We are just days away from a significant eclipse of the sun. I have watched over the past several months three distinct approaches to this oncoming event. The most widely held is the basic secular approach. For these folks the eclipse is of no more significance than a clock chiming twelve. The universe is a self-created, self-governing, great clockwork orange to them. It may look vibrant and alive, but inside is nothing but an ordinary machine, gears integrated with gears, orbits matching up with orbits, everything easily predictable and uniform. The darkness that will descend is “nothing to see here” to these folks.
The second approach is not too terribly different from the first. These folks, nice and reasonable evangelicals, differ from the first group in that they affirm that the universe is a great clockwork orange that God created and that is governed by God’s laws of nature. The universe may look vibrant and alive, but is nothing but an ordinary machine, gears integrated with gears, orbits matching up with orbits, everything easily predictable and uniform.
The third group are those who see great significance in this event, finding portents and messages in the darkness to come. These are the folks that offer up odd nuggets like the claim that the path of the eclipse will fall over twelve different towns called Ninevah, and that such means the end is nigh. Well, the claim itself is false which isn’t a strong endorsement as to its purported meaning. Others see in the event, tied to sundry local governments encouraging people to stock up on supplies a sign not of God’s judgment, but of a Black Swan event, a move of government to usurp what freedoms we have left.
Most of us, I suspect, see ourselves in the second group. We’re not so secularized that we deny God’s existence or His providence. We’re also not so sacralized that we affirm He is active. We have Bibles to read and study, and have no need to read the skies. Trouble is, the Bible we study shows that God has used signs in the sky in the past, and has promised to use them in the future. God stopped the setting of the sun that Joshua might fully defeat and enemy. God sent darkness over the land in Egypt, and again in Jerusalem.
I don’t know if anything catastrophic is coming. I do know that God’s governance of His universe is neither uniformitarian nor merely passive. I know also that we are a nation in darkness not just for a few hours on April 8, but daily, even when the sun is shining. I do know, whatever eschatology we believe the Bible teaches, that we are to look for, pray for, prepare for, His coming again in power. I know that a smug assurance that tomorrow will always be like today is the folly of the virgins bereft of oil. Lord give us eyes to see, and let us be light in the darkness.
It is our fears that reveal to us our treasures, and the shape of the idols of our hearts. And the devil likes nothing more than to prey upon those fears, even through the medium of our purported friends. I am, like I suspect most of you, what can rightly be considered politically conservative. Indeed it’s unlikely that any of you are more conservative than me. As such it has been known to happen from time to time that I turn on my car radio to conservative talk radio. I started listening to Rush back in the early 90’s. Today, however, I find that there are three things that frustrate me deeply about conservative talk radio.
First, it isn’t very conservative and is often reactionary. Most hosts in my judgment do not have a principled understanding of the appropriate limits to the government, both domestically and abroad. They want smaller federal programs, smaller educational footprints, smaller entitlement systems. They want to stay out of wars favored by Democrats, but go to war when the Republicans want to go to war. They may bluster and mock, but these are not, by and large, thoughtful, principled men.
Second, the most potent reason I believe them to be not principled is because if they were they would talk about the greatest evil in our day. Trillion dollar deficits are horrible. COVID was a train wreck. But babies are being murdered, 2500 of them every day. They may talk about Gosnell. They may cover Supreme Court nominees. But they don’t talk about the babies.
My third concern, however, is what it does to us. How easily we fall for the fallacious notion that we are the customers of talk radio, and conservative talk is the product. The truth is we are the product, being sold to advertisers. The talk is just the bait to catch the product. They do this, day in and day out, by exposing the vulnerability of our idols. Our standing in the world as a nation is threatened, and we grow fearful and so tune in. Our 401k’s are threatened and we grow fearful and so tune in. Our entertainment is threatened with gross immortality, and we grow fearful and so tune in. What will we do without national pride? How will we make it with worthless federal reserve notes? How can we enjoy our music, television, movies and games when they are created by moral barbarians?
I like a strong national defense (and a non-existent offense). I’m all in favor of people saving money, investing for the future. And I listen to music, go to movies and watch some television. But why would I fear losing any of these things? If they all go by the wayside they would do so because the real King determined that they should. The real King would only do so if such were good for my sanctification. It’s all just stuff- wood, hay and stubble. But Jesus reigns. Nothing will change or even challenge that. And He loves me with an unbreakable, everlasting love.
Paul was able to sing songs of joy and praise while imprisoned by that brutal nation that would over the first 300 years of the church martyr over 2 millions saints. While we sing dirges in our car about who won the right to spend us into oblivion in Washington. Jesus wins. He has already overcome the world. Therefore be of good cheer.
Tonight we continue our look at the monumental, towering book of Romans. 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, RC-Lisa Sproul. We hope you’ll join us.
What if I told you that on September 12, 2001 terrorists in the United States killed 3000 people, and the story didn’t even make the news? What if I told you that on January 7th terrorists killed 2500 people in the United States and it didn’t even make the news? What if I told you that every day in between terrorists killed between 3000 and 2500 people in the United States, all with the full knowledge and legal protection of the United States federal government, and it didn’t even make the news? What if I told you that every voter in the country, for both parties, knew this was going on?
When my wife and I watched the President’s first press conference on COVID I came away shocked. The sheer audacity of suspending travel, of ordering lockdowns was like nothing I’d seen before. Then, a few months later, protestors not only took to the streets across the nation, in a few jurisdictions they took the streets, establishing their own autonomous regions. That was something I’d never seen before. A few months later an election left us wondering not only who had won, but if we would ever know. That question culminated in violence at the Capitol Building. Something I’d never seen before. All of which, added together and multiplied ten times is not worthy to be compared with the ordinary, banal truth that over the past 51 years more than 60,000,000 times parents hired trained assassins to murder their own child with the full legal protection of the federal government.
What we accept we have every reason to expect. A culture that hasn’t the moral capacity to end the greatest atrocity in its history is not a culture that can expect peace on its streets, an orderly transfer of power, the blessing of the God of heaven and earth. We got in this mess because we determined that the state had an obligation to protect our right to pursue our sexual appetites as we see fit, without a thought for our victims. We got in this mess because we refused to submit to His created order. We got in this mess because we think we know better than He does. We got into this mess because from top to bottom, in our streets, in our churches, in our homes we are in rebellion against God.
It was a great shock to me and to just about everyone else to see violence at the Capitol Building. It was not, however, a shock at all to the living God. First, He planned it from before all time, for His glory and the well-being of His children. Second, every one of His children, and every one not His child daily seeks to break into His own most august chambers and wrestle Him from His throne. We all do this with every sin. January 6th, 2021 may be remembered for some time in this country, but for all the wrong reasons. The great evil, the true affront, the most wretched display of lawlessness was the legally protected murder of unborn children. Pearl clutching over the Capitol or Trans Visibility Day is just one more manifestation of our guilt.
Accuse me of “what about-ism” all you like. Until babies are safe in their wombs from the assaults of their parents, nothing else should shock us. Until this greatest evil ends we can expect nothing but judgment. How do we get out of this mess? We repent, and believe the gospel.
There are any number of ways to capture the glory of Eden. Because it is a garden paradise, we can focus on its bucolic nature. Bereft of thorns and thistles, fruitful and beautiful, it is the ideal location, designed for man and for glory. We can zero in on the peace that reigned there, the absence of death and illness, lions lying down with lambs. We can wonder at the glory of the rivers, the gold, and the precious stones. The crescendo of God’s description, however, isn’t at any of these points. Instead, Genesis 2, just before the serpent is introduced in Genesis 3:1, ends with this paean to the blessed glory of the garden: “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed” (v. 25).
Naked and unashamed. It is all too easy for us to miss the significance of this. Given our cultural obsession with youth and our obscene fixation with changing, arbitrary standards of physical beauty, we might think that Moses is highlighting here the physical perfection of our first parents, as if Moses is saying, “Not only is the setting glorious and the stage perfect, but the actors are so smoking hot they were perfectly comfortable in their birthday suits.” Eden is a glorious place, but that’s not why.
The truth is that Moses is getting at something far more significant than physical perfection. The reason Adam and Eve were able to be naked and unashamed is because of their moral perfection. They were unashamed precisely because they had nothing to be ashamed of. Their bodies were perfect. But their wills, their emotions, their thoughts, their desires, all of these— indeed, all that they were—was unaffected at this point by sin.
They were the polar opposite of what we are in our state of total depravity. Total depravity affirms that all that we are has been affected by Adam and Eve’s first sin, that the whole of our being is corrupt, that we are unable even to embrace the saving work of Christ for us in ourselves. We cannot incline ourselves toward the good. But here, in the garden, the whole of their beings was uncorrupted. There was no shadow upon their moral standing, no blemish on their record, not so much as an inclination against the good to struggle against and be sorrowful for.
Think of what this must have meant for their relationships. It is true that a lack of sin is good for our relationships, as it means we won’t sin against each other. Adam and Eve had no need to fear being sinned against. But how much more potent is it when we know we won’t and haven’t sinned against others? How much more open, how much more honest can we be when there is nothing to be ashamed of? In like manner, while God was gracious and condescending to walk with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening, though Adam and Eve were mere creatures and He is the Creator, because they knew no sin they could talk with Him, unashamed.
Moses, I would argue, gives us this picture not merely so we might be conscious of all that we have lost. Rather he is also telling us something important about what we will regain. Eden is not only a picture of our past but is a picture of our future. It is where we are going. When Jesus calls us to seek first the kingdom of God, He is reminding us where our treasure is. He is directing our gaze away from the blessings of earthly beauty, of earthly fruitfulness, even of earthly peace. He is directing our gaze toward heavenly beauty, spiritual fruit, and peace with the living God. When Jesus calls us to seek the righteousness of God, He is reminding us that because we are now in ourselves sinners, naked and unashamed isn’t what we should be shooting for. Rather our goal is covered and unashamed. We, like our parents in the garden, can move through our days without shame. Not because we have no sin like them, but because we have no sin in Him.
Our standing in Christ, however, is not our ultimate end. We will not enter into the fullness of His kingdom on our own. We need the righteousness of Christ to cover us. But the promise of God is not just that we will be justified, not just that we will be sanctified, but that we will be glorified.
We enter into the kingdom dressed in His righteousness, but then our sanctification will be complete. We will be made what we once were, whole and perfect. And we will be in eternity naked and unashamed. In the new heavens and the new earth, in that great garden city whose builder and maker is God, not only will sin be banished, but so will shame.
Eden is our source. And Eden is our destiny. Naked and unashamed, in the garden, we entered this world. And naked and unashamed we will enter the world to come. The gospel of Jesus Christ expels from the garden not us, but the guilt, the stain, and the shame of our sin. Seek then His kingdom and give thanks.
Last week I published a brief piece (here) that argued that making a nation Christian is a good thing, while trying to make nationalism Christian was a fool’s errand. Simply put, we as a nation become more Christian the more we submit to God’s law, at every level. Nationalism, on the other hand, well, here’s how Oxford defines it, “identification with one’s own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations.” One can no more Christianize the exclusion or detriment of other nations than one can Christianize abortion. The Christian “nation” is the kingdom of God, which joyfully and peacefully invades every border with the gospel.
I have no desire to remake the same point here. Instead I want to explore the experience of being ratio-ed. In the many replies I received the most thoughtful ones argued that we have to choose between Christian nationalism and communism. Freedom is not an option. The great bulk of the replies, however, were directed at me. Some determined that my point had no merit because I had visited the Ashley Madison website ten years ago. Others pointed out that I drove drunk with my two sons in the car more than seven years ago. Many pointed out that I am not half the man my father was. All, sadly, true. Irrelevant, but true.
Others accused me of sins I have not committed. Not relevant, but false. Still others suggested that I am not masculine, that I am gay, that I am a cuckhold, (a man whose wife is unfaithful), that I deserve to die, that I support the rape and torture of nuns and the desecration of their bodies, and last but not least, that I am not a child of the living God. Yikes. This is not one or two people who forgot to take their meds, but dozens of, mostly anonymous, people who see themselves as supporters of “Christian nationalism.”
Strangely, no one accused me of my worst sin. Though it should be widely known, not because I am the son of RC Sproul, but because I am a son of God, the truth is I crucified Jesus. Not only did my sin, in conjunction with His love for me, make it necessary, but, had I been there, no doubt I would have cried out “Crucify Him.” Had I been Pilate I would have washed my hands. I confess this sin, along with every other sin, every Lord’s Day when I come to the Lord’s Table. There I am called to discern the body, which is to recognize my brothers and sisters in Christ.
Some of my brothers and sisters in Christ have secured abortions. Virtually all of them have voted for political candidates, and will do so again, who support legal rights for some abortions. Some of them think you can Christianize nationalism. Some of them think nothing of throwing a man’s past sins in his face to try to silence him. Some of them think nothing of spreading lies and false rumors. Some of them feel free to insult a brother, and to deny he is their brother. Some of them have visited Ashley Madison and driven drunk. And all of them who rest in Christ alone, who acknowledge their failure and cry out for mercy are my brothers and sisters. One out of every one person who repents and believes will inherit eternal life. That’s a ratio we will live with, and through, for eternity.
