Lisa is back. Yay! She brings the biblical wisdom on how to be an Abigail in a world full of Nabals. Plus, how boomers and Gen X are both right about today’s economic realities. Jesus tells us to wipe the dust off our feet. And giving God His due glory in rescuing us from ourselves. Go ahead. Click the link. I double dog dare you.
The RC Sproul Jr. Principle of Hermeneutics is a simple truth, and a deep passion of mine. You remember it. Whenever someone in the Bible does something really stupid, do not say, “How can they be so stupid?” Instead say to yourself, “How am I stupid just like them?”
It matters to me in large part because it reveals how the Bible reveals my sin. James tells us that the Word is a mirror. Because we’re sinners, however, we often look in the mirror, see the Hero rescuing us, and think that’s us. We are indeed called to be rescuers, but first we have to know that we not only needed, but continue to need to be rescued.
One frequent biblical snapshot of stupidity is the propensity of God’s people to think themselves such by birth right. We can, of course, err in the other direction. I once spoke at a Christian high school graduation. Therein not just one or two, but all of the graduates were given opportunity to speak. Each of them stood up and thanked their parents for raising them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. They praised them for sacrificing to give them a distinctly Christian education, for washing them with the Word. So far so good.
What shocked me was that after giving their heartfelt thanks, each and every student went on to say that all that Christian nurture had nothing at all to do with their faith, that God rejected all that fidelity, and intervened to give them life. They dissed God’s work through their parents in order to praise God’s work apart from their parents.
The more common problem in the Bible, however, is the lazy conviction that because my parents were Israelites, I am due the privileges appertaining thereunto. The scribes and Pharisees insisted that Abraham, not the devil, was their father. Jesus said the opposite. Jesus was right. That this dynamic is not foreign to us, however, does not mean that we are in no danger of falling into it. Whether it be because we live in a nation with a strong, albeit rapidly waning Christian heritage, or whether it be closer to home, that our parents, grandparents, etc. were believers, we tend to think our being brought into the kingdom is a natural thing rather than a supernatural thing.
My parents, professing believers, raised me. My ancestors hail from lands to whom missionaries braved death to bring the good news to. They proclaimed the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. This happened more than 1500 years before I was born. The gospel had had zero impact on land in which I was born, little more than 400 years before my birth. What a fool I would be to think I was never in danger, that I was never outside the people of God.
I, and my people were once not a people. But He made us His people. It was not my birthright. That was death and destruction. Instead His grace brought me in.
This same gospel is at work around the globe, bringing in the elect from the four corners. All the nations are being brought in. The kingdom is covering the earth like a stone uncut by human hands. Jesus saves. Do not forget that He called us from far off, even as we never forget we are the children of our father, Abraham.
Liturgy is one of those words that manages to be both vague, but also, sometimes, the perfect word. Liturgy simply means a tool of remembrance, grounded in beauty. Such tools can include the yearly flow of God’s feasts established for Israel. Or the order of worship at your local church. Even returning thanks before a meal, or my own habit of always breaking my bread before eating it.
Because of the baleful influence of romanticism we have grown suspicious of liturgies. We have come to believe that spontaneity is the font of sincerity, and sincerity the benchmark of authenticity. Liturgies seem to us old and outdated, inseparable from rote repetition. Or even a gateway drug to the dangers of Roman Catholicism.
The trouble with such culturally bound sweeping condemnations is they not only assault the real problem of formalism, but the very established patterns given by God Himself. That is, it is one thing to scoff at mindless repeating of the Hail Mary, quite another to look down our noses at the celebration of the Lord’s Table. If God has established liturgies for us, and He has, it cannot be that liturgies are bad things in themselves.
Consider how often God calls His people to remember. We are given to forgetting. When we bow our heads before our meals, we are laboring to remember that every meal is an answer to another liturgy, our prayer that He would give us this day our daily bread. When we come to the greatest of all meals we are laboring to remember that we broke His body, spilled His blood, and though we often forget, that He welcomes us as His children to His own table, that we are at peace with Him.
What though about personal liturgies? Are these legitimate, or are they strange fire, a violation of the 2nd commandment? I would suggest the dividing line between the two has less to do with what the liturgy in question is, more to do with how we see it. When I break my bread before eating it I am simply seeking, in the midst of daily life, to remind myself that He died for me. When I open my wife’s car door I am reminding myself of her great value and blessing.
What I don’t do with these two liturgies is elevate them to the level of God-given liturgies. I don’t seek to impose them on others, or even proselytize for them. They are personal, and except insofar as I use them as an illustration of a broader point in this piece, private. They are personal habits of the heart, not a command from on high. In short, they are useful, in their place.
The irony is that liturgy is inescapable. That moment when the worship leader looks off in the distance while imploring the assembled to sing the chorus one last time is as much a liturgy as chanting the Apostles’ Creed. Wisdom dictates that we fight against forgetting, whether our forgetting flows from mindless liturgy, or from a lack of liturgy. Christ has died. He is risen. Christ will come again. Lord, help us to never forget.
Because we believe it is our due, we’re confident that even the darkest clouds have silver linings. When someone dies in old age, we rejoice that he had a long, full life. On the other hand, when someone goes suddenly, we’re comforted knowing he did not suffer long. When someone dies young but not so suddenly, we’re glad he had the opportunity to say goodbye. We find reasons to give thanks not only in death but in dying.
When we are merely terminal but not yet terminated, we are blessed. We can live each day as if it were our last. Sometimes the doctors seem to give us enough of a glimpse of the future — you have weeks, you have months — that we think it changes everything.
We are all terminal. Every mother’s son of us. The future, or rather our knowledge of it, however, isn’t binary. We neither know for certain what is to come nor are we utterly ignorant. Some things we know; some things we don’t. Most things we know only vaguely.
We know we are going to die, but we don’t know when. We know that others we love are going to die, but we don’t know when. Neither do we usually know how. What we do know, however, is exactly what we need to know. We are called to know this: knowing more details about our future should not radically change our present.
“What would you do if you knew you had only a year, a month, a week, a day, an hour to live?” may make for an interesting parlor game. We ought, however, to answer “The same thing I have been doing, hoping that I have decades left to live.”
On the one hand, we ought not live casually, walking through lackadaisical days on the brash assumption that we have plenty of time in front of us. On the other hand, though, we don’t want to toss aside the wisdom of a calm, faithful, steady life on the grounds that it could all end tomorrow. If I were to die tomorrow, I only hope that I will have been faithful today.
Our calling, in short, is not grounded ultimately in our peculiar circumstances. We don’t have one set of obligations when we are healthy and looking forward to many more years and a different set when we are beset with illness and already feel the icy breath of death on the backs of our necks.
When we marry we vow to remain faithful in sickness and in health. Circumstances do not change that calling. The same is true of each of us as we together constitute the bride of Christ. He calls us to love, honor, and obey Him in every and all circumstances. His pledged love to us is not that we would avoid suffering and death but that He would remain faithful. We, in turn, are called to be faithful to Him, to seek first and always, in plenty and in want, in sickness and in health, His kingdom and His righteousness.
Because He assures of this— that He is faithful—and we are called to be the same, we are able to do what we are called to do: to trust in Him. He is the perfect husband, and all that He sovereignly brings into our lives He brings for our good and His glory. He gifts us, as His bride, not with diamonds and pearls but with that which is far more valuable— the very fruit of the Spirit.
His promise is that He is making us more like Him, and we could wish for nothing greater. Because we know where we are going—that we will be like Him, that He will and does hold us, laugh with us, and dance with us—we can be at peace in all things. We can profess with deepest joy: “The Lord giveth. The Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Christian apologists have made a great deal of hay out of the “is to ought” problem the atheist has. Any naturalist view of reality, that suggests that all that exists is matter and energy erases any foundation for ethics. “Ought” is neither matter nor energy. And neither can produce it. “Is” describes how things are. “Ought” describes how things should be. If all there is is is, well then, naught can be said about ought.
Don’t be fooled by this common countermove of the atheist. “We don’t need God to tell us it’s better to help old ladies across the street than to mug them.” This, however, is not a statement about what is good. It is a statement, a false one at that, about what is needed to determine the good. Atheists may be correct from time to time on what is right and what wrong, but their worldview doesn’t have room for it. They have no reason to privilege helping over mugging.
A second strategy they take is to try to sneak in their ought while obscuring it as something else. “Of course,” they’ll say, “there can be no objective moral standard. We know, however that what we ought to do is that which is conducive to human flourishing.” Which is like saying, “There is no such thing as a bachelor. I am, however, an unmarried man.” Survival or flourishing of the species may win a popularity contest against destruction and the agony of the species. But that still doesn’t make it an ought.
The wisest man, apart from Jesus, to ever walk the planet, made the same point millenia ago. He said “under the sun,” that is, in a naturalist universe, all we have is vanity, striving after the wind. If there is nothing beyond this world, everything in this world comes to its end, and thus has no end.
Huh? Whatever we pursue, whether wealth, power, wisdom, human flourishing, comes crashing down when we die, when we end. Which means it has no telos, purpose, or end. My father was fond of reminding us that “right now counts forever.” Under the sun, right now not only doesn’t count forever, but doesn’t count at all. Only when purpose is grounded in the eternal can it have any temporal meaning.
Which is one more reason we ought to have pity on those who deny their Maker. They’re not terribly bright (“The fool says in his heart ‘There is no God’” (Proverbs 14:1). Worse, they are aimless, fruitless, pointless. They not only have no reason to do what they do, but in denying God they themselves deny they have a reason to do what they do. We proclaim a good news that not only can they have peace with the living God, but they can have direction on both where to go and how to get there.
We exist to make manifest the glory of God. That is our ultimate purpose. There can be none greater. May we walk in joy knowing His purposes are always met, and that He is pleased to use us along the way.
My advice? Give a listen to this week’s podcast. I think you’ll enjoy it and benefit from it. Check it out and let me know.
Praying for something happens when two circumstances are met. First, we the ones praying must recognize that what we want is a good thing. No one prays to lose their job or to need a new heat pump. Second, we the ones praying must recognize that it is God who gives us every good gift. Reformations are not bootstrap efforts. If ever a man understood that, it was the leader of our last Reformation.
When Luther was called to the Diet of Worms to recant his teaching he did not, at first, deliver his famous speech. Instead he asked for a day to pray about it. The next morning he took his stand. In between he prayed this for Reformation:
Almighty, eternal God! How dreadful is the world! Behold how its mouth opens to swallow me up, and how small is my faith in You!
O the weakness of the flesh and the power of Satan! If I am to depend upon any strength from this world, all is lost. O my God! Help me against all the wisdom of this world. Do this, I beg You.
The work is not mine, but Yours. I have no business here, nothing to contend for with these great men of the world! I would gladly pass my days in happiness and peace. But the cause is Yours, my Lord; and it is righteous and everlasting! Stand by me! O faithful and unchangeable God! I lean not upon man. It would be vain!
You have chosen me for this work. I know it! Therefore, O God, accomplish Your own will! Stand by me in the name of Jesus Christ, who will be my shelter and my shield, yes, my mighty fortress, through the might and strengthening of the Holy Spirit.
I am ready, even to lay down my life for this cause, patient as a little lamb. For the cause is holy. It is Your own. Though this world be filled with devils, and though my body, originally the work and creation of Your hands, go to destruction in this cause — yes, though it be shattered into pieces — Your Word and Your Spirit they are good to me still! It concerns only the body. The soul is Yours. It belongs to You and will also remain with You forever. God help me.
Amen.
I would argue that Reformation began not at Luther’s tower experience. Nor was it October 31, 1517 with the nailing on the church door of the 95 Theses. Neither was it with the speech he would deliver at Worms. It was the prayer, the meeting with the living God at the throne of grace. It started on this day not because of Luther himself but because of the Spirit that dwelt within him.
The leader of an earlier Reformation learned this lesson well praying for relief from the thorn in his side,
And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me (II For. 12:9). May God grant us the grace to instill us an immovable certainty in our dependence on His grace.
Tonight we conclude our study exploring the parables of Jesus. Last week we considered the Prodigal Son. We serve dinner at 6:15, and begin the study at 7:00. We also livestream on Facebook Live, on the account I share with Lisa, RC-Lisa Sproul. Typically, a day or so later, we post the study right here. Scroll down for previous studies. We’d love to host you in our home, or out in cyberspace.
No, and yes. Racism is, and will be, until Christ’s return a peculiarly ugly manifestation of the sin that remains within us. It is grounded in a pride that is as loathsome as it is ridiculous. Imagine taking pride in the history of cultures and genes that you neither built nor chose. Imagine looking down at those who were given a different culture, or a different genetic background. It’s just silly, embarrassing.
The “no” part, however, comes here. “Color-blindness” is wrong when it is used to wipe out any sense of cultural identity. I didn’t choose my family, but it is still my family. In my cultural context I identify not only with being a Sproul, but with being a native of Pittsburgh. In turn I identify with my ancestors who hailed from Scotland and Ireland.
These cultural identities carry with them things to be proud of. Like the glorious truth that no team has more Super Bowl trophies than my Steelers. And propensities that are not something to be proud of. Like the habits of my Scottish ancestors to not do well getting along with each other. If “color-blindness” means I have to forget all that, ignore all that, I’m doing it wrong. Shared experiences unite us.
The “yes” part, however, may have been given its best expression in Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Among the things King dreamt of was a future where a man would be judged not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. I am from Pittsburgh. My ancestors hailed from the British Isles. But I am also me.
I know I didn’t do much to secure those Super Bowl trophies, though we Pittsburghers do believe in the power of a well-waved Terrible Towel. I like to think I haven’t succumbed to my cultural heritage of squabbling with my kin, even if my kin have such a cultural heritage. In short, I should neither be praised for the virtues of my tribe, nor condemned for their vices.
In like manner, my calling is to look at others one at a time, to assess their character rather than their family tree. God, after all, rescued us from our first family, and adopted us into His own. Our identity is now in Him. And in Him we are called to love our neighbor, to recognize that our family is not black or white, but rather is all those covered by the blood of Christ. I not only have more in common with a believer who was born and raised in the Amazon than I do with an unbelieving Pittsburgher with Scots-Irish ancestors, but I am closer kin to that believer.
God has not only adopted me into His family, but has adopted in our family two boys whose ancestors came from Africa. They, and we with them, because we are family, ought to know and celebrate their historical background. But in terms of our family, their skin color is of no more significance than the color of their eyes. In the end we no longer have Adam as our father, but Abraham, the father of the faithful. All because we have the same elder brother, our kinsman redeemer, Jesus of Nazareth.
Teaching philosophy is in my blood. I don’t just know how to do it, but I love doing it. Most of the classes I’ve taught over the years have consisted of people not planning to become professional philosophers. There aren’t many of those.
Side Note- My last semester at Grove City College I got a call from its sole Philosophy professor, the much beloved Dr. Dick Trammell. He asked me in his thick Kentucky accent, “RC, aren’t you a philosophy major?” “Yes sir,” I replied, “I’ve been meeting all the requirements but I haven’t filled out the paperwork to make it official.” “Would you mind,” he asked, “going to the registrar and doing that right now? They’re about to cancel the major. You’ll be the only one.”
I typically begin each semester with Zeno’s Paradox. Zeno (or Xeno if you prefer) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who argued that motion is not possible. He points out that a tortoise with a head start will progress some distance in the time it takes the hare to get half way to where the tortoise started. To make up half that distance, again the tortoise will progress. He can therefore never catch up.
What follows from my students is one of two responses. Some are outraged. How ridiculous to waste time on something we know isn’t true! So I invite them to disprove Zeno. Which no one has done across thousands of years. I concede that hares do catch up to tortoises. But no one has refuted Zeno showing it can’t happen.
Others respond with sheer delight. To discover that the world carries mystery, that there is more than just what appears to the eye is a kind of awakening. Such raises the obvious question- what else have I not given a thought to? What else is the water I don’t notice that I’m swimming in? It can be like taking the red pill.
The same is true of theology. Like philosophy too many think that exploring theology is somehow unspiritual, a waste of time. It is likewise true that some study it in order to use their knowledge to beat down others. What is supposed to happen is that theology opens new vistas into beholding His glory. We’re supposed to not buckle down in our studies but lift up our eyes, to more fully see Him as He is.
Which brings us back to philosophy. Socrates wisely said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” He gave profoundly practical advice here. You cannot answer the why’s, the question of the purpose of all that we do, apart from philosophy and theology. Without these disciplines, we are stuck under the sun, blown about while chasing the wind.
“Huh, never thought of that” opens a door into a world of mystery and imagination. Walk through and discover that the inside of our world is bigger than the outside.
