A wise man sees what is coming. The fool claims there is a lion in the street. Thus the difference between prudence and panic. New study starting, new book coming. Plus, rejoicing in persecution in submission to Christ. All whipped up just for you, like a well made omelette. Dig in.
We spend an awful lot of talk and ink discussing the proper and biblical way to disagree with one another. Often we debate whether sarcasm is ever a legitimate tool in the believer’s arsenal. We dispute about what situations call for the Matthew 18 protocol and which ones do not.
We have the nice police regularly tooting their whistles and waving their batons about over a hard word or two, following by sundry citations of our Lord zinging His enemies with the wit of Shakespeare and the venom of Don Rickles. For all the talk, however, we’re making little progress in reaching consensus. Come now and let us reason together.
Our disputes are by and large through impersonal cyber means, which exacerbates an already existing problem. We don’t speak on the interwebs with the same gentleness with which we talk with one another in real life. Mere written words are denuded of all the subtleties and nuances of face-to-face conversation. There we have tone of voice, posture, and facial expression to give us clues. In real life, even when we are steaming mad, we still sense their humanity and typically temper our tantrums.
We are prone to denying our opponents’ simple humanity. I receive regular reckless accusations against me on the flimsiest of evidence. As the conversation moves forward, each participant feels absolute freedom to ascribe to me perspectives I’ve not only never taken but have expressly denied. And then to add insult to injury, they assign sundry selfish motives to all that I do.
Some time ago I had a conversation go something like this, “I heard on a podcast that you said on a podcast that Lutherans are heretics who go to hell.” I replied, “I didn’t say that as I have never believed that. Could you please cite where you believe I said that?” “I don’t have time to hunt down the citation. Why don’t you tell me what you did say on that podcast?”
So I’m now accused of saying something I never would have said. I ask for the source. And in turn I am asked for a source where I didn’t say it. “Uh, here’s your source- everything I’ve ever written or said that has ever been published. Those are all the places where I didn’t say what you say I said.”
Others came to my accuser’s defense, noting that one thing they know about me is that I like to confuse my congregation, and that I’m just interested in selling books and getting butts in seats at my seminars. I was told that I have ulterior motives.
Sadly, I have no citations from my writings or podcasts where I publicly deny having ulterior motives, desiring to confuse my congregation and having a mercenary perspective. All this because I’m a Calvinist and not a Lutheran. I’m confident, by the way, that many a Lutheran has been treated as badly by Calvinists.
I’m guilty of the same I must confess. A star in Hollywood, a well known podcaster, a political pundit are, too often in my own mind, not real people deserving of Christian charity. Perhaps being on the receiving end will help me to more fully repent. Lord help us to never forget that the people we disagree with are people before they are people we disagree with.
It is, of course, a sound and biblical truth that what comes out of our mouths reveals what is in our hearts. And, in turn, it is true that what is in our hearts is desperate wickedness. To be sure we are regenerate, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, but the old man is still kicking and screaming. Because of the deceit that remains in our hearts, however, we are wont to miss what actually comes out of our mouths. We end up thinking our hearts are rather sunny places because we find rather sunny things coming out of our mouths, at least when people are listening.
I know this because I live this. From time to time I find myself logging some long hours and long miles on this nation’s interstate system. Sometimes I drive alone. I’ve been alone in the car on some rather crowded highways. That, sadly, doesn’t mean I have been driving in silence. If my windows could talk, well, parental guidance is suggested.
When we assess our hearts via assessing our minds, I suspect we tend to pick those memories which are the safest, the tamest recordings we can remember. We think that how we spoke to that sweet old woman at the library with the big cross around her neck reflects what is actually in our hearts. In truth, it may be what we say when no one is listening that reveals us most fully.
This is because of common grace. It, along with the spread of the gospel in Western culture, has created notions of manners, chivalry, and discretion. We understand that some things are just not said in polite company. Or at least most of us do.
There are both psychological and physical ailments that can restrain whatever mechanisms we have that restrain our speech. Some folks are missing that filter that greases social discourse. They are the ones who are quick to point out that you’ve put on some weight. Children, in turn, can be slow to develop these nuances. They aren’t afraid to ask why two of my sons have skin that is so much darker than my own.
Most of us also are missing the nuances when we are engaged in internal conversation, when we are just talking to ourselves. We think it is safe to be honest in the quiet of our own minds. There we admit our dislike of this person. There we confess to our own assurance that we are quite gifted with this skill, that we are the ones deserving of this honor or that. We seem to think that these things can’t hurt us as long as we don’t speak them, as long as we keep them inside.
Oh, the lies we tell ourselves. What comes out of our hearts reveals what we are. What goes into our hearts, that creates what we are. Our internal dialogue is not meaningless background noise. It becomes instead the soundtrack of our lives.
We are blessed to live in an age and a culture which has easy access to the Word of God. And we are cursed to live in an age and culture which has easy access to the Word of God. Our fathers had to internalize the Word of God. They sang the Psalms so they would learn them. They learned them so they could sing them, even if it was only in the quiet of their own minds. We, on the other hand, are more apt to have the wisdom of last night’s big winner on American Idol reverberating in our minds. We have Bibles in every room in our homes and apps on our smart phones, but we don’t hide it in our hearts.
When I drive down the highway yelling and sputtering, I do so reflecting the wisdom of the world. What I am saying is: “I am important. I have important things to do. I have to hurry. You all are failing to understand how to treat me properly.” What I should have been thinking was more like this: “If the Lord wills, I will get there on time.”
The song I should have had playing in my mind was “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.” What I should have been rejoicing over is the glorious gospel truth that when I am stuck in traffic, I am already where I need to be, that no matter how many more miles I have to drive, the kingdom I am called to pursue first is already with me.
What I and we all need to remember is that whether we are alone in the car or alone with our thoughts, there is no thought in the woods that no one hears. The Word Himself hears every word, and every word of ours that is not an Amen to every word of His will burn up as wood, hay, and stubble. What I should have thought about in that traffic was not a resigned but a joyful reminder: “Where else can I go Lord? You alone have the words of eternal life.”
This fall we begin a new study on the Psalms entitled Songs of Sorrow and Prayers of Praise. We are moving our meetings this fall to Thursday evenings, beginning September 10 at 7:00. We meet in our home. All are welcome to attend. In addition, we live stream on Facebook at RC-Lisa Sproul. We hope you’ll join us.
Scandal is tragic. No, it’s not merely sad. It is that to be sure. Tragedy, however, contains within its meaning not just hardship, but the downfall of the once lifted up. It may be a tragedy when a white stag dies caught in barbed wire. It is not a tragedy when a cockroach gets stepped on. The Roman emperor being assassinated is a tragedy. An old man passing into eternity is merely sad.
In like manner, it is no scandal when a drug dealer gets killed in a deal. Sad, yes. The story of how he became a drug dealer may be a tragedy. But we expect the fallen to fall, not the mighty. The issue isn’t might or falseness. The issue is repentance.
Sometimes, however, we see something as scandal and tragedy because we forget that all of us are fallen, and not a one of us mighty. Ravi Zacharias, Steve Lawson, Doug Phillips were no more sinful than the half dozen pastors I know of that you have never heard of who got into trouble by straying from and betraying their wives. In the same manner, we somehow are stunned by David’s infidelity, while rolling right past Judah’s. The lesson from David’s sin isn’t that powerful people who present themselves well are all lying cheats. It’s that we’re all lying cheats, one way or another.
More recently we’ve been shocked and appalled at anonymous and inflammatory accusations from some at G3 Ministries against a pastor I respect and admire, Tom Buck. This after the board of G3 bounced its leader, Josh Buice, a few years ago for the same thing. The fallout at G3 and Pray Mills Baptist Church continues. Must be something in the water at G3, right? There is something in the water there- two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom. The same stuff in the water we all drink. The problem isn’t the water, but the people that drink it. That is, all of us.
While we certainly ought not to accept scandalous behavior, we surely ought to expect it. From unknown people, the people we know, and the people everyone knows. Whatever the sin, our response ought to be “There but for the grace of God go I.” I am not above either plagiarizing sermons nor above falsely accusing a brother anonymously. Nor of accusing a brother of falsely accusing a brother anonymously with insufficient evidence. Not because that is the type of person I am, but because I’m the type of person they are, as are you. It’s the kind of people we are. We, if we rest in Christ, are better than we once were. We continue to get better. But we are most certainly not well.
What kind of shysters parade about as godly men while cheating on their wives? What kind of hypocrites fire one man for doing what they themselves do? What kind of heartless person kills his own unborn child? What kind of monster shoots up a worship service or a school? The same kind of shyster, hypocrite, heartless monster I am. The kind Jesus came to rescue. The kind who, because of Jesus, having embraced His grace, are forgiven, adopted and beloved by our heavenly Father. That, friends, is what ought to shock us.
Listen to me now. We’ve gotten very bad at listening. Here’s an opportunity for you to practice, and to benefit. When you’re done, why not encourage others to do the same?
There is a reason that Saint Augustine is considered the greatest mind the church produced in the first millennia after the ascension of Christ. The man was flat out brilliant, blazing theological trails like Daniel Boone. His writings continue to instruct and inform the church to our day. His Confessions is canon for both the world and the church. His extensive essay on the trinity is brilliant. The City of God is a classic in any era. What may demonstrate his greatest genius, however, was the one book he no doubt wished he didn’t have to write.
Late in his life Augustine looked over the corpus of his work and went on to publish his “Retractions.” Here he catalogued the things he believed at life’s end that he had gotten wrong earlier in his life. In so doing he demonstrated what he had gotten right, a biblical embracing of humility. We all know ourselves well enough to know that we make mistakes. We all hide from ourselves how sinful we are, because we don’t realize how far we are willing to go to cover our mistakes.
When your writing is published, it can often haunt you. It remains out there for people to read, even when you wish they wouldn’t. Many years ago I wrote a horribly muddled and inaccurate brief piece on women blogging. And the women, along with not a few men, blogged about what a doofus I was. They were right, and I was wrong. My second essay, acknowledging that reality, did not, of course, get spread out as far and wide as the first one. This is a perfectly natural consequence of my failure.
Still, some go to great lengths to try to cover their tracks. They erase old websites. They seek to nuance their previous views, spinning them into their current views. Others, far more strangely, go heavily on the attack against what they once believed, believing perhaps if they yell loudly enough now, people will not hear them back then. You can add a side of chicken to their waffle.
I once had a fan on the internet. It was his habit to quote from me extensively, to praise my wisdom, to encourage others to drink deeply of that wisdom. While he was saying all these nice things about me, however, he was saying some not so nice things about friends of mine. I then published a brief piece pointing out to this friend where we disagreed.
Suddenly, though nothing of what I had believed had changed, I became an enemy. No, I became THE enemy. This gentleman wrote tens of thousands of words articulating just which hell hole I had apparently crawled out from. All of which is fine by me. The issue we disagreed on was a biggie for him.
What surprised me was that there was no acknowledgment by this writer that he had once been foolish enough to be a fan. There was no apologizing to the folks he had encouraged to look my way, for giving them a bum steer.
In the end, that great African bishop Augustine showed the greater wisdom. One way to see if your commitment is more to the doctrine of total depravity, or more to acknowledging our own desperately wicked hearts is to see whether we spend more time confessing our own sins, or pointing out the sins of others. I know which one I do- I point out the sins of others. For that, I need to repent.
No, of course not. Does Jesus reign over all things? Is He king of kings? Are all things being brought under His subjection? Does He command us to disciple the nations? Indeed, yes, absolutely and yup. I find it hard to believe that this is even a question.
A hundred years ago the Protestant church found itself split in two. On one side were those who believed the Bible and wanted to see people brought into the kingdom. On the other side were those who were embarrassed by the Bible but wanted to use it to bolster their social agenda. This, the fundamentalist-modernist controversy shows that black hats are deeply dark and white hats are badly stained. That is, both sides, one much more than the other, had their problems. The problem with the modernists was rank unbelief. The problem with the fundamentalists was unbelief with respect to Christ’s reign in the here and now. The modernists were all in on already, the fundamentalists all in on not yet.
This is the root of the divide in our own day. Now the modernists call their social agenda “putting feet to the gospel” and call the fundamentalists’ social agenda Christian nationalism, Trumpism, racism. The fundamentalists have gotten better insofar as they are in fact more politically engaged. The trouble is, sometimes the loudest in our camp have confused the Republican party with all that is pure and noble. We’ve been taken for a ride for almost fifty years on Roe, redefining “pro-life” as “slightly less bloodthirsty than the Democrat.”
I’ll grant, nodding in the direction of my two-kingdom friends that Christians should not act as though every policy decision is a matter of eternal life and death. We should not excommunicate our brothers and sisters in Christ simply because they think a capital gains tax rate of 30% is better than 25%. Jesus did not say, “Disciple the nations, and when the price of gas gets above $3.50 a gallon scream until Washington releases some of its strategic reserves.” I’ll grant as well that we ought not to be shrill, unkind or partisan to party. Poking those inside or outside the camp in the eye with political snark probably does no one any good. I know, physician heal thyself. Amen.
That said, just as the gospel does not leave us orphans, so the law does not leave us in our blindness when it comes to the issues of morality attached to the government’s use of force. The truth is, the Bible does speak to how we treat those who are different from us. It most certainly speaks to the protection of the unborn. It speaks to the rapacious spending habits of politicians, and the bloodlust that leads to war. And where the Bible speaks, we are responsible to speak.
Let the world, and the modernists rail all they like. Let them accuse us of stepping outside our boundaries. Then remind them they have stepped into our territory in telling us to be quiet. Remind them that Peter once stood before the governing authorities and told them when they insisted he be silent, “Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll obey God rather than you, since you insist on contradicting Him.” Do not confuse America, in our early history, much less today, with the City of God. Do, however, let us work together to see that justice rolls down like thunder.
My favorite theologian was wont to argue that the defining task of the theologian is to make distinctions. That’s what we do. We bring clarity through precision, precision through distinction. The man who may well be my favorite theologian’s favorite theologian, Francis Turretin, published his three-volume work The Institutes of Elenctic Theology as a sort of systematic theology by contrast. Each point is broken down, compared and contrasted, and examined in light of its opposite.
One could argue that theologians are here following the path of their Maker. We serve a God who delights in distinctions. Reading through the creation account, for instance, we see not only the creation of light, but the separation of light and darkness. Not only the creation of land, but the separation of land and sea, or land and sky.
On the other hand, the God who delights in distinctions warns against tearing asunder what He has brought together. He brings people of every tongue and tribe together into a holy nation, a royal priesthood. He makes of many grains one loaf.
Reformed theologians especially are given, at least when dealing with the critical issue of our salvation, to razor-thin distinctions. The links in our chain of the ordo salutis, or “order of salvation,” are strong, unbreakable, but nevertheless rather small. There is good reason for this, but also some danger. Sometimes the wedges we drive between concepts go too deep.
Consider faith and repentance. There is good reason to see these as two distinct things. With one, we look with hope to the provision of God in Christ. With the other, we acknowledge and confess our need for that work. Hypothetically, one could affirm Jesus died for sinners and miss that the one making the affirmation is a sinner. One could more easily recognize the reality of his sin but know nothing of the provision in Christ. Thus, the two are two, and both equally needful.
On the other hand, one could argue that the two things are actually one, or at the very least that they flow from the same source. Faith is indeed the coming together of understanding, agreement, and trust. But on a more fundamental level, faith is simply this— believing God. Faith is displayed when God speaks and we say, “Amen.”
The devil, of course, knows that God is true. He’s quite informed on the sacrifice of Christ. Satan knows to his very core, from the very longing of his heart by which he misses those who slipped through his fingers, that Jesus came to save sinners. He is also quite well aware of what and who he is— a sinner. All of this knowledge will make his eternity that much more painful.
Faith and repentance, then, might be at their closest when we confess that, as He says, we are sinners, and as we cry out, as He has commanded, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13). God says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), and we say, “Lord, Your judgments are true.” When God says, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Tim. 1:15), we do not merely affirm our agreement, but we sing it with hallelujahs and amens.
For all the important nuances, for all the valuable precision, the simple truth of the matter is we fell in the garden because we failed to believe God. All sin is a failure to believe God. The good news is that we are rescued from our sins by believing Him, both His judgment and His promise. That is, we are gifted with faith and repentance.
Just as we can make theology more complex than it need be, just as we are called, in seeking orthodoxy, to say our amens to what God has revealed about Himself, so we can make the living of our lives in faithfulness, the seeking of orthopraxy, more complex than it need be. Here, too, we are to say our amens about what God has revealed about His promises for us, about His law. He commands us to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and we are called to repent of our pursuit of personal peace and affluence, and to believe His promises.
It is true that God is true and all men are liars. It is true, in turn, that every man is miserly while God is extravagant. Were we wise, we would repent expansively, even as we would believe with both deep conviction and broad expectation. Our sin is simple—we do not believe God, and so do not obey God. The solution is simple—believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household (Acts 16:31). We do not merely believe this once and then nevermore; rather, we believe it both evermore and evermore.
We are all all too comfortable affirming we are due what we are in fact not due. We are prone to confusing wants and rights. Some argue that every employee is owed a “living wage.” Whence came, however, such an obligation on an employer to pay such a wage? Does God require it? If not, who are we to do so? If so, would you please show me where?
The only biblical conversation I am aware of over the justness of a given wage is found in Matthew 20, the parable of the workers in the vineyard. You remember the story. The owner hires a crew in the morning at an agreed upon wage. Three hours later he hired more men. Three more and again, three more again, and finally, hires the last crew with only one hour left in the workday. He then proceeds to pay the first group what was agreed upon. Then pays each other group the same amount. The first group objects. The owner explains that no one got less than they agreed to, and thus no one was done wrong.
Of course this is a parable about God’s grace. Which does nothing to undo the soundness of the principle. We are all owed what we agree to. If we agree to it, we haven’t been cheated, exploited, shortchanged or robbed. We are not owed more. Nor do we owe more to anyone we hire than what we agree to.
The economic value of a given person’s labor is measured not by the training that preceded it, not by the effort inherent in it, but in the value placed on it by the consumer of that labor. Which means no one is owed a living wage. This is not cruel indifference toward anyone. It is instead protective of everyone’s freedom. No one should be forced to pay more than they are willing.
This applies also to those who earn more. Because the value of one person’s labor is what someone is willing to pay, no one is overpaid in a free market. When some sports star signs a big contract he is only receiving what the ones signing him are willing to pay. When a person enters the marketplace and finds eager buyers for his goods or services, he earns every penny he makes, even if it’s billions. He need feel no guilt. Nor ought any of us feel covetous toward those whose goods and services are in great demand.
Every weekday at this site I post either an article or a podcast. I offer them for free. I do, from rare time to rare time seek support for this work. Two things I have never done, however. I’ve never tried to play upon anyone’s guilt for not supporting this work. Second, I’ve never encouraged those who won’t support this work to move on. I’m in the writing/teaching “business,” not the fundraising business. If you value what you’re reading enough to invest your time in it, you need not invest your treasure in it.
Be at peace with what you earn, and with what others earn. Give thanks to the Lord for He is the one who provides and prospers.
Lisa and I conclude our conversation on the grace displayed in the account of Jesus and the woman at the well. I offer caution to those judging the nuances of the repentance of others, inspired by the G3 controversy. Micah condemns fascism, not wealth. Plus, the joy of God’s forgiveness. Now doesn’t that sound like a great thing to listen to for a half an hour? Try it. And if it goes well, why not share with a friend? That’s my advice anyway.
