Begin the day with God:

He is the rising Sun,

His is the radiance of thy dawn,

His the fresh day begun.

Sing a new song at morn;

Join the glad woods and hills;

Join the fresh winds and seas and plains;

Join the bright flowers and rills

Awake, cold lips, and sing;

Arise, dull heart, and pray;

Lift up, O man, thy heart and eyes;

Brush slothfulness away.

Cast every weight aside;

Do battle with each sin;

Fight with the faithless world without,

The faithless heart within.

Look up beyond these clouds,

Thither thy pathway lies;

Mount up, away, and linger not,

Thy goal is yonder skies!

– Horatius Bonar, 1808–89 –

As we introduced in the previous post, many people and churches in our world have forgotten, overlooked, and ignored the holiness of God. We outlined four disastrous consequences for failing to appreciate, love, and proclaim God’s holiness: frivolous and trivial worship, a lost Great Commission in churches, worldly and ungodly lives, and countless false believers who incorrectly think they know God.

Thankfully, there is a remedy to this widespread problem of forgetting God’s holiness. If we would know and love the living and holy God, we must be people who have truly encountered Him as the God who is holy.

Someone might ask, “How do I know if I’ve encountered this holy God?” Three illustrations from Scripture show us what happens when creatures encounter this holy God. In light of these illustrations, we might put our hearts to the test, to see if we have really understood and grasped that we believe in Scripture’s revelation of God as unchangeably, eternally, and perfectly holy.

The first illustration is that of Moses in Exodus 3:1-6; 33:13-34:8.

Moses encountered God perhaps more than anyone else in the Old Testament, and it’s fascinating to observe how encountering God in His perfect holiness affected Moses. When reading how God revealed Himself to Moses in the burning bush, we see three facts about sinners encountering God in His holiness.

If we would know and love the living and holy God, we must be people who have truly encountered Him as the God who is holy.

First, the holiness of God put distance between God and Moses. Second, God commanded Moses to show reverence for His holiness. Third, when Moses realized he had encountered God (the true and living God who is holy), he hid his face and was terrified to look at God. At this point in Moses’ relationship with the Lord, he was a believer in the God of Israel, but he also appears to know very little about sacrifice, redemption, or forgiveness. Moses’ fear in this episode of the burning bush makes perfect sense. As time goes on, however, Moses begins to learn about the compassion of this holy God, the way of salvation provided through sacrifice, and the forgiveness that comes to sinners. Consequently, Moses’ interactions with God change to reflect Moses’ greater understanding of God’s holiness in its fullness.

In Exodus 33, we observe a significant contrast. Moses has seen the mercy, forgiveness, grace, and compassion of this holy God. Now, rather than desiring to hide his face from God, he wants to know this holy God and be in the Lord’s presence.

God granted Moses’ request to see His glory as much as his sinful humanity could handle, allowing Moses to see the rear parts of His glory and declaring His name before Moses. We see, though, that Moses’ fear and reverence for God were unchanged. Moses never lost that sense of awe before the majesty of God’s infinite holiness. God’s holiness no longer terrified him as someone who wanted to run from God because he knew God had forgiven and accepted him. Nevertheless, the holiness of God still caused Moses to bow in worship, to reverence God, and to fear Him.

The church today has too much familiarity with the Holy One of Israel – a glibness, and a lack of reverence and awe. If we have truly encountered God in His majestic holiness, we will never trifle with Him. Instead, we will long for Him, love Him, adore Him; we will want to be with Him, and we will want Him to be with us – but we will never lose the sense that He is God, and we are not.

Isaiah was another man who encountered God face to face.

In Isaiah 6, we see both Isaiah (a sinful man) and holy angels encountering God. Even the angels in the presence of God – angels who never fell into sin – are overwhelmed by God’s holiness. They cover their face because of the awesomeness of God’s holiness, and they cover their feet as a sign of honor and reverence before this holy God. If such mighty angels, who have never sinned, revere and fear the Holy One of Israel, what would the response of a sinner be to His glorious holiness?

That answer is given to us in Isaiah’s response to this vision. He pronounces a curse on himself, recognizing that no matter how good he thought he was before this moment, he was accursed because of his sin in the presence of the holy God seated on the throne. Isaiah confesses that he is totally and completely defiled before a God so perfect and holy.

Isaiah’s reaction to seeing the holiness of God is similar to Moses’: fear, dread, and impending doom. This is the correct response when a sinner encounters God in His holiness and recognizes that he is fully unworthy and stands under the just penalty of death for his sin.

Once Isaiah’s sins are forgiven later in the passage, the scene’s tone completely changes. Isaiah turns from pronouncing a curse upon himself for his sinfulness to volunteering to serve the Lord. This is a total transformation: seeing the holiness of the Lord in the context of forgiveness produces holiness in the life of the sinner. Isaiah leaves the presence of the holy Lord, realizing his one aim in life moving forward is to be holy, to be obedient, and to submit himself to the will of his holy Lord.

Peter also encountered the holiness of the Lord in Luke 5.

Note that this moment of the holiness of Christ was veiled in human flesh. This was not the same level of majestic holiness Isaiah saw when he observed Christ seated on the heavenly throne with all the angels around Him. Jesus was, to all outward appearances, a normal human man; but even this glimpse of the holiness of Christ overwhelmed Peter when his Lord caused a great miracle during his fishing expedition.

Seeing the holiness of the Lord in the context of forgiveness produces holiness in the life of the sinner.

Peter’s response was exactly like that of Isaiah. He told Jesus to leave because Jesus had exposed his sin. Peter knew immediately that Jesus was holy, but he was not. Peter was filled with dread, with awe, and with reverence; he bowed down at Jesus’ feet. It was here Peter became a full-time disciple of Jesus Christ. He stacked up the value of a lucrative fishing trade and the value of the holiness of Christ that called him as a disciple – and the choice was obvious.

Those comparing the narratives of Isaiah and Peter should note there is exactly zero difference between the holy God of the Old Testament and the Holy Son of God who came to seek and to save that which was lost. The holiness, response, and reverence are all the same.

Hebrews 12:18-29 perfectly encapsulates what it means for the new covenant believer to encounter our holy God. Verses 18-21 remind us of the holiness of God and what a terror it is to sinners under the Law, so that even Moses trembled at the sight! Verses 22-24 explain that we have not come to an earthly mountain, but to Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem. We have the blood of Christ covering us; we have a new covenant in which our sins are forgiven; and we have a mediator in Christ who brings us to God so that we might joyfully dwell in His presence forever!

Verses 28-29 summarize the result of this glorious new covenant relationship we have with our holy God as we encounter Him. We come before our holy God with gratitude that He has provided for us a perfect High Priest, a perfect Mediator, a better covenant based on better promises, and blood that has washed away our sins. With that gratitude, we come with reverence and awe because our God is still a consuming fire.

Have we encountered the God who is holy, holy, holy – the God of Moses, the God of Isaiah, the God of Peter, the God who is a consuming fire? Have we heard through the promises in His Word that through faith in Christ He has taken away our sin through the blood of His Son, welcomed us into His holy presence, and transformed us through our encounters with His holiness? These are weighty questions we do well to ask ourselves today.

Charles Dickens utilized his pen to influence his readers’ opinions. In a Christmas Carol, he strikes out against the ill-treatment of the poor through stinginess. He prescribed for Scrooge’s spirit to be replaced with the love for the common man. In another work, Little Dorrit, Dickens turned threatening eyes upon a practice that stifles man’s freedom to live and enjoy life. What has enchained man to a life of bondage? The answer is the Victorian Sabbath.

The narrator in his story described “a Sunday evening in London, gloomy, close, and stale.… Melancholy streets in a penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of the people who were condemned to look at them out of windows, in dire despondency.”[1] Dickens considered the Victorian Sabbath to be punishment for the laborer who toiled the previous six days. “Nothing for the spent toiler to do,” lamented the narrator, “but to compare the monotony of the seventh day with the monotony of his six days.”[2]

To replace the Victorian Sabbath, Dickens advocated for Sunday societies along with other intellectuals in Britian.[3] These groups began meeting in the 1860s and replaced the traditional Christian sermon with a lecture on science or another subject. Thus, the common man, on his only day off a week, would have another option of inquiry than attending a depressing church service. For Dickens, the Victorian Sabbath produced misery and not joy.

Charles Spurgeon, however, came to the opposite conclusion. God gave humanity the Christian Sabbath as a day of joy. “Time is the ring,” he preached, “and these Sabbaths are the diamonds set in it.… The Sabbaths are the beds full of rich choice flowers.”[4] Elsewhere, he called the Sabbath “the pearl of the week”[5] and “a day to feast yourselves in God.”[6] Moreover, “they are full of brightness, and joy, and delight.”[7]

Spurgeon also compared the gift of the Sabbath to the gift of marriage. He argued, “It is a blessing for which good men dwelling with affectionate wives praise God every day they live. Marriage and the Sabbath are the two choice boons of primeval love that have come down to us from Paradise, the one to bless our outer and the other our inner life.”[8] Certainly, this statement exalted the Sabbath day, considering Spurgeon’s blessed union with his wife.

Reflecting upon his letters to her, Susannah wrote, “To the end of his beautiful life it was the same, his letters were always those of a devoted lover, as well as of a tender husband.”[9] After thirty-six years of marriage, she saw herself as the “loving wife of the best man on God’s earth.”[10] From the couple’s letters and secondary historical accounts, it is natural to conclude that Charles and Susannah had an ideal marriage.[11] Given this fact, Spurgeon’s assertion that the Sabbath is one of God’s two greatest gifts discloses the happiness and gratitude with which he approached the day.

For a person to love the Sabbath, he must love the Lord of the Sabbath.

Spurgeon, therefore, saw the Sabbath commandment as a life-giving gift and not as a soul draining obligation. Why? God calls all people to rest from their normal labors to labor joyfully for Him. He invites us into His presence to hear the preaching of the Word, to sing hymns, to pray before His throne of grace, to give financial gifts, and to commune at the Lord’s Table. Furthermore, we can serve others in conversation, in evangelism, in visiting the shut-ins, in teaching our children, and in hospitality.  

What caused Dickens and Spurgeon to have opposite attitudes on the Sabbath? Spurgeon believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and Dickens did not. For a person to love the Sabbath, he must love the Lord of the Sabbath. If God sets aside every Sunday for worship, a believer is “glad when the Sabbath arrives,” because he “look[s] forward to it with delight.”[12] When the services end, the believer would “wish that Sabbaths were never over” and would “look forward to the next occasion when we should meet the saints of God.”[13]

For a believer in Christ, the joy of the Sabbath anticipates the joy of heaven. We skip one Sabbath day after another across the river of life until we arrive at the eternal Sabbath. George Herbert, a 17th century Anglican poet whom Spurgeon admired summarizes this Christian experience. In his poem “Sunday,” he wrote,

Thou art a day of mirth:

And where the week-days trail on ground,

Thy flight is higher, as thy birth.

O let me take thee at the bound,

Leaping with thee from sev’n to sev’n,

Till that we both, being tossed from earth,

Fly hand in hand to heav’n! [14]

[1] Charles Dickens, The Works of Charles Dickens: Little Dorrit, Part 1,29. Spurgeon’s library in Kansas City contains a volume of this work: Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit (London: Chapman and Hall, 1865).

[2] Dickens, Little Dorrit, 30.

[3] John Wigley, The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Sunday, 126, 190.

[4] Spurgeon, MTP, 7:584.

[5] Spurgeon, MTP, 33:104.

[6] Spurgeon, MTP, 8:527.

[7] Spurgeon, MTP, 38:140.

[8] Spurgeon, MTP, 20:42.

[9] Spurgeon, Autobiography, 2:24.

[10] Ibid., 28.

[11] See Rhodes, Susie: The Life and Legacy of Susannah Spurgeon, 75–86. Rhodes titled the chapter that chronicles the Spurgeon’s courtship “A Marriage Made for Heaven” (italics in original).

[12] Spurgeon, MTP, 47:76.

[13] Spurgeon, MTP, 14:413.

[14] Herbert, The Complete English Poems, 69.

Have you heard the latest church scandal? Sadly, the question is too broad and too evergreen to signal what situation is in mind. Ask that question any time in the last decade and it will be relevant.

No church that is comprised of sinners is perfect, which is to say that there is no perfect church. Yet, Jesus has given us clear instructions to deal with sin in a church. If biblical church polity and authority were better appreciated and exercised, many of the scandalous sins and crimes that have plagued churches over the last ten years would have been far better handled than they were.

When church membership is taken seriously and both formative and corrective discipline are implemented carefully there can still be sinful things (even egregiously sinful and sometimes criminal) things done in a congregation. But when such sins and/or crimes occur, both the victims and perpetrators will be better loved and cared for than would otherwise be the case.

Faithful church leaders will lead a church to recognize the supreme authority of Jesus Christ.

Such a church, though not impervious to wolves coming among them (see Acts 20:29-30) will be a less attractive target for evil people. The elders of such churches recognize that no small part of their shepherding work includes defending the flock from wicked people. These men must be qualified & determined to “rebuke those who contradict” the faith and practice that Christ has given to His church (Titus 1:9). Elders must also be willing and able to “silence” anyone in the church who becomes insubordinate or deceitful (Titus 1:10-11). Commenting on these verses, John Calvin wisely said, “A pastor needs two voices, one for gathering the sheep and the other for driving away wolves and thieves.”

Faithful church leaders will lead a church to recognize the supreme authority of Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:18) and to appreciate His delegation of specific authority to people and institutions in His world. This includes the authority that magistrates (the state, executives, legislators, judges, police, etc.) have in the civil realm. They specifically have been made responsible by Christ to punish evil, or as the Apostle Paul puts it, to be “the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:4). In other words, Christ has ordained the state to deal with crimes.

He has similarly ordained the church to deal with sins. Matthew 18:15-120 is quite clear about what is to be done if a church member becomes recalcitrant in offensive sin and “refuses to listen even to the church” and repent. Such a person is to be regarded “as a Gentile and a tax collector,” or as an outsider. In other words, he is to be excommunicated. Where the sin is both scandalous and public, the steps Jesus outlines are to be compressed into immediate excommunication, as Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 5.

Were churches to understand and follow these clear teachings of Scripture then sin would not be tolerated but would be lovingly corrected in the power of the risen Christ (1 Corinthians 5:4) with a view to helping the wayward brother repent and make things right. When such correction is rejected, then the church will exercise the authority Christ has delegated to it and the perpetrator would no longer be allowed to be a member.

In the same way when a crime is committed in the church (as has sadly and too often happened) the police should be called. Those government officials should exercise the authority Christ has vested in them and pursue justice, including vindication for any victims and punishment for any criminals. The church should cooperate with this process to see this outcome.

If you want to see the weak and the vulnerable loved and protected in churches, then pray and work for a renewal of biblical church authority and polity.

Think of the various scandals that have plagued churches over the last decade. We have heard horrific stories of children being preyed on by sexual perverts, women being abused by leaders, and money being wickedly misappropriated. How many of these situations do you know that were handled according to the instructions of God’s Word that I outlined above? Very few, if any at all. Had those churches been well-ordered and followed the instructions of Scripture, the stories would be much different.

That does not mean that there would have been no perpetrators nor victims. Again, no church is without sin. But it does mean that both the sinners and those who were sinned against would have been afforded the provisions that God has made in His church and world. I know of many such situations where this has been the case. Churches exercised the keys of the kingdom through excommunication and civil municipalities did not “bear the sword in vain” but prosecuted criminals. These cases tend not to make the headlines the way that the mishandled ones do. The sins are no less wicked and the crimes are no less heinous, but the grace and justice that Jesus has provided through His life, death, and resurrection were more readily and effectively applied as His Word was obeyed.

God’s ways are not only right, they are good. If you want to see the weak and the vulnerable loved and protected in churches, then pray and work for a renewal of biblical church authority and polity.

In looking over the landscape of the church today, many people have noticed that the holiness of God has largely been forgotten, overlooked, and ignored.

The late J.I. Packer claimed that the contemporary Christian finds holiness to be outdated and irrelevant. Kevin DeYoung wrote, “Shouldn’t those most passionate about the gospel and God’s glory also be those most dedicated to the pursuit of godliness? I worry that there is an enthusiasm gap and no one seems to mind.” John MacArthur put it like this: “The doctrine of sanctification has become unpopular in our time. There has been much talk about the doctrine of election, of justification, of glorification… But the doctrine that has fallen into the greatest disuse is this doctrine of sanctification.”

MacArthur, Packer, and DeYoung all rightly point out that too few Christians seem to care about sanctification or about pursuing holiness in their personal lives; and too few churches seem to preach anything that resembles a call for believers to be holy.

The failure of the church and the Christian to pursue holiness has everything to do with the holiness of God. The chief reason why the church today fails to pursue holiness, is because the church has forgotten that our God is a holy God. Many churches fail to recognize that we serve a God who is absolutely, unchangeably, and eternally holy. Churches have trivialized God and ignored certain attributes of God that we don’t like or that seem out of step with the times. The evangelical church, in its never-ending quest to be cool, to be relevant, to be accessible, to be unoffensive, to be relatable, to be thought well of by the world, has jettisoned the holiness of God because it has no place in a church that wants a seat at the world’s table or a church that wants to be attractive to ungodly, unholy people.

Calling attention to this problem is vital because the failure to appreciate, love, and proclaim the holiness of God has disastrous consequences.

It results in worship that is frivolous and trivial.

When we walk into church, we should almost feel like we are leaving this present world and stepping into the presence of God in heaven. Heaven is a holy place, where God dwells and where His holiness is worshipped and adored. Heaven is not a place for trifles, for silliness, for trivialities. There should be a reverence and a fear and awe of God in worship.

The failure to appreciate, love, and proclaim the holiness of God has disastrous consequences.

Many churches have abandoned any sense of the holiness of God or any element of reverence or awe before God. These churches seem to have an overwhelming desire to minimize the holiness of God to ensure the comfort of the sinner. Attendees are left with the impression that it doesn’t really matter how they live, or maybe even what they believe – because “God loves them and so do we,” and “God accepts us all and isn’t really that concerned about holiness.”

This kind of worship service presents a god that is totally foreign to the God of the Bible. It takes what should be a transcendent, awe-inspiring encounter with a holy God who transforms us, turning it into something trivial and meaningless. It also centers worship on the felt needs of sinners instead of something that is supposed to be about the glory of God. This is the greatest crime in neglecting the holiness of God because such an approach robs God of the worship He rightly deserves from His people.

When we forget about the holiness of God, serious consequences result, and trivializing the worship of God is at the top of the list.

Another consequence of forgetting the holiness of God is having churches that have lost the Great Commission.

The goal of the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20 is the holiness of God’s people. We cannot fulfill the Great Commission unless Jesus’ disciples are being taught to obey all that He commanded us.

One of the key marks of a spiritually mature church is its obedience to Christ. In Romans 1:8, Paul highlights the faith of the Roman church and the fact they had turned from idols to trust in the living and holy God. Paul bookends that commendation in Romans 16:19, noting the Roman’s obedience and holiness due to their sincere faith in Christ. The Romans did not have a faith in name only, a nominal faith, a worldly faith, or a faith that made little difference. Their faith was so strong and sincere that, when people talked about the faith of the Romans, the report about their obedience and holiness accompanied it.

One of the key marks of a spiritually mature church is its obedience to Christ.

If we are not worshipping, serving, and trusting in the true God, who is the holy God, we will not be a Great Commission church because we will not lead people to holiness. And if holiness is distasteful, irrelevant, or offensive, we cannot fulfill the Great Commission.

A third consequence of forgetting the holiness of God is exhibiting lives that are worldly and ungodly.

In 1 Peter 1:15-16, Peter writes that what sets the standard of holiness in the life of the believer is his view of God and God’s holiness. We are to be holy as God is holy. However, if we have forgotten or neglected the holiness of God, what will our standard be? If we serve a god who accepts everyone, who is unconcerned about holiness, who is devoid of wrath and judgment against sin because his holiness is not offended by sin, we will become just like that unholy god.

This neglect of God’s holiness results in believers who have no real pursuit of holiness at all or who are unconcerned to be holy because they don’t understand the holiness of God; or in believers who think they are pursuing holiness but who are defining it by the world’s definition of holiness rather than by conforming themselves to God and His holiness. Both paths lead to ungodly living.

If we would live godly lives, if we would seek to be obedient to Christ, if we would put to death the deeds of the flesh and seek to walk in the Spirit, we must first understand the holiness of God.

One final consequence of forgetting the holiness of God is this: countless false believers who think they know God, but who serve an idol.

If we would put to death the deeds of the flesh and seek to walk in the Spirit, we must first understand the holiness of God.

In Luke 6:46, Jesus asked this powerful question: “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”

To put Jesus’ words another way, all true believers and followers of Christ will pursue holiness and seek to obey Jesus’ commands. The reason why people call Jesus ‘Lord’ but do not do what He commands is because they don’t know Him. They miss that He is holy. They have trivialized Jesus; they have created a Jesus in their own image; they have invented their own savior and rejected the Jesus who is the Holy One of God.

This is a tragedy of monumental proportions because it results in eternal destruction. Many people on the final day will call Jesus ‘Lord, Lord,’ and yet they will be condemned because they did not do the will of the Father, but instead practiced wickedness. They had no regard for holiness, and that manifested the reality that they did not know God.

These are the disastrous consequences of forgetting the holiness of God.

There is a remedy, however, for us who live in a time when the holiness of God has been so neglected and forgotten. We will unpack that remedy over the course of this series as we uncover the holiness of God and discover what our response to that holiness should be in our lives and in our churches.

All creation declares the glory of God. Part of that glory is manifested in the ways that He designed specific creatures to benefit His highest creation, mankind. This was driven home to me again recently when preaching through the creation account in Genesis 1. I was struck by the fact that before God created man, He created an antidote to human anxiety and made certain that it would be widely available around the world.

He did it on the fifth day when He created animate life. On that day filled the seas with fish and the skies with birds. “And God said, ‘Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.’ So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth’” (Genesis 1:20-22).

Every living creature has its role to play in displaying God’s glory by fulfilling the purpose for which He created it. This is confirmed by God declaring each phase of creation good after its completion. Creation is good in and of itself because it comes from God and exists for God. I find it fascinating, however, that God had in mind a special purpose for birds beyond their beauty and contributions to the various ecosystems of the earth. This purpose is not revealed until the New Testament when Jesus called special attention to birds.

Every living creature has its role to play in displaying God’s glory by fulfilling the purpose for which He created it.

He could hardly have picked a more readily available creature to consider. Researchers estimate that over 50 billion birds fill the world’s skies today. The most populous wild bird is the red-billed quelea, which is found throughout sub-Saharan Africa. There are about 1.5 billion of them, followed by 475 million mourning doves, 310 million Robins, and 160 million pheasants. It is safe to say that birds are heeding their Maker’s command to “multiply on the earth.”

I live in Southwest Florida where we get to see and hear a variety of birds year-round. From our national symbol, the bald eagle, to cardinals, burrowing owls, great blue herons, and sand hill cranes—this part of the world is a great place for bird watching. And the Lord Jesus told us to do just that. In Matthew 6:26–27 He commanded His disciples to “Look at the birds of the air.”

Have you ever really done that? Have you deliberately taken time to stop and consider birds? God created them, each according to its kind. And our Lord calls attention to them by telling us to look at them. Consider them, He says, because “they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.” Then Jesus adds, “Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?”

On the fifth day of creation God created an antidote to anxiety. And He made this antidote ubiquitous so that if we will make even the slightest effort to obey the Lord Jesus and look at the birds, we will have ready access to one of the most comforting, life-giving truths in the world. God takes care of His birds. How much more will He take care of His image-bearers? More than that, how much more will He take care of His own people whom He has purchased for Himself through the life, death, and resurrection of His own Son?

God takes care of His birds. How much more will He take care of His image-bearers?

This is a vitally important truth. Jesus makes it by reasoning from the lesser to the greater—since God takes care of birds you can be sure He will take care of His people. The Apostle Paul makes the exact same point by reasoning in the opposite direction—from the greater to the lesser. He says in Romans 8:32, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” Jesus says, consider the birds. Your Father takes care of them. He will take care of you, too. Paul says, consider Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God. Your Father did not spare Him but gave Him up for us to save us from sin & reconcile us to Himself. It is impossible, therefore, that He will not also with Christ freely give us all that we need.

Take time this week to stop and look at birds. Remember that their Creator is your Creator. Their Provider is your heavenly Father. Just as He cares for them, so He will most certainly take care of you.

This speech was given by Megan Basham at the 2024 SBC Event: SBC at a Crossroads, hosted by Founders Ministries and the Center for Baptist Leadership.

So I’d like you all to imagine for a moment. You’ve just started a new job and on your first day your supervisor tells you that at 2 pm every afternoon the entire company pauses to “carve out time for their spirits. To “connect with their divine source.” And to “honor the sacred world.”

As a Christian, this New Age jargon sets off alarm bells in your mind. But you decide to keep your reservations to yourself. (You don’t want to look like a fundamentalist!) Then your boss leads you to an all-white room he calls a “communal space” where he rings a “sacred meditation bell” three times.

A “spiritual engagement coordinator” steps forward, lights incense and invites you, along with the rest of the staff, to sit in the lotus position and close your eyes. He then tells you that he is going to lead you through a 20-minute “sacred pause” designed to deepen your relationship with yourself. He tells you this “sacred” meditation with yourself (he really likes the word sacred) is being done to the benefit of all beings everywhere.

This little eastern mysticism scenario is not imaginary. This is the daily practice of The Fetzer Institute, a leftwing foundation who says its mission is to “build the spiritual foundation” of our world.

If it weren’t clear enough that Fetzer’s method for building that spiritual foundation is nothing like the Bible’s, another way it does so is by giving money to groups like the National LGBTQ Task Force. 

Who else does it give money to? The ERLC.

In 2018, Fetzer gave the ERLC more than $346,000 to “collaborate” on research that would identify the “rhetorical framing” evangelicals use when it comes to democracy. That is, how we talk about politics. And it was then to share the insights from that political research with the ERLC’s national conference and with “churches under the Southern Baptist Convention.”

The following year, in 2019, Fetzer gave the ERLC another $200,000 to, among other things, conduct seminars on “how American evangelicals might contribute to healing political divides.”

In other words, Fetzer bought access to Southern Baptist conferences and churches through the ERLC in the form of an explicitly political project. And the ERLC earned its pay.

The research Fetzer bankrolled has been disseminated and promoted in ERLC material and at ERLC events. In one such document, the ERLC recommends we learn how to engage in civil political discourse from a fellow recipient of Fetzer funds–Cherie Harder, President of Trinity Forum and a prominent Never Trump voice.

At a February 2024 conference for a Never Trump Political Action Committee, she called the former President a “frankly evil and nihilistic leader.” She has never used such rhetoric to describe Biden, the most pro-abortion, pro-perversion, and anti-family president this nation has ever known.

Yet this is who the ERLC (and Fetzer) hold out as our model for civil, Christian discourse.

When we look at Fetzer’s political stances like its “unequivocal support of the LGBTQ community,” it’s clear that when they say they want evangelicals to “heal our political divides” what they mean is that they want Christians to soften their public positions on issues like marriage and sexuality.

According to Fetzer, Christians who are confident in our convictions harm democracy. Nor is Fetzer the only leftwing foundation that has managed to tie some purse-strings tothe ERLC.

The Democracy Fund was founded by Buddhist billionaire Pierre Omidyar. You might recognize him as the man who gave the world Ebay. His foundation gives grants to groups like Red Canary Song, which describes itself as a “grassroots collective of Asian & migrant sex workers.”

When Roe v Wade was overturned, the Democracy Fund put out a statement. It said the Dobbs decision proved “how vulnerable our political system is to perversion by leaders who are not committed to protecting and strengthening our democracy.”

Let me say that again—according to the Democracy Fund, protecting and strengthening our democracy means protecting and strengthening abortion.

In 2018, when the Democracy Fund was looking for evangelical leaders to help foster more “constructive politics” in the U.S., it, too, turned to the ERLC.The purpose of the $100,000 grant it gave them was to pursue “long-term action” against America’s alleged white supremacy problem.

The ERLC took it for granted that the Southern Baptists it is supposed to represent would agree that one of America’s most pressing problems is white supremacy.

It’s worth noting that independent journalist Glenn Greenwald, a liberal, was once a beneficiary of Omidyar himself. Omidyar bankrolled his left-leaning news outlet, The

Intercept. But Greenwald was forced to quit the company he co-founded when it wouldn’t let him publish stories critical of Joe Biden. Greenwald said this of Omidyar: “Liberal billionaires will only fund groups that advance liberal causes.”

So what cause did Omidyar want to advance through the ERLC?

Another liberal billionaire who has taken an interest in the ERLC–Mark Zuckerberg. In 2020, the Facebook founder spent over $400 million dollars turning out the vote in heavily Democratic areas in swing states. According to reporting in the New York Post, he did this by “funding a targeted, private takeover of government election operations through…nonprofit organizations.”

That same year, his foundation also gave the ERLC a $90,000 grant for an unspecified criminal justice reform project. How was the money used? We don’t know. The SBC lacks financial transparency and the ERLC has not disclosed this information. And the ERLC staffer who procured the grant left a short time later to join the Biden Campaign.

I didn’t set out to write a book about the SBC. And despite the rumors, I did not write a book about the SBC. But the SBC does loom large in my new book. And that’s because the SBC looms large in the minds of the people I did set out to write about—the powerful progressive influences in the church. And I’m not just talking about the ministry leaders bringing in racial hiring quotas, female pastors, and pronoun hospitality.

I’m talking about leftwing billionaires and organizations who, in their long march through the institutions, have now set their sights on the Church. And too many leaders within the church are proving only too happy to help them.

When we see the secular foundations the ERLC is partnering with—those who work to see abortion, legal prostitution, every sort of LGBT perversion protected and promoted in our law, Southern Baptists should echo 2 Corinthians 6:14 and ask—what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? What fellowship has light with darkness?”

The ERLC was created to represent the interests of Southern Baptists to the secular political world. Instead, it is now taking money to represent the interests of the secular political world to Southern Baptists. Which must prompt us to wonder, just who does it see as its mission field?

Know this, it is not a coincidence that these leftwing influencers decided to work with the ERLC. They have been specifically strategizing about how to co-opt Southern Baptists for years.

Yes, they are talking about the SBC and its entities by name. And not just the ERLC.

In 2015, the George Soros- and Bill Gates-funded think tank, New America, released a report on efforts to pass climate change legislation.

The report noted that the strategy of the environmentalists was to recruit “elite evangelicals” who would then use their influence to give spiritual legitimacy to specific climate change policies. Their hope was that this advocacy for fossil fuel legislation would “trickle down” to ordinary Christians in the pews.

That is, the climate change activists wanted to use evangelical leaders in trusted organizations who know the lingo to persuasively sell a message to what would otherwise be an unreceptive audience. New America explained that the object is to “collect strange bedfellows” and “sort of sneakily break down” the faith coalition from the inside and “give cover to Republican members of Congress to support climate action.”

“Because” they wrote, “even just neutralizing the Southern Baptist Convention” could “disrupt the solid Republican opposition to measures like cap and trade.”

In the nine years since that report, the climate change activists have had significant success in convincing SBC institutions to take up their cause.

Southeastern Seminary, for example, has been particularly active in promoting climate change alarmism to its students.

Just one example of many, in 2022, it welcomed Jonathan Moo, Environmental Studiesprofessor, to give a guest lecture titled, “How to love our neighbor in the midst of the climate crisis.”

In it, Moo claimed that environmental activism is a necessary part of being “faithful to the Gospel.” He said the United States bears the lion’s share of guilt because of how “rich and prosperous” our use of fossil fuels has made us. And he told the students Americans are especially obligated to “sacrifice” by adopting emission-restricting policies.

The kinds of policies that are making everything from gas to groceries more expensive, not just for us, but also for those neighbors we’re supposed to be loving.

If Moo adding new environmental requirements to the Gospel weren’t shocking enough, he also suggested the students purchase indulgences for climate sins like traveling by airplane. In particular, he suggested they buy carbon credits from the environmentalist group A Rocha. On whose board Moo just so happens to sit.

Now A Rocha probably isn’t a familiar name to most of you. So I’ll tell you a little bit about it. Though it brands itself as a Christian ministry, it gets much of its funding from secular groups like the Annenberg Foundation, which also funds the National Abortion Rights Action League, Planned Parenthood, and the Center for Reproductive Rights.

As with many other major secular foundations, Annenberg’s interest in environmentalism is married to a desire to reduce the population through abortion.

And A Rocha’s leadership isn’t especially bothered by that goal. Its executive director, Ben Lowe, ran for Congress as a Democrat, assuring voters that despite claiming to be personally pro-life he would not support overturning Roe v. Wade. In other words, he took the same position Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi have.

Then there are A Rocha’s strange hymns and prayers that sound more like Marxist Gaia worship (or something you’d hear at the Fetzer institute) than anything recognizably biblical.

Among the sins A Rocha calls humanity to repent from in its recommended prayers are “ecological violence” and humanity “act[ing] like parasites.” It suggests praying for the “courage to speak out against increased nuclear capability” and lamenting America’s “exploitive economic system.”

Listen to part of this prayer it published for distribution to churches and ask yourself whether you could imagine your congregation praying this together on a Sunday morning. It’s titled “Woe to the Unholy Trinity.”

…We have acted as cheerleaders and chaplains to the unholy trinity…

And so we name the unholy beast.

We renounce it.

We repent of it.

Unrestrained Capitalism,

Consumerism,

Individualism . . .

This unholy trinity

That oppresses the poor,

Ransacks the Earth.

One has to wonder what average Southern Baptists would have thought had they known their “unholy” capitalist tithes, which help support Southeastern Seminary, were going to pay the lecture fees of a representative from A Rocha. Who then used that invite to do a bit of capitalist carbon trading himself.

While researching the multiple guest lectures and conferences Southeastern has dedicated to the subject of climate change, I never found a single speaker who challenged the progressive position that it is an existential crisis. Yet there is legitimate evidence for skepticism about this claim. And reputable evangelical organizations whose members include NASA climate scientists would be only too happy to explain to an audience of seminary students just what that evidence is.

Yet for some reason, Southeastern Seminary students have never heard from those NASA climate scientists.

Is the degree to which humans are impacting the climate an issue on which Christians of good faith can disagree? Of course. The problem is demanding consensus on the subject by abusing and manipulating scripture. The problem is an SBC seminary, whose ostensible mission is educating students on the full breadth of Christian thought, promoting only one view. And it just so happens to be the view that aligns with nearly every major corporation, A-list Hollywood, the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, and the most powerful progressive foundations on the planet.

Then it seems less like debating debatable issues and more like turning our temples over to the environmentalist moneychangers.

But alarming as it is that these powerful secular left institutions have managed to harness the SBC for their purposes, it is even more disturbing that some of our leaders are covering their tracks for them.

Perhaps some of you will remember in 2020 when Baptist Press published an explainer claiming that “not a penny” of Soros money has ever gone to the Evangelical Immigration Table (EIT), which is a side project of the secular progressive group, the National Immigration Forum. The EIT is not, as you might suppose from the name, a group that preaches the gospel to or provides for the material needs of immigrants. No, it is a political coalition that includes the ERLC, JD Greear, Kevin Ezell, and Danny Akin, to name just a few of the SBC leaders involved. Through lobbying legislators and distributing material to churches and ministries it promotes amnesty policies for illegal immigrants.

In 2016, the internal board books for Soros’ foundation, Open Society, leaked. They revealed that it had given $200,000 to a program the EIT was a part of, known as Bibles, Badges, and Business. The report also noted future plans to divide an additional million between that program and another initiative because, Open Society said, “evangelical support [has been] highly influential in engaging conservative lawmakers.”

The 2016 Soros board book also said this:

“In the course of our work, we were able to generate engagement by some conservative voices such as evangelical Christians and Southern Baptists through grantee National Immigration Forum.”

Which, again, is the umbrella organization over the Evangelical Immigration Table.

As ERLC trustee Jon Whitehead, a Harvard trained attorney by the way, told me after he reviewed these documents, “Southern Baptists were shamelessly hung out for sale by these leaders. In exchange for subsidized meetings with their EIT friends, they looked the other way as their churches and pews were exploited. They even used Baptist Press to mislead people, claiming ‘not a penny’ of Soros money went toward EIT. It looks more like tens of millions of pennies!”

If we give Baptist Press the benefit of the doubt, they were negligently mistaken. The only other alternative is that they were lying.

And Soros’ Open Society is only one of the hard left NGOs that has supported the EIT. The Ford, Rockefeller, and Tides foundations–all groups that also support abortion, the LGBT agenda, and a host of other anti-biblical goals—have contributed over a million dollars to the EIT’s project to mobilize evangelical support for open borders policies.

The secular left powerbrokers see American Christians as a captive audience. Maybe the last captive audience they have not conquered. Their desire is to have SBC churches and ministries for their political projects, and we have leaders who are more than willing to give them that access.

As the largest Protestant association in the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention is uniquely positioned to influence the U.S. toward godliness. In an era in which almost the whole of our mainstream culture has been engulfed by confusion and darkness, we should stand out all the more for our willingness to cut against the cultural grain.

Instead, so many of our SBC leaders warn that to look different from our neighbors—by, say, rejecting feminist demands to open the pastorate to women—will damage our witness. (As if God didn’t know what would be “damaging” to His Church when He laid down his proscription against women pastors.)

According to the latest religion statistics, just over 5 percent of U.S. adults are Southern Baptists. That’s nearly 13 million Americans. Coincidentally, that’s almost the exact same number of American adults who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.

Through their tremendous commitment to their cause, they have transformed America from the steps of the White House to the smallest local library. No corner of this country has not been touched by their influence.

Why can’t we say the same?

Can you imagine the transformation we might see in this nation if the whole of the SBC had the same courage of its convictions that the LGBT movement has?

If Southern Baptists uniformly demanded that their pastors, professors, seminary administrators, and national leaders stayed passionately focused on the cause of Christ and His Word, rather than taking up the preoccupations of billionaires, businesses, and lawmakers, it would be enough to see a new Reformation in the American Church.

We have a choice, we will either fulfill our commission to be salt and light, which starts with choosing biblical distinctiveness and holding our leaders accountable for what they do in our name. Or we will continue diluting our mission with the world’s priorities until we disappear into the crowd entirely.

Order Megan’s book: Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda

Imagine you are a member of a church that rents a theater for worship. Every Sunday morning you meet without incident. In fact, God has providentially used this location to reach the rich and the poor for the gospel. Thousands, who otherwise would have not heard an evangelical sermon, now sit under the preaching of your eloquent, doctrinally sound pastor. The owners of the theater, however, want to change the lease. They desire to rent out the facility on Sunday evenings for entertainment to make more money. This new arrangement will not affect your church services in the morning. What would you do? Would you advise your church to stay or go? Would you consider opening a theater for entertainment to be a violation of God’s law?

Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) faced this scenario in 1859. His church in London had exceeded capacity even after expanding the building. To provide room for the crowds, the church decided to build a new church building which would become the Metropolitan Tabernacle. In the meantime, while the new building was under construction, the church rented the Surrey Music Hall for services on Sunday morning. Spurgeon’s preaching filled this venue for entertainment which had a capacity of 10,000. God was saving souls through Spurgeon. Yet the proprietors of the venue wanted to make more money and decided to rent it out for shows on Sunday evening. How did Spurgeon respond?

As a convictional Sabbatarian, Spurgeon broke the lease. Even though the new arrangement would not interfere with his congregation’s worship on Sunday morning, Spurgeon could not give money to an enterprise who broke God’s fourth commandment. In a letter to The Christian Watchman and Reflector, Spurgeon explained his decision:

The proprietors of the last named place had twice attempted to open it on Sunday evenings for music and amusements. I was, however, able to prevent this by threatening to cease my occupation, and as we paid a rent of more than £700 a year, ($3500,) [sic] they were not willing to lose so large a sum, and therefore gave up their unhallowed design. Now, however, they have conceived the idea that my preaching injures them; for the people will not come to dance and drink on week days in a place where the Word is thundered out on Sunday mornings. This, I think, is very likely to be a near guess at the truth; for two companies have been broken up since I have preached there, and a blind man can see the end of the present one. I left the place on the very day upon which it was opened for Sunday desecration.[1]

For Spurgeon, doctrinal convictions trumped pragmatism. To make this decision to leave the Surrey Music Hall required great sacrifice. The church went back to Exeter Hall to hold their services, but its capacity was one-third of the Surrey Music Hall. Instead of preaching to 10,000 people, Spurgeon would preach to 3,000. Many of those present at the previous venue would not be able to hear Spurgeon preach the precious truths of the gospel. Surely these considerations should allow Spurgeon to remain at the Surrey Music Hall for the sake of these souls. Would not God want Spurgeon to evangelize as big a crowd as possible? Would not this be God’s will?

To understand God’s will, Spurgeon turned to the Bible and his family’s understanding of the Christian Sabbath. At the end of his last service at the Surrey Music Hall on December 11, 1859, Spurgeon justified his leaving this venue:

On two occasions before, as our friends are aware, it was proposed to open this place in the evening, and I was then able to prevent it by the simple declaration, that if so I should withdraw. That declaration suffices not at this time; and you can therefore perceive that I should be a craven to the truth, that I should be inconsistent with my own declarations, that in fact, my name would cease to be Spurgeon, if I yielded. I neither can nor will give way in anything in which I know I am right; and in the defence of God’s holy Sabbath, the cry of this day is, ‘Arise, let us go hence!’[2]

To be a Spurgeon meant being a Sabbatarian. To be obedient to God’s Word, for Spurgeon, meant keeping the Sabbath command even if it was inconvenient. Throughout his life, he practiced, preached, and advocated for Sabbath observance. These convictions came from the Bible and not from the ideals of Victorian culture in the 19th century.

[1] Spurgeon, Charles Spurgeon’s Letters to the Christian Watchman and Reflector, 1859–1863, 19.

[2] Spurgeon, NPSP, 6:32.

(The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) convenes in Indianapolis June 11-12, 2024. The most significant vote that will be taken will be to ratify the “Law Amendment” into the constitution of the SBC. That amendment, which was passed last year by a super-majority, must be ratified again this year with two-thirds of the messengers voting for it. If it passes again Article 3, Paragraph 1 will be amended to read, that a church will be in “friendly cooperation with the Convention” only if it “Affirms, appoints, or employs only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture.” This article shows why biblical fidelity requires Southern Baptists to adopt this amendment. For a fuller discussion of the issues involved, a debate that Dwight McKissic and I had on women preachers can be found here.)

A godly woman cannot pastor a church of Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ forbids it. The debates surrounding this issue—including the recent Southern Baptist debate over the Law Amendment—really do turn on this simple reality. The Lord of the church has decided who He will have serve as pastors in local churches. He has expressed His will in simple, clear terms & those who have no desire to obfuscate His meaning readily acknowledge this.

Others, guided more by the feminist zeitgeist than the plain teaching of Scripture, sometimes suggest that the issue is really about the value of women. Unless a church is willing to have women pastors then, the reasoning goes, they are oppressing women. That argument is specious.

God created both men and women in His image (Genesis 1:26-27). Both men and women, therefore, are worthy of dignity, respect and honor. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith says exactly this. 2LC: 4.2: “He created man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls, … being made after the image of God, in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness…” (4.2). Likewise, the Baptist Faith and Message states,  “Man is the special creation of God, made in His own image. He created them male and female as the crowning work of His creation. The gift of gender is thus part of the goodness of God’s creation” (Article 3).

To submit to Scripture’s requirement that only qualified men may be pastors does not deny the valuable services in God’s kingdom that women can and have performed. In the Old Testament, as the late Roger Nicole wrote, “Miriam the prophetess, sister of Moses, wrote a song recorded in Scripture (Exodus 15:21). She was followed by Deborah (Judges 4:4), Huldah (2 Kings 22:14, 2 Chronicles. 34:22), Isaiah’s wife (Isaiah 8:3),…all of whom also were called prophetesses” (Priscilla Papers, Vol. 20, No. 2; Spring 2006, p. 5).

Similarly, in the New Testament we read of Anna, “a prophetess” (Luke 2:36) and Philip’s 4 daughters “who prophesied” (Acts 21:9). Add to them Mary, Martha, Euodia, Synteche, Phoebe, Priscilla, Tryphena Tryphosa, Persis, Rufus’ mother, Junia, and others, and you immediately that women played important roles in the early church. This pattern has continued throughout history. Perpetua, Felicitas, Anthusa, the mother of John Chrysostom, and Monica, the relentless, praying mother of Augustine, are all representative of mighty women of God who served Christ well throughout history. It is no wonder that the fourth century pagan, Libanius said, “What women these Christians have!”

Christ has not been unclear about who may serve as a pastor in any church that bears His Name.

As the father of five godly daughters (and one godly daughter-in-law) and husband of a godly wife, I have a front row seat to the important roles that women have been assigned in the kingdom of God. All these women are boldly devout, theologically astute, wonderfully gifted, and joyfully committed to serving Christ in their local church. Because they are strong, spiritually mature, and biblically grounded, none of them has ever aspired to be a pastor or ever felt in any way slighted because that job is not open to them. They delight in being women of God and celebrate the differences between themselves and their brothers in the Lord.

Christ has not been unclear about who may serve as a pastor in any church that bears His Name. He cares deeply about how His churches are organized and operate. We see this in the language that the Apostle Paul uses to instruct Timothy about giving leadership in the church at Ephesus. He writes, “I am writing these things to you so that, 15 if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:14-15). God cares about how His people conduct themselves in His house. In other words, His house—His rules.

And God has made it a rule that only qualified men can serve as pastors in His church. This is abundantly evident from the plain teaching of the New Testament both in the examples we have (no church was led by women pastors) and in the qualifications prescribed for pastors—“he must be…the husband of one wife” (μιᾶς γυναικὸς ἄνδρα, a “one woman man;” emphasis added), 1 Timothy 3:2. Additionally, the Apostle Paul addresses the question directly in 1 Timothy 2:9-14.

Verses 11-12 are simple and clear: “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. This prohibition against women teaching or exercising authority over men comes amid Paul’s instructions about how believers are to conduct themselves “in every place” (v. 8), which is a reference either to the house churches in Ephesus or quite possibly to all the churches where Paul taught. With the modern rise of feminist hermeneutics this passage has been increasingly subjected to critique and reinterpretation in modern times. However, prior to this, there has been a remarkable consensus of its understanding across all of church history.

Paul identifies two positive activities that he does not permit women to engage in with respect to men—teaching and exercising authority. Some see this as one activity—that of teaching men with authority, believing that such an interpretation allows for women to teach men in the church as long as they don’t do it in an authoritative or “an elder-like way.” Yet, the word for “teach” (διδάσκειν) is normally used in the New Testament to denote the accurate teaching of the gospel. Douglas Moo says that it denotes “the authoritative proclamation of God’s will to believers.”[1] In the pastoral epistles, “teaching” always refers to “authoritative doctrinal instruction,”[2] as seen, for instance in 1 Timothy 4:11, “Command and teach these things.”

The second activity that this passage forbids to women is “exercising authority” over men in the church. The word Paul uses (αὐθεντεῖν) has been the subject of much research over the last forty years. Egalitarian scholars have tried to demonstrate that etymologically it has an ingressive or even pejorative connotation, so that it should be understood as “to assume authority” or “to lord it over.” Since this word is used only here in the New Testament and rarely elsewhere, etymological studies are tenuous at best. What is far more helpful is to note the way Paul uses it in the context.

Consider the rationale on which he bases his apostolic prohibition in vv. 13-14. “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” He does NOT ground this prohibition in the cult of Artemis or anything else that might be unique to the cultural setting of Ephesus where Timothy was. Rather, he says that the reason that women are not to teach or exercise authority over men in the church is because of what happened at creation and what happened at the fall.

Just as there was order between men and women at the beginning—by God’s design—so there is to be order in the church, again, by God’s design.

Paul appeals to the divinely created order that God established in the beginning. Adam was created as Eve’s head by God’s design. When Eve was deceived by the devil it was because God’s created order was overturned. She took to herself a responsibility she did not have, and Adam abdicated a responsibility that he did have by God’s design.

Just as there was order between men and women at the beginning—by God’s design—so there is to be order in the church, again, by God’s design. We have seen the devastating consequences of forsaking that order in the Garden. We should not be surprised by more grievous consequences when His order is forsaken in the church. If anyone would like real time examples of the latter simply consider the last century of the Unite Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church in the USA. They did not become LGBTQIA+ celebrants overnight. Rather, their steady decline began with a rejection of God’s rules for His house.

Once God’s Word is rejected in the ordering God’s church, God’s judgment falls on God’s people. Those who love Christ and fear God should never stand idly by and let such perversion of the Word of God take place without a fight.

[1] Douglas Moo, “What Does it Mean” in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, edited by John Piper and Wayne Grudem, Crossway: Wheaton, IL, 241).

[2] Ibid.

I love the month of June. It features the longest day of the year. It is hot but not the deathly hot of July and August, which means you can still enjoy some mornings and evenings outside and swimming is still refreshing. Baseball season is in full swing. Father’s Day lands on the third Sunday of the month. And my beautiful bride was born in the month of June.

Yet for all the highlights of the sixth month of the year, in the United States it brings a more sinister side. Our nation celebrates June as “Pride month.” Desecrated rainbows fill store displays and social media feeds. Sexual deviancy and perversion is celebrated as a virtue. Baseball teams host “Pride nights” at their stadiums. Government buildings are lit up with the colors of the rainbow. The US Navy joins in, changing their entire Twitter avatar and bio to boast in wickedness.

As Christians we might easily look at June as a month where the darkness has overtaken the light, where godless people brazenly mock God by taking His rainbow and use it to celebrate what He describes as an abomination. But we do well to remember that God in His sovereignty rules over the darkness, and that God is not mocked, no matter how vigorously men may try.

While the godless of society take this month to celebrate their ungodliness, we must acknowledge the sovereignty of God in that they label this celebration with a sin that is even worse than the one they are promoting: pride. Proverbs 6:16-17 says, “There are six things which the Lord hates, Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him; Haughty eyes…” Haughty eyes are the visible, outward manifestation of a heart of pride. The Lord hates pride. The Lord says that pride is an abomination to Him. Peter wrote, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5).  To celebrate pride is to celebrate what God hates and to put yourself in a position where God is opposed to you. That includes all pride, not just pride in sexual immorality.

To celebrate pride is to celebrate what God hates and to put yourself in a position where God is opposed to you.

When our nation celebrates pride month, it is a manifest indication of God’s judgment against us. The reason it is such a clear indication of judgment is not because of the rejoicing in unrighteousness that occurs, although that in itself would qualify, but because this rejoicing in unrighteousness is done under the banner of another sin that God hates, the sin of pride. God’s judgment is manifest in taking those who love sin and doubling their guilt. They no longer are guilty before God for one sin – sexual immorality – but two sins that God hates, as pride becomes their adornment. The judgment of God is manifest when He not only condemns sinners in their sin but aggravates their condition so that they become even more guilty before Him.

We see this throughout all of Scripture. Pharaoh hardened his heart before God, and God hardened Pharaoh’s heart as well. When Pharaoh refused to repent, God hardened his heart to such an extreme that Pharaoh drove his army to their death in the sea (Exodus 14). We see this with Herod in Acts 12. Herod was guilty before God for executing the Apostle James. His unrepentant heart became so hardened that he exalted himself over God, and God executed him for it. When Eli rebuked his sons for their godless behavior, including sexual immorality, “they would not listen to the voice of their father, for the Lord desired to put them to death” (1 Samuel 2:25).

Besides the judgment of God, we also see the sovereign providence of God over all of these events. God is no mere bystander, watching helplessly or disinterestedly as His creatures defy His authority and flout His law. God is intimately involved in ruling His world and reigning over His creation. Part of that sovereign providence is bringing specific and terrifying judgment from which there is no escape. From that vantage point, we can say as Christians that pride month is not merely a manifestation of the wicked heart of man but an indication of the righteous judgment of God. That means as Christians we realize that God is sovereign over pride month and that He has a good purpose in what man means for evil.

Pride month is not merely a manifestation of the wicked heart of man but an indication of the righteous judgment of God.

A heart of pride might be the most terrifying judgment of all, because it is the judgment from which there is no path of escape. The necessary element for salvation is the opposite of pride. God delights in a broken and contrite heart, not a proud countenance. Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:3-4). The poor in spirit are those who recognize their spiritual poverty, and they are connected with those who mourn because they grieve over their sins. They are not proud, and they do not celebrate what God condemns. Their hearts are broken over their sins, and they are humbled to the dust before a holy and righteous God who judges everyone impartially.

The only way anyone can be saved is by abandoning their pride, their self-reliance, their delight in disobedience to God’s Word, and humbling themselves before the cross of Christ, seeking mercy through faith in His sacrifice for sinners.

God’s judgment becomes clear when the Lord begins to aggravate people’s sinful condition, so that one sin begins to pile on top of another. That is what is happening during pride month, and that is why June is for judgment. And yet in this present age, every act of judgment points us to the cross, where Jesus bore the penalty of the sins of all who would believe in Him for salvation. For those who repent and find their only boast in the cross of Christ, June – like every other month – is for Jesus.