Tonight we conclude exploring the greatest commandment, asking, “who is my neighbor.” All are welcome in our home at 6:15 eastern for dinner, and for the study itself at 7:00. The study will be live-streamed on Facebook Live, RC-Lisa Sproul. We hope you’ll join us.
Because we are given to complaining, we need to be reminded to give thanks. Complaining comes naturally to us. Giving thanks is a supernatural activity. Consider, for a moment, our propensity to complain about the state of the church. In Reformed circles we have far too many “whispering Calvinists,” men in the pulpits of Reformed churches who affirm the system of doctrine found in the Westminster Confession, but whose preaching seems unaffected by that system.
On the other side of the spectrum we have the cranky Reformed. These are men who preside over bitty little congregations of bitty little hearts. They spend their time and energy sifting through the subtle theological nuances of their enemies, other Reformed pastors. It’s not a pretty picture.
We would be wise, however, to remember that once, not too long ago, there was no Reformed world to complain about. Outside of Grand Rapids, the mecca of the Dutch Reformed, and the greater Philadelphia area, where a then very young Westminster Seminary sent its grads, seventy-five years ago the only Bible believing Presbyterians you could find were fundamentalists given to dispensational eschatology. And even they were hard to find. That we have big troubles in the Reformed world is the result of now having a big Reformed world. And that is something to give thanks for.
The same principle applies to the church at large. How hard is it to find something to complain about in the evangelical church? Turn on Christian television. Turn on Christian radio. Pick up your average evangelical magazine. Attend a conference. Chances are you will find a hodge-podge of squishy, feel-good goo-gah. You will find men in pulpits who not only don’t teach the Reformed faith, but won’t teach the plain teaching of the Bible. You are more likely to find the spirit of Madison Avenue at work than the Holy Spirit.
Once again, however, we need to remember that not long ago the evangelical church was a tiny backwater institution, dwarfed to insignificance by big churches overcrowded with parishioners who did not know or did not care that their pastor did not believe Jesus was raised from the dead. While there is great room for growth in the evangelical church, praise God we live in an age where it is the mainline churches that are insignificant shells.
Might we be still more grateful if we were to look back to that church which has so radically departed from the faith. We were once a part of the one true church known as Israel, the people of God. While our fathers may have worshipped in mainline mausoleums, our spiritual great-great grandfathers gave over the worship of the living God for the worship of the Baals- over and over again.
Read through our family story and we will find there repeated ad nauseum, “And King So and So did not fear God but established high places throughout the land… Then King So and So II, like his father before him, did not humble himself before the Lord, but welcomed the priests of Baal to his table.”
Apostasy wasn’t a surprise to the children of Israel; it was a way of life. Over and over God sent foreign lands to oppress His people, that they might turn to Him in repentance. Time and again God sent His prophets to call His bride back to fidelity. And then something amazing happened. God sent the prophet Joel. He too spoke against the sins of Israel. He too lamented the judgment of God. Famine would come. The Day of the Lord was at hand, a day of darkness and gloom. A nation would come in conquest like none that had come before:
“The earth quakes before them; the heavens tremble. The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining. The Lord utters his voice before his army, for his camp is exceedingly great; he who executes his word is powerful. For the day of the Lord is great and very awesome; who can endure it?” (Joel 2:10-11).
God calls His people to repentance, promising to forgive them, and to restore them. But then He makes this astonishing promise:
“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophecy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit” (2:28-29).
This is a promise of a whole new world. For all our failures and weaknesses as the modern church, we are the church indwelt by the Holy Spirit. For all our infidelities, and flirtations with the world, we will remain as the bride. Institutions will come and go, but the bride of Christ will never turn away. She will be spotted and wrinkled, but she will have within her the living Spirit of God.
This promise was inaugurated at Pentecost, and is still coming to pass in our own day. We are the people of God, but with this difference. We are His people, indwelt and empowered by His Spirit. We dream dreams and we see visions.
The Spirit that indwells us is at work driving far from us the spirit of grumbling and complaining. He is teaching us to give thanks, and we would be wise to begin by giving thanks that He is teaching us. We should be dreaming this, a dream that, for all her weaknesses and failures, the church will grow ever more faithful. Our vision should be forward looking, driven by gratitude and hope. This is why the Father spoke these words through Joel. This is why the Son told us that it was better for us that He should ascend. This is why He sent His Spirit, that we would rejoice and give thanks.
We live in the new and improved. Our calling is to make the new newer still, and the improved still more improved. We march from victory to victory. And in the end we will dance, bride and Groom together, forever and ever.
This is the thirty-seventh 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 March 30 at 10:30 AM at our new location, at our beautiful farm at 112811 Garman Road, Spencerville, IN. Please come join us.
Paul tells us that it is right and appropriate, in times of hardship, that we should mourn. Hardship, though it be for our good and His glory, is still hardship. It is hard. And so we mourn. But, Paul tells us, we do not mourn like the world. They mourn without hope, while we mourn with hope. The two dance together.
There is an immediate and sound deduction we can reach here. Why would our mourning differ from the world around us? We know where we are going. We know what end is in store for us. Any sadness or hardship that we experience is, on any appropriate scale, brief and mild. Our suffering, after all, cannot be compared with the eternal weight of glory (Romans 8:18). The suffering of those outside the kingdom is but a prelude, a small taste of an eternity of agony. Our suffering, on the other hand, is but a speed bump on the way to Glory Road.
What we must not miss, however, is the reason for our different ends. Our grief is infused with hope not merely because we have a bright future. Instead our grief is infused with hope because of our past. We look forward, in the midst of our grief, in hope, because we look backward, in the midst of our grief, with joyful gratitude.
My future is bright because the wrath that I am owed has already been spent. The difference is in the cross of Christ. Whatever sorrow God calls me to go through, He calls me to go through for the express purpose of remolding me into the image of His Son. Judgment lies behind me. Glory lies before me. Because of Jesus.
Stephen, while he was being martyred, saw heaven open up. He beheld the glory of Christ, as He stood, a witness for this witness. The joy was not merely that Stephen would be found innocent, not simply that Stephen would be with Jesus. The greatest joy was that Stephen knew that what he saw, that he would become. John, remembering that we ought not to mourn as those who are without hope, gives us this greatest hope, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears, we will be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
He knows the plans He has for us, plans to give us hope and a future, a future so grand that eye hath not seen or ear heard, nor has it entered into the mind of man. May we be blessed with the courage to believe His promises, even in the midst of hardship. May the world witness us, the witnesses of Christ, as we attest to His goodness, through mourning with hope. May they behold His glory, as we move from mourning to dancing.
Americans are not so much a forgiving people as we are a forgetting people. Great evils are not so much atoned for as they are moved on from, especially in the political sphere. The news cycle is a rinse cycle. My hope, however, is that I might serve as a remind-er, one who reminds. That some of you, for reading this, might better remember. And just maybe, we won’t get fooled again.
Here is a list of people and institutions who were caught in the most egregious lies imaginable, prevarications so destructive that it’s hard to fathom that such people would ever open their mouths again.
1. The Covid Karens
Francis Collins, Anthony Fauci, the CDC, NIH and WHO didn’t merely make a mistake in their assessment of COVID, its origins and the safety and efficacy of the vaccine but a. knew they were lying and b. nearly destroyed the world. How far down the chain of command this goes I couldn’t say. My family doctor encouraging the jab didn’t do wonders for his credibility, but I still basically trust him. The higher ups are bald-faced liars.
2. The Jack’s a Jills
It seems every day there’s a new study coming out from the Institute for the Obvious telling us that the sexually confused are a few queens shy of a full deck. Ya think? Yet we have government school bureaucrats telling us that a. this is normal b. this must be accommodated in the bathroom and the sports field c. it’s nothing some experimental drugs and a scalpel can’t cure and d. they should get to decide what to do rather than parents. The kids may be confused. Those pushing the confusion are not. They are evil.
3. The Climate Chicken Littles
It is an inconvenient truth that every single prediction of impending doom solemnly announced just a few decades ago is drowning not in rising sea levels but rising barnyard substance levels. They made a critical mistake in their strategy. As long as their models and science was over our head, they could fool us a bit. But it couldn’t make us care. So they switched to doomsday scenarios we could understand, and deadlines we would soon face, only to have the calamity go back in its hole like Punxsutawny Phil after seeing his shadow. They haven’t delivered the bads. Because they are lying and they know it.
4. The Maxwell Smart Brigade
When 51 current and former high ranking intelligence officials assured us, days before the 2020 election, that the Hunter Biden laptop looked like a Russian disinformation op, they missed it by this much. If by “this much” we mean all the way from here to Russia. Some of those same men had already demonstrated their credibility when they treated the Steele dossier as Holy Writ rather than what it was, fan fiction emailed from Hillary’s private server.
5. The Sharp as a Tack Confederacy of Dunces
In the run up to his walking away from the 2024 presidential race, dozens of Dems parroted their talking point that President Biden was as sharp as a tack. While they knew he was as dumb as a box of nails. They asked the entire country, “Are you going to believe us, or your lying eyes?” And the media played right along.
Lying as a strategy only “works” if either the lie has enough credibility to be believed, or if the audience forgets when its been lied to. Don’t believe the hype. Never, ever again.
Take some time. Tune in. Learn a thing or two. Share with friends. It’s not too complicated. I know you can do it. The question is, will you?
We must not allow our grasp of total depravity to lead us to miss in us God’s image. We are plenty bad. Sin touches every part of us. We’re unable to do anything in ourselves pleasing to God, including coming to faith. We do not, however, run in precisely the opposite direction of where we ought.
Romans 1, wherein Paul’s chief goal is to explain the universal guilt of man, for instance, tells us not that man in his sin, made to worship God, merely refuses to worship God, but rather says we worship the creature rather than the Creator. Because we’re fallen we won’t worship God. Because we bear His image, however, we will worship. Even at Babel they didn’t merely turn their back on the dominion mandate but rather twisted it. They built the tower because of God’s image. They built it for their own glory because of their depravity.
Distortion, Not Destruction
The same principle, that many of our desires (to work, to worship) are good and proper but because of sin, misdirected, applies to our desire to be loved. We are relational beings, just like our Father in heaven. It is not good, He told us, for man to be alone. Wanting to be loved isn’t a shame, weakness, a failure. Looking for love in all the wrong places, however, is a shame, weakness, a failure.
Seeking, Not Finding
When we are men pleasers, ear ticklers, hungerers for the approval of the world we are seeking love where we ought not, and missing the love that we have. When we commit adultery, indulge in pornography, escape into fantasy we seek love where we ought not, and miss the love that we have. When we gossip, slander, bear tales, we are seeking love where we ought not, and missing the love that we have. When we use social media to present our lives as one glamorous success after another, we look for love where we ought not and miss the love that we have.
Our Hearts Are Restless…
The one thing that will satisfy our hunger is the Father who sent His Son. To dwell with us, be our Husband, feed us. If I am in Christ, I am His beloved, and in turn beloved of the Father. The Spirit is ever with me, encouraging me. If I am in Christ I have all I could ever ask or hope for. In my sin I’m like the beloved son of the world’s wealthiest man, going to the seedy part of town to pick through dumpsters to fill my belly. My Father’s table is heavy laden with the choicest delicacies laid out for me, and I’m looking for a pizza crust in a trash can.
Full and Famished
My shame is not that I am hungry, for I was made to eat. My shame is missing what my Father has given me. My weakness is not that I want, but that I don’t recognize that I have. My failure isn’t that I long to be loved, but that I’m wrong to not know I am infinitely loved. He is my beginning- I bear His image. And He is my end- I will be with Him always.
Tonight we continue exploring the greatest commandment. Tonight we continue to loving our neighbor as ourselves. Is this a command to love ourselves? All are welcome in our home at 6:15 eastern for dinner, and for the study itself at 7:00. The study will be live-streamed on Facebook Live, RC-Lisa Sproul. We hope you’ll join us.
There are myriad ways that we dishonor the Word of God. First, we don’t read it. Too many of us somehow think that we have mastered the content of the Bible, and now that we are spiritually mature, all we have left to do is wrestle over difficult theological issues. Then we dishonor the Bible this way- we read it, but we don’t believe it. We discard this injunction or that as culturally bound, so that we can happily continue to be culturally bound.
Then there is this choice way we dishonor the Word- we read it, we believe it, but we miss how shocking it is. We turn what we believe into something safe and reasonable. We, for instance, take Jesus’ wisdom that if we would gain our life we first must lose it, and turn it into a safe, reasonable moral aphorism. We think Jesus is simply saying in His flowery way, “Don’t be selfish.” We take God’s wisdom, and turn it into something even the serpent could live with.
The battle between the seed and the serpent runs deep. Most of our wars do not. World War II pit the allies who embraced the welfare state, against the axis powers who embraced pure socialism. It was a battle between those who think the government owns half of all we produce, and those who think the government owns it all. With the truly Great War we have good versus evil. We have carnal weapons versus spiritual weapons. We have soldiers on the one hand who will spend eternity in paradise fighting soldiers most of whom will spend eternity in torment (thank God and His grace that some of our enemies will be brought in by His Spirit before they die.)
The difference, however, runs down to the respective economies as well. God’s economy and the devil’s are polar opposites. With the devil, everything is a zero-sum game. He can only divide up an already existing pie. Our King, however, speaks not just pies but universes into existence. His is an economy of abundance. But it also an upside down one. With the devil you gain by taking. With our Lord you gain by giving; you live by dying.
The differences in weapons and in economy come together when we consider what may be our most powerful weapon of war- peace. The devil feeds on strife. The seed of the woman, on the other hand, our meat and our drink is peace. When we are able to love one another, when we rest in the sweet and mystic communion of the saints, then we win great victories for the kingdom. I do not mean merely that after we rest we are better able to fight. Instead, in God’s glorious economy, in our rest we are fighting.
This is true first in ourselves. That is, when each of us keeps Sabbath, that is, when we rest in the finished work of the Lord of the Sabbath, when we live in the peace we have with our Father through His Son, mortar shells bombard the bunker of the evil one. When we cease from our labor to win His approval, we win grand victories, and not coincidentally, His approval.
But this is true of us corporately as well. That is, our peace with each other, inside the kingdom of God, carpet bombs the enemy. The Bible says that by this will all men know that we are His disciples, if we have love one for another” (John 13:35). Our love for each other does indeed have apologetical pop. But that’s not all. Our love for one another is our blowing trumpet, our unfurled banner, the sign that the soldiers of the most high have arrived to do battle. The weapons of our warfare are love, our love for one another.
While there is unimaginable potency of this reality in our homes (which is one reason why our children are likened to arrows in a quiver) it reaches its greatest power in His home, among the family of God, the church. This is nowhere more evident than when we, in our love for one another, gather together to feast on our Lord, at His table. For us it is glory-
“Behold how good and pleasant it is when brother dwell together in unity! It is like precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down the collars of his robes! It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion! For there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore” (Psalm 133).
For them, it is the stench of death. For us, it is the very table that He prepares for us in the presence of our enemies (Psalm 23). While we feast, we rest. But while we rest, we are at war. Tearing down strongholds, laying siege to the foundations of the wicked one, storming the very gates of hell. Remember that when we come together at the table we do not, one by one, commune with our Lord. Instead, we all together commune with our Lord, and with each other. And the world, our flesh, and the devil all quake in fear.
This is the thirty-sixth 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 March 23 at 10:30 AM at our new location, at our beautiful farm at 112811 Garman Road, Spencerville, IN. Please come join us.
The serpent, more cunning than any of the beasts of the field, is a counterfeiter. His wily custom is to not merely construct an alternate realm to Christ’s realm. No, he crafts every piece of that realm as a copy of the real. He is a mimic. He is a false messiah of a false kingdom. And like the true Messiah, he is seeking those who would worship him. As such, he is a false prophet, a false priest, and a false king. For every blessing our Father above bestows upon His children, the Devil below has a faux blessing. And it is his unholy habit to cause us to confuse the two.
Our cultural declines via the steady erosion of a sane understanding of the family. Family, we should remember, is on one level what we call a common blessing. God has not restricted the freedom to marry and to raise up children to His redeemed. He has blessed all mankind with that liberty, with that calling. The serpent, however, has countless versions of the false family, a dizzying array of communities held together by base and foolish affections. He entices us to look for love in all the wrong places, to draw circles in the sand that will wash away with the tide.
Family, as family, provides a sense of belonging, of shared convictions, of common goals. The local Christian family, just like the corporate Christian family, the church, has one goal, to seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness. The Devil’s versions are rather anemic by comparison. Some draw their lines through their experience, seeking family in those who shared a common illness, or even a common hobby. They see themselves as united with those who have survived cancer like them, or who raise prize roses, like them.
Still others draw lines based on secondary genetic markers. They believe that their family consists of those who share a common genetic makeup. Their loyalties go to a particular skin color. These folks consider my own family to be “race traitors” because God has blessed us with a young men whose ancestors hail from Africa. These young men may have brown hair, brown eyes, and brown knees, but they are Sprouls, and like the rest of us, called to seek first the kingdom of God.
Those outside the kingdom look for identity, for belonging in such pointless ways. Worse, however, is that the same kinds of ties bind too many within the church. We call ourselves Christians, but are more loyal to our favorite football team (and its fans) than to Christ and those He has bought. We’d rather spend our time with a peer group defined by age, gender, and socio-economic status. We call ourselves Christians, but we define ourselves, and those around us, by just about anything but the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Our Father in heaven told us all, that is, all that are His, to pray to Him as our Father in heaven. This is what defines us, as us. We are those who have God as our Father. Our lines of loyalty then are clearly drawn. My kin is not bald fifty-somethings with children still at home. My kin are not those who can trace their lineage back to the British Isles. My kin are those who have been bought by the blood of the Lamb.
They are my brothers and my sisters, even if they root for the wrong football team. I’m called to love them like family, for they are family. They, like me, have been born a second time, into the family of God. We share a common Father, a common mother, the church, and a common brother, Jesus our Lord. This is now how our family is described,
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1 Peter 2: 9–10).
May we by His grace live as sojourners and pilgrims, our identity held not here on earth, but with our Father in heaven. May we live as His family.
