The Spirit of Rebellion in His Church

Posted on July 19, 2024 by RC

Though I haven’t the infernal wisdom that C.S. Lewis demonstrated in his classic work The Screwtape Letters, I think I know something about at least some of the devil’s stratagems. The Screwtape Letters, you remember, purported to be a series of letters written from senior demon Screwtape to junior demon Wormwood, explaining how best to assault his “patient,” the young man under his charge. Lewis’ insights were uncanny, as if he really had been spying on the devil and his minions. I have no secret wiretap, I’m merely guessing.

First, the devil is, I’m sure, rather proud of his work in the culture at large as we ditch that old devil modernism for the devil in the new dress, postmodernism. How we Christians bravely fought to tear down the smug certainty of the scientific worldview, to drive the enlightenment into the shadows. We have destroyed Frankenstein’s monster.

Precious few people today are convinced that the scientific method is the only pathway to truth. The devil’s success, however, is that there are likewise precious few people who are convinced that there is a pathway to truth. We no longer need to bow down to the mighty scientist as the grand arbiter of truth. Now we bow to the man in the mirror, as each of us has his own truth.

It cost the devil nothing to get us to buy this latest lie. He promised that if we would but embrace relativism, we would enjoy peace. No longer would my understanding of truth war against yours, because even when they contradict, we can both be right. Now we can all get along.

Except for this. If, in your reality, you have the right-of-way, and in my reality I have the right-of-way, all our smiling confidence that we can both be right won’t keep our fenders from trading paint. To Hitler, he had done nothing wrong. To the Allies he had. And soon millions of men, women, and children were dead. But we should have known. The devil never gives what he promises when he makes us a deal.

This success, however, is really small potatoes. The devil may take a sadistic joy in muddying up the world around us. But it is not the strategic ground he so desperately seeks. Victory for him isn’t confusing the world; it’s seducing the church. Like any good strategist, he is thinking several moves ahead. Relativism exists, in the devil’s game plan, not for the folly of the world, but as a tool to assault the church.

But how could relativism make any headway into the church of Christ? We are the people of the book. We are defined by creeds, affirmations of objective truths, that are true for everyone. Surely we must be immune from the folly of relativism. Sadly, we are not only not immune, but are not, in truth, people of the Word. The thin spiritual veneer that the devil drapes over his poison is simple enough — it is the Holy Spirit. The only thing that can trump God’s Word, is God Himself. It is ordinary and pedestrian to take our cues from the Bible. It’s so much more exciting and pious to hear direct from the Author. Thus relativism gallops into the church.

This problem is by no means restricted to the more flamboyant pentecostals. Otherwise austere Presbyterians have been known to baptize their sin with this bilge. Adultery may be wrong for you, some have reasoned, but to me it’s okay, because the Holy Spirit has granted me peace about the matter. The command to obey may be okay for you, but the Holy Spirit has given me a spirit of freedom. We enlist the Spirit to justify not our souls, but our sins.

This is the spirit of our age. The driving force behind the culture’s embrace of relativism is the intense desire to justify away our own sins. Remove the objective standard of the law, and you remove the accountability that comes with it. It works the same with the Holy Spirit. Remove the objective standard of the Word, and you remove the accountability that comes with it.

The devil likewise delights that we in the church are faithfully about the business of trying to remove the speck in the world’s eye, while blissfully ignoring the mote in our own. The foolishness of relativism is indeed laughable. But it is also understandable. They are, after all, fools. Folly is what they do. But we have been given a spirit of wisdom, and we still succumb to the folly.

We must never forget that for all our worldliness, the world follows the church. They do the silly things they do because we do the silly things that we do. Which means, in turn, that the fastest way to rid the world of its folly is to remove it from the church. Do we want courts that treat the Constitution as the law of the land, rather than a quaint relic? More important than letter-writing campaigns, or rallies around the flag, is for us to begin treating the Bible as our law.

The spirit of wisdom is the Spirit of Wisdom. He is indeed speaking to us, telling all of us that there is but one truth, telling us to feed upon the Word of God, for therein is life, and life abundant. He is calling us to submit to Him, by submitting to His Word, the very words of life. If He whispers anything, it is only to go to where He speaks with clarity to all of us. May He grant us the ears to hear Him where He speaks.

Posted in 10 Commandments, apologetics, Biblical Doctrines, Big Eva, church, Devil's Arsenal, Holy Spirit, kingdom, Kingdom Notes, philosophy, post-modernism, RC Sproul JR, wisdom | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Cost of Conviction, or, Guarding our Garbage

Posted on July 18, 2024 by RC

Peer pressure, though we may consign it to teenagers and temptations toward teenage sins, is real and impacts all of us. It rarely comes complete with all the accoutrements, the insistent pleas from our friends, “Come on, everyone’s doing it” or the fake chicken squawks from the crowd. The social cost is more subtle. We’re simply judged to be outside the circle.

It’s because those accoutrements are missing that we miss we’re still susceptible to peer pressure. We come to the questions of the day and often look more at the price tag than we do at the evidence. It’s not at all unlike President Trump lurching left on life. Babies in the first trimester are no less babies than babies in their first three years. But to act on that truth carries a political cost.

The same is true theologically. Embrace six day creation and no one will call you names, “Fundamentalist” or “know-nothing.” They’ll just treat you like one. Reject presuppositionalism and no one will call you a modernist. They’ll just treat you like one.

The same goes for politics, and the issues of the day. Failure to salute the rainbow flag will earn you the sobriquets of homophobe, Nazi, closeted queer. And just maybe bricks through your window. Which is why we watch the stampede of evangelicals racing toward a middle ground that just doesn’t exist. An evangelical, after all, is little more than a fundamentalist that desperately wants to be accepted.

Some seek to skip out on the bill of the social costs of their convictions by holding them secretly and loudly. Secretly and loudly? Yes, which is why the great bulk of purveyors of white identity politics spew their bile from the safety of anonymity.

So what do we do? How do we pay these bills? Simple enough. No one collects payments from a dead person. I have no need to protect my reputation if I’m dead. Sticks and stones can break my bones but neither they nor names hurt those beyond the grave. Every believer is seated with Christ in the heavenly places. Our treasure is beyond the reach of His and our enemies. We’ve already confessed to be horrible people. We have no pride to protect.

Whether its left-wing Karens demanding we believe the science, main stream media telling us to believe the Dementia-Patient-in-Chief is sharp as a tack, or the whole mad world telling us to believe that boys can be girls, we are impervious. Only though if we know we are dead. Only if we have forsaken our standing in this world. Only if we have joyfully embraced His shame, as He embraces ours.

Negative world brings with it a cornucopia of negatives. But it allows us to receive the honor of being persecuted for His name’s sake, which He tells us is a blessing. Which we are to rejoice over. The reward overpowers the cost into nothingness.

Do remember this though. What the world hates is less our convictions, more our courage. That is, if they can cow you into hiding your convictions, they’re good. If, however, their fear tactics leave you unmoved, then the rage comes. And it’s coming.

Posted in "race", 10 Commandments, abortion, Big Eva, church, covid-19, Devil's Arsenal, ethics, kingdom, Kingdom Notes, persecution, politics, post-modernism, RC Sproul JR, scandal, sexual confusion | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Encouragement; Shot in the Dark; Satanic Folly & More

Posted on July 17, 2024 by RC

This week’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

Posted in 10 Commandments, Biblical Doctrines, Jesus Changes Everything, Lisa Sproul, Month of Sundays, Nostalgia, politics, RC Sproul JR, Sacred Marriage, That 70s Kid | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Encouragement; Shot in the Dark; Satanic Folly & More

The Madness of the Method, or Losing the Lost

Posted on July 16, 2024 by RC

“You can’t turn back time.” “There’s no stopping progress.” It’s interesting the way we manipulate words. It’s certainly true, I suppose, that you can’t turn back time, and that there’s no stopping progress. But somehow these truisms have come to mean something other than what they say. We know the words add up, but the sentiments are patently false. To consider that perhaps the older ways are better than the newer is not to turn back time. Rather it is to honor it. And no one I know is interested in stopping progress. But if we’re wise we’ll labor to stop regress. That is that you cannot tell if you’re making progress unless you know where you came from, where you are, and where you want to go.

Only a fool comforts himself while he’s lost by considering what great time he is making. These arguments are tricks the liberals play on us. They begin with the assumption that we’re moving toward their vision of the good life, and that we will inevitably get there. And so to suggest that we’re going down the wrong hill is to be accused of the folly of Sisyphus. They don’t own the future, we do. And progress is not measured by the number of Gs in your wireless network, the growth of government, or the eroding of what’s left of our moral foundation. Progress is moving toward a greater understanding of His grace, toward the consummation of His Kingdom, and toward greater obedience to His law.

But still there is the question of methods. The evangelical church has for decades been all abuzz with the great insight that we can reach the lost if only we can learn to take the morally neutral tools of the world and apply them to the spreading of the gospel. That’s how we got Christian television, Christian rock music, Christian movies, Christian enneagram books, Christian yoga, and a host of other knock-offs. I too once dreamed of having my cake and eating it to, of writing the great American novel that would spawn the third great awakening. Fame and fortune would be mine, and all for the glory of God. Who says you can’t serve God and mammon?

The trouble is in the assumption that mediums are morally neutral. Our understanding of the law of God has become so blunted that we’ve lost the capacity to see sin unless it wears a neon sign announcing its nature. We’ve forgotten that there are more carnal weapons out there than cannons and fighter planes. We’ve accepted the propaganda that propaganda is an acceptable means of winning the lost. We’ve bought the lie that marketing truth is okay. There’s a madness to our modern methods.

The irony is that these pragmatic theories don’t work. When we use marketing techniques to win the lost we find, much to our surprise, that they have no more loyalty to Christ than they have for their cola of choice. We find that when we hide the cost of discipleship the “converts” aren’t willing to pay it when the bill comes due. We find that all our appeals to how new we are work only until something newer comes along.

History shows us what works. It provides the empirical data we need. When were the lost being found? When was the kingdom being built? We know of no other time like the age of the Puritans. We look and see how they proclaimed the fullness of the gospel and we find that they proclaimed it boldly, straightforwardly, and confidently. They told it boldly, refusing to hide from their audience the truths of God’s sovereignty, of the horror of Hell, of the wrath of the Father, of the cost of picking up the cross daily. They told it straightforwardly, leaving out all the bells and whistles, but instead gathering in simple buildings to hear the simple Word expounded simply.

These preachers knew nothing of the importance of illustrations, or humor, or charisma. They knew the power of the Word preached. And because they knew of the power, they preached confidently, believing the Gospel to be the power of God unto salvation. They understood that when you adorn the gospel with dainties, you present a dainty God. But when you let the pure Gospel loose, it goes forth like a lion.

Posted in Biblical Doctrines, Big Eva, church, Devil's Arsenal, evangelism, kingdom, Kingdom Notes, preaching, RC Sproul JR, wisdom | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Madness of the Method, or Losing the Lost

How often should we observe the Lord’s Supper?

Posted on July 15, 2024 by RC

Never. If, however, you want to know how often we ought to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, that’s a whole different matter. For which the answer is, weekly, at the very least. What’s the difference between observing and celebrating? The former is fulfilling a duty, the latter is entering into a feast.

At Sovereign Grace Fellowship, and every other church I’ve served in over the years, we celebrate the Lord’s Table weekly. Sometimes aspiring theology students ask me, “Where does the Bible say we have to do this every week?” My response? “I don’t know. I’ve never felt the need to ask that question.” The better question is how often are we allowed to do this? However many times we’re allowed, that’s how often I want to do it.

When we come to the Lord’s Table, we come to the Lord’s Table. It is a time of deep fellowship, a shared family meal, entrance into the Holy of Holies. Yes, we ought, while there, to remember that we are the ones who broke His body and spilled His blood. We must also remember, however, that through this we are brought near, bought and adopted. We receive a foretaste of the marriage feast of the Lamb.

The biggest objection to this practice is the fear that the Lord’s Table can become rote, a mere ritual. My answer is simple enough. The danger is real, but it is grounded not in the frequency of the celebration, but whether we believe what it is we’re celebrating. It is rote when we observe it. It is life when we celebrate it. Whether we do it every Lord’s Day or every quarter.

The best “argument” I can give in favor of weekly celebration is this. Imagine that Jesus said to you, “I’d like us to meet together every week. We’ll have a little bread, a little wine, and spend time together.” Can you possibly imagine responding to such an invitation, “That sounds great Lord. Trouble is, I might find myself taking it for granted. How about we make it every other month, You know, to keep it special?”

When our Lord offers us a gift, the right and wise thing to do is to accept it with great joy and gratitude. When He invites us to a feast, we ought to do the same. We are too clever by far if we think restricting the gift will help us appreciate it more.

Too often in the contemporary church we think the center of the service is our time of singing His praise. Of course such is a good and wonderful thing. It is not, however, feasting with Him. Others think the center of the service is when the pastor downloads the results of his exegetical research into the brains of the congregation. Of course the Word preached is a good and wonderful thing. It is not, however, feasting with Him.

Feasting with Him is feasting with Him. It may look like nibbling a dry cracker and drinking a thimble full of the fruit of the vine. That, however, is not what it is. It is drawing near. A deeper blessing I can’t imagine.

This is the fifth installment of an ongoing series of pieces here on the nature and calling of the church. Stay tuned for more.

Posted in Ask RC, assurance, beauty, Biblical Doctrines, church, communion, grace, RC Sproul JR, wonder, worship | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

What Love Is This? The World’s Hatred of the God of Love

Posted on July 12, 2024 by RC

The simplicity of God is a doctrine that provides a rather useful fence. The perfections of God are, of course, worthy of our excitement. Their infinity is, of course, staggering. But the simplicity of God is that place where these infinite perfections show themselves to be one where the glorious colors come together in a blinding white. Whatever else we delightfully affirm about God, we must affirm that He is one.

It is the very point of the doctrine of simplicity, however, that we don’t diminish one attribute when we remember another. We have misunderstood simplicity if, as we wax rhapsodic over the love of God, we throw a wet blanket over the party by remembering, “Well, He is also a God of wrath, after all.” The wrath of God doesn’t restrain the love of God, nor does the love of God restrain His wrath. Rather, in a profound way, they are one and the same thing.

There are some fairly obvious ways that we see this. In Psalm 2 we see the wrath of God coming for a specific reason, because the kings of the earth will not kiss the Son. The love of the Son is what provokes the wrath of the Father. We see much the same thing on the road to Damascus, as Jesus accuses Saul, “Why dost thou persecute Me?” Christ’s loving union with the Bride brings wrath on Saul. And in turn, that wrath brings forth love as Saul becomes Paul, a part of the Bride.

Love is universally loved. We who belong to the King rightly celebrate His love for us. But those outside the camp do not stay outside the camp because of a self-conscious rejection of love. Those who think the lost are lost because they have trouble accepting love have been accepting too many foolish bromides from pop psychologists. The very creatures that the lost create, in their rejection of the Creator, are characterized by love. One can safely finish the idolater’s sentence, when he begins, “Well, my god is a god of … .”

It’s love, every time. Have you ever heard someone object, when we tell them to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus, “Well, I’m repulsed by your God that forgives the repentant. My god is a god of raging, irrational fury.” No. Everyone loves love.

But while love is not diminished by wrath, a love that excludes wrath is not a biblical love. The love clamored for by the lost is a wrathless love. But the love they crave is just unknown. While there is, rightly understood, a universal love of God that includes even those who will be damned, this love is a simple love, one that includes all that God is. There is no wrathless love that comes from God.

The Bible tells us that God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. We find there what some theologians call “common grace.” God acts kindly to all men living. We all need to remember this. When we, or others, in trying to describe their particular anguish describe their situation as “a living hell,” they do not understand the patient love of God. Any suffering experienced on this earth, save for the passion of Christ, is a suffering mitigated by His love, a suffering that is less severe than what is due, a suffering less severe than hell.

But even the most wicked among us do not live their earthly lives exclusively in agony. Some unbelieving mothers genuinely rejoice when blessed with a child. Sometimes unbelievers win the Super Bowl and are genuinely happy about it. Even the heathen in the remotest, most desolate part of the world sometimes sit down to a favorite meal and feel real joy in eating it. Common love is common, love, and real.

Common love, or the universal love of God, however, cannot be separated from common wrath. Because God is one, a simple being, you cannot wrap your arms around His love and miss the wrath. The Lord our God, the Lord is One. For the wrath of God is revealed against all unrighteousness, including the unrighteousness of ingratitude.

The common love of God is connected with the common wrath of God right here, where Paul tells us of all natural men, “For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him …” (Rom. 1:21a). Though the lost will receive the loving gifts of God, they will neither honor Him nor thank Him, and so they will earn His eternal wrath.

God’s love is not only inseparable from His wrath, but it is equally bound together with His sovereignty. That is, when God sends the rain to the unjust, He does so knowing that the unjust will not honor Him. But this doesn’t frustrate God. First, He planned it that way. And second, He planned it that way because of one more connection between love and wrath — God loves His wrath. He delights to manifest the infinite perfection of His wrath just as much as His love, because they are one thing.

This, in turn, must inform how we look at the world around us. The problem with the broader culture, that place where they love love, isn’t that they’ve embraced part of the truth, and that our job as sound Christians is to teach them the hard parts. Rather we have to understand that the love they love is no more love than the god they worship is God. They are wrong on all counts.

And unless they embrace the true and living God, the God of love that is wrath, of wrath that is love, of both that are manifest sovereignly, they will perish. Biblical love requires that we tell the world that their love of their love will earn them only His wrath.

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No Believer Could Ever, or, Logs-in-Eyes ‘r’ Us

Posted on July 11, 2024 by RC

It’s election season again, which means I once again enter into that weird phase where my ideological friends regularly make me cringe. Sometimes it’s over the top rhetoric in favor of some guy on the red team, other times it’s over the top rhetoric in against some guy on the blue team. People who ought to know better say things like, “No believer could ever vote blue.” This is logically equivalent to “All persons who voted blue are not believers.”

Yikes. Now please don’t misunderstand me. You will likely never meet a man more committed to the sanctity of live, to limited government, to conservative ideology than me. I am also a deeply committed believer myself. Last but not least, I have never voted for, nor can I imagine ever doing so, a democrat for any office. I’m more than happy to say this radically different thing, “No believer should ever vote blue.” Could never? Don’t be ridiculous.

Here is a brief list of things that are at least on par with voting blue if not worse, that believers can and have done.
1. Committed sexual infidelity.
2. Committed murder to cover up sexual infidelity.
3. Refused to share table fellowship with fellow believers because of their ancestry.
4. Denied the Lord three times.
5. Passed out from drinking.
6. Murdered his or her unborn child.
7. Driven drunk with his children in the car.
8. Whatever it is you’ve done that you desperately hope no one ever finds out about.

The first two on this list is a man God called a “man after His own heart.” The second two are man Jesus called “the Rock.” The third is a man God called righteous in his generations. That’s King David, King David again, Peter, Peter again, and Noah. The sixth is the one sixth of procurers of abortion in American, while professing to be evangelical Christians. The seventh is me and the eighth is you.

According to Jesus, there is only one sin a believer can not ever commit, blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. While there may be some uncertainty as to what exactly that is, voting foolishly is surely not what it is. Which means that while it may well be a sin to vote Democrat, it is certainly a sin to suggest that this particular sin is a sure sign that that sinner is outside the kingdom. This sin, however, even those under His grace, are prone to commit.

The solution is for us to understand that while all sins are heinous, and while some sins are more heinous that others, believers are more than capable of committing the most heinous of sins. While His promises include washing us of our sins, they don’t include our being freed from committing sins until we have crossed over.

Education and admonition are good things. And it is certainly true that there are forces of foolery inside the church that seek to deny the sinfulness of voting for the Baby Killing party that should be directly challenged, calling such a sin unforgivable is a lie against the breadth and scope of the grace of God in Christ. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of which I am chief (I Tim 1:15).

Posted in abortion, Biblical Doctrines, Big Eva, church, ethics, kingdom, Kingdom Notes, politics, RC Sproul JR, wisdom | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Former Astrologer Marcia Montenegro, Lying Media & More

Posted on July 10, 2024 by RC

This week’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

Posted in 10 Commandments, appeal, Biblical theology, covid-19, Devil's Arsenal, ethics, ism, Jesus Changes Everything, Lisa Sproul, Month of Sundays, new age, philosophy, politics, post-modernism, RC Sproul JR, shepherd's college, typology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Former Astrologer Marcia Montenegro, Lying Media & More

Name It Blame It, or, Pinning Failures on Failure

Posted on July 9, 2024 by RC

Some time ago I published an Ask RC podcast titled, “What’s wrong with the enneagram?” One of my (many) concerns is that as with so many other so called assessment tests, we always face the temptation to excuse our sin on the basis of our personality type. The bossy person gives free reign (pun intended) to his bossiness by claiming to be gifted at administration. The more I’ve been thinking about this, however, the more I see it everywhere.

One of the reasons, for instance, that the Christian’s strategy of “Hate the sin, love the sinner” hasn’t been able to broker peace with the sexually confused is because the sexually confused wind their identities up in their confusion. Thus we have “Side B” Christians, celibate sexually confused people who are willing to give up gay sex, but not gay identity. When we hate the sin of the LGBTQ, they inevitably conclude we hate them because they think they are their sin. Even the “alcoholic,’ if he maintains a friendship with Bill W., even if he hasn’t had a drink in decades, holds on to his self-identity as an alcoholic.

We need not, however, find ourselves in these extreme circumstances to make the same mistake. I make it too. That is, even someone like me who rejects enneagram and other personality profiles, who rejects sexual confusion and who isn’t a friend of Bill W. still falls for this temptation. I needed no personality test to know this- I am introverted. I tend to find interaction with other humans less stimulating, more tiring. I’m far more likely to become a hermit than a salesman. Sometimes, witnessing my lack of enthusiasm, people reach the conclusion that I am rude. I am discovering that they are right.

The Bible calls me to love my brothers, to be actively involved in the lives of others. It does not call me to not be tired. That I am inclined toward the sin of rudeness, that I am selfish enough that I think being tired is sufficient reason to hide away isn’t a sign that I have a particular personality but that I struggle against a particular sin. My calling isn’t to grant a title to that temptation and then excuse my failure to overcome it by claiming, “That’s just the way I am.” “That’s just the way I am” doesn’t remove our guilt. It merely describes it.

When I name my weakness I make it my pet, something safe and manageable. When I give up that name, I can begin the good work of putting my weakness to death, nailing it to the cross. When I take the blame rather than shift it I can take my medicine and start to get better. Introvert can join the long list of things I used to be, that are no longer a part of my identity. I am not a slave to my habits, my temptations, my psychology, my past. I have been set free by Jesus. Whom He sets free is free indeed.

Posted in Biblical Doctrines, Devil's Arsenal, ethics, kingdom, Kingdom Notes, RC Sproul JR, repentance, sexual confusion | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

What should I expect from my local church?

Posted on July 8, 2024 by RC

It is an easy thing to grumble about the marketing mentality of so many local churches. Rather than taking direction from God’s Word we take it from sociological studies, surveys, and sage savants. What we often miss is that churches adopt these strategies because the “market” is asking them to. We want what we want, and they are happy to give it to us. What though of what we ought to want? Shouldn’t what we look for in a local church come from God’s Word? Here are three things we should expect from our local church.

1. Care. The church exists to care for the flock of Jesus Christ. That care, of course, covers quite a bit. We find in the book of Acts that the church not only provided sound teaching, which we will get to, but also provided for the needs of its widows. Those whose natural families were unwilling or unable to help the widows found provision through the deacons of the local church. Your local church should be a safe place to seek out the care you need.

The deacons, however, were not social workers helping the widows manage the Roman bureaucracy to get food stamps. No, they distributed to the widows that which had been given freely by the body. You should not expect the church to subsidize bad decisions. You should expect it to care for those within who are in need.

2. Teaching from the Word. Note that when the office of deacon is created in Acts that part of the motive was to remove the weight of those duties from the leadership of the church. They were to turn their attention to the ministry of the Word and prayer. You should expect your local church to be that place where the Bible is taught with faithfulness and fervor. It should be preached, with authority.

That means you should expect to have your sins confronted, your presuppositions challenged, your toes stepped on. A preacher who never makes you say “ouch” is almost certainly a hireling. Run away, and be glad he won’t chase after you. You should also expect, however, to be given the balm of Gilead, to hear preached with joy the good news of all that Jesus has accomplished and promised. If you come away from church without the joy of your salvation, you may be in the wrong place.

3. Prayer. Remember that the leadership at the church in Acts was freed to devote themselves to the ministry of the Word, and to prayer. Remember also that when Jesus cleansed the temple, He reminded all that were there that the temple was to be a house of prayer.

Your local church should be a place where those in leadership with persistence and compassion, pray for those under their care. This demonstrates not only a fitting love for the flock, but a robust grasp of from whence comes our help. It should also be a place where the saints in the pews also pray for those in leadership, and for the other saints in the pews. Everyone there should be praying for everyone there.

One more thing you should expect. Expect all leaders and all of the flock to sin, and to sin against you. It is not the gathering of the sinless but of the repentant. Don’t expect the church militant to have gained all the victories of the church triumphant. The church should be a place of grace, a hospital for the wounded and the wounding.

This is the fourth installment of an ongoing series of pieces here on the nature and calling of the church. Stay tuned for more.

Posted in Biblical Doctrines, Big Eva, church, grace, kingdom, prayer, preaching, RC Sproul JR, repentance, theology, wisdom, worship | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment