If some people will never believe, no matter how much evidence and reason we put in front of them, we have to work out when we have said all we can and then leave people to their determined rejection. This seems to be what Jesus is talking about when he speaks about casting our pearls before swine. t’s certainly what he did with the Pharisees, when he reached a point where he insisted they would get no further signs from him nor would he even bother answering their questions anymore.

It is not uncommon, nor unreasonable, for people to ask us for evidence of why we believe in Jesus. It is perfectly right and proper to give people a reason for the hope that is in us. Indeed, not only reasonable, but something the Bible demands. God condescends to reason with us (cf. Isaiah 1:18) and calls us to reason with others (cf. 1 Peter 3:15). It is good, right and proper to offer genuine reasons to believe.
But as a soteriologically reformed believer, I am well aware that unless God moves in grace towards people, they cannot and will not believe. If Total Depravity tells us anything it is that we do not by nature reach out to God. Even if you’re not reformed, it’s pretty hard to ignore the plain statement of Romans 3:9-18. And then there are the words of Jesus in John 6:44. There are other verses saying much the same thing. Unless God moves in grace towards us, we aren’t going to seek after him and we can’t come to the Father.
Similarly, we see the Pharisees in the gospels continually asking for signs that they know they will reject. They recognise perfectly well who Jesus is and yet reject him. They ask for more signs, having received countless signs already – enough even for them to have formed a clear understanding that Jesus is at least ‘a teacher come from God’ (John 3:2) – knowing full well that this sign is not going to be the one where they finally acknowledge Jesus as Son of God and Son of David. For them, no amount of signs will ever be enough.
I think three things are worth noting about that for us today. First, we have to accept that there are some people who engage with us who simply will never believe and do not want to do so. We can present Christ to them. We can point them to evidence. We can show them the scriptures. But in the end, unless God himself is drawing them, no amount of evidence will be enough. It is worth just preparing ourselves for that reality in our evangelistic efforts.
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Your Sunday meeting is discipleship 101. It is the very heart of your discipleship and training. You may find any other number of things helpful, you may think your church should be doing all sorts, but your primary point of discipleship is the weekly gathering of the saints around the Word with a focus on fellowship, prayer and the breaking of bread.

In the Christian world, we are never far away from someone – or several someones – loading us up with guilt about something or other we need to think about, do more of or that we aren’t doing but we definitely should because someone, somewhere else, does it and it’s really vital. It can, at times, get a bit overwhelming. As I argued a while ago here, give yourself a break and remember if it isn’t in the Bible you don’t have to do it.
But some things are in the Bible. One of those things is discipleship. Sure, the Bible doesn’t say exactly how we are to do it. There is more than one way to skin a cat (not that I have ever tried but I take it on trust). But there is no question that we are certainly called to do it. It is when we are called to do something in scripture that we are faced with a raft of people soon telling us exactly how we ought to be doing it too. Things that the Bible doesn’t expressly demand, but nevertheless have been deemed useful and helpful. But it is often a short jump from what is helpful and useful to an insistence it is the best way, and if the best, why would you want to do anything less for the Lord? That is, it becomes de facto biblical and, with it, something you really ought to do.
Well, let me give you a bit of relief. If you are meeting as a church weekly and you are teaching the scriptures, devoting yourselves to the Apostles teaching, then you are engaged in the task of discipleship. To put it in the form of a question: why does everybody overlook the preaching of God’s Word and the fellowship of his saints on Sunday when it comes to discipleship? It’s not as if the Bible hives off discipleship apart from the gathering of God’s people.
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If we are calling for an apology but we all know that apology will only lead to further calls for greater sanctions, who is going to apologise? Particularly, it bears saying, who is going to apologise if they are only tangentially related? Even if an apology might be well received, or helpful in some way, if they know they will be implicated (especially if deeply unfairly so) why would they raise their head above the parapet?

Scandals in the church seem to happen with far greater frequency than any of us think they should or wish they did. There is something of a well worn path that follows now too. Usually starting with a bit of distancing between people and/or organisations that are clearly, if not actually and directly linked, certainly relationally so. What then follows is often a refusal to just say sorry.
Yesterday, Michael Tinker wrote a blog post making just this point. You can read that here. What I’m about to say is not to disagree with what he wrote. I think the point he makes is quite right. When organisations are rocked by scandals, when they had some level of involvement such that they could have addressed matters, the right thing to do is just say sorry. Sometimes there are others linked in such a way that may require apologies from them too. My purpose in writing this is to press a little further and ask, are there reasons why the elusive sorry is rarely forthcoming? I think there are.
For one, an organisation needs to be clear what it is sorry about. If an individual is caught in a scandal within an organisation and those very organisational structures allowed it to happen, that would be a solid reason for the organisation at large to apologise. Or, perhaps people within the organisation raised the alarm and were subsequently ignored. Being sorry for that seems entirely right. The problem is when we start dealing with relationally linked but technically separate groups or groups even further removed from matters than that.
What, exactly, is an organisation that isn’t directly involved – but clearly has some relational links with those involved – supposed to say sorry for? Sorry we knew the person at the centre of the matter but had no jurisdiction over them? Sorry we worked with them, not knowing anything about the matters that have come to light, but nevertheless sorry anyway? The further the degree of separation – even if we can draw some relational lines – the harder it becomes to know what these other groups and individuals are meant to say sorry for. I suspect, some of the time, that is why they don’t say it. They just don’t know exactly what they are meant to apologise for.
Some insist that as believers we should be clear that all of us are sinners and will therefore err but all of us have received grace and therefore should extend it in the face of repentance. This is Christianity 101. We all sin, we all need forgiveness, therefore confess your sin and receive grace. Why on earth, we may wonder, would a Christian person or organisation not be willing to say sorry or admit fault when that is the case?
I think, if we are honest, we know the answer. Just as organisations and individuals are fallible and may sin, organisations and individuals are fallible and therefore are often less than willing to show grace. Just as the well-worn path of foot-shuffling and buck-passing has been seen enough to know that sorrys aren’t forthcoming, we have also trod this path long enough to know that if and when they do come grace is rarely extended.
Sorry, as we know, is an admission of guilt. Once we have it, let’s be honest, matters rarely stop there. Demands for a mere sorry – and incredulous claims as to why we didn’t get an apology when that is all we want – are either naïve or disingenuous. Because what most want is not a mere sorry, but the extraction of an apology as an admission of guilt from which a series of retributive actions can then be established. I don’t presume any and all people ever asking for an apology are saying or thinking this, but enough instances have occurred for us to see that it is often so. I am left wondering why those who can rightly see so clearly that if sinners will sin they may well sin further by not confessing their sin and apologising cannot similarly see that if sinners will sin those who are supposed to confer forgiveness don’t always appear very forgiving when faced with contrition.
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In the end, the pastoral thing to do is to point people to Christ and to call them to faithfulness in him. If we think Jesus has put things in place that matter for the local church, being pastoral must mean faithfully standing on those things Christ has called the church to stand on. It cannot be pastoral to encourage people to set aside Jesus’ commands and to say they simply do not matter. The pastoral implications of doing that, I would argue, are far worse.

I am often unsure what to make of people, faced with teaching from scripture, want to encourage us to consider the “pastoral implications”. Whether it be facing the biblical teaching on marriage and its implications for same-sex attracted people, the doctrine of complementarianism and its implications for gender roles or that vexed issue of the ordinances and who it is appropriate to welcome into the church and what is demanded on those who would seek to be welcomed. All of these are examples of teaching on which the Bible has something specific to say but some are keen to encourage us to be aware, and even to moderate what we perceive to be the biblical position, based on “pastoral concerns”.
My major concern with the call to be mindful of the pastoral implications is that it so often sounds to me like a call to set aside what the bible clearly teaches on a matter so we can make people who will not abide by it feel more comfortable. Of course, I would love it if a church altered its position on any number of things to align with my views and welcome me. But I, ironically, wouldn’t want to join the church that did that in the face of what it actually believed on the matter at hand. A church willing to change its position in the face of what it thinks the Bible is teaching in order to welcome those who see no reason to abide by such things is not, in my view, being faithful. It is placing the desire to welcome over and above what the Lord explicitly commands and sets aside the very grounds by which Jesus says we ought not to welcome.
Of course, everyone agrees with this when it concerns matters they reckon to be sinful. You don’t get many genuine evangelicals arguing that our churches should become affirming despite teaching clearly about Jesus’ views on marriage and same-sex relationships. Their uniform understanding of what is and is not sin in these circumstances mean most are quite ready to say that we ought not to welcome those who would ride roughshod over the commands of Christ in this area.
The issue tends to come when one party considers a matter one of sin and faithfulness while the other does not. The argument in such circumstances boils down to I do not find this sinful so you should welcome me. There seems to be little recognition that I might find it sinful so cannot welcome you if you refuse to acknowledge it is so.
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The thing about pushing and pushing for what is sinful is that God may well decide in the end to give us over to it. Our sin may be pushing us towards something that, of itself, is good but for ungodly reasons. Our sin may be pushing us toward something ungodly for ungodly reasons. But God’s judgement will come when he eventually gives us over to our sinful desire.

The other day, I wrote about the most atrocious thing you can possibly do in any given job. It wasn’t stealing artefacts from a museum as a curator, it wasn’t even killing children as a nurse (heinous and awful as that is). The very worst thing a person could do is actively lead them away from the Lord Jesus and cause them to face eternal punishment in Hell under God’s wrath. Anyone might potentially do that, but I think teachers of scripture – pastors and theologians in particular – are especially well placed to do so. They are so plausible and we (rightly) trust them. Those who take us away from Jesus, the pursuit of his glory and the holiness to which he calls us are – according to Christ himself – truly the most despicable of all.
Whilst on that cheery note, I got to thinking a bit about Romans 1. Particularly to the Lord giving people over to their sinful desires. I have long been of the view that one way the Lord gives people over to sin in the church is to give them what they want.
For congregations who will not wear sound teaching, the Lord often gives them over to those who will gladly please them and tickle their ears. For many, that might not seem like much of a judgement but we have several hundred years now of seeing what happens when churches depart the gospel. Their people fall away because, per 1 John 2:19, they never really belonged to Jesus. Those calling for teaching that will take them away from Jesus, and it is so obvious when you say it out loud, clearly do not belong to Jesus because they agitate for what will necessarily takes them away from him. What they want is evidently not him which suggests they never belonged to him. So, their people fall away.
As those churches limp on for a while, largely operating as social services doling out the feel-goods to whoever happens to rock up, affirming everyone in every sin because God is love, love is love and therefore love must be whatever you want it to be, they eventually peter out. When the church ends up merely parroting back what you can get anywhere and everywhere else in the world, people rightly begin to ask what purpose it serves. When they offer social services you can get anywhere else, often better, and teaching that you hear all the time all around you, it is hardly surprising when people no longer get any value from the church and soon drift away.
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There are times when it is appropriate to seek justice and times when it is best to bear injustice. The grounds for when to do what seem to always be centred around the gospel. Will this matter serve the cause of the gospel as I seek justice or will this matter bring the gospel into disrepute? Will I be able to serve the cause of the gospel better by seeking justice in this case or will I serve the cause of the gospel better by bearing this injustice patiently and leaving it with the Lord to judge one day? So rarely in our quest for justice do we ask these sorts of questions.

Injustice, without question, exists. In our broken world, it exists all around us. It exists in society, it exists in our denominations and gospel partnerships, it exists in the church and it exists in our own hearts. Sinful people will cause injustice. Injustice, simply, is opposed to whatever is right. It is the inverse of righteousness, which is concerned with rightness. Injustice is the absence of what is just and right; it is unfairness and wrongness made manifest.
But what do we do about injustice? Options range from setting up campaigns and waging unrelenting war against it right the way through to actively encouraging it ourselves. But what should be our response as believers? I think there is a time to pus back against injustice and there is a time to wear it. The big question is, how do we know when to do either?
Helpfully, I think Paul offers us some pointers both in how he responded to injustice on a personal level and how he directed the church to address injustice. Let me land on four examples which, I think, give us some helpful guidance.
First, there is Paul’s imprisonment and beating in Philippi. You can read the full story in Acts 16, but the two pertinent sections are Acts 16:16-24 and Acts 16:35-40. The short story is that Paul and Silas are followed around by a girl with an evil spirit whom some men are exploiting for profit. She begins disrupting their efforts to share the gospel so Paul exorcises the demon in the name of Jesus and the girl is restored to her right mind. Her “owners” are miffed at the loss of profit so make up stories about Paul and Silas which led to them being beaten by the magistrates and chucked in prison. The next day, they are released without charge and Paul tells the magistrates they are Roman citizens who have been beaten and detained unlawfully and they expect a fulsome, public apology with an escort out of prison, which they duly did to stop word getting to their higher ups.
The second example comes later on in Acts 21-26. It kind of goes on longer than that, but you can get the main points in those chapters. This time, Paul is arrested unjustly in Jerusalem. Some Jews from Asia wrongly incite the crowd against Paul leading to a riot. A Roman Commander came down to sort matters out and again Paul cites his Roman citizenship. Only, this time, he doesn’t cite it to get out of prison, but in order to stay in! From chapter 22 to the end of Acts, Paul keeps appealing up the chain of command. He doesn’t demand release but speaks to the Roman commander, then to the Jewish Sanhedrin, then to the governor Felix, then because he as been left in prison so long, to his successor Festus. After that, Paul appeals to Caesar – to whom he goes next – but before he gets there he speaks to King Agrippa. At the end of Chapter 26, they are all agreed that had Paul not kept appealing up the chain of command he would have been released.
It seems prudent to ask why, in one case, does Paul take a beating and claim his rights as a Roman citizen after the fact while in another almost identical case he claims his rights beforehand to avoid a beating? Why, in one case, does he demand his release from unjust imprisonment and in the other keeps doing things that he knows full well will prolong his time in prison? In each case, Paul is unjustly imprisoned. In each case, his rights are being trampled all over. But he responds differently in both cases. Why?
As far as I can see, the answer seems to be for the sake of the gospel. In one case, the gospel was being maligned because of his false imprisonment. He wanted it to be made known that Christianity is not opposed to civil obedience.
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Grace, by definition, is unjust. It is not giving us what we deserve, but giving us the opposite. It is why just grace is an oxymoron. If God puts his grace upon us justly then he is giving us what we deserve. But we do not deserve God’s good favour, that is what grace is!

I wonder if you have ever thought about the opposite of grace? We all know (I suspect) that grace is unmerited favour despite what we deserve. It is more than just unmerited favour because you can put your favour on someone who hasn’t done anything warranting your ire. Grace is unmerited favour in the face of what we deserve. God shows his grace towards us by showing us unmerited favour in the face of the wrath and judgement we deserve by nature.
What, then, is the opposite of grace? Some would argue it is judgement. After all, if we don’t have God’s grace on us, we stand under his wrath. We will face his condemnation. But that is really the result of not receiving God’s grace. Or, more accurately, the result of our own sin. It isn’t the opposite of grace, just what results if we don’t receive God’s grace.
Look again at our definition above. God’s grace is his unmerited favour in the face of what we actually deserve. If we do not have God’s unmerited favour in the face of what we deserve, we must have God’s wrath in line with what we do deserve. Grace is undeserved so what happens apart from grace is entirely and properly deserved.
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John may have expected a slightly different kind of messiah. But nevertheless, had an idea in his mind of who that messiah ought to be. Jesus simply says, I am the messiah and you will be blessed if you’re not put off by me as I am, whatever your expectations. It’s quite something. Later on, Jesus points out that the religious leaders couldn’t be pleased in their expectations at all.

I was recently prepping a sermon in Matthew 11. The passage concerns John the Baptist’s doubts concerning Jesus. Is he really the one God has sent? Should we be looking for someone to come after Jesus?
Jesus doesn’t even answer John directly. He just references Isaiah and effectively says to John, these things are happening. In a sense, Jesus is saying to John, if Isaiah’s prophecy of what the messiah would come to do didn’t factor into your thinking, then it should.
Given John’s earlier confession of Jesus, the question is always asked: how could John go from everything he said about Jesus at his baptism to wondering whether he is really the one Israel have been waiting for? But, to be fair to John, he had been preaching a message that included confession of sin and repentance from it because judgement was at hand. But it was that very message that got him locked up by Herod. It’s not totally unreasonable to think – if Jesus has come to judge the world and is going to restore the kingdom – what am I doing in a jail cell at the behest of a bloke like Herod! I think there’s enough in the passage – and earlier descriptions from John’s disciples – that John is a product of his times and Jesus just isn’t what he is expecting.
It is into that context that Jesus gives his answer. Effectively, he says, do you see the things the prophets said would happen coming to pass? Am I doing the kind of things the prophets said the messiah would do? If I am, then whatever current expectations might be, there are good reasons to believe that I am the one God has sent to save his people. That is Jesus’ basic answer. Look at what the prophets prophesied and compare it to what I am doing. There is your answer.
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Having periods of rest, where things seem easy, where ministry is going well, where life is not hectic is not, of itself, a sign of unfaithfulness. Sometimes I think in all the talk of cross-carrying we forget that Jesus does care about us and isn’t out to just make our lives miserable all the time.

Jesus famously called his followers to take up their cross. I think this is a message that much of the evangelical church needs to hear. Many of us are content with our comfort and seem to think cross carrying is designed to be super easy. We need to reckon with what Jesus has to say about that seriously.
For too long, the church has been driven by a beguiling functional god of comfort. We seem to think that when Jesus says take up your cross and follow me, we think he means move to a nice area, get a house, attend church a couple of times on a Sunday, have some kids, get them into university, graduate jobs and retire comfortably. I don’t think that is what Jesus had in mind when he spoke about cross-carrying, but it seems to be the broad plan of many in the church.
When there is a tendency like that – and it is widespread – the usual thing to do is highlight it and talk about it. So, we will get a some talk from certain quarters – often quarter like mine – that seek to afflict the comfortable a little. We want to shake them out of their comfort and encourage them towards the faithfulness that Jesus calls them to, cross-carrying and all. The problem with doing this is that some hear things that were not intended nor necessarily meant for their ears.
Sometimes it means, rather than afflicting the comfortable, we accidentally end up afflicting the afflicted. People who are already doing some significant cross-carrying start to feel “got at” or even more guilty because they hear voices speaking about many folk not doing so much carrying of crosses. It needs to be said that those who are carrying significant crosses already – and being quite faithful to Jesus as they do it and are not bowing out of his commands for the sake of their own comfort – are not the ones in view here.
It needs to be remembered in these sorts of conversations that we are calling those who could come, but won’t come, and challenging the frankly often lame reasons they content themselves not to do so. We are not discounting the reasons many might have for legitimately staying where they are. We are simply saying it can’t be right that nobody is called to harder callings. It equally cannot be the case that Jesus calls most people to the easiest and nicest of places en masse. Even if there are good and proper reasons to stay where you are – faithful, godly reasons – we are simply asking that the question is asked honestly. It is those who won’t even consider the question, who quickly dismiss any possibility without proper consideration, that we are often speaking to.
The other way that talk of cross-carrying and faithfulness is often misheard is in the sense that if everything is not extremely difficult for you all the time, you must be doing something wrong. Kind of like an inverse prosperity gospel that came out of Yorkshire or Scotland rather than America. A attitude that suggests you are only really doing right if you are properly suffering for it. If you were really being faithful, everything would be hard and miserable all the time. Then you would know you are doing right for the Lord.
I do think Jesus calls us to take up our cross and follow him.
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The church is the meeting of God’s people. What happens in it is for the benefit of God’s people. Others are welcome to look in, but what we say and do is necessarily for the believers. It is in taking the gospel out to the world that preach the good news to the perishing.

In certain circles, seeking to get unbelievers into church is seen as the highest possible goal. There is nothing better, according to some, when unbelievers come into the church and under the sound of the gospel. That, they aver, is what we ought to be about. At the risk of being deemed a contrarian, I just don’t think that is true.
What goes on inside the church is necessarily for the upbuilding of believers. The church is, after all, a gathering of believers. The world is not the church. What happens in the church is not primarily for the world. It is for believers.
This matters when it comes to our preaching. Sermons are not principally for the purpose of sharing the gospel with unbelievers. They are primarily for teaching and applying God’s Word to God’s people. Sermons are for Christians, first and foremost.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that we kick all the unbelievers out the room on Sunday. Of course it is better for unbelievers to be in the room listening to the Word preached than outside not engaging with it at all. Of course the sermon should include some gospel clarity. Not least because the gospel is not just a message we believe when we first trust in Christ, but is the very heart of everything we do as believers thereafter. But we also want some gospel clarity because – even amongst those who think they are genuine believers already – some of them won’t be. It is only clear gospel preaching that will wake such people up to the fact that they don’t actually belong to Christ.
So, on any given Sunday, I fully expect believers and unbelievers to be present in the room. I am more than happy that unbelievers are there.
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