An Eternal Weight of Glory
Set your mind on things above (Col. 3:2). Anchor your hope in that coming world where righteousness dwells (2 Pet. 3:13). Keep fighting by faith for that crown that neither fades nor rusts (2 Tim. 4:8), and run for that inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading (1 Pet. 1:4). Christ has won for us an eternal weight of glory (2 Cor. 4:17).
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man…’ (Revelation 21:1–3)
Without a doubt, the closing chapters of the book of Revelation are among the most beautiful and enchanting ever penned. Here every hope of the human soul is brought finally to fulfilment: every ache for restoration satisfied, every desire for redemption accomplished, every hope of reconciliation achieved, and every voracious longing for love brought finally to rest. Here, at the culmination of history, the warring, devouring, and backbiting of humanity has become a trinket of a bygone age and unity at last prevails over fragmentation, reconciliation triumphs over estrangement.
This panorama of wonder is so foreign to our present experience it feels almost dreamlike; yet the reason for this paradisal state is made plain in the text: the Lamb was slain for sinners and the presence of God now dwells with man again (cf. Rev. 4:9–10).
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Work Hard to be Encouraged
Hold a high standard for faithful exposition and really value when your pastors faithfully expose God’s word, even when the style may need some polishing. God uses these means to encourage His saints, so may we tune in every time God’s word is opened, ready to be encouraged.
What’d you think of that sermon?
An innocent question with zero ill intent, but one I’m trying to avoid. Sunday by Sunday, pastors all over the globe take God’s word and attempt to deliver a faithful exposition to His church. Through these men, in their own weak but faithful way, God graciously equips His church for the work of ministry. When we ask that question it has at its root some bad assumptions, and it often leads to negative takeaways for the person asking and the person answering. Not to say that critique or criticism is always wrong, because surely we need to hold our pastors to a high standard. But when we make our topic of conversation about the style of the sermon and not the content of the sermon, I believe we are making a crucial mistake. I want to exhort you to work hard to be encouraged.
The Sermon Is Not A Performance
The first problem with this question is that it assumes that the sermon was delivered as a performance for us to critique. Often our critiques revolve around sermon length, delivery, style, almost at the exclusion of the actual content of the sermon. Again, while we should hope that our pastors are constantly working to improve their delivery of the precious promises of God, their sermon is not a performance. They are taking God’s word and saying to His people, “Thus says the Lord.”
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No More Lies – We Must Proclaim the Truth, Even if It Costs Us
The Church is imploding. The faithful masses have stopped turning up on Sundays. We are seeing the most rapid decline of Christianity in this country that we may have ever seen. Do not accelerate this with heresy. You do not have the authority to bless sin! When I hear the bishop of London on record saying these new prayers will mean priests can bless same-sex relationships, some of which will be sexual in nature, I hear the devil at work. Bishops are promoting the idea of sacramental sodomy. Let them be anathema! Repent!
I hate to break it to you, but the time when Christians play games is over. The time for trivial pursuits is long over. The time for just trying to be ‘nice’ and ‘winsome’ and not rock the boat is well past its use-by date. Instead, we are in desperate need of committed disciples of Jesus Christ to affirm truth – regardless of the reaction.
Of course, the overwhelming need for courageous truth-tellers has always been with us, since lies are everywhere and at all times found. Plenty of champions for truth could be mentioned here. Let me feature just some. The Psalmist put it this way: “I have chosen the way of truth” (Psalm 119:30).
Plenty of proverbs speak to this, such as Proverbs 13:5: “The righteous hates falsehood,” and Proverbs 29:27: “The righteous detest the dishonest.” So too Jesus: “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).
And again: “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).
A long line of more recent truth proponents could also be mentioned, such as:
“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.” G. K. Chesterton
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” Aldous Huxley
“People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to.” Malcolm Muggeridge
“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.” George Orwell
But fear of telling truth is an ever-present danger. One example of a spineless wonder who is so utterly fearful and paralysed by the woke mobs can be mentioned. Recently the uber-woke New Zealand Prime Minister Ardern stepped down. That was great news, but many of us wondered if her replacement would be any better. Well, now we know. Consider this short news item:
New Zealand’s new prime minister was left struggling for words at a news conference after a reporter asked him to define the term “woman”. Chris Hipkins, who took over after Jacinda Ardern’s resignation, was asked to explain how he and his government define the word. The politician appeared to need some time to think before giving his answer.
“Um… to be honest that question has come slightly out of left field for me,” Mr Hipkins replied. “Well biology, sex, gender. Um.” He then paused again before saying: “People define themselves, people define their own genders.” When pressed further Mr Hipkins said “people identify for themselves”.
He actually said this when the question was repeated: “It is not something that I have a preformulated answer on”. Good grief, what a useless wonder. If that is too hard for him to figure out, he should not be trying to run an entire nation. He needs to go back to kindergarten and learn a few basics about life.
Talk about being a mindless woke zombie. This is the madness of living a life of lies. BTW, Hipkins was married (to a WOMAN) for two years (but is now separated), and has two children. But he is totally clueless as to what a woman is. Maybe that is why they are separated! And maybe that is why the world is going to hell so fast with utter nincompoops like him running things.
Perhaps I can offer one more example. Someone commented on my site recently that as Christians we might be “rude” if we call people by their actual pronouns. I replied:
I and others just spent some time here trying to make the case that the most loving thing we can do for others is tell them the truth, and that allowing people to live in delusion, lies and deception is not only unloving, but sinful. So I am not at all worried about being “rude” in this case. I AM worried about people destroying themselves because we might be too afraid to speak much-needed truth to them.
So many have had to stand for truth even though it has been so very costly. Consider Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Writing from Moscow on February 12, 1974, just before he was exiled, he penned a short piece called “Live Not By Lies.” If that sounds vaguely familiar, it should. Rod Dreher used it as the title of his exceptionally important 2020 book. See my review of it here.
The entire essay by Solzhenitsyn is well worth reading, but here are a few choice quotes:
Things have almost reached rock-bottom. A universal spiritual death has already touched us all and physical death will soon flare up and consume us and our children. But, as before, we still smile in a cowardly fashion and mumble with our tongues tied.
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Evangelicals Must Stop Their Preferential Treatment of the Left
Written by James R. Wood |
Thursday, August 1, 2024
Today, centrists and those on the right are more fertile soil, I believe, because they are more open to reality. They recognize that the cultural revolutionaries’ projects to rewrite reality are destroying civilization. These refugees crave clarity about basic moral realities because of how much confusion the negative world has produced. They are looking for voices who stand up to the civilizational destroyers—maybe even voices who boldly proclaim supernatural truths.Aaron Renn’s “negative world” thesis broadly posits that in contemporary America the primary forces of culture are turned against Christians and Christian moral teaching. Identifying as a Christian and following the Bible’s moral teachings is viewed as regressive and antisocial, and even invites ostracism.
In recent months, however, several high-profile former critics of Christianity have pivoted to openly confessing the need for Christianity due to its social and civilizational resources, as Paul Shakeshaft has noted. While researching for his blockbuster book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, non-Christian popular historian Tom Holland became convinced that most of our cherished values in the West are indebted to Christianity. As a result, he realized that in his “morals and ethics” he is “thoroughly and proudly Christian.” Joe Rogan, the freethinker who hosts the most popular podcast in the world, and who has in the past repeatedly denounced Christianity as unreasonable and intolerant, admitted in February that “We need Jesus” to bring social and moral order out of our contemporary chaos. In a viral essay this past November, former New Atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali narrated her conversion to Christianity, inspired at first by its ability to resist the authoritarian, woke, and Islamic forces that threaten Western civilization. She also credited Christianity as the source of our greatest values in the West. And arch-pop-atheist Richard Dawkins recently came to similar conclusions, referring to himself as a “cultural Christian.”
These high-profile “conversions” to cultural Christianity (and, in Ali’s case, genuine faith) don’t so much challenge Renn’s thesis as press us to consider what might be on the horizon. I am convinced Renn’s analysis remains essential for that task.
First of all, the negative world itself sparked the backlash represented by Dawkins and the others. The moral chaos, tribal hostility between identity groups, and loss of classical rights that now characterize the post-Christian West have made many nostalgic for the time when our social norms were rooted in Christianity. The very real threat of losing permanently the substantive goods of the classical liberal order has led them to recognize that that order cannot sustain itself apart from its foundation in living Christian faith. The figures mentioned above are merely high-profile examples of a broader phenomenon (evidenced, for example, by the flattening of the growth of “nones,” especially among Gen Z). Regular people know things have gotten crazy. They rankle at the destructive lies peddled by the woke. They crave common sense, the affirmation that they are not crazy, stupid, or bigoted. They recognize the need to labor together to build a society that promotes the true, the good, and the beautiful, not the fake, depraved, and ugly. This does not mean that we aren’t living in the negative world. Rather, it means we have reason to hope that that world’s days are numbered.
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