Taking Takes Off, or, Nebby Is as Nebby Does

Posted on December 5, 2024 by RC

They were heady days, the first decade of the internet. The market seized on this new technology to do what it does best, spread pornography. The Reformed seized on it to do what it does best, skewering our brothers. I was there for the rise and fall of Federal Vision, regularly pilloried by both sides. I watched it unfold first in discussion forums, later in blog pieces and their accompanying comments.

Now we live in the world of social media. Podcasts, the occasional blog and the ubiquitous social media outlets have multiplied voices, venues and vituperations. That multiplication of venues has created not only more opportunities for battles, but more pressure for EVERYONE to have a take. It’s not just Team Webbon and Team Wilson but everyone else insisting they know how to divvy up the fault.

Though I’m confident even fewer people would care where I come down on the latest imbroglio than did with respect to Federal Vision, I did want to throw my two cents in. Ready? I haven’t the faintest idea who is at fault, or for what. That’s my two cents.
I consider Pastor Wilson to be a friend, and he has certainly had a profound influence on me over the years. That said, my first concern about him would be my perception that he doesn’t get an A+ in Discernment Class when it comes to picking friends. I serve as exhibit A. Pastor Webbon’s perspectives cross my timeline from time to time, but we have never met. I’d never heard of Pastor Tobias before this dust up.

Which means not only do I not have to have a take, I am blessed to not actually have one. It is profoundly freeing to be able to walk away from someone else’s fight without taking a dog by the ears (Proverbs 26:17). The Bible says we ought not to do so. Even if someone said something he shouldn’t have said. Even if someone shared a meme. Even if sharing said meme is done for honorable purposes. Even if someone is guilty of untempered key rattling.

When you grab a dog by the ears, it doesn’t matter which side is right and which wrong. You are wrong. Even if you actually know which side is right. Even if you, no, because you take it upon yourself to pronounce judgment on the people and the situation you run afoul of God’s command to mind your own beeswax.

I’ve often wondered why this biblical account doesn’t get more interest:

Then one from the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”
But He said to him, “Man, who made Me a judge or an arbitrator over you?” (Luke 12: 13-14).

The Judge of heaven and earth bowed out of this dispute. He did not feel the need to enter the fray. If nothing else, shouldn’t this account slow down our incessant need to have a take on every controversy coming down the pike? Shouldn’t we feel some sense of embarrassment over our eagerness to spend our time down at the Dog Ear Grabbing Emporium and Circus?

I’m guilty too. Lord, forgive me and teach me to not meddle in the affairs of others.

* Nebby

Posted in 10 Commandments, Biblical Doctrines, Big Eva, church, cyberspace, Devil's Arsenal, ethics, kingdom, Kingdom Notes, proverbs, RC Sproul JR, scandal, wisdom | 1 Comment

God is Near; Corporate Guilt; Illustrated Man

Posted on December 4, 2024 by RC

You can call it a re-run if you like. I prefer “Greatest Hits.” We’ll be posting more greatest hits the rest of the month. Most of you haven’t listened to this one, and its themes are ever green.

This week’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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All Quiet On the Western Front

Posted on December 3, 2024 by RC

It probably says more about what defines our moments, the television, than the moments themselves, that we keep multiplying defining moments. For my parents’ generation, it was the death of John F. Kennedy. Everyone remembers where they first heard, or more likely saw, the news. Since that time we have added a moon landing or three, two shuttle disasters, and 9/11. We no longer can be certain what will follow, “Do you remember where you were when you first heard…”

Each of these events, however, was more startling than shocking. That is, while we weren’t expecting these things to happen, neither were we thinking, “It will never happen.” Presidents have been killed before, and technological marvels, and failures, are virtually a staple of American life. What truly shocked me, on the other hand, was the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and all that it symbolized, the collapse of the Soviet Union. There we had the curious marriage of both bang and whimper. The speed was bang-like. The events themselves were but a whimper.

Because we are such an a-historical people, we tend to forget that empires come and go. Greece and Rome, because they were both so long ago, and so long lasting, are given virtual immortal status. Because we can still find Greece and Rome on a map, we think they’re still with us. The Ottoman Empire, along with the sundry dynasties of China, are just too far east to really count. What we are left with then is the Soviet Empire, and the American Empire.

As a child of the Cold War, this was the very air that I breathed, the very water in which I was swimming. Until we woke up one day to discover that the evil empire was no more. We watched the hammer and sickle brought down as hammers and chisels chipped away at that wall. And like the good Americans we are we thought, “Wow, I wonder what those little pieces of the wall will sell for?”

We tend to make one of two mistakes in contemplating our corporate cultural future. A few of us, being hip to the rickety nature of our economy and who ironically have an optimistic view of the long-term future, lean Chicken Little. In the 1970’s we were sure inflation would destroy us. In the 1980’s, we learned to fear AIDS. Then in the 1990’s we feared a far more deadly virus, the millennium bug. In the 2000’s we were waiting for the Muslims to overrun us. And now reset, Russia and a sea of make believe money.

When Chicken Little meets an ostrich it never takes long for the ostrich to ask, “Don’t you believe in the sovereignty of God?” The unspoken assumption is the same one that messes us up individually. God is in control. Everything is supposed to be comfortable for me. Therefore nothing bad will happen.

It is true for the Christian that God is in control, and that nothing bad will happen to the Christian, understanding that “Bad” should be defined as anything that isn’t helpful in the believer’s sanctification. Comfortable is another matter altogether. But when it comes to this nation, things are different. God is in control still. But everything isn’t supposed to be comfortable for this nation. And of course bad things can happen here.

With both of these mistakes, however, comes a third mistake. Whether you are waiting for judgment, or are sure it will never come, in both circumstances what you’ve missed is the judgment that has come and continues to come every day.

What might cultural judgment look like? Like growing sexual insanity as described in Romans 1? Like a culture where thousands of people each year are murdered by their neighbors? Would a culture under judgment be one where tens of thousands of people each year take their own lives? A culture where nearly a million moms and dads murder nearly a million babies every year? We keep waiting for God to judge us for these things, and miss the obvious truth, that these things are His judgment against us.

That the economy continues to teeter along, that foreign powers do not rule, at least openly, within our borders, that the better man won the election isn’t a mitigating of the judgment, but an exacerbating of the judgment. Because He has not yet chosen to topple our idols we are fooled into thinking we’ve avoided His judgment, and so we continue down the path of destruction. We miss the opportunity to repent, and that is judgment at its most severe.

When He was but a boy, Jesus performed the first anti-exodus. God’s people had sinned so deeply, that the only safe place for the boy was in the nation of Egypt. Then He returned, and over the next sixty years or so systematically drove out the children of Israel, just as they once drove out the Canaanites. The world was turned upside down.

In like manner, not long after the demise of the evil Soviet empire, where do we find ourselves, but at home and at peace in the evil empire? We now impose our will not over a few satellite nations in eastern Europe, but over the whole of the middle east. We now impose our own cultural decadence on nations that haven’t bowed the knee to our particular utopian scheme. They spread communism, while we spread consumerism. Which is more dangerous to the soul?

Judgment has come. Judgment is here. And judgment will come. The only escape is repentance, recognizing that we are Egypt, a stubborn and foolish nation of hardened hearts. We wait for judgment while missing the judgment all around us. We are judged but do not learn repentance. In due time our feet shall slide.

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Live Study Tonight, II Thess. 1 – Maturing in Hardship

Posted on December 2, 2024 by RC

Tonight we continue our study on I Thessalonians. All are welcome to our home at 7 est, or you may join us for dinner at 6:15. We will also stream the study at Facebook Live, RC-Lisa Sproul. We hope you’ll join us.

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Why did God chose us? 1st Church of the Base and Foolish

Posted on December 2, 2024 by RC

One complaint against the doctrine of unconditional election is that it seems to make God out to be capricious. The late great John Gerstner, in trying to emphasize the sovereign grace of God in election once, with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, described that moment before time when we were chosen as “our lucky day.”

The Reformers, however, in arguing for unconditional election were dealing with a particular argument from the other side. They were more interested in denying something than affirming something. The driving motive here was to ensure we understood election is not done on the basis of any good in the chosen. There were no meritorious conditions in the elect that motivated God to make them the elect.

He did not peer down the corridor of time to find out which among us were good enough to choose Him. He didn’t then, on that basis, choose us. Total depravity, of course, is sufficient to undo that notion. If He peered down time’s corridor to see who would have themselves choose Him, none would be elect.

That God looked for nothing good in us, however, does not mean that He looked for nothing at all. The goal of the doctrine is not neutrality, but humility. If we look to God’s Word, we find that God just may have used a particular criteria in choosing us. Paul writes about God’s choosing His people,

“For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty, and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not to bring to nothing the things that are” (I Cor. 1: 26-28).

That’s us. Were we more honest, we would give up our dignified church names, like Covenant Church, First Church, Trinity Church, and adopt more honesty in our labeling. We ought to tell our neighbors, “We worship each Lord’s Day with the saints down at First Church of the Ignoble.” We ought to put bumper stickers on our cars advising “Follow me to Base and Despised Community Fellowship.” God did indeed have a reason for choosing you and choosing me- He wanted to choose losers.

Does the church acknowledge this painful reality? Do we embrace our inner loser? No. He chooses us because we are fools, and we, because He was right, think ourselves wise. We come up with elaborate marketing strategies for the kingdom of God. We divide up the congregation by market tastes, setting up the hip, urbane fancy coffee gathering place over here, and the country/western place over there. We’ll serve this group lattes and the other group Mountain Dew, and we’ll send the satellite feed of Pastor Sweater to both.

He chooses us in our lack of nobility, and we pat Him on the back for choosing such fine fellows such as we are.

This is why it is wise to come together at the table each Lord’s Day. How can we go on thinking so highly of ourselves if, each week we see the body we broke, and the blood we shed? How can we persuade ourselves God’s kingdom needs us, when we need our Captain not just to provide for us, but to feed us His own body? How can we perceive ourselves to be a net gain for the body, when we cannot stay alive without the Body? The table, for all its joy and delight, powerfully reminds us of who we are, the weak, the foolish, the ignoble.

Why would God choose losers like us? Is it because of His compassion? Was it sympathy that drove Him to overlook the stronger, wiser, nobler of His creatures? No, the text tells us how God reasoned this out- “that no flesh should glory in His presence” (verse 29). God’s motive for picking us is the same as His motive for all that He does, that His glory might be made known.

When we preen about, thinking too highly of ourselves, therefore, we are not merely showing our foolishness by misunderstanding ourselves. Rather we fall under the very curse of Malachi, “Will a man rob God?” (3:8). A failure of humility is a failure to render unto God the things that are His, glory.

We’re not, by the way, fooling anyone anyway. The world knows what losers we are. God knows what losers we are. Losers that we are, we’re the only ones that don’t seem to notice. We’re too busy trying to impress each other. May God have mercy on our souls.

The answer, of course, isn’t to get all Puddleglum about ourselves. That we are losers isn’t cause for mourning, but for rejoicing. We should move not only from grace to grace, but from shocked to stunned- ME? He chose ME? But I’m awful. I’m a bundle of dust and rebellion. What did He see in me?

What did He see in us? Losers so awful that He was our only way out. He saw in us an opportunity to make known His glory. An opportunity to shine forth the riches of His grace by bestowing them upon we the poverty-stricken. We now have no more reason to pretend. We need no more put on a show for others. All we need to do is to repent and believe. And having believed, all we have left to do is rejoice and give thanks. We are losers, every one of us. But by His grace and for His glory, were His losers.

This is the twenty-third installment of an ongoing series of pieces here on the nature and calling of the church. Stay tuned for more. Remember also that we at Sovereign Grace Fellowship meet this Sunday December 8 at 10:30 AM at our new location, at our beautiful farm at 112811 Garman Road, Spencerville, IN. Please come join us.

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Looking for Life in the Temple of Consumption

Posted on November 29, 2024 by RC

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, “Black Friday is proof that Thanksgiving didn’t stick.” I understand the importance of proper qualifications. One should not hear in that pithy phrase a condemnation either of getting a good deal, or having nice things. I’m in favor of both. No “bah, humbug” from me.

What concerns me isn’t the thriftiness of finding the best deals but our propensity to feel dissatisfied, to believe that things can bolster our contentment. It’s one thing to get up early in the morning to go in search of bargains, another thing altogether to go in search of meaning. One you can find almost anywhere. The other, you’d be looking in all the wrong places.

We’re all familiar with the story of John D. Rockefeller when he, who was at the time the richest man in the world, was asked, “How much money is enough?” His response, “Just a little bit more.” If you think this a lesson on how greedy the rich are you’re missing who you are in the story. It is true enough that the rich are greedy. So are, however, the middle class. Even the poor don’t escape. Greed is a human heart problem, not a income bracket problem. We would all answer as Rockefeller did, were we honest.

There are always things we’d like to have that seem just out of our reach, a kind of mental shopping list for when our ship comes in, “If somehow I had X dollars, then I’d buy Y.” Perhaps because this isn’t necessarily a look we like to see in the mirror, we may instead tell ourselves, “If somehow I had X dollars, then I’d give Y to Z.”

We tell ourselves what great givers we’d be, if we only had more. But here’s the thing. Precious few of us have ever found ourselves in debt because we were donating too much to others. Precious few of us are financially upside down because of what we wanted to give. It is instead what we wanted to get. We fault the Pharisees for making a grand show of their giving, while we hide our merely hypothetical giving in our minds.

There are two portentous signposts that show us what we value, rather than what we like to think we value- what do we spend our time on, and what do we spend our money on? On Black Friday the two come together as we give up time sleeping in order to purchase more stuff.

Please do not hear me scolding anyone. Rather hear me confessing. I have confidence in my assessment of your heart simply because of the ugliness I see in my own. That said, here’s something we all ought to be thinking about as we wake from our feast-induced coma. Maybe we should be thinking about what we can give rather than what we can get. Maybe we should be looking for bargains, those organizations that provide great bang for your buck. Maybe we should put the gratitude we expressed yesterday to work today.

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As Good as Thanksgiving Leftovers, A Repeat Performance

Posted on November 27, 2024 by RC

This week’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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Kenning Kin Cons, or, Lining Outside the Colors

Posted on November 26, 2024 by RC

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who do not. I’m both. There is one kind of people, two kinds of people, three kinds of people and more kinds of people. The one is people. All people are people, bearing God’s image. The two are believers and unbelievers. The three could be Africans, Asians and Europeans. The more could be both citizens of many nations, plus every combination of the above.

God, in His mercy, has laid out His law on the relations of several of these divided peoples. We are commanded to love both our enemies and our neighbor, acknowledging our shared nature as image bearers. We are commanded to provide for our families. We are forbidden, as believers, to marry unbelievers. What the Bible says not the first word about is how we are to relate to people from other parts of the world, or with a differing set of genetic distinctives. Which is saying a lot.

Comes now modern Pharisees who, quoting long dead fathers, add to God’s law and seek to bind consciences where God has left us at liberty. They do so by taking one category of people and trying to stretch it into another. They take the truth that most of us are all closer kin to one ethnic or genetic subgroup and determine that such are our kin. To fail to prefer Caucasians over Asians, as a Caucasian, is to fail to abide by God’s command that we love our “family.”

We are in the midst of yet another donnybrook over these issues. Not the first time nor the last. See here.

God, however, while He did establish nations and boundaries, never established such a law. Which is why, ironically, virtually every kinist on the planet is, by kinism’s own understanding, a mutt, a mixed breed. Not only does skin color in the mind of the kinist equate to family, but it, ironically obliterates national boundaries. You won’t find kinists objecting to the Irish and the Spanish intermarrying. Though they would, on the other hand, object to say, a Hebrew marrying a Nubian. The law of family love flies right past national borders, only to land on skin color.

They could just as well move in the other direction. That is, love of kin can be defined as close kin, and run headlong into God’s laws against consanguinity. You can only marry someone who shares the same genetic connection to your grandfather, or worse, your father. That is, either your cousin or your sibling.

These folks line outside the colors in real life, while their ideology thrives on gratuitous self-made distinctions. The truth is that their loyalty is not to their national background, their continent of origin, their skin tone, but to their ideology. A white kinist has more in common with a black kinist than he does with a white Christian who rejects kinist ideology. I ought to know. I was reviled by the kinists before such was cool. I, despite being their kin, was mocked and targeted by them.

My hope is that they will find their way home, to the city whose builder and maker is God, following in the footsteps of who I hope is their father, Father Abraham, who had many sons; many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them. Praise the Lord..

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Live Study Tonight, I Thess. 5 – Comfort the Fainthearted

Posted on November 25, 2024 by RC

Tonight we continue our study on I Thessalonians. All are welcome to our home at 7 est, or you may join us for dinner at 6:15. We will also stream the study at Facebook Live, RC-Lisa Sproul. We hope you’ll join us.

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For what should the church be thankful?

Posted on November 25, 2024 by RC

While one could argue that Thanksgiving began with the church, in that it was celebrated by our spiritual fathers who came to these shores, it has become more of a family holiday. Families always have much for which to give thanks. So too does the church. It would be wise of the church to take the good habit of a day devoted to giving thanks and apply it to the gifts He has given the church.

What gifts? Paul writes,

“And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,” (Ephesians 4: 11, 12).

It is a good sign that we are not grateful as we ought to be that when we read this text we are prone to jumping right to cessationist vs. continuationist debates. Not here, not today. While everyone agrees we do not have apostles in the exact same sense as the early church had, and nearly everyone would agree we do not have prophets in exactly the same way either, we still have much to give thanks. We are failing if we rush by the text to get to the debate.

First, we give thanks for the apostles and prophets in the Bible. They still speak to us today. We have, because of God’s working through them, God’s Word. That is surely something worthy of our gratitude, as it reveals not just the gifts but the Giver, the Redeemer of our souls.

Second, we give thanks for evangelists. This could certainly include those who are simply faithful to share the gospel, those whose ministry is principally evangelistic, anyone that God uses to bring the Word which gives life. Every Father’s son of us was once outside the kingdom. Faith comes by hearing, and someone spoke the words of life into our lives. If you haven’t, and you know who that person was in your life, maybe take the occasion this week to thank him or her. All of us, however, can thank the One who put that person in our lives.

Third, we can give thanks for our pastors and teachers. Pastor Appreciation Month was October, and it might have escaped your radar. But gratitude is always in style, and every pastor and teacher can benefit from words of encouragement. They (we) want to know that we have been a blessing in people’s lives. Giving thanks lifts spirits, fuels fidelity and blesses the one blessing you.

Fourth, give thanks not only for these gifts but for the work of the ministry that is the fruit of these gifts. The gifts of the Lord redound to more gifts. Those who have served you in time of need, who have blessed you with an encouraging word, give them thanks.

Which reminds me, I am grateful for all who invest the time to visit this site, to read my pieces, to tune in to our Bible study, who worship with us, who listen to the podcast. Simply listening is a gift. Feedback is the icing on the cake. Thank you, and may God bless you this holiday season.

This is the twenty-second installment of an ongoing series of pieces here on the nature and calling of the church. Stay tuned for more. Remember also that we at Sovereign Grace Fellowship meet this Sunday December 1 at 10:30 AM at our new location, at our beautiful farm at 112811 Garman Road, Spencerville, IN. Please come join us.

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