Working on Reformation, Praying for Revival

   Welcome to Reformation Day our annual celebration of what God accomplished for the church and the world through the likes of Martin Luther, Tyndale, Calvin and their generation. While the Reformation recovered (and its important to understand that the Reformation was a recovery project) several vital doctrines that lay at the heart of Christianity, its also vital to see that the Reformation was, at its heart a revival of faithful Christian worship and life across Christendom. For centuries the Roman church had accumulated accrustations of falsehood and corruption. These corruptions led most devastatingly to the loss of the doctrine of Justification by Faith and with it all manner of other fundamental teachings from the Bible and the Church Fathers. The Roman Catholic church had developed all manner of theological and liturgical innovations over the previous centuries, innovations which had the left the biblical voice of the church unrecovnizable. The Reformation was not an attempt to begin something new, it was a movement to scrape these additions to the Apostolic faith from the teaching and worship of the church, to remove the corruptions and to pursue a renewal of the church throughout Europe. The blood of many saints were spilled in these efforts and the church in the West was split as the wickedness of Rome persisted, refusing the repentance offered in the Reformation. But the Reformers did not seek to simply purify the doctrine of the church. The Reformation entailed a re-examination of the church's relationship to the political rulers as well as a restoration of biblical worship in the liturgy. The liturgy had shifted from the work of God's people, to a ceremonial observance for God's people. The authorities of the church saw all God-ordained authority subsumed under their own. Kings, meant to rule under Lordship of Christ for the good of their nations were subject to the dictates of the Vicar of Rome. 

This work of reformation gave rise throughout Europe to a great reviving work of God. The gospel of God's grace, uncovered by Rome's additions was unleashed that had lost the wonder of the Gospel. The altars were cleared of their thousands of intermediaries and the church rediscovered the glory of worship and the Eucharist. The Scriptures were proclaimed and read among the common folk. Joy broke out in all corners of Europe and eventually England and Scotland. As the purity of the church and her worship was pursued, the Spirit of God blew across this work to revive the faith that had been slowly eroded in the late Middle Ages. All of life was reformed and revived by the Word and the accompanying work of God's Spirit. 

...in our own day.

We live in a day wherein the church desperately needs another work of reformation and, in God's mercy, revival. I was talking to a friend this week who asked me to summarize what I pray God might do in and through our church in our city. I answered, "Reformation and Revival." Revival is a funny word. If one grew up in the south it means a series of meetings held by the church and scheduled several months in advance. A usually fiery preacher comes in and gives "revival" messages for a few nights, complete with long altar calls and some people praying in the back. For others, images of college students singing fervently in auditoriums and arenas with lots of crying, hands raised and the rest. A couple of years ago a lengthy night of worship at several universities took on a life of their own with Christians traveling from all over the country to see what was going on. Some walked away confessing the authenticity of these "revivals" on the basis of what they felt when they were in the room. Others mocked the whole ideas arguing that such emotionalism was being manufactured. In such seasons, I find Jonathan Edwards' work The Religious Affections to be helpful. He argued for a strong "wait and see" posture. Strong emtional responses are no proof of a genuine work of God in revival, nor are they an argument against such a move of God. The fruit of genuine revival is a life marked by repentance, faith and genuine fruit of such faith: obedience. God has used all manner of methods to produce such fruit over the centuries, sometimes quiet and sometimes loud. But do not be fooled by appearances. 

I take "revival" to mean a supernatural work of God wherein he works through his Word and by His Spirit to lead whole churches, cities and even nations to turn from their unbelief and sin, to believe and rejoice in the Gospel, and to bring all of their lives under the authority and reign of Jesus. The most important component in this definition is that revival is a "work of God." It is not our work. We pray for it. We arrange the wood on the altar. But God must light such fires that would burn through our churches, our homes, and our cities. 

Reformation is the work of arranging the wood for the fire. It is the work to purify the teaching of the church, to teach, to worship, to pray. It is the work to see that the word we proclaim, is in fact, Christ's Word and not our own innovations or subtractions. It is the application of the Word to every area of life - from our own piety, to the life of our families, to our work and our politics. It is the diligent effort to purify the church's worship, the church's doctrine, and the church's relationship with the city around her. We pray for revival. We do the work of reformation. We want to see every part of lfie, for all people, lived under the total reign of Christ. This cannot happen across our city apart from a work of God. But what the church can do is to structure her worship in accordance with the Word, to teach the law and the gospel in accordance with the Word, and apply God's word to every part of life, leaving nothing alone. 

So, what does Reformation look like at Trinity...

Reformational Worship

Worship is always about God. It entails the covenant people of God gathering in God's presence to renew covenant with Him. It is the people who sing. It is the people who confess their sins and are assured of their pardon in Christ. It is the people who gather at God's covenant table for bread and wine. We believe that the worship of the church is central to everything else God is doing in the world, so the gathering of God's people on Sunday is central to our life as a people in Denver. Our children are included in this offering we bring before God each week so they are with us when we sing, when we confess our sins and when we come to the table. Our singing should reflect the great songs that God has given us in his Word, so we sing Psalms, we sing hymns and we sing in the power of the Spirit and the faith that He gives us. We want our worship to be free of Romish innovations adding layers of corruption to the worship of God's people. We also want our worship to be free of all modern corruptions as well. The worship of the Roman churches prior to the Reformation had separated the work as well as the blessings of the liturgy from the people. The priests worshipped while the people looked on. Much modern worship does the same. A dark room with screens pulls ones' attention away from the precious reality that we gather as a church, a covenant community, creating the illusion that its just you and Jesus. A professional band drowns the singing of God's people, moving the locus of these offerings to "priests" whom do all the worshipping for us. Children are shuffled from the room in the name of age-appropriate learning, training us to think of worship as an educational experience rather than offerings brought before God and the blessings of God poured out on His people. Worship is assessed on how it made me feel, rather than on its objective beauty, its truthfulness, and its faithfulness to the Gospel itself. The wood arranged rightly means a people gathered in the name of Jesus, bringing their offerings in song, confessing their sins, believing God's Word and expectant that God will keep all His promises. 

Reformational Preaching and Application

Christ is Lord of everything. His Word must be taught and His word must be applied. We have grown far too comfortable with heady doctrine that has no feet on it. When revival comes, it always comes with feet. It brings repentance, faith and obedience to every square inch of life. The gospel of God's grace in Christ is believed, yes. But also, men lead their families and lead in civic life with courage and boldness. Wives submit to their husbands and fill the world with beauty and fruitfulness. Children are given Christian educations. Businesses refuse to bend the knee to DEI, the feministas, or any other godless agenda. Sexual immorality is cut off. Generosity abounds. Hard work and excellence in the work done throughout the city is pursued. The grounds for revival will always entail the preaching and application of the fullness of God's Word. The wood arranged rightly will entail a Word that shapes and directs all of life, not just our pieties or our theology, but our politics, our businesses, and our homes.

Reformational Church Life

Ephesians 3 tells us that Jesus has given gifts to his people in the form of pastors and teachers - men, called by God to shepherd God's people - to teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded them. For much of modern church life, pastors and elders have functioned more as business managers and celebrities rather than as shepherds of God's people. The elders of the church are given by God for the sake of counseling, comforting, disciplining, and leading the church - to do so, they must actually know the people they lead. They must confront sin, they must counsel with compassion and courage, and they must demonstrate a joyful hospitality. The wood arranged rightly will entail shepherds who faithfully love God's people and disciple those under their care, helping all to faithfully follow our Lord and to trust in His good mercy. 

And so, we pray for revival and we prepare for it through a church life marked by reformation - reformed both from the corruptions of the papists and the corruptions of modernity. We seek a city that is Christian, filled with the mercy and righteousness of God, and pray that God might come and move even here. 

To go all in… Pete Hegseth and the US Naval Academy

I left the oil fields of North Texas to attend the United States Naval Academy in the summer of 1996. Bill Clinton was President. 9/11 and our lengthy entanglements in the Middle East had yet to kick off in earnest. I was an 18-year-old still deeply affected by an immature mythology of the persistent righteousness of America and her military. I went to Annapolis because I loved football, I loved America, and I thought this was the best way to pursue honor and glory as a young American. I went to the hallowed grounds of the Naval Academy because I believed that this was the most honorable and pure vocation one could pursue. 

One's first year in Annapolis is called "plebe year," wherein a bunch of promising and relatively accomplished 18-year-olds are reduced to plebeians - the lowest class in Roman society. Plebe summer kicks off with a raucous 8-week "boot camp" known as plebe summer. On Induction day, mostly naive young men and women walk into Alumni Hall (the Basketball and Event Center at USNA) and are corralled through a series of rooms where their life is quickly altered. They are led by "Detailers" who will serve as their torturers for the summer, but who seem relatively kind and mostly patient during this day. Your clothing is taken from you. Your hair is taken from you. Your first name is taken from you. You are handed an enormous number of uniforms. You are taught some basic military etiquette - how to salute, how to respond to questions and orders from a superior, and some basic "plebe" rules for how to navigate Bancroft Hall (plebes must "chop" in the center of all hallways, square all corners and yell the hallowed "Go Navy!" or "Beat Army!" throughout). You must "keep your eyes in the boat" (look straight ahead), give forthright answers to all addresses (definitely don't mumble anything), and we learned the basics of marching and how to wear the Plebe pajamas (uniforms worn almost exclusively during Plebe summer that look like, well, pajamas). 

At the end of I-Day, the whole class, 1200 strong, is marched out onto Tecumseh Court and given a nice speech, after which they take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. We were then given 15 minutes to say our goodbyes to any family and friends who'd come to see us off and then return to our "decks" in Bancroft. My mother had been unable to afford the trip out to Annapolis. A wonderful family who'd we'd connected with via Baptist Student Ministries had picked me up at the airport, dropped me off, and was there to see me off. I went and thanked them for their support of this relative stranger and then set out to arrive early to my deck and begin this thing called "Plebe Summer." 

As I approached the door to the enormous Bancroft, I heard AC/DC playing rather loudly from the windows of a room over my head. I thought this was odd and out of character for my experiences the rest of the day. As I got even nearer, I heard a cacophony of voices, all deafening and some extremely stressed. When I entered the door, what I found was what appeared to be absolute chaos. Plebes standing, running, doing pushups, people crying. Detailers, in a line, took each plebe as they entered the doors, yelling, asking unanswerable (at that point) questions, ordering pushups, and questioning how such specimens as ourselves could be allowed in their Navy. It was terrific, and I, in between pushups and "No Excuse, Sir!", began to laugh (which immediately drew the ire of a particularly angry upperclassman). We were supposed to be overwhelmed and scared, but here was madness and the entry into a whole new life. I was simultaneously excited, confused, amused, and terrified at what lay ahead. The rest of Plebe summer consisted of all the things one would expect of boot camp. Early morning PT. Lots of yelling. Lots of marching, running, and pushups. There was also an enormous amount of humor, which it was necessary to keep bottled up inside. It was 8 weeks designed to strip 18-year-olds of any pretension and begin the long process of making them Military officers. 

A week into Plebe summer, I was feeling very confused and like a complete failure. Much of the summer is designed to teach 18-year-olds who haven't failed at anything to fail and keep going. Impossible tasks are given, and penalties are applied. My roommate at the time, who I had barely spoken to as one has absolutely zero time to socialize with classmates, whispered one night, "Remember, the whole thing is a game. They were us two years ago." The next day, we began a game of trying to get each other in trouble by making the other laugh at inopportune times. I remember being surrounded by detailers one hot afternoon in the hallway as we all stood at attention with our concrete-filled rifles at "Present Arms!" (arms extended, holding our rifles vertically). The state of my uniform and the angle of my arms were being critiqued by three detailers as I attempted to stand perfectly still. My roommate, standing across the hall from me in the same position, stepped out of line and aimed his rifle at one of the detailers without being noticed. I burst out laughing, and that pretty much ruined my afternoon. 

About midway through Plebe summer, tragedy struck. A girl in my platoon died in the middle of the night. No cause of death was found, and we were informed the next morning. Her roommate was moved to a room with two other women in our company, and a few nights later, we were awakened and informed that she had been taken into custody after confessing to those same roommates that she and her boyfriend (then a plebe at the Air Force Academy) had murdered a girl in their hometown shortly before beginning Plebe Summer. It was a bit surreal. Here were two women I had sat next to while getting yelled at during meals who were suddenly gone. One had died, the other was arrested for an unrelated murder. This wasn't enough to crack the mythology I'd come to Annapolis with, but they were certainly noticeable smashes against the door. 

A few things began to bother me, though. A few times during plebe summer, and then throughout the year, we had to take physical tests—pushups, situps, running, etc. Even though we were all aiming for the same jobs, women had different standards. On the one hand, I had grown up in conservative Texas, where men and women are different and should have different physical standards. On the other hand, we're talking about an institution built to train officers in the United States Military, with a shared purpose and goal - namely to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States by being a lethal fighting force, and some were held to different standards than others, even though their jobs were the same. There was also a sense that something was being held back. I noticed it in classes first, but later began to see it everywhere. There was an incipient political correctness, a fear of offending the wrong sensibilities that was driven by principle or mission, but by a larger narrative that had begun to shape our culture. It was most noticeable in religious contexts, such as chapels, etc. But it appeared in any discourse discussing sexuality or gender as well.

I could fill pages with stories of my two years in Annapolis. Stories for which I am grateful and entail some of the best glimpses of honor and humor I can muster from my 48 years. I met some of the best men and women in my life during this time. Playing football for the Navy was an honor and a privilege. There were countless late-night conversations that shaped much of whatever good I am today. But something began to haunt me towards the end of my Plebe year that would eventually lead to me leaving Annapolis and pursuing an entirely different route. It was the sense that one couldn't be "all in" on the mission and succeed. Commitment to conviction and the truth would actually restrict one's ability to be promoted and to lead well in the Navy. 

Near the end of one football season, we had been invited to play in a bowl game. In the week of preparation for that game, playing in Hawaii, an Admiral stationed nearby had played offensive line for Navy back in the day and invited the Offensive line to eat lunch after practice. He was a great man, clearly unhindered by the political games of the day and a bit of a troublemaker. Over the course of our time with him, he was frank and honest; his speech wasn't encumbered by the veneer that often accompanied high rank. We began to ask him about changes in the military and asked for advice. At one point in the conversation, he said, "I don't think an officer can call it how he sees it and make it to a high rank anymore. One has to be sensitive to the political mood now. Oh, they'll reward performance and honesty to a point, but they won't give you any real authority." 

It was about this time that news broke about Bill Clinton and his sexual liaisons with Monica Lewinsky. He spoke at graduation that year and was booed as he was introduced to the crowd. It was somewhere between that lunch at the Admiral's quarters and Bill Clinton's scandal that I began questioning the honor and virtue that had led me to Annapolis. The immature mythology that had led me to the Navy had broken, and I hadn't had time to find a way to honorably give my life to the military or the underlying values that had led me there in the first place. 

A year later, I would leave the Naval Academy to pursue a theological education in preparation for becoming a pastor. I have always been an aggressive Navy football fan (ask my neighbors about Army-Navy week). I love the ideals heralded by that institution. Since leaving the Academy, I now believe that one can serve nobly and pursue wholeheartedly a life dedicated to virtue even when an institution is compromised (since every institution is compromised). But at the time, the perfect and immature image of the United States and her military had collapsed under the weight of the compromise that I had assumed was not there and was creeping everywhere. I longed for a vocation that I could give myself to with every ounce of my being. I wanted something unencumbered by political correctness and the need to appease the Left, confusion over the roles of men and women, and unapologetic about its mission. I foolishly chose pastoral ministry within American Evangelicalism.  

On Saturday, my wife and I went to the Navy-Air Force game in Annapolis (Navy beat the Zoomies). Afterwards, we walked from the stadium down to "The Yard" and walked around. The campus of the United States Naval Academy is riddled with its noble history. It's hard to look anywhere without seeing some memento of the exploits of honorable men doing courageous things. The marvelous reality that honor matters, courage matters, and that men are capable of simple and great acts of heroism saturates the very aroma of the place. We live in a culture in which the basic premises of reality are insanely denied. We are no longer allowed to notice that men and women are fundamentally different and created for different things. Courage is labeled arrogance. Good and evil are confused and turned upside down. Sexual degeneracy is hailed as a virtue. The political correctness of the 90s has devolved into a haunting progressive gaze that keeps everyone in line as they deny the most fundamental truths that everyone, everywhere has always known. Confessing the Lordship of Jesus over all things, particularly our Nation, has become hate speech and, somehow, racist. 

This moral degeneracy has spread far beyond the propaganda of Hollywood and the media. They've profoundly influenced the church, national politics, and even the mission of the United States Military. Reversing these corruptions is something that seems almost impossible. It would require a kind of repentance of which it is hard to imagine. It is one thing for an individual to acknowledge his sins, seek forgiveness, and change course; it's something else entirely for massive institutions and their leadership to do so. 

Which is why, when Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gave a speech last week to all the top brass in the military, something astounding took place. When he came onto the field during the Navy-Air Force game on Saturday, there was an overwhelming roar of approval from the crowd, and from the Midshipmen, particularly. His speech, which was both courageous and clear (and upset all the right people), was a simple declaration of repentance. I don't mean the sort of repentance that grovels and keeps the same course. I mean the sort of biblical repentance that names the sin and turns the other direction entirely. Here is an institution that has been hampered in its mission by deep ideological corruption, and its current leader stood up, named that corruption, rightly called it "shit," and set a different course. It will, no doubt, take a great deal of work to uproot the progressive madness and denial of reality that has hindered the US Military from "being all that it can be", but here was an appropriate beginning. "We are done with this shit." 

What might happen if we imitate Secretary Hegseth's clarity, humility, and boldness? What if in our own lives, riddled with pride and fear and lusts, we were to stop, say "enough," and then to find mercy in Christ and a courage to do what is right? What if churches said "we're done" with the progressive gaze, confusion on the callings of men and women, and a lack of clarity in calling our neighbors to repent and be reconciled to God? What of our families? I can only commend to you the kind of freedom such a resolve brings. The military, right now, may be as free as she's ever been to pursue her mission unencumbered by the madness that has been a growing hindrance for the last 50 years. Pastors, casting off your fear of offending the wrong people and growing steel in your spine to preach the whole word of God faithfully is a kind of joy-filled freedom I pray you would long for - far more than the approval of man or growing numbers of unbelief and compromise in your church.  May we find, in the grace of God, and in whatever calling God has laid upon you, to pursue this freedom with all your might. It is the exact sort of freedom promised to accompany the life of the Spirit. May we find it where it can only be found: repentance and faith in Jesus, our Lord, and the subsequent obedience such faith produces. 

In Gratitude for Voddie Baucham

As God works to build up and purify His church, he does so graciously. He does so by giving good gifts to his people. Ephesians 4, a text exhorting the church to pursue unity in the bond of peace, explains that the fundamental means that God uses to establish that unity as well as maturity is the gifts of faithful “…evangelists, shepherds, and teachers.” Jesus gives gifts to men in the form of faithful leaders whose fundamental task is to herald and apply God’s word to God’s people. We, then, shouldn’t treat lightly the faithful ministers God has given us. They are gifts, after all. On Wednesday night, we lost just such a means of grace in the death of Voddie Baucham.

I first heard of Voddie when I was in high school. He came and preached at our church. His preaching was marked by fire, humor and a clear call to believe in the gospel of Jesus. He warned prophetically about the ideologies swirling about that sought to challenge God’s authority and lure Christians into cul-de-sacs of compromise and sin. It was wonderful, and the first time I had heard such clear, impassioned preaching.

Shortly after Jenny and I were married, I snuck into a large homeschool conference to hear him deliver a keynote message on the importance of the family and discipling your children. I stood in the back and heard a profound and masculine call to disciple your children, to aim at raising children who were more faithful, clearer thinkers, and who joyfully obeyed all that God commands of them. It was a call to raise children who would stand on your shoulders and delight in all that God is for them and all that God had made them for in the world. He was unapologetic about all the things currently taboo in modern America. What God had called them to entailed their being distinctively men and women. Faithfulness to the authority of Jesus and the grace of God was something that should shape every facet of our lives and every part of society. Nothing could be off-limits to the claims of Christ. I left with a clear mandate to lead my family, and to raise our soon-to-arrive children with a holy and unapologetic ambition.

In the years leading up to the madness of 2020 and the confusion that mired much of the church, Voddie’s voice was a call to biblical sobriety in the face of intoxication with Critical Race Theory and counterfeits to justice. He was criticized and ostracized for his clarity, but he maintained a commitment to what was true and refused to apologize for saying it anywhere he could. His words were clarifying and worked like steel into the spine as I sought to navigate those years faithfully.

Voddie Baucham is one of God’s good gifts, given to His people at just the right time. I am thankful for the impact he had both on the broader church and on the life of my family and in our church. May we not treat God’s gifts lightly, but give thanks for them, even as God receives Voddie back into eternal life.

Praying with Jesus

I grew up playing Texas High School football. Before each game, our team would recite the Lord's prayer. It was like a little pregame liturgy. The team represented various states of conviction about the words we prayed. This wasn't a Christian school, just a public high school with a Christian coach who understood something about the Lord's prayer that many Christians in the west have forgotten. The prayer and its "fittingness" for a pregame ritual isn't my point right now. Instead what Coach LeBleu understood was that the prayer is a battle prayer. It is a prayer that is conducive to a people who believe that victory is at hand.

It isn't simply sweet old words meant to create a nice sentiment. It recognizes the time we are living in as well as the task we've been called to and pleads with God to keep his promises as we pursue the calling He has laid upon us.

The Lord's prayer calls upon God to esteem his name above all else and to act such that His reign is established on earth just as it is in heaven. These are the first requests of the prayer and set the stage for everything else we are commanded to invoke from our God. We begin our prayer in such a way that establshes the context for all our other requests by asking for the authority of God to be expressed and established in the world. This is no merely religious request, it is political through and through. We ask that God's will would be done, obediently, everywhere.

The prayer proceeds to ask that God might provide the daily provision we need in pursuing this good mission, namely that he would give us "this day our daily bread", "forgive us our sins" and "deliver us from evil." These amount to Paul's admonition in Thessalonians that we might live quiet, peaceful lives. Lives marked by a society growing in conformity to God's reign over all things.

We pray this prayer each week in our worship gatherings. It should not be merely another liturgical check box in our weekly worship. Rather it is a faith-filled prayer that God might save us, save our country and put wickedness away forever. It is a prayer that the Vice President of these United States would declare the Nicene Creed to be the central truth on which all other truths are built. It is a prayer that the Secretary of War would uphold the central Truth of the gospel as paramount to all things. It is a prayer that the city of Denver would be marked by the worship and law of the true King of all nations, Jesus. This prayer is the prayer of a people who intend to rule the nations under the good and soveriegn rule of God. It is the prayer of a people commanded to disciple the nations.

As we sing this prayer on Sunday, I pray we might do so with faith, understanding the glorious vocation God has called us to, and believing that He has guaranteed that He will accomplish it.

A Difficult Week…

This has been a difficult week for our nation. The assassination of Charlie Kirk on Wednesday was a devastating loss for Christians. He engaged in open debate on college campuses over the most contested issues of our day. He did so warmly. He did so with a genuine desire to both encourage those who shared his views and to convince, when possible, those who would honestly consider them. He regularly called his listeners to faith in Jesus and to faithful obedience to all God has commanded of us. It is also notable that he was not a right-wing extremist. His views were consistent with what most people have believed for most of history. He was extremely effective in winning the minds of a younger generation. He advocated for marriage, raising children, hard work, and against wickedness in the public and private sphere. He called people to faith in Jesus. He demonstratably enfleshed what he preached, prioritizing his wife and children, worship with his church, and engaging in open and free debate with those who reviled him. His message and example was bearing fruit all over the nation.

It appears that he was gunned down by a young man who was raised in a Christian home by believing parents and who was radicalized after a year in University and online by progressive ideology. 

The media and the left are portraying Charlie as a sort of right-wing extremist, a provocateur, a rabble-rousing and hateful man who attacked anyone who disagreed with him. This is false. I've seen Christians implying that he simply got what he asked for. This is wicked. Over the past few days, there have been two fundamental responses from Christians condemning Kirk's assasination and these two responses are instructive as we try to navigate the days we're currently in and, more broadly how the Bible describes the world. 

1) There is a deep sickness over our country and it is our polarization. Our rhetoric has grown too fiery. We're not that different from one another, we must simply learn to get along. None of these things are worth dying over. 

2) There is a deep sickness over our country and it is progressivism and secularism. Charlie's murder is the result of a courageous and godly man winning the argument with the ideological rejection of God, His Word and Reality. These things are worth living and dying for. 

The first response is what the last 60 years and the third-wayism of modern Christianity has taught us to find comfort in. It's highest value is peace and a false sense of unity in our humanity. The second is much closer to how the Bible describes the world. Our polarization is not simply rhetorical, nor is it simply political. It is theological and spiritual to its core. It is a real division as significant as any that can exist. Jesus promised that if we love him and keep his commandments, the world will hate you. They will seek to kill you and they will say they are doing good, even honoring their god. I pray that the rot of Progressivism and its manifestations through trans-ideology, sexual perversion, BLM, Antifa and the rest will be rooted out by our leaders over the coming months and years. But in the meantime we have work to do as a Church. Work that may not seem vital to this division, but again, the Scriptures would tell us otherwise.

We are going to continue to worship together, not only proclaiming the Gospel but celebrating it. We are going to continue to build a vital and faithful church that loves God and His Word. We want to see marriages and families built and filled with vitality and joy. We are going to call one another to love each other faithfully, to return curses with blessings, and to work diligently and skillfully in the vocations God has given us in our city. We will confront the lies of our day with truth. We will call our neighbors to be reconciled to God, inviting them to worship, in warm hospitality and courageous clarity. I pray that in the coming weeks and years we might bear much fruit from this work in our city, state and nation and that we might see in marvelous and incremental ways the promises of God fulfilled here. 

Mourning and Rejoicing in Christ,

Brian

Husband, talk to your wife. Wife, sleep with your husband

Over several decades of providing pastoral counseling for married couples, I’ve heard some stuff that when you hear it, you have to concentrate really hard not to make one of “those” faces and inadvertently make everybody feel even more awkward. What’s remarkable about turbulent marriages is that inevitably, the problem that finally led them to get help is rarely the real stuff they need to work on. The flying pots and pans, the disintegrating budget, and the intractable arguments all have a relatively simple set of remedies, given enough time and patience.

Often it’s as simple as turning together to 1 Corinthians 13 and asking both to consider how they are doing at simply behaving as Christians towards one another. But I’ve seen enough husbands and wives who fall into the same pattern of failure in distinctly masculine and feminine ways that I think we’d all be helped to hear the following. I’d like to ask that we all agree not to elbow each other to ensure they got the point. Consider yourself for a moment, and then we can have a robust discussion later. Also, consider that there aren’t any magic bullets in marriage, and while these certainly aren’t one of those, they do, given enough time, tend to break up the hard crust of marital issues and get back to rich, good soil where good things grow.

Here’s the advice:

Husband, talk to your wife.

Wife, sleep with your husband.

Every year, Trinity hosts a date night at a local park. We provide some alcohol, questions, and ground rules for communication. At a fundamental level we’re simply trying to help facilitate the two points above. We’re explicit about the first, and the hope is that if it goes well enough, it will lead to the second (I mean, we’re not *that* kind of church). These two things might seem excessively simple, and if you’ve only been married half a minute, they may seem like no challenge. But it is notable how many husbands don’t know how to talk with their wives. They know how to speak at them. They inform. They direct. But they don’t have the foggiest idea how to have a fruitful and edifying exchange of words. It is also notable how many wives withhold sex from their husbands. They tend to think of sex as a kind of reward for getting to another birthday, or merely the culmination of a husband dutifully taking the trash out on time every week in a month.

When Paul instructs husbands to deal with their wives in an understanding way, men can tend to assume that the critical word in the sentence is “deal” or that the only referent to “understanding” is when Paul mentions that their wives are of the “weaker sex.” But I humbly propose that the most important term is “understanding.” Yes, given where Paul goes next, a husband should understand that he should go ahead and carry the heavy box on moving day. But there is far more to it than simply shoulder strength. To perform the adverbial phrase here, “in an understanding way”, a husband must understand his wife. He needs to know what sorts of things she’s good at and what she isn’t so good at. He needs to understand what types of things can lead her to be anxious and what kinds of things delight her. He needs to know these things, not about women in general, but about the actual wife God has given him. It requires paying attention to things men aren’t always predisposed to pay attention to. It requires asking questions, listening to the answers, and then asking follow-up questions. Your job is not to make sure your wife can avoid all difficult decisions or never gets upset by a decision you make or an observation you have, but as much as possible, you shouldn’t be surprised when those moments come. By all means, lead - but make sure you know and understand the person you’ve been called to lead.

This will require some planning - these conversations of discovery. Several years into marriage, I realized I was deficient in this conversational skill, and so I started planning. The afternoon before a date, I began sitting down and filling a note card with all the questions I wanted to ask my wife. Things like, “What’s your biggest concern with the kids right now?”, “If you could change anything about our house or yard, what would it be and why?”, or “What is the best thing about our marriage right now, and what needs more work?” We’d arrive at dinner for our date, and I would pull out my card and ask questions. Jen thought it was cute. I’d ask the questions and then listen, not trying to defensively give a reason why such and such wasn’t as good as it could be, but listen. I’d listen to the problems and the delights - not simply to solve the issues, but to learn more about this woman God had given me. Husband, talk with your wife.

When Paul instructs married couples not to withhold their bodies from one another, he didn’t add many qualifiers. And while I’ve met with couples where the husband seems disinterested in sex with his wife, lots of wives tend to view sex either as an inconvenience or use it as an odd sort of reward system. But sexual intimacy is designed by God to cultivate health in all kinds of ways throughout the home. It isn’t the end or goal, but often one of the key means by which a husband and wife grow in love for one another. If the goal is a happy, fruitful, and loving home, sex is one of the key tools in the toolbox of a godly marriage, and it is something that should be used often. Sexual intimacy should not be used to manipulate, and it should not be used sparingly. Instead, it is a marvelous gift to be shared generously. Wives should take Paul’s admonition to heart - your body is not your own, your generosity as a lover is not your own to be doled out to your husband in a miserly fashion. Give and receive this love generously and regularly.

Once again, this will require some planning. The pace of a productive household can and should leave everyone tired when it comes to bedtime. I’ve seen couples set a weekly schedule for sex. That may seem about as sexy as setting the timer for the sprinklers, but a truism about the world is that delight grows best in the garden of discipline. Just because you set a time for everyone to eat dinner doesn’t mean the dinner can’t be fabulous. Wives, learn to delight in the giving and receiving of love with generosity and intentionality. Wife, sleep with your husband.

One final observation is that both of these things tend to cultivate the other. A husband growing in understanding of his wife will often find their sex life growing increasingly enjoyable. Wives who begin giving themselves to their husbands more frequently will find that conversational value increases. They aren’t exactly parallel sliders on a panel, but as both understanding and sex are indicators of marital health as well as means to pursue marital health, they necessarily impact the other.

So, couples, get out there and talk about good things, laugh together again, and have great married sex.

Israel and Israel

In Hebrews 12:26-27, the author of Hebrews climactically describes yet another reason why Jewish converts to Christianity should not go back to their old Judaism and the worship of the temple. God is in the process of shaking things up, of tearing down the old covenant temple—the one "which was made" — so that the new covenant temple, established through Jesus' own sacrifice, may remain. It is just one example of a ubiquitous theme that runs throughout the New Testament. While it has many current applications to Christian faithfulness, we shouldn't avoid its primary referent, namely the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 AD. God tore down the Old Covenant structures to establish, for all the nations, the New Covenant structures (which fulfill the old), namely the church, communion, and baptism reflecting the kingly, prophetic, and priestly work of Christ.

The destruction of Jerusalem is a fundamental theme in the Bible. It lay just under the surface of numerous New Testament texts and appears rather explicitly in others. For the authors of the New Testament, the events of 70 AD lay just ahead. While Jesus expressly spoke of it in the Olivet Discourse (Mark 13 and Matthew 24), later Paul, Peter, and John all make use of this prediction of judgment as further vindication of Jesus' claims to be the Son of Man and the Son of the Living God. The theme is so prominent that modern liberal scholars have used its presence in the New Testament as proof that these texts were written later than most of church history has thought. We can't have biblical authors accurately predicting historical events - that might imply that the Scriptures are, in fact, divinely inspired!

But the Biblical authors see this coming (in the future - for them) event as evidence. For here is an institution that has proven itself to be God's enemy by rejecting and crucifying God's Son. The destruction of Jerusalem and the temple is foretold explicitly by Jesus (Matthew 24). The author of Hebrews describes it in terms of the shaking of heaven and earth, as well as the removal of things that are made (Hebrews 12). John describes it as the destruction of the whore of Babylon (Revelation 19), whom the nations turn against in Revelation. We cannot forget that within decades of these things being written, Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed by Titus and the Roman legions, and the Bible interprets this as the decisive act of God's judgment against Israel, which had rejected Him and the vindication of Jesus as Messiah and Lord.

What does any of this have to do with what Christians should think about the modern state of Israel specifically and the Jewish people generally? God made glorious promises to Abraham and his children. Jesus said that God could raise up children for Abraham from the stones. Paul tells us explicitly that the children of Abraham are all those who have faith like Abraham, believing in Jesus (Romans 4). He also tells us that the mark of circumcision that reveals the inheritors of those promises are those whose hearts have been circumcised - not the flesh (Romans 2:29). He tells us that being part of the tree of Israel is a matter of who is attached to Jesus by faith—Jew or Gentile alike (Romans 11). So, whatever promises we find given to Israel, Abraham, and his family, all of them belong to those who belong to Jesus. These promises include the land promises (which Paul says refer to the whole world, not just "the land" in Romans 4), the riches and glory of the nations (Haggai 2:6ff.), and peace with God. This is to say that all the promises belong to the church, which is the Israel of God. They cannot be claimed by anyone who rejects the Son of David; for everyone outside of Christ, there remains only the promise of judgment and wrath.

A modern theological system emerged in the late 19th century and gained popularity during the first half of the 20th century. Dispensationalism has gained increasing popularity in the United States over the past 80 years, primarily due to the widespread influence of the Ryrie Study Bible, the Left Behind Series, John MacArthur, and the growth of numerous seminaries that subscribe to its tenets. While there is some diversity in the Dispensational camp regarding several issues. It, in all its forms, fundamentally denies that the promises given to Abraham are given to all those in Jesus. It maintains a pervasive ethnic division (contra Ephesians 2:14) in how God acts redemptively. Israel is always ethnic Israel. Gentiles are always Gentiles. This popular and innovative (and not in a good way) theology received a real kick in the pants with the formation of the state of Israel in 1948. All manner of speculative interpretations began to abound, and this was seen as the restoration of God's promises to God's people - ignoring the problem that this new Jewish State was still fundamentally in rebellion against her King. However, the American dispensational imagination was awakened. So current history became the stuff of prophetic fulfillment, with much debate about who exactly would be the Antichrist and how long until the rapture (ignoring the problem that the modern notions of the rapture are themselves historically novel). This coincided with international horror over the atrocities committed against European Jews during the Holocaust. (Good) International sympathy for the Jewish people combined with this novel American theology to produce a heady mix of ideas and a lot of political and theological confusion - which we have inherited in our day.

But the Israel of God is the church of Jesus Christ. She, in Jesus, has inherited all the promises of God. In Jesus, and only in Jesus, do the promises of God find their 'amen.' So, following from this assertion, we should make the following theo-political observations:

1) Unbelieving Jews have no claims to the promises of God given to Israel. In maintaining their rebellion against God's Son and the King of all nations, they have forfeited those promises and proven themselves to not belong to God's Israel. In this sense, they are no different than unbelieving Brits, Chinese, or Germans. Outside of Christ, no one has any claims on the promises of God outside of His judgment.

2) The State of Israel is an ethno-state - meaning that citizenship in the State of Israel is dependent on being of a particular ethnicity. This makes Israel unique among the nations of the world (Japan may functionally come close.) Oddly enough, such a policy would be condemned by most Western countries in the West itself but is not condemned in Israel. There are historical reasons for this (notably, the Holocaust). However, I should note that there is nothing morally problematic with this policy on its own.

3) Given #'s 1 & 2, the State of Israel should not be confused with the Israel of God in Scripture. In this sense, Israel is not Israel. The Church is Israel, and the church comprises men and women from every ethnic group under heaven.

4) The State of Israel has a right to defend its borders and against its enemies, just as any nation-state has.

5) The United States may choose to support Israel or to oppose Israel according to its own interests, but it is under no "theological" obligation to support the State of Israel. The clear statements in Scripture regarding the treatment of Israel by the nations are clearly interpreted in the New Testament to be fulfilled in how the nations treat the church. The book of Revelation is, itself, largely a prophetic description of God's judgment of the nations and the Jewish people explicitly for their mistreatment of the early church.

6) The publicly stated goal of the leaders of nearly all of Israel's neighbors is to annihilate Israel and take over their land. This isn't simply a matter of over-heated political rhetoric. It has been historically demonstrated over the past 80 years through military and terrorist attacks against Israel's military and civilian populations. Whatever moral judgments are to be made concerning Israel's behavior in the region must take this ongoing reality.

7) Islam, since its inception, has been at war with the Christian West. It is actually in the Koran. It, like Christianity, has world-conquering ambitions. The Crusades, no matter what you learned in school, began as a defensive war by the Christian West to push back the invasion of Islam into Europe and as a reaction to the enslavement, torture, and execution of Christians in the lands Islam had conquered.

8) A significant number of theologians throughout church history have seen in texts like Romans 11 the hope of a great revival among the Jewish people, wherein they repent of their rebellion against God and turn to trust in Christ, and thus are grafted back into the Israel of God. (For an excellent book promoting this interpretation, see *The Puritan Hope* by Iain Murray). Whether one follows this interpretation or not, it is a thing we ought to pray for and work towards, not simply among the Jews but among all the peoples of the earth.

In conclusion, if you are in Christ, then all the promises given to Abraham and to Israel throughout the whole of Scripture are yours. You are a part of the Israel of God. The past judgments of Israel, especially the terrible judgments of 70 AD, should not give rise to boasting and arrogance against the Jewish people. In Romans 11, Paul explicitly warns against this danger, and he doesn't warn against such things because they aren't likely to happen. They should drive you towards humility and a renewed commitment to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, lest you, too, fall. Do not discount the fullness of Christ's work on our behalf. His life, death, resurrection, and ascension have secured for us the hope of glory, and all the promises of God are, in him, yes and amen.

Pride and Gratitude

When Pride and Gratitude show up to dinner, they often look very similar. Smiles, even if short-lived. They both look around the house, at the kids, at the dinner on the table and begin their reflections with “Look!…” The reflections diverge at that point, but they both begin with a sense of satisfaction with what lay around them. When Gratitude and Pride show up to history class (at least good history classes) they often look very similar. Something growing in the chest, some smiles, astonished questions and a revelatory identification with great things in their own people’s history. They both begin their reflections with “Look! …” When they show up at ones’ daily work, it’s the same thing. A sense of accomplishment, smiles (so long as the work is going well), and a realization that good things are afoot. But the differences, laying both beneath and in what comes next is the difference between Christianity and paganism. The differences are as starker than one can imagine.

We have lived in an age marked by a distinctive ideological envy. This envy is the appeal of Marxism and every progressive impulse. They put nice political and sociological justifications over the top of our collective envies. And because of this pervasive envy overt pride has been forbidden and labeled racist or worse. But so has gratitude. At your next social event, start a conversation expressing your profound gratitude for any distinctive of European cultural exploits and you’ll quickly see what I mean. You can even do it in reference to your family. The trolls will find a way to ruin a gracious father’s positive comments about how well Suzy is doing in her Calculus class. And because of this accusatory envy one might be forgiven for getting confused on this important distinction between pride and gratitude, but the danger of such confusion remains.

Gratitude looks at the abundant gifts all of us are surrounded by and says “Look at what God has done.” Pride, even if it is self aware not to say it out loud, says, “Look what my hands have wrought!” Or “Look at how great my people are!” Pride show up at family dinner and its foundational impulse is to consider the kids’ good behavior, and the abundance of good food on the table as being, in the first place, a reflection of my own accomplishments. It swells in the chest, but it also swells the head. But gratitude is born of faith. It takes its first bite into the chicken parm, and as the chest swells, it considers the kindnesses of God that led to this dinner table. It sees the cathedrals of Europe, the chest swells, and give thanks to God for the great wisdom and vision he gave our fathers. In other words, in accordance with Hebrews 11 it believes that God exists and is a rewarder of those who seek Him. It beholds these great and various gifts as the gracious kindness of God.

In our current discourse we are regaining the freedom to feel our chest’s swell when we recognize the good gifts of God. But far too many of us are allowing that swelling to extend to the head rather than lifting our heads in thanksgiving. Pride poisons the dinner and it poisons the history. It becomes hyper-vigilant in anything that reflects poorly on its accomplishments. It becomes an expert in the corruption of others as an odd sort of way to dismiss our own. It walks with a self-wrought swagger, than a joyful confidence in the faithfulness of God to build, to conquer and to sustain. Everything is at stake in this distinction - pride or gratitude, faith or unbelief, heaven and hell. Pride will inevitably give way to envy, which is how we got to this spot as a society. Pride is unsustainable. We live in a world filled with wonders and designed to shrink heads. You cannot see the world God has made, hear the histories of other peoples or encounter a coworker who’s just plain more ingenious than you and hold on pride. It will either give way to faith and gratitude or it will descend into a bitterness and envy that poisons the soul.

So when you sit down to dinner, let your chest swell and give way in thanksgiving to God, for He has provided faith, He has given bread, and He has skillfully wielded His mercy in your family’s life to give wonderful gifts. Tell of the exploits of King Alfred and the good Scottish kings. Let your chest swell and bit with joy as you do so, and then give thanks to God for His mercy to raise up such men and to grant them great victories. Take joy in a job well done as you close that deal or install the plumbing, and then give thanks to God for the wisdom he’s given to make such good work possible. Faith looks to God in all things and give thanks. Learn to have this sort of faith.

Father Hunger

Parenting is like a game where you wake up every few years and find yourself playing a brand new sport that you had no idea was coming, and often aren't completely sure of the rules. And if you have sons *and* daughters you often find you're playing two different sports at the very same time. You work your way through 3rd and 4th grade and the whole thing feels like golf, easy going with the occasional wedge and the need for a swat or two. Suddenly you wake up one morning and all the rules have changed. What were easy conversations or discipline situations suddenly become something else entirely. You show up for what seems like another day of golf-parenting and suddenly your getting whacked in the face with a lacrosse stick. What's necessary in one season isn't the same in the next one. What was merely clear instruction one day, suddenly becomes an overbearing attempt to control your kids. Add to this the further complication that kids are generally convinced their playing an entirely different game than the one they are in. Your 15 year old boy is convinced he could make it in the real world and doesn't need any more help. Your responsible 16 year old daughter is offended when you remind her that she failed to do her dishes after dinner. Parenting should aim at the Christian discipleship of your children, at their flourishing - that they would go farther and be more faithful than you've been.

In the middle of all that, fathers have a unique and vital role to play. And when father's fail or abandon their responsibilities, their are devastating consequences for a family and for society. They are the key to laughter at the dinner table. They hold out the call for their sons to hold the line, to grow into men of courage, and they provide instruction in the pursuit of wisdom. They set an aiming point and show their sons what to spend their lives running toward. Where a mother provides nurture and ensures that all these high-minded ideas touch the ground, the father pulls and helps their sons and daughters imagine the life God might have for them.

Fathering well in the midst of the ever-changing dynamics of parenting is a challenge by itself, but its made harder because too many of us haven't reckoned with the weight of responsibility that comes with being a dad. Too often dad either checks out of doing the relational work, on the ground which his office requires. We work all day, often driven by the projects and work God has given us to do outside the home - compelled by the vision, but we fail to bring our family along. We provide. We're around most evenings and present for the weekends. But there is little direction, less late night conversations on the back porch, and too often, not enough laughter. Your sons, and perhaps, especially your daughters need a thousand conversations about whatever comes up. They need questions. They need your laughter. They need your wisdom. And yes, they at times, will need your discipline - telling them that this was foolish, sinful or just unfruitful. They need you to be interested in what their interested in. I grew up in Texas. Boys who grow up in Texas love football. My son loved soccer and now loves volleyball. It was actually really important that I learned and suddenly became really interested in soccer. Volleyball is harder, but I'll watch his videos of some incredible national player from Japan. Don't check out. Don't just stand back and set broad parameters for your children's formation. Guide them, laugh with them, learn them and learn to delight in the ways God has made them.

Fathers, God has made you the natural and central character in the glory that your children are growing up into. Delight in this responsibility. It is central to what God has made you for. Do it with all your might, and do it laughing loudest.

Faith Working Through Love

Where your good works come from make all the difference. You stand at an altar next to your soon-to-be-wife. You make crazy promises about what you’ll be doing 25 years from now in relation to that particular woman. You have no idea what’s going to happen in 6 months, what troubles may come. You may even be naively of the opinion that it’s all going to be Pot Roast and Beer - good days followed by better ones. You don’t know what will happen in 2 weeks. You don’t know what time and pressure and piles of laundry will reveal about this woman. You don’t even know what years of work, broken sprinkler lines and endless lawn mowing will reveal about you. But you make those solemn promises regardless. Do you make those promises because it’s the right thing to do? Do you make those promises because as of right now you are hopelessly infatuated? Do you (foolishly) make those promises because you believe your moral fortitude and stick-to-itiveness is adequate for whatever challenges may come? Or, as is true in particularly sad cases, do you make those promises because you think this is your only shot? The only stable ground on which to rest such enormous and solemn vows is in the promises of God and faith in those promises. How can you stand up and swear to be faithful to this one woman “‘till death do us part”? Only on account that God has said marriage is good, its to be fruitful, its given to demonstrate the gospeland you believe Him - come what may.

Love and good works are the necessary good fruit of faith in God and His promises. As we discussed last week from Hebrews 11, it is vital that these two, faith and good works, maintain the right sort of relationship in our own understanding. Faith in Jesus is not the same thing as good works, but neither are they unrelated. Faith divorced from obedience to God’s commands is what James called (along with the Westminster Divines) “dead faith” - it leads to a Christianity that treats the moral commands of the Bible as “not a very big deal.” It plays fast and loose with God’s law. And in the end, such a faith is not real saving faith.

But it is also possible to bind the two together such that they are one and the same. In this schema, my worship, my obedience, my love for neighbor is not simply the good fruit of faith in Jesus but instead is my faith in Jesus. This was one of the Reformers criticisms of the Roman church’s defacto position. Such a Christianity abandons its center- namely an eternal celebration of the work of Jesus and His reign, but instead becomes a celebration of my own good works done in the name of Jesus. If faith without works is dead, then this sort of faith is no faith at all, but a moral position devoid of Grace.

Good parenting should be born of faith: not fear, not as a demonstration of your own parental expertise, or out of some firstborn need to get everything right. Good parenting is born of believing the promises of God - belief working through love. We teach, we have afternoon wrestling sessions, we discipline, and we are patient because we love our children and that love is put to work through faith in the words of God. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6) ““Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”  (Acts 2:38–39) And what was that promise? The gift of the Holy Spirit - the one who sanctifies us into godliness and fruitfulness. You believe all the promises of God, your love your children, and you persist in the good, hard work of parenting.

Good, faithful work in your week-to-week responsibilities should be born of faith. Not born of your need to achieve greatness, not merely from a desire to compete or the fear of being fired. Rather we trust all the words of God and so we work wisely, diligently, and with all our might in whatever God has set before us. We believe the promises of Gd and so we manage our households well - budgeting, hospitality, good joyous meals and that pesky lawn. We work as lawyers and contractors and managers - trusting that God has made us for these good works and that because of the resurrection, they will bear fruit (1 Corinthians 15). Here is faith working through love - love for our neighbors, our spouses, our children and for one another.

Finally, we must worship by faith. We don’t gather and sing and confess and pray in order to earn some merit badge in the quest to be a “good Christian.” We gather because God has promised to meet with us when we do so. We confess our sins because God has promised to forgive those sins. We sing because, though we cannot see Him, we know Him to be Holy, Glorious and Good.

You are saved by grace through faith. And this faith is a living faith, the very soil out of which the good life grows and bears fruit everywhere. Keep it all straight and keep living by every word that God has spoken.

Do not leave the affections behind…

Last night, I saw that the Passion 2025 Conference is going on right now in Atlanta. As it happens I was reading Jonathan Edwards' Religious Affections when the notification came across my screen. I know next to nothing about what is happening in that part of Christendom right now. But last night, I stopped reading, prayed for that 3 day conference and gave thanks to God for all that He gave my wife and I, and subsequently our children, through 3 days of a Passion conference back in 1999. I have moved into a remarkably different part of the church since those days. We don't have smoke and lights. We don't use screens during our worship. The vast majority of our music comes from hymns and psalms set to music several hundred years ago. Nobody dances during our church's worship (maybe we get an occassional sway). The congregation raises its hands as we sing the Doxology each week, and while a few may raise their hands during other parts of the service, for the most part the congregation just sings loudly, joyfully, and increasingly, beautifully. I love the Reformed Confessions. I mostly preach straight through books of the Bible. Our elders offer congregational prayers. There might be few gatherings more different, externally, than what's happening in Atlanta right now and Trinity Church on most Sundays. I wouldn't trade a Sunday at Trinity for all the lights and smoke and guitar swells in the world. I love our worship - or I've come to love our worship for reasons I have articulate elsewhere.

But I am grateful for what God wrought in me during those three days in 1999. And I pray that work is never lost in my own life and that it burns brighter in the lives of my children. I was introduced to a Reformed vision of God as well as a taste of what it means to chew on the argument of a text of Scripture where I was introduced to the preaching of John Piper. But I also sang my voice raw at Passion with guitars and drums and the whole shabang. I lifted my hands, I prayed fervently, even desperately, pleading with God for myself, for our nation and for the nations. I wept over my sin. I laughed at the sheer enormity of God's mercy. I trembled before the holiness of God. There was forever linked in those three days the hard and glorious truths of God's sovereignty, God's righteousness and God's mercy together with the movements of the heart. I did not simply comprehend the propositions concerning Christ's atoning work - I marveled at his atoning work. I did not simply understand arguments for God's pervasive sovereignty, I was in awe and overwhelmed by his authority and power. I did not simply sing songs articulating Christ's rule over the nations, I rejoiced that Christ is the King of the nations and our nation. There was joined, I pray forever, the beginnings of a rigorous biblical understanding of the world, and affections moved and stirred by that vision of the world.

Now to an Evangelicalism saturated with sentiment and emotionalism, I would warn - with the Scriptures, that our emotional moods are no sure sign of biblical faithfulness or understanding or obedience to the truth. Jonathan Edwards' Religious Affections is a wonderful corrective here. The fruits of the Spirit's work are never short-lived and not designed to make one feel good all the time. Strong emotions are no indicator that what you are affected with is either true or good. Obedience is often difficult and counter to good feelings. Truth is regularly troubling. But to the corner of the church I currently reside in, Conservative Presbyterianism - may we be profoundly moved by what we know and confess. Even as we strain for beauty in our congregationally-centered singing, may we learn to be moved by what we sing. As we preach doctrinally and exegetically sound sermons - may we seek to not simply inform our listeners, but to move them with the substance and force of God's Word. When we pursue righteousness and godliness in the public square, fighting vigorously for God's glory among our nation and the nations, may we be moved to action and argument by the beauty and holiness and mercy of God - and always rejoicing. And may we pray, ceaselessly, full of joy and hope and trembling before the word God has given to us. Do not leave the affections behind.

Voting Towards Reality

It's a wild thing, this American story. We have arrived at the part of the story where one must choose between a political party that denies basic human realities like male and female, basic economics, and the existence of legal borders and something like citizenship on the one hand, and a political party whose biggest strength is being half-heartedly committed to those things. But that's where we are. This is the time God has given to us.

A lot of Christians twist themselves up in knots every election cycle. Using their statements on politics as an opportunity to assess candidates' moral character, they have almost no actual knowledge of outside of the curated images presented rather selectively by media and campaign managers. This year, we had a candidate whose curated aesthetic was "joy," and another who was presented as, on the one hand, a demagogue and the second coming of Hitler, and on the other, as the only man who can save America. Of course, reality exposed itself here and there. Harris and her campaign demonstratively lacked joy, and there was something decidedly unjoyful about her performative cackles. Trump holds positions largely similar to Bill Clinton in the 90s - barely conservative by any objective historical standard and yet seemingly radical for how the Overton window has shifted over the past 30 years. He's neither Hitler nor is he America's savior.

So what's a Christian to do? Here are a few thoughts...

1) Understand what politics is.

You are not choosing a father (or mother.) You are not electing a pastor. You are not making a moral declaration about whose rhetoric you find most winsome and loving. You are making a contextualized tactical decision about which of the choices in front of you is best for you, your family, and your actual neighbors. You are making a tactical decision about what policy directions are best relative to how God has made the world and how he wants us to live on the ground in this particular time and place. Politics are always contextual and tactical. In other words, they aren't idealistic (at least not until we make much more progress towards the eschaton than we have currently made.) Politics involves complex, objective, and judicious realities with little room for your immediate feelings. They are about practical realities, laws, taxes, and trends that will make life in your neighborhood harder or more manageable in the coming years. Don't make the mistake of thinking that politics is an opportunity to virtue signal. First, stop with the virtue signaling altogether. Second, politics doesn't work like that, no matter what kinds of pressure milquetoast Christians attempt to lay upon you.

It's nice to say that Politics is a civil debate over tertiary methods of governing. But it is, particularly in our day, a war. It's better not to deny that. Instead, recognize the hour we're in and vote tactically. You don't win a war all at once. You fight the battle that's in front of you, and you make decisions about how to take the hill you need to take now in order to take the next hill.

2) Vote for Reality, or for now, towards reality...

The Democratic party has moved increasingly into the realm of denying basic sexual reality, fundamental norms of justice, and unrestricted baby murder. Not enough can be said for how dark things have gotten over there. But add to these social evils the economic stupidity that makes it increasingly difficult to own a home, raise kids in the city, and keep or get a job, and it should be very clear that Christians cannot vote for Democratic nominees or policies. Some will, for reasons that are simply foolish. But a society can't function when basic reality is actively denied, and policies are built on this denial. It will collapse. Voting in support of such candidates and policies is hardly loving to one's family and neighbors. Other Christians will refuse to vote because they find Donald Trump distasteful or inadequately pro-life. I mean, he is inadequately anti-abortion. They see voting for a candidate who doesn't meet their standards of decency as morally staining. I think this is usually more about virtue signaling than moral purity. Your vote doesn't stain you; It is either wise or foolish. It either promotes the good of a nation or doesn't. Do not be emotionally manipulated into voting for foolish and destructive policies and candidates.

3) Sermons on politics are generally bad...

Ministers will attempt to explain that how one votes is unimportant and that there is room for disagreement over the Right and the Left somehow related to our "Unity in Christ" (All Rise and Solemnly Nod... dutifully). I've listened to more political sermons from churches in our city over the past few weeks than I should've. I wanted to hear how theologically conservative pastors addressed this cultural moment. Almost all of them preached primarily about avoiding divisiveness, how both sides are evil, and how Christians must transcend partisanship.

Interestingly, nobody has preached like this in past centuries. This isn't how elections were addressed nor how the political implications of the Lordship of Jesus were taught. Political decisions are not morally or religiously neutral. They carry enormous weight and are one of the most basic ways we love our children and grandchildren and express our loyalty to Jesus. Yes, Christ is on his throne no matter who wins next week - but this is all the more reason to vote for a civil magistrate who moves us closer as a people to acknowledging that confession rather than away from it.

4) Vote Toward the End of Abortion...

The greatest moral injustice of our time is abortion. Millions of children are torn limb from limb, chemically murdered, or vacuumed out of the womb annually. The ministry given by God to the governing authorities is primarily that of justice - defending the innocent, punishing evildoers, and promoting the good. The protection, promotion, and financing of abortions by any government is an unconscionable evil. In Colorado, Amendment 79 is on the ballot, which would guarantee unrestricted access to abortion (through 9 months) and support the use of public funds to pay for abortion. It is a devastating commentary on the moral bankruptcy of our state legislators that this has made it onto a ballot. It is a horror that it could pass. A Christian must vote against this amendment.

Neither presidential candidate is anti-abortion. But Harris supports enshrining a right to abortion, with no limits, into law. Trump and Vance allow us to continue to fight against this great evil at the state level and give us a chance to win nationally in the future. Tactical decisions are the game of politics. We must put an end to the murder of children, and we should think wisely about how to do this in the coming years.

Jesus is Lord of the Nations, including this one. That means he is Lord of your vote, family, neighborhood, and city. May He save us from the catastrophic folly and evil currently on full-court press on the political Left and from the slow compromise with evil historically tolerated by the political Right. May we Christians vote for our families, our actual neighbors, and in sight of our Lord during this election.

Why is Denver Christianity so thin?

The old doctrines seem to be the most important and contested doctrines. This should not surprise us, as modernity itself has proven an attempt to redefine the foundations rather than debate the particulars.

So, let's consider Creation and Incarnation, but I think Atonement should be in there too.

Creation:

Has God made the world a particular way - all the way down? Is the world simply a neutral palette on which God imposes an arbitrary law as a sort of test to mankind? Is God's Law - all of his commands, a description of a righty ordered life and society specifically mapped to the creation He made - or, again, is it simply divine command given to creatures living in a world that could work any number of different ways? Put one more way - Do God's laws actually reveal something about creation? In one specific arena: are men made something *as men*, such that they are fit and unfit for particular offices and roles? Are women made something *as women* such that they are fit and unfit for particular offices and roles? In other words, is God's command that the office and vocation of minister being given only to men something arbitrary or does it reveal something about the nature of man and woman? Is it some supernatural command superimposed on the neutral creation - or is it a part of the created order itself?

The assault in our day (say, the last 200 years or so) has been at this very point. It is not for nothing that the compromise in our day began with debates about the meaning of Genesis 1-2. For most evangelicals - and I mean even the complementarian ones, God's commands are simply supernatural commands superimposed on a neutral creation. There is no created *order*, at least not functionally. The secular and the sacred are divorced almost entirely. A state is a state. A family is a family. A school is a school. A man is just a man and a woman is just a woman. The phrase often used in the Christian Nationalism debate is that "only individuals can be Christians" - but even that isn't quite right for this erroneous view. More accurately to say, "only souls (stripped of their nationhood, family, maleness and femaleness) can be Christians." Men nations and households are just secular things that Christians’ souls might or might not inhabit. For most evangelical Christians, not really knowing what to do with God's law otherwise, it is simply a thing that we should try to generally keep (but not too carefully) because, well, God commanded those things - but they are largely unrelated to how the world or men or women or families or nations or schools *actually* work. This isn't new, by the way. It is simply repackaged gnosticism, the earliest heresy in the Dragon's long (and doomed to fail) assault on the church.

But the historic and biblical teaching is far richer and more glorious. There is a reason we read the old theologians selectively. We love Augustine, Calvin, and the Puritans when we think they are talking about the redemption of our *souls*. But we find them intolerable and severe when they start talking about Christian nations, Christian magistrates, Christian families, and even Christian households. There is a reason why Denver Christians bristle at the imposition of God's explicit commands spoken from pulpits or a minister and call it "legalism" or "harsh." Part of it is simply the nature of sin - but sin that takes on the pseudo-intellectual skin of a gnosticism that claims God has no real claims on our actual bodies and our actual institutions.

God made the world with a grain. God's law graciously teaches us how to live life as men and women worship in our churches, build nations, structure households, raise children, and do fruitful work with that grain, not in a way that splinters the wood and ruins the work. When we maintain that the world can work just as well most any old way, and God's law and wisdom are simply something for our our individual souls, we wreck everything, eventually. Churches that find creative ways (or some less-creative ways) to disregard God's specific commands regarding men and women's offices and vocations undermine the very nature of what it means (in accordance with creation itself) to be man and woman - and therefore undermine everything those things are connected to: the household (marriage, children, and generational life), and society itself. Years ago, as the Gospel Coalition was founded, John Piper got roasted for insisting that men and women's roles in the church and home be put into the defining documents. His response was puzzling to me at the time, but it is loaded with wisdom as I look back now. He defended the move by arguing that it was an upstream issue and a kind of litmus test for how one reads the bible. Now many complementarians have found a creative way to have their cake and eat it too, saying things like: "Men and women aren't really different, but God has given us this random command in 1 Timothy and 1 Corinthians - don't know why he did that, but He did." Soon, we do this with any of God's commands that contradict the moral codes of our day, and we have thus attempted to sever heaven and earth.

Incarnation:

This is sort of the twin of the Creation question - simply adding the element of redemption. Did God come to save and restore the created order, or did he come to save us from it? Its the same question that often divides the novel eschatology of dispensationalism from the more historic eschatologies of the church: Who is moving in Revelation 21-22? Heaven moves to earth. Glory *fills* the earth. Jesus doesn't put on a human skin suit to show us how to pass the test. He redeems humanity - he redeems Creation by becoming a man, dying and rising, and then ascending with our humanity - our created humanity - to the right hand of the Father - the office we were created to occupy. In other words, the Incarnation is not merely about a rescue operation for humanity to escape our created-ness and our maleness and our femaleness - but a restoration of all those things and with it, the whole of creation, work, families, and nations. Jesus comes to save us from our sins is true in the most profound way imaginable. He saves us from the wrath and judgment our sins deserve in light of God's law. He saves us from slavery to those sins. He saves us from the death those sins inevitably lead to. He saves us from a world marred by generations of humans cutting against the grain. He saves the whole world from corruption and death. The incarnation pulls *everything* into the salvation work of God. He did not come merely to save individual souls off to some unnatural state. He came to save men and women, just as he came to save manhood and womanhood. He came to save families, just as he came to save the household as a created institution. He came to save particular nations, as he came to save nation-ness. Jesus came as the second Adam, not to destroy the created order, but to save it - to restore it. This means that a robust and maturing embodiment of that salvation must mark the church. Sins have been forgiven. We have been freed from slavery to sins. And so we are now free to "put on Christ" as Paul said - and to disciple families and nations and particular men as men and particular women as women.

We must return to these foundations and then let them reshape our worship, lives, politics, families, and churches. They are doctrines that touch everything else: every other doctrine, every other ethical issue, and, more importantly, our day-to-day lives with husbands, wives, children, and the work we do. They hit at the biggest questions in the world as well as the most mundane: From "What is the world?" and "What are we *for?*" to "What do I do when my two-year-old won't stop throwing her carrots on the floor?" Christian life and doctrine are a marvelous fabric woven from a single thread, and they shape everything. We have attempted to sever that thread for too long, cutting off bits we find embarrassing or passé. But to do so is to miss its beauty and its glory, and it is to transform Christianity into a threadbare patchwork quilt with most of its patches gone when what God has given us is a marvelously beautiful, insulated wool blanket for when the days are cold, as our nation’s days seem to be creeping towards winter.

Some Thoughts on Lent, Both Good and Bad

This coming week marks the beginning of the traditional church season of Lent. I thought it might be helpful to give some encouragement and some warnings about what this season has meant for the church and what it can be for us. 

Lent began as a season of fasting and cleansing for new families coming into the church. Having believed in Jesus, and many of them coming out of a life of paganism and idolatry, these 40 days leading up to our celebration of the resurrection were to be set aside to examine one's life, put aside all remnants of paganism, fast and then come to be baptized. The season grew into a time for the whole church to renew the practice of repentance, to remember their own baptisms and to remember all that God has saved us from - chief among them being death and judgment. We can see problems with this practice right from the start. Baptism and the promises of God given to us in our baptism are not the result of our own self-cleansing. The stubborn fleshiness of our sin can't be scrubbed off through our own efforts to somehow make us worthy of baptism. But we can also see the potential good: As Luther famously said, "The whole of the Christian life is a life of repentance." 

Lent and Ash Wednesday - which initiates the season at its worst, has become a season of somehow restoring God's favor to us by fasting from various things: meat, social media, alcohol, sugar - and other things. Christians put ash on their heads, announce their absence from social media ("for this season"), and find other ways to "cleanse" themselves. In other words, the whole season becomes a rather ironic deep dive into self-promoting self-righteousness. We take up the ages-long sin of trying to cleanse ourselves in order to earn God's blessings. 
In other circles, evangelicals have used the season as a kind of trendy yet traditional attempt at a cleanse or detox. They don't drink odd mixtures of lemon juice, vinegar and Tabasco, instead they somberly announce their seasonal cleanse from things they find distracting, indulgent, or delightful. 
It all amounts to the same thing: an attempt to do "good works" in order to be made worthy of God's forgiveness, love, and covenant blessings. 

But Lent at its best can be quite wonderful. As we remember that God has saved us from our sins, from his judgment of those sins, including death itself, it matters how we mark this season and if we mark this season at all. It can be a season where the regular practice of repentance for our sins and believing the good news of the cross and resurrection of Jesus is renewed as central to what it means to be God's people. It can be a marvelous season of preparation to sing even louder and more joyously on Easter morning. It can be a season marked most centrally by the remembrance of God's grace - not a grace that waits for us to prepare ourselves, but a grace that captures us, cleanses us, and renews us; bringing us to repentance, forgiving the sins we commit, and transforming us daily. 

And so I offer a warning and a hope for our church during this coming season - May you be renewed in the daily work of pulling up the weeds of indwelling sin in your life. Not pulling up weeds merely by your own efforts, but by bringing those weeds before the Lord in repentance, trusting in his justifying and sanctifying work given to us in Jesus, and then pulling them up. May this season be marked by a fascination with the gospels themselves and perhaps chiefly the final weeks of Jesus' earthly ministry leading to his final supper with the disciples, his trial, his death, and his resurrection. Most of all, may you become convinced even further that it is God who saves, God who forgives, God who cleanses, God who has put to death our old man, and God who has raised us with Christ. 

A Few Possible Things to do during this season:
- I find it helpful to spend a little time each morning and evening reviewing my day and considering ways that I have sinned against God and against others - both in what I've said and done and in my attitudes. Confess these to God, read a glorious passage of Scripture like Romans 8, and be reminded of God's mercy and forgiveness of those actual sins. Some of you will face the temptation to minimize your words or behaviors, to pass over sins of omission in favor of considering only sins you've actively participated in. Some of you will be tempted to parse your motives with an increasingly cynical eye. Avoid both ditches. Confess real sins, defined by God in his Word, and immediately trust in his mercy.
- Pray these Psalms: 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143
- Read the narratives of Jesus' final week and resurrection from all four gospels - take one a week: Matthew 26-28, Mark 11-16, Luke 19-24, John 12-21
- Listen to music - particularly classical music written to help the church reflect on the passion of Jesus:
    - Arvo Part: Misere and Passio
    - Bach: St. John's Passion
    - Bach: St. Matthew's Passion
    - Allegri: Misere
    - Gorecki: Misere
- Sing hymns and psalms this season - as a family and as a parish, that help us to fix our attention on the work of Jesus in his death and resurrection. Here are some recommendations:
    - Nothing But the Blood of Jesus
    - Jesus, What a Friend of Sinners
    - How Sweet and Awful is the Place
    - O Sacred Head Now Wounded
    - O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus
    -  What Wondrous Love
    - Were You There?
    - Rock of Ages

It's important that in addition to taking up some of these personally if you are married and have children, you do some of these things with your family. Pick a night a week to read from the gospels or Read from Romans 1-8. Sing a hymn together. Put on a piece of classical music and talk about how it reflects the sorrow and hope of the cross. Doing these things together helps build families and parishes grounded in the same reality - the great work of Jesus in the cross and resurrection.

In the end, our prayer for all of us during this season is not for morbid introspection but a deeper delight and gratitude for the person and work of Jesus. He is our King. He is our Savior. He speaks to us a better word than all other words. May we be particularly tuned to hearing that word this season, celebrate that word when we gather on Sundays, and be overjoyed by that word when we gather on Good Friday and Easter.

New Covenant Church Launches Public Worship on February 4

We believe that God is making all things new, and that all things will be brought under the good reign of Jesus. To that end, we love the starting of new, faithful churches that love God above all things, love His Word and love the authority of Jesus and His Gospel.

Jonathan Helvoigt has been helping to direct our music over the last few months and is headed out now as New Covenant Church starts their gatherings on Sunday mornings at Denver Christian School. Please pray that God might establish this work in Lakewood and that the Word would go out from this church to bear much fruit in our city.

New Covenant Church

Jonathan and I sat down for a short interview for him to share more about New Covenant, partnering with us, and what he hopes God will do.

The Culture War Will Be Won in the Trenches

There is a rather enlightening, if depressing book entitled *Degenerate Moderns* by E. Michael Jones that demonstrates that most of our modern ideological woes - the constant pull towards leftward social and moral ideas - are largely an elaborate attempt to cover over and justify sexual immorality. His examples run the gamut from espionage rings in the British Security Service in the 40s to sociological studies in Samoa to Kinsey's theories which arose out of the University of Indiana. All in all the book is largely about sexual misconduct happening in private that swung the whole ideological norms of the West.  

Rousas J. Rushdoony argued similarly in the opening chapters of his marvelous *The Politics of Guilt and Pity*. There he makes the case that since humanity needs atonement, knows it needs atonement, *and* wants nothing to do with Christ, we come up with elaborate political schemes for justifying our cultural sins. But at the bottom of our secularized moralizing is something quite simple: guilt. We are desperate to cover things up with the latest social cause. Perhaps now we can atone for our sins with this new one - whether its a country (or countries) collectively agreeing to wear masks, destroy all their jobs for CoVid or marching in the streets and burning down Targets for "justice" vaguely defined, or our increasing obsession with protecting everyone's feelings - we need atonement. 

I think that thesis bears a lot of fruit and could use a lot more applications to current events. But a thread I'd like to pull on grew out of some reflections on the stories in Jones' book. Some women in our church are reading Jim Wilson's *How to be Free from Bitterness*. It's a marvelous little book I try to pick up frequently because its so practically helpful. It dawned on me as I was listening to the discussion unfold above my head (literally, I was in the basement), that all of our big culture war level issues can be tied quite nicely to some fairly basic sins in the bible. Much ink and tweets (or X's?) are spent addressing vast conflicts on a culture-wide scale. We often put our efforts confronting big Moral Vision questions - and we should. But do you know where they come from? They didn't come *from* Freud and Nietzsche and Marx - that horrid little triad just named something that was already in the water. They come from everyday normal sins like greed and lust and envy and bitterness and pride. These sins get blown up on a massive scale, politicized, protected and then, well, destroy civilization. Pastors, the biggest problem in your church is not the feminists. It's not the porn industry. It isn't the alphabet lobby. Don't get me wrong, those things should be fought tooth and nail. But often we're in danger of confronting big cultural ideas instead of confronting actual people and our own actual sins. The biggest problem in your church are bitter and envious wives who don't think they need to repent of their envy and bitterness. The biggest problem in your church is lustful and proud men who will not submit to the rule of Jesus and love and lead their wives and kids. The biggest problem in your church is parents who won't discipline their kids. And the biggest problems are people controlled by their passions - their emotional life, and then calling it love and compassion and empathy. And because they are the biggest problem in most every church, they are the biggest problem in the cities we minister in and in the nation we live in. These little bitternesses, these prickly little envies, those hidden lusts, they get coddled and excused and redefined into virtues. But they build up a head of steam and become culture-shaping laws and parades and film production companies. They become our confusions over words everyone has known for centuries like "love" and "justice". And they grow into world-shaping ideologies that justify unknown horrors and petty but wicked behaviors.

The abortion industry is the fruit of a million people's envy and lust and is designed to make such sin possible, livable. The Red Pill (Black-pill, I don't know I get all the pills mixed up) pick-up artists is the collective fruit of a million people's hubris and bitterness - excused as natural and manly and "reclaiming masuclinity". Ideologies too, not just policies and weird niche groomers. Marxism, feminism, a big part of the therapeutic culture of our day - all built to feed or defend or accelerate those little sins. 

I preached a wedding homily a couple weeks ago where I told the bride and groom that the most important battle in the whole culture war would be fought for their marriage - to obey Jesus, to trust God's words, and to navigate sins from within, temptations from without, and well, the Devil too. Christians - the war over a God-honoring, fruit-bearing, joy-filled culture is real. Its not just in your heart. It will be fought in the public square with laws and elections and by Christians learning to tell better stories on pages and screens. It will be fought in church position papers and denominational meetings. **But the most significant battle** will be learning to put all these things to death in ourselves and one another. It will be wives coming to terms with why they hate Ephesians 5:22 so much - is it bitterness? envy? It will be husbands coming to terms with why they are impatient with their kids or why they avoid their duties in the home with any escape they can find - even work. Is it pride? lust? greed? Yes, the culture war will be fought on big stages, but mostly it will be fought in the trenches of individual homes and hearts - with families and roommates and over careless words spoken in haste that Jesus said we'd be judged for. It will be fought by people who have been forgiven in Christ and so are eager to forgive others and to seek forgiveness. It will be fought by people who do the daily work of tending to the garden of our own souls and the garden of our family - pulling up weeds, trimming branches, protecting the fruit.

How Much More... Some Reflections on Hebrews 2 and Christian Discipleship in Denver

“Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.” - Hebrews 2:1-4

Don't Separate What God Has Joined

One of the central hindrances to the work of discipleship in our city is a failure to recognize how Jesus relates to everything else -- everything under the sun. We have failed to teach one another to obey everything Jesus commanded and that what He commands regards everything in life. While much of fundamentalism did this woodenly and often in ways that went beyond the Scriptures, too many modern evangelical churches either don't do this or do it very badly. But if the central confession of the Christian church is the Lordship of Jesus, and the foundational mission of the church is to baptize the nations and teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded, then we must get this right. For too many Christians and the churches they attend, the central claims of Christianity have little bearing on how we actually conduct our lives - in our work, in our homes, in our politics, and in our public witness. There are millions of Christians in America, and there have been for quite a long time, but our society is increasingly pagan and secular in its cultural life. This is because our churches are increasingly pagan - if not in creed (though it is apparent that theological fidelity wanes in many circles), then in their worship and life. Holiness - both personal and cultural, has become a lost emphasis. Not the pietistic sort of holiness wherein we simply pray or read our Bibles and make sure to fit our religious commitments into our otherwise secular lives. But holiness as a fullness of life lived in glad obedience to God's law and grateful dependence on God's grace. The sort of holiness that fills dinner tables with wine, gladness, and thanksgiving. A holiness that raises children to fear God, love God, obey God, and walk in his wisdom and mercy. Holiness that cannot abide the public idols of our day - demanding the souls of our families, the capitulation of our church's worship, and the constant refrain in response to the commands of Scripture, "Did God really say?"

Two Premises:

- Jesus is Lord (of Everything.) As Abraham Kuyper famously said, "There is not one square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is Lord over all, does not exclaim, 'Mine!'" Therefore, all of our human existence - including our social and political lives - should be lived in glad obedience to him, in covenantal communion with him, and grateful reliance on his grace. We are to do everything he commanded.

- What Jesus commanded is in the whole of Scripture, and Scriptures addresses everything in life.

Some Obstacles and Some Places to Go

- We have separated the Religious and the Secular - Francis Schaeffer spent his life fighting what he saw as the central problem in modern society. We had divided the world into two different stories or floors - an upper story of morality and religion and a lower level with everything in our day-to-day lives. This division runs through every corridor of life, be it public life or in our personal lives. Religion has been torn from the public square (theoretically) and relegated to some place in our hearts. **We must regain the biblical vision of reality**. The Bible does not give us separate religious and secular spheres in which the world operates. His law does not simply address matters of private morality and spiritual devotion. His salvation is not an other-worldly salvation. The gospel comes to save us in our totality. It comes to save the nations. It comes to save the law. It comes to save the created order. It comes to save us in our maleness and femaleness.

- Neglecting the actual teachings of Scripture concerning the world, we've adopted the "virtues" of secular thinking and called them holiness or the "way of Jesus". For too many Christians, "Christlikeness" has come to mean something like apologetic, empathetic, and uncertain. The severity and clarity of Jesus in places like John 6-10 are ignored or downplayed. Instead, we have a globalist democratic Jesus adopting therapeutic categories for sin, justice, and righteousness. This is all done in the name of "grace," but it is the end of grace. Grace is terrible and glorious. It names sin and evil with clarity and offers forgiveness and sanctification. As the teaching of God's commands has diminished or disappeared, it has been replaced with a different law. This "law" is governed by feelings and extols the importance of "impact" over intent. We've adopted the values of DEI offices as our standards for righteousness. We've defined the law of love in shallowed therapeutic terms: Love is to do nothing that might elicit negative emotional responses from the object of our love. We must forsake our idolatrous "laws" and trust again the righteousness that comes from Jesus and is taught by the Scriptures. We must learn again that faithful witness and genuine love for our neighbors will often smell like death to them (2 Corinthians 2:15-17)

- Pastors have neglected the hard places. We've tread softly, if at all, in the contested areas - particularly in places that might make us unpopular in a secular city like Denver. We whisper where God shouts. We minimize biblical distinctions where they run afoul of cultural orthodoxies (What exactly does it mean to be a "soft" complementarian?). The net effect is to disciple our people into not knowing what the Bible says concerning these things, how it says them, and why it says them. Many pastors are happy to toe the line on particular biblical positions but fail to teach these things the way the Bible teaches these things and refuse to glory in what the bible glories in. Our task is not to teach the bare husk of what the Bible teaches - merely the concept, but to speak as the Bible speaks. And we must do this where the battle rages most fiercely. These controversies are where the Lordship of Jesus is most contested. It is also likely the places where conversion and discipleship are most opportune.

What we believe will always come out of our fingertips. You and I will live what we truly believe, whatever creedal commitments we make or don't make. The reverse is also true. How you live, navigate the world, and worship week in and week out will shape what you believe. Disobedience to God's word sows unbelief, and that unbelief will grow. It is vitally important that we treat the words of God with blood-earnestness. - every single iota of it. It is a grace-saturated book - grace that forgives and grace that gives life, the real kind. This Word has enough life for your family, your work, and all the glorious ways that the nations of the earth will flourish under the good reign and commands of Jesus.

Watered Down Whiskey and the Glory of the Gospel

The Protestant Liberalism of the early 20th century often spoke of finding the kernel at the heart of the Bible's teachings while removing the accretions of religious myth and miraculous language. This reductionism was their attempt to salvage the Christian message in a scientific age where things like a 6-day creation or resurrection from the dead were offensive to reasonable secular people. J. Gresham Machen wrote his masterful Christianity and Liberalism in response to this movement redefining American Christianity. He observed that what was left was an entirely different religion, not to be confused with historic Christianity. With those "accretions" stripped out, the remaining kernel had been distorted and reshaped according to modern man's thinking such that there was no Christianity left but something else. 

This pattern has continued with much preaching and teaching in modern Evangelicalism, though the stripped-away portions have changed. There are a variety of opinions and debates about what one is allowed to remove and what kernel of biblical teaching should remain. But the effect is the same; what's left is something different than Christianity. What's left is an entirely different sort of thing than what has been passed down to us in the Creeds, Confessions, and most notably in the Scriptures themselves. What is no longer of much concern is the materialist problems in the text of Scripture and the teachings of Christianity - things like miracles and resurrections and God's remarkably efficient six day creation. These things are of little concern to modern pop culture. What is always stripped away in these scenarios is what our neighbors find offensive or unsettling. In our day, that means essentially two things: 1) The Bible's teachings on sexuality and sex, and 2) the troubling language of judgment, the infinite divide of the antithesis, and the death of the myth of neutrality. Regarding the first, we must strip it or water it down because it does not fit our age's flat, egalitarian emphasis. Or perhaps better to use the Bible's language here: It does not serve our lusts. and the Second must be stripped away because, in our therapeutic age, such distinctions make everybody feel bad - as though there might be people we know at enmity with God. 

The troubles with this are legion, but I want to focus on one: This approach to Christianity strips it of the richness, beauty, and joy that is given freely by our God. It is of particular concern to me because it leads to the anemic Christianity that has rooted itself in and around Denver, Colorado. The sort of Christianity grown up in the front range of Colorado is like watered-down whiskey. Not whiskey with a drop or two of water added to unlock the flavor, but the sort of "watered-down" where you can't taste the whiskey. Like a high schooler's Jack and Coke, the Coke is present in quantities sufficient to drown out any taste of whiskey. But what you're left with is simply flat cola with a funny taste. 

Instead of homes filled with the cheerful tumult of children chasing dragons, the smells of warm bread, and the joys of marriage, we have the never-ending frat scene of 30-year-olds sipping cocktails, gutting themselves for a feeble and impotent promiscuous sexuality. Instead of the glory of the church gathered to sing with artistic beauty and wonder, the thundering of God's word, and the feasting joy of God's table, we have smoke machines, professional musicians, and therapeutic messages designed to avoid offending the sensibilities of the people who aren't in the room yet. Instead of strong men and beautiful women embracing the full range of God's diverse and often gendered wisdom, we have an increasingly genderless monoscape sipping well-made coffee (Why is it that no matter what else is dying in a civilization, the coffee just gets better?) 

Most of all, we are left with a domesticated god. A God who rarely offends without extended qualifiers. Preachers who spend 15 minutes warning their audiences and qualifying with all the linguistic nuances before they mention a text like "Wives submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord" or "I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man" or "The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers." God is no longer free to offend us. He is no longer allowed to frighten us. He is no longer allowed to contradict us. He is only allowed to delight and comfort us. The gospel bids us to come and die, but instead we celebrate a gospel where the God revealed in Scripture must hide himself lest we feel unsafe or uncomfortable. But in domesticating this god, we have killed any chance at the sort of fullness of life, joy and glory Jesus promises us. We live in an age of unbearable lightness, lacking the weighty substance God created us for. We have what we have demanded of God and Christianity, a thin, comforting accouterment to our modern, largely secular lives. We've drowned our whiskey in store-brand cola, forsaking the difficulty and the glory of what God has given us. 

The road forward entails a rebellion of sorts. We must rebel against every instinct which winces when it reads the text of Scripture. An older, faithful minister sat in my living room a few years ago, answering questions from a room full of younger pastors and church-planters. He was asked what one bit of advice he would give the young pastors in the room. He responded, "Resolve now, before you ever step into the pulpit, to follow the text of Scripture wherever it leads." One young guy in the back blurted, "But everyone will leave my church!" The older pastor responded, "Follow the text wherever it leads." 

This is no mere fundamentalist rigidity. This is the path to savoring the very fatness of life. It is simple, but it is hard. Most glorious things are difficult. Raising children with joy and to know and fear the Lord is difficult. Worshipping with God's people, in the beauty of holiness is difficult; it involves things like learning music and learning how to use our voices together. Warm hospitality with rich food and wine is difficult, but it is marvelous. Learning to trust and delight in every word that proceeds from the mouth of God is hard, but it is the fount of real faith. Stop looking for the kernel that does not offend. Stop watering down your whiskey. Drink it straight, share it straight. Eventually, you'll stop wincing, and with some practice, you'll begin to taste the richness and its multiplying flavors. 

Foundations and Skyscrapers, some Reflections on Moscow and New York City

I was sitting in my son's "Lordship" class (he's a college freshman at New Saint Andrews in Moscow, ID and it was Joe Rigney's class), listening to a far-ranging discussion stemming from Joe Rigney's *The Things of Earth* to Augustine's *City of God* and Edwards' *Religious Affections*. The students were asking Rigney questions from their reading and related topics. The question of cultural reformation and the best location for such high-minded goals: the city or rural areas. He didn't answer that question, but he did draw our attention to a distinction that had me scribbling notes the rest of the class time. He observed that the two best known pastors committed to a Kuyperian vision of cultural reformation from the past 20 years are Tim Keller and Doug Wilson - two men that normally one wouldn't put in the same sentence. He then pointed out a key difference between them: Keller focused primarily on the arts, white collar business and other things normally associated with cultural success and influence. Wilson has focused primarily on what he has called "repairing the ruins" - restoring the Christian household and Christian worship.

It struck me that this explains far more about the current state of evangelicalism than we'd like to think.

If one is primarily drawn to evangelizing cultural elites (I hate the term, but go with me a bit), then of paramount importance is not offending prevalent cultural sensitivities. Keller wasn't above offending certain sensibilities - but has been criticized for being too delicate in this offense giving, a criticism that I think sticks. 2nd generation ministries out of Redeemer have a far worse record on this than Keller himself did. The fundamental idea is that cultural reformation comes from the influencers - geographically (hence the emphasis on cities) and in terms of power and wealth. Questions of sexuality, men and women, and other secular orthodoxies have to be treated delicately or not at all, lest we lose the opportunity to really see churches grow, and people come to some sort of Christian faith. Cultural renewal or reformation happens as we build on the foundations (no matter how rotted they actually are) already in place. It's a kind of trickle-down mission. Get the urbanites (I am one), the rich and powerful (I'm not one) to believe in the basic tenets of the gospel and then reform will happen from the top-down. Culture is what happens when people learn new stories and new ways of living within an existing cultural framework.

Wilson begins in almost the exact opposite place. Culture arises on the foundations of worship and the life of the household. Nothing will be right if we don't get those foundation stones in the right place. While the goal isn't to throw everybody into a tizzy, when you get to the foundations and start rebuilding stuff, you have to tear out some stuff. This will upset all the folks in the skyscrapers whose buildings are shaking and falling overhead. Wilson built his ministry talking and writing about godly marriages, husbands who lead, wives who joyfully submit to that godly leadership, raising children to love and fear God, and re-establishing Christian worship. He talks about other stuff. Politics seems to be a kind of entertaining hobby for him, while Keller almost never touched politics. But that's not what he was/is aimed at. He has aimed at fruitful, godly, and joy-filled homes. He has aimed at restoring orderly, biblical and joy-filled worship. The theory at root is that cultures are built, not by political engagement nor by winning over hollywood execs, but cultures are reformed by Christian households and Christian worship.

Both men preached the same gospel. Both men have spoken to culturally taboo subjects. But the focus of their ministries was worlds apart and I don't think there is a third way between them. One will be severely limited in most halls of power if one speaks too loudly about issues of sexuality or the household. On the other hand, the same gospel preached to the "rich"man can kill him and make him alive - and then the foundation-laying discipleship work begins. But this is why Jesus said its incredibly difficult for the "rich" man to enter the kingdom of heaven - particularly when you start defining "rich" in cultural terms and not merely economic ones.

This is not meant to be a Keller-trashing observation. I learned much from him. But his style of ministry is attractive to a particular kind of evangelical who wants desperately to be liked, to enjoy the lifestyles afforded by a modern secular city (read: likes to be cool), and has largely bought into the relative lack of importance our culture places on family life. Wilson attracts some people who like the sky-scrapers shaking who haven't bought into the work of foundation-laying (these stones are soooooo heavy!) The modern evangelical looks at what's happening in Moscow and similar ministries and scrambles to find some way to discount all that heavy fruit (sounds FV, "racism!", "abuse!", and my favorite, "He's so caustic!"). But I think this is the way. I like cities. We are going to stay in ours for awhile. But the work to be done here (and everywhere) is not to impress the elites. Its to build churches filled with godly homes, warm hospitality with all the necessary accouterments (Christian schools, sound theology, holy worship) and continue the work for a bunch of generations.

If one takes a look around, not just since 2020, but in the decades preceding one will find that the foundations are in big trouble. If you were looking to buy a house and it had cracks this big, you’d pass, no matter how sexy the big spacious kitchen was. The challenges we’re facing are not to fill a decent house with better stuff and happier and healthier people. It is to rebuild the foundations. None of this will happen apart from the redeeming work of God’s Spirit, wielding His word to save - bringing death and resurrection to individuals currently sipping lattes, thinking most things are fine - and bringing death and resurrection to churches everywhere. Death is a scary prospect, but its the only way to resurrection.

I have a bunch of Acts 29 brothers (formerly of that particular club) looking around after a few decades and trying to find something more meaningful and lasting than a well-attended church service sitting atop the cultural ruins. It is time to get to work building brothers. Die first. Then grab a shovel, we need to get some foundations laid.