Every week I write a brief-ish devotional to help our congregation prepare for the Lord's Day. Occasionally I post a version of them here. This is the one for Saturday evening, July 8, 2023.
The blessings of liberty, human dignity, socio-economic opportunity, and justice have long been enjoyed in the West, albeit imperfectly, to greater or lesser degrees at different times and places, for many hundreds of years. We should not miss the fact that these blessings are the direct result of our Christian heritage. Christendom in the West was far from perfect, and we confess that its eventual demise was a judgment from God for unbelief and disobedience, but it was the fountain of most of the freedom, general morality, and prosperity that western nations have long enjoyed. Notwithstanding the modern, and largely successful, efforts aimed at historical revision, nations did not discover that chattel slavery was immoral until they had not only been evangelized but also brought, culturally and politically, to a degree of Christian obedience and sanctification. Hospitals and modern medicine, the university, social welfare programs, protection of women and indigent children, socio-economic elevation of ethnic minorities, political rights, and merit-based economies were the result of the Bible and a Christian faith and worldview. We have largely rejected the basis of that inheritance over the last 150 years, and like the prodigal son, we have squandered our father’s wealth. It is no surprise that some of our neighbors now identify as pigs and gorge themselves on slop.
Many of us grew up in western nations that seemed, at the time, broadly religious and mostly moral. Not everyone actually was a Christian, and many of those who had been baptized did not live like it. But we were able to take for granted a general morality and basic set of values that we assumed most of our neighbors shared. However, the western world was, then and long before, in the midst of a Cold War, not just with Soviet communists, but with the religious Marxists and demonic forces hiding next door. The Church made peace with the world, marking out no-fly zones, agreeing to stay in its own lane. Rejecting the embarrassment of Christian Reconstruction and the Moral Majority (have you seen the pants Francis Schaeffer was wearing in those videos?!), the Church ceded the public square to avowed secularists. They sent their children to public schools, which were on the secularists’ side of the demilitarized zone, and were shocked when they came home as pagans. The 1980s would have been an opportune time for the Church in the West to humble herself, repent, and do the first works. God raised up men to call us to do so. But there was no apparent need. We had Reagan, a surging economy, and hair bands. Repentance was the last thing on our minds. If anything, the golden age had come. Many in the Church decided what we needed were more peace treaties with the secularists. Maybe if we destroyed our nuclear arms, the Premier would agree never to use his own.
Now pedophilia is being decriminalized in multiple states in the Union, our government is flying the Pride flag at embassies worldwide, and France is once again in flames. That sacred-secular division of labor is working just fine. The common kingdom may be going to Hell in a handbasket, but the invisible, spiritual kingdom of Christ is doing great. Pay no attention to the covenant youth who had BLM squares on their social media profiles three years ago, dyed their hair pink two years ago, and are now talking about what we can learn from sexual minorities and how to empathize with people whose experience of gender does not align with their biological sex. Applying the Scriptures is the Holy Spirit’s job, brothers. Just keep telling them to rest in their justification and reminding them of the burning issues litigated in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Lest anyone fear that I am making fun of someone personally, let me assure you that I am only “heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea — a practice I shall always follow,” with gratitude to LTC Dubois and his History and Moral Philosophy class. We are in the grip of inexcusably silly ideas, ideas which will not last, ideas which are self-destructive by nature, prophecy, and destiny. I may not live to see their catastrophic collapse—someone please take notes and tell me all about it when we see one another in Aslan’s country—but be sure that the collapse is coming. It may take a hundred years. It may cost us this nation or western civilization as we know it. So be it. God is building an everlasting kingdom, and he does not need the USA at all.
What does this have to do with the Lord’s Day? The Christian Sabbath is when God calls us away from the chaos and speaks peace, comfort, and courage to our hearts. He does not hide the truth from us; he pulls back the curtain—he lifts its skirts and exposes the culture’s… shame, to use the impolite, biblical metaphor of the OT prophets. He commands the Church, “Look at me, and take courage! Trust me, and then live, fight, die, and win manfully” (cf. Isa. 40-66). If you had never been taught that Christianity is an effeminate religion for emotionally driven people and read the Bible for the first time, you might be astonished at what you would find. It’s hard to see the Scriptures for what they are when they have been taught to us for generations by so many weak-kneed, morally compromised, and worldly people.
On the Lord’s Day, the Church musters in heaven. We join the glorified chorus of praise that surrounds God’s throne. Our sins are forgiven. The covenant is renewed. We confess our allegiance. Then we are equipped, directed, and sent back onto the battlefield to win the world for Christ by the weapons of gospel-witness, biblical wisdom, and prayer (not necessarily in that order).
Tomorrow the army is assembling. The Lord is calling. Our hearts are weary, but he summons us that we might be refreshed in our faith and restored in our souls. Come to Jesus. Bring your burdens. Cast away your sins. Lay down your fears. He has called you to victory, and until that victory is fully seen, he has called you to joy. Come, and welcome to Jesus Christ. --JME
