Audio Transcript

We’re now about a dozen years into the podcast — or eleven and a half years of podcasting, to be more exact. We have talked a lot about work over those years. We have talked about career building and finding our vocational calling, how to glorify God at work, and on the issues of when to leave a job and how to avoid overworking and idolizing a career, and issues of laziness and personal productivity, and how you define all those things — many huge issues now covered, and I tried to write those up into a digest in the Ask Pastor John book on pages 67–94 if you want to see the ground that we’ve covered.

In that section, and in this podcast, we’ve also taken up the question of what vocations are worthy of the Christian and which ones are not worthy of the Christian. A marketer at Nike once emailed in to ask if his job marketing luxury goods to people who don’t need them but want them — was that life vain? You might remember that episode, APJ 1519. That comes to my mind.

We’re back on a similar topic in today’s question from an anonymous man. “Hello, Pastor John! I am a building contractor. And in my region recently I was asked to join up with a construction partner I have worked with before, and one I really like and enjoy working with, to help complete one of their own projects. The project is a Mormon temple. Is this out of the question for a Christian who leads a construction crew to consider working on such a project like a temple like this, or even a mosque or casino or other things like that? How should I think through making this moral decision on behalf of the crew I lead?”

Probably I should start where I’m going to end — namely, by saying that this is the kind of question that has enough layers of ambiguity that I should not be dogmatic but admit that good Christians believing the same Bible may come to different conclusions. There are just so many aspects to take into consideration. But having said that, let me spell out maybe four or five principles or thoughts that I hope will give some guidance to the consciences of God’s people.

Ethics in Light of Eternity

The first thing I feel constrained to say is that believing in the reality of hell the way Jesus does — and he’s more explicit on this in the Bible than anybody — gives a kind of seriousness to most questions, especially questions like this. It just makes things so serious, and I mention this because Christians who keep the reality of hell out of their minds and sometimes are not even sure they believe in it — those folks simply won’t feel the weight that I feel in answering a question like this. Because when I think of a question like this, one of the questions I ask is this: Is this building that I’m working on going to be devoted to beliefs and activities that lead to eternal destruction?

Some people don’t even raise that question in trying to do ethics. I’m asking the eternal question about what becomes of human beings when they participate in what this building is for. A person who doesn’t think about hell just won’t take it that seriously, and therefore the question doesn’t have the same weight that it does for me. That’s the first thing I think I should draw attention to.

Many Works of Darkness

The second thing would be to draw attention to the fact that there are many more applications for the ethical issue at stake here than just building a Mormon religious house. What about building an abortion clinic for Planned Parenthood? What about building a mosque for Muslims? What about building a brothel in a red-light district? What about building a casino in northern Minnesota that you know is going to soak the meager savings of many poor people and continually divert their attention away from a healthy, productive life?

“If you don’t know what the building is for, you are probably not guilty for doing a good job in building it.”

What about building a room in somebody’s attic without taking out a permit, so that they can avoid fees from the city? What about building a meeting space for the central committee of the political party that makes child killing and homosexual behavior a matter of celebration? What about building a bar and a nightclub that includes striptease performances? What about providing fixtures, doors, countertops, lights, tile for any of those structures?

And the list goes on and on. So, this question has a much broader relevance and layers of complexity than one might think.

Incidental and Integral Evil

Another thing to take into account here is the degree to which the structure you’re working on not only will be the place where evil happens, but also the place designed and intended for evil to happen. That’s the purpose of the structure. Evil is not incidental here, but integral. Now, hardly any building anywhere is free from evil, right? I mean, you can’t build anything where evil’s not going to happen. Evil happens everywhere in every structure.

So, the morally relevant question when it comes to participation in the building of structure is whether that’s the intention of the structure; that’s the reason it exists.

Degrees of Responsibility

Here’s another factor to take into account: To what degree does the person involved in building the structure know what is involved in it, know what the intention is? Or to say it differently, given what a person knows — a builder knows, a construction worker knows, a provider knows — how clearly and substantially does his work add to the construction of the structure he disapproves of?

Now, that’s complicated. Let me illustrate. If you work in a factory that makes windows — we have got a big one in Minnesota here — you may have no awareness at all as you do your work in that factory that some of these windows are being sold to a mosque or a casino or an abortion clinic. It’s just not in your mind at all as you go to work every day and make a window. The causal connection between your daily work and the purposes of those structures is so remote that I think it is of little moral significance.

Your part is so remote that there is little moral connection between them. Your part in the window factory is not going to be seen as morally implicated by the evil purposes of the buildings down the economic chain, far out of your sight, than if it were part of what you’re immediately intending to help construct.

How Much Do You Know?

The principle that is most explicit in the Bible, I think, and most helpful in all of this, is in 1 Corinthians 10:27–28, which may not sound like a building text. Listen carefully:

If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience.

In other words, if you don’t know that the food involves you in the support of a pagan ritual, you can eat it. But if you do know that this pagan ritual is what the host intends, you won’t eat it. So, whether you eat or you don’t eat depends on whether you know what the eating signifies about the false religion.

It seems to me that this same principle applies to building something that is devoted to a false, destructive religion or lifestyle. So, if you don’t know what the building is for, you are probably not guilty for doing a good job in building it. You’re just doing the job to the glory of Christ as best you can. But if you know that you are involved in promoting a destructive religion or practice, then your participation may well be wrong. In fact, my inclination would be to encourage the Christian builder and construction worker or provider not to be part of a building that is widely known to be explicitly anti-Christian.

Building Wisely

So, I’m going to end where I began. In general, I want to encourage builders and workers not to contribute to structures devoted to anti-Christian beliefs and practices. But I realize that the complexities of various situations are such that we should be very careful not to pass judgment on a brother’s effort to make a biblically informed, conscientious decision.

Perhaps you will feel the same discomfort I felt overhearing saints of old speak of death.

“He who does not prepare for death is more than an ordinary fool. He is a madman,” began Charles Spurgeon.

“Agreed,” said the good Doctor Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Men seem to ignore the plain fact that “the moment you come into this world you are beginning to go out of it.”

But this fact need not spell doom and gloom for the Christian, Spurgeon responded. “The best moment of a Christian’s life is his last one, because it is the one that is nearest heaven.”

“I concur fully,” Richard Sibbes chimed in. “Death is not now the death of me, but death will be the death of my misery, the death of my sins; it will be the death of my corruptions. But death will be my birthday in regard of happiness.”

“When Christ calls me home,” Adoniram Judson added, “I shall go with the gladness of a boy bounding away from school.”

“May I also interject?” asked Calvin. “We may positively state that nobody has made any progress in the school of Christ, unless he cheerfully looks forward towards the day of his death, and towards the day of the final resurrection.”

“This strikes me as true,” said Thomas Brooks. “It is no credit to your heavenly Father for you to be loath to go home.”

“And why should we hesitate?” Samuel Bolton questioned. It is the “privilege of saints, that they shall not die until the best time, not until when, if they were but rightly informed, they would desire to die.”

“Exactly.” For the child of God, “death is the funeral of all our sorrows,” reasoned Thomas Watson. “Death will set a true saint out of the gunshot and free him from sin and trouble.”

“Indeed,” John Bunyan added, “death is but a passage out of a prison into a palace.”

As I listened, I overheard the most disquieting questions. “Has this world been so kind to you that you would leave it with regret?” C.S. Lewis posed. “If we really believe that home is elsewhere and that this life is a ‘wandering to find home,’ why should we not look forward to the arrival?”

“Hear! Hear!” exclaimed William Gurnall. “Let thy hope of heaven master thy fear of death. Why shouldest thou be afraid to die, who hopest to live by dying?”

“I am packed, sealed, and waiting for the post,” cried John Newton. “Who would live always in such a world as this?”

Even snippets of their prayers issued a subtle rebuke. I could not help but hear one George Whitefield plead, “Lord, keep me from a sinful and too eager desire after death. I desire not to be impatient. I wish quietly to wait till my blessed change comes.”

This proved the final blow. These men anticipated death, viewed an early departure as a “promotion.” I lowered my gaze. I rarely think this way, rarely feel this way. Do I really believe in heaven? Do I really love my Lord?

Snuggled in This Life

My squeamishness, flipping through an anthology of Christian quotes, helped me realize that my discipleship has slanted too American, too shortsighted, too this-worldly.

“Are you packed and ready to go?” Well, I was hoping to set sail several decades from now, so —

“Has this world been so kind to you that you would leave it with regret?” Well, I wouldn’t give it a ten-star rating, but it certainly hasn’t been half that bad (yet). So yeah, maybe —

“Nobody has made any progress in the school of Christ, unless he cheerfully looks forward towards the day of his death, and towards the day of the final resurrection.” Well, that’s intense.

“It is no credit to your heavenly Father for you to be loath to go home.” I see — worthy point. No credit to Jesus either, I imagine.

“These men daily lived awake to the truths I daily profess to believe.”

These men daily lived awake to the truths I daily profess to believe; they inhabited them, longing to fly away and be with Christ. Although they loved families, enjoyed things of earth, and did good in this world, they nevertheless were unafraid to dive headfirst into those cold waters of death at the first moment their Master allowed. They believed, with Paul, that “to depart and be with Christ . . . is far better” (Philippians 1:23).

I discovered then just how snuggled by the fireside I had become in this world. A place I too readily felt to be home.

Epitaphs of Exiles

My heart can live too much here, too little there. “My life is hidden with Christ,” I must remind myself (Colossians 3:3). As this world seeks to entice my affections to linger in its marketplace, I desire to be more of a heavenly disciple. And if you love Jesus but think too little of the life to come, I know you will agree. Oh, that this might be a true inscription over our graves, and all the more since we live after the coming of Christ, and the down payment of the Spirit:

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.

For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. (Hebrews 11:13–16)

Abraham, by faith, left his home in Mesopotamia, not even knowing where God was leading him (Hebrews 11:8). He lived in the promised land before he could call it home, dwelling there as a foreigner. Isaac and Jacob, heirs with Abraham of God’s promise, lived in tents of temporality; their home was not yet (Hebrews 11:9).

“Once God saved them, they refused to unpack their hopes again in this world.”

Abraham’s eyes were elsewhere. “He was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10). And he and his sons bore the heavenly insignia in their speech: they acknowledged, to anyone who cared to know, that they would live and die on this earth as exiles and sojourners (Genesis 23:4; 47:9). Once God saved them, they refused to unpack their hopes again in this world. The land far-off — big as God’s promise, sure as God’s word — held their allegiance. They made it clear that they sought a homeland not built by human hands.

As the world tried to tempt them back, the bait remained on the hook. Better to live in a tent in this world with a heavenly city before them than to dwell in the tottering kingdoms of men. They desired a better country, a heavenly one. And God is not ashamed to be called “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). He is not ashamed in the least to be the one they so hoped in, for he has prepared for them a city.

Still at Sea

So, is your mind mainly set on this world or the next?

This world is not our home, precious saint. We are not yet in our element. We fling open the window and send our dove about this earth, finding that it returns to us having found no homeland within this watery grave. But this world will be drained soon enough. The swells of judgment shall intensify and then subside. The new heavens and new earth shall arrive, and our Mighty Dove shall descend with a sword in his mouth for his enemies and an olive branch for us.

Until then, keep waiting, keep hoping, keep acknowledging, keep living in tents, longing for that moment when we can bound away from this world as the Father calls us home.

The Existence and Attributes of God by Stephen Charnock (1628–1680) is one of the standout works from the Puritan era. This is quite an accomplishment when one thinks of the hundreds of well-known books and discourses that emerged from the pens of those theological giants. Published two years after his death, it was regrettably not yet fully completed, with fourteen Discourses finalized but more planned.

There has been no shortage of praise for Charnock and his work since its publication. Historian Edmund Calamy (1671–1732) speaks of Charnock’s reputation as a theologian:

He was a very considerable scholar, there being scarcely any part of learning he was unacquainted with. He had a peculiar skill in the original languages of the Old and New Testament. His natural abilities were excellent. He had, what rarely meet, a strong judgment, and a lively imagination. He was a very eminent divine.

Erasmus Middleton (1739–1805) called him “one of the greatest men in the church of Christ, with respect to his depth, clearness, accuracy in true divinity.” He added, “He was the Author of those unparalleled discourses on the Existence, Attributes, and Providence of God.”

Anglican hymn-writer Augustus Toplady (1740–1778) similarly commented on the greatness of the Discourses: “Perspicuity and depth; metaphysical sublimity and evangelical simplicity; immense learning and plain, but irrefragable reasoning; conspire to render that performance one of the most inestimable productions, that ever did honour to the sanctified judgment and genius of a human being.”

Joel Beeke once remarked to me that Charnock’s magnum opus is the one “must-read” on the doctrine of God from the Puritan era, and he added that the Discourse on God’s goodness is “alone worth its weight in gold, and is unsurpassed in all of English literature.” Jerry Bridges, in reading the Discourse on God’s holiness, at roughly half a dozen pages in, found himself on his knees before God, overcome with his holiness. As he got up and started reading again, a few pages later he was again on his knees before God.

Left alone with only two books for the rest of my life, I would happily keep myself busy in the knowledge of God with the Bible and Charnock’s masterpiece!

Theology for the Pews

Perhaps to the surprise of some readers today, the Discourses are written chiefly for homiletical (preaching) purposes. While there would be some obvious editing to the sermons, we must keep in mind that the pages before readers today were meant to be heard in the pews of the church where Charnock ministered alongside Thomas Watson. (Incidentally, one can’t help but envy the hearers of two of the most gifted theological wordsmiths alive in Britain at the time.)

The sophistication of this work does not mean it is inaccessible to the lay reader. In fact, what makes this work a sort of classic is Charnock’s ability to take perhaps the weightiest doctrine (the doctrine of God) and write on it in a way that not only scholars and pastors can appreciate, but also Christian laypersons — though, in today’s age, it may require a great deal more focus than the average Christian book.

Each of the fourteen Discourses contains an exposition of a well-known Bible text. Charnock would often choose the locus classicus for each topic, usually in continuity with other Reformed treatments on the same subject (for example, Psalm 14:1 on God’s existence). This was a typical approach for homiletical discourses on theological doctrines. As one quickly notices, Charnock is concerned with the practical implications of who God is, which means practical atheism takes up a major part of his treatment on God’s existence.

While more people were beginning to doubt God’s existence in the latter part of the seventeenth century, the major threats to the doctrine of God’s existence in that period were, first, attacks upon a classical understanding of God and, second, the ever-present reality of failing to live as though God exists and cares about our thoughts and actions. Charnock’s work is a penetrating analysis of the extent of these problems, but he also offers many solutions to our practical atheism.

While Charnock’s work looks at the existence and attributes of God, we should not think he lacks a strong focus on Christ. Littered throughout each discourse are golden nuggets on how each attribute relates to Christ. In fact, some of Charnock’s best thoughts on Christ in relation to the divine attributes appear in the “uses” section of each Discourse. This is a crucial observation, for the simple reason that even in the application of the doctrine of God we see Charnock anchoring his Discourses in the person of Christ.

Lucid Sophistication

The “uses” (or “instructions”) sections in the Discourses show us just how practical the doctrine of God is for Christian living. Without his applications, the work would be like a beautiful car but without wheels. Today we still suffer to some extent from the idea that a theology book is not very practical, and a practical book should not be too theological. This concept is demolished by Charnock’s work, which is as practical as it is theological and vice versa.

“If Calvin was known for ‘lucid brevity,’ I think Charnock should be known for lucid sophistication.”

Some of the more popular Puritan theologians, such as John Owen (1616–1683) and Richard Baxter (1615–1691), wrote extremely sophisticated treatises. Their learning was perhaps unparalleled among English-speaking theologians in the seventeenth century. And when you read the two of them, you sometimes need a “translator” of sorts — yes, for their works in the English language! But Charnock does not require a “translator.” He is simpler and clearer and has better turns of phrase than the other two. In other words, if any of these men belong on Twitter, it is Charnock (and Watson). If Calvin was known for “lucid brevity” (as he himself described his aim), I think Charnock should be known for lucid sophistication.

The beautiful turns of phrase used by Charnock are a result of putting his learning to use to bless God’s people in the pew. His metaphors and analogies are Christlike insofar as he possessed a remarkable grasp of the natural world (“consider the lilies,” Luke 12:27). He was a Renaissance man par excellence; and his medical training shines through in the metaphors, illustrations, and analogies that surface on most pages of his work. His insight into human nature is also a major strength of his expositions. One gets the impression that Charnock’s erudite understanding of God enabled him to peer deeply into the human soul and all the sinful peculiarities that beset us even in a state of grace.

Big Book on a Big God

Why should you read Charnock on The Existence and Attributes of God? Quite apart from what has been said above, we should remember that the twentieth century was not a great century for the doctrine of God. Christians today still entertain ideas about God that are unorthodox, perhaps unwittingly due to poor or inadequate teaching. The remedy begins in the pulpit, but it also includes our private and corporate study.

“You are entering a big world as you learn of a big God.”

With the recent reprint of Charnock’s Discourses, pastors can easily access a work that has stood the test of time and read a treatment on God that will illuminate their own preaching. J.I. Packer once remarked to me that the best compliment he could give Martyn Lloyd-Jones was that he “brought God into the pulpit.” When the “Doctor” preached, it was clear God was powerfully present. If pastors are going to bring God into the pulpit, it will not happen if they are not consumed with the same God that Charnock so eloquently writes about.

In addition, whether as a pastor or a layperson, when reading Charnock, you are not simply reading a singular Christian thinker, but someone who widely engaged the broader Christian tradition. You are encountering other thinkers that span many centuries and traditions (even pagan poets and philosophers). You are entering a big world as you learn of a big God.

It is quite an accomplishment to read a work of over 1700 pages, but it seems to me that anyone who thoughtfully and prayerfully tackles this work will never be the same again. This book truly is life-changing. And if you are somewhat intimidated by the size, consider, at the very least, reading the Discourse on God’s goodness, and prepare to fall on your knees before God in humble thankfulness for the manifold mercies that he shows to you each day (many of which you have likely ignored).

It was a pleasure to edit these two volumes by Charnock in the hope of meeting a pressing need in the church today for a more robust, more biblically and theologically informed view of God that will stir not only the minds but also the hearts of God’s people. In my mind, few books from the last several hundred years can quite help the church today like Charnock’s Discourses in the never-to-be-sufficiently praised Existence and Attributes of God.