The Slow Death of the Christian West
It begins with the Church recognizing first how pagan it has become, then rooting out our rotten structures and rebuilding them in the eyes of the Word and His word. We can’t hope to overturn the advances of Satan with a gospel that doesn’t even move those who already believe it. Our preaching must be with power and assurance, and our discipleship needs be ordered to shape all the areas of life that a Believer needs prepared to face. And none of this can come about without prayer. We so underestimate what prayer can accomplish because we fail to comprehend the God we pray to.
As the next to last entry for the fall series on things that go bump in the night we need to talk a little bit about a subject that can illustrate for us some of the dangers of the world in which we are currently living, especially in the West. When I say “the West” I mean Europe and North America. The cultural fishbowl in which all of us live in our day-to-day. Despite what your DEI representative (and I can’t be the only southerner who reads that as Dale Earnhardt, Inc.) told you at the last HR meeting it is okay for us to identify and express ourselves as Western. We are men and women who are the result of a bunch of dead white guys philosophizing about the world and we are also the result of the infiltration (in a good way) of the Bible into how we see and understand everything around us. It’s not white supremacy to notice our own culture, and even think that it is good and in fact better than what came before Europe became the Europe it became after Constantine’s dictate. We should celebrate the fact that we don’t sacrifice babies on the altar (well, more on that in a second) and force women to die with their husbands. Those things are bad. White men passing laws that stopped it were good. We shouldn’t be ashamed to say so. The art, philosophy, science, religion, etc… that produced the Christian states of Europe were and continue to be a blessing to all those downstream from them. Yet, there is a problem.
In our prayer and worship help today we are going to talk about the world in which we live today and how the same men tasked with building up have been working to destroy and tear down. We are now experiencing the results of this evil. In some sense the reappearance of the strong gods, the pagan culture we left a millennia or more ago is all a result of men abandoning their responsibilities in accordance with the Fifth Commandment. Everything comes back to the law of God, and whether society will bow their knee to Christ or seek to be their own god. Psalm 2 and other passages warn us as to the consequences of such. I get calls/texts regularly from folks both within and outside the congregation about why we see such rampant licentiousness and sin in the world today. On one hand the earth has been so since the days of Adam’s fall. However, there were times when it was better, even if sin was still present. The golden age is not yet with us. In our Thursday catechism lesson this week we are going to hear about Stews, and as will be opened there that means brothels, houses of ill-repute. Why did our Westminster Divines write about this? Because it was a problem. They were all over the place in Seventeenth-Century England. How many open, public, state-authorized spaces do we have for this practice in Clover? I am not naïve enough to not know that there is availability for such if you were desiring to look.
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Faith and the Present Economy
Our whole government, spurred on by many private actors, gives its efforts to material prosperity, and by this concern with prosperity above all else has conditioned the citizenry to have similar priorities. And that concern makes remorseless war upon the life of the Spirit.
“You cannot serve both God and money.”Luke 16:13
When our nation is called to give an account at the Last Judgment, surely this statement will be among those that stands against us. For ours is preeminently a commercial and financial society, one whose course is taken up with the making and spending of money, and the material comforts it affords. A citizen’s chief activities are production (if part of the workforce) and consumption, and government policy at all levels aims to provide for a citizen’s ability to do these two things. This shows in a thousand ways, from subsidizing vocational training to unemployment assistance to myriad welfare programs.
Whether these things are economically sensible is not our concern here. Our point is that this preoccupation with money tends to predominate all other things. Preoccupation with material concerns suffocates concern for things of the Spirit (Matt. 13:22). Preoccupation with the things of this life drives out thought of eternity (Lk. 12:16-21). And preoccupation with the kingdom of Mammon deprives one of allegiance to the kingdom of God (Matt. 6:24).
It is on this point that we stumble terribly at present. We panicked and did considerable harm to our economy by our initial response to the Chinese sickness outbreak, and we then panicked yet further and pursued a broad array of measures to ‘build back better’ and mitigate all the harm of our initial response. All of this has been immensely detrimental to the spiritual well-being of both the church and the nation.
For whatever their intention, all our economic measures have conditioned people to think in terms of finances. The nation is awash – not merely in the pronouncements of politicians or the reporting of the press, but in the everyday speech of the common people – with incessant and anxious talk of inflation, interest rates, housing costs, wages, the unemployment rate, and so forth. All this is connected with material prosperity; and while all of it has long featured in American life, the economic crisis occasioned by our initial panic seems to have raised its pitch and made it even more all-encompassing than previously. Now one can scarcely have a conversation without it devolving into a discussion of such things.
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The Main Reason We Fail to Delight in the Lord
The beginning is a commitment to more time in His Word. More time in prayer. More time in reflective silence as you consider His promises. And, of course, the flipside is also true. That along with making those choices you believe will lead to delight, you also start to make choices to cease delighting in other things.
Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart (Psalm 37:4).
For most of us, this is an aspirational verse. Yes, we have had moments of excitement – even elatement – in the Lord, but is our general posture one of delighting in Him? Probably not. We would like it to be, but the reality is at least a little bit different.
It’s not that God is not “delightful” enough. We know that He is, with all His power, creativity, love, grace, mercy, and everything else. He has brought us into His family, adopted us and given us an eternal inheritance in Jesus. He has ordered our steps with providential love and care. Surely there is more than enough for us to delight in.
So why don’t we?
What if the answer to that question – of why we fail to delight in the Lord – is incredibly simple? What if the main reason we fail to delight in the Lord is because we haven’t tried to do so?
Maybe a little illustration to help.
My parents will tell you that until roughly the age of 18, I did not eat a vegetable unless it was slathered with cheese sauce or wrapped in bacon.
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Why Were They All Willing to Die?
Their response as a result of their relationship with Jesus demonstrates the integrity of what we read in the Bible. Why would these men be willing to die in such horrific ways if they did not in fact believe deeply in the Jesus they knew and loved? There was no money or fame in first century Christianity. They simply believed, obeyed, and loved.
As far as we know, only the Apostle John died a natural death. All the other Apostles of Jesus died for their faith. They were killed because of their fidelity to the message of Jesus. That fact begs the question: Why were they all willing to die?
Why the Disciples Were Willing to Die
Why were they all willing to die? I think this question can be answered in three primary ways.
First, they realized that Jesus was everything that He said He was – the Son of God in the flesh. In the Bible, the Apostle John makes this case for us in 1 John 1.
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life—the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us—that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. (1 John 1:1-3)
Jesus was 100% a person who lived and walked with the Apostles for three years. He also was 100% God. That fact was manifested to them over and over throughout the Gospels. This Jesus the Apostle John wanted us to know.
Second, they received the power to be witnesses (Acts 1:8). Before Jesus left the earth, He promised that the Holy Spirit would be given to all of His followers to be witnesses. This gift of the Spirit was given to them in Acts 2, and the Holy Spirit has been given to all followers of Jesus Christ ever since (cf., Eph 1:19-23). In Acts, the Bible records Jesus’ words:
“…But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)
They each one lived consistent with this power received from God.
Third, they remained faithful while they waited for Jesus’ return. Jesus taught them in the week before He died to wait patiently for His return (cf., Matthew 24-25). They wanted to know many things – especially the future. Jesus reminded them that the exact nature of the time of His return was not theirs to know; however, they were to remain faithful (cf., Acts 1:7).
As Jesus ascended, the angel made this promise to the Apostles and others who were there watching the ascent into heaven:
And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:10-11)
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