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Before there is a battle cry there must be a heart cry. Before we fight, we must repent. Sadly, many Christians are angry but still arrogant, wound-up but not worshippers, haughty but not holy. What’s it going to take to finally break us? More perversion? More violence? More depravity? Wake up church!

A battle cry is used to summon armies to war. A loud, unified shout could intimidate the strongest of enemies. Confidence in battle often tilts the scale toward victory, whereas timidity, fear, and cowardliness will surely lead to defeat.
In these dreadful times, don’t be shamed into silence. Follow Isaiah’s lead and raise your voice like a trumpet — awake and arise! (58:1; 60:1).
Can We Handle the Truth?
America today is a lot like Israel in Isaiah’s time. He painted a very vivid picture of Israel’s depravity: “You sons of the sorceress, you offspring of the adulterer and the harlot!” (57:3).
The love of the occult, magic, and divination has never been greater, nor has sexual perversion. The stench has surely reached the nostrils of God.
Isaiah lamented that they inflamed themselves “with gods under every green tree, slaying the children in the valleys, under the clefts of the rocks” (57:5).
They slaughtered their children on the altar of pleasure. Sound familiar? Did you know that rape or the loss of life of the mother is not the driving force behind abortion? The main driving force is failure to take responsibility for sexual sin. 
Blatant Sin Demands a Strong Rebuke
Many today would no doubt chide Isaiah for his apparent lack of grace and love. But God showed tremendous grace, mercy, and love while dealing with Israel. Even today, He is patient and long-suffering with us.
Although many of the prophetic books are not always in chronological order, we find in Isaiah 55 that everyone who thirsts could come to the waters and drink freely, and that those who  seek the Lord  will find Him. What an incredible promise!
In Isaiah 56, we are encouraged to seek righteousness. He then switches gears and talks about blind watchmen who cannot bark and warn the people. God loved His people so much that he would send prophetic voices to warn them. Are you listening today?
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In John 4, John records what Christ did and the success He had on His way to Galilee, in bringing a soul to Himself. While He was sitting by the well, a woman of Samaria came to draw water. They had a conversation, in which He led her from one thing to another, till she came to know Him to be the Messiah.
Jesus Comes Close to Sinners
Providence may be intending much mercy to those who are unworthy of it, and who have little thought of it. This woman, who was guilty of vile sins, came to fetch water, and no thought of anything else. Yet providence brought her to meet the Saviour of sinners, and at a time when He was actually feeling weary and thirsty. In this way He was an appropriate Lord to deal with such an unfeeling woman.
Christ is a Lord who will not be stopped by any impediment, but will overcome everything, to reconcile sinners to Himself. He doesn’t even keep a distance from Samaritans, not even a lewd woman among them. He counts it His glory to win someone so unlikely to Himself.
Jesus Introduces Himself to Those Who Do Not Know Him
When Christ spoke to her, He lets her see how much she mistook her own mercy (verse 10). If she had known Him, she would not only not have refused His request, but would have instead requested something from Him, and He would have given her better and living water (by which we are to understand the Spirit of God, and the graces of the Spirit acted by Him, John 7:38-39). Christ’s meekness passes over a lot of frowardness, which He finds in His own in the time of their conversion. By His goodness He overcomes their badness.
Ignorance of Christ, and what He has (and is ready) to give, is a major reason why sinners treat Him so badly. “If only you knew!” Christ says. He is known rightly and savingly when He and all He has are looked on as freely gifted to the world by the Father (as well as by Himself) and made theirs by offer to be embraced. This is why He is named “the gift of God.”
It greatly adds to Christ’s reputation that He is the one who makes the effort to come to sinners, and He pre-empts them by making offers of Himself. And when Christ is rightly known, as offered to the world for the salvation of lost sinners, it will beget a thirst for Him. It gets souls seeking for Him by prayer to supply their thirst, and they cannot stay away from Him. They see Him seeking sinners, to give something – salvation! – to them, more than to receive anything from them.
This woman, rather than refusing Him a drink of water, should have asked for water from Him! Christ has better things to give sinners, then anything He can ask from them, or anything they can offer Him. The well of life is in Christ’s hand, to dispense it as He wishes. Instead of her water, He has living water to give her.
Christ, who makes offer of grace before we seek it, will not refuse it to those who ask it. Nor do our past sins hinder us from being accepted by Him when we come to seek grace from Him. Even to this wicked woman He says, “If you had asked, He would have given you living water.”
Jesus Persists Against Misunderstandings and Disbelief
When the woman replies, she argues against Christ’s offer, alleging that this water either had to come out of the well – which was impossible, seeing the well was deep, and he had nothing to draw with – or this water had to come out of a better well, which would mean Christ was making Himself out to be better than Jacob (verse 11).
When we are unconverted we can’t help taking up spiritual things in a carnal way. People are not able to discern grace till they have it. This woman understood Christ as if he were speaking of elementary water.
We are also naturally enemies to our own good. Far from preparing ourselves for conversion, we are prone to dispute against our own happiness, and deceive ourselves, just like this woman reasoning against this living water because, in her judgement, it was impossible to be had or given.
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Written by Reuben M. Bredenhof |
Saturday, August 20, 2022
Not long after John 11, Jesus will come out of his own grave in triumph over Satan and death. It is through the power of Christ’s resurrection that faith lives within us, together with hope, and love. And when we are made alive in Christ, death can no longer keep its hold on us. Believers still die, but now we’re joined to the One who is “the resurrection and the life.”

Death happens every day. Every day people die from cancer and drug overdoses and car crashes. Every day there are funerals at the local cemeteries. I read that about 160,000 people die each day, all around the world—that’s a lot of death.
And that’s just physical death. Think of the pandemic of spiritual death in this world, the many millions who are living without God and a knowledge of Christ. They are dead in trespasses and sins—just like we would be, apart from God’s grace.
So how wondrous is the good news in John 11:25, where Jesus announces with another of the seven “I am” declarations,
I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live.
Not far in the background of Jesus’s saying is the raising of Lazarus back to life. Lazarus, together with his two sisters Mary and Martha, were good friends of the Lord Jesus. But Lazarus had become very sick and was fading fast. It seemed like Jesus had an opportunity to go and heal him, but He delayed his journey. Now, when Jesus is finally near Bethany, Lazarus has been dead for four days.
Martha has gone out to meet Jesus on his way. We suppose that she is broken with grief over losing her brother. But despite her sadness, she speaks of great confidence in the Lord. And Jesus responds: “Your brother will rise again” (v. 23). On this dark day, the gospel is beginning to shine. Death isn’t the end, not for Lazarus, nor for anyone who believes.
Now, Martha knows already that Jesus has power to do incredible wonders. But she can’t imagine how Jesus can do something about her dead brother, here and now. This is what she says: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day” (v. 24). She’s probably thinking about the Old Testament promises of resurrection, like in Psalm 16, and she is sure that God will raise her loved one on the great day of the Lord.
In response, Jesus doesn’t say, “Nice try, Martha, but think again.” He doesn’t correct her, but He shifts the focus onto himself. He will transform God’s promise of resurrection. For Martha is speaking with the person who is the sure fulfillment of every ancient word. “In me,” He says, “the resurrection has already come!”
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Written by T. M. Suffield |
Saturday, August 20, 2022
There is no pressure in Christianity to be happy. There is instead an invitation to feel. To truly enter into the reality of the things that life throws at you, good and bad. To discover the emotions of God, what he loves and what he hates. We are invited to live life to the full. And that may look more like your life than you realised as you read through tear-stained eyes. Or it may not, and you may have to truly enter the joy and the sorrow of the situations that you find yourself in. Jesus did, and he invites us to follow him, with a cross on our shoulder.

Jesus came to give us life, and life to the full. Life that is abundant, excessive in quantity. We know the words of John chapter 10 well enough, but I think it’s difficult for us to picture what that means.
I hear the phrase “life to the full,” and I inevitably picture someone into extreme sports—perhaps a surfer—who is living their life to the full by chasing the thrill of adrenaline coursing through their body.
Or, if we look at the culture of our churches rather than the things we say, we might wonder if ‘life to the full’ had more to do with being Middle-Classed and living a nice well-adjusted life where our psychological drama is kept to a minimum and we earn a good salary and live in a nice-looking house with our 2.4 children. You might scoff at the characterisation, but when 70% of the British church is degree educated, something is off, even if this is unlikely to be the cause.
Life to the full cannot mean living like a beach bum. It cannot mean living like an upwardly mobile knowledge-worker in the suburbs. It cannot mean being employed by a church. And, it must be possible for people in all three of those situations.
Why can’t it? It must include Jesus’ own life. If his life cannot be described as ‘to the full’ or ‘abundant’ then we are defining our terms wrongly. When Jesus said ‘life to the full’ he must, as Alain Emerson points out in his beautiful memoir Luminous Dark, surely have meant a life like his own.
At this point I suspect you’re still with me. Most of us know this implicitly, even when our cultures speak differently. We imagine instead that life to the full is a life replete with joy, with friendship with God, and with demonstrations of God’s power dogging our footsteps.
A fully charismatic ‘naturally supernatural’ lifestyle, that sounds more like it! That lines up with Jesus’ own ministry and sounds like ‘life in abundance’ as well. That’ll be it, right?
A life like his own. Marked by suffering as well as joy. We should imagine that our abundant life will be as marked by struggles, disappointment and pain as his was.
What is life in its fullness?
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Once the Holy Spirit ministers to the preacher’s heart, the distress is transformed; instead of cautioning him, it now compels him. The fear of the Lord not only causes dread but, as Proverbs tells us, “In the fear of the Lord one has strong confidence (Proverbs 14:30).” This assurance in God is where the preacher finds great delight. He now has complete confidence, not in himself, but in the God who laid him prostrate before His holiness, then brought him to his feet by the power of the Spirit and His word. 

No preacher worth his weight enters the pulpit without some distress. There is a heaviness to delivering the word of God that is unlike anything else. Even if the preacher is naturally jovial, the man moved by the Spirit of God will tremble under the gravity of what he is doing.
I do not hold the office of pastor, but I do preach occasionally, and I teach the Bible regularly. Though I do not know the entire burden these pastors carry, I do know, in part, that preaching is often accompanied by a sense of woe that weakens them to their very core.
What causes this? It is the holiness of God. To stand in the pulpit and represent God to His people is a weight and responsibility that can only properly be done in the power of the Holy Spirit. To stand there in the power of the flesh or to trust in our theological knowledge and oratory skills is a sin.
Preaching, when done correctly, almost always begins with anguish. The greatest preachers will always ask, “Who am I to stand and proclaim Your word?” They know they meet the qualifications of pastor or elder as laid out in the scriptures and know God has called them to this, but they also know they need the word of God as much as any person in the congregation. Their sinfulness reminds them their lives depend upon the gospel they declare just as much as anyone to whom they will preach.
This acknowledgment of need is the only foundation for a great sermon. The pastor will often find himself studying the word of God until the passage he is covering begins to feed his soul.
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Though the flesh fights against us in wanting what we want immediately, waiting on the Lord can equip our hearts and call to our minds that our status in this life is only temporary. To wait on the Lord is a wonderful and helpful weapon in our arsenal to fight against sin. We are not yet what we will be, and waiting patiently for God to renew all things, especially ourselves, fuels our joy. The best is truly yet to come, and it is more than worth waiting for.

Anyone who has seen the original “Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory” film from the 1970’s undoubtedly remembers the spoiled Veruca Salt who whines in song to her enabling father,
“I want the whole works
presents and prizes and sweets and surprises,
of all shapes and sizes,
and now don’t care how
I want it now,
don’t care how
I want it now.”
While such behavior and attitude is blatantly odious to the the viewing audience, what is often much more subtle to recognize or admit in ourselves is our own inability to wait and have patience.
As a society and culture we don’t like to wait. Like Ms. Salt, we want what we want, and we typically want it sooner rather than later. Yet, we miss surprising spiritual benefits and blessings when we fail to head God’s imperatives and call to wait on Him. The word in Hebrew “Qavah” (Isaiah 40:31) means much more than merely sitting idle or with our thumbs twisting, like passively waiting for an Uber ride or the toaster to be done. It denotes waiting with activity, waiting with great hope to watch for God to act. The fact that God commands us to wait on Him ought to be enough rationale for obedience. However, in this very brief post, I’d like to remind us  of three surprising joys that belong to the believer when they wait on the Lord.

Waiting on the Lord fosters dependance rather than entitlement– Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maidservant to the hand of her mistress, So our eyes look to the LORD our God, till he has mercy upon us. Psalm 123:2

When I don’t get what I want in life, in relationships, vocations and jobs, or even in ministry, I am forced to lean on something (or rather someone) else to attain satisfaction and hope. If the Lord “spoiled” us, and simply gave us whatever we desire (given our fallen nature, such gifts would be cruel) we would cherish the gifts rather than the giver. We would remain spiritually atrophied, for we would not look as much to the giver of all good things. He gave us His only Son, Paul reminds us in his letter to the church in Rome (Romans 8:32), how also will he not give us all things in their providential timing? Waiting on the Lord protects us from a sense of spiritual entitlement.
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Governments are not merely a response to sin, but are also affected by sin. Governments can become “beastly”; they can function as objects of idolatrous designs. They can – even when they claim to be maintaining “law and order” – commit themselves to injustice, unrighteousness, and oppression…Since we are already citizens of God’s commonwealth, we must find effective ways of living in political conformity to its norms and patterns. Because we know that all political rulers will someday be called to account for the only true Sovereign, we must not give them more than they are due in the present age. And from the perspective of the New Testament, what is “due” them is not blind obedience or uncritical submission — and it certainly is not worship or idolatrous trust. 

There is a connection and a continuation between God’s original creation and what we will find in the new heaven and the new earth. So if we want to know something of the future, we need to know something of the original designs of God as found in the opening chapters of Genesis.
All believers should be intrigued and interested in what life will be like in our future state. And the Bible has much to say about it, and not just in the last book of the Bible – Revelation. The Old Testament prophets often spoke about these matters, often speaking in terms of a glorious future that Israel would one day experience. There are numerous such passages, including Isaiah 60.
Yes, Christians can have different understandings of just how these OT texts are to be understood. For example, do they apply only for Israel, or for all God’s people. Do they refer to some millennial state, or to the eternal state? Indeed, just what exactly does the Bible mean when it speaks about heaven and the like?
Twenty years ago Richard Mouw of Fuller Theological Seminary in California released a slim little volume called When the Kings Come Marching In (Eerdmans, 2002). It is based on some lectures he had given a few decades earlier, looking at Isaiah 60.
Before going any further, let me say this: If you like people like Abraham Kuyper and the notions of common grace and the cultural mandate, you will quite like Mouw, since he writes about these matters so very often. If not, well, look away now. But for those still interested, see some of my earlier articles on this:
billmuehlenberg.com/2022/07/19/on-the-cultural-mandate/
billmuehlenberg.com/2022/07/18/jordan-peterson-and-common-grace/
But here I want to offer a few quotes from his 2002 volume. First let me draw upon his introductory chapter. Not only is there a connection between creation and new creation, but there is to be a connection with how we live NOW – in between these two periods. He writes:
Like the Old Testament saints, we Christians await the appearance of God’s city — we too “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb. 11:16). But while we are to be a “waiting” people, we are not to be passive in our lives of anticipation. The biblical visions of the future are given to us so that we may have the kind of hope that issues forth into lives of active disobedience vis-a-vis contemporary culture.
When I refer to “culture” in these pages I am not using the term in any narrow sense. This is not a book, for example, about “refined tastes” in art or music or literature. My focus here is on the broad patterns of social life, including political, economic, technological, artistic, familial, and educational patterns. It is my contention in these meditations that it is extremely significant that when Isaiah looks to the fulfillment of God’s promises, he envisions a community into which technological artifacts, political rulers, and people from many nations are gathered. God intended from the beginning that human beings would “fill the earth” with the processes, patterns and products of cultural formation.
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Written by Michael G. Brown |
Friday, August 19, 2022
A plurality of elders provides the flock of Christ with greater pastoral care. In the Old Testament, a multitude of elders were appointed to assist Moses in caring for the people of God. The Lord gave a portion of the Spirit that was on Moses to seventy elders so that they would help carry this burden (Num. 11:16–17). Likewise, in the new covenant church, elders share the responsibility of pastoral care with the minister. Peter writes: “So I exhort the elders . . . shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight” (1 Peter 5:1–2). Elders do this in a variety of practical ways.

Living in Milan, I enjoy taking walks around the perimeter of Sforza Castle. Built in the fifteenth century, this structure was one of the largest citadels in Europe for hundreds of years. Its massive walls, more than a hundred feet high, loom over the outer moat like a towering tsunami of brick, making the castle practically impenetrable. There was a time when these walls extended around the entire city, protecting its inhabitants from invasions and providing them with a sense of security. In the medieval world, a city without walls was almost unimaginable. It would have been defenseless and unlikely to survive.

The vast walls of an ancient city illustrate the church’s need for a plurality of elders. Just as ramparts and fortified gates helped safeguard a city so that civic life could prosper, so too a plurality of faithful overseers in the church helps preserve life in the kingdom of God. A church in which the senior pastor is the sole elder or possesses the most authority among its leaders is in a very vulnerable position, exposed to the perils of power, personality, and conflict. One need only observe the course of many influential evangelical churches in recent years to see how true this is. In most cases, the eventual collapse resulted in part from a lack of shared authority among a group of elders.
There are at least four biblical and practical reasons that a plurality of elders is necessary. First, it provides the church with greater accountability. According to the Bible, believers are accountable for their doctrine and life. What they believe and how they live are to be in line with Scripture. The elders of the local church have the weighty responsibility of holding the members of the congregation accountable. “Obey your leaders and submit to them,” says the writer to the Hebrews, “for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you” (Heb. 13:17). Notice that this verse speaks of leaders in the plural. Christians are not accountable to one leader alone. Instead, Christ cares for His church through a plurality of elders. This shared accountability helps protect the flock from the spiritual abuse and bullying that could more easily occur in a church where everyone is accountable to one man.

Moreover, the pastor himself is also accountable to the elders. The biblical model for church government is not a hierarchical system in which the senior pastor is a bishop over the elders of the church. In the New Testament, “bishops” (also translated “overseers”) and “elders” (also translated “presbyters”) are synonymous. For example, when Paul instructs Titus to “appoint elders in every town” (Titus 1:5), he describes the qualifications for these elders, calling them overseers: “For an overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach” (Titus 1:7). He uses the two terms to describe the same office. Likewise, in his farewell address to the leaders of the church in Ephesus, Paul “called the elders of the church to come to him” (Acts 20:17). He then addressed them as “overseers” or “bishops” of the church of God (Acts 20:28). These terms are never used in Scripture to describe differing ranks of authority or a single leader governing the church alone. This means that the pastor serves the congregation alongside the ruling elders but not over them. He himself is an elder who labors “in preaching and teaching” (1 Tim. 5:17). Even though he has biblical training and spiritual gifts for rightly dividing the Word of God, his vote is not more important than the votes of other elders; nor does he possess veto power over the consensus of the group.

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Neo-Marxists are re-creating history, inventing a new language, targeting the Christian family, and are seeking to eradicate the two sexes that God created in the Garden of Eden. Children are being chemically castrated and physically mutilated in order to change genders. A justice who sits on the Supreme Court who cannot define what a woman is.  This is the tip of the iceberg, and worst of all it is seeping into the church through false guilt and misplaced pity.  Or, perhaps, and just as dangerous, your church may be ignoring this monster altogether claiming that they are being faithful stewards by concentrating on “spiritual” matters.  

The Protestant Reformation was one of the paramount events in the history of the world.  The Westminster Confession of Faith may be one of the greatest man-made documents ever prepared by the church.  The doctrine of justification by faith alone is the crux of our hope in Christ.
Contrary to what I witnessed a number of years ago, Reformed churches today have become uncompromising in teaching and protecting the great truths coming out of the Reformation period. Only a few decades ago, there were just a few of these churches, at least in the South.  I am a witness to that, having been ordained for over fifty years.  Indeed, every generation must be diligent in protecting these truths because every generation produces its own heresies. If the Reformed Faith is not aggressively taught, it will be lost. Reformed churches will die.  I have witnessed this too.
However, if we remain in the culture of the Reformation period without expanding our defense of the faith against modern insurgent movements bent on destroying our beloved church, then we are in great danger.  We are failing the very people over whom we are called to be shepherds.
Sitting through presbytery ordination examinations for these last fifty years, it has become obvious to me that there is a major flaw in the seminary education of our young men preparing for the ministry. They have no knowledge of that which is a real and present danger.  Later as pastors, they don’t read outside the box of what they were given in seminary.  It’s not what you hear from the pulpit that is the problem.  You are probably hearing orthodoxy every Sunday.  It’s what you don’t hear from the pulpit that concerns me.
The greatest threat to our nation and to the modern church today is Neo-Marxism.  If you do not know what that is, then someone has failed you in your Christian walk. With all due respect to my godly brethren in the pulpits, probably your pastor will be hard-pressed to explain it.  Neo-Marxism is the great white elephant in the room.
Neo-Marxism is a religion.  It is the most dangerous modern enemy seeking to destroy Christianity.  It has infiltrated almost every institution in America from modern universities to the civil government. It is capturing our public education system.  It is foundational in courses taught in graduate business schools.  Results based on Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) scores set the religious direction of our corporations.  It is the religion that undergirds three of the largest investment institutions in the world – Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street.
Neo-Marxists are re-creating history, inventing a new language, targeting the Christian family, and are seeking to eradicate the two sexes that God created in the Garden of Eden. Children are being chemically castrated and physically mutilated in order to change genders. A justice who sits on the Supreme Court who cannot define what a woman is.  This is the tip of the iceberg, and worst of all it is seeping into the church through false guilt and misplaced pity.  Or, perhaps, and just as dangerous, your church may be ignoring this monster altogether claiming that they are being faithful stewards by concentrating on “spiritual” matters.
Seminary instruction is heavy-weighted on the side of soteriology and missiology.  There are no classes on Neo-Marxism.  The very weapons that seminary students need to fight against the modern tenets of Satan are avoided. It’s the great failure of American Christianity.  The reasons for this failure are numerous, and I cannot go into those here.
This is a diatribe. It’s not an introduction to a book.  It’s really not a short article written for edification. It’s one way to handle my immense frustrations with the modern pulpit. Remember, I have been in the pulpit myself for over fifty years.  Maybe that gives me a right to say what I am saying.  What better way to conclude this short diatribe than by a quote attributed to Martin Luther.
“If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle-field besides is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at that one point.”
Larry E. Ball is a retired minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is now a CPA. He lives in Kingsport, Tenn.
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