The devil is introduced to us first as being more crafty than any of the beasts of the field (Genesis 3:1). We are reminded in II Corinthians 11:14 that he transforms himself into an angel of light. It is however, because of his craftiness that we forget to look for him as an angel of light. Do we not tend to think the devil shows up when we are overcome with some kind of illicit desire? We think when he begins to influence us we begin to grow fangs, our eyes turn to fire, our muscles go all Hulk-like, and then we pursue our madness like a bull in a china shop. When we fear the devil’s influence on us, this is what we watch for, what we guard against. If we can, by grace keep our more base desires in check, well, we must be fighting the good fight.
The devil usually shows up, however, not with illicit desires but with a “better” plan than God’s plan. Adam and Eve did rightly want to mature, to become more like God. God’s plan to get there was to trust Him, to not eat of the tree. The devil explained they could get there faster if they would just eat. Adam and Eve didn’t begin slobbering and lusting. Instead they simply thought they knew better than God. They thought they could find a better strategy than His.
This pattern is even more clearly revealed at Caesarea Philippi. There, you will remember, Peter wisely confessed the glorious truth that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus praises Peter for that Spirit wrought insight, and then proceeded to talk about His future, and His deliverance to be put to death. Now while Jesus is explaining what must needs come to pass Peter did not run to his secret lab and chug down a pint of Dr. Jekyll’s special recipe. Instead, out of his love for Jesus, he sincerely, gingerly expressed his conviction that Jesus’ plan wasn’t the wisest course. And Jesus replies, “Get thee behind me Satan.”
Wow. Many a sermon has been built on how this reveals the critical importance of Jesus’ mission to atone for our sins. And rightly so. But I’m afraid too often we miss what this account tells us about our sins. When Jesus tells us what needs to happen, and we contradict Him, no matter how good our intentions, we become Satan, and a hindrance to the kingdom. In like manner when we sweetly, gently encourage the pastor to lay off preaching those sins that make visitors uncomfortable, we are being the devil. When we insist that the session be “reasonable,” “realistic” in dealing with the deep-pocketed man’s unbiblical divorce, because of all the good that can be done as long as he continues to tithe, we are being the devil. When we, with all due concern and compassion, pass along, in the guise of seeking prayer, our brother’s struggle, we are being the devil. When the Word of God commands anything, and we reply in all innocence, “Well, yes, but…” we are the devil.
Our calling, always and everywhere is to affirm our Amen to all that God has spoken. We don’t nuance it, shift it, redirect it, squelch it; we affirm it. We confess that His plan is not only better than ours, but the only plan. Or else we are being the devil, disguised as a well-meaning believer. Which is why when He calls all men everywhere to repent, we say, “Amen.”
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 worries you most about your ideological friends? The same thing that worries me most about me.
We are overrun by the cowardice of paper prophets. These thundering heroes build a following and a reputation by denouncing with great vigor and panache the errors of those who are not their audience. They are preaching against Ninevah in Jerusalem, pronouncing woe against Jerusalem in Cleveland. When we do this we get credit, an unearned reputation for courage when all we are really doing is tickling ears.
Now I have friends, plenty of them, at varying distances from my ideological sweet spot. And I have plenty of concerns over them, usually their distance from my ideological sweet spot. But what really concerns me is the weaknesses evident among those who are just like me, who believe what I believe.
Of course all sin, sooner or later, traces its origins back to the father of sins the devil, and the mother of sin in him, pride. Check the tag on any given sin and it is apt to declare, “Brought to you by pride.” Pride, however, has numerous nuances, and we are not safe if we avoid their kind of pride, while embracing our own.
We are sinful enough, in fact, that we can be proud of our humility, parading it around so that others will think well of us. We boast that we are the ones good enough to believe in total depravity. We can take our shame and turn it into pride, turning our scarlet A into an adornment. People like me, all along the way, we reject the worldliness of a gaudy pride, while nurturing the worldliness of a smug pride. We look down our noses at the world, our brothers and sisters in other wings of the evangelical church, the respectable people in our own wing of the evangelical church, all for looking down their noses at us. We are Smug-ol, alone in our dark cave, caressing our precious ring of orthodoxy and orthopraxy.
It is smugness that worries me, that quiet, unassuming assumption that I am not only better than other men, but disdainful of them, beyond them, in possession of the one truth to unite them all.
The solution, of course, is not to deny the power of the truth we have learned. Insofar as our convictions flow out of the Bible, they are indeed eternally precious. Instead the solution, as is so often the case, is gratitude and humility. God did not reveal His truth to us so that we could stroke it in some dark cave. He gave it to us that we might let His light shine before men, and that we might give thanks to the praise of His glory.
Whether one, like the world, is proud of one’s sin, or if one, like me, is proud of one’s right thinking and right doing, one is still caught in the web of pride. What we must cast into the fires is not the righteousness but the pride. What we must do is repent and believe the gospel, giving thanks. People like me need to learn this wisdom from The prophet, that blessed are the poor in spirit, for ours is His kingdom.
Good exegesis will tell us that bad conclusions do not burst forth de novo from bad exegesis. It is valuable, important, even potent for us to have a good grasp of sound hermeneutical principles, to be on our guard against bad hermeneutical principles. We are easily led astray, and sound hermeneutics are like bread crumbs leading us back to the straight and narrow path.
We are, however, reading our Bible with rose-colored glasses if we think that all or even most of our interpretive failures stem from ignorance or misinformation. That is, we are guilty of the modernist conceit when we think that education is always the cure for what ails us. Paul, for instance, in Romans 1 is rather straightforward in highlighting our troubles in our natural state.
It isn’t what we don’t know. It isn’t what we do know that just ain’t so. The problem is what we do know and suppress because of our sin. We know there is a God. We know we fall short. We know we’re in trouble. And we know we don’t like how it feels, knowing we are in trouble. So, we go back to the beginning, and try to unknow that there is a God. The fount of bad theology is our wicked hearts—which is why we had better take our wicked hearts into account when we are about the business of hermeneutics.
Being all too familiar with my own wicked heart, I have over the past decades been on a mission. I have traveled the globe as well as the vast expanses of cyberspace spreading the word about what I have carefully named the R.C. Sproul Jr. Principle of Hermeneutics.
I have not only explained the principle, applied the principle, and enjoined the principle, but also, every time I bring it up, I have begged my audience to remember it and to pass it along to their friends. I am sincerely convinced that if we all master this principle, we will be more faithful to the Word, and more faithful to the One the Word calls the Word.
The principle is as simple as its author— whenever you are reading your Bible, and you come across someone doing something really, really stupid, do not say to yourself, “How can they be so stupid?” Instead say to yourself, “How am I stupid just like them?” We, like the people in the Bible, are much better at discerning the sins of others than we are at sniffing out our own. Other people’s sins are clear, immediate, obvious to us, while our own are fuzzy, distant, obscure.
When we see the ten spies expressing their fear that they will not be able to take the Promised Land— right after the God of heaven and earth had brought Pharaoh, the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, to his knees, and just after this same God had led His people on dry ground across the Red Sea— we think, “I would have been faithful like Joshua and Caleb, the two spies who were ready to move forward.” Chances are, however, that we would have sinned just like the ten, that we would not have had the faith to believe the promises of God.
The reason for that is simple enough—there is nothing new under the sun. Saints and sinners in the Bible are just like saints and sinners in our day, including you and me. Their frailties and follies are our frailties and follies. So when we see them sin, and how they sin, that ought to clue us in to the ways that we are likely to sin.
The Bible describes itself as a mirror. We look at it, but we turn away and forget who and what we are. We are faithless. We are skeptical. We are stubborn. We, like that fool Peter before us, move through our lives time and again speaking that same oxymoronic phrase he spoke at Caesarea Philippi, when he insisted that Jesus must not go to Jerusalem to be handed over to the Gentiles, “No, Lord.” “No” I understand. “Lord” I understand. But these two words do not go together.
Do we not, however, speak the same? Our Lord tells us not to worry about what we will eat or what we will wear. We read these words and bow our heads in prayer. We beseech Jesus as the King of kings, bringing our petitions before Him, acknowledging His lordship, and then pray, “Lord, please help me because I’m afraid about my job, or my bills. I’m worried about what I will eat, and what I will wear.” That is just another “No, Lord.” Our problem isn’t that we aren’t sufficiently educated but that we aren’t sufficiently sanctified.
Which means, in turn, that the solution is to repent and to believe. We must repent of our unbelief, and ask that our Lord would help our unbelief. We must learn the wisdom of the lilies of the field. We must learn to speak our amens to all that our Lord promises. This is the righteousness we are to seek. These ayes are the eyes of the kingdom.
There is a reason that churches are full on Christmas. It is that time of year that even the heathen crash we believers’ party over the incarnation of Christ. It’s rather like Americans in 1943 celebrating Pearl Harbor. I suspect that they can’t help themselves because the truth is that the coming of Jesus is a boon to each and every human. The angels said as much when their song rang out, “Peace on earth, good will to men.” Of course there’s dispute there. Is it peace on earth, good will to men, or is it peace on earth among those with whom He is pleased?” It’s an interesting debate, but even the second, more restrictive understanding must account for the prior verse, “I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all people” (Luke 2:10).
The answer is found in God’s common grace. It is true enough that God’s saving grace, which He pours out on all those who are His, is vastly more significant than common grace. Such doesn’t however, undo the graciousness of grace. While all men who do not rest in Christ will spend eternity in everlasting torment, God’s common grace rains on us all. God has always been patient with the wicked, which never forget, once were we, calling them to repent. He provides for their needs. He reveals His message of salvation. These manifestations of His grace began in the Garden and will continue to the end of days.
Which doesn’t change the truth that His coming brought radical change even in the lives of unbelievers. From the fall of Adam to the resurrection of the Last Adam the world was in the grip of moral entropy. Which means not only that each of us was getting worse and worse but that each of us suffered more and more hardship through the sins of others. There was less restraint and therefore more warfare among men before His coming. As He receives all authority in heaven and on earth, that all begins to change. There is now more restraint, more peace among men through the mustard seed growing, through the rock uncut by human hands expanding, through the power, glory and beauty of His reign becoming more manifest.
The world, while still in rebellion, while still filled with folly and temptation and injustice and evil, is better than it was. Because He came, lived a perfect life, died a vicarious death, was raised incorruptible and ascended to His throne as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the world is closer to what it is supposed to be. His kingdom is most certainly not consummated, but it has just as certainly been inaugurated. All of which redounds to His glory, the believer’s comfort and the temporal well-being of unbelievers.
Let them join our celebration as they too have something to celebrate. Let us never forget, however, why we celebrate, that His Gift for us isn’t just for the here and now but for there and forever.
Because we are the heirs of the moderns, metaphors tend to slip right by us. To be sure, we know how to recognize a metaphor. Jesus tells us that He is the door, and we puzzle for a moment trying to imagine Him with hinges. When it doesn’t add up, we conclude, “Must be a metaphor” and happily move on. We think the object of the game is to recognize the metaphor, rather than to enter into it. Paul tells us, for instance, that we are the body of Christ. Recognizing that this isn’t literally the case, we pat Paul on the head for the clever metaphor, and again, move on. We don’t stop to ask what the metaphor is seeking to tell us, what it means, for instance, that the church is the body of Christ.
We note that we, as the body of Christ certainly need to get along with each other. It doesn’t make sense for eyes and ears to be at war with each other. What we miss, however, is that it is the church by which the reality that Christ is with us always is made manifest, or visible. We miss our calling.
Years ago I was preaching through the 10 Commandments. We came to the seventh commandment, the one calling us to not commit adultery. I highlighted all the usual fallout that seems to follow adultery around. I noted the destruction of families, the broken hearts and disrupted lives of little children. I spoke on the shame it brings to the church. But I argued that the greatest problem with breaking the seventh commandment is how it breaks the third commandment. A philandering husband is not just blowing up his own family, but is lying to the whole world about who Jesus is. When Paul draws the analogy between husbands and Jesus, wives and the church in Ephesians 5, he isn’t merely saying what husbands are supposed to be like. Instead he argues that the connection is always there. Unfaithful husbands who claim the name of Christ are “showing” Jesus to be unfaithful.
The same is true more broadly speaking of the church. Just as the wife reflects the glory of her husband (I Corinthians 11) so we the church and the Christians therein are called to show forth the glory of our Husband, Jesus. We’re supposed to show each other and the watching world what and who He is. We are His apostles, His sent ones. This does not mean that we must by all means seek to put our best face forward, according to the watching world. It does mean, however, that we must always seek to show forth His glory. This will be to those who are His a pleasing aroma. To those who are moving from death to death, it will be a stench, and a rock of offense. We must not only do what Jesus would do, but must strive to be what Jesus is.
We are His body, His visible presence in the very world over which He rules. That is a tremendous responsibility, as daunting as it is exciting.
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.
