Christ Church

Conservative and Progressive

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Introduction

This is Ascension Sunday, which means that we are going to be reminded of the absolute authority of the Lord Jesus Christ in every realm. Because we are currently in a political season, and we are in this season in a time that is politically swollen, we need to come to the Scriptures as the only foundation upon which we may build our political identities. This is the task, and it is harder than it looks.

The Texts

“Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: 10 That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; 11 And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:9-11).

“If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets” (Matt. 7:12; cf. Matt. 22:40).

Summary of the Texts

Because of Christ’s great obedience, even to the point of death on a cross, God has highly exalted Him. He has a name above every name (Phil. 2:9). The point of having such an exalted name is that every knee should bow (in obedience), and this includes creatures in heaven, on earth, and under the earth (v. 10). It certainly does not exempt anyone. The universal confession follows—every tongue confesses that Jesus is Lord. Again, the lordship of Christ entails obedience. As a result of this, God the Father is glorified. We do not oppose love for Christ and obedience to Christ, as though piety and law were at odds. If we love Jesus, then we will do what He says (John 14:15). But it is not enough to affirm the need for this in the abstract. What does He say? In His Sermon on the Mount, He gives us His authoritative summary of the entire Old Testament. Do unto others (Matt. 7:12). In another place, He says that love for God and neighbor sum up the whole Old Testament as well (Matt. 22:40). If we look at this carefully, we see that the Golden Rule is another way of expressing the duties of love. Jesus said that He did not come to abolish the law and the prophets, but rather to fulfill them (Matt. 5:17). This is how.

Definitions: Conservative and Progressive

Remember that no virtue can be found in a transitive verb. Everything hinges on the direct object. Did you know that loving (agape loving) was a great sin (1 John 2:15)? Did you know that we are called to a life of hatred (Prov. 8:13)? Stop loving and start hating. That’s what the Bible says . . . Everything hinges on what you love and what you hate, and why. Right? The same thing is true of the verbs related to our common political terms conservative and progressive.

What are you conserving? Joseph Smith’s polygamist directives in the mountains of Utah? The old prerogatives of the Politburo? The work of the Holy Spirit in human culture over the last two thousand years? What? And what are you progressing toward? The Marxist vision of the final state? An Islamic vision of sharia law? Isaiah’s vision of the feast on the mountain (Is. 25:6)? What? You have to decide where you are going before exulting in the fact that you are making really good time.

Where We Are Right Now

This means that as Christians we should want to conserve those elements of our culture that are the goods of common grace, or which developed as a result of the progress of the gospel in the world. That is what we are conservative about. Knowing what these are requires the pursuit of wisdom, and all that entails. As Christians, we should want to progress toward the scriptural vision of the good life, every man under his own fig tree—not somebody else’s fig tree that you bought at auction because his property taxes were in arrears. We progress toward the time when human society is shaped by the fact that every knee is bent, and every tongue has confessed who Jesus actually is. What we conserve, and what we progress toward, are both defined, entirely and completely by the Bible.

But what would “they” call it? You are on national television, and are given a chance to spell out what you would keep and what you would work for. When you are done, what do they call you? How do they define you? An ultramontane fundamentalist theocratic conservative redneck tinfoil-hatter would be at the kind end of their descriptions. There is no way they would call you any kind of their kind of progressive. So how do we self- identify?

Cashing This Out

The apostle Paul calls us to not be babies in our understanding. He says we are to be like little children when it comes to malice, but that we should be mature and adult in our understanding of the world (1 Cor. 14:20). So then . . . we are not allowed to rubber stamp whatever political program appeals to us with the name of Jesus. We must do what we do politically in His name, and that which we do must be entirely in line with what He says.

But don’t be a child. Would you like to get free money from the government? Then why not vote for free money from the government for everybody else? The brief answer is that it isn’t free. Do unto others, but complete the sentence. If I would like to get free money, then I should support the giving of free money to others. But I emphatically would not want to get money that was stolen in order to give it to me. Why don’t I want that? Because I am a Christian. Therefore I may not support it in other cases. What many point to as an application of the Golden Rule in politics is actually the most egregious violation of it. We are disobeying Jesus in the name of Jesus.

Limited Government, Great Glory

In Scripture, there is an inverse relationship between the amount of coercion a government uses and the glory that government has.

“The God of Israel said, The Rock of Israel spake to me, he that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; As the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain” (2 Sam. 23:3-4).

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Grace and Sweat

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Introduction

I am fond of saying that grace has a backbone, but I think it is time to explain what I mean by that. The context of these remarks is the general and current ongoing discussion about the worrisome trajectories of all those incipient legalists and antinomians out there. The incipient legalists are the ones the incipient antinomians are worried about, and vice versa.

The Text

“Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12-13).

Summary of the Text

We see that for the apostle Paul, obedience is not a bad word. It does not have negative connotations for him. The Philippians were beloved by him, and he commends them for their obedience (v. 12). This was not just when Paul was present, but also when he was not with them. In particular, he tells them (in his absence) to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling (v. 12). How is it possible for them to do this? God is the one who is at work within them, willing and doing in accordance with His good pleasure (v. 13). This means that the Philippians were to work out what God was working in. The labors of both parties, added up, did not come to 100%. God did everything in them. They did everything that was the result of what God did in them. Salvation is all of grace—even the work.

But what is the relationship of the grace of God to the (seemingly unrelated) world of hard moral effort? If the grace of God is in all and through all, and beneath us all, then why do we still have to sweat bullets? Are those who sweat bullets abandoning the grace of God? Are those who rejoice in free forgiveness forsaking the demands of discipleship? But not all conditions are meritorious.

Reconciled Friends

Spurgeon once said, when asked how he reconciled divine sovereignty with human responsibility, that he did not even try—he never sought to reconcile friends. If we think about it rightly, from the vantage of those jealous for moral probity, we will never try to reconcile grace with works—that would be like trying to reconcile an apple tree with its apples. And, if we think about it rightly, from the vantage of those jealous for the wildness of grace, we will never try to reconcile grace with merit, for the two are mortal enemies and cannot be reconciled.

But those who insist that apple trees must always produce apples will make the friends of free grace nervous, not because they have anything against apples, but rather because they know the human propensity for manufacturing shiny plastic apples, with the little hooks that make it easy to hang them, like so many Christmas tree ornaments, on our doctrinal and liturgical bramble bushes. But on the other hand, those who insist that true grace always messes up the categories of the ecclesiastical fussers make the friends of true moral order nervous—because there are, after all, numerous warnings (from people like Jesus and Paul, who should have a place in these particular discussions, after all) about those who “live this way” not inheriting the kingdom. Kind of cold, according to some people, but the wedding banquet is the kind of event you can get thrown out of.

Rightly Related

So what is the relationship of grace to hard, moral effort? Well, hard, moral effort is a grace. It is not every grace, but it is a true grace. It is a gift of God, lest any should boast. We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, and this is a description of someone being saved by grace through faith, and not by works (Eph. 2:8-10). This is the meaning of our text—“work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”We are called to work out what God works in, and absolutely nothing else. If we don’t work out that salvation (as evidenced by the fruit of it), then that is clear evidence that God is not working anything in.

If we work out some pressboard imitation (a salvation that has the look of real wood!), then that shows that God is not working anything in there either. Moralism is just a three-dollar flashlight to light the pathway to Hell with. And of course, if we are guilty of the opposite error, if our lives are manifesting a lineup of dirty deeds done dirt cheap, the only real sin we are avoiding is that of hypocrisy. Overt immorality is the fifty-dollar flashlight.

All Grace, All the Time

This is why we need a little more of “in Him we live and move and have our being.” Actually, we need a lot more of it. The answer to the grace/works dilemma is high octane Calvinism, and by this, I don’t mean the formulaic kind. If God is the one Paul preached — the one of whom it can be said “of him, and through him, and to him, are all things”—then where in the universe are you going to hide your pitiful merit? If He is Almighty God, and He starts to transform your tawdry little life into something resembling Jesus, who are you to tell Him that He is now wavering on the brink of dangerous legalisms?

The bottom line is that we cannot balance our notions of grace with works or our notions of works with grace. We need to get off that particular teeter totter. We have to balance absolutely everything in our lives with God Himself, who is the font of everlasting grace—real grace. Real grace is the context of everything. If we preach the supremacy of God in Christ, and the absolute lordship of that bleeding Christ, and the efficacious work of the Spirit in us who raised Jesus from the dead, then a number of other things will resolve themselves in a multitude of wonderful ways.

In Jesus, we are the new humanity. Is Jesus grace or works? Jesus lives in the garden of God’s everlasting favor, and we are in Him. In Christ, there are no prohibited trees. Outside Him, they are all prohibited. That means there is only one real question to answer, and it does not involve any grace/works ratios. The question is more basic than that, and has to do with the new birth.

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Mechanics of Fatherhood (Father Hunger 8)

Joe Harby on

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Introduction

In this series, we have been emphasizing the gospel of free forgiveness, and we have also noted that God is the kind of Father we want to become. This means that perfect love casts out fear—we are liberated by the blood of Christ to a life of imitation. Always remember that being precedes doing, and that what we are called to believe (really believe) is the foundation of what we are called to do. A Christian pulpit must always proclaim Jesus, but also always remember that Jesus has hands and feet. Not only that, but they are pierced hands and feet, sacrificial hands and feet. We are called to imitate Him. In that spirit then, as we come now to the conclusion . . .

The Texts

“And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4).

“Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged” (Col. 3:21).

Summary of the Text

Putting these two texts together, we see two basic realities. The first is that fathers are called to not provoke their children to anger because that would result in the children being discouraged in their Christian walk. Christian fathers can have that effect. The second is that fathers are to provide a life of nurture and admonition, which consists of a full and robust Christian upbringing.

Twenty-One Words for Fathers

As we consider 21 principles for fathers to remember, you will see that we have touched on some of them already. But here they all are in one place. These are the mechanics of fatherhood . . .

  1. Love Jesus Christ, and express that love by worshiping His Father in the power of the Spirit, and do this as a gathered family on the Lord’s Day. Worship is a big deal. God honors those who honor Him (1 Sam. 2:30).
  2. Love your children by loving their mother. Love their mother by loving her children. This is the central way the gospel will be proclaimed in your home (Eph. 5:25).
  3. Teach them to love the standard, which is not the same thing as merely requiring them to conform to the standard (for a time). This is a function of heart loyalty (Prov. 23:26), and you teach them to love the standard (and to be loyal to you) by loving the standard yourself (and being loyal to them).
  4. Your garden of yes should have a tree of no in it, and not the other way around (Gen. 2:16). God is not a skinflint, and you should not paint Him as being one. In Christ, all the promises are yes and amen (2 Cor. 1:20). Resemble the God you serve.
  5. Give them the Torah, not the Talmud (Matt. 22:40). The law of God is simple to understand, and can be easily summarized. If your house rules are convoluted and Byzantine, then you have a problem. I well remember my father’s summary of what was expected of us—“no disobedience, no lying, and no disrespecting your mother.” See? Life is good.
  6. Acknowledge your children all need to be converted (Eph. 2:3), but do not do this with unequal weights and measures. If you apply impossible standards to your children, you are causing them to stumble. Beware of millstones as you bring them to Christ (Matt. 18:6).
  7. Listen to them. They are people. It is possible to converse with them (Prov. 18:13).
  8. Their food, shelter, and clothing take precedence over your toys (Ex. 21:10).
  9. Remember their frame (Ps. 103:14). Don’t skip naps, keep them up until 11:30, withhold a real dinner, and then paddle them for falling apart. Someone should paddle you for pulling them apart.
  10. Eat together and not just as refueling measure. This is how families become companions. The liberality that results in table fellowship is a big deal in Scripture (Prov. 11:25), so why withhold it from your family? If half your meals are eaten over the sink, then take stock of your situation.
  11. Respect your sons and love your daughters (Eph. 5: 33, 25). They are different, and those differences should be honored. This obviously does not mean you don’t have to love your sons or respect your daughters, but it does tell you which way to lean.
  12. Tell stories together. Listen to stories together. The gospel is a story (1 Cor. 15:3ff), and we come to know one another truly as we come to know the genre. By telling stories you come to realize that you are in one.
  13. Provide your children with a Christian education (Eph. 6:4). And it must be a true education, filled with life and laughter. The classroom is not a cauldron (Dt. 14:21).
  14. You should want a home full of Scripture, a home full of joy, a home full of music (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16). Godly child-rearing is Spirit-filled, and it cannot be Spirit-filled without becoming a musical.
  15. Give your children quantity time, and don’t try to sub in the guilt salve of so-called “quality time” (Dt. 6:4-9).
  16. Discipline should be a gift, not a grabbing. If you are retaliating against your children, then the whole thing isself-serving (Gal. 6:1).
  17. Discipline should be judicious, and not an occasion for you to jump to conclusions (Prov. 18:17). Sometimes kids can invite the injustice, and they bear the weight of it if they do, but fathers should fight to maintain justice in the home. Playing favorites with your children, incidentally, invites such injustice.
  18. The pain of discipline should be acute, not chronic. The Bible says that discipline should be painful (Heb. 12:11), but not the pain of a dull ache week after week. Heartache is not discipline.
  19. The point of discipline is restored fellowship (Heb. 12:11), not retribution. There is a difference between discipline and punishment. Discipline is correction, and can cease when correction is accomplished. You don’t make all your children spend the same amount of time in the tub for the sake of “equality.”
  20. Divided discipline is dangerous. Father and mother are in this together. Scripture requires them to be honored together (Ex. 20:12), and so they should work together. Don’t allow your children to apply the tactic of “divide and conquer.”
  21. Prepare them for independence (Gen. 2:24). Do not make the mistake of indulging sin when it is little and cute, and then trying to crack down on it later, when things start to look more serious.

And again, remember that Jesus is always the point.

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Honoring Fathers (Father Hunger 7)

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Introduction

Human flourishing depends in large measure on the faithfulness and happiness of families, and this depends, in its turn, on the honor rendered to the parents by the children. This is, the apostle Paul tells us, the first commandment with a promise. The promise originally applied to the land of Canaan, as it was spoken here at Sinai. The apostle Paul speaks the same words from the heavenly Mt. Zion, and he says that the words of promise apply to the entire earth—whether Ephesus, or New York, or Beijing. So what does it mean?

The Texts

“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee” (Ex. 20:12).

“Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth” (Eph. 6:2-3).

Summary of the Texts

The Ten Words given at Mt. Sinai are God’s summary of His entire law, just as the two greatest commandments (love God and love your neighbor) are a summary. The Ten Word summarize the whole, and the Two Words summarize the ten.

Honor must be shown, and it must be shown to both father and mother (Ex. 20:12). The reason that is given is so that those who show this honor might have a long life in the land that God was giving them (v. 12). This was spoken to Jewish children at Mt. Sinai. Centuries later, the apostle repeats the command, only this time to Gentile children in Ephesus (Eph. 6:2). He points out that the command is the first one with a promise (v. 2), and he reiterates the promise—extending it to the whole earth. We are no longer limited to the land of Canaan, but this promise now applies to any place where Christians might live.

A Brief Word to Mothers

There are two things that need to be said as an aside to mothers. First, you may have noticed that the text this morning is just as insistent upon the honoring of mothers as it is of fathers. So why this long series on father hunger? The answer has to do with how men and women sin differently, about which more in a minute. It is not that mothers are unimportant, or that a series of messages for them would be out of place. A doctor might talk to you for a long time about the importance of Vitamin D, and you should not conclude from this talk that he hates Vitamin E. We can’t talk about everything all the time, and in our generation, in this moment, we need a particular focus on fathers, a particular word to fathers.

But while we are here, the second thing is that women can’t compensate for father hunger by being more motherly. Women are gravity, and men are centrifugal force. Women cluster, and men escape. Women overcommit and men under commit. Women are soft and men are hard. This is why we don’t have a comparable phenomenon like “mother hunger.”We have mother troubles—frequently—but it is a different ball game. If men under engage and women over engage, they can both key off the sins of the other sex, which then makes them double down in their own problems.

Tangible Honor

As we consider this, always remember that honor must start in the heart, but if it ends there, it isn’t honor. Honor must be expressed through words, symbols, actions, or gestures. Honor is among the most incarnational of the virtues. It must have feet and hands.

Teaching the Showing of Honor

A father can teach and lead his children in how to show him honor, and the first thing to recognize is that this must be done because he seeks the blessing for his children that this command promises. He doesn’t need the honor himself, he is not being an honor-hound. He is seeking the blessing of having the kind of children who show honor, along with the subsequent blessings that come from that. If the father is being a needy bucket, and he demands honor in order to fill up his internal ache, then he will suffocate his children with intolerable demands. There is a kind of seeking honor that is destructive (John 5:44).

The first rule of teaching something is that you must demonstrate that you know how to do it yourself. You teach your children to honor you by showing them how you honor their grandparents. If your parents are alive, show them in real time. If your parents are deceased, then honor them in the telling of stories. All of you fathers have fathers. Model what you would like your children to grow up into.

Showing Honor

Small children show honor through cheerful obedience (Eph. 6:1-4). Not only must children obey, but they must do so “as unto the Lord.”This means that obedience must be quick, it must be heart-felt, it must be cheerful, it must be immediate. How would you respond if Jesus Himself asked you to do whatever it is? You might be tempted to say that Jesus would never ask you to stay inside on a Saturday morning to clean your bedroom . . . oh, but He did.

The duty of obedience passes as children grow, but the duty of honor never does. The Lord Jesus teaches us that grown children with financial resources have a duty to honor their parents that way (Mark 7:10-13).

Honor Knits Generations Together

We are disciples of Jesus in the first instance. He tells us that we have to hate father and mother (Luke 14:26), and the account in Matthew explains this as not loving father or mother more than we love Jesus Christ (Matt. 10:37). If we love Jesus Christ above all things, then we are in fellowship with the source of all the love in the universe. If we refuse to do so, then it doesn’t matter what we make into our idol, we are not in fellowship with the source of all love. And if we are not in fellowship with that love, then even if you idolize your father, he will be get less honor, respect, and love than if he were number two.

So we are called to Christian honor, honor rendered as part of our discipleship. This is not honor rendered blindly in a tribal, patriarchal way. As intelligent honor, it is used by God to knit each generation to the next one.

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Repentance and Fatherhood (Father Hunger 6)

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Introduction

The word repentance means a “change of mind,” but in the biblical vocabulary this entails much more than mere intellectual assent to a different proposition than was held to before. If sincere, it represents an entire turning, and it includes what we would call the heart.

The Text

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse” (Mal. 4:5-6).

Summary of the Text

We know on the authority of the Lord Jesus that this passage is talking about His ministry. We know this because Jesus identified “Elijah the prophet” in this text with the ministry of John the Baptist (Matt. 11:14). Before the great day of the Lord, Elijah will come and in his ministry of repentance (turning the people back to God), he will also have the effect of turning people back to one another—particularly the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to the fathers.

In this chapter of Malachi, the day is coming when the wicked will be consumed like dry grass in an oven (v. 1). But for those who fear God, the Sun of righteousness will arise, and there will be healing in His wings (v. 2). The result will be that the godly will tread down the wicked (v. 3). The godly (members of the new covenant, remember) are charged to remember the law of Moses, given at Horeb for all Israel (v. 4). Elijah is coming before this great day (v. 5), and he will be the basis of reconciliation between fathers and their children, and children and their fathers (v. 6).

A Turned Heart, A Given Heart

In Proverbs 23:26, Solomon pleads with his son. He says, “My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways.” In our text, the reconciliation is described as a turning of hearts, and here we have the giving of the heart. The parallelism in this proverb shows us that the giving of the heart involves imitation (willingness to observe the father’s ways). Fighting the natural impulse of imitation is what drives estrangement, and surrendering that fight is what constitutes the reconciliation.

When a father asks for this—“give me your heart”—what is he pleading for? He is asking his children to imitate him. This is what children do naturally (Eph. 5:1; cf. 1 Cor. 4:16; 1 Cor. 11:1), unless that natural impulse has been continuously insulted. If a father says, “Give me your heart,” what will he say if the question comes back, “Why?”

Two Kinds of Authority

There are two kinds of authority that a father may have. He always has at least one of them, simply by virtue of being the father, but he may or may not have the other. Think of it in this way.

There is the authority of having a checkbook and checking account. You own it. Your name is in the upper left hand corner. You are the authorized signatory on the account. You have the full authority to write checks from that account. No one questions it. That is one kind of authority. The second kind of authority is what comes from having a good bit of money in that same account. Applying our illustration, the former authority is simply positional authority. The second kind of authority is what we call a moral authority. The former argues, “I am your father.”The latter simply knows, “I am your father.”

Too many fathers want to be able to write checks simply because they own the checkbook, and not because they have made any deposits in it.

What They Need Protection From

We have already learned that a man’s basic marching orders call him to provide and to protect (Gen. 2:15). Since we are imitating God the Father, we should see that before providing “the bacon,” a man must first provide himself. And because we are living in the kind of world where protection is needed, a man’s first impulse to protect should be informed by the realization that he is the first one his family might need protection from. Eve certainly needed protection from the serpent, but prior to that, she needed protection from her abdicating protector.

Remember that when St. George fails to fight the dragon, in that instance, St. George has become the dragon.

Children Included

When this work is accomplished, we see that the healing is done on both sides of the divide. Fathers who have been harsh, distant, demanding, or abdicating are given a heart of repentance, and they turn (with that heart of repentance) back to their children. But if the children have been provoked to anger (Eph. 6:4), if the children have been embittered because their father had not been mindful of their frame (Ps. 103:13-14), the Spirit of God moves in them, and they are able to lay that bitterness down. They are able to forgive. If someone has wronged you, being bitter about it is simply saving a souvenir from that special occasion. But if you hated the play, then why would you save the ticket stubs for your scrapbook?

Healing in His Wings

The call to repentance is the entryway into grace. We are called to surrender our pride, and to come into His grace, in which we are invited to stand (Rom. 5:2).

Returning to the point of the text, we assume that the fathers and the children in it are not where they ought to have been. When the healing of God comes, it is healing where there was sickness. There is restoration where there was ruin. There is reconciliation where there was estrangement. This is what the gospel does. This is why Jesus came.

This is why it is no good despairing—it is entirely beside the point to say that it is “too late for you.” If the preacher declares that Jesus came for those who are all messed up, is it a refutation to say that this cannot mean you—because you are all messed up? Jesus came for those who are sick, not for those who are healthy. He came for the sinners, not for the righteous (Mark 2:17). Don’t argue that this can’t mean you, for you are sick and sinful.

We preach a message of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18). And if we are reconciled to God (Rom. 5:1), then it follows that other kinds of reconciliation will fall into place (1 John 1:7).

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