Christ Church

A Sermon for Americans

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Benediction

Blessed are those who are called by the name of the Lord, for they shall be feared.
Blessed are those who listen, for they shall be chased down by blessing.
Blessed are those who observe and do, for they shall be set on high.
Blessed are those who have the word in their mouth and heart, for the new commandment is theirs.
Blessed are those who are truly fruitful in their basket and store, for they will hunger and thirst after righteousness.
Blessed are those who serve God in joy and gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things, for they shall be free of covetousness.
Blessed are those who have not looked on the form or shape of any graven image, for they shall see God.
Blessed are those whose foot does not slide, for they shall walk in the truth.

Present Testimony

Obedience can only be offered in the present, and disobedience—that unclean sacrifice—can only be offered on that same altar. Whatever it is must be offered in the present. Were you faithful once? Were you a faithful nation then? To offer up faithfulness then as though it were as good as obedience now, to rest on your laurels, is the same thing as offering up disobedience now. Offer what God asks of you. Offer your heart, promptly and sincerely, and do it now.

Real Authority

Do not think that these are words of revolution, designed to overthrow your laws and customs. Rather you have already been diligent in overthrowing your own laws and customs, while pretending you have not done so, such that if anybody comes to you and urges a return to the old paths, you think of him as the radical. If someone were to come to you and urge three senators from every state, you would hail him as an innovative progressive, and the Constitution as a living document that allows for such progress. If someone were to resist the novelty, you sneer at him as an extremist.

The Heart of Obedience

You have heard it said that it was the intention of the Founders to keep and maintain a strict separation between church and state. You have even heard it said that there was to be a wall of separation between the two. But I am telling you there is a difference between separating two forms of government found under the sun, ecclesiastical government and civil government, which is a most biblical thing to do, and separating God and state, or morality and state, or righteousness and state. You would separate morality and state . . . isn’t there enough of that already?

Divorce and Remarriage

A nation cannot be as faithless as you have been to your God without that faithlessness also being manifested in your marriages. You treat the dissolution of marriage as a personal convenience, whatever you feel like. You ought rather to consider divorce as something more akin to having a leg amputated.

Oath Keeping

You assume to yourself the right to prioritize all your promises. Promises that are about defending the Constitution are the really important ones, but promises to remain faithful to your wife are only “about sex.” But a man who will betray his wife, or a woman who will betray her husband, is already treacherous in principle. Treachery grows, just as cancer does, and oath breaking is a gangrenous business. This is the long way around, but it is to say that a nation filled with liars, thieves and adulterers is going to be well-represented in their state and national capitals.

Good for Evil

You judge yourselves by your intentions and motives, and you judge others by their actions toward you. You do not take their intentions (or professed intentions) into account. In your evaluation of all your interactions with others, you weigh and measure with meticulous care, always taking proper care to leave your thumb on the scale. Because you evaluate motives in such a crooked way, it is not surprising that your retaliations toward others are so often unjust.

Showboating

And beware of all the humility snares. You are a casual people, and you take pride in not being stuffy. But if previous generations were proud of their top hats and tails, and you are proud of your sweat pants, what is the real distinction between you and those others—apart from the fact that they had more of a plausible excuse for their pride?

Your worship services resemble classroom lectures, or assemblies, and sometimes they even look like pep rallies. And yet you are proud? No creature should be proud of anything at all, but to be proud of doing something poorly is a remarkable feat.

Pray Like This

When you reflect on your own character, on your failures and successes, this is how you should do it. Pray to God in this way, and not in a way that will seal your blindness to your true condition.

Father God, Father in heaven, You are holiness itself, and may that holiness come down and take root in me. May I measure my life by a heavenly cord, and cease my attempts to measure heaven with an earthly one. As you grant me my daily bread, keep me from using it to subsidize any continuing folly. Help me to see that forgiveness that does not go out is a forgiveness that never came in. Keep me from becoming ensnared by all the shiny objects around me, and let me actually see your kingdom, which is the true shining. Amen, and amen.

Pray this way, and don’t let anyone know that you do. Pray this way, and let God be in charge of who might find out about it.

Don’t Be Greedy

Greed will out. There is no way for you to set your heart on things below, like a hog rooting for acorns, and not have what you are becoming being revealed to all. Stand upright, and look at the stars. Look up to the heavens. Where is your heart? Is your heart there, in the heavenly places, or is it here below, down among the acorns?

Why are you so beset by false urgencies? Why do you set apart important tasks for the sake of trivial but urgent tasks?

No Double Standard

Everyone is the protagonist of their own story. Everyone is in the middle of writing a novel in the first person, writing it in their own head, and as it turns out, everyone is their own hero. Some will say that the word hero is ill-chosen—do not some people have very negative views of themselves? But even though it is a negative view, who is still the protagonist? All the other characters are judged by a different standard, which is how double standards arise. We judge others by their actions, and we evaluate ourselves by our motives—which, as the first person narrator, we can easily see.

Don’t Waste Your Breath

How many hours have you spent trying to correct people who did not want your correction? And you had no real obligation to correct them in the first place?

Reciprocity

Do not measure the warmth of God’s heart by the coldness of your own. Because we are the merciless ones, we project that hard attitude into the heavens, and assume that God will deal with us as we deal with one another. If we continue insisting upon this that may eventually be arranged—where the measure we use will be measured back to us—but our starting point is entirely wrong. God is filled and overflowing with tender mercy.

The Contrary Way

The world does not follow the broad way to destruction out of statistical necessity, but rather as a function of contagion. Finding the narrow way is not like winning the lottery, as someone had to mathematically, but is rather a matter of learning how to refuse the madness of crowds.

Liars and Their Fruit

Beware of those theologians who separate doctrine from life, especially if their schematic diagram of the relationship of doctrine to life appears to be accurate and edifying. The truer a confession is, the worse it is when it is not lived out. The worst is when the confession that is not lived out is the confession that all truths must be lived out.

Application Foundational

If you know what to do then every witness in heaven and on earth calls upon you to actually do it. We are after the lost art of Christian character, and are mighty tired of the showy performances of Christian personality.

Character withstands the storm, like an oak tree rooted, and personality blows off across the way like a withered oak leaf, no longer attached to the tree.

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1 John: Love

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Introduction

Everyone agrees that love is a good thing, and nobody is against it really. The problems arise when we try to define what we mean by it. For our purposes here, love is what Christ reveals His Father to be like (John 14:9), as that love is mediated to us by the Holy Spirit, shed abroad in our hearts, as He ministers the Word to us. “And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us” (Rom. 5:5). But even this must be teased out further.

The Text

“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:7–12).

Summary of the Text

As believers, we summoned (as in, required) to love one another. The reason for this is that love is of God (v. 7). If someone loves, this shows that he is born of God, and that he knows God (v. 7). A person who does not love does not know God (v. 8). It is that simple because God is love (v. 8). This love of God was manifested toward us when God sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him (v. 9). Love is defined, not by our love for Him, but rather by His love for us—as marked and measured by propitiation (v. 10). And if God loved us like that, how much more should we love one another like that (v. 11). No one has ever seen God except as God dwells in those who love each other, and are seeing His love grow to perfection in us (v. 12).

God is Love

We have already seen that God islight (1 John 1:5). We see in two places in 1 John that God islove (1 John 4:8,16). We see it most clearly with love, but we must understand that God is not separable from His attributes. All that is in God is God. It is not as though a certain percentage of the divine nature is love, another percentage is just, another percentage All that is in God is God, and that is in God is holy, holy, holy. We speak of different attributes of God, and look them up under different headings in our Bible dictionaries because of the nature of our little finite minds. But keep in mind that God is a personal Lover, a personal Beloved, and personal Love, all three, and this triune God is the one eternal God.

As Finite Creatures Imitate It

Our love for God is exclusionary because no one can serve two masters. We have already considered what love for the world is, but we must also note what it drives out. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15).

And if we see, really see, what the Father has done for us, in calling us His sons, we will come to understand why the world is so bewildered by us.

“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not” (1 John 3:1).

Love is Obedience

When God loved the world, He did something (John 3:16; 1 John 4:9). So also, when we love we must act. Love is not mere sentiment.

“For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another” (1 John 3:11).

“By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous” (1 John 5:2–3).

Faith in Christ leads inexorably to action. Love your brothers and sisters as though you were not concerned at all about being accused of being in a cult.

“And this is his commandment, That we should believeon the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment” (1 John 3:23).

True Assurance

Obeying an impersonal list of rules is not the way to assurance, but is rather the way to a screaming lack of assurance. Works righteousness and legalism breeds either pride or despair. But the obedience of love is a different thing altogether—it leads straight to assurance.

“We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death” (1 John 3:14).

In short, we know because we love.

“But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him” (1 John 2:5).

In short, if we keep His word about love, His love is perfected in us, and this also leads to assurance.

So Love Is More Than Big Talk

“Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:16–18).

Bring It Back Around

The apostle John tells us an enormous amount about the love of the Father in this very short letter. Remember, the lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh and the pride of life remove you from the love of the Father. This lands you in the midst of a tangled cluster of lies. But God brings us to life in His Son through the gospel, and His life is not dark but rather light. Put it all together, and you discover that God has ushered you into His everlasting love.

“And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him, because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also” (1 John 4:16–21).

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Refugees and Apostles

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Introduction

As we seek to live our lives as faithful Christians, informed by the Word of God, we soon discover that it is not a simple process. It is not as though the Spirit gave us a rule book, in outline form, fully indexed. He gave us laws, principles, stories, and parables, strewn across various ages and cultures of men. What are we to do with it all?

The Text

“Ye shall not eat any thing with the blood: neither shall ye use enchantment, nor observe times . . . ” (Lev. 19:27-29).

“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world . . . ” (1 John 2:15-17).

“For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe . . .” (Heb. 5:13-14).

Summary of the Texts

These texts before us provide us with a good snapshot of the difficulty. First, consider this. The ancient nation of Israel was told to keep themselves distinct from the pagan nations round about. There were many aspects of this. They were not to eat blood (Acts 15:20), use enchantments (Gal. 5:20), or observe times (Gal. 4:10). They were not to round the corners of their heads (huh?), or trim their beards (what?). They were not to mutilate their flesh, or get tattoos (see?). Because the Lord was their God, they were not to prostitute their daughters (1 Cor. 6:9), which would defile the land. The question is which things in this list should we obey now, today, and why? Christians obey some things on this list, ignore others, and have arguments about a third category.

The apostle John tells us that root of sin is an attitude, that of loving the world. If we are wise, we don’t work from a list of prohibited items to the attitude, but rather we deal with the attitude, knowing that it will necessarily entail a list. He breaks out what this love of the world looks like—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. These three things, as it happens, were part of the temptation in the Garden. The forbidden fruit was good for food, delightful to the eyes, and able to make one wise (Gen. 3:6). None of this is of the Father, but is rather of the world. And the problem with the world is that it is transient, while the one who lives out the will of God lives forever.

As these are difficult issues, they should not be sorted out by those who have been Christians for a year or so. These are not problems to be handed over to the nineteen-year-olds. Those not yet weaned are unskillful in the Word. But those who are mature understand the Word, and through long practice in sorting out these kinds of issues, know how to distinguish good from evil when a judgment call is needed. All Christians know some things, but not all are mature.

Some Practice Exercises

In this current climate, it is not possible for Christians to go more than fifteen yards without encountering some new practice commended, urged, or demanded by the world, and it is necessary to deal with the resultant questions from your teenagers. “Can I, can I, huh? Why not?” You can keep life simple (for a time) by always saying no, for no particular reason, but that is no worldview. What about temporary tattoos? What about getting permanent tattoos? What about reading vampire fiction for teens written by a Mormon? What could possibly be problematic about that? What about metal music that sounds like a troop of cavalry going over a tin bridge? What about those fetching lip rings and tongue studs? As G.K. Chesterton once put it, art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.

Questions to Work Through

Begin by distinguishing the basic question—always an easy one—from the more complicated ones. Is this an expression of love for God and His Word or is it being filed under the category of, “Well, God never said I couldn’t”? This basic question is another form of asking whether you are being worldly or not.  There is another question right next to this basic question. Think of all the people you know who are saintly and are at least twenty-five years older than you are. Do you want to ask them their advice on this or not so much? Is it because you already know what they will think and you don’t want to do it? An honest motive check would fix about 90 percent of our problems, and enable us to talk intelligently about the remaining 10 percent.

Once you have resolved to not be worldly, you still can’t go through life saying, “just because.” You should have reasons for what you say and do.  Why are tattoos not in the same category as temple locks? The answer is because of the flow of the whole story. Look at all the piercings and cuttings, and what they mean. Even the one required cutting in the Old Testament is replaced with baptism in the New. What is wrong with vampire fiction? The question should be answered by Christians who know the history of European literature, not to mention sexual diseases. The whole thing is a metaphor for immorality and syphilis. So what could be problematic about sweet Christian girls being taught to be drawn to a dangerous lover? Is this a trick question? What is wrong with music that celebrates rebellion? Why do we even have to ask?

Refugees and Apostles

But as we are interacting with the world (which we must do), we have to make a distinction between refugees and apostles. The twin businesses of the church are birth and growth. Evangelism must not exclude discipleship, and discipleship must not be allowed to exclude evangelism. So in this culture, robust evangelism means welcoming refugees from the world. That means, in the current culture, that we should want our churches filling up with tattooed people, those with memorials of who and where they used to be. But this should not be used as cover for receiving apostles of the world. We must not receive them, or give them the time of day.

God takes us all where we are, and not from where we should have been. If He only took those who were where they should have been, we would all of us be lost. Evangelism means that nonbelievers will be brought into the church. And they will track things in. So? Didn’t you track things in? Did God kick you to the curb?

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1 John: Light

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Introduction

As members of a fallen race, we want, we desire. What we want is the world, taken by us outside the framework of God’s character. This is worldliness. Because we want to be unrighteous in this way, but we also want the reputation of righteousness, the only solution is to deceive ourselves, to lie to ourselves. But however much we lie, we cannot cross the chasm that exists between our death and God’s life. The only way to have that life is to receive it as a gracious gift from God. But we must never forget the character of the one who gives this life—He is light.

The Text

“This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).

Summary of the Text

This passage contains one of the few succinct definitions of God as found in Scripture, where the writer tells us that God is xyz. Jesus tells the woman at the well, for example, that God is Spirit. “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24).

In this passage, we are told that God is light. Because He is light, it follows that in Him there is no darkness at all. This is not a theological triviality; John declares as integral to his message. This is the message we have heard from Him. This is the message we declare to you. God is light. This is crucial, in other words.

But this is no hard, cold, severe light. John introduced this thought in the previous verse when he said, “these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.” God is light, and those who are in fellowship with that light are happy people. Their joy is full and overflowing. To use the apostle Peter’s expression for this, it is “joy inexpressible and full of glory” (1 Pet. 1:8).

The verse following our text is a verse that emphasizes the problem of lying again. Those who claim to have fellowship with the light, while walking in darkness, are lying. They are not doing the truth.

Confession and the Light

Near the end of this short chapter, we are told that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins (the ones we confessed), and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). The word for confess is homologeo, which means to “speak the same.” Homomeans the same, and logeo is the verb to speak. To confess your sins means therefore to acknowledge your sin, freely and honestly, no spin control. Spin control is actually sin control.

The consequence of this kind of confession is that God cleanses us (katharizo) from all unrighteousness. But notice that two verses earlier, walking in the light has the same result.

“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).

If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Christ cleanses us (katharizo) from all sin.

Put This All Together

If you are not walking in the light, you are walking in the darkness. If you are walking in the darkness, you are telling yourself lies (v. 6). If you are in the darkness, you can’t see any of your own sin down in there, right? You can then tell yourself that you have no sin. But if you do that, then John says that you are deceiving yourself, and the truth is not in you. If you come into the light, if you confess your sin, then you are cleansed. Not only are you cleansed, but you are also now in fellowship with anyone else who has been cleansed (1 John 1:7).

And if your automatic reflex is to assume that you are not in fellowship with someone else because they are still walking in darkness, then you have said something that could be true, technically, but probably isn’t.

A man is walking in darkness, and his sole comfort in that dark place is something he takes for a teddy bear, his precious, which he strokes as he walks along. But it is not a teddy bear at all, but rather a ten-pound tarantula. You might wonder if such a mistake is possible, but I can assure you that it is. Remember how dark it is in there.

Confession of sin is to flip on the lights, and to walk in that light. You see the sin for what it is, and throw it away from your chest with an anguished gaaa! It is either that or a return to the darkness, and the grotesque comforts found in that darkness.

Bring It Down to Relationships

Remember that to walk in the light is to walk in the way that God is. To walk in the light, “as He is in the light,” is to walk in Christ-light. Again, you are not walking in a material impersonal substance. You are not walking in a force. You are walking in a Person. You are abiding in a Person. And what does this light look like? It looks like love, and does not look like hate. It does not taste like that acrid bitter taste in your mouth.

“Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth. He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him” (1 John 2:8–10).

But as long as you are in the darkness, you can chop definitions lengthwise, and say that you dolove her. You can say that youdolove him. Then why are youmiserable? Why are you unhappy? When you are in the dark, every word you look up in your self-justifying dictionary is pitch black. Allthe words are black down there.

Christ Light, not Christ Lite

But again, this light is a Person. Arise, O sleeper, and Christ will shineon you (Eph. 5:14). But this light . . . this light overwhelms all of our senses. It is light you can drink, like it was a cold mountain stream. It is light that fills the house with the aroma of spiritual bread baking, and then it tastes like that same bread, still hot enough to melt the butter. It is light that cascades over your head like an infinite bolt of unrolling invisible silk. It is light that is a breeze off the ocean. It is symphonic light, with an orchestra and choir made up of myriads of angels, and their billions of human understudies.

And finally it is the unapproachable light that you cannot see for brightness, and the cool clear light by which you see everything else—but especiallyyour brother and sister. If we are walking in the light, we regard no oneafter the flesh (2 Cor. 5:16). I can assure you that if you can’t see your brother and sister rightly, then what you are using for eyes need to be taken back to the worldview shop. If you see Christ, then you can see all the rest of us.

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