I think it’s fair to say that the year 2020 was a stressful year for the global population. The COVID-19 pandemic was a large part of that, but people are also worried about the government, the economy, their health, their jobs, their loved ones, and their futures.

A survey of 3,013 adults conducted on behalf of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 2020 showed stress levels in American adults as the highest since these levels started being recorded, and “marks the first significant increase in average reported stress” since the survey began in 2007. According to the APA, parents are more anxious than adults without children, reporting stressors related to education, basic needs, access to health care services, and missing out on major milestones. The poll found that nearly 80% of adults say the coronavirus pandemic is a significant source of stress in their lives, while 60% say the number of issues America faces is overwhelming to them.

Dr. Arthur C. Evans Jr. APA’s CEO said: “This survey confirms what many mental health experts have been saying…: Our mental health is suffering from the compounding stressors in our lives…[which] will have serious health and social consequences if we don’t act now to reduce it.”

It’s 2022 and people are still overwhelmed. And there is not much hope out there. One medical website asked and answered the question:  “Can you cure yourself of anxiety completely? The short answer is, No.”  They go on to explain that anxiety is partly a genetic condition and can thus never be cured completely.

Friends, I have good news: I have found a vaccine for anxiety! And I will give it to you right now – for free.

All you have to do is…. turn to John 14.

Jesus is talking to his disciples the night before he goes to the cross. He has told them that he will be betrayed and that he is going back to the Father. They are understandably shaken, afraid, anxious, upset, and troubled. What antidote will Jesus offer to cure that anxiety?

3 REALITIES TO HOPE IN SO YOU WILL HAVE PEACE IN TROUBLED TIMES

1. THE PERSON OF CHRIST

John 14:1 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.“

Anxiety is a condition that starts in the mind and affects the body and behavior. Stress is the puppet master that pulls the strings of your thinking and behavior. Jesus injects his cure precisely where the anxiety resides: in the heart: “Let not your hearts be troubled.”

You can’t always change your environment, but you can change your thinking. The first dose of Christ’s remedy is to focus your thoughts, attention, faith on… your God.

“Believe in God; believe also in me.”

Trusting in the person of Jesus is the most potent cure for anxiety I know. To trust in a person means that you consider their character. Jesus is saying that when your heart is troubled, trust in God. You know who he is, you know what he is capable of, and you know his character.

Stop letting your feelings steer your life. Let your faith steer your life!

Phil 4: 5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand.

If you put a little toy soldier next to a molehill and take a picture, the molehill looks like a mountain. But if you put an actual Army Ranger in full gear next to the molehill and take a picture, it’s not a mountain anymore, you don’t even notice the clump of dirt.

Jesus is not a toy soldier, he is a warrior, armed with power, and he is on a mission to accompany you through whatever valley you are going through: The Lord is at hand.

When you zoom in on your fear, to exclude Jesus, of course it will cause anxiety. Frankly, if Jesus weren’t real, and good, and in control of everything, nothing could convince me to have peace.

Always keep Jesus in the picture. Keep your perspective. God has got this. Jesus is God. Trust in God and trust in Jesus.

2. THE PREPARATIONS OF CHRIST

John 14:2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

Here Jesus reveals something that is absolutely mind-blowing. Many people think of Heaven as a place of clouds and rainbows with us playing harps for eternity. That is not even close.

The New Heavens and New Earth represent a physical reality, an actual place. It is a world, with buildings, roads, agriculture, animals (living creatures), industry and exploration. God could make cities with a word, like he did with nature. But he doesn’t. With Earth, God created a paradise of natural resources and put humans in it to cultivate and improve it by inventions and technology and mining and experimentation.

God could have made a world with bridges and sky-scrapers, espresso machines, cars, cellphones, and WiFi – but he didn’t. God gets glory from his creatures exercising their own creativity, ingenuity, and diligence. The image of God is manifest in the various ways his diverse creatures produce and cultivate and exercise their creativity.

And it appears from Jesus’ words here that some sort of construction is going on in Heaven too.

14:2 In my Father’s house are many rooms.

The word is monai which could mean mansion, dwelling place, or room. This monai is in the Father’s house. So, in modern language, I would translate this as a suite. And those units are under construction. They are being prepared.

I imagine Jesus as the project manager, not the bricklayer. But when he says he is “preparing a place,” it implies he is somehow involved in the project. If I had one person designing, constructing, and decorating the perfect dwelling place for me, I would want that person to be Jesus, wouldn’t you?

You might have this burning question: How do we get to this perfectly customized suburb in the sky?

3. THE PAROUSIA OF CHRIST

John 14:3 And if (since) I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

This promise refers to what theologians call the parousia of Christ. The word parousia is a Greek term for “coming, arrival, or physical presence.” This word is used 24 times in the New Testament and 17 of those refer to the glorious coming of Christ.  

1 Thessalonians 4:16-18 says that Jesus will come again, physically, to gather his saints to himself.

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Let that sink in for a moment: Jesus is coming back to earth again… to get you.

He wants you with him in his home.

Jesus has not forgotten us here. There is nothing that can keep him from keeping his promise and coming to get you. He is getting everything just right for us. And he will come back. You can bet your soul on it.

CONCLUSION

Do you have rising anxiety levels from watching the news?

The disciples heard troubling news too, but they also heard the ultimate comfort. Hope in the person of Jesus, in his preparation of heaven for you, and in the certain return of your Savior.

Pastor, let’s step into your study for a moment. It’s Wednesday or Thursday or maybe some weeks it’s Saturday night. You sit down to harvest the wheat of truth from the text to prepare the weekly bread for your people. After a bit of study, you feel reasonably certain that you understand the author’s intent in the passage you plan to preach, and now you’ve got to pull it all together into something resembling a sermon. Open before you are a Bible, your study notes, and a blank page for your manuscript or outline.

Now, what’s your first thought? Where does your mind go when you start writing this sermon?

Some go immediately to illustrations – how can I make this truth come alive? Others consider just the right way to word the application to give it that really convicting zing. The self-conscious among us comb through the archives to make sure MacArthur didn’t steal our outline. This is the stuff of homiletics, the substance of preaching preparation. This is what you need to build a sermon, undoubtedly.

But, pastor, here’s my concern: If you rush into the what of preaching without reminding yourself of the why, my guess is that your sermon will show it and your people will know it. There is a far more important and foundational homiletic question to ask before you put pen to paper on your outline, your exegesis, or your conclusion. Even if you’ve got the meaning of the text deftly in hand, you must not rush to preach without this answer in the other.

After understanding the truth from your text, the most important question to ask in sermon preparation is: Do I love them?

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Cor 13:1). Or, we might say it, “If I preach with the tongue of Knox and of Spurgeon, but have not love, I’m just making noise in the pulpit.”

Paul demonstrates for us in his letters to the Corinthian church that a pastor’s love for Christ’s sheep is the defining motivation behind all his preaching. He says what he says because he loves how he loves. Preaching is for people, so the preacher must love his people. He doesn’t preach for himself, he preaches for them. And that motivation, that clarity of purpose, shapes everything about the sermon.

So, let’s briefly observe how the why of homiletics affects the what of homiletics, or to put it another way, how love for your people should shape your sermon-writing this week:

Love Writes Sermons with the Right Tone

In 2 Corinthians, Paul sets out to defend his ministry against the vain accusations of the “super-apostles” that were plaguing the church in Corinth. With respect to this self-defense, Paul writes, “As the truth of Christ is in me, this boasting of mine will not be silenced in the regions of Achaia. And why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do!” (2 Cor 11:10-11). You can almost hear Paul’s exasperation in these sentences. How could they possibly think that he’s motivated by anything less than love for them? So, to make things crystal clear, Paul pulls back the curtain on his heart and shows them why he’s written this way: It’s because of love.

Or consider Paul’s words rebuking those who were arrogant in the Corinthians church. “I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children.” (1 Cor 4:14). As a fatherly tenderly correcting his little ones, so Paul writes out of love to humble those who have exalted themselves, and so uses a strong, assertive tone. But he also says that his love could produce a different tone: “What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?” (1 Cor 4:21). The implication is that if the Corinthians would be humbled, then Paul’s love would come with gentle, sweet words of encouragement and praise.

Pastor, our love for the dear sheep must create in us a sensitivity to their needs that manifests in our preaching tone. They need to hear in your voice that you love them, either through necessary rebuke or through gentle, nurturing comfort. How you preach, for instance, the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) should not only be shaped by the tone of the text but also by the tone they need to hear. Do they need to hear, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” or do they need to hear, “Blessed are the poor in spirit”? Love should shape a sermon’s tone.

Another way to say it is: If you don’t love your people, then you’ll be tone-deaf as you preach. If you’ve preached for any number of years, you’ve known the homiletic blight of an insensitive, calculated sermon. You can check all the exegetical boxes perfectly, but if you don’t know how this text can minister to their daily needs then your sermon will be a cold, audio commentary. If your heart isn’t bleeding in the pew, their hearts won’t beat with the pulpit. The sheep know the tone of loveless sermons and ignore them instinctively.

Therefore, pastor, this implies that you need to not only love your people but also that you need to know them; that you take the time throughout the week to call, visit, write, and share your life with them as they do with you. Only when you know the joys and struggles of your people will you know what tone most serves their needs as you unfold the Word of God before them. If love is writing your sermon, then your preparation begins over coffee, in the hospital, and by the graveside. Love knows the right tone to write a helpful sermon because it knows the sermon’s target hearts.

Love Writes Sermons with Clear Content

Love also compels clarity in the sermon-writing process, which often manifests in simplified explanations and understandable illustrations. Consider Paul’s burden in correcting the Corinthians’ obsession with unintelligible “tongue-speaking”: “Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say, ‘Amen’ to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying? For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up” (1 Cor 14:16-17). Remember that 1 Corinthians 14 follows right after Paul’s great exaltation of the gift of love in 1 Corinthians 13. What should compel a preacher to want to build up his congregation in preaching? Love. How does he build them up? By preaching truth clearly.

Clarity is the deepest diamond in the mine of sermon preparation. It’s hard work to speak clearly, and it’s easy to be obscure. But if you love your people, then you’ll scrub the vague sludge off the window of your sermon to let in the light of Scripture’s clear truth. We must think ourselves clear to serve our people well.

To write clear sermons, then, you have to know how make eternal, transcendent truths accessible. You avoid unfamiliar theological terms, or if you use them then you also explain what they mean in plain English. Strunk and White’s advice still stands: Short, Saxon words over long, Latinate pontification. If you can’t explain what the text means with everyday language, then you probably don’t understand it. As Haddon Robinson said, “If it’s a mist in the pulpit, it’ll be a fog in the pew.”

Practically speaking, you can love your people well by using illustrations to bring clarity to the text. Love illustrates because love seeks to aid understanding. Did you notice Paul’s goal? “But the other person is not being built up.” They can’t be built up if they don’t understand, and a well-placed illustrative phrase or story could make all the difference. So, don’t throw in an illustration just to get attention; illustrate to clarify.

Another clarifying tool in the preacher’s kit should be negation. “Not that. Not that. But this.” We don’t understand an idea until we know its boundaries, and negation helps toward that end. Think of Jesus’ most famous sermon: “You have heard that it was said… but I say to you” (Matt 5:21-22). Or consider Paul’s clarifying word on sanctification: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Phil 3:12). Negation can be overdone but should be used wisely by a loving pastor who wants to help his congregation understand God’s Word.

Love Writes Sermons with Helpful Application

After defending his ministry out of the love for the Corinthians, Paul begins to draw his argument to a close, saying, “Have you been thinking all along that we have been defending ourselves to you? It is in the sight of God that we have been speaking in Christ, and all for your upbuilding, beloved” (2 Cor 12:19). That’s a strong statement. Paul’s conscience is so clean that he can declare before God himself that everything he’s written was out of love and for one purpose. What was that aim? Well, we would call it application. Upbuilding. Edification. The growth and maturity of the saints. “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Cor 8:1).

A sermon written from a heart bursting with love has Christlikeness in its audience as its aim. Paul said to the Galatians that he was “in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you” (Gal 4:19). If a pastor loves his people, then it should be a strong, almost uncontainable desire to see his people grow. More than anything, he wants them to put off sin and put on Christ, and that has strong implications for how he preaches to them.

Pastor, remember: The purpose of preaching is application. That application may be as simple as learning new truth or as tangible as changing jobs, but either way, the preacher always announces God’s Word to bring about sanctifying change in the lives of his hearers. Preachers help people love and live like Jesus. A sermon’s aim is change.

So, when preparing your sermon this week, pastor, don’t overlook application! If you love your people and know what preaching is for, then you’ll necessarily spend time crafting appropriate, exegetically grounded, life-changing words of application. The “so-what” of your sermon should not be an afterthought, but a pervasive mindset behind every word you say. Do you want to see people look more like Jesus? Then help them. Apply the text.

Much could be said about how to apply a text well, but perhaps the most important homiletical step towards effective application is to apply the text to yourself first. If you have been changed by God’s Word, then you’ll be a walking billboard for that change in the lives of others. If the Word has convicted you of jealousy, then you’ll know what incisive questions will penetrate another envious heart. If you’ve been swept away with the grandeur and glory of Christ, then they will see your face shining. Come to the Word as a Christian so that you can go to the pulpit as a preacher. Help your people by being helped by Christ. He is always ready to give mercy and grace to help in your time of need (Heb 4:16).

Brother, if you want to be used of God to sanctify his saints as you preach this coming week, then emblazon this verse on your heart: “For the love of Christ controls us” (2 Cor 5:14). Jesus’ love for you is the ink in your pen. Without it, there is no sermon. Controlled by it, you just might preach a sermon that helps someone. Let your love, then, be genuine. Let it shape every sentence you craft and every point you make. Let it adjust, clarify, illustrate, and apply. Or, as Paul said it, “Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Cor 16:13).

Much attention has been given to Canada’s recently passed, “Bill C-4.”  Reportedly, some 4000 pastors expressed their willingness to protest the bill from pulpits last Sunday. If you are not familiar, among other things, it criminalizes “conversion therapy” of people in homosexuality and transgenderism. I spoke with a long-time Canadian citizen last week who said that the Bill is intended to forbid things like actual physical harm, torture, kidnapping, and assault on children under the guise of “conversion therapy.” Obviously forbidding those things is necessary.

However, the wording of the Bill is not only ominously broad, but seems to target God’s definition of gender and sexuality. For example, the Bill’s Preamble declares that it is a “myth” to believe that “heterosexuality, cisgender gender identity, and gender expression that conforms to the sex assigned to a person at birth are to be preferred over other sexual orientations, gender identities and gender expressions.” Thus, according to Canadian law, God’s good and loving design for marriage sexuality, and gender (Gen 1:26-27, 2:24), is a myth. The Bill goes on to define conversion therapy as, “a practice, treatment or service designed to change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual; change a person’s gender identity to cisgender; change a person’s gender expression so that it conforms to the sex assigned to the person at birth.”

With the passing of Bill C-4, Canada has criminalized the evangelism, counseling, and shepherding of people in homosexuality and transgenderism. According to the Bill, it is a criminal offense, punishable with up to five years in prison, to be used of God in bringing the incredibly loving news of Christ crucified in our place and risen from the dead to such individuals. Let’s be clear what Canada has done. In passing this Bill, Canada announced, and sanctioned, its hatred for people involved in homosexuality and transgenderism. Conversion to faith in Jesus Christ meets the greatest need of the human race; it is the zenith of God’s love extended to a person. So, to forbid this from individuals is to hate them.

Before getting into what the Bill can and cannot do, let’s consider the unspeakable deluge of God’s love in conversion; how loving God’s conversion is. In converting the sinner, God sets his unshakable love on us though we had not loved him (Rom 5:8). Then, God imputes all of our sin to the perfect, sinless, glorious Person of Christ in his death at the cross (1 Pet 2:24). He also imputes the righteousness of Jesus Christ to us, the sinners, though we have only lived in sin (2 Cor 5:21). As if that was not enough, we are then made spiritually alive by the regeneration of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5), thereby having the power to be transformed out of previously enslaving sins (Rom 6:6-7). What a blessing that is! To finally have the ruthless shackles of sin shattered from our souls; to be rescued from Satan’s brutal lordship over us; to be converted from our sprint into hell’s ruin! There is nothing better than being converted to Christ! Nothing better, absolutely nothing! What a blessed God he is to love us enough and care about us enough to convert us to faith in Jesus Christ! Glory to God for his grace and mercy and kindness in conversion. But there is more: consequent of conversion to Christ, we are at peace with God (Rom 5:1). We thereupon have hope; real hope that hinges, not on us, but on the Person and finished work of Christ (Rom 8:25). Instead of a terrifying doom and inescapable finality, death becomes a door to greater blessing whereafter we will live in the bliss, joy, peace, and happiness forever with Christ and God’s glorified people (2 Cor 5:8; Phil 1:21, 23; 1 Thess 4:16-17; 1 John 3:1-2; Rev 21:3-4). And this whole package of salvation; this consequence of conversion; all of this is permanent, irreversible (though we will still sin), and instantly gifted to us simply on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ (Eph 2:8-9). Blessed be God for his love of conversion. This conversion cannot be accomplished through any kind of physical force or coercion. It is only by the power of God (1 Cor 1:30-31).

Now, as we think about this, it behooves us to consider, what can and can this Bill actually do?

What Bill C-4 Can Do

This Bill can effectually bring about the imprisonment of anyone (Christian or not) who would counsel, speak, teach, preach, or communicate, in such a way as to encourage those in homosexuality and transgenderism to embrace heterosexuality and/or their actual gender. The wording of the Bill is general enough to open the door for that. So, Christians, and others, will almost certainly face imprisonment at some point.

Consequently, the Bill can, in effect, separate parents from their kids, husbands from wives, pastors and teachers from churches, counselors from hurting people, and friends from one another. In doing so, the Bill can cause tremendous and unnecessary hurt and suffering.

The Bill can, and has, declared its hatred for God and his word. Canada’s government has, in effect, slapped God in the face and trampled underfoot the Person and work of Christ by criminalizing Christian conversion.

The Bill can, and will, store up God’s wrath for the governing officials responsible for the Bill, should they refuse to repent and turn to Christ for forgiveness. Canada’s governing officials responsible for this are under God’s judgment and will stand before him one day for a reckoning (Rev 20:11-15).

What Bill C-4 Cannot Do

As much harm as this Bill can do, there are things that it cannot do.

This Bill, and any like it, cannot and will not stop a single individual in homosexuality and transgenderism in Canada from converting to faith in Jesus Christ. Not one person, not a single one, will be stopped from repenting of sin and embracing Christ as Lord and Savior. How do we know that?

“All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37).

Notice that Jesus did not say, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, oh, rats, except those who are not allowed to because of a sinful human law.” No. All means all.

Jesus also said, “This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has give Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day”(John 6:39).

“No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:44). In other words, Jesus says that the power of Christian conversion is bound up in God the Father’s sovereign grace to draw the sinner. Thus, no human law can prevent or cause it.

A few more to consider:

“All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Matt 11:27). In other words, saving conversion happens by the permission of the Son, not by a human law.

Jesus also said, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; ²⁸ and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. ²⁹ My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. ³⁰ I and the Father are one” (John 10:28-31). In other words, the conversion of Christian salvation is by the power of Christ’s voice, his effectual call. He gives eternal life. And nothing—no human opposition, law, or Bill—is able to undo or prevent someone’s salvation. To do so, they would have to be able to pry open both the Father and the Son’s grip. To do that, you have to be stronger than God.

On another occasion, Jesus said, “Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ ⁸ The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:7-8). So then, conversion depends upon the power of the Holy Spirit. For political officials to pass a Bill prohibiting Christian conversion is akin to passing a Bill to stop the wind from blowing through their nation. It would be like Florida passing a Bill that forbids hurricanes from crossing state lines or Wyoming passing a Bill that prohibits storms from entering its state. It’s utterly futile. They are attempting to endeavor in something that is way, way above their power and paygrade.

The apostle Paul wrote, “So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. ¹⁷ For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.’ ¹⁸ So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires” (Rom 9:16-18). What is the “it” Paul mentions at the beginning of verse 16, which does not depend on man, but on God’s mercy? Salvation. Conversion. It does not depend on a man’s will or a man’s run or a man’s law. It’s all God’s sovereign grace.

Again, Paul writes, “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; ³⁰ and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified” (Rom 8:29-30). In other words, salvation begins by the sovereign decree of God in predestination (also mentioned in Ephesians 1:3-6). Those whom God predestines are as good as justified and converted and glorified. Nothing can stop the power of God’s golden chain of salvation.

In first century Corinth there were many people involved in homosexuality. And yet, through the loving instrumentality of preaching the wonderful news of Christ crucified and risen, many were converted. “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, ¹⁰ nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. ¹¹ Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6:9-11). Notice, how verse 11 begins: speaking of those in homosexuality, among other sins, Paul says, “Such were some of you…” Never in history has that word “were” been so glorious. They were, but were no longer because they were converted. How? By the power of Christ and the Spirit. In fact, earlier in 1 Corinthians, Paul writes, “But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, ³¹ so that, just as it is written, ‘Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord’” (1 Cor 1:30-31). In other words, conversion is by God’s doing; God’s power. The conversion in Christian salvation is purely the product of God’s sovereign grace. That’s why we are to boast in the Lord only (1 Cor 1:31). If the power to convert, or prohibit conversion, had anything to do with human will or human law, then we could not boast in the Lord, period.

Is not the fact of God’s sovereignty in salvation just a gloriously wonderful reality?! Nothing in history has ever stopped God from saving sinners. God is sovereign; toweringly and breathtakingly sovereign in salvation. Nothing has ever thwarted God’s breathtaking miracle of conversion, and nothing ever will, certainly not a Bill decreed by sinful man.

Canada cannot and will not do a thing to hinder Christ from building his church. Jesus said, “I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it” (Matt 16:18). Notice, Jesus didn’t say, “I will build My church, however, anti-conversion laws are really going to hinder that.” Man cannot and will not prevent the risen Jesus from adding a single person to his church.

In fact, the God of the universe laughs in derision at man’s futile rebellion against him. “Why are the nations in an uproar and the peoples devising a vain thing? ² The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, ³ ‘Let us tear their fetters apart And cast away their cords from us!’ ⁴ He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord scoffs at them” (Ps 2:2-4). Attempts by men and nations to prevent God’s sovereign purposes, not the least of which are conversion, are so pathetically impotent that God laughs at them.

No nation ever has, and no nation ever will, hinder God from accomplishing his sovereign purposes. They have and will continue to try, as Psalm 93 records: “The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice, the floods lift up their pounding waves. ⁴ More than the sounds of many waters, Than the mighty breakers of the sea…” (Ps 93:3-4). When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time watching the raging Pacific Ocean slam against the huge rocky cliffs of the Oregon coast. Over and over, the sea would rush in with intimidating power and pound the rocks day and night. But in all those years, you know what never happened? The rocks against which the ferocious sea pounded never moved an inch. The waves came in with fury, hydro-threats, speed, noise, and power. But every time, they slammed the cliffs, those intimidating waves were sent scattering as water droplets high into the air and back from where they came. And the mighty rocks never moved. So it will be with any king or nation or government who comes with fury against the sovereign plans of the God of the Bible. “The Lord on high is mighty” (Ps 93:4).

More could be said. In the meantime, we pray for Canada’s governing officials. We pray that they would understand that they have overstepped their bounds and turn from this unrighteousness; that they would see and embrace by faith the loving, merciful, kind Savior, Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for our sins and victoriously rose from the grave. And we pray for those in homosexuality and transgenderism. We understand that all of us have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (Rom 3:23). We pray that they would see the gentle, compassionate, risen Christ, who extends forgiveness and transformation to all of us by faith in him. And we pray that they would embrace him as Lord and Savior.

“Salvation is from the Lord” (Jonah 2:9).

I’m thankful for the liberty to evangelize freely. Whether it is a college campus, at the Lincoln Memorial, or in front of the Colosseum, it still is a thrill to me when I think about the fact that I get paid to be an ambassador of Christ.

Except for a few times on a mission trip to a communist country, I have been able to evangelize without any possibility of being stopped. 

I love the fact that I can drive to church and meet with my brothers and sisters in Christ without any fear of persecution. Religious freedom is such a blessing! 

But it is also incredibly tragic. 

I know that there are Christians whose full-time job is directed towards maintaining religious freedom. I’m thankful for their work. If the Lord has opened a door for them to provide for their families in this way, I’m thankful for that. It is imperative though that they understand that religious liberty is both a blessing and at the same time it is incredibly tragic. 

Each time I walk into a Roman Catholic church and the mass is going on, the real Jesus who died on the cross once and for all two thousand years ago is being blasphemed. 

Each time a Jewish person asks God to send the promised Messiah for the first time, the already died, resurrected, and currently alive Jesus is being blasphemed. 

Each time a Muslim prays to Allah, the trinitarian God revealed in scripture is being blasphemed. 

The fact of the matter is that fighting for religious freedom is fighting for freedom of idolatry. 

I’ve watched people on wheelchairs, at the bottom of the holy steps in Rome, wishing they could, like the rest, earn their salvation by praying rosaries as they go up each step. Do you celebrate religious freedom when you see that? Or do you weep as you think about this poor hell-bound soul?

How are we to think about this? Are we to praise the Lord that people blaspheme him openly each and every day, or is it more appropriate to weep and be invigorated to share the Gospel with lost souls?

What is your first thought when you think about religious liberty?

John Macarthur preached a sermon not too long ago in which he made a comment saying, “I wouldn’t fight for religious freedom because I won’t fight for idolatry”. People have attacked him for saying so. Obviously, they misquoted him and took his comments out of context, but I was surprised to see many Christians criticize him and openly mock him for his stance. 

But I would love to ask them, is it so hard for them to understand that worshipping idols is a tragedy? Is it hard to understand that the church should not be fighting for this? 

John Macarthur doesn’t need me to defend him, and probably would rather me not do it since he never does it for himself, so I will just lovingly ask those who are attacking him on this subject to think about God’s honor. 

Obviously, we can’t control hearts. We can’t force people to become Christians. That’s what led to the devil’s masterpiece of Roman Catholicism! When Constantine declared Rome Christian and millions of unbelievers became supposed Christians overnight. Not through repentance and faith but through an emperor’s declaration. The church and politics do not go together. In fact, anytime the church gets involved with politics the gospel is suppressed. They always leave their first love. 

We know that, whether religious freedom exists or not, idolatry will always exist, so countries with and without religious liberty both are filled with idolatry. But that doesn’t change the fact that it is a tragedy when people from birth worship the creation rather than the Creator. It should make you weep and spurn you towards sharing your faith. It shouldn’t produce exhilaration it should produce evangelism.

And I think that that might be the problem ultimately. I’ve heard many times people mention in different ways that evangelism doesn’t work. Few in the church have unbelievers over to their homes. Few pass-out tracks. And even fewer go out on the street to evangelize. Many might be tempted to replace evangelism with various notions of making this world a better place because evangelism just doesn’t work anymore in their minds. 

It is the disdain for idolatry that is the greatest motivator for evangelism. Because while the existence of hell is a major motivation for many to evangelize it is not the best motivation. The blessing of becoming a Christian and getting to enjoy God in Heaven for eternity is also a great motivation for many but again it is not the best reason to evangelize. 

Those are man-centered reasons to evangelize. 

It is the fact that God deserves the worship of all men and women ever created that should motivate us. We love God, we believe He deserves Worship and so we beg all men, everywhere to join us in worship of him. We hate it when they worship idols. We don’t celebrate their right to do so! We want to tear our clothes when we see it! We love them and understand depravity, so we gently but truthfully confront their idol worship and warn them from the wrath to come. We beg them to come to Jesus and worship only Him. 

I don’t know what motivates those criticizing Macarthur. Some might rejoice that a Muslim gets to pray openly to their idol as a win. I just see a soul worshipping Satan and I desperately would love the chance to beg them to be saved. 

While I do think that individual Christians can be called to various vocations including working for the maintenance of religious liberty, it is not the church’s task to do so. The mission of the church is to preach the Word and make disciples. The Church must not get distracted by worldly matters. The church must be about the Father’s kingdom. 

Many in America are distracted. They are working to make this life easier. It is many times noble and good work they are seeking to do, but many times it can be a distraction from eternal matters.  

I don’t see anything controversial in saying that the church is not called to fight for religious liberty. I don’t see anything wrong with saying that we would rather the Lord not be blasphemed. And at the very same time, I don’t see anything wrong with saying that I am so thankful to be able to share my faith freely and to be able to gather with my brothers and sisters in Christ each Sunday without fear for my life. Religious freedom is both a blessing and a tragedy.

Regardless of where we live and whether there is religious liberty or not, let us keep worshipping the one and only Lord and let’s beg those who don’t to join us. 

The Olympic gold-medalist, Roland Schoeman, had an undeniable talent. His swimming career spanned four Olympic Games from 2000 to 2012. He won gold, silver, and bronze medals at the Olympics, the FINA World Championship, as well as at the Commonwealth Games. He broke numerous records and he was voted the African Swimmer of the Year three years in a row by Swimming World. He was elected South African “Sports Star of the Year” in 2004.

Schoeman made the news in 2005 when he turned down a $2.6 million contract to swim for another country, saying that it is swimming for South Africa that makes winning gold worth it.

What many people don’t know is that Roland Schoeman’s talent lay hidden for a long time. The reason I know this is because I happened to attend the same high school as Roland, in Pretoria. Our school was pretty mediocre at sports, but we excelled in one area: our A-league swimming team. Our school emphasized swimming and forced every student to try out for the team, as they tried to discover new talent.

But Roland didn’t think he’d like swimming, and so he stubbornly refused to try out. He skillfully avoided the compulsory swim events in which times were recorded. Until 10^th grade. That was when Roland developed a crush on an attractive girl who happened to be on the swim team. He decided to show an interest in her sport by trying out for the team. It was only then that he discovered he was like a fish in water … literally. His talent secured him the attention of the girl, the country, and the whole world.

Have you ever wondered if you have a hidden talent?

Last week, we saw that Peter taught that pew-warming is prohibited and that all Christians have gifts. So today we will look in more detail at our gifts.

1. THE PARTICULARS OF YOUR GIFT

1 Peter 4:11 whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies…

Although you don’t have to have a label for your gift to be able to use it, it is helpful to think about the type of gift you might have. In verse 11 Peter gives us 2 broad categories of gifts: speaking and serving.

Many people go way too far in labeling the particular types of gifts, and this paralyzes people who can’t serve until they have put an exact label on their talent.

Maybe you have been anxious about this. But the New Testament puts no such pressure on you. It is interesting to me that the Bible never explains how a Christian can determine their gift. You’d think if it is the secret to living a fulfilled life, there would be one passage on how to determine what gift I have. But nope. It is assumed that whatever opportunity, ability, or training you have, you treat as a gift from God and so will use for the body. In other words, if you can do something, that’s a gift for the body.

If you are able to do something, it’s because God has equipped you. So don’t boast, and don’t bury your gift.

There are a number of lists of gifts in the Bible, but these lists are not meant to be exhaustive – in fact the lists have different items. If the lists were exhaustive that would limit Scripture’s relevance. Just because Peter hadn’t heard of Microsoft, doesn’t mean your gifting is not in IT.

But all the gifts fall into two categories: speaking or serving. Speaking gifts are not limited to official positions in the church. If you have a speaking gift it doesn’t mean the elders have to invent a class for you to teach. You will naturally use your gift in whatever arena God allows.

Serving gifts are any ability you have to meet needs in the body.

So, how do you determine your gift?

1) start serving: anywhere you can – be faithful with little and see if God entrusts you with more.

2) seek counsel from godly friends: those who know you well might be able to identify an area where you can be of service

3) pray for opportunities: God wants you to serve, ask him for guidance.

2. THE POWER OF YOUR GIFT

1 Peter 4:11 whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies…

When you give your kid a remote-controlled car for Christmas, you also get him batteries, right? When God equips you to serve, he includes the batteries. The power source for spiritual gifts is God himself. Peter tells those whose primary giftedness is in the speaking category that their message for delivery is supplied by God. ¹¹ whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God

Oracles refers to the words of God delivered to mankind – it’s the closed canon of the Bible in your lap.

Peter says “When you speak, speak like someone who has God’s message to deliver.”

People ask me if I get nervous before preaching. Not when I’m prepared. This isn’t my message, it’s God’s. And I deliver it in full dependence on the Holy Spirit. We expect that of our preachers – they must all rely on the Holy Spirit. But what about those who serve coffee, or arrange flowers, or operate the sound desk, or administer the finances? Well they serve ¹¹ as one who serves by the strength that God supplies…

In the same way that those who speak must draw their message from God, so those who serve must draw their strength from God.

John 15:5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

How do you get power for your ministry? Pray for it. Ask God to help you.

3. THE PURPOSE OF YOUR GIFT

1 Peter 4:11 whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

What is the chief end of man?

To glorify God and enjoy him forever.

So what is the chief end of serving?

To glorify God and enjoy him forever.

1 Corinthians 10:³¹ So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

This is our very reason for being. We exist to give God glory. Which doesn’t mean adding to his glory, but revealing it, magnifying his glory.

But your gift becomes unacceptable to God if you are using it in your own strength or with the wrong attitude. It might still work, it might be acceptable to the church. If the flowers are arranged with a sour attitude, they still look pretty to us. But to God they are wilted by your contaminated motives.

You see this in people who quit a ministry after many years, in a huff, because of lack of appreciation or recognition. It shows they were never serving with God’s strength for God’s glory. They were in it for themselves. But ministry is not external duty, it’s worshipful delight.    

If you truly serve for God’s glory, your own credit, appreciation, or thanks, will not enter your mind. It is this type of service that Peter is commanding you to have.  And for those who are still not serving, you are being disobedient – find the signup sheet at your church and put your hidden talents to work.

The Metropolitan Tabernacle is one of the most famous Baptist churches in history. Situated south of the Thames in London, at a busy junction of three streets, the Tabernacle was built in 1859 to accommodate the swelling membership of a previously small congregation. The growth was credited to the influential preaching of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. When the 21-year-old accepted the call to pastor a church with an attendance of about 80 no one could have predicted that within five years of his arrival, the building would need to accommodate 6,000.

Shipments of his printed sermons were loaded onboard every ship that sailed from England. But in London the Tabernacle was famous for much more than the Sunday sermons. It was a veritable ants’ nest of activity by serving saints throughout the week. They had 100 Sunday School teachers, and over 1,000 people out evangelizing on Sundays. They had alms’ houses, an orphanage, an evangelists’ association, 40 local missions and many foreign missions, a tract society, the Ladies’ Benevolent Society, the Christian Brothers’ Benefit society, a Gospel Temperance Society and 50 other such enterprises.

Historian, Arnold Dallimore, writes:

“The Tabernacle was a place of almost constant activity. On each of the seven days of the week the doors opened at 7am and did not close till 11pm, and there were persons coming and going all the time…. The Tabernacle was like a hive of bees and for the vast majority of its people to be a member meant to live a very busy life…The affections of the members were entwined around the church and its activities. … With grand delight people went up from what was often the drudgery of daily life to the house of the Lord on Sunday mornings, evenings and at least 2 evenings a week, and there their hearts were lifted, their minds informed, and their souls inspired. Many of the women were there again at various hours, preparing meals or sewing garments for the orphans, and many of the young men were at the Tabernacle in the evenings, gaining an education or learning something more about doing the Lord’s work. For hundreds of persons the Tabernacle was the centre of their existence. The message they heard there had been the means of transforming their lives, remaking their homes, saving them from sin, and giving them new affection and new joys, and the loved the place.”

Was the Metropolitan Tabernacle an exceptional church, or is this the normal standard for all churches? Is it fine for some Christians to do all the work, while others do no more than keep the pews warm on Sundays?

3 ASPECTS OF SERVICE SO THAT YOU WILL UNDERSTAND THAT PEW-WARMING IS PROHIBITED

1. DIVERSITY OF SERVICE

1 Peter 4:10 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace:

Peter uses the word, each which makes it crystal clear that every believer must serve the body. Some Christians act like they are going to the movies. As if to say, “I’ve paid my entrance fee in the offering box, now I want to sit back and enjoy the show. I hope the pastor’s funny this morning. I hope the band plays my favorite hymn, and I really hope the noisy toddlers have someone to look after them on the playground.”

But the church isn’t for entertainment, it’s worship. And God is worshipped by service.

“As each has received a gift,” – Gift is the word charisma, which stems from the charis, meaning grace.

These gifts take various forms: 

·     natural endowment—the ability to teach

·     training—musical or financial

·     physical ability—strength for construction

·     desire to help—a love for kids, perhaps baking

·     opportunity—singleness or retirement

Sometimes you get this gift when you get saved, other times you had it, but now it is directed to worship and service. And no Christian has all the gifts, otherwise, he wouldn’t need to be part of a church.

Ask God to show you your gifts. It can be money. Maybe it’s the gift of time. Perhaps you have a counseling ability, or musical training, or are skilled with your hands, patient with kids, have a home you could host visitors, speak encouraging words, parent well, teach, or have an extra car.

God’s gifts are as different as a cornea is to a kidney or an ear to an arm. But we need them all to function as a Body of Christ.

2. NECESSITY OF SERVICE

1 Peter 4:10 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, …

Peter instructs everyone with a gift to use it, employ it, give it a job, put it to work. Serving is not an option it’s a command. But there are far too many Christians that God has gifted, saved, and moved into a local body, who aren’t using their gifts. The solution isn’t to go warm other pews, it’s to repent! Non-participation is sin. Perhaps you aren’t serving out of:

·     Ignorance. Maybe you didn’t know that it is sin to be a Christian and not serve. But now you know! Use your gift to serve. Perhaps you don’t know what your gifts are….just start serving somewhere. Often faithfulness in one area leads to other opportunities.

·     Laziness. Having a gift doesn’t mean you don’t have to work at it. Just that the work pays off.

·     Selfishness. Some people want to use their gifts for themselves alone. You have time to open up before church, or the ability to bake snacks for homegroup –  but you want time for yourself, or to entertain rather than serve. But Peter doesn’t say use your gift for self-service, he says use it to serve one another.

Do you come to church looking for ways to serve or to be served?

3. AUTHORITY OF SERVICE

1 Peter 4:10 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.

The reason you have a gift and the reason you must use it to serve one another is because it is God’s resource, for you to manage on his behalf.

A steward is a house manager. Like when you start a business and hire a manager to run the shop. You find out he regularly doesn’t show up, closes the shop early, and makes his assistant manager do all the work. What do you do? Fire him!

Jesus taught many parables about stewards. Peter had emblazoned on his mind that Jesus was coming soon for an accounting. Remember what Jesus said would happen to the servant with no return on his investment? The guy with 10 minas made 10 more, the one with 5, made 5 more….but the one with a single mina….

Luke 19:20 – 26 … ‘Take the mina from him, and give it to the one who has the ten minas.’ And they said to him, ‘Lord, he has ten minas!’ ‘I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.’

You will account for every gift God has entrusted to you, and your eternal reward is weighed in the balance.

Why do you spend your time and energy and gifts on earthly, temporal pursuits when you know you are going to die and this world is going to the recycling plant? Invest in eternity! Use your gifts to serve the kingdom and reap the eternal rewards.

Imagine that you’ve invited a non-believing, unchurched friend to the worship service at your church this Sunday. You’ve explained about the old-school songs that he or she won’t know, prepared them to let the communion plate pass, and even given them a heads up that the sermons can be kind of long. Now, as the preacher gets up into the pulpit, Bible in hand, you nervously shift in your seat, thinking about how your friend might receive what they’re about to hear.

Think about that moment. What do you hope the preacher will say? What do you hope the preacher won’t say?

The church growth gurus say that they know how that sermon can best reach your unchurch friend. The truly evangelistic preacher needs to address the life issues of your non-believing friend, preferably using up-to-date movie illustrations. He should preach about issues of injustice and present community concerns. Less judgment, more affirmation, less Bible, more conversation, and so on. You’ve heard it all before. The advice sounds, in summary, like this: “Leaders should focus on who they want to reach, not who they want to keep.”

According to the apostle Paul, that’s painfully backward. What preachers must say to reach non-believers in the pews, and what we should desperately want our unchurched friends to hear at church, isn’t necessarily what our unchurched friends want to hear. It’s what the church needs to hear.

The best way to evangelize the unchurched at church is to build up the church.

The logic of edification as evangelization seems counterintuitive to us, so let’s hear Paul explain it in his own words to the confused Corinthian Christians:

Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature. In the Law it is written, “By people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners will I speak to this people, and even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord.” Thus tongues are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers, while prophecy is a sign not for unbelievers but for believers. If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds? But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you.

1 Corinthians 14:20-25

Without explaining this whole passage, let me note the relevant pieces to reaching the unchurched at church. First, notice that the context of Paul’s exhortation is when “the whole church comes together” (1 Cor 14:23), a description of the Lord’s day assembling of the church for worship. Paul uses this same word for “come together” five times in 1 Corinthians 11 in discussing the practice of the Lord’s Supper, and again in 14:26 about the regular worship of the church. So, what Paul has to say applies to the Sunday gathering of the church, not another setting. If it were an evangelistic campaign, or street evangelism, or another venue, then Paul’s instruction would probably sound more like 1 Corinthians 9:22 “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.” But here, we’re just dealing with what believers should do when they come together as a local body on the Lord’s Day.

Second, notice that Paul makes a distinction between gifts meant for evangelism and gifts meant for edification. Paul says, “tongues are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers” (14:22), meaning that God gave the gift of tongues to the early church for the purpose of reaching people from different language groups with the gospel. This happens first at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-11), then again with the household of Cornelius (10:46), then again in Ephesus (19:6), and the purpose, as Paul notes, is to convert non-believers through gospel-preaching in their own language.

In contrast, Paul says that “prophecy is a sign not for unbelievers but for believers” (1 Cor 14:22). Whether “prophecy” should be understood as preaching from God’s revelation or delivering fresh revelation from God (I think it’s the latter, but either way), Paul’s point is that the intended audience of prophecy is believers. Therefore, unlike tongues, the aim of prophecy is not evangelism, and Paul even accents this by saying it is “not for unbelievers.” So, what’s the aim of prophecy if not evangelism?

• 14:3 “On the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.”
• 14:4 “The one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church.”
• 14:5 “Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. The one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up.“

Building up. Edification. Maturing believers. Strengthening the church. Christian growth. Prophecy was given to the early church for the purpose of sanctifying believers as they were conformed ever more into the image of Christ.

Finally, based on the context and the nature of the gifts being employed, here’s Paul’s argument: Don’t have everyone use the gift meant for cross-cultural evangelism in the church service, otherwise the unbelievers who enter will say “you are out of your minds.” Instead, everyone should use the gift that is aimed at the church at the church’s gathering, the gift of prophecy, so that if an unbeliever enters, he is “convicted,” “called to account,” and exposed, resulting in his worship toward God. Notice that Paul isn’t only concerned about building up believers in this passage, but he understands that the best means to also reach the unbeliever at church is to minister to the believers. Meaning, if the unbeliever can intelligibly understand what’s being said from one believer to another about the glory of God and the gospel for their upbuilding, then he will see himself for what he is – an outsider condemned before a Holy Creator – and come before that Lord in repentance and fear. The unchurched are reached at church by building up the church.

Now, you may say, “That’s fine for the early church, but as a card-carrying cessationist, I don’t believe that the gifts of tongues or prophecy are in operation in the church today (or at least not in the same way). That’s an application for their context with their gifts, but not for ours.” While I agree that God does not continue to bless the church with those apostolic era sign gifts, I would disagree with that conclusion based on the last words in this passage: “and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you” (14:25).

“That God is really among you.” Paul’s unbeliever is convicted of his sin, undone before the Lord, and prostrate before the throne of heaven because he perceives by the sanctifying speech of God’s people to one another that God is in their midst. And friends, the presence of God with his people is not restricted to the 1^st century. The revelation of God to his people is both encouraging towards Christian growth and terrifying to the overhearers in every age. To hear the voice of God is to sense the presence of God, either for comfort or conviction. That’s how God reaches unbelievers at church: by exposing their alienation from him and his covenant people through his Word. The glory of the God of Sinai, manifest in the delivered revelation of God through his people, draws his people nearer and strips bare those who come unclothed in Christ’s life.

Just ask yourself this question: If a rebel against God wants something in a sermon (more justice talk, movies quotes, and the like), will that something cause him to stammer from a naked heart that “God is really among you?” Or is it more likely that for our unchurched friends to encounter the living God they must be introduced to a kind of holy, earnest, God-besotted speech like they’ve never heard before?

Of course, the wise preacher’s eye will rove across his congregation and address diverse spiritual states appropriately. It is right and blessed, even necessary, for the faithful pastor to directly address the unbelievers in his hearing to call them to come to Christ. And yet, according to Paul, the primary obligation of the minister who wishes to reach every pew from front to back is to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ to build up his body, knowing that the manifest presence of Christ through his preached Word will bring dark hearts into the light of his glorious grace. The unchurched see Christ in his church being made more like him. And that happens as men of God expound the Word of God to the people of God for the praise of God in his church.

So, what do you want your unbelieving friend to hear in that sermon as you’re nervously sitting next to them on that Sunday morning? Let them hear hammer and nail, brick and mortar, steel and stone as Christ builds his blessed church into his likeness, calling all men to fall down and worship him.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.”

So reads Proverbs 3:5. But what exactly does it mean to lean not on your own understanding?

Like many verses in Proverbs, Proverbs 3:5 pits two opposite concepts against each other. A person can either trust in the Lord with their whole heart, or lean on their own understanding. It is an either/or, not a both/and.

But despite the simplicity of this structure, there is an ocean of truth behind it. In actuality there is a massive war in the world. There is a war between angels and demons, truth and lies, Satan and the church. There is a war involving “the rulers, authorities, cosmic powers over this present darkness, and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). Those dark forces are hostile against the truth, and specifically against anyone who tries to live a life submissive to the the Lord.

In contrast to those forces, there is the Spirit-filled person—the person who fears the Lord. If he is a husband, he is a leader who loves his wife and brings his children up in the fear and discipline of the Lord. If she is a wife, she is submissive to her husband and loving toward her children. If he is a child, he is obedient to his parents. These roles describe the Spirit-filled life in Ephesians 5:21-6:9.

In all of those roles, there is a war being waged in the mind of the person. Should they act according to their own desires, or according to God’s pattern for the world? Should they do what they want to do, or do what the Lord calls them to do?

While the battle may sway back and forth, at some point the combatant needs to take sides. This is Solomon’s appeal in Proverbs 3. He is pleading with his readers to choose a side—are they going to fall prey to the devil’s schemes and live like they want to live, or are they going to crush their own desires, and live in submission to the God’s word?

The context of Proverbs 3 bears this out. There is a contrast between the one who “forgets” biblical wisdom and the one who “keeps the commandments” (Proverbs 3:1). There is a difference between the person who “is wise in his own eyes” and the one who “turns away from evil” (Proverbs 3:7).

Solomon’s overarching point is that you can’t be both people. You can’t live in such a way where you are right in your own eyes, where you do what you want to do and live how you want to live, and simultaneously trust in the Lord with your whole heart.

What makes this section of Proverbs so compelling is how Solomon is aware of the cosmic battle between good and evil that is waged in the sinner’s mind, yet he sees this transcendent war played out in the mundane daily decisions of life. In your next step, will you trust your flesh or slay your flesh? Will you trust the Lord or suppress the truth in unrighteousness?

This is practical. Do you have wealth? Are you going to spend it on what you want, or on what the Lord wants? (cf. Proverbs 3:9). When you make a decision, do you go with your gut, or do you stop and pray and ask “what does the Lord require?” Are you allowing your heart to love fruitless things, or are you filling it with the word of God? (Proverbs 3:3).

So how do you lean not on your own understanding? First, you purpose in your heart to live for God rather than for yourself. You decide that God rewards those who seek him, and that your life will be better, last longer, and be more fruitful if you live for Jesus over your own desires (Proverbs 3:2). If you live a life aimed at pleasing God, not only will others respect you more, but you will develop into the kind of person that the Lord sets his favor upon (Proverbs 3:4). The more integrity is shown in your life, the more you end up influencing others. If you decide to live for the pursuit of God’s favor rather than man’s, in the process you will likely discover that you will grow in both.

Second, you then actually ask yourself “in this situation, what is it that the Lord would want me to do?” In fact, don’t ask yourself, but rather ask the Lord. Pray to him as you are establishing your paths. Don’t just live in such a way where you do what feels right, but rather you adjust your conduct to match the word of God. “In all your ways,” Solomon says, indicating that this not a thought process that only occurs at major decisions, but should bind your conduct in every situation. Recognizing that “ways” and “paths” are synonyms, Solomon is asking you to make sure that every path you take—every career choice, every habit developed, whatever—is aimed at the glory of the Lord. Put off sin, and as you repent from sin, you are demonstrating the fear of the Lord (Proverbs 3:7).

Finally, you seek to grow in your knowledge of the Bible. You familiarize yourself with it to the extent that it could be said to fill your heart and your head (Proverbs 3:3). You want to love the Word by knowing the Word—one feeds the other. This is in contrast to the person who leans on his own understanding. He doesn’t need the Bible to direct him, because he thinks he has life figured out. That person is a fool. In contrast, the person who fears the Lord actually studies God’s word—and he does so not to learn head knowledge, but to really and legitimately learn how to live.

So if you want be the kind of person who does not lean on his own understanding, but instead builds his paths around the Lord, then purpose in your heart to desire God’s approval over man’s, then actually submit your daily decisions to the Lord’s revealed will, and finally dedicate time to growing in your knowledge of the Bible.

By Clint Archer

Computers have stealthily infiltrated the fabric of human society like a genial tribe of cannibals moving into the neighborhood. Prophetic doomsday filmmakers play on the unnerving suspicions we all have that one day these indentured electronic appliances could rise up against us. And I’m not talking about a malicious microwave overheating your pasta out of petty spite. The world’s most lethal military arsenals are run by what is essentially a video game consul. Our banks, our public transport, our family pictures, our medical histories, and our social networks are all enmeshed in a digital matrix. As a society we have cavalierly handed over our most intimate details and most valuable assets to an inanimate hive of electrons, with the simple trust that a machine will do what it is told to. And thankfully, that is mostly true. Even when a CPU crashes in a silent hara-kiri protest, we simply reboot with our back-up drive and all our revenant data reappears. We take comfort in knowing that sinister self-aware artificial intelligence is the stuff of science fiction. Computers only do what humans tell them to. But isn’t that just as scary?

The harrowing truth is that the electronic puppet strings that govern every level of our existence can be plucked and pulled by anyone with the expertise, equipment, and desire to become a hacker.

Hackers comprise a sub-culture of computer users who are not content to use software the way it was designed, but master the programmable intricacies of a system in order to intrude and manipulate or destroy information. Profit, protest, or simple glee may fuel a hacker’s subterfuge; but the result is always that an unwanted user gains access to that which is intended to be guarded.

The hacking underworld has spawned a variety of breeds. The so-called “white hat” hackers are benevolent programming experts who use their abilities to discover security weaknesses for the purpose of rectifying the vulnerability. But the variety of hacker that triggers chills down the spines of network administrators, bank managers, stock analysts, and army generals the world over, is the notorious “black hat” hacker. As the archetypal name suggests, this species is compelled by nefarious goals, for example political anarchy, ethical protest, personal blackmail, or simple pilfering. Black hat hackers are anti-establishment predators who come out in the twilight, like vampires, and employ their special powers to prey on the rest of us.

Now imagine you discovered there was a person who could hack into the matrix of life and manipulate even the most inviolable laws of nature. This person could, say, reverse scientific laws, crash the economy, bring a powerful kingdom to its knees, cure the incurable, explain the inscrutable, multiply foodstuff for the hungry, bring the dead back to life, and generally manipulate anything and everything we think we understand. How would you respond?

It’s God’s Prerogative to Hack into Life

Most of us prefer order, structure, and predictable laws to govern our world. As much as gravity hinders the enjoyment of moving furniture, we are grateful for its predictability and consistency when we go for a walk. What scares us is when an immutable law, which is out of our control, is suddenly in the control of someone else. We don’t mind that we cannot leap tall buildings in a single bound, as long as no one else can either. If a select group of the population were superhuman, I would suddenly feel handicapped and vulnerable. Anything supernatural or paranormal is frightening because it lies outside our realm of expertise. It leaves the most reliable laws of nature temporarily unreliable; like knowing there is a hacker out there who knows the password to your bank account. It can be disconcerting.

When educated individuals read the Scriptures and discover the pages are sprinkled liberally with events that could never be explained by natural laws, they are understandably skeptical. If there is a being that can hack into the matrix of nature, society, medicine, economics, or any other sphere we like to control, that leaves us with a sense of vulnerability and uncertainty. But the Bible paints God’s uninhibited involvement and control in our lives as a doctrine to be cherished, not feared.

Jesus offered comfort to the anxious with an injunction to remember how the Father feeds inconsequential, winged vermin like ravens (Luke 12:24). I love how in Jesus’ worldview God is intimately and minutely involved in His creation. Ravens survive because God actively feeds them. In Hebrews 1:3 we are told that Jesus “upholds the universe by the word of His power.” In Matthew 10:29 we are assured that not even the cheapest culinary commodity, a sparrow, dies without the explicit say-so of the Father. God did not design a self-contained software system, hit the enter button, and step back to watch the program run, like a detached digital-watchmaker. His attention is constantly engaged with His creation to the minutest detail.

Understandably, this knowledge can be a bit bewildering for some. Even King David punctuated Psalm 139, which extols God’s omniscience, with the reeling admission, “this boggles my mind,” (vernacular for verse 6):

“O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it” (Psalm 139:1–6).
And we can understand why. Our independence recoils at the thought of being so closely scrutinized. But the knowledge of God’s involvement in and attention to our lives is intended to be a comfort, not a curse.
Let us never forget exactly whose creation this is. God is God, after all, and one of the great job perks of being God is that there are no limits placed on control. Omnipotence is a handy utensil when you want something done, as when a nation needs to win a battle before sunset (Joshua 10:12–13), or new eyes need to be plugged into a blind man with the ease of arranging a Mr Potato Head (John 9:6–7). God made the world for His own glory and enjoyment, and He reserves the right to run it any way He chooses. Psalm 135:6 states this categorically, “Whatever the LORD pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps,” and also in Psalm 115:3 “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.”

God’s Tools for Hacking into the Matrix of Life

Computer hackers use tools to circumvent the security of a system. These tools include social engineering (soliciting passwords from people in the company), rootkits, viruses, worms, and many other delightful sounding contraptions used to pick the privacy lock of a program.
God also uses various implements to hack into our lives. His toolbox has three main compartments in it, namely miracles, providence, and concurrence. Each of these has a place and purpose in the way God involves Himself in our lives. Let’s start with the flashiest, albeit the rarest of the tools: miracles.

Miracles

As appropriate as it is to designate it as such on a Hallmark congratulatory card, the birth of a baby is not, strictly speaking, a miracle. Nor is it theologically accurate to modestly declare, “It’s a miracle I passed that exam with so little time to study.” I commend the impulse to give God glory for His involvement in the natural processes of your life, but for the sake of theological precision, let’s define a miracle more conservatively. A miracle is when God breaks the laws of nature to accomplish His will by doing that which is scientifically impossible.

Examples abound in Scripture: causing a heavy metal axe head float in the water to save a destitute from going into debt (2 Kings 6:5–7), morphing H2O into fine wine to spare a host embarrassment (John 2:7–10), or parting the sea to keep his people safe from pursuant Egyptian hordes (Exodus 14:21–23). Jesus displayed his deity by effortlessly performing an array of miracles in every conceivable realm: geographically (calming the storm with a word), medically (generating the growth of a withered hand), creatively (feeding 5000 with two fish), chemically (water transubstantiated into wine), and spiritually (casting out tenacious demons cohabiting a human’s body), and even in thanatology (resurrecting the deceased). Jesus wielded absolute control over disease, demons, death, and nature.

The reason Jesus performed those deeds was to prove something about His claims. When a person declares confidently that he is God, either we smile and nod, or we institutionalize him. But if he can cause a corpse to sit up in its coffin, we do well to follow suit and pay attention. In order to have the clout that was intended, the miracles Jesus performed had to be undeniable, irrefutable, verifiable, instant, complete, and downright impossible. If the deed could be faked, it would not accomplish its purpose of distinguishing the miracle worker as one sent from God (John 9:30–32).

The same can be said for the apostles, who proliferated a spectacular sampling of miracles during the infant years of the church. That is precisely why those activities were called “signs and wonders” (Acts 2:43; Hebrews 2:4) and “the signs of a true apostle” (2 Corinthians 2:12). They were signposts that pointed to a truth God was underscoring.

Miracles have a specialized function in God’s dealing with humanity, namely to prove something. God was either proving a point, e.g. I am God (see Exodus 4 and the burning bush), or He was authenticating a spokesman (see Exodus 7 and the serpentine rod), or He was providing protection to prove His involvement in the lives of His people (see Exodus 14 and the parted Red Sea).

Though miracles do not occur on that grand scale anymore, nor are they specifically linked to individuals with a gift of miracles, there is no biblical reason to believe that God cannot or does not perform miracles today. I would merely caution that before appending the coveted label of bona fide miracle, we pause to compare the candidate to the standard of a true, Bible-grade miracle. We simply can’t put Miracle Whip cream or the “miraculous results” of teeth-whitening products on par with the law-busting impossibilities of genuine signs and wonders.

There is another tool that God uses to affect the world, which though less obvious to the casual observe, is no less astonishing when perceived rightly. I’m referring to the mind-boggling doctrine of providence.

Providence

The compartment in God’s toolbox that supplies Him with his most used instrument is that of providence. Whereas a miracle is an example of God’s involvement in His creation by breaking the laws of nature, providence refers to God’s operation within those laws to accomplish His will.

One punchy example is found in Matthew 17. The persnickety collectors of the two-drachma temple tax pounced on Peter with an enquiry as to whether or not Jesus pays for the upkeep of the temple in Jerusalem (though this encounter happens in Capernaum). Ordained rabbis were exempt from this tax, but it seems these collectors were gloating about Jesus’ lack of formal recognition.

Jesus makes the point to Peter that He is exempt from this tax, not only as a rabbi but since He is the Son of God the temple is technically His temple! However, to avoid offending their sensibilities, Jesus instructs Peter to go make a withdrawal to obtain the cash, in a most unusual manner. Jesus tells him to pull a fish out the sea, knowing that the creature would be bearing a shekel coin in its mouth. The shekel was worth four drachma, meaning it would cover the annoying toll for both Peter and Jesus.

Now just ponder for a moment what went into supplying the precise amount of money needed at the perfect moment in time to meet this specific fiscal need. First some unwitting accomplice to the provision would have had to irrecoverably drop a coin into the seawater. Then an unsuspecting fish would instantaneously be attracted to that falling object and would scoop the currency into its mouth. The cash-bearing cavity needed to be roomy enough to ensconce a coin, but not so large as to facilitate swallowing said coin. The fish, not yet having its appetite satisfied would be attracted to whatever bait Peter tossed in the shallow waters of the Galilean beach, and would get ensnared in the fisherman’s hook, only to be relieved of both manmade metallic burdens by a bemused Peter who would now be in possession of the exact change needed to cover his tax and his Lord’s. It is not hard to see why people think of this as a miracle. It is a remarkable example of God’s involvement in the everyday affairs of people, and yet, at no time was a law of nature violated. The entire event could, by an unbelieving observer, be termed uncanny coincidence.

This demonstrates the difference between miracles and providence. Miracles require a supernatural explanation; no other will suffice. Providence can be explained entirely by natural means, but the believing eye sees the invisible maneuvering of creation to order and ordain those means.

The fishy shekel is a particularly conspicuous example of God’s interference. But there are times that God’s involvement is no less real, but far less perceptible. For example, did you thank God for the rent money this month? Unless you were expecting an eviction notice and had a last-minute reprieve by some unexpected income, you probably didn’t notice God’s tender provision through a complex stream of events that converged in you having enough money to pay your rent. The family you were born into, the school you attended, the grades you got, the education you attained, the job interview you secured, the impression you gave, the job you received, are all links in a chain that God forged to provide for you this month. Just because the workings of God flow beneath your awareness, does not mean they aren’t there. When sound reaches your ears in church you might not see the sound crew working the desk, the cables in the ceiling, or the vibrating airwaves carrying the information to you, but those conduits are all in place for your benefit, whether you are aware and thankful for them or not. Providence is the way God runs His creation moment by moment. When you open your eyes to this fact, you see just how involved He is.

Bible verses about sparrows falling to the ground begin to make more sense. Confidence in God’s protection becomes less mysterious. Trust in God’s provision becomes less challenging. And obedience to His commission to evangelize is less daunting. All of life is minutely ordered and incessantly propelled by the hand of God.

When bad things happen, our confidence can be unshakeable. We who love God know that “all things work together for the good of those called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). “All things” includes natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis, it includes man-made problems like recession and kitchen fires and flat tires, and it even includes the sinful decisions people make like murder and slander. God monitors all these events and activities and decisions in the matrix of life, and He is able to constantly make adjustments and provisions in response to prayer and obedience, in order to accomplish the panoramic purpose and sweeping counsel of His will (Ephesians 1:11).

The articulate Puritan preacher, Thomas Watson, described this fascinating doctrine in his characteristic eloquence,

“The providences of God are sometimes dark, and our eyes dim, and we can hardly tell what to make of them; but when we cannot unriddle providence, let us believe that it will work together for the good of the elect (Rom. 8:28). The wheels in a clock seem to move contrary one to the other, but they help forward the motion of the clock, and make the larum strike; so the providences of God seem to be cross wheels; but for all that, they shall carry on the good of the elect.”

Some may balk at the thought of a “micromanaging interference” in their lives. They may feel that it impinges on their “free will” or personal responsibility. But this is where the doctrine of providence hands the baton over to its sister doctrine, that of concurrence.

Concurrence

To the undiscerning eye a ballpeen hammer and a flathead hammer look like the same tool; they both whack things. They both look equally different from a screwdriver or a tape measure. And yet, in the hands of a skilled workman, these two tools are used for vastly different purposes. Since providence and concurrence are both operations of God within the laws of nature, they look equally different from miracles, and yet they are distinct tools in God’s collection.

Concurrence is when God uses human will to accomplish His purposes. The classic example of concurrence in the Old Testament is when Joseph’s brothers decide to sell him as a slave. After an arduous adventure of indentured servitude, and incarceration, Joseph finds himself promoted to chief-of-staff in the Pharaoh’s court, armed with inside information, and serendipitously in charge of Egypt seven years before a crippling famine. When his brothers express their reasonable doubt that Joseph will be forgiving of their inexcusable decision, Joseph responds serenely, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today,” (Genesis 50:20).

In the New Testament an even more pointed example is described in Peter’s fiery Pentecost sermon, “this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men,” (Acts 2:23). How did Jesus end up on the cross? The Jews plotted to assassinate Him, Judas decided to make a quick buck by betraying his friend, Pilate permitted an innocent man to be executed, the Roman soldiers nailed Him to a cross, Jesus gave up His spirit, and all the while those decisions were all a hundred per cent “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.”

Amazing.

This may feel to you like grappling with a Rubik’s Cube. As soon as you get one side clear in your mind, you have scrambled the other side. How can man’s sinful decisions be a part of a holy God’s plan? To alleviate this tension theologians sometimes distinguish between God’s commands and His permissive decrees. The former are His revealed will for us, e.g. “Thou shalt not…” and the latter what He allows to happen for the ultimate good of man and glory of God.

Thomas Watson again aptly frames this teaching in a picturesque description,

“When a man rides on a lame horse, his riding is the cause why the horse goes, but the lameness is from the horse itself. Herein is God’s wisdom, that the sins of men carry on His work, yet He has no hand in them…”

And,

“While [the wicked] disobey His command, they fulfill His permissive decree. If a man sets up two nets, one of silk, the other of iron, the silken net may be broken, not the iron; so while men break the silken net of God’s command, they are taken in the iron net of His decree; while they sit backward to God’s precepts, they row forward to His decrees.”

Concurrence is a tool of God that we do well to recognize. When another person’s decision affects our lives, we can rest in the knowledge that they are instruments in God’s capable hands. Or in the wisdom of the Proverbs, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will” (Proverbs 21:1).

Conclusion

Sometimes God uses miracles, as when he destroyed 185000 Assyrians by deploying an angel of death; at other times God wields His implements of providence and concurrence just as deftly, as when He harnessed the Babylonian king’s decision to invade Nineveh, and a simultaneous, well-timed flooding of the Tigris to again wipe out the Assyrians (Nahum 2). All three are examples of His handiwork, and all are equally amazing. Two are workaday methods of God’s involvement in creation, and one is exceedingly rare. And yet, all God’s methods should be recognizable to those who enjoy praising Him for His provision, help, and grace.
Some Christians, in the sincere desire to prove God’s involvement in their life promote a different type of God’s working to the status of miracle, but thus they unintentionally demote the extraordinary nature of God’s signs and wonders. So in the quest to prove that God still performs miracles as a normative part of the Christian experience, they redefine miracles to include a plethora of other ways God works.
For example, they call it a miracle when they receive provision of a last minute reprieve from rent that is due, when actually that is providence. Or they thank God for the long shot court decision that went in their favor, by calling it a miracle when more precisely it is an example of concurrence. I don’t mean to be the vocabulary police here, but it is important to distinguish the different varieties of God’s involvement so that we give proper glory to God.
The reason black hat hackers are such ominous threats to the cyber world is because they don’t have our interests at heart—and because they tend to be creepy, disheveled guys who live with their moms and rant about The Man. But when your computer refuses to comply with your wishes, your programs keep crashing, and viruses are persistently prying into your motherboard, wouldn’t it be neat to have a white hat hacker skillset in the family? Say a tech-savvy brother-in-law who can remotely hack into your computer, and in five minutes sort out all your digital woes including setting up a guard against future hassles.
The power to interfere can be a very desirable trait in an acquaintance who is on your side. The good news is that God is good, He is willing and able to get involved in every nook and cranny of His creation. He wants to do you good, make you Christ-like, save your soul and accompany you on your journey to glory. This is a God you want on your team, and His incomparable power to hack into the matrix of life is exactly what gives us peace and confidence in a world riddled with the effects of sin’s curse.
Test claims of miracles, recognize providence, and respect concurrence. These are God’s tools for working in God’s world. The more you understand them, the less scary they become.

“It’s too dangerous. Fully grown male African lions can weigh up to 500 pounds, can run up to 50 miles per hour, and can eat a small adult human in one sitting. And they’re all over. They’re on my street. They’re in the mall. They’re in my workplace. The church is lousy with lions. It’s probably best to just stay in and watch lion news coverage, away from the lions. Nowhere is safe from the lions. There are lions lurking right outside my door. There are lions everywhere!”

2022 may be the year of the tiger on the zodiac calendar, but for many, it will be the year of the lion. Not a flesh-and-bone lion, but the sluggard’s lion from Proverbs 26:13. The lion of excuses.

The sluggard says, “There is a lion in the road! There is a lion in the streets!”

Solomon’s warning about the sluggard’s lion is a parable for the era of excuses. We need to heed this biblical instruction if we would honor Christ this coming year because we fall for this same foolishness all the time. We are prey to our own lions, our excuses, more often than we’d care to admit. And our excuse-mongering has the potential to undermine our spiritual lives one selfish justification at a time.

Maybe you won’t succumb to intense leophobia in 2022, but you and I will be tempted to make excuses about a thousand other threats. Our lion-like excuses are about traffic patterns, frustrating coworkers, contagious illnesses, social rejection, possible failures, psychological diagnoses, shifting moods, political changes, YouTube binges, sinful struggles, and anything else that’s just plain hard. These and countless potential dangers and even blessings will haunt our hearts and control our schedules – maybe even define our religion – if we let them. So, we need help battling our excusing impulses this coming twelve months.

Solomon wants to help us, excusers that we are. So, here’s this wise man’s word to the wise, if we would be teachable to receive it, and fear the Lord to act on it. The main thing that Solomon wants us to know about our excuses is this:

Our excuses are lazy.

Lazy? Really? That’s the big deal? Well, yes, according to the inspired text of Scripture, that’s the problem with our excuses. Making excuses is lazy. And that’s a more serious issue than we might first think. So let’s examine the components of this sluggard’s excuse to expose the sinful motives behind our own excuses. Our devotional lives may be at stake.

The Sluggard’s Sloth

Think about the way that Solomon constructed this proverb. He tells us right up front who’s talking: the sluggard. And that’s the point. The speaker is his argument. Solomon doesn’t say, “The wise man says,” or, “the righteous says,” or even, “the prudent says.” It’s the sluggard talking. The one making excuses is identified by his primary vice, the sinful desire that moves him to do the excusing: sluggishness.

The word “sluggard” is used almost exclusively in Proverbs, and its uses fill out for us what it means. The sluggard is the indolent opposite of the industrious ant (Prov 6:6). He loves his sleep way too much (6:9, 26:14). He’s all desire but no do, all appetite but no action (Prov 13:4, 20:4, 21:25, 26:15). Worst of all, he’s arrogant, imagining that he’s always right despite wise correction (26:16).

The biblical profile of laziness, then, is far more serious than we might think. The sin of sloth is no mere peccadillo but a life-consuming attitude. It’s a way of thinking about oneself and the world that prioritizes selfish desire above everything else. It hates responsibility and craves satisfaction. It’s hedonism with no work ethic. If something hurts or is hard, the sluggard defies it. Laziness demands pleasure and rejects the cost, ignorant of its own consequences and always lusting after more.

It makes sense, then, that excuses issue from the sluggard’s greedy gullet. His mental calculation in every situation is: How can I avoid what I don’t want (work, challenge, and danger), get what I do want (pleasure, sleep, and leisure), but not have to admit that I’m doing anything wrong on the way? It’s a spiritually lethal cocktail of pride, lust, and selfishness. The sluggard makes excuses because he can’t deny himself.

Think of all the weight-loss New Year’s resolutions that are being made right now. What derails otherwise erstwhile dieters? Often, it’s laziness manifesting in excuses. “I want to eat what I want, I don’t want to go the gym, but I also don’t want to feel bad about not losing weight… so here’s my excuse: I’ll get serious about it when it’s nice outside. Or, I need to get to a better place mentally first. Or, the gym is too expensive. Or, fill-in-the-blank.” Do you hear what’s behind all of that? Plain old laziness. The sloth of the sluggard.

The Sluggard’s Slogan

Now, let’s take a second to meditate on the excuse that Solomon’s sluggard makes. “There’s a lion in the road, there is a lion in the streets!” We know from the repetition of this proverb in Proverbs 22:13 that his concern with the lion is the physical danger it presents. He says, “I shall be killed in the streets!” Therefore, he refuses to go out and stays in instead.

Now, first, think about this excuse for a second. Why is the sluggard making the excuse to begin with? We don’t know the intended audience (maybe his parents, maybe his boss, maybe himself), but we do know that he feels compelled to make an excuse, which implies something important. When we make excuses, it’s because there’s some expectation or demand pressing in on us that we’re trying to circumvent. Maybe the sluggard didn’t want to go to work, maybe he didn’t want to run an errand, maybe he didn’t want to go on a trip. Who knows? The point, however, is that he knows he was supposed to do something, and his lion is the perfect excuse for not having to do it. Excuses imply obligation.

But second, does the sluggard have a point? We’ve been calling his language an excuse, but couldn’t you just as easily call it a reason, and a good one at that? I mean, people got attacked by lions in the Ancient Near East (Judges 14:5, 1 Sam 17:34, 2 Kings 17:25). There was no animal control, there was no game preserve. Those cats legitimately could have been prowling around the sluggard’s town. It’s probably a small chance, the statistics are on his side, but hey, it’s a chance! Is he really so awful for not wanting to put his life in the paws of a lion?

Well, according to Solomon, yes, the sluggard is making a foolish excuse by playing little-boy-who-cried-lion. But why? What’s the difference between an excuse and a legitimate reason? Is it percentages and likelihoods? Or is it something else?

The sluggard’s problem is his heart. He’s got bad motives. Remember that Solomon’s argument in this proverb is the person speaking – the sluggard, one who is identified by his sinful motives. So, the problem with the sluggard’s justification for staying inside is not that it’s unlikely, but that he’s unwilling. He has an obligation to fulfill and he isn’t willing to go through with it if it means accepting some amount of potential risk. And, for what it’s worth, I do think Solomon intends for us to see the foolishness of his statement in how wildly unlikely it would be for the sluggard to be mauled by a lion on the street, a place where people normally travel. His problem is his selfish, idolatrous, disobedient heart.

Here’s what Solomon’s getting at with this proverb, and what we need to hear to expose our own excuses: The evil motive behind an excuse is laziness, and laziness is sinful because it refuses to accept the God-ordained cost of obedience.

Brothers and sisters, obedience is supposed to be costly. In a cursed world, we will always be fighting against scarcity, weakness, and sin, and that’s hard. To do what our Lord has commanded us to do, we will have to sweat, sacrifice, and surrender our desires to his. Obedience isn’t easy for excusers like us. Remember that Jesus told us, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). The path of obedience requires a cross. Obedience always comes with a cost, especially when we need to repent of sin. As the church father Ambrose wrote, “repentance has no excuse but confession.” That’s why dying to self may look like walking among lions, or knowing we’ll be misunderstood, or entering into relationships that will hurt, or even losing your life. For believers, Jesus commands costly obedience, no excuses.

So, this year, when you’re tempted to set aside a command of your Lord (whether to work, to serve, to share, or to devote yourself wholly to Christ), ask yourself, “Why?” Are you willing to obey Jesus no matter the cost? Is your desire to maximize Jesus’ glory through strategic obedience, or are you trying to justify sinful, selfish desires by clothing them in a respectable guise? Excuses always seem plausible on some level, but plausibility is not the question. The heart of the matter is your heart. The difference between an excuse and a reason is a heart that longs to obey Jesus Christ, even when it’s costly. Are you willing to bear a cross to obey your crucified Savior?

Your zeal for Christ may not be threatened this year by a lion, but we’re all in danger of making excuses about lions. You will undoubtedly be surrounded by lions in 2022 – frustrating people at work, sermons you don’t like at church, bills piling up at home, and turmoil in our world. There will be countless ways to falsely justify our lack of fervent obedience to Christ. So, before you get there, “count the cost” (Luke 14:28), and be willing to “renounce all that [you] have” (14:33) for the sake of knowing and following your Savior. Know that Christ accepted the cost of the cross to purchase you and has called you to follow in his costly footsteps (1 Pet 2:18-25). The Lion of Judah has conquered every threatening lion, even death itself. And if we are willing to accept the cost of obeying our loving Lord, then our lazy excuses will vanish in the light of his glory and grace.

This was our blog’s eleventh year, and as is our custom, here are our top ten posts from 2021.

Before listing them, we did want to note that this year had a lot of changes on the back end of the blog, which hopefully have given the readers a better experience. Our traffic and archives had grown too much for HostGator, so we changed our hosting service over to Mere. Also this year, Google stopped maintaining Feedburner, so we had to move our subscribers to Follow.it. That service costs money, but we are thankful that The Master’s Seminary graciously picked up the tab.

What’s that you say? You are not a subscriber? Well, before you make the jump to our top ten posts, you should go to the box that says “Get new posts by email” (either on your side bar or if you are on your phone, it is at the bottom of the page, or at this link here). Fill that out, and then you will be a bona fide subscriber to The Cripplegate.

Here are our top 10 posts (by unique IP addresses to view it) from 2020.

Tullian, Byron, and the need for repentance. This was not a fun post to write (or read) but it apparently was helpful in reminding our readers that theology has consequences, and bad theology has devastating consequences.

Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna: are there difference?. This post looked the biblical terms used for these three places associated with the afterlife. There are differences between them, and understanding those differences reminded our readers of Jesus’ ability to reorient everything–even the afterlife–around himself.

No, Jesus would not require vaccine passports. As society gradually reopened post-COVID, one Canadian church began requiring vaccine passports for those attending worship. Jordan looked at some of the implications of a church barring sick people from attending corporate worship.

Even if there was fraud. After the election of President Biden, a study found that nearly half of Americans thought “large-scale fraud” was instrumental in President Trump’s loss. Eric wrote a post for those people, reminding them of some theological realities that are true, even if there was fraud.

“I love my students too much to lie to them”. School boards around the country were roiled this year as parents and teachers began to revolt against the infiltration of CRT into educational philosophy. In Virginia, the NAACP even called the CRT curriculum “shocking and racist.” Jesse (who pastors in Virginia) wrote a post looking at one teacher who was suspended for opposing the transgender components of this curriculum.

How Simone Biles helps us understand Eric Liddell. The Olympics took place this summer, and they provided a bit of a respite from COVID dominated news. When American gymnast Simone Biles dropped out of several events she was expected to win, it had an over-sized impact. Everyone, it seemed had an opinion on the merits of her decision. Jordan wrote a post drawing a connection from that point back to Liddell–an Olympic runner who also dropped out of an event hew as favored to win.

Why Pastor James Coates’ imprisonment is actual persecution. When Canadian pastor James Coates was jailed for preaching during COVID restrictions, one of the more ludicrous responses seen in some corners of evangelicalism was to say that his arrest and imprisonment was “not actual persecution.” This is one of two posts at The Cripplegate on Coates arrest, and it was a response to those who felt the need to minimize what he was going through.

Cry the Beloved Country: Understanding this week’s anarchy in South Africa. Back in July, South Africa descended into anarchy. Tensions had been simmering under the surface there for sometime, but they erupted in riots and vigilantism. Clint wrote a post about what was happening in his beloved country, and it was our third most-read post of the year (as it was even picked up by secular sources that referred back to it).

What would Jesus say about the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill? 2021 was the year of the podcast, and it seemed like everyone was listening to Christianity Today’s Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. However, there was one obvious hole in the plot of that pod-cast: while lamenting how dull evangelicals are for embracing Mark Driscoll, the podcast essentially skipped over the fact that MacArthur had been warning about MD for years. While some want to use the Driscoll dynamic to retool the notion of Christian leadership, Jesse wrote a post encouraging Christians to simply remember who said what about Driscoll and when. What leaders were proved correct, and which were refuted? “Wisdom,” Jesus said, “is vindicated by her children.”

Master’s Seminary pastor jailed. Our most read post this year was about James Coates’ arrest and imprisonment for shepherding his church when the government had banned it. James is a graduate of Master’s Seminary, and is friends with all of us at The Cripplegate. When we started our blog, we chose the name “Cripplegate” after a location where many of the non-conformists preached when the government prohibited them from gathering with their congregations. We did not expect that only a few years later one of our friends would be similarly persecuted. Eric’s article was our most read post of the year.

Along those lines, James Coates has a book coming out soon about his ordeal Co-written with Nathan Busenitz, God vs. Government will be released in March, but can be pre-ordered here.

As always, if you have requests for something we should blog on, leave it in the comments below.

And, if you are curious, By the way, here are our lists from 2020, from 2019, from 2018, from 2017, from 2016, from 2015, from 2014, from 2013,  from 2012, and from our first year, 2011.

The Christmas truce of  Christmas Eve, 1914, was a wonderful parenthesis of respite in the animosity of what would become the bloodiest war in human history.

As reports have been collated of that mysterious peace that washed over the Western Front on that silent night, it seems it all started with well-wishing and spontaneous singing of Christmas hymns. The Germans offered their hearty a cappella rendition of Stillenacht from their muddy trenches. In good cheer, from the British side—and by some accounts even in some French trenches—hymns of praise to God resounded throughout the empty battlefields.

Captain Robert Patrick Miles of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry division wrote in a letter that was published in the Daily Mail in January 1915:

Friday (Christmas Day). We are having the most extraordinary Christmas Day imaginable. A sort of unarranged and quite unauthorized but perfectly understood and scrupulously observed truce exists between us and our friends in front. The funny thing is it only seems to exist in this part of the battle line – on our right and left we can all hear them firing away as cheerfully as ever. The thing started last night – a bitter cold night, with white frost – soon after dusk when the Germans started shouting ‘Merry Christmas, Englishmen’ to us. Of course our fellows shouted back and presently large numbers of both sides had left their trenches, unarmed, and met in the debatable, shot-riddled, no man’s land between the lines. Here the agreement – all on their own – came to be made that we should not fire at each other until after midnight tonight. The men were all fraternizing in the middle (we naturally did not allow them too close to our line) and swapped cigarettes and lies in the utmost good fellowship. Not a shot was fired all night.”

But what happened the day after Christmas? The opponents on either side of no man’s land cocked their guns and fired at each other with an aim to kill. Captain Miles, who wrote the letter above, was killed in action before New Year’s Eve.

Despite the brief interlude of religious observance and quiet reverence for the night commemorating the birth of the Prince of Peace, the enemies’ reconciliation was short-lived as the following day all returned to “normal” business: the business of death and destruction.

I understand that the soldiers on both sides were compelled to return to arms by the cause they were commissioned to fight for. In fact, with a seemingly unintended British dry irony, Captain Miles wrote of the Germans’ tardiness to get back to the war the day after Christmas:

The beggars simply disregard all our warnings to get down from off their parapet, so things are at a deadlock. We can’t shoot them in cold blood…I cannot see how we can get them to return to business.”

I realize the war could not have been brought to an end by sentimentality, and yet it does seem a pity that the irenic effects Christmastime has on so many do not last beyond Boxing Day.

The attendance of many churches swells significantly on Christmas Day.  But the swelling abates noticeably by the next week’s worship gathering. What happens to all these people the day after Christmas? They go back to being their unchanged selves until the next yuletide pause in their devotional apathy.

Imagine if the glimpse of peace experienced by the warring parties on the Western Front in 1914 had just kept on spreading, instead of abruptly ending the next day.  And imagine if those who showed up to a worship service in honor of the Savior of the world on December 25 just kept on coming back week after week, and just kept on wanting to worship Jesus for coming to save us, and just kept on basking in the peace and joy and hope that comes from saving faith in God. Am I beginning to sound like an evangelical John Lennon?

What we can learn from the short but sweet Christmas Eve truce of 1914 is that being at peace is vastly superior to being at war…but enmity doesn’t just go away without a hard-earned, blood-bought peace.

Christmas makes people feel at peace with Jesus for a short spell, but their true peace with their Creator can only be accomplished by unconditional surrender to him—the willingness to repent of sin, lay down weapons of rebellion, and trust in the mercy and love with which he secured our forgiveness by his own blood. That gospel message is not seasonal; it must be proclaimed in season and out by we who have experienced its lasting effects.

The Christmas season can be a rough time for more people than we might think. Everyone is already weathering the merciless scourgings of this Genesis 3 world. The miscarriage of a child. The separation of a spouse. The loss of a child. The letting-go from a job. The news of that diagnosis. The rebellion of a child. For many, Christmas time can be a ruthless reminder of that person or thing or blessing that we are without. Combine that with the pressure to feel merry, when some don’t, and it’s a battle.

One particular difficulty is waiting. Often in life, we find ourselves waiting; waiting under the inscrutable sovereignty of God. Much of life can be summed up like this: we are about to enter a situation where we are waiting on the Lord, we are in a situation where we are waiting on the Lord, or we are coming out of a situation in which we were waiting.

Waiting is nothing new for God’s people. Abraham and Sarah had a lengthy wait, from the time of the promise of a child until he was born (Gen 12:1-3, 16:3, 21:5). David had to wait on the Lord (perhaps 15 years), from the time he was anointed king (1 Sam. 16:12-14) until he actually ascended the throne (2 Sam. 5). The apostle Paul waited, while he prayed repeatedly for the Lord to remove the thorn (2 Cor. 12:7-9). Jeremiah waited, as he endured decades of little to no fruit along with persecution. And yet, he said this of waiting:

The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. ²³ They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. ²⁴ “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I have hope in Him.” ²⁵ The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him. ²⁶ It is good that he waits silently for the salvation of the Lord. ²⁷ It is good for a man that he should bear the yoke in his youth. ²⁸ Let him sit alone and be silent since He has laid it on him. ²⁹ Let him put his mouth in the dust, perhaps there is hope (Lam 3:22–29).

Various words are translated “wait” in Scripture. One word, used in Ps 119:114, has the idea of an extended period of time in a place or state, implying a hope of resolution to some situation. Another, used in Ps 62:5, carries the idea of quietness; silence; stillness; a stilled demeanor and quietness of soul. A third, used in Lamentations 3:25, refers to looking forward with confidence to that which is good and beneficial, with a focus of anticipation in a future event.

One way to think of waiting, is a demeanor of surrendered trust in the Lord that fights to remain patient, prayerful, and faithful in one’s walk with God as Father and Sovereign.

We find ourselves waiting for so many things. The long, painful years, waiting for the salvation of a loved-one. A difficult financial situation. A job to come through. Clarity on what to do in life. Weathering a season of perplexing sorrow. Waiting for a child to turn from rebellious ways. Waiting as someone shoots fiery arrow after fiery arrow at you, and it’s inexplicable; it seems useless; they are going through all the trouble to do this to you, when they could be doing a million more productive things. Waiting for a spouse to change and grow. Waiting for victory over sin. Waiting during a grievous, lamentable political situation. Waiting for vindication when you have been falsely accused. Waiting during the suffering of a loved one. Having to sit by a hospital bed and wait. Waiting during hospice. Waiting to be reunited with a  loved one in heaven. Waiting for our own glorification, because our sin is tiring. Or just waiting for the return of Christ, to right all wrongs and fix all this damage.

Some of you are waiting. And it’s very difficult

Why does our good God have us wait like this? Sometimes we don’t know (Eccl 9:11-12). Sometimes it’s because of depravity (Ps 13:1-2). And sometimes it’s for the miraculous work of transformation God wishes to do in us (Rom 8:28-30).

Activity

What should we do while we wait? Biblical waiting is never passive. It’s active. God would have us get moving in waiting. Waiting means praying (Ps 119:147). “I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined to me and heard my cry” (Ps 40:1). Contained in the “waited patiently” is fervent prayer, hence the next phrase in the verse.

Waiting means saturating our souls in Scripture. When we wait, we read. Your soul is too hungry not to do so. Perhaps God might put us in a season of waiting to kickstart a fire for the word.

Waiting means continual surrendered-trust before our good God (Ps 62:1-2). It’s a time of wrestling; wrestling with wanting to have our will done; and our results produced. But it’s not happening. So, it’s a season where, by the grace of God, we labor to get our soul into a demeanor of surrendered-trust.

Waiting means taking shelter in God. “You are my hiding place and my shield; I wait for Your word” (Ps 119:114). The psalmist equates waiting for God to the concept of taking shelter in God. This is not a mystical thing, but meditating on Scripture like Ps 62:1-2: “My soul waits in silence for God only. He only is my Rock and my salvation, my stronghold, I shall not be greatly shaken.”

Waiting means continuing to immerse yourself in the people of God. “He who separates himself seeks his own desire, he quarrels against all sound wisdom” (Prov 18:1). It’s the lone zebra who gets picked off by the lions. While waiting, we practice presence with the body in corporate worship. We may not always feel strengthened by it, but we walk by faith, knowing that God is feeding and strengthening us there. In his time of waiting and sorrowrr, the psalmist longed for corporate worship (Ps 42:4). 

Temptation

Waiting also comes with its temptations. There is the temptation of escape/feel-good sins. We feel like we need a little relief. Temptation promises it, but fails to deliver.

Like the Israelites in the desert, there is the temptation to grow impatient (Ps 106:13-14). Let us beware when impatience delivers (Ps 106:15).

There is the temptation of pragmatism. Do what seems to produce the quick, desire result that we want. Do what works. If I can get the result I want, then the ends justify the means. But, let us beware of Hagar solutions in seasons of waiting (Gen 16:1-6).

If we’re not careful, we can compromise in seasons of waiting. Or grow angry or bitter. There is the temptation to withdraw. “If this is how it’s going to be, I’m not going through the trouble to immerse myself with the church.” There’s the temptation of becoming jaded. “If God is not going to pull through on this situation, then I’m going to take a break from God.”

Benefits

By faith, we know that there are benefits to waiting. One benefit is walking with God. That’s much of what waiting is. I am walking with him. I am learning from him. David’s situation in Psalm 23 was, in part, waiting on the Lord. The Chief Shepherd had lead him into the valley of the shadow of death. He couldn’t see much in the valley, much less where it ended. Thus, it was a season of waiting on the Lord, while walking with the Lord. We are to seek him, while walking and waiting. David knew that: “When You said, ‘Seek My face,’ my heart said to You, ‘Your face, O Lord, I shall seek;” (Ps 27:8). Jeremiah knew this also: “The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him” (Lam 3:25).

Waiting means growing deeper in learning about God’s fatherhood of us. There is no greater privilege than legitimately getting to call God, “Father.” Hebrews 12:5-11 is key here to deepen us in this sacred privilege. God is parenting us while we wait on him. That’s critical to preach to ourselves as we wait lest we be hardened by difficult people and difficult circumstances. For the Christian, God fathers us in the waiting and by the waiting.

Waiting means growing in applying the sovereignty of God. It’s one thing to boldly declare we believe in the sovereignty of from untested confines. It’s quite another to do so in a season of waiting. “Consider the work of God, for who is able to straighten what He has bent? In the day of prosperity be happy, but in the day of adversity consider— God has made the one as well as the other so that man will not discover anything that will be after him” (Eccl 7:13-14).

Waiting means growing in gratitude (1 Thess 5:18). The alternative is unthinkable; hardened bitterness.

Waiting means an opportunity to strengthen the muscles of faith. Moses knew what this was like (Heb 11:24-27). While waiting, we may not get what we’re hoping for in our timing. Faith is the only option (Heb 11:1-2).

Waiting provides opportunity to distance ourselves from complaining (Phil 2:14-15). Complaining doesn’t shorten the waiting. It may lengthen it. And it certainly makes it seem longer.

Waiting is an opportunity to grow in humility. Humility is something we might pray for. We ought to brace ourselves when that prayer is answered. We grow in humility while waiting because we are seeing that we cannot control things as we might want. We are not sovereign. We are less powerful and awesome than we may have thought. We may have overestimated our abilities to produce outcomes in life. We realize that God is the great outcome-producer. Psalm 131:1 becomes more familiar to us in these times. Waiting reminds us that we are not impressive. We are little spiritual children, held by a great God and Father.

While waiting, we have the opportunity of decreased anxiety (Phil 4:4-7). Waiting forces us to fall on God daily. We realize that our anxiety does not bring about resolutions; though it does defy our profession of faith in God.

Waiting biblically makes us a more enjoyable person to be around (Ps 119:74). We are learning to fret less and less; to rest in God more and more. We become more spiritually balanced; gracious and patient with people.

Waiting forces us to grow in cultivating a spiritual palate (Col 3:1-2). We have to. Nothing else can stabilize the soul.

Waiting also cultivates spiritual vigor in us. “Wait for the Lord. Take courage and let your heart be strong, yes, wait for the Lord” (Ps 27:14). Notice the vigor consequent of waiting: “Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary” (Isa 40:31).

Waiting makes us more skilled at discipling others (Ps 119:74). While waiting, we transition from knowing about God to knowing God. You no longer merely have highlighted sentences in Christian books. Those sentences have become part of your walk with God. You’ve lived them.

The End of Waiting

I don’t know what you are waiting for. Perhaps the waiting seems unbearable. God knows. And our compassionate God wants us to know that we never have to wait on our greatest joy and need: “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:4-5).

The greatest Christmas gift ever needs no waiting. Jesus Christ came, clothed himself in humanity, then lived in stunning sinlessness. He then went to the cross as our wrath-bearing substitute to render us clean, righteous, and in the favor of God. He already paid for our sins. He already rose from the grave. Eternal life is accomplished. No more waiting. We know. We have seen him through the eyes of God-given faith. And it’s only the beginning. How much more glory and joy and excitement there remains to be seen by those who have simply opened the empty-hand of faith to the crucified and risen Christ. Much, much more.

“He will swallow up death for all time, and the Lord God will wipe tears away from all faces, and He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth; for the Lord has spoken. And it will be said in that day, ‘Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation’” (Isa 25:8-9).

What a year it’s been, beloved. Merry Christmas from all of us here at the Cripplegate.

“Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life” (Jude 21).

By Clint Archer

George Orwell’s seminal political satire, Nineteen Eighty-Four, portrays a nightmarish world that is inescapably under the oppressive control of a totalitarian government. Every minute aspect of this dystopian society is monitored and governed by the unopposed rule of the tyrannical so-called “Party.” The dictator who leads the Party is a quasi-divine figurehead known as “Big Brother.” Information about citizens is gathered by seemingly omnipresent surveillance technology, and fear is instilled through ubiquitous propaganda posters with the ominous slogan, “Big Brother is watching you.”

Understandably, the idea that there is someone assigned to watch over you can be quite unsettling. People don’t want to be “looked after.” Either we see it as patronizing, like when you hire a babysitter for your teenager; or it is just downright creepy, as you would rightly feel if you discovered a stalker had a collection of photographs of you.
But from a different perspective, being watched over can be very comforting. The victim of a schoolyard bully would find great reassurance in a promise made by his older brother, “I’ll be watching over you this week at recess. No one will hurt you on my watch.” Likewise, the President is probably relieved to know that even while his eyes are closed in public prayer, his bodyguards are perpetually vigilant and attentive to the slightest threat of danger. A country can get on with its business knowing that there is a strong and prepared military that is constantly analyzing intelligence and monitoring potential threats to the safety of its citizenry.

Your view of biblical church government through elders probably falls into one of the two antithetical sentiments: fear or comfort. Which of those reactions you have is probably determined by your experience. You have either witnessed the wise and godly use of authority, or you have been the burn victim of the sinful abuse of church leadership. An your understanding of the New Testament pattern for church leaders, or lack thereof, will also influence your experience. Exposure to poor leadership in a church is one of the most frequent excuses offered by professing believers for them not attending church. Conversely though, the healthiest churches are those with good leadership.

Ultimately, we need to come to terms with what the Bible says about elders. God knows what is best for His flock. He outlines the requisite qualifications for elders, He supplies their job description, He limits their authority, and it is He alone who prescribes the role and function of leaders in the church.

Title Fight: The Biblical Terms

Pastors use business cards as an efficient way of transmitting contact details. But the card can also be a barometer of a church’s view of biblical leadership. If the pastor’s card has as a job title, “Regional Bishop of the Eastern District” you can surmise his denomination has a rigid, geographically based hierarchy. If he has before his name “The Right Reverend Most Holy Apostle,” you likewise have an idea of what view his church has of their leaders (or at least the view he wants them to have). Some titles are intended to convey the church’s position on issues. Say you had lunch with an “Anointed Prophet and High Priest of the Flaming Old Covenant Tabernacle Ministries,” you might want to avoid recommending the pulled pork sandwich.

Some churches create an office of leadership ex nihilo for whatever new ministry program they concoct. Their church office block has on the doors name plaques with titles like “Pastor of Media Outreach,” “Chairman of Angelic Visitations,” and “Associate Pastor of Light and Sound Therapy.” What a long way we have come since the Reformers decided to ditch the High-Church “priest” for the humble designation “pastor,” which purely means shepherd.

These days “pastor” can be misused as a title of honor and respect. Ministers go by Reverend, or Doctor if they have studied enough. Some pursue post-graduate degrees simply to add the coveted “Dr” to their business card.
Jesus rebuked the spiritual leaders of Israel because they loved the preeminence of their positions, “and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your servant” (Matthew 23:7–11).

The titles for leaders in the NT provide instruction and examples of how we should view our leaders, and how they should view themselves. There are three primary terms used to describe spiritual leaders in the NT church. Each holds insights into the function and position of the servant-leaders of a healthy church.

At the Helm: Elders are Leaders

The term elder (presbuteros as used in 1 Peter 1:5; Acts 14:23; 1 Timothy 5:17) is a word that refers to the seniority and maturity of a person. The word does not necessarily imply an advanced age, as when Paul reminds the youthful elder Timothy, “Let no one despise you for your youth…” (1 Timothy 4:12). But maturity, both emotionally and spiritually, is an essential quality of the elder. Paul stipulated as much in his list of qualifications for elders: “Therefore an overseer must be…sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, …He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil” (1 Timothy 3:2,6). Some churches use the English term “presbyter” to refer to their leaders; that usage stems from this word.
The need for seniority is simply that someone needs to lead. Jesus chose twelve men to lead the early church. Among them he instituted informal tiers. Peter, James, and John (and occasionally Andrew) were the inner circle.

They were leaders among leaders, exposed to privileged times of instruction and observation (e.g. Matthew 17:1; Mark 5:37, 13:3, 14:33). And even among this core group, Peter emerged as the first among equals. In every list of the twelve, Peter is always mentioned first, and he functioned as a spokesman for them time and again. Jesus singles Peter out as the rock on which the church will be built (Matthew 16:18), and leaves the care of the disciples in his hands (John 21:15).

This is not to say Peter, or the inner circle, or any spiritual leaders in the church are superheroes of spirituality. History is replete with the failings of those in leadership. But there is a sense in which God equips, gifts, and calls elders to their role. Paul calls them gifts of God to the church (Ephesians 4:11). A seminary professor of mine always reminded us who were training for the ministry, not to be puffed up by position, and also to not feel inadequate for the task ahead of us. He used this pithy reminder that we were feeble leaders, but equipped by God’s grace to impart something of value to our churches: “In the land of blind men, the cross-eyed is king.” Human leaders are indeed weak creatures; but by Gods calling and equipping, they have a responsibility to lead the flock. In this sense they are elders, or seniors, manning the helm and steering the church at the bearing God has set in His word.

Men of the (Wash) Cloth: Elders are Servant Leaders

The word overseer (episkopos as used, for example, in Philippians 1:1 and Titus 1:5) means one who gives oversight or has authority over a group or situation as a watchman or superintendent. As the meaning suggests, the leaders of a church are there to provide spiritual oversight and authority. This is why the writer of Hebrews tells us that we as members need to “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls” (Hebrews 13:17). “Keeping watch” in this verse is the Greek word that means to abstain from sleep, to keep awake. Church leaders are never to fall asleep at the wheel, they are never to doze off on duty, but are to keep watch to protect and guide the flock God has entrusted to them.

Spiritual authority in the church is not like secular authority in the world. As Jesus said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:25–28). Jesus repeatedly taught and modeled that leaders in His church are to be servants of the flock. He donned a slave’s towel and stooped to wash His disciple’s reeking feet to prove that men of the cloth are to be men of the wash-cloth!

Fencing the Flock: Elders are Bodyguards

Pastor (poimēn as used in 1 Peter 5:1) refers to the work the leaders do. The word means to shepherd. The shepherd is an ideal metaphor for spiritual oversight, one that Jesus used of Himself, as the job description has many parallels with church work.

Shepherds feed their sheep, as pastors nourish their congregation with teaching from God’s word (2 Timothy 3:16–17). Pastors guide the church in making decisions by directing them to the Scriptures, rebuking them when they sin, and exhorting them to obey God (2 Timothy 4:2), just as shepherds guide their sheep to safe and healthy pastures.
Shepherds are also guardians. The Body of Christ needs guarding from the assault of error. Since our fight is not against flesh and blood but a spiritual warfare (Ephesians 6), our bodyguards need to be men of spiritual stature and confidence. Guarding the flock from predators was a shepherd’s prerogative, just as a pastor is tasked with defending the faith and exposing false teachers whose dangerous doctrines would ravage the church like wolves (Acts 20:28–30).

This is noble work indeed. But before the pastor prints a new batch of business cards with auspicious words like “Guardian and Guide” embossed on them, let us not forget that the title is not one to flaunted. Shepherds were considered to be unsophisticated, uncouth, and socially undesirable. Theirs was not a position to be proud of. The work was extremely important, but nonetheless a dirty job that someone had to stoop to do. This is how Jesus wants His “under-shepherds” to view their position: “Shepherd the flock of God that is among you…not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory” (1 Peter 5:2–4).

The pastor’s reward for faithfulness will come in heaven, not in the marketplace.

Walk This Way: Elders are Examples

Elders don’t just teach the word, they model it. Their very lives are motion pictures of what Jesus’ teachings should look like in practice. The flock will not only follow their leaders in the direction they take down the path of sanctification, but they will follow their pace and mimic the very way they walk it.
This is why Peter instructed pastors to lead in humility “not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock” (1 Peter 5:3).

Power in the Pulpit: Elders are Teachers

Since the primary ability an elder needs to have is the ability to teach (1 Timothy 3:1), it stands to reason that one of their primary roles is that of teacher. The New Testament is unambiguous about the need for pastors to preach, teach, exhort, rebuke, counsel, admonish, encourage, and otherwise dispense truth in its various mediums and dosages (see 2 Timothy 2:4; 1 Thessalonians 5:14).

Not all elders will carry the same weight of a church’s teaching load, but the primacy of this role is seen, for example, in Paul’s instruction on remuneration of fulltime preachers: “Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching” (1 Timothy 5:17).

Making the Grade

In many martial arts, grading is awarded on the basis of two seemingly unrelated criteria, namely competency and character. One understands the need for a demonstration of competency. If a martial artist cannot perform the requisite katas, display his or her prowess in the abilities required for the level, then failure can be expected. But in many dojos, it is not just an ability to do fancy kicks and airborne swirls that will garnish the coveted black belt. There is also a need to show self-control, respect, and discipline. No matter how many blocks of wood you can chop through barehanded, or how dexterously you master your opponent in sparring bouts, if you show disrespect to your opponent or the grading council, or if you behave in an unsportsmanlike manner, the verdict will not be favorable.

In the church, more so than in any other arena of life, the character of a person is as integral to the positions of leadership as competency. In fact, there are only two required abilities for an elder in the church, while the bulk of requirements are to do with one’s character. Paul gave Timothy a list of qualifications to use as criteria when appointing elders in the fledgling churches in and around Ephesus. These lists should be the sole source of criteria for churches appointing elders. Whether a person is influential in the community, has acquired impressive wealth or academic credentials, or even proves to be a “really nice guy,” these laurels can wilt with time and pressure. God’s standards are much more telling and significant to the work He calls elders to perform.

Competency

Job interviewers often ask applicants what they consider to be their strengths and weaknesses. One tactic is to list weaknesses that the boss would consider strengths. “Oh, my weakness is that I am a perfectionistic workaholic, which is why I make my job my whole life.” Another slightly more honest strategy is to admit your weakness in a way that emphasizes a strength: “Though I am new to this industry I make up for inexperience by being a quick learner and hard worker.” But a savvy human resources interviewer will is looking for at least this one point: can you actually do the job for which you are applying. A chemical plant needs a chemical engineer with a degree more than they need perfectionistic workaholics. No amount of personality and character will make up for the lack of basic required abilities. And yet many churches appoint their leaders based on how likeable they are and how enthusiastic their involvement in church events is. Elders don’t need to have a vast array of superpowers, but they do need to have at least these two fundamental skills: the abilities to teach and to lead.

The most important skill an elder needs to possess is the ability to teach (1 Timothy 3:2). This makes perfect sense, as his function in the church is to teach the word (through preaching, or conducting Bible studies, or by counseling people), to defend the faith against false teachers, and to guide the flock into wise decision as laid out in the Bible.

The ability to teach implies a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures, theology, and application of doctrines to everyday situations. Not all elders are good at preaching, but they do all need to be able to know what the Bible says about a situation, and then help people to apply that knowledge.

Another ability an elder has to possess is “He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive,” (1 Timothy 3:4). The management of a household covers many facets of oversight. To provide for a household involves financial planning (budgeting and sticking to said budget), delegation of responsibilities (chores), maintenance of facilities (e.g. mowing the lawn and paying the rent), concern for spiritual development (family worship times), teaching (from tying shoelaces to persevering at calculus), counseling (broken hearts and dearly departed hamsters), and countless ways of serving (yes, carting kids to and from soccer practice counts as selfless service!).

Paul makes the point that family management is a good test of his competency for spiritual leadership, “for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?” (1 Timothy 3:4–5).

Since the elders’ task is to provide spiritual, financial, and strategic oversight for the church, it seems reasonable to expect them to have some evidence of their ability. What better arena to prove the man’s oversight skills than by watching how he manages his family? A man’s wife and children are those who know him the best. Do they respect him? Do they trust his judgment? Do they exhibit the type of fruit one would expect to see in a family where a godly, loving, husband and father has been leading? These are probing questions that are worth pondering before appointing a man to an office that requires him to do for a large group of people essentially what God requires him to do for his own family: lead, teach, protect, rebuke, encourage, and serve.

This does not mean that a man must have perfect children like a well-bred litter of flawless spiritual pedigree. Children have a mind of their own (though some use it more consistently than others). A father is not on trial for every misstep his children have taken over the years. The question is how has he managed the issues of life that crop up? A church will present the same challenges we see in families—personal conflict, financial pressure, health trials—and the elder’s response to these situations should prove consistent in wisdom and poise.

Character

Much of the paranoia about Orwellian dictators lording it over the church can be dispelled at the list of character traits that qualify one for the office. It’s hard to imagine a totalitarian leader described in the terms Paul employs for elders: “Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money” (1 Timothy 3:2¬–3). These qualities are mandatory for those in the office of overseer.
If the commitment to these qualities ebbs over time, the elder would forfeit the right to continue to function in the office of overseer. Elders are disqualified from their office when any of the required traits or abilities lapse. For example, if an elder changes his doctrine from what the church believes, he is no longer “able to teach.” Or if he commits adultery, he is no longer a “one-woman man.” In either case, he should no longer be allowed in the office of overseer.

The horror stories we hear of churches under the thumb of a megalomaniac pastor and his Gestapo elders are cases where the biblical standards have not bee applied. The solution is not to invent an unbiblical system to replace the biblical one. The solution is to implement the biblical system properly. Elders are not untouchable. They are even more strictly accountable to God’s standards (James 3:1).

A natural concern arises at this point: what if the elder is disqualified (lacking in the necessary character), or even just unqualified (lacking in the necessary abilities), and yet refuses to resign from the office? Good question; bad situation. Ungodly elders are a disease in the Body of Christ. They must be amputated with urgency before their influence spreads like gangrene. Thankfully God’s word supplies a potent remedy to that infection.

Dishonorable Discharge: What to do about bad elders?

Elders will sin because elders are human. The issue, as with any believer, is how do they respond when confronted with their sin? If repentance ensues, “you have won your brother” (Matthew 18:15). If the elder repents and reforms his ways, then he is exemplifying what he should be teaching the flock. For example, if he told a lewd joke to a congregant, who pointed out to him that this kid of off-color humor is unbecoming of one who is to be “respectable” and “above reproach.” The elder should humbly confess that this was sin, ask forgiveness, and then commit to stop his course jesting. This response shows maturity, humility, and godliness.
In some cases, however, the sin he is caught in may be one that still requires him to step down from the office of elder, even if he is repentant. For example, an elder caught in adultery, he may confess and repent speedily, but he has still shown that he can no longer be characterized as a “one-woman man.” In this case, he should graciously resign, so that the other elders aren’t forced to remove him from office.

The problem only comes in when “he persists in sin” (1 Timothy 5:2). For instance, if the elder denies his sin, or rationalizes that it wasn’t sin, or if he simply refuses to stop committing the sin. In this case the other elders must deal with that situation decisively and publicly: “Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear” (1 Timothy 5:19–20).

The public nature of the rebuke is to undo any influence the sin might have already stirred. People may have been thinking, “Outbursts of anger must be acceptable behavior for a believer, because that elder is always erupting at church meetings!” The publicity of his rebuke shows the congregation that the elders are serious about their own sin, and will therefor be serious about the sin of anyone in the church too.

The need for two witnesses is to avoid disgruntled individuals who might accuse the elder with some fictitious charge. If, however, multiple people have detected the same pattern in an elder, and have brought these concerns to light, then the other elders will be made aware of a pattern that they should address.

Conclusion: Whose Afraid of Their Big Brothers?

As freaky as it is to know you have someone watching over you, the Bible portrays this reality as a blessed privilege of a healthy church. Elders are our big brothers—not the dictatorial Orwellian type, but the reassuring protective kind. These men spend their time to pray for the flock, they labor to teach, they study diligently to guide, and preach boldly to protect.

We are told to “respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work” (1 Thessalonians 5:12–13). We should not resent their involvement in our spiritual lives, but should cherish their car and cooperate with them. Just as when parents leave the older brother in charge of the young ones, there is an accountability placed on the older to be responsible for his siblings, and there is an equal expectation on the siblings to respect their parent’s delegated authority.

As the writer of Hebrews says, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you” (Hebrews 13:17). To a mature believe this blessing is a cause for reassurance and comfort, not fear and suspicion.

I recently had the opportunity to preach through Proverbs 31, and I was struck by how the chapter was organized. While I’m sure some of this is common knowledge, to my shame I hadn’t realized all that was in Proverbs 31 simply in terms of its structure.

First, it is progressively ordered. Stereotypically this chapter is about the Proverbs 31 woman, but the instructions begin with how to be a Proverbs 31 man. The first nine verses are all about what a godly leader would look like. A godly man is sexually pure, not a drunkard, and speaks out on behalf of the poor and the oppressed. 

In fact, speaks out is too muted of a phrase. Because this comes in the form of instructions for a king, you could say it this way: a godly man uses his power and influence to defend the rights of the needy. 

It goes without saying, but if you want to find the right person, you have to be the right person. That is essentially the message of the king’s mother. If you want to marry a true princess, you have to act like a righteous king.

When it then comes to the description of the so-called Proverbs 31 woman, the mother’s description is intricately organized. The chapter is an acrostic—it moves through the Hebrew alphabet, with each verse (from verse 10 forward) beginning with a subsequent letter. The Proverbs 31 woman is described from A to Z, so to speak. 

Why would Lemuel’s mom speak in such a way? In a 1954 commentary on Lamentations, Norman Gottwald wrote that biblical authors use acrostics differently than secular or pagan authors. Pagans might use acrostics to convey messages or to identify themselves in a coy way. But biblical authors, Gottwald writes, use acrostics to convey completeness. He says that the “alphabet is a ready metaphor for totality, and thus serves as an excellent frame for praising the qualities of God” (Studies in the Book of Lamentations, 1954, p 14).

Well, long before Jeremiah wrote Lamentations, Lemuel’s mother used the same principle to describe the Proverbs 31 woman. She apparently used an acrostic to describe the totality of praise due to this remarkable woman. Her qualities are too many to simply convey in list form—as if a list could ever contain them!—so they are described from A to Z. 

Nevertheless, there are two particular focuses of the acrostic. You see, not only is Proverbs 31 an acrostic, but it also contains at least 2 chiasms. A chiasm is typical to Hebrew poetry as well—it is where a poem works itself inward. The first line parallels the last line, the second line parallels the second-to-last line, and so forth, until the main point is revealed in the middle.

The description of the Proverbs 31 woman contains at least two chiasms (Duane Garrett in the NAC commentary argues for a third one that encompasses the two I see below, so it is possible there are actually three in this chapter; NAC, Proverbs, p. 248). 

As you can see, the first chiasm places the focus on the woman’s work for her home. While many men might lock their possessions away when they are on a trip, the Proverbs 31 man does not. In fact, he leaves all of his possessions with his wife, who leverages them and expands them. If the king is away negotiating in Egypt, he is as likely as not to come back to a kingdom that has grown under his wife’s watch. 

So, the Proverbs 31 woman is not lazy. But it’s more than that. She’s actively advancing her household. She’s clothing them, she’s feeding her servants—you might have guessed that it would be the other way around, but not here! She grows her household and makes capital improvements for the sake of her home. She works hard to bless her family.

The second focus is on the reputation of her husband. The context of the chapter makes clear that this woman’s virtue is being described through the lens of her husband. After all, this is the kind of woman Lemuel’s mom tells him to marry. She will not only advance her household, but her husband’s reputation will flourish because of her. People will look to the king and see the virtues of his wife. 

Finally, the Proverbs 31 woman is an argument from the greater to the lesser. Clearly, this chapter is meant to apply to more than kings, but the point in how it is structured is this: If it is important for a king to marry well, how much more important is it for someone who is not a king? If kingdoms can rise and fall based on the queen, imagine the effect a godly wife can have on a much smaller unit—namely her own family. 

The typical Jewish reader of Proverbs 31 is not going to be either king or queen. Today’s reader may not be knitting scarlet mittens or feeding servants. Yet the beauty and structure of Proverbs 31 communicate that these qualities are admirable on whatever scale we are capable of receiving them.

The past two years have not lacked sorrow and tragedy. Tragically, many have lost their lives during the covid-19 pandemic. In addition to sorrow, confusion has not lacked. In such time, the church’s priority, as always, is to preach Christ, shepherd God’s people, practice the one another’s, and make disciples. Further, it behooves God’s people in the confusion to attempt to ascertain truth among confusion as much as possible.

It was said of the sons of Issachar that they understood the times and knew what to do (1 Chron. 12:32). Discernment is needed amidst the sorrow and confusion. Along these lines, a pastor and mentor I greatly respect mentioned a recently released book that attempts to sift through the times and grant a measure of understanding: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, & the Global War on Democracy & Public Health. Among other things, the book documents the history of Dr. Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, and Big Pharma’s complex involvement in health and government which eventually lead to Fauci’s catastrophic handling of the covid-19 pandemic.

Pause is required for a few reasons among those who might dismiss the book as fit only for tinfoil-draped conspiracy theorists:

First, Kennedy is a not a Republican. He is a Democrat who endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primaries. In fact, early in the book he writes that Trump’s presidency was chaotic. So, it cannot be concluded that Kennedy is a Trump fan, looking to discredit a left-leaning archnemesis. Second, the book is not a referenceless tirade of unverifiable claims and ignorance. Kennedy’s work includes roughly 1,800 footnotes. Third, nearly 150 physicians, researchers, and medical professionals are listed in the work as officially endorsing the book, including Dr. Harvey Risch (Professor of Epidemiology at Yale, Editor of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and Board of Editors of the Journal of American Epidemiology), Dr. Robert Malone (original inventor of mRNA and DNA vaccination technologies, NIH Accelerating Covid-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines Clinical Work Group, and former Editor in Chief of Journal of Immune Based Therapies and Vaccines), and Dr. Peter McCullough (vice chief of internal medicine at Baylor University Medical Center and clinical cardiologist). Therefore, intellectual honesty forbids a disdainful dismissal of Kennedy’s work.

The history and medical data documented by the work is as fascinating as it is shocking. Following includes a brief sampling and paraphrasing of Kennedy’s work.

Kennedy writes that Fauci, an unelected official, is the highest paid of America’s four million federal employees. He is less of a health professional, and more a businessman, with significant financial incentives and partnership with Big Pharma. Fauci has exercised more power, enjoyed by few rulers and no medical professionals in history. He spent half a century as America’s reigning health commissar preparing for his final role as commander of history’s biggest war against a global pandemic. When covid-19 hit, many nations looked to Dr Fauci, America’s most powerful and enduring public health bureaucrat, to confidently direct US health policies and rapidly develop countermeasures that would serve as state-of-the-art templates for the rest of the world. Kennedy documents the wave of veneration sent to Fauci during the pandemic, along with the prohibition of criticism towards him.

Fauci dictated a series of policies that resulted in some of the most deaths and one of the highest percentages of covid-19 body counts of any nation on the planet. Only relentless propaganda and wall-to-wall censorship could conceal his disastrous mismanagement during covid 19’s first year.

Fauci’s lockdown policies bankrupted a massive amount of small businesses, including 40% of black-owned businesses, some of which took generations of investment to build. The interest payments on the national debt due to some of these closure policies will cost up to one trillion dollars annually. Kennedy predicts that debt will likely permanently bankrupt the new deal programs, the social safety net that, since 1945, fortified nurtured and sustained America’s middle class.

Business closures pulverized America’s middle class and engineered the nation’s largest upward transfer of wealth in history. In 2020 workers lost 3.7 trillion dollars while billionaires gained 3.9 trillion. An additional 8 million workers dropped below the poverty line. The biggest winners were, Kennedy reports, the companies that were cheerleading Dr. Fauci’s lockdown policies and censoring his critics; big technology, big data, big telecom, and big media behemoths. The internet companies that snookered us all with the promise of democratizing communications made it impermissible for Americans to criticize their government, or question the safety of pharmaceutical products. These companies propped up all official pronouncements while scrubbing all dissent. Larry Ellison’s company, Oracle, which partnered with the CIA to build new cloud services, won the contract to process CDC vaccination data. Kennedy documents the billions gained by individuals consequent of the covid-19 pandemic such as Ellison, Google’s Brin, Bezos, Facebook’s Zuckerberg, and other big-tech and media leaders.

Kennedy writes that Ellison and Gates, and other members of government industry collaboration used the lockdown to accelerate the construction of their 5G network of satellites and biometric facial recognition, and track and trace infrastructure that they and their government intelligence partners can use to mine and monetize our data, further suppress dissent, and manage the rage that comes as Americans wake up to the fact that this outlaw gang has stolen our democracy, our civil rights, our country, and our way of life while we huddled in orchestrated fear from a flu-like virus.

With fears of covid generously stoked, the dramatic and steady erosion of constitutional rights and fomenting of a global coup d’état against democracy, the demolition of our economy, the obliteration of a million small businesses, the collapsing of the middle class, the evisceration of our Bill of Rights, the tidal wave of surveillance capitalism, and the rising biosecurity state, and the stunning shifts in wealth and power going to a burgeoning oligarchy of high-tech silicon valley robber barons seemed to a dazed and uncritical America like it might be a reasonable price to pay for safety; and anyway, we were told it’s just for 15 days, or maybe 15 months, or however long it takes for Dr. Fauci to follow the data to his answer.

Fauci, the J. Edgar Hoover of Public Health, has presided over cataclysmic declines in public health including an exploding chronic disease epidemic that has made the “Fauci generation,” children born after his elevation to NIAID kingpin in 1984, the sickest generation in American history. His obsequious subservience to Big Ag, Big Food, and pharmaceutical companies has left our children drowning in a toxic soup of pesticide residues, corn syrup, and processed foods while also serving as pin cushions for 69 mandated vaccine doses by age 18, none of them properly safety tested.

Kennedy reports the ineffectiveness of masks and social-distancing. He documents emails from Fauci which report that ordinary masks had little to no efficacy against covid-19. Studies are cited which demonstrate that masks with less than an N-95 respirator are ineffective. Fauci admitted that masks are most effective in making people feel better. In one study, 85% of people who contracted covid reported wearing a mask during the time of contracting the illness. Masking, instead, helped inoculate the public against critical thinking. Kennedy mentioned that mask-mandates reminded him of the futile duck-and-cover drills performed during the Cold War. Former US Commissioner of Food and Drugs, Scott Gottlieb, admitted that the six-foot social-distance rule was arbitrary and not scientifically backed. In October 2020, the WHO (World Health Organization) strongly recommended against lockdowns. Later studies demonstrated that lockdowns were ineffective, and far more detrimental to the public than the virus.

Kennedy documents that the Fauci-encouraged, large-scale approach to treating patients with covid-19 was devastating. Specifically, treating patients with Remdesivir, intubation, and ventilator, was unprecedented, and racked up an unnecessarily high body count.

In September 2021, justifying covid vaccine mandates, Dr. Fauci spoke at an elementary school where he recounted the benefit of receiving the measles and mumps vaccines as a child. Kennedy documents, however, that those vaccines were not available until 1963, and 1967. Dr. Fauci attended grade school in the 1940s.

One of the more troubling reports from the book concerns the unnecessarily high death count from covid-19. Dr. Peter McCullough (Baylor University Medical) is the most peer-reviewed published medical professional in history. McCullough wrote that we could have drastically reduced hospitalizations and deaths by early treatment medications like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. His work demonstrates that some 80% of deaths could have been avoided with these and other relatively inexpensive treatments. In particular, McCullough says that death rates would have been below that of the seasonal flu. By early summer 2020, McCullough and other physicians reported promising data on ivermectin and other treatments (for example, hydroxychloroquine, zinc, vitamin D, azithromycin, quercetin, IV vitamin C, NAC, etc.). Dr. Michael Seheult (a pulmonary and critical care internist) reported similar data from things like zinc, vitamin C and D, quercetin, and NAC early in the pandemic.

McCullough and his team demonstrated an 85% reduction in hospitalizations among 800 covid-19 patients treated with his guidelines. Though he is now often censored, Dr. McCullough’s study is still the most downloaded paper for 2020 according to the American Medical Association. Notably, the Association for American Physicians and Surgeons downloaded his article and made it their official guideline. McCullough observes the problem with the fact that Fauci has never published a paper on how to treat covid, yet was lifted up as an authority on the illness.

Kennedy cites a Michigan physician, Dr. David Brownstein, who approached early treatment of covid-19 with some of the aforementioned inexpensive and easily available supplements and medications. Brownstein and his team subsequently experienced censorship, while also reporting a high rate of severe covid vaccine side effects.

Five medical professionals, including some of the nation’s most highly published and experienced physicians and frontline covid specialists (Dr. McCullough, Dr. Kory, Dr. Ryan Cole, Dr. Brownstein, and Dr. Harvey Rish) independently reported that Dr. Fauci’s suppression of aforementioned early treatments and off-patent remedies was responsible for up to 80% of the deaths attributed to covid-19 in the US. The relentless malpractice of deliberately withholding these effective, early covid-19 treatments, and forcing the use of Remdesivir (which costs a few thousand dollars per dose) may have unnecessarily killed up to 500,000 Americans in hospitals.

Dr. Ryan Cole is a Mayo clinic and Columbia University trained, board certified anatomic clinical pathologist and CEO of Cole diagnostics. He has diagnosed over 350,000 patients in his career. Dr. Cole records successful results using aforementioned early treatments. He treated 300 patients with covid-19, half of whom were comorbid. Not one of the 300 were hospitalized and none died. Knowing that covid is an inflammatory blood-clotting disease, doctors such as these insist, and have proven with their work, that the majority of deaths could have been avoided. But early treatment remedies were censored. Dr. Cole reports that this has never happened in medical history. He says, instead, that the deadliest part of the pandemic was under-treatment in early stages.

In the meantime, Dr. Fauci did not recommend increasing things like zinc, vitamin D, or C, though the majority of covid-19 hospitalizations reported a vitamin D deficiency. Nor did he encourage helpful approaches like increasing exercise, decreasing intake of processed foods, sugar, and chemical residues, which increase inflammation and weaken the immune system. 

Dr. Pierre Kory (President and Chief Medical Officer of the Front-Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance and Chief of Critical Care Service, Medical Director of Trauma and Life Support Center at the University of Wisconsin) reported that vaccinating individuals with natural immunity to covid-19 should never be the approach.

Kennedy writes in chapter two, “Most of my fellow Democrats understand that Dr. Fauci led an effort to deliberately derail America’s access to life-saving drugs and medicines that might have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, and dramatically shortened the pandemic. There is no other aspect of the covid crisis that more clearly reveals the malicious intentions of a powerful vaccine cartel led by Dr. Fauci and Bill Gates to prolong the pandemic and amplify its mortal effects in order to promote their mischievous inoculations.”

Kennedy records that the censorship of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) was curious. Thirty-one out of 32 random worldwide studies of HCQ demonstrated that it was safe and effective in treating covid-19. Further, the WHO for decades prior to the covid-19 pandemic had listed HCQ as a safe and essential drug to treat a huge list of illnesses. However, it quickly fell out of fashion during the pandemic as it potentially posed a threat to the vaccine cartel.

Kennedy reports that Bill Gates and the WHO financed an effort to conduct nearly 20 studies of HCQ in response to the promising data on the drug. However, each study employed fraudulent protocols deliberately designed to discredit HCQ as unsafe. Instead of using the standard treatment dose of 400 mg/day, the studies administered a borderline lethal daily dose starting with 2400 mg on day one, and 800 mg/day thereafter. Kennedy goes on to describe the questionable practices of the HCQ studies whose results reported the deadly effect of the drug.

The book concludes, “Covid-19 is not the problem; it is a problem, one largely solvable with early treatments that are safe, effective, and inexpensive. The problem is endemic corruption in the medical-industrial complex, currently supported at every turn by mass-media companies. This cartel’s coup d’état has already siphoned billions from taxpayers, already vacuumed up trillions from the global middle class, and created the excuse for massive propaganda, censorship, and control worldwide. Along with its captured regulators, this cartel has ushered in the global war on freedom and democracy.”

This is just a small sampling of the book’s extensive documentation of sorrowful practices over the past several decades, especially during the covid-19 pandemic. If even half of the book’s claims are true, God’s people understand that none of this should be surprising. “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). Sin is the root cause of any and all deception. And not one of us escapes sin’s plague. But the good news is that Christ, truth embodied, has come down, lived in perfect truth, subject to God’s Law, and died as a wrath-bearing sacrifice in the place of sinners on the cross. He then victoriously rose from the grave that those who repent and put faith in him are freely granted eternal life.

By Clint Archer

It was a sobering and humiliating punishment. While millions of onlookers watched in morbid fascination at the televised spectacle, the eight victims of the controversial verdict stood crestfallen and shell-shocked in disbelief. After the many years of effort and sacrifice, the countless hours of practice and training, the untold expense of sponsorship and support, four ladies’ doubles pairs were disqualified from the Olympic badminton finals for the crime of—wait for it—not trying hard enough.

Badminton is generally perceived as a placid sport, not known for its drama. But the brouhaha of the “shuttlecock scandal” in the London Olympics in 2012 made history with a bizarre turn of events. Two ladies’ doubles teams from China, one from South Korea, and one from Indonesia were unceremoniously disqualified for, in the words of the Vice President of the International Olympic Committee, one Craig Reedie, “not using one’s best efforts to win a match.” The players had all cleared the elimination round, and were apparently attempting to lose their games in the hopes of attaining a more lenient placing in the following round.

The comical self-sabotage was hard to miss. Here were the best female badminton players on the planet, not merely lagging a little in their enthusiasm, but deliberately throwing their matches with double-fault serves. They were playing with such lackluster effort that the shuttlecock, like a pathetic flightless fowl, repeatedly couldn’t muster the height to clear the net. The players made no token pretense at appearing disappointed when they lost a point. But their dastardly antics cost them all a shot at Olympic gold.

There is an unfortunate parallel in the spiritual realm. Grace by faith alone is a precious doctrine. But ever since its most popular publication (i.e. the Book of Romans), there have been professing believers who were tempted to rest on the laurels of free forgiveness instead of striving for heavenly reward. Paul addressed those who would sin under the banner of “once saved always saved” with these unambiguous words: “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:1–2).

The Olympic badminton verdict provides an apt parable for the poor service of many Christian lives. Our Lord was fond of these real-life snapshots of inept stewardship and its consequences. The New Testament parables are peppered with a cast of stewards who didn’t try hard enough (e.g. Luke 12:45; Matthew 25:26–27).
To be clear, let us remember that there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). Condemnation is the eternal death of Hell; it is the never-ending separation of unrepentant sinners from a holy God. When Jesus lived the perfect life and then offered that righteousness on the cross on behalf of those who would believe, the payment was made for every sin that would be committed by every person who trusts Jesus for salvation. So why is there a judgment for believers? The answer lies in understanding the different types of judgments.

There is the judgment of unbelievers, a time of God’s justice and wrath, based on their deeds of sin, resulting in condemnation. But then there is also a judgment of believers, a time of grace and mercy and reward, based on the deeds of Christ, which results in reward. This judgment, or rewards ceremony, is referred to in Scripture as the Bēma seat of Christ. It is at this glorious event that believers will receive their rewards, commendation, and new functions in the kingdom. But what many Christians overlook is that this appraisal of our lives will result in varying degrees of reward, for varying degrees of faithfulness. This awesome truth may sound scary, but the more we understand of it, the more inspired we are to be faithful, and the more we will anticipate our Master’s eternal rewards.

The Master’s Degrees: Understanding Reward at Christ’s Bēma Seat

Christians understand that salvation from condemnation is an equally glorious, equally free gift of grace, for all believers, irrespective of when they repent. Our Lord taught this explicitly in the parable of the generous landowner in Matthew 20. The thief on the cross—saved for a few hours—will enjoy the same salvation from his sins and their consequences as the Apostle John who served Christ for decades. There are no degrees of forgiveness. But, does that mean our behavior, words, and motives have no bearing on our eternity whatsoever?

Consider these sample warnings, directed at believers:
“Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Corinthians 3:12–15).

Note that the person who “suffers loss” due to his faulty foundation is not an unbeliever, but one who “will be saved.” Paul is talking about believers.

And,
“Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time [on other believers], before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God” (1 Corinthians 4:5).

This passage refers to a time after the Lord comes when motives of believers will result in the corresponding commendation from Jesus (reminiscent of the “good and faithful servant” commendation in parable of the talents in Matthew 25).

“For we [Paul includes himself with all believers] must all appear before the judgment seat [bēma] of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil [phaulon, a word meaning futile/worthless]” (2 Corinthians 5:10). Here believers are warned that they will receive what is due to them, according to their deeds in this life, whether they are good, profitable deeds or futile, worthless deeds.

“For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?” (1 Peter 4:17).Peter is referring to the discipline of God in this life in the life of believers—the “household of God.”

The writer of Hebrews liekwise explains, “It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?” (Hebrews 12:7).

Believers are not exempt from accountability in this life or the next. Many Christians have a misconception of the day of their judgment. Either they fear that their sins will somehow haunt them by being flashed before them and others on some giant plasma screen display; or alternatively, they assume blithely that since believers are forgiven of all sins, there will be no accountability for them in the afterlife. Both views are wrong.

The Bible teaches clearly that believers will be rewarded according to the faithfulness of their stewardship of God’s gifts to them. Their words, deeds, and motives will be scrutinized, and will result in eternal reward and the loss of reward. No sin will have any effect on their salvation or their perfect righteousness through Christ. But their rewards will be commensurate and in proportion to their faithfulness to the stewardship God gave them.

The judgment of believers—called the Bēma Seat judgment in 2 Corinthians 5:10—is an appraisal done in love, for the purpose of apportioning rewards. The judgment of unbelievers (called the Great White Throne judgment in Revelation 20:11) is a reckoning of wrath, for the purpose of punishing rebellion. In the one the outcome is always reward, in the other it is always condemnation.

Splitting Heirs: Are All Believers Equal in Heaven?

A common question is often posed: Are all believers equal in Heaven? Regrettably, I am constrained to offer the most annoying of answers: Yes and no.

Yes, in essence and in standing before God all believers are perfectly equal in Heaven. We will be equally clothed in Christ’s righteousness. We will all be perfectly content and there will be no rivalry or comparisons. And yet, the functions and roles of believers are not identical.

Although believers are all equally saved, there is still disparity in their roles in the afterlife. One clear example of this hierarchy of heirs is that of the apostles. In Luke 22 Jesus offers a promise of unique reward to the twelve apostles (presumably Matthias would take Judas’s position),
“You are those who have stayed with me in my trials, and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Luke 22:28–30).

The reward is pictured as having a function of governing (a throne), a sphere of responsibility (a kingdom), that is specific to the apostles, and not conferred on all believers. This proves at least that twelve believers will be privy to a more privileged function or role in the eternal kingdom. But are these twelve the only who will have a privileged position in eternity?

Suffering Saints: Can a Believer Really Lose Eternal Reward?

You may agree with the notion that some believers—at least the twelve apostles—have more prominent roles or functions in the kingdom of God, but perhaps you are not yet ready to concede that it necessarily implies that other believers lose reward. It’s not the logic alone, however, which indicates that believers can forfeit eternal reward. Biblical evidence demands it.

John wrote, “Watch yourselves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward” (2 John 8). In 1 Corinthians 3:10 we are told spiritual leaders who build their ministries out of sub-standard material, will “suffer loss.” The exact meaning is not given, but I’m sure you will agree that whatever it means to “suffer loss,” it certainly cannot mean, “not suffer loss.”

Now let us be clear that there is no purgatorial punishment or chastisement in the afterlife for believers. We are immune from all condemnation because of the full price Jesus paid for our sins. The forfeiture of reward is not punishment, it is simply being apportioned the function in Heaven that correlates with one’s faithful stewardship of God’s gifts.

At his point, any good Protestant should be shifting uneasily in his or her seat. We are saved by faith not works. Salvation is a free gift of God. How can our deeds affect our afterlife is Jesus paid it all? These questions remind us to draw a clear distinction between what we do to be saved (nothing), and what we do once we are saved. Paul, in Ephesians 2:10, reminds us that we were saved not by good works, but “for good works.”

Prophets of Profit: What are the Eternal Rewards?

Crowns are traditionally synonymous with eternal rewards, but the crowns in Scripture stand for something more than glittering headgear. Crowns represent authority and position. The true reward in eternity is the position and responsibility granted to the believer. We will all serve Christ in different capacities. The family business in the kingdom of God is governing. As a co-heir of Christ, and child of God, the believer’s eternity involves ruling and reigning with Christ. This breathtaking privilege is alluded to in many passages, and even explicitly promised in a few.

Consider Paul’s off-the-cuff comment in which he chides the Corinthians for their inability to settle civil disputes from within the church. His rationale for prohibiting outside arbitration is this enigmatic statement: “Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!” (1 Corinthians 6:3). Wait, what?

The word “judge” refers to ruling, governing, as in the designation given to the ad hoc rulers of Israel in the book of Judges. We believers will rule angels in the kingdom in some capacity.
Another clue that our eternal reward involves reigning is found in the parable of the minas, in Luke 19. The reward to the good steward who managed his master’s investment faithfully was increased authority: “Well done, good servant! Because you have been faithful in a very little, you shall have authority over ten cities” (Luke 19:17).

Explicit references to the ruling function of believers feature prominently in the book of Revelation:
“Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years” (Revelation 20:4, emphasis added).
And,
“Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years” (Revelation 20:6, emphasis added).
And,
“And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Revelations 22:5, emphasis added).
The rewards promised by God are frequently referred to in terms of authority. Mostly, the symbols of the rewards are pictured as crowns (2 Timothy 4:8; James 1:12; 1 Peter 5:4; Revelation 2:10; 3:11) and thrones (Matthew 19:28; Rev 3:21; 4:4).

Whether we receive literal, physical crowns or not is irrelevant, the point is that functions and positions of authority accompany the reward. The physical tiara awarded to a beauty queen is not the reason she entered the competition; it is merely the symbol of her victory and the prize that comes with the position.

The Score Sheet: What are the Criteria for Eternal Reward?

In our seminary homiletics lab, preaching students would deliver a message to a hungry pack of peers. The salivating audience then had the delectable task of critiquing their victim. But the professor directed (limited) our feedback with a checklist of criteria to be aware of. We filled in a simple score out of ten for each criterion, which served to explain the grade we awarded. This prevented unhelpful, unspecific criticism, e.g. informing the preacher that his first and only sermon attempt “wasn’t your best.”

The Bēma judgment is a detailed assessment of specific criteria we are warned about in the New Testament. Deeds, words, and motives are all appraised in the Bēma seat, which affects our rewards.

Deeds

Christians rightly become a bit nervous when we hear teaching that relates deeds to rewards. The heroic saints of the Reformation toiled to clarify that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, apart from the works of the sinner. So it is with caution that we must approach this topic. It is crucial to understand that the works believers do after salvation are in response to the grace we have received, motivated by love to God, and empowered entirely by the Holy Spirit who works out God’s will in our lives (Philippians 2:13). But a right understanding of these post-salvation deeds helps us to recognize the effect they have on our eternal rewards.

Consider these passages, which mention reward in relation to our deeds:
“He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life” (Romans 2:6–7, emphasis added). Here one’s salvation is evidenced in commensurate deeds.

And this passage that we looked at before,
“Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Corinthians 3:12–15, emphasis added).
And,
“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil (2 Corinthians 5:10, emphasis added).
And,
“Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay everyone for what he has done” (Revelation 22:12 emphasis added).

There is no denying that the Scriptures indicate a correlation between works and rewards. But how are these verses compatible with our understanding of grace by faith alone, apart from our deeds? The apostle Paul, champion of grace by faith alone, masterfully explains the balance for us:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8–10, emphasis added).
What a gracious master we serve: He saves us, equips us, supplies us with work, empowers us to accomplish it, and then still rewards us for that which we did in His strength!

Words

There is a special focus on a particular sub-category of our deeds, namely words. This is to be expected, since words are a barometer of the conditions brewing in our hearts (Luke 6:45).
Jesus lashed at the hypocritical Pharisees with righteous indignation, “The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matthew 12:36–37). Though the recipients of this scolding were unbelievers, the insight that words receive special attention on judgment day should be sobering.

And even believers—specifically teachers—are warned with these somber words,
“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body” (James 3:1).

Imagine for a moment that a fastidious team of researches were archiving every e-mail, text message, Tweet, or Facebook status update you have ever typed. Would that make you nervous? What if you discovered that a comprehensive compilation of your output—including transcripts of every conversation you’ve had and every sound you’ve mumbled under your breath—was to be printed and published in book form for the entire world to read? That would be quite a revealing and voluminous artifact, wouldn’t it?

The Bible teaches that the Judge, who is to determine your reward, is keeping track of everything you say.

Motives

God not only hears everything you say and sees everything your do, He also knows everything you think, everything you feel, and everything you mean to say! As Jesus said, “Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops” (Luke 12:3).
Paul, too, acknowledged the scrutiny of motives in the judgment:
“For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.

Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God” (1 Corinthians 4:2–5, emphasis added).

Two people may do the same deed but with very different motives. Anything—even that which seems praiseworthy—done with impure motives, will be disregarded. Only that done to the glory of God will survive the judgment.

Faithfulness

God does not reward according to what you do, but rather according to what you do with what you have. No one is responsible to do more than what has been entrusted to them. As Jesus clearly warned, “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more” (Luke 12:48b).

As Helen Keller, the champion of the physically handicapped once said, “I long to accomplish some great and noble task, but I am to do small tasks as if they were great and noble.” Some of us are more limited than others in the scope of our ministry. But thankfully God rewards only our faithfulness to do the best with what we have.

Conclusion: Immunity is not Impunity

She never knew what hit her. The sixteen-year-old girl had recently moved with her mother to Washington D.C. where she attended school and easily made friends who would shortly attend her funeral. She was out late. Just before midnight on the fateful night of Friday, January 3, 1997, as the car she was in casually approached DuPont Circle, the sound of shrieking tires, breaking glass, and buckling steel signaled a fleeting and chilling warning that probably barely registered in her awareness before…

The smoldering, five-car wreck claimed the girl’s life, and left four others seriously injured. The culprit was a drunk driver who had been bulleting through the city streets as if they were part of his own private Formula One playground. He plowed at full throttle into several cars stopped at a traffic light. He emerged unscathed and surrendered to the police with cavalier compliance, like a stroppy child who knows there will be no consequence for his naughtiness.

Sure enough, despite his obvious intoxication level and the corpse at the scene, the man was speedily released from custody. The police had no grip on this slippery character because of the license plate on his car. As it turned out, the driver was a foreigner, the deputy ambassador of his country. According to the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the envoys of the 187 signatory countries enjoyed immunity from prosecution in the countries in which they were serving.

But, in a twist of satisfying justice yet, the criminal’s immunity was waived by his superiors. A year later he was sentenced to serve seven to twenty-one years in prison for involuntary manslaughter.

The victim’s mother eloquently summed up the outcome, with a pithy flourish, “My daughter will not come back, but it has been worth the fight because immunity is not impunity.”

Well said indeed. Immunity from the law does not mean impunity from all consequence, even in theological terms. It is an error to assume that forgiveness of sins means there is no accountability or consequence for believers in this life or the next.

The lesson we take from the Bēma seat is that immunity from condemnation is not impunity from consequence. May God enable us all to be faithful with His gifts, to use them for His glory, and then to enjoy His gracious rewards to the degree we were obedient.

By Clint Archer

He was new to the creepy little town, but not a visitor. This dot on an Appalachian map was now home. His Christian upbringing had left his conscience averse to the “Solo Lobo Syndrome”— a lone wolf is a dead wolf was Grandma’s sagacious mantra. So that first Sunday he dutifully visited the only church in town. Its shabby, unkempt exterior didn’t put him off. It matched the ageing appearance of all the local buildings, and their occupants. He wasn’t expecting much from the service that morning, but still there was something slightly off-kilter about the experience, like when a painting has been hung askew, just enough to pique one’s awareness but not enough to be called crooked.

The bald greeter at the door seemed genuinely happy to meet the stranger. And although he never removed his right hand from the pocket of his suit pants, he warmly gripped the visitor by the shoulder and led him toward the sparse, seated congregation. The evidently tight-knit cohort of a dozen or so regulars greeted him enthusiastically. Everyone was friendly, though one or two could not mask their bemusement that this stranger had chosen to worship with them.

A short, elderly lady on well-used crutches peppered him with personal questions regarding his provenance, vocation, and intentions of staying. Her long dress hid the reason for her need of assistance. A smartly dressed, middle-aged gentleman interrupted her barrage of questions, gently announcing that the service was commencing. He then walked with a slight limp to the pulpit. The sermon contained nothing untoward, and the discerning new face smiled approvingly at the literal interpretation and faithfulness to the text of Scripture, in the King James Version. But behind his smile, the man found his thoughts wandering to the strange coincidence that the gentleman in the pew next to him, and the young lady sitting across the isle from him, were both missing some fingers.

After the service, as he exited the gravel parking lot, he saw the fellow who had greeted him at the door lugging a trashcan. His left hand gripped the handle, while his right arm hugged it to his chest, revealing a stump where his hand had been amputated. The flame of curiosity was now unquenchable. Impulsively pushing the break pedal, he hopped out, leaving the driver’s door open, trotted over the greeter and blurted, “I’m really sorry if this is rude, but I was wondering what happened to your hand?” As the words set sail from his mouth he realized how boorish he was being. He tried to recoup and offered, “It’s just that I also noticed a few others in the church who…” He couldn’t bring himself to finish. “You know…never mind. Sorry for… Have a nice day.” Just before he turned back to his car, the greeter smiled and said enigmatically, “If you decide to become a member here, you’ll find out.”

The Perception of Membership

Different churches and denominations teach varying views on church membership. Your perception of membership will vary widely on your upbringing, denominational practices, and experience with certain churches. For some, membership seems a normal. They belong to a gym, a country club, and a band—why not a church? To others membership feels intrusive and restraining, like a spiritual straight jacket. Some churches compound this perception by creating membership requirements as intimidating as a Faustian contract for your soul.
There are churches whose requirements for membership border on being illegal. You would experience this if you, like our unsuspecting stranger, decided to visit the church of Appalachian snake-handlers. This quirky sect is not renowned for their numerical growth. What they are known for is a disturbing and occasionally lethal worship rite, namely holding venomous serpents, usually rattlesnakes. (Two hints that you’ve stumbled upon such a church: the inordinate number of handicapped parking spots, and a visibly surprised greeter at the door).

The Church of God preacher, George Went Hensley, founded the dubious movement in the 1920s. Tragically, his own wife died of a snakebite. His faith, however, remained resolute to the end, which came in 1955 when at the age of seventy-five, he too died of a snakebite. Quelle surprise.

The rationale for this macabre commitment is that if one has decided to trust everything in the word of God, then one needs to practice everything found there. This includes the passage in Luke 10:17–19 where Jesus tells the seventy-two evangelists that they had been given authority to “tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.” The context clearly refers to the demons they were able to cast out, causing Satan, the Serpent of old to “fall like lightning.” But instead of paying attention to context and employing a modicum of common sense, they remain pertinacious in their belief that Christians should handle poisonous snakes as a sign of faith in God’s word.

Although the practice is only legal in West Virginia, there are today about forty churches in the USA and four in Canada who maintain this rite, to date accruing over a hundred fatalities and scores of maimed members who have lost fingers, hands, and legs to the hemotoxic venom of rattlesnakes.

No one can question the movement’s evidence of a committed membership. This introduces a pertinent question in contemporary church scene: Just how committed does a Christian really need to be to become a member of a local church?

On one extreme, you may have a church that has no formal procedure at all. Like buskers, their casual policy is, “Just enjoy the show and leave. A few coins in the coffer would be appreciated. You can feel free to get as involved as you would like, or to stay as anonymous as you want. You can sign up for the weekly e-mail if you like, but if your aversion to spam prevents you even from that step of commitment, it’s no problem; you can still tell people this is your church.”

On the other hand you have churches who insist on what feels like the FBI background investigation, weeks of doctrinal classes, signatures with witnesses on a statement of faith and members’ covenant, a public testimony, a vociferous congregational discussion, followed by a formal vote of secret ballot, and either a triumphant ceremony of acceptance, or a humiliating retry at the next meeting. It makes the simplicity of a rattlesnake faith test seem attractive.

As always, we need to shelve our perceptions and preconceptions, and examine what the Word of God says on the matter of membership.

The Proof of Membership

Psychologists call a fear of snakes ophidiophobia. I call it common sense. The aversion to churches that require handling venomous vipers is perfectly rational. There are reasons to avoid certain churches, but many who refuse to become church members, have no good reason.

I appreciate it when folks in my church ask me to produce a chapter and verse reference for any doctrine I mention. Like the Bereans they are diligent to “examine the Scriptures daily to see whether these things are so” (Acts 17:11). I have been asked, “Where in the Bible does God say I need to be a member of a church?” I occasionally like to reply with the playful retort, “Where in the Bible does it tell wives to love their husbands?” The fact is that some instructions in Scripture, though never overtly stated, are supplied by the implication of other commands. Older women, for example, are told in Titus 2:4 to “train the younger women to love their husbands.” Christians are also told to love their neighbors and their enemies alike. The command for a wife to love her husband is never actually stated, but it is an obvious implication of other commands.

Likewise, though membership is not declared in any particular verse, it is most certainly contained in dozens of other commands and situations that imply membership. As Mark Dever and Paul Alexander explain in their excellent work, The Deliberate Church, “It may seem like a stretch to say that local church membership is a biblical concept—that is, until we actually start looking for it in the Bible. It’s not as pronounced as the atonement of justification by faith. But the evidence is there, and it is consistent.” There may be different approaches in methodology, but it is necessary for the leadership of a local church to have some process in place to distinguish those considered as —to borrow the apostle Paul’s language from 1 Corinthians 5:12—“insiders” from those who are “outsiders.”
From the many commands in Scripture which imply membership, I see at least five lines of reasoning that prove God’s will for Christians is to be formally attached to a local church, as opposed to loosely associated.

The Presence of a Majority

The commands addressed to a majority imply some sort of understanding who constitutes the congregation. In 2 Corinthians 2:5–6 Paul says to the Corinthian church, “Now if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure—not to put it too severely—to all of you. For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough…” The fact that Paul and the church at Corinth recognized a majority, showed that they knew how many people constituted their local body.

In Acts 6:2 the apostles summoned “the full number of disciples” in their embryonic mega-church of 5000. Not only did they know how many were in their church, they knew when the full number was gathered. Also when delegates delivered a letter to the church at Antioch, they only did so when the whole church was gathered (Acts 15:30).

The Ability to Remove Members

The command to discipline believers by removing them from a church implies that the congregation is aware of who is “inside” and who is “outside” the church. In Matthew 18 Jesus supplied directions on how to graciously and patiently purge the church of unrepentant members. The penultimate step is, “If he refuses to listen to them [i.e. the two or three witnesses], tell it to the church…” The final step had to be taken before the assembly, not an assembly. Not an ad hoc committee. The church. It seems reasonable to assume that there was knowledge of who constituted that person’s church. And then the final step, “…And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (Matthew 18:17), another action for the entire assembly to be involved in. Discipline does not work without the cooperation of the entire church.

Similarly, in the church at Corinth, a church discipline case was brewing. The offending brother had been committing acts of unrepentant indecency and Paul told the church not to allow him to remain as part of the assembly but to “put him out.” Paul employed very specific language to differentiate between those inside and those outside, “For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. ‘Purge the evil person from among you’” (1 Corinthians 5:12–13; see also 2 Thessalonians 3:14).

The Consensus of Who is in the Church

The commands to choose from within the church imply that there was knowledge of who the members were. For example, in Acts 6:3 the apostles instructed the fully assembled church to select the first seven prototype deacons “from among you,” i.e. not from outside the church but from within it. No “outside hires” would be accepted. It stands to reason that the church was aware of who qualified as an insider. This principle of who is “among you” is reinforced by the practice of sending letters of commendation and acceptance with perambulating believers who were changing congregations (e.g. Acts 18:26; Colossians 4:10).
There are also lists of widows in the church who were eligible for support: “Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband” (1 Timothy 5:9). The term, “enrolled” means to be added to a list. There was an understanding of which widows were the responsibility of which church.
Also, the church was responsible for the support of its pastor (see also 1 Corinthians 9:4–14). This implies that there was consensus of whose responsibility it was to support which pastor.

Corporate Commands

The ubiquitous commands to practice the one anothers imply that believers are in a congregation of people whom they are instructed to exercise a variety of duties. These include serving, admonishing, encouraging, stirring up to love and good deeds, bearing burdens, helping, and many others. These commands are not referring to the community in general, but always to people in the church. Having a formal membership list helps know toward whom we are to target our obedience to these commands.

Accountability of Leaders

The commands for elders to be responsible for their flocks imply that they knew who their flocks were. The leadership of the church is commanded to pray for, teach, protect, and rebuke the sheep in the flock. It is obvious that they would need to know to whom they owe this responsibility.
In 1 Peter 5 “Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory” (1 Peter 5:2–4). The elders’ reward is linked to their faithfulness to their charge. A wise shepherd would take seriously for whom he will give an account.

When someone insists on a chapter and verse on membership, I slide Hebrews 10:17 out my scabbard. This unequivocal instruction cuts to the bone, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.”

If a church’s leadership decides to use a different process, then you may be off the hook. It is conceivable that a small congregation of twelve people would know when a new person starts attending regularly, wanting accountability, and showing commitment through giving and serving. They may informally decide if this person is one of them or not, and presumably would find a way to communicate this to him.
But if the leaders of the church you attend require membership, then you need to obey them. They will, after all, be accountable for your soul on judgment day. It seems reasonable for them to ask you to make it clear that you expect your name to come up when they give a reckoning for your soul with Jesus.

The Pictures of Membership

There is another strong case for formal church membership, which is as blatant as a bug on a windshield to anyone familiar with the New Testament. The images employed to describe the church irrefutably imply a formal connection, not a loose association.

The Household

The household metaphor is one of bonds of familial strength (1 Peter 4:17). When your five-year-old daughter doesn’t show up to the table for dinner, you notice. If your teenage son casually announced that he was transferring to his friend’s family, there would be some resistance. The severing of the family bond to start a new family is usually a big deal including tears and papers being signed, e.g. at a wedding.

The Flock

The flock metaphor also implies that the good shepherd would know if any of his sheep are missing (1 Peter 5:2). Shepherds frowned on their sheep casually wandering to sample the greener grass in the pasture of another flock.

The Body

The body metaphor speaks for itself (1 Corinthians 12:12–27). But allow me to pose one question: If your thumb looked like it was about to leave your body, would you resist that, or would you dismiss your connection to that digit as a loose association, hoping it would return? Exactly.

The Building

The building metaphor is a vivid picture of formal connection (1 Corinthians 3:10; 1 Peter 2:5). Bricks are affixed with mortar; they are not stacked loosely. And if a neighbor came and took a few of your bricks, you would notice and object. The inimitable Charles Spurgeon bewailed the “rolling stone” mentality of those who eschewed membership with these words,

“What is a brick for? To help build a house. It’s of no use for a brick to tell you it is just as good a brick while it is kicking about on the ground, as it would be in the house. It is a good-for-nothing brick. So you, rolling stone Christians, I do not believe you are answering your purpose. You are living contrary to the life which Christ would have you live.”

The Priority of Membership

In the Danish town of Billund, in 1932 Ole Kirk Christiansen began making little wooden blocks as toys for children. These toys developed over the next twenty-six years into the system of “automatic binding bricks” made of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene. Or “plastic.” They had several round studs on top, and a hollow rectangular bottom, enabling them to snap together. The company name comes from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means to play well. We call the blocks Lego. Today production of bricks averages 20 billion per year, or six hundred bricks a second. Every person on the planet could own sixty-two.

The genius of the system lies in the way it blends unity and diversity. The bricks are produced according to various themes, e.g. Vikings, pirates, Star Wars, construction workers, knights of Camelot, etc. But each block is first and foremost, part of a universal system. Despite tremendous variation in the design and purpose of individual pieces over the years, each remains compatible with existing pieces. Bricks from 1958 still interlock with those made in 2008. When snapped together, Lego pieces can’t be too easily pulled apart, or the resulting constructions would be unstable; they also cannot be too difficult to pull apart, since the interchangeability with other constructions is part of the appeal.

The similarities with another organization are uncanny. The universal church consists of millions of bricks (to borrow the biblical metaphor from 1 Peter 2:5, “You are living stones being built up in a partial house”). These bricks have been produced in various countries over many years. Each individual appears in a variety of contexts whether Baptist, Presbyterian, Anglican, Charismatic, Conservative, or whatever, but all are first and foremost part of a universal system and those Christians made in 33AD are compatible with those made in 2014.

Although Christians are individuals before God, and can shift from one congregation to another as they change their domicile, they are only useful if they are snapped in tightly enough to be part of a work in a certain place. As a Christian who is part of the worldwide universal church, you also need to be part of a local congregation. The local church is the manifestation of the universal church. If you are not plugged into a church you are a rogue believer.

The writer of Hebrews outlines your responsibility and the warning if you habitually neglect it, in this way,
“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries” (Hebrews 10:24–27).

Did you get that? You need to be part of a group of Christians who meet together regularly. If you skip a service for vacation, that’s one thing; but if you make it a habit to neglect the meeting, you are “sinning deliberately,” which implies that you are an unbeliever or “adversary” with “a fearful expectation of judgment.” Ok, so this is serious stuff. This is why pastor and author, Mark Dever, who has taught and written extensively on church membership, often begins his sermon on this topic with the attention grabbing words, “If you are not a member of the church you may be going to hell.” He goes on to explain that in the same way that a desire to be accountable and to be involved in God’s family is a sign of grace, the converse is also true: if you don’t want accountability or involvement, then what does that say about the state of your soul? Christians are by definition sinners who repent. If you refuse to repent of your neglected involvement of your church (see Hebrews 10:24–27 above for a reminder) then it may be right to question the assurance of your salvation.

Conclusion

Membership can be a scary doctrine. But it’s a necessary one for Christians to understand. The fear of committing to a local church is an indicator of spiritual immaturity. It’s analogous to another kind of fear of commitment called anuptaphobia. Anuptaphobia is the fear of staying single, or of being married to the wrong person for life. This type of commitment dysfunction is common among single people who want the benefits of marriage like companionship, sex, convenience of cohabitation, and perhaps even children. But they simultaneously crave the freedom of independence. They try to reserve the moral right to bail on the relationship if and when it suits them to do so. But the benefits of marriage are only permissible within the impenetrable fortress of the marriage covenant. It is commitment that makes marriage work. In the same way, membership opens the door to benefits of the local church.

If you say you love Christ, but you hate his Bride, you are deluding yourself. If you want to be united to Christ, but refuse union with his church, you are advocating spiritual anuptaphobia. It betrays immaturity and confused priorities. Are you the type of person who would commit to a gym, but not a church? What does that tell you about your spiritual life? I love what author Joshua Harris’s sobriquet for people who like to visit churches, but refuse to commit. His calls them “church daters.” They are people who test drive churches like teenage boys who try out a girlfriend through the serial monogamy of dating. Harris insightfully points out that church daters tend to be “me centered, independent, and critical.” They look for a church that suits their felt needs, where people let them do what they want, and they often find something wrong with the church which supposedly justifies their reluctance to commit.

Picture an immature guy who dates a young lady because of what he gets out of the relationship, he enjoys the freedom that dating affords as opposed to marriage, and he reserves the right to break it off with her when he thinks he can “do better.” Nauseating, isn’t it? Meet the modern church dater. Is this pathetic portrait a picture of you and your commitment to Christ’s bride? As intimidating as it may be, I challenge you to be like your Savior and love the church. Overcome your spiritual anuptaphobia.

This was a remarkable week for the pro-life movement.

Wednesday the US Supreme Court heard Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which was the first major abortion case the court had taken up in nearly 30 years. Since the last case (Casey vs. Planned Parenthood in 1992), a lot has changed. The so-called “age of viability” has lowered, the pro-life legal movement matured, and a generation of Americans has grown up around ultra-sound pictures on refrigerators and Facebook walls.

The pro-life movement has expanded dramatically in those last 30 years, likely because of those very things I just noted.  Yet it has also grown accustomed to legal let downs and mealy-mouthed compromises. So when I tuned into Wednesday’s oral arguments, I was prepared for the worst, but left honestly astonished at how well it went for the pro-life movement.

The advocate for the pro-life cause, the solicitor general from Mississippi, was prepared, and directly and boldly. He flat out told the Justices that they are in a legal mess of their own making, that the Roe vs. Wade decision of 1973 has wrecked the American political system and made American politics essentially dysfunctional. Moreover, Roe vs. Wade was wrongly decided, has no basis in constitutional law, is unworkable, and goes against the legal principles of our country.

But most significantly, he said that is the only example of a law that invents a right for one person to take the life of another.

This was likely the first time anybody has stood in the Supreme Court and spoke about abortion that directly. Even if nothing comes from this case, that moment alone represents a substantial advance in the pro-life cause.

The contrast between the two sides in the case was jarring and obvious. Compared to the force and clarity of the pro-life position, the pro-choice position fell apart. The US Solicitor General, who was making the pro-choice argument, sounded almost resigned. While the pro-life side was forceful and presented with moral clarity, the opposing side sounded hesitant and murky. One side argued against the legalized taking of human life, while the other side argued that it was too disruptive to overturn fifty years of abortion precedent.

This led Justice Alito (appointed by Bush) to ask about cases legalizing discrimination and segregation. We would all agree that they were wrongly decided, but rightfully reversed fifty years later. Why not this case? He seemed to eventually get the pro-choice attorney to grant that if a case is “egregiously wrong” then it should be reversed.

Meanwhile, Kavanagh (appointed by Trump) said, “this case is hard because we can’t accommodate the interests of both the [abortion minded] woman and the fetus.” While many people jumped on this as evidence that the pro-life justice doesn’t care about women’s rights, it is in reality a very powerful statement if its implications are followed. What is the interest of the abortion-minded woman? To be rid of her baby. What is the interested of the fetus? To not be killed.

This led to Justice Sotomayor (appointed by Obama) to point out that a fetus might not be able to feel pain because sometimes brain dead people have reflexes against pain, but that doesn’t indicate brain activity. It was really just as shocking and out of place in court as I’m sure it comes across here. I mean, at the most basic level, even if a fetus is at the same level of personhood as a brain dead person after a stroke, it would still be barbaric and immoral to rip a brain dead person apart limb from limb to sell the body parts.

One justice (I think also Sotomayor, but it may have been Kagan) kept pressing on if the concept of “age of viability” is a theological or rational concept. Her point seemed to be that if it was a theological concept, then the Supreme Court shouldn’t regulate it. When I heard that part of the case, I was stunned—that is exactly the argument for the pro-life cause! The concept of “age of viability” (which the Supreme Court has used to say that abortion cannot be limited before it) is not a real scientific boarder. It is arbitrary and unworkable. It makes no moral sense to say that that 23 weeks it is morally wrong to kill a fetus, but at 22 weeks and 6 days it is ok.

Regardless, those were basically the sum total of the pro-choice arguments made. There was no positive case made for their view, beyond “don’t overturn precedent.” I wonder if that was not the legal strategy—they knew they can’t persuade the justices that abortion is actually moral, so focus on the credibility of the court if they overturn precedent? Maybe it was a strategy, or maybe it just reveals the moral bankruptcy of the pro-choice side of the debate.  

Justice Sotomayor was on to something though. The bedrock of the American experiment is that people have rights endowed to them by their creator. While neither the Puritans nor the Conquistadores could have predicted that abortion would have been an issue that would split our country politically, both groups would have been aghast at the notion that the highest court in the land would jettison the idea of rights coming from a creator as “too religious for our laws.”

As I said earlier, the pro-life cause is used to legal let downs. But regardless of how the justices rule, the case has already succeeded in exposing just haw flimsy the pro-choice legal case really is. This is perhaps why most news stories didn’t contain the pro-life arguments—the papers simply ignored them. This is also why many liberals who listened to the arguments said they went terribly for the pro-choice cause, and I think many of them were as surprised at how shallow and base their arguments sound in comparison to the pro-life arguments.

Regardless, for the first time in a generation, the reality of abortion was presented clearly and convincingly in front of the very people who have the power to do something about it.

Over the next few weeks I am posting five chapters I wrote for the book, Things That Go Bump in the Church. The word count, of 5,000 is about five times longer than my normal posts here, so it may require two cups of coffee to get through, but I hope you will find these offerings enjoyable.

Spiritual Swashbuckling: Dealing with Demons

By Clint Archer

It was a dark night. Raining. I awoke to frantic knocking on my cabin door. Youth camps often come with various genres of drama, from relationship angst to teary confession sessions. As a camp counselor I had encountered my diverse array of spiritual emergencies on my watch, ranging from the need to rebuke a bevy of mean girls, to confiscating contraband magazines from the guys’ dorm. But the look in this kid’s eyes was one of genuine terror. Something was wrong. I grabbed my Bible and charged through the pouring rain in pursuit of the young man who had been sent to summon me. When I got to the dorm room, all twelve teenage boys were standing outside, shivering wet.

They sheepishly confessed that they had been experimenting with an occult game, glassy-glassy. This is where people supposedly channel spirits, which move a glass over a lettered board to eerily spell out instructions from the netherworld. The boys breathlessly recounted what they had witnessed. Shortly after they had turned out the lights and sealed the door, they heard an intense crying sound in the room like a baby had been pinched. This was followed by hissing noises and more high-pitched cries. The stunned boys all looked thoroughly traumatized. This was no prank being played on the camp counselor. I wanted to ask which one of them was disturbed enough to bring Satanic paraphernalia to a Christian camp, and why none of the others were man enough to put a stop to it. Instead, I clutched my Bible, boldly kicked open the door, and flipped on the light switch.

After a halting flicker, the room was flooded with a fluorescent blaze, and I immediately saw the creature. It was as hideous as any I had seen before. Wild eyes glaring at me, sharp fangs bared, curved claws gripping a shredded down pillow, it was perched as if spring-loaded to pounce at my jugular. This was the most terrified cat I had ever encountered.

The poor animal’s back leg had been clipped between the metal bed frame and the wall, probably when one of the camp’s dumbest dozen shifted the cot during their would-be foray into the spirit realm. I moved the bed with my foot and the beast made a limping beeline for the door. The boys’ fear had turned to throbbing embarrassment. Without a word I trudged back to my cabin, rolling my eyes in disdain, and shaking uncontrollably from the adrenalin and cold.

As I lay on my hard mattress with the lights on, I kept wondering why my first reaction had been to expect that the encounter would be with a demon. I had honestly thought that a Satanic specter was a legitimate explanation for the fear that gripped those young men. What sane person hears, “There’s a noise in my dorm room,” and concludes, “This could a demon”? It bugged me that I had reacted so superstitiously. But I realized that what had sparked my fear was the unknown. I knew almost nothing about glassy-glassy, the occult, or the demonic realm. I knew that the Bible considered demons to be real. And I had heard stories of demonic manifestations from people who had heard it from people, who probably read it on the Internet. But I was clueless as to what the Bible said about demons. This is a symptom of a broader problem: that of appointing new converts as youth leaders.

I decided that I would ferret out every verse in the Bible on spiritual warfare and demonic activity. If the spirit dimension was real and demons were still at large today, I wanted to be well informed of their operations. And if all the demons mentioned in the Bible were now in some sort of hibernation, I wanted to be biblically certain of that.

My feline foundling had provided me with a vivid metaphor: flipping a light switch was all it took to strip a situation of futile phobias that are bred in the darkness of ignorance. I needed Scriptural illumination to dispel my spiritual naïveté. Incidentally, I also learned that night why so few people consider themselves “cat people”—that horrid little fiend haunts my dreams.

There Are No Experts

In my studies on spiritual warfare one illusion I was summarily disabused of was the notion that there are experts in the field. Any reading you do soon demonstrates that the pundits cite experience as their primary source of information, and those experiences vary greatly. Either the expert has assimilated an anthology of anecdotes as related by other people, or just as commonly, he or she claims to have personally witnessed some sort of manifestation.

One such self-styled authority is Neil Anderson. His experience led him to make some outrageous conclusions, for example, “It is my observation that no more than 15% of the evangelical Christian community is completely free from Satan’s bondage.” He makes other authoritative assertions of this sort: “Demonic influence is not an external force in the physical realm; it is the internal manipulation of the central nervous system.” And he even blames sins of omission and commission on demonic control over believers, “Anything bad which you cannot stop doing, or anything good which you cannot make yourself do, could be an area of demonic control.”

There are a few problems with the limited information on demons out there. The usual suspects in the line up are subjective interpretations, unverifiable claims, and of course, the big E on the eye-chart: the untrustworthiness of the source.

The Flimsy Sword of Subjective Interpretation

Subjective interpretations plague the research. Some of the information comes from people who swear they “felt a presence” of evil, or their hair stood on end when they walked in a room. Like a flimsy sword, this type of claim makes some noise, but is useless to serious study. God has not equipped humans with a sixth sense to be brandished like a Geiger meter to detect invisible spirits. Our feelings are a flimsy sword in the battle of truth.

The Rusty Blade of Unverifiable Claims

You can’t trust a rusty blade in a duel, and you can’t rely on fanciful, unverifiable claims when formulating a doctrine. Supernatural experiences are by definition exempt from the standards of enquiry in the natural sciences. This pops open a portal to outrageous abuses. Anyone looking for attention can claim a paranormal experience. This can be any variety of ghost hunter, from your well-intentioned, slightly delusional weirdo, to an outright lying liar who is craving attention from their pew buddies at church.

This phenomenon is not limited to the church. The epidemic of alien kidnappings is spreading among other ignored folks in the flyover states who resent their anonymity and are pursuing their fifteen minutes of entitled fame. Demonology is simply the church’s flavor of a wider cultural obsession with the supernatural, reflected in the television line up, which features scores of vampires, angels, and psychics.
But the most undermining issue with experience-based information in the field of demons is the untrustworthiness of the source.

Liars Make Unreliable Sources

I’m not saying that experiences of demonic activity never happen, I’m merely pointing out that they can’t be trusted as authoritative. Think about it. Demons are a genus of beings known for being masters of deception (John 8:44). Who would choose to base their research on what these lying liars say? It seems to me that general issue equipment for demon hunters should not be a holy water, but rather a pinch of salt.

Fred Dickason recounts his interview with a spirit,

“I queried the demon regarding his undercover mind control. He admitted to controlling the brain through electrical and chemical changes. ‘We have power in that,’ was his confession. Again we do not take this as scientific evidence, but his confirmation of controlling the mind through the brain, must be considered. Why would he give away such damaging information except he were under pressure from the Lord?”

Why indeed, Dr Dickason? Perhaps so that he can deceive his quarry into believing that he is now an expert who can write books on his experiences, thus distracting Christians from the truth. That’s just my guess, but I’m no expert. Then again, neither is Dr Dickason, nor is Neil Anderson. There are no experts in this field. No one person has any more reliable information than anyone else.

So where does that leave us? If we want to know about demons is there anywhere we can turn for trustworthy information that runs no risk of the contamination of error and deception? Enter, the word of God.

The Sword of the Spirit

One trustworthy supernatural source of information is the Holy Spirit, who inspired the writings of Scripture, “for the word of God, is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword” (Hebrews 4:1). A belief in the doctrine of inerrancy is the only safeguard against the chronic confusion that obscures this topic. The apostle Paul told Timothy that, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). The apostle Peter gave us the assurance that we as Christians have “been given all things pertaining to life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3). If God wanted to tell us what to do and how to do it, He is certainly capable of it. He is not suffering from a speech impediment. God can and has revealed everything we need to live a life pleasing to him, including how to deal with the spiritual realm. As long as we rightly interpret the Bible, we will have the light of knowledge guarding us from the fear and confusion that comes from ignorance.

There is one interpretive principle that is most helpful to keep in your hermeneutic tool belt: the difference between descriptive accounts and prescriptive instructions.

Description is not Prescription

This tool helps you understand why there are accounts sprinkled throughout the four Gospels and the book of Acts about demons being cast out. These books are historical narrative accounts of events that occurred. What we learn from them is that demons exist, that they can possess unbelievers, and that they can be cast out by Jesus and the apostles who had His authority to do so. But these descriptive accounts are not intended to be a manual prescribing the how-to’s for every Christian who wants to go ghost-busting in Galilee like the disciples did.

The New Testament epistles are crammed with prescriptive instructions on how Christians are to live, to behave, and to think. It is very significant to note that none of these epistles give any instruction whatsoever on how to (or even whether to) cast out a demon. In a book written by God for His people to know what to do and how to live, the fact that there is absolutely no instruction on how to cast out a demon is a lesson in itself.

Demons, we learn from descriptions of their abilities and proclivities are extremely dangerous. One account we have in Acts would almost be humorous if it were not so chilling. In Acts 19 we are told, “Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, ‘I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims’” (Acts 19:13). Apparently these guys had witnessed Paul cast out demons. And taking that description as a prescription on how to do the same, they confronted a demon-possessed man. The result: “But the evil spirit answered them, ‘Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?’ And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded” (Acts 19:15–16). Yikes. I facetiously wrote in the margin of my Bible, “I.e. don’t try this at home.”

Lesson learned: just because someone else has his or her license to operate heavy machinery, does not mean you have the right or ability to drive a forklift. We do not apply descriptions of Moses parting the Red Sea directly, so why assume Paul’s authority over demons is ours for the wielding? This can be dangerous, just ask Sceva’s bruised boys.

Parry with Error with Truth

The Bible supplies us with helpful information concerning the spirit world. Demons are spirit beings who are fallen angels, cast out of heaven and operating in this world to oppose the rule of God on earth (Revelation 12:9). We can assume that they are immortal, intelligent, and consummately evil. And as Satan’s minions, they are never ever to be trusted as a source of any information (John 8:44).

Demons can, like Satan orchestrate temptations (Luke 4:13), infiltrate society through teachings (1 Timothy 4:1; James 3:15), instigate false religions (1 Corinthians 10:20), hinder the ministry of believers (2 Corinthians 12:7), possess unbelievers (though with some challenges involved in finding a suitable host as in Luke 11:24), tell fortunes (Acts 16:16), and empower convincing fake miracles (2 Thessalonians 2:9; Revelation 16:14).

However, demons cannot do whatever they want. They are limited to operate within parameters set by God, like when Jesus granted the seventy-two evangelists “demonic immunity” (Luke 10:19). Demons cannot possess believers (1 John 5:18), nor can they control a believer’s mind, or make a believer sin (James 1:14). But they may somehow also be able to influence the mind to be tempted to sin, probably through external teachings and situations (Acts 5:3).

There is no evidence in Scripture that visible demonic activity should be expected as a normative part of the Christian life, despite the many occurrences in the Gospels.

As Konya points out,
“It should be recalled that historically most cases of demon passion described in the New Testament occurred in idolatrous or occultic settings such as Galilee, Phoenicia or Ephesus. It seems reasonable to conclude from this that demon possession is most likely to be encountered in persons whose past involves serious involvement with the occult or idolatry.”

I’m not saying that demons are in a low-power, screensaver mode today. They are active in variegated ways, but they can function in subtle and sophisticated ways too. In societies where the supernatural is accepted wholesale as a given, the reports of overt demonic activity tend to be more prevalent. They seem to be less shy to manifest visibly. Shamanism, animism, ecstatic ritualism, and urban-brew Satanism are fertile soil for demonization. Reports abound from missionaries who infiltrate Amazon tribal rituals, or encounter African “sangomas” (witchdoctors) in ancestral worship. Some pastors in the South Pacific islands report sustained demonic activity where the paranormal intersects with the normal as a matter of routine.

On the other hand, in societies where an acknowledgement of genuine supernatural events is generally held in condescending disdain, demonic activity is far more subtle and covert. The rationalism of Westerners is easy to use against us to keep us duped. The supernatural is relegated to the world of fanciful fiction, the likes of TV shows and vampire novels. No self-respecting Western secularist would entertain the notion that demons are real. Such myths are unscientific and therefore primitive. But the danger of that naïve denial is as insidious as the alternative.

C. S. Lewis warned in his Screwtape Letters,

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about devils: one is to disbelieve in there existence. The other is to believe and feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”

The face of evil may look less like a tormented cat than you think; it may be the clean-cut cult leader or the esteemed seminary professor who is propagating godless arguments that fortify the strongholds of demonic influence in society and the church. This threat should not be ignored. It is as devastating to impressionable minds as demon possession is to a body.

Our Riposte: A Right Response

Despite the conspicuous absence of instruction on how to engage the enemy forced in the physical world, the New Testament is replete with marching orders for Christians. Our Commander-in-Chief has not left us to guess His will, or devise a strategy apart from His guidance. He has instructed us on what to do and how to do it. Not surprisingly, there are no recipes for holy water or scripts for incantations. Instead, there are commands to apply the lessons of Scripture and trust God to do the rest.

First we are told to combat demonic influence with spiritual virtue, not in the physical realm (Ephesians 6:11ff; 2 Corinthians 10:4–5). Our task is to resist temptation by submitting to God’s will (James 4:7).
If you feel tempted to try bind or rebuke a demon just bear in mind that God has specifically told His people to refrain from confronting demons in this way (2 Peter 2:11; Jude 9–10). Where we got the idea it was ok to talk to demons, or address Satan in our prayers to God, is unfathomable. I’ve heard pastors, frustrated by a malfunctioning church sound system, derail their prayer to God with phrases like, “And now we bind you Satan in the name of Jesus, you are not welcome here, and we resist your presence, and we shun your distractions.” For one thing Satan is not omnipresent or omniscient. My guess he is probably occupied with activities more important that attacking your overhead projector or snapping a worship leader’s guitar string. But even if his demons were active in a church building, there is no biblical evidence to suggest that the influence would include mysterious gremlin-type interference of our physical apparatus. And even if it was, that is no license to talk to the demon.

The overarching principle in our response to the demonic realm is to understand that there are spiritual schemes at play (2 Corinthians 2:11) and that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:11), so the resistance needs to be spiritual, not physical. There is no protective spell or vial of holy water that works as well as simply walking in God’s will, obeying him, being a worshipper of Christ, evangelizing the lost, and praying to God about any fear or situation that occurs.

When the Apostle Paul preached the gospel in the hip, metropolitan neighborhood of Ephesus, the effects were dramatic. After the scandalous whipping of Sceva’s would-be ghost-busters, the city of Ephesus was ablaze with change, literally:
“And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled. Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily” (Acts 19:17–20).

That is a lot of esoteric kindling. Ephesus must have been a demonic stronghold. To think that the converts from pagan magic burned books to the value of 50000 pieces of silver, one can imagine just how prolific the magic arts must have been in that city. The instructions God gave the fledgling church in Ephesus contains a conspicuous absence of physical methods. Instead, Paul lists the armor of God described as virtues to be spiritually donned by all believers:
“Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak” (Ephesians 6:11–20).

This is the most direct and detailed instruction in the whole Bible on how believers are to treat the demonic realm. There isn’t a single hint of casting out, binding, or in anyway engaging demons or their possessed hosts. That is either a blundering oversight of eternal proportions, or the most compelling evidence that Christians are not supposed to engage the spiritual world directly.

Conclusion

In my teenage years I fenced competitively and I fancied myself quite the swaggering swashbuckler. I was indomitable in my age group (as I remember it), but I’ll never forget what it was like to draw swords against the national champion. He practiced at my club, so on occasion I challenged him to a duel. My goal was to score a single point. Fencing him was an exercise is humility. Even when he was going easy on me, I could barely register where the blade was at any given moment. Once I got hit squarely on the back. How he bent his blade to reach my spine while still standing before me was an embarrassing enigma. I was clearly out classed.

Lessons like that lingered with me into my pastoral career. There are times when I hear of pastors challenging demons by castigating them, invoking formulas to bind them, drive them out, or in some other way wrangle compliance from them. I shudder at the thought of drawing spiritual swords with a creature as powerful as a demon.

The doctrine of spiritual warfare is a scary one for many Christians, and with good reason. When we are blindfolded by misinformation, we really have no idea what we are getting into. But as soon as we aim the biblical floodlight of truth on the matter, we are comforted to know that our God is invincible, and He is on our side. Rather than become fascinated by the intrigue of the spiritual world, we should focus on the accessible truth in our laps, the Scriptures. In them is everything we need to keep us safe and help us to live godly lives. All of our spiritual swashbuckling should be directed at the enemy within our reach: sin’s temptations, demonic teachings, and the residual enemy within our own flesh. Demons are out of our league, and we should praise God that He doesn’t expect us to draw swords with them. He is our shield, our defender, and our fortress. “What shall we say then? If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31).