I am the Lord, and there is no other; I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the Lord, do all these things” (Isaiah 6b-7).
It was Millenium Bug season, and many of my friends thought I was sick. They feared for me that my manic concern about the potential for untold hardship at the turn of the new year, 2000, not only was evidence that I suffered from Chicken Little Disease, but that I was giving up my commitment to the Reformed faith. We Reformed folk, if we believe anything, believe in the sovereignty of God. How, these friends worried, could I have even the slightest concern about this grave hardship befalling us, when I supposedly believed in the sovereignty of God? I told them often, “It’s because I believe in the sovereignty of God.” My friends reasoned in this manner- Cultural meltdown is a bad thing. God is in control of the future. Therefore bad things cannot happen. I reasoned this way- Cultural meltdown is a bad thing. God is in control of the future. Therefore “bad” things can happen. The difference in our views was that each of us believed competing unspoken premises. They believed God could not will for bad things to happen. I believe He not only could so will, but likely one day would.
Isaiah the prophet is, if only parenthetically, making the same point. That is, his larger point, which is in point of fact on point, is that God is God. He is the almighty one. To suggest that anything would come to pass that He did not sovereignly orchestrate is an affront to His sublime deity. To get us to more fully grasp this hard truth Isaiah, speaking for God, speaks an even harder truth. That is to say, neither is content to merely affirm that God is sovereign over all things, but both go the extra mile to affirm, yes, that includes the bad stuff too.
The easier version of the problem of evil addresses not the question of how men became sinners, but instead addresses the question of the fruit of that sin- why do bad things happen? Those outside the kingdom are wont to ask why bad things happen to good people. Those inside the kingdom don’t have such a pressing question for we know there are no good people. But we still struggle with the whys of hurricanes, pandemics, and in the case of Isaiah, oppression by foreign powers. Indeed we are so perplexed by the reality of suffering that we find ourselves in a rather bizarre position- trying to get God off the hook. We deny implicitly that we deserve the suffering we experience (which is true enough- we deserve far worse than any suffering we ever experience on this side of the veil) because we feel the need to justify God, to put distance between Him and our suffering lest He be found guilty for treating us unfairly.
My friends, thankfully, didn’t want to go in that direction. They were not willing to negotiate God’s sovereignty. God is sovereign, they rightly affirmed. God is good, they rightly affirmed. God won’t let these United States become a wasteland, they wrongly concluded. My friends’ real problem is that they confused these United States with the kingdom of God and they confused a pleasant and safe life with a good one. It is precisely because we were a wicked nation that worshipped affluence in 1999 that I feared for our safety. Though God spared us an earth-shaking calamity that time, does that mean He always will? Have we as a nation come to repentance? Have we owned our sin and turned from it?
That is not to say that I am now once again breaking out my “The End is Near” sandwich board. I don’t know now any more than I knew then what God was going to do in the near term future. I don’t know if our currency will go the way of the German mark, circa 1923. I don’t know if the ship of state will veer so far to the left that we’ll take on water and sink. I do know this however. If God sends a new and surprising kind of calamity upon us, it will be God who sends it. I know that His goodness and His sovereignty are not hedges against this. For we together stand guilty before Him. The very ground cries out because of the innocent blood.
More important, I know this. Isaiah’s prophecies end with the promise of the fullness of the kingdom. I know that because our God reigns, that if He sends calamity He sends it always for His glory, and for our good. Nothing truly “evil” could ever befall we who are His own. Hardship, yes. Cross bearing, by all means. Even death, of course. All of which are tools in His hand to make us more like Jesus. That, in the end, is not only not a calamity, but is the very height of glory. Fear not. He has already overcome the world.
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.
Proxy wars have a long history. Viet Nam was less about Viet Nam, more about the United States and the Soviet Union. Hamas may well be doing the bidding of Iran. Conservative Christians on twitter have of late been treated to the great war over Christian Nationalism. Issues of eschatology, kinship and right government have led to not just disagreement, but snark and arrogance. Who knew, however, that physical fitness would be dragged into the war?
On one side we have those who argue that physical fitness is a. good stewardship of the bodies God has given us, b. fruitful in keeping up a fighting spirit in the culture wars, c. counter-cultural d. reflective of godly masculinity. On the other side are those who argue that physical fitness is a. not directly commanded in God’s Word, b. deemed to be of little profit compared to spiritual fitness, c. culturally defined and d. reflective of an arrogant demeanor.
It is not my intention to chime in as the wizened old fat cat to call for maturity and balance over every issue coming down the pike. The problem is that every issue that comes down the pike is running on empty when it comes to maturity and balance. This one is no exception.
A few decades ago the esteemed Dr. John Frame argued that those of us who argued for the great hymns of the faith over against praise choruses and who used arguments built on the relative aesthetic virtues of each were forced to conclude that we could only sing one song, the best one. If Amazing Grace is the ultimate in objective beauty, and Holy, Holy, Holy the penultimate, that makes Holy, Holy, Holy simply the first loser, and thus to be rejected as swiftly as Reckless Love. To which I said, hogwash. Two can play that game. If beauty is really subjective, we could sing Jesus Loves Me to death metal or to the sounds of screaming babies, and it would be fine.
In like manner, the physical fitness mandate doesn’t have bright, shining lines on either side. The bros who don’t even lift would surely acknowledge that sitting all day while downing nothing but donuts is a bad thing. The bros who do lift, on the other hand, surely wouldn’t argue that eating a grape is sinful, bad stewardship because it has sugar, even if it is natural. No one is saying you can only eat kale and can never sit down.
Which means, at the end of the day, all we’re left to argue about is relative emphasis. Which means we shouldn’t argue. The Bible explicitly says,
“For one believes he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats only vegetables. Let not him who eats despise him who does not eat, and let not him who does not eat judge him who eats; for God has received him. Who are you to judge another’s servant?” (Rom. 14: 2-4a.).
Exercise is a good thing, and like all good things it can be underappreciated and overappreciated. Sitting around judging your neighbor, on the other hand, is a bad thing. Let him who lifts lift, and him who doesn’t lift, not lift. Neither the lifter nor the non-lifter is superior to the other and arguing otherwise is nothing more than the disciples bickering over their standing in His kingdom.
How prone we are to miss the drama. The tyranny of the urgent, the plainness of our patterns, and our propensity to look inward rather than outward all push us to regard our callings, our surroundings, and our souls as rather dull affairs. We read of the great upheavals of history, then find ourselves scraping the burnt remains of casseroles off dishes. We watch Hollywood make believe about terrifying invaders from outer space, then go home to balance our checkbooks. We, according to Jesus, construct foolish drama by worrying about what we will eat or what we will wear while missing the battle of eternity that is going on right before our eyes.
When Jesus calls us to cease worrying about those things the heathen worry about, He isn’t inviting us to heave a sigh of relief and flop down on our hammock with a glass of lemonade. No, we put down our petty concerns that we might take up the one vital concern, the kingdom of God.
Our Lord reigns. His kingdom knows no bounds, for all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him. But there remains in His realm rebellion. There is work to do. In this country, we continue to deny the humanity of an entire class of people—the unborn. In so doing, we have shown forth our inhumanity. What may be worse is that this great evil demonstrates our lack of humanity. How twisted, how distorted, is a state that God ordained to punish evildoers, but that instead uses the sword God gave it to guard the grisly practitioners of this crime? How twisted, how distorted, are men who were made to protect and defend women and children, but who now drag their girlfriends, wives, or daughters to killing centers? How twisted, how distorted, are women who were made to nurture their babies, but who now hire assassins to kill them?
This, beloved, is the battle. Here is the drama. Souls of men and women are being twisted and slowly dragged into the very pit of hell. Babies are being burned alive, on purpose. And we, even though we have been made alive, even though we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, worry more about stock markets and football teams.
Right now, in our own neighborhoods, people’s lives are at stake. Every one of our neighbors, young or old, male or female, believer or not, will die. And when they die, they will become fully, finally, and forever one thing or another.
C.S. Lewis, in his classic work The Weight of Glory, reminds us what is at stake. He reminds us what is wood, hay, and stubble, and which jewels will shine evermore. In turn, he helps us see what this means for our todays—that forever counts right now.
It is a serious thing . . . to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no “ordinary” people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations— these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.
We don’t seek the kingdom merely when we read our Bibles or sing our hymns. We seek the kingdom when we love our wives and cherish our children. We seek it when we weep and mourn for the murder of our neighbors, and when we weep and mourn for our neighbors that are murderers. We seek the kingdom when we call on men to be men and women to be women. We seek the kingdom when we welcome the least of these into our lives, into our homes, and into our families.
The righteousness we seek for our justification is ours by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness—the sole ground of our right standing before God. Yet righteousness is also becoming ours in our experience through sanctification. We in Christ, despite all for which we have to repent, are being made into everlasting splendors. Despite all for which we must repent, despite all over which we mourn, despite all the horror of what we as a nation have become, we rejoice to know that we are citizens of another kingdom. We are a royal priesthood, a holy nation. We once were not a people, but now we are the people of God. We are those who have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. May we then keep our conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against us as evildoers, they may see our good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
It is not hard to complain about the government’s schools. The government, at least during every election cycle, seems less than satisfied with its own product, ever promising us that it will improve. Atheists complain about prayers before football games. Christians complain about the teaching of sexual (im)morality. Everyone complains about graduation rates and test scores.
What precious few complain about, however, is where the schools succeed. A cursory study of both the founding fathers of the modern American educational system and its most esteemed pundits in our own day demonstrates that schools are not actually designed to train up scholars, that their goal is neither intellectual nor moral giants. Rather, they function to prepare men and women to work. School-to-Work programs, Vision 2020, No Child Left Behind- these are just rehashings of the original Frankfurt School philosophy. Schools exist to create workers. It is less important, in this model, what is said between the bell that rings at 8:30 a.m. and the bell that rings at 9:20 a.m., and more important that the bells ring. We learn to think about an artificial, hermetically sealed body of information for a time. Then, when the bell rings, we turn our attention to some other artificial, hermetically sealed body of information, until another bell rings to tell us to go home. The entire system looks at children as if they were widgets, entering the education factory as toddlers and coming out the other side when they are grown.
This is not how God designed the rearing of children. To be sure, our children must learn things. But they are not so much widgets in a factory as they are plants around our tables (Psalm 128). They are not products to be manufactured but lives to be nurtured. The Bible presents the raising of children in natural and organic terms, rather than mechanical or industrial terms.
This is why we are called, according to the Shema, to speak to our children of the things of God when they lie down and when they rise up (Deut. 6:7). This poetic expression should itself be seen organically. That is, Moses is assuredly not saying, “Don’t speak to your children of these things when they are seated,” or, “Do speak to them when they walk by the way, but if they are jogging, be silent.” That is, Moses is talking about an immersive educational experience—we are to talk about the things of God with our children always and everywhere.
The things of God are to be the very warp and woof of our daily conversation. God does not here call us to be sure to have or add Bible curricula to our educational programs. He does not command us to sign our children up for Bible memory programs at our local churches. He does not require that we hire others to teach them their catechism answers. Instead, He tells us parents that we are to speak with our children about the things of God all the time.
In order to do this, of course, we who are parents first must be thinking about the things of God all the time. Most of us are the products of schools that taught us to divide our lives, to separate what we think about Jesus and what we think about our work, to separate what we think about our work and what we think about our play. We give time to Jesus on Sundays, perhaps on Wednesday nights, and, if we are peculiarly pious, every day during our quiet times. These all may be terribly good things, but not if they are hermetically sealed. We dare not believe that Jesus matters only during these times while He is beside the point the rest of our days.
When Jesus calls us to seek first His kingdom, He is not narrowing our focus. He is not saying: “Set aside kingdom building for your best hours of the day. Then, when you are tired, you can go about your own business.” Jesus does not reign in one kingdom that we pursue through the means of grace and in another kingdom that we pursue some other way. He does not take His world and slice it into class periods. Rather, He ever, always, and everywhere reigns. How we live our lives must not merely acknowledge that, but subsist in it. Therefore, how we train our children must not merely acknowledge that, but subsist in it. It is not enough that we say a blessing over our days and go on as if the One to whom we have prayed can be ignored.
The Shema tells us not only of the God of the covenant, but of the first law of the covenant—that we are to teach the covenant to our children. The Shema, in a new covenant context, calls us to acknowledge and proclaim the lordship of Christ over all things. It is a clarion call to all God’s people to rejoice in God’s reign over all things. It is a constant reminder that Jesus is not a subject to be mastered, but the Master we are to be subject to. The school of Christ never takes a weekend. The school of Christ never takes a vacation. The school of Christ never takes a snow day. And the school of Christ hands out diplomas only when we die.
We must pray without ceasing.
One of the dangers of honoring the Reformation is that we can end up dishonoring the very principles that gave rise to it. If, for instance, we were to carry around bits of bones from Martin Luther and revere them, we would have badly missed the point. If, in like manner, our understanding of justification becomes so complicated that it takes a Ph.D. to understand it, we’ve missed the point as well. The Reformation did not happen because Martin Luther applied his prodigious intellect to a vexing intellectual problem, and came out with the right answer. It was driven more by courage than by raw intelligence, by fidelity more than finesse.
In like manner, while we want to be sound in our thinking, and while the things of God are infinite in depth, what we need if we want a new Reformation is not new information, but greater fidelity to the information we have already been given. Consider how much time and energy we devote to the question of prayer. If everything is already ordained, why pray? we ask. Does prayer really change anything? Should we pray in tongues? These are all legitimate questions. But we ought to be spending more time praying than asking questions about praying. We know this, and it is enough, we are commanded to pray without ceasing (I Thessalonians 5:17).
If we want Reformation, if we want to see the world changed, the church changed, our families changed, and ourselves changed, we need to change our habits. Reformation will come when we are obedient in the simple things. God calls us to pray without ceasing, and so we ought to do. As we obey this command we are changed, and the world around us is changed. As we obey this command we will in turn rejoice always. We will give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for us (5:16-18).
One of the most potent elements of prayer is shame. That is, when we are not praying, we seem to believe that God isn’t listening. Prayer is, to our subconscious minds, opening the communication link with heaven. When we’re “on” we are less likely to dwell not only on those sins we nurture in the quiet of our minds, but we are less likely to dwell on the trivial and insignificant. Praying to the Lord of heaven helps keep our focus on heavenly things. This in turn will turn our efforts toward heavenly things. A person who prays constantly is probably not given to thinking all the time about their favorite football team. Neither are they busy trying to make sure their favorite team wins. A person in constant prayer is already working for the kingdom. But such a man is in turn far more likely to set his hands and feet to work on that which is not wood, hay and stubble.
Pray without ceasing, for God is at work in and for us, without ceasing.
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.
