Where a Wrong Can Be Called a Wrong

Kevin DeYoung post:  Are You Really Personally Opposed if You Won’t Call it Wrong?

Abraham Lincoln didn’t think so:

You say that you think slavery is wrong, but you denounce all attempts to restrain it. Is there anything else you think wrong, that you are not willing to deal with as a wrong?

Why are you so careful, so tender of this wrong and no other? You will not let us do a single thing as if it was wrong, there is no place where you will allow it to even be called wrong!

We must not call it wrong in the Free States, because it is not there, and we not call it wrong in the Slave States because it is there; we must not call it wrong in politics because that is bringing morality into politics, and we must not call it wrong in the pulpit because that is bringing politics into religion. . . .and there is no single place, according to you, where a wrong thing can be called a wrong thing! (Quoted in D.A. Carson, The Intolerance of Tolerance, 105).

Preach

R. C. Sproul Jr post:  Brothers, We Are Not Professors

It has been said by one great Reformed theologian that we are living in the most anti-intellectual age in the church’s history. We are the TV generation, making way for the Internet generation. Images tickle our eyes, and sound-bites massage our brains. We are, compared to our Puritan fathers, ignorant shepherds leading sensate sheep in a dry and dusty land. Surely what we need then is more thought, more scholarship, more earnest hours spent pouring over the ancients in our studies. Right?

We are worldly when we, like the world around us, give ourselves to an entertainment mentality, when we amuse ourselves to death. We are still worldly, however, when we rightly reject the eye candy and froth of pop culture and then conclude that our problems are intellectual, and our solutions more learning. It was the enlightenment, not the Light of the World that gave us education as its high and holy sacrament. What Jesus calls us to is to repent and believe the gospel. It is more important to us and our sheep that we would learn to believe more, than that we would find more to believe.

That means first that when we prepare to serve in the ministry, we have to prepare to serve in the ministry. Our seminaries, if we must have them, should more reflect a training hospital than a university. Divinity is not a body of knowledge to be mastered like geology. The Bible is not a book to be dissected like Moby Dick. We go there, if we must go there, not to study the Word, but to begin to learn to have the Word study us. We go to pursue not advanced degrees but the fruit of the Spirit. We go to lose our reputations, not to gain them. We go not to be thought wise, but to learn what fools we are.

That means next that when we are called to the ministry, that we minister. Our pulpits, sadly, are filled with men who started as seminarians eager to shepherd a flock. There they were introduced to a dynamic, likely godly professor, and suddenly the student determines he will pursue still more degrees, that he might follow in the footsteps of his hero. As seminary comes to a close growing debts, a growing family, and a growing urge to go and teach derail the plan to become a professor. Instead the young pastor determines to take a church that his flock can become his student body, and His Body, a tiny little seminary. He will lecture then during Sunday School, and regale them through each sermon. The Shepherd, however, calls us to feed His Sheep. We are not to give our wisdom, our insights, the fruits of our scholarship. Rather, like Paul before us, we serve up our weakness, our frailty, our need. That’s how the Word breaks through, where the power comes from.

Brothers, your flock may need some more information. What they need more, however, is someone to lead them, to show them the Way. They need to see you repenting. They need to see you wrestling with your sins. They need to see you preaching the gospel to yourself, not because you like the sound of your voice, but because you hate the sin that yet remains, and you need grace. They need to see you rejoicing in the fullness of His promises, and mourning both sin and its fruit, the last enemy, death.

No man needs advanced degrees, and arcane letters after his name in order to follow Jesus. Which means that no man needs these things to lead others in following Jesus. If you follow Him, they will follow you. If, however, you merely tickle their brains, they will soon go off in pursuit of someone who seems smarter than you. If they are taught to hear your voice, they won’t discern the voice of the Master.

When our days of ministry come to an end, our labors will either be dust, or they will be dust. No matter how many downloads our wisdom garners, no matter how many journals publish our insights, these will all one day decay. Our scholars’ hoods and robes, pulpits and libraries will become mere chaff.  If, however, we spend our days as shepherds, pasturing the flock, our labors will last forever. For we minister to dust, to men into whom the Spirit breathed twice. We minister to dust that is, through faithful, pastoral preaching, being burnished into the image of the Pearl of Great Price. Brothers, we are not doctors, but the sick, not scholars but fools. Let us then be fools for Christ. Preach.

Great Goal of Preaching: White-Hot Affections for God

Excerpt from John Piper:  A God-Entranced Vision of All Things: Why We Need Jonathan Edwards 300 Years Later | Desiring God 2003 National Conference | 

A God-Entranced Vision of All Things

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You cannot elevate joy higher in the universe than this. Nothing greater can be said about joy than to say that one of the Persons of the Godhead subsists in the act of God's delight in God-that ultimate and infinite joy is the Person of the Holy Spirit. When we speak of the place of joy in our lives and in the life of God, we are not playing games. We are not dealing with peripherals. We are dealing with infinitely important reality. So joy is at the heart of what it means for God to be God. And now let us see how it is at the heart of what it means for us to be God-glorifying. This follows directly from the nature of the Trinity. God is Fatherknowing himself in his divine Son, and God is Father delighting in himself by his divine Spirit. Now Edwards makes the connection with how God's joy in being God is at the heart of how we glorify God. What I am about to read has been for me the most influential paragraph in all the writings of Edwards:

God is glorified within Himself these two ways: 1. By appearing... to Himself in His own perfect idea [of Himself], or in His Son, who is the brightness of His glory. 2. By enjoying and delighting in Himself, by flowing forth in infinite . . . delight towards Himself, or in his Holy Spirit...So God glorifies Himself toward the creatures also in two ways: 1. By appearing to... their understanding. 2. In communicating Himself to their hearts, and in their rejoicing and delighting in, and enjoying, the manifestations which He makes of Himself...God is glorified not only by His glory's being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and by the heart. God made the world that He might communicate, and the creature receive, His glory; and that it might [be] received both by the mind and heart. He that testifies his idea of God's glory [doesn't] glorify God so much as he that testifies also his approbation of it and his delight in it. ⁸

The implications of this paragraph for all of life are immeasurable. One of those implications is that the end and goal of creation hangs on knowing God with our minds and enjoying God with our hearts. The very purpose of the universe-reflecting and displaying the glory of God-hangs not only on true knowledge of God, but also on authentic joy in God. "God is glorified," Edwards says, "not only by His glory's being seen, but by its being rejoiced in."

Here is the great discovery that changes everything. God is glorified by our being satisfied in him. The chief end of man is not merely to glorify God AND enjoy him forever, but to glorify God BY enjoying him forever. The great divide that I thought existed between God's passion for his glory and my passion for joy turned out to be no divide at all, if my passion for joy is passion for joy in God. God's passion for the glory of God, and my passion for joy in Godare one.

What follows from this, I have found, shocks most Christians, namely, that we should be blood-earnest-deadly serious-about being happy in God. We should pursue our joy with a passion and a vehemence that, if it must, would cut off our hand or gouge out our eye to have it. God being glorified in us hangs on our being satisfied in him. Which makes our being satisfied in him infinitely important. It becomes the animating vocation of our lives. We tremble at the horror of not rejoicing in God. We quake at the fearful lukewarmness of our hearts. We waken to the truth that it is a treacherous sin not to pursue that satisfaction in God with all our hearts. There is one final word for finding delight in the creation more than in the Creator: treason.

Edwards put it like this: "I do not suppose it can be said of any, that their love to their own happiness . . . can be in too high a degree."⁹ Of course, a passion for happiness can be misdirected to wrong objects, but it cannot be too strong.¹⁰ Edwards argued for this in a sermon that he preached on Song of Solomon 5:1, which says, "Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love!" He drew out the following doctrine: "Persons need not and ought not to set any bounds to their spiritual and gracious appetites." Rather, he says, they ought

to be endeavoring by all possible ways to inflame their desires and to obtain more spiritual pleasures. . . . Our hungerings and thirstings after God and Jesus Christ and after holiness can't be too great for the value of these things, for they are things of infinite value. . . . [Therefore] endeavor to promote spiritual appetites by laying yourself in the way of allurement...¹¹There is no such thing as excess in our taking of this spiritual food. There is no such virtue as temperance in spiritual feasting.¹²

This led Edwards to say of his own preaching and the great goals of his own ministry:

I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided that they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with.¹³

White-hot affections for God set on fire by clear, compelling, biblical truth was Edwards's goal in preaching and life, because it is the goal of God in the universe. This is the heart of Edwards's God-entranced vision of all things.

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Priceless Treasure

Scotty Smith:  A Prayer for Owning Our Fears and Choosing Our Treasure

     Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Luke 12:32-34 

     Dear Lord Jesus, I’m poised to hear your calming voice and to experience your transforming presence this morning. This Scripture is the perfect vehicle for both. I gladly own my place among your little flock—one of your beloved lambs, no stranger to uncertainty and fear.

    There’s no safer place than to be in your hand and heart, for you are the Good Shepherd who laid down your life for us. Whether it’s besides still waters, in green pastures or in the presence of our enemies, you are with us and you are for us. We lack nothing we need, because, in our heart of hearts, you are truly all we want.

     So I completely understand why you warn us against setting our hearts on the wrong treasure, when feeling vulnerable and anxious. When threatened, we often look to the wrong things and wrong people for safety, stability, and security. But I’ve lived long enough to see what happens when we choose anything or anyone besides you, as our present treasure and functional savior.

     I have friends who’ve inherited millions and others who’ve inherited the wind; sometimes, they’re the same people. I’ve seen families deeply stressed as they prepare for the reading of a will and then permanently divided over the execution of the same will. I’ve seen windfall profits turned into landfill waste in a matter of months. I’ve seen dads and moms drink away enough money in to have built two orphanages in Haiti, and educated their kids and grandkids for a couple of decades.

     There are all kinds of wear and tear, and thieves and moths that diminish and destroy the temporal riches in which we trust; but nothing, absolutely nothing, threatens the value and glory of your everlasting kingdom.

     Today we reaffirm that you, Lord Jesus, are our priceless treasure and most to be desired portion. Because of you we call God “Abba, Father;” the new heaven and new earth, our home; and the gospel of the kingdom, our way of life. Hallelujah, many times over.

     Lord Jesus, melt our fears with your peace; strengthen our hearts with your grace; and send us forth into kingdom service with your measureless love. As you have been (and remain) compassionate and generous with us, so we choose to be compassionate and generous with the poor. So very Amen we pray, in your sane-making, soul-centering name.

Everything For the Sake of Displaying His Glory

Excerpt from John Piper:  A God-Entranced Vision of All Things: Why We Need Jonathan Edwards 300 Years Later | Desiring God 2003 National Conference | 

A God-Entranced Vision of All Things

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In 1735 Edwards preached a sermon on Psalm 46:10, "Be still and know that I am God." From the text he developed the following doctrine:

Hence, the bare consideration that God is God, may well be sufficient to still all objections and opposition against the divine sovereign dispensations.³

When Jonathan Edwards became still and contemplated the great truth that God is God, he saw a majestic Being whose sheer, absolute, uncaused, ever-being existence implied infinite power, infinite knowledge, and infinite holiness. And so he goes on to argue like this:

It is most evident by the Works of God, that his understanding and power are infinite. . . . Being thus infinite in understanding and power, he must also be perfectly holy; for unholiness always argues some defect, some blindness. Where there is no darkness or delusion, there can be no unholiness. . . . God being infinite in power and knowledge, he must be self-sufficient and all-sufficient; therefore it is impossible that he should be under any temptation to do any thing amiss; for he can have no end in doing it . . . So God is essentially holy, and nothing is more impossible than that God should do amiss.⁴

When Jonathan Edwards became still and knew that God is God, the vision before his eyes was of an absolutely sovereign God, self-sufficient in himself and all-sufficient for his creatures, infinite in holiness, and therefore perfectly glorious-that is, infinitely beautiful in all his perfections. God's actions therefore are never motivated by the need to meet his deficiencies (since he has none), but are always motivated by the passion to display his glorious sufficiency (which is infinite). He does everything that he does-absolutely everything-for the sake of displaying his glory.

Our duty and privilege, therefore, is to conform to this divine purpose in creation and history and redemption-namely, to reflect the value of God's glory-to think and feel and do whatever we must to make much of God. Our reason for being, our calling, our joy is to render visible the glory of God. Edwards writes:

All that is ever spoken of in the Scripture as an ultimate end of God's works is included in that one phrase, the glory of God... The refulgence shines upon and into the creature, and is reflected back to the luminary. The beams of glory come from God, and are something of God and are refunded back again to their original. So that the whole is of God, and in God, and to God, and God is the beginning, middle and end in this affair.⁵

This is the essence of Edwards's God-entranced vision of all things! God is the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things. Nothing exists without his creating it. Nothing stays in being without his sustaining word. Everything has its reason for existing from him. Therefore nothing can be understood apart from him, and all understandings of all things that leave him out are superficial understandings, since they leave out the most important reality in the universe. We can scarcely begin to feel today how God-ignoring we have become, because it is the very air we breathe.

This is why I say that Edwards's God-entranced vision of all things is not only rare but also necessary. If we do not share this vision, we will not consciously join God in the purpose for which he created the universe. And if we do not join God in advancing his aim for the universe, then we waste our lives and oppose our Creator.

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Joy in God

Excerpt from John Piper sermon:  God Is Most Glorified in Us When We Are Most Satisfied in Him

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4. Christian Hedonism changes everything: 11 illustrations

Death

1. We’ve just seen how it changes death. If you want to make Christ look great in your dying, there is no big performance or achievement or heroic sacrifice. There is simply a child-like laying yourself into the arms of the one who makes the loss of everything gain.

Conversion

2. Christian Hedonism changes how we think about conversion. Matthew 13:44, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” Becoming a Christian not only means believing truth. It means finding a treasure. So evangelism becomes not only persuasion about truth but pointing people to a Treasure—that is more valuable than everything they have.

The Fight of Faith

3. Christian Hedonism changes “the good fight of faith” (1 Timothy 6:12). John says inJohn 1:12, “To all who received Jesus, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). Believing Jesus is receiving him. As what? As the infinitely valuable Treasure that he is. Faith is seeing and savoring this Treasure. And so the fight of faith is a fight for joy in Jesus. A fight to see and savor Jesus is more precious than anything in the world. Because this savoring shows him to be supremely valuable.

Combating Evil

4. Christian Hedonism changes how we combat evil in our lives. Jeremiah 2:13 gives the Christian Hedonist definition of evil: “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” Evil is the suicidal preference for the empty wells of the world over the living waters of God’s fellowship. We fight evil by the pursuit of the fullest satisfaction in the river of God’s delights (Psalm 36:8).

What Hell Is

5. Christian Hedonism changes how we think of hell. Since the way to be saved and go to heaven is to embrace Jesus as your source of greatest joy, hell is a place of suffering, a place of eternal unhappiness, prepared for people who refuse to be happy in the triune God.

Self-Denial

6. Christian Hedonism changes the way we think about self-denial. Oh, it is really there in the teachings of Jesus, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). But now the meaning becomes,

• Deny yourself the wealth of the world so you can have the wealth of being with Christ.
• Deny yourself the fame of the world to have the joy of God’s approval.
• Deny yourself the security and safety of the world to have the solid, secure fellowship of Jesus.
• Deny yourself the short, unsatisfying pleasures of the world so that you can have fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore at God’s right hand.

Which means there is no such thing as ultimate self-denial, because to live is Christ and to die is gain.

Money

7. Christian Hedonism changes the way we think about handling our money and the act of giving. Acts 20:35, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” 2 Corinthians 9:7, “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” The motive to be a generous person, is that it expresses and expands our joy in God. And the pursuit of deepest joy is the pursuit of giving not getting.

Corporate Worship

8. Christian Hedonism changes the way we do corporate worship. Corporate worship is the collective act of glorifying God. But God is glorified in that service when the people are satisfied in him. Therefore, the worship leaders — musicians and preachers — see their task primarily as breaking open a fountain of living water and spreading a feast of rich food. The task of the worshippers is to drink and eat and say a satisfied "Ahhh." Because God is most glorified in those worshippers when they are most satisfied in him.

Disability and Weakness

9. Christian Hedonism changes the way we experience disability and weakness. Stunningly, paradoxically, Jesus says to the weak and thorn-pierced Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” To which Paul responds, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly [yes this is the voice of the thorn-pierced Christian Hedonist] of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Love

10. Christian Hedonism changes the meaning of love. Paul describes the love of the Macedonians like this: “In a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part” (2 Corinthians 8:2). In verse 8, Paul calls this "love." "Abundant joy" in “severe affliction” and “extreme poverty” overflowed in loving generosity. Still poor. Still afflicted. But so full of joy it overflowed in love. So Christian Hedonism defines love as the overflow (or the expansion) of joy in God that meets the needs of others.

Ministry

11. Christian Hedonism changes the meaning of ministry. What is the ministry aim of the great apostle Paul? 2 Corinthians 1:24, “Not that we lord it over your faith, but we are workers with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith.” All ministry should be one way or the other a working with others for their joy.

That’s why God created you. That’s why Christ died for you. That’s why we serve you as your pastors. And that is why I have preached this message. We are workers with you for your joy in God. Because God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him.

For God Loves

What's Best Next post:  Why Social Action Is Both Essential and Not Enough

I love and fully affirm the centrality of the biblical call to meet the full range of people’s needs, not just spiritual needs. When people are hungry, we need to feed them (Matthew 25:35). When they are mistreated, we need to stand up for them (Isaiah 1:17; Job 29:12-17). When they are sick, we need to visit them (Matthew 25:36). It is noteworthy that the false believers Christ rejects in Matthew 7:21-23 were apparently great at preaching (so-called), but neglected to meet people’s real, concrete needs as Christ instructs in Matthew 25:35-46.

We need to do better at this, and I think it is exciting to dream dreams of taking radical action for the good of others, and actually following through on those dreams. Further, we need to do this on a large scale, not just a small scale.

As we seek to correct our oversight as a church on the social action side of the last 90 years or so, it can be easy to emphasize the importance of social action in a way that downplays or minimizes the equal importance of evangelism. It is not uncommon to hear stories, for example, of short term missions teams going over to build houses for those in need, and yet never once mentioning the way of salvation through Christ. Further, we can feel that when we do make evangelism a chief aim, we almost need to apologize for it as though social action is what really “counts,” since it meets people’s concrete and directly felt needs.

This dichotomy is completely unnecessary. The reason is that the call to meet physical needs and the call to preach the gospel stem from the same motive and the same place in God’s heart.

Notice, for example, Matthew 9:13. Jesus chides the Pharisees here for not understanding the Scripture that “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” (Hosea 6:6). The Pharisees consistently put their strange and odd rules over the welfare of people, and this Scripture stands squarely against that. This Scripture teaches us that what God requires of us is not following made-up rules, or even rules that seem justified on the basis of “self-protection” or keeping ourselves from sin, but actually serving people and meeting their needs (cf. also the related instance in Matthew 12:1-8).

God’s statement that he desires mercy and not sacrifice is a great passage, in other words, on the importance of social action and meeting physical needs. This is especially clear from the tie with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, where the Samaritan’s actions to meet the man’s physical needs are called “compassion” (Luke 10:33) and “mercy” (Luke 10:37). Jesus also often had compassion on the crowds, resulting in meeting their physical needs (Matthew 14:14; 9:35-36). To be a merciful person necessarilyincludes being on the lookout to meet physical needs.

But there is something even deeper in Matthew 9:13. When Jesus says “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” there, he gives it as the reason and foundation for why he is interacting with sinners. For he immediately adds: “For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

At the heart of what Jesus is saying is this: True compassion involves not just taking action to meet people’s needs, but doing this even for the unworthy. “I desire mercy” does not simply mean “do good to those who do good to you.” Jesus is defining true compassion as having love for sinful,unworthy people at its very essence. What the Pharisees didn’t get is that when God calls us to have compassion on people, he doesn’t restrict it to apparently “worthy” people. Love that does not love the unworthy is actually not true love at all. That’s why the call to love one’s enemies iscentral, not an aside, to the biblical ethic of love (Matthew 5:43-48; Luke 6:27-36; Romans 12:19-21). True compassion has compassion even on sinners, those who have failed, and even one’s enemies.

Which is, of course, all of us (something else the Pharisees didn’t get).

This is why Jesus came to earth. He came because he is a loving, compassionate God, which means not simply that he does good for those who do good, but that he also seeks to rescue those who have done evil. That’s the true meaning of love. That’s Jesus’ point here. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came to call not the righteous, but sinners” (Matthew 9:12-13).

This is also the meaning of John 3:16. “For God loved the world in this way: He gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” That is, God’s love is the kind of love that gives utterly sacrificially even for the welfare of sinners–those who, as John puts it here, are in danger of perishing.

Seeking the welfare of unworthy — demonstrated in action — is part of the very definition of God’s love.

This is why social action is not enough. Love for others will and must manifest itself in meeting people’s concrete, tangible needs for food, shelter, companionship, and purpose in life. But beyond all of these things, we have a more fundamental, even deeper need: we are estranged from God because of our sin. True compassion does not stop at meeting people’s physical and social needs, therefore. It goes all the way and seeks to meet their spiritual need for reconciliation with God as well.

That’s how Jesus ultimately describes for us the meaning of “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” He demonstrates the meaning of that verse ultimately in his own ministry, coming into the world not simply to meet physical needs but also proclaim the gospel and thereby rescue us from our ultimate misery. “For I came … to call … sinners” (Matthew 9:13).

The same love that compels us to meet people’s concrete, physical needs also compels us to truly care for the full range of their needs — including their spiritual need to receive the forgiveness of sins and come to know God.