Resting in His Providence, Working For His Kingdom

To suggest that wisdom is always balanced seems to me to be a bit, well, unbalanced. Whoever first uttered the words of wisdom, “moderation in all things,” should, I believe, have healed himself. All things? Isn’t that a bit extreme? In like manner, wisdom is almost always balanced. We need to measure the wisdom of looking before we leap with the equally potent conviction that he who hesitates is lost. We need to remember, as we loudly affirm that we ought not answer a fool according to his folly lest we be like him, that we ought to answer a fool according to his folly lest he become wise in his own eyes (Prov. 26: 4–5).

Jesus, who is wisdom incarnate, wisely tells us that we must consider the cost. Only a fool would set about the business of building a tower without first checking his checkbook. Planning, according to Jesus, is good and proper. Out of this wisdom we have with all due wisdom extrapolated our calling to set goals, look beyond today.

This same Jesus, however, speaking through James His brother, says, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’ — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil” (James 4:13–16).

It is a great thing to plan, to lay down our hopes and aspirations. We ought to map out the steps that will get us there. It is, however, incumbent upon us to do this as creatures, as vapor. We must remember our frame, that we propose while God disposes.

If the Lord wills, we will do this or that. If, however, the Lord wills differently, His plans will supersede ours. We to pray, “nevertheless not my will but Thine be done.” And know His sovereign will will be done.

If we would plan in accordance with God’s plan, we must know God’s plan. He hasn’t told us we will go into a city, buy and sell and make a profit. Nor that our five-year-old daughter will marry her eight-year-old neighbor. That the two of them will build their home on the back side of our property. He has not told us that our ten-year-old son will thrive in a particular line of work. That he will, along with his own unborn children, seize that whole industry for the kingdom of God. It is shameful to be shortsighted, an arrogant thing to boast you can see far into the future.

God’s secret plan is just that — secret. We don’t know His strategy, how He will move in this coming year, decade, or century. God’s revealed plan is, well, that which has been revealed. He has told us what is required of us — that we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with Him (Mic. 6:8). He has told us the sum of the matter — that we should fear Him and obey all that He commands (Eccl. 12:13). He has called us to go into all the nations, baptizing them, teaching them to obey all that He has commanded (Matt. 28:19–20).

He has told us that we ought not worry about what we will eat or about what our great grandchildren will eat. The Gentiles worry about such things. No, our calling is to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matt. 6:33). My prayer and my plan is that every day I would grow more faithful in this calling, that I would in turn encourage my dear wife in the same direction. My prayer and my plan is that the two of us, as long as life should last, will encourage our children along this same path. But as long as we live, we are all called to grow in grace and wisdom.

This, we highly resolve — that we would seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. If we would but keep this one resolution, we would witness worldwide revolution. Better yet, we would enjoy a new reformation. May God give us the grace to be extremists where we ought to be, that we would always seek out wisdom and rest in His finished work.

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The Bride Wore Black: Protesting Our Pride

A week or so ago the folks at Protestia tweeted this:

Better to marry a former OF model who has come to know the depths of her sin and the mercy of the Lord, than an unkissed virgin with a haughty look and a proud heart.

I do not personally know anyone at Protestia. We would have plenty of disagreements, and plenty of agreements. My goal is not to comment on them, but to comment on the tweet. It provoked hundreds of responses, many of them negative. Which, frankly concerns me. I thought though it might be helpful to break it down.

God gave few biblical restrictions on who can marry whom. Believers may only marry believers; boys must marry girls. Finally, the two must not be too closely related. Which brings us to the first point of clarification.

We lack the ability to read souls with complete accuracy. Which is why we should, in making these kinds of judgments, acknowledge the difference between professing believers and actual believers. I’d argue that the language of the tweet does not allow us to put the first woman in the category of a mere professing believer. She knows the mercy of the Lord. She is not experiencing mere remorse, but genuine Spirit given repentance.

The second person, on the other hand, could fit into either category. A haughty look and a proud heart could certainly mean this professing believer hasn’t come to actual saving faith. Or, it could be this actual believer struggles against haughtiness and pride. Believers are not beyond any sin, much less haughtiness and pride. Nor should they be treated as such.

If she is a believer, one could presumably make the case that at the very least, this isn’t an easy call. We’re comparing the hardships of someone carrying baggage from repented of grievous sin with the hardships of someone still battling grievous sin. Not the same grievous sin. Not the same level of wickedness on the sin. This, however, is mitigated by one being the past, the other in the present.

In this scenario the tweet’s claim may still be true. If, however, the comparison is between a true believer with deep past sins and an unbeliever who has led a “clean” life, the choice is not only obvious, but biblically required. How could anyone possibly object? Out of pride and haughtiness.

This tweet hit a nerve. We live in an age in the church where we think our sin is small and the sins of others are great. When, while Christ covers our sins, Christians delight to expose them. Where we’re willing to “forgive” others’ sins, but unwilling to look past them. We don’t believe in the power of the gospel, seeing it as a small answer to our small problem, our small sins. We’ve lost sight of the depth and scope of our own capacity to sin, both before we’ve been redeemed and after.

God, remember, not only commanded Hosea to marry a prostitute, but, to go and rescue her when she, having been saved, went back to her old life. Rahab, Gomer, David, Peter, Mary Magdelene, the thief on the cross, rescued porn producers, rescued porn consumers, and me. We’ve all together been made by His grace, His bride.

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Golfing with RC Sr.; Thief on the Cross; Ethic Cleansing

Another classic episode, complete with the story of my first time on the golf course with my father. You don’t want to miss this one.

This week’s Classic Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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Angels, Angels Everywhere- Messengers of Unbelief

Being sick has its advantages. I am constantly encouraged when sick by the willingness of others to pray. I am grateful for the prayers, and goaded to be a more faithful prayer warrior myself. It is also a timely reminder of the catholicity of the church. That is, people from all manner of denominational backgrounds have been faithful to pray when I’ve been sick. What’s more interesting, however, is the response I receive from those outside the body of Christ.

I have friends outside the kingdom, and they too have, at times, been concerned for my health. They just have a rather peculiar way of expressing their concern. I can’t count the number of times I have been told, “We’re sending thoughts your way.” Apparently either their transmitter or my receiver is on the blink. What are these dear folks thinking? Do they actually believe that their brain waves have some sort of healing power? Do they think that they can visualize away the illness in my body?

We would do well to watch out for temporal pride. We face the temptation to believe our broader culture is less primitive than others, because precious few bow down to statues. Or fear the storm god. We think the problem with those wrapped up in modernist unbelief is that they are too sophisticated. When the truth is they are superstitious rubes. They “send their thoughts” out. Hang crystals from their rear view mirrors. Not too long ago they were all aflutter over angels. There was a time you couldn’t swing a dead cat in Barnes and Noble without hitting some angel book. There were books explaining the work of angels, how to get in touch with angels, the history of angels.

Why all the fuss?

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known about God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image like corruptible men—birds, and four footed animals and creeping things” (Romans 1:18-23).

The unregenerate man finds himself in a horrible pickle. He knows all too well what Solomon wrote about in Ecclesiastes. If reality ends at the universe’s edge, if our lives are only under the sun, then all is vanity. You come from nothing, live in futility, and then you return to the nothing. If, on the other hand, there’s a transcendent realm, a God in heaven, then you answer to Him. This dilemma is what Paul is getting at in Romans. Either life is meaningless, or we will have to answer to the Giver of meaning.

Man’s solution is to muddy the water, to strive for a touch of transcendence, while steering clear of accountability. We do this by constructing gods in our own image, bowing to the creature. We are willing to worship, as long as what we worship will require nothing of us. Which may well by why angels became a thing. Angels give the unredeemed a touch of something beyond this world. They come from a world above the sun. But they come, because these false angels are made in our image, with no judgment. Check through all the angel books, blogs and podcasts and you won’t find a single one giving instruction on how to appease the wrath of your angel. They are all soft, light, and only want to help.

We are fools when we rejoice that those outside the church are at least interested in the world beyond. We are fools if we think that those who are “religious” or worse still “spiritual” are on the right track, but simply need better directions. It is all rebellion, and it is all foolishness. A culture fascinated by angels is a culture that is unwilling to look upon that which the angels delight to look upon, the glory of the living God. A culture awash in angel dust is a culture still buried under the dust of death. A culture that longs to be touched by an angel is not on the highway to heaven, but is on the highway to hell.

Angels are heralds, messengers. They are sent from the transcendent realm, the realms of glory, to wing their way o’er all the earth. They sang creation’s glory, and now sing not just the Messiah’s birth, but His death, burial, resurrection and ascension. If we want the world around us to hear them, we must point the world around us to the Word of God. We must encourage the lost to look into the very things that the angels themselves long to look into. In short, our calling to those caught up in angel lore is to be angels ourselves, messengers speaking the good news. May God give us the grace to speak with the tongues of angels, that every tongue would confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

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What Causes Us to Fail to Rightly Divide God’s Word?

Nearly all of us are willing to concede that we are not right about everything we believe. We all have errors in our thinking and would love to correct them. Trouble is, we’re not always so sure where to find them. We affirm God’s Word is true in all that it teaches. We affirm that we believe all that it teaches. But we don’t. Why is that?

First, because we are sinners. Though it is unspoken, most of us carry with us this first rule of interpretation- whatever this text might be saying, it can’t be calling on me to change. Though the Bible says otherwise, we tend to think we’re just fine. Sure, we might slip up here or there. But overall, we’re wonderful people. James says the Bible is like a mirror that shows us what we are, and when we move away from it we forget who we are (1:23, 24). We don’t know ourselves because we don’t like what we see in the mirror. So we shroud God’s Word in the cobwebs of ambiguity and confusion.

Secondly, sometimes it isn’t ourselves that we don’t want to change, but what we have already learned. Because truth is one, every change in our convictions has a ripple effect that impacts everything else we believe. We have no hermetically sealed convictions, and so often come with a hermeneutic that says “No changes allowed.”

It may be that we learned this idea, or that system when a student. Maybe it feels like rejecting an idea would mean rejecting the one who taught it to us. We are, in short, sometimes more loyal to who teaches us than the Word they might have misunderstood. We must remember that whenever the Bible changes our view, we have actually remained loyal to our foundational principle, that the Bible is true in all that it teaches.

There is a third source, however, that we often miss. My father used to say that while a lack of knowledge of Hebrew or Greek, or an ignorance of ancient near eastern mores can cause us slip ups, the majority stem from something else. A failure to understand basic logic. It is because we are prone to jumping to conclusions with insufficient evidence that we sometimes err. Or because we miss when the evidence is compelling. We succumb to a bevy of informal fallacies.

We err in our thinking. Just as the fall impacts our bodies, our wills and emotions, so it impacts our minds. Such doesn’t mean we can’t reason well, anymore than wayward emotions mean we can’t feel rightly. It does mean we ought to be on our guard. It means a simple study of logic basics may bear good fruit in our understanding.

Posted in Bible Study, Devil's Arsenal, hermeneutics, inerrancy, logic, RC Sproul, RC Sproul JR | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Some Dance to Forget: Walking in His Garden

It is a sure sign of the fall that we so egregiously miss what we lost. Jesus calls us to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness precisely because our priorities are all out of line. Even that for which we long — to get back to the garden — we long for in the wrong way. Eden, to be sure, was Edenic. It was a garden paradise. There were no weeds crowding their way in there. No bugs buzzed in ears, nor did they sting arms and legs.

Adam and Eve had no need to fear that prowling lions would consume humble lambs or that cyclones would tear up their garden by the roots. Eden was a place of joyful, fulfilling work. Adam would never feel the pressure of too many deadlines. His laptop would never go on the fritz. Neither had he any reason to fear an industrial accident. And then Adam and Eve had each other. This was a love relationship that would stagger us in its glory, that would blow us away in its intensity, that would in turn calm us in its beauty.

And all of the above did not amount to a hill of beans compared to the real blessing. All of the above are but shadows of a far greater glory, icing on a far richer cake. The glory of the garden was this — they walked with God. What we lost was not just beholding but entering into the very glory of God. That is to say, it would have been enough just to have been allowed the privilege of watching Him walk by. That would have shrunk every other blessing down to size. But He did not merely walk by — He walked with.

This loss, in turn, is what we are seeking so desperately to forget. We are haunted by Eden. Which may help us to understand the peculiar way in which our modern culture practices its folly. We are told by Paul in Romans 1 that all men know that God exists, but we suppress that truth in unrighteousness. Supposing ourselves to be wise we become fools and exchange the glory of the Creator for mere creatures. Our idolatry isn’t merely embracing the wrong religion. It is rejecting what we know so that we might bow down to what we have made.

In Paul’s day it seemed that on every street corner there was a temple to this goddess and a statue to that god. Modern Americans are different — or are we? We do not self-consciously bow down to gods of our own making. But if one were to step back, to set aside the normalcy of our idolatry, we might find it in the strangest places. I suspect that archeologists in future millennia, when they dig up our civilization, will suggest that we worshiped a nearly ubiquitous god named “Starbucks.” They would, of course, be missing the point. Starbucks is not our god, but a mere aid to our worship.

We carry around cups of our drug of choice that will keep us awake and alert enough to attend to our gods — that we can distract our minds, and our hearts with our cell-phones, our streaming, our constant and perpetual influx of meaningless data. We are all aflutter taking in media of one sort or another so that we will not hear the deafening echo of our emptiness, so that we won’t feel the gnawing lack where we once walked with God.

The strangest thing of all, however, is not the frantic forgetfulness of those yet on the outside. No, the truly strange thing is that Jesus has for us restored paradise. We walk with God but will not listen because our earphones are piping us the latest new band. We will not see His glory because our eyes are captured by whatever is making the rounds today on TikTok. We will not even hold His palm-scarred hand because we’re busy sending someone a text. That is, we who walk in paradise, are too busy dancing with the Devil to notice.

The kingdom is here, and the kingdom is now. We need not, in one sense, seek it. For it has sought and found us. To seek what has already been found we do not work harder. Instead we stop. We listen. We see. We smell. We enter into the glory of His presence. We rejoice and give thanks that we are already seated with Him in the heavenly places. There is no cell service up there. Be still, and know that He is God.

In that stillness you will hear first the heavenly choirs of angels, as they cry out, “Holy, holy holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.” Then you will hear the Master’s voice. Even now, even here on this side of the veil you will hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant…. Enter into the joy of your Master” (Matt. 25:21). And you will rejoice that He is that exceedingly great reward. He walks with you now in the cool of the evening. For lo, He is with us always.

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Narcissists Gonna Narcissize: Popping Psychology’s Bubble

It is bad enough when a group of scholars determine themselves to be experts on the human psyche, while leaving behind God’s Word. Sometime in the late nineteenth century psychology as a field of study was birthed at the University of Leipzig. It would not take long before something even worse was born, pop psychology.

Pop psychology is a phenomenon wherein everyone determines themselves to be experts on the human psyche. You read a paperback, attend a seminar, browse a website, and suddenly you know who is a psychopath, who is a narcissist, who is bi-polar. If we actually understood the human psyche, we would not be surprised that those we tend to diagnose with such were already our enemies.

There are two reasons for this. Sometimes our enemies become our enemies by doing unkind things to us. Perhaps their conscience is seared. Maybe they wrong us out of their own selfishness. Maybe they are in a foul mood. In any case, we at one and the same time want to hate on this wrongdoer, while pretending to be patient and loving toward people. So we have to paint the wrongdoer as pathological.

The second reason we diagnose people with these utterly unbiblical categories is because we have a seared conscience, are given to selfishness, often wake up on the wrong side of the bed. We label someone a narcissist because we think said person must always have his or her own way, must hold everyone’s attention. This annoys us because we want to have our own way, and want everyone’s attention. They are narcissists because they get in the way of our narcissism.

The Bible, God’s Holy Word which is true in all that it teaches, has its own categories. It calls all of us sinners. It affirms that all our hearts are desperately wicked, and that we deceive ourselves. We are prone to seared consciences. We are all about ourselves. And we have ups and downs. What we don’t have is some special insight apart from God’s Word, that can turn our sin into illness, or our propensities into an excuse for our propensities.

Every mother’s son of us fails to judge with equal measures. We excuse our own behavior, while we accuse the same behavior in others. Do we not believe we are victimized more than we are victimizers? We label ourselves in order to excuse ourselves. Then we label others in order to demonize them. We look at the world through me colored glasses.
Sin is our problem. Sin is their problem. Sin is the problem.

Psychology, either professional or pop, isn’t the solution. Even repentance isn’t the solution. It is the pathway to the solution, Jesus. Praise God for our Savior.

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Classic Episode- Ex Cathedra, and What Do We Need to Know?

This week’s Classic Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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A Confederacy of Dunces: Crooked Sticks, Straight Lines

Some years ago I had a refreshing, encouraging conversation on a podcast, with a well known blogging friend on the subject of writing. One of the things covered in that conversation was dealing with criticism. The irony is that each of us has at one time or another criticized, or at least critiqued the other. My friend is quite clear on his conviction that public schools are a viable option for Christian parents. I’ve been quite clear over the years that I think not. Our pens, mightier than swords, have crossed. That, however, has not kept me from being blessed by, served by, taught by him and his writing.

Too often, perhaps especially among we who are Reformed, we are binary when it comes to those we are willing to learn from. We tend to be either all in, or all out. We assign a white hat or a black hat to every preacher, writer, podcaster we take in, and often, dramatically strip our heroes of their white hat when they cross us or our, or even their convictions. Now I’m not of a mind that suggests we ought to surround ourselves with bad teachers to make us stronger. I am persuaded, however, that the issue ought more to be good teaching than good teachers, or as the case may be, bad teaching rather than bad teachers.

When I was a younger man I looked upon virtually every conversation as an opportunity for battle. As a college student I regularly called my dad after class and let him know of the great victories I had imagined I had won. He, being wise, cautioned me- you can learn something from all of your professors. You’ll serve yourself better being a discerning student than a tilting Quixote. Trusting the teaching of my own father, I have sought to be just that, a discerning student.

I disagree with everyone but me. Of course I’m not right about everything. Nonetheless everything I believe I believe. I don’t believe I’m always right, but I do always believe I’m right. Thus all my teachers are people with whom I disagree. While all of them have blessed me despite their errors, many have blessed me by exposing my errors. Learn the strengths of your teachers, and mine deep there. I don’t get my eschatology from my dispensational brothers. But many of them are quite adept at breaking down a tough passage of Scripture. I don’t look for church government insights from my Baptist brothers, but many of them are on the money on how we have peace with God.

But the principle goes well beyond intramural debates. CS Lewis, as many scholars are all too happy to point out, didn’t fit neatly into the evangelical subculture that so admires him. But boy howdy when he’s on, he is on. Few writers I am aware of have such an insightful capacity to expose the nature of our sin, or even the glory of our Maker.

GK Chesterton, another occupant of great swaths of my bookshelf was even more far afield than Lewis. But he had many of the same strengths. This doesn’t undo my convictions on either the manner of our justification, nor the inescapable importance of the doctrine, any more than reading Luther, the great champion of justification by faith alone, tempts me to become, well, a Lutheran.

We serve a God who delights to make straight lines with crooked sticks. I pray He is able to use a sinner like me, with all my errors and my warts. If He can use me to serve the kingdom, He can use anyone. May we all be faithful Bereans. May we beware a sloppy feel-good ecumenism that blurs critical distinctions. But may we learn to give thanks for all the Balaam’s asses that He speaks through even in our day. Reject error, by all means. But rejecting those who make errors means rejecting the crooked sticks our Lord uses to make straight lines.

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Why do good things happen by bad people? Mirrors Crack’d

Perhaps my most shared tweet answers the age old question- why do bad things happen to good people? My answer- “That only happened once, and He volunteered.” The lesson, of course, is that apart from Jesus there are no good people. That whatever “bad” things happen to us, they all, on this side of the veil, are well short of the suffering we are due by God as rebels against Him.

When we emphasize the universality and the depth of the sin within fallen men, we are being faithful to God’s Word. Not once but twice we are told, “There is none who does good, no not one” (Psalm 14:3 and Romans 3:12). Yet, we have to confess that we regularly witness even unbelievers doing things that might be considered “good.”

We see unbelieving mothers who love their children well. Unbelievers are capable of laying down their lives for others, giving generously, speaking hard truths, fighting for justice. How do we explain this? As one might expect, the answer is found in differing ways we use the word “good.”

Every act of every unbeliever, however “good” it may be, is inevitably tainted with sin. While the act itself might be good, the motives will always fall short to some degree. Such acts are never done for the sake of the glory of God. It is in that sense that they cannot be considered good.

How though can the unbeliever have any act, as it were, “tainted” with good? How can there be any good in anything they do? Because of the image of God that remains in them. The love of a mother for her child is part of the image of God. Sin can sear the conscience, diminish a mother’s love for her child. But it will not, at least prior to death, utterly obliterate the image of God.

Humans were made to be little mirrors, reflecting back to God His own image. With the fall, every human image, apart from Jesus, because a mirror cracked. A cracked mirror still has mirror qualities about it. It is both crack and mirror. Our descent into greater sinfulness is an increase of the cracks and the shrinking of the mirror into smaller and smaller pieces.

When God grants us a new heart and we come to saving faith, when the Spirit indwells us, that process of sanctification begins to turn our cracks into mirror. When we are fully sanctified, at our deaths, we have no more crack, but are all mirror.

We should not only affirm the reality of the remnants of the image of God in the lives of unbelievers, but should give thanks for it. It is why the world is not worse than it currently is. It is why sometimes believing children are loved by unbelieving parents, why both unbelievers and believers are rescued from burning buildings by unbelievers. We have our battle between our old man and new. Unbelievers have their battle between the image of God and their fallen nature. By God’s grace, we will win. In God’s just judgment, they will lose.

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