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State of the Church 2022
Christ Church on January 9, 2022
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Christmas for the Blind: A State of the Church Message

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INTRODUCTION

This is something of a Christmas message and end of the year State of the Church sermon all wrapped into one. But the point is that I want to meditate on the covenant curses that are raining down on us in the form of Covid-statist tyranny, the sexual promiscuity and perversion jihad, on top of abortion insanity, fiscal madness, and political imbecility. Christians find themselves caught in the middle of family and culture turmoil. What are we to do? The central thing we must do is recognize all of it as judicial blindness from the Lord. He had done this.

THE TEXT

“According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins” (2 Pet. 1:4-9).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

By His power, God has given to His people everything that they need for life and godliness through the knowledge of Christ, at all times and in all places (1:3). Having escaped the corruption of the world, Christians are to grow in holiness and godliness through God’s great and precious promises (1:4). The broad outline of that growth is listed in seven additional steps added to faith in those promises (1:5-7). With those eight virtues abounding in Christians, they cannot be barren or unfruitful in the knowledge of Jesus (1:8). But a Christian who lacks these things is blind, near-sighted, and has forgotten that he has been forgiven (1:9).

TWO DIFFERENT KINDS OF JUDICIAL BLINDNESS

We know from elsewhere in the Bible, that unbelievers have a certain kind of spiritual blindness: 2 Cor. 4:3-4: “But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” Likewise in Ephesians 4:18, speaking of the Gentiles, “Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.” That is one kind of judicial blindness. But here in 2 Peter 1, we have a different kind of blindness described, what we might call a covenantal judicial blindness. Peter is describing believers who have not progressed as far as they should have as blind and forgetful (2 Pet. 1:9). Jesus calls the church of Laodicea to repent of a similar blindness: “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked… anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke, and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent” (Rev. 3:17-19).

COVENANT BLINDNESS & CALAMITY

This same covenantal blindness is described in the Old Testament: “If thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God… all these curses shall come upon thee… The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart: and thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness…” (Dt. 28:15, 28). Likewise, in Isaiah’s commission: “Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed… But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return…” (Is. 6:10, 13). So when God’s covenant people disobey and break covenant, God sends covenant curses and spiritual blindness on them for the purpose of dividing the faithful from the unfaithful: some are proven to be complete unbelievers who die in their blindness, but there are some who struck with some blindness in order to chastise them, and call them to repentance (e.g. Rev. 3:17-19, Jn. 12:37-43).

CONCLUSIONS & APPLICATIONS

While America is fast joining the post-Christian nations of the West, there is another sense in which covenanted nations do not have the luxury of forgetting their Christian past. They may forget their Christian past, but their Christian past cannot forget them. Or to be more precise, God does not forget covenants made and broken. And we have manifestly fallen under covenantal curses. We have murdered our own children, and while we have not yet stooped to eating them, we most certainly have experimented on them and used their bodies for sorcery (what we call “medical research”) (Dt. 28:53-58). We have been chased by tiny minorities of sexual madmen (Dt. 28:25, 32:30), and we have been struck with terror and diseases (Dt. 32:25, 28:59-61).

But it is perilously easy to make light of our sins in the church because they do not seem as bad as the pagans, but that is not at all the same thing as holiness, as godliness and virtue (2 Pet. 1:5-7). It’s said that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king, but listen to what it says: “he that lacketh these things is blind” (2 Pet. 1:9). Do you lack any virtue, any temperance, any patience, any brotherly kindness or charity? Those “little sins” of anger, lust, envy, selfishness – they are blindness and near-sightedness. And like the church of Laodicea, we are tempted to make light of them because of how fabulously well-off we are: “knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind…?” We think we know what joy is because we have high speed internet, Instagram, and food on demand. But that isn’t joy. Joy is serving the Lord with gladness of heart for all the abundance of things (Dt. 28:47). Joy is holiness.

The only way out of this mess is if Jesus gives us eyes to see. “And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind. And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words, and said unto him, Are we blind also? Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth” (Jn. 9:39-41).

Are you blind? Is our land full of the blind? Christ was born so that the blind might see.

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State of the Church 2020

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Introduction

The Lord has been blessing our congregation in many striking ways. We have been growing in remarkable ways, and an essential part of this growth entails the inevitable growing pains. Quite a few of you just moved to our community within the last year, and it may seem to you that you have jumped into the middle of a conversation that has been going on for forty years. But some of you newcomers might be puzzled over something else. Where you came from felt like a wilderness to you, and so you would devour all kinds of things that would come out of Moscow, and then when you arrived here, you found yourself more checked out about what is going on than some of the people who have lived here for years. Life is funny.

The Text

“And Samuel took a sucking lamb, and offered it for a burnt offering wholly unto the Lord: and Samuel cried unto the Lord for Israel; and the Lord heard him. And as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel: but the Lord thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistines, and discomfited them; and they were smitten before Israel. And the men of Israel went out of Mizpeh, and pursued the Philistines, and smote them, until they came under Beth-car. Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and called the name of it Eben-ezer, saying, Hitherto hath the Lord helped us” (1 Sam. 7:9–12).

Summary of the Text

On the threshold of battle, the prophet Samuel interceded on behalf of Israel, with a sacrifice and intense prayer, and the Lord heard him (v. 9). In the very moment of offering up the ascension offering, or whole burnt offering, the Philistines approached the Israelites to do battle (v. 10). But the Lord responded from heaven with loud thunder, so much so that the Philistines were thrown into confusion and Israel overcame them (v. 11). The men of Israel seized control of the situation and drove the Philistines back as far as place called Beth Car (v. 11). In response, Samuel in his gratitude set up a monument stone, and named it Ebenezer, saying that the Lord had helped them to “this point” (v. 12). The word Ebenezer literally means “stone of help.”

Earlier in the narrative, when the Ark of the Covenant had been captured by the Philistines, they took the ark from the place called Ebenezer to their city of Ashdod. This lost battle was a humiliation to Israel, and an indicator of their idolatrous faithlessness. Twenty years later, Samuel called Israel to return to God with all their hearts (1 Sam. 7:3), which they did. God granted them this victory, which Samuel memorialized, and the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel (1 Sam. 7:13).

Here I raise my Ebenezer
Hither by Thy help I’ve come
(Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing)

Our Ebenezer

I would like this message to serve as an introduction for our “new members,” and a reminder for our old timers. Our congregation is alive and thriving, and there were many occasions when it all might have gone otherwise. Thus far the Lord really has helped us. We have no right to still be here.

The Centrality of Worship

We believe that the most important thing that any of us can do in the course of a week is to appear here before the Lord. “Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve [worship] God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:28–29).

The Interconnectedness of All Things

But worship is not a disconnected important thing, like a diamond in a load of driveway gravel. Rather it is central and connected to absolutely everything else we do—the way the engine is central to the function of the car. “And he is before all things, and by him all things consist” (Col. 1:17). We believe that all things in the universe are related to one another, and they are related in Christ. In fact, the only reason why the universe can even be a universe is because of Christ. God is sovereign and therefore Christ is Lord.

Three Governments

Self-government—which is the fruit of regeneration—is foundational to every other form of God-given government. Those three other governments are the government of the family (Gen. 2:18), the government of the church (Eph. 4:11-12), and the government of the state (Rom. 13:1-2). The state is the ministry of justice. The church is the ministry of Word and sacrament. The family is the ministry of health, education, and welfare. Among other things, this means that you and your family all belong here at worship.

Chestertonian Calvinism

We are followers of Christ alone, and so it may seem odd to describe one of the attitudes that we are seeking to cultivate by using the names of two of the Lord’s more notable servants. But that is all that it is—odd. “Then he said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our Lord: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the Lord is your strength” (Neh. 8:10). Joy is not just an attitude we have going into the fray. That joy is one of our most formidable weapons.

All of Christ for All of Life

If there is one most noticeable thing that is missing in our lost generation, it is the fact of identity. They have had almost all of their old established (and idolatrous) identities smashed, and now are reduced to making up their own ad hoc identities as they go along. To this we answer, not with “traditional values,” but rather with the message of the crucified and risen Christ.

He is the risen one, and therefore the Lord of all. He is Lord extensively, and He is Lord intensively. There is therefore nothing in this cosmos that He did not extend His scepter over. Our task is to fan out and claim it.

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Church and Kingdom, Cathedral and Town (State of the Church 2018 #7)

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Introduction

Remember that the Spirit moves throughout the earth, converting and restoring individuals, fashioning them into saints, into believers. As His fruit is manifested in them, one of those fruits is self-control, self-government, or self-mastery. This self-government is the basic building block for establishing non-tyrannical governments in the other spheres that God has established among men. Without self-government, families can become autocratic tribes, with one domineering personality. Without self-government, the church can become a grasping and despotic monster, as happened with the medieval papacy. Without self-government, the civil magistrate can become an overweening and covetous thug, as has happened in our day.

It is easy for us to blame these governing entities for filling up the vacuum, but we really ought to find fault with ourselves because we (and our lack of self-control) are the ones who create the vacuum. When the people are slaves to sin, they cannot enjoy the balance of form and freedom that God has ordained for humanity. A family filled up with scheming manipulators will not be at peace with one another. A congregation of porn-users will not see the law of liberty unleashed in their midst. A nation of fornicating potheads will not enjoy civil liberty. As well expect to plant thistles and harvest barley.

The Text

“And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it. And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there. And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it” (Rev 21:24-26).

“In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations” (Rev 22:2).

“Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the Lord thy God, and to the Holy One of Israel, because he hath glorified thee. And the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee: for in my wrath I smote thee, but in my favour have I had mercy on thee. Therefore thy gates shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day nor night; that men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought (Is 60:9-11).

“And by the river upon the bank thereof, on this side and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed: it shall bring forth new fruit according to his months, because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary: and the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine” (Ezekiel 47:12).

Summary of the Texts

Instead of just one text, I have selected a mash-up of texts. In doing this I am not attempting to pull a fast one, but am rather following the example of the New Testament writers, who frequently present us with a collage of quotations from all over the Old Testament.

In that spirit, the New Jerusalem in Revelation, the Isaianic Zion, and Ezekiel’s great Temple, are all one. Comparing them with one another, and seeing what is said of them, we see that they are all symbolic images of the Christian Church, neither more nor less. The Jerusalem above is the mother of us all (Gal. 4:26). When we gather to worship God, as we are doing right now, we are assembled on the heavenly Zion (Heb. 12:18). Come, the angel said to John, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb. And who is that Bride? It is the Christian Church (Eph. 5:25). And then he showed him the New Jerusalem, adorned as a bride (Rev. 21:2). The great Harlot was the old Jerusalem, now divorced and put away. The New Jerusalem is the Holy of Holies, a living shrine of the living God (1 Cor. 3:16; 1 Cor. 6:19; Rev. 21:16). So much is basic.

My point with these texts is to show you the distinction between this Church and the redeemed nations of men. The boundary between them is porous, but still clear. Ezekiel’s Temple does not grow and fill the earth, but water flows from her until it inundates and heals the earth. The earth does not become the New Jerusalem, but the kings of the earth bring their honor and glory to her, and acknowledge and support her. The great Zion of Isaiah does not swallow the world, but the ships of Tarshish sail to her, with all their wealth. There is a traffic of peace between them.

To Review

When men are forgiven and set upright again, they find themselves functioning within the framework of three basic governments. The first is the government of the family, following the order that God has established. The husband is the head, his wife is his body and the executive, and together they shepherd their little ones. The family is the Ministry of Health, Education, and Welfare. The second is the civil magistrate, which is the Ministry of Justice. Their task is to make it possible for you to walk across town safely at 2 in the morning. Justice here is defined by the Bible, and not by the hurt feelings of somebody. The church is the Ministry of Grace and Peace, who is the Holy Spirit Himself.

The Relationship of the Three

In God’s order, not one of the three is permitted to domineer over the others. Each has its assigned task, and each one needs to tend to its own knitting. The church does not declare war, or collect the trash. The family does not administer the sacraments. The state does not review cases of church discipline. And not one of these spheres is dependent on any of the others for its existence.

But with that said, there is definitely a hierarchy of honor in this glorious and eschatological fulfillment. And this is what it looks like. The church does not fill up the world, and the church does not make every day Sunday. But the knowledge of the Lord does fill up the world, as the waters cover the sea (Hab. 2:14). How does this work? In our texts, notice the flow in two directions. The living water flows from the church out to all the families and nations of men, and all the families and nations of men flow to the church. But they don’t stream to the church in order to live there. They come to eat from the tree of life, and then they go back out again with a benediction, with the peace of Christ upon their heads.

So picture it this way. The worship of God is central to all of life, but it does not devour all of life. The sun does not burn everything up, but it does give light to everything. The water does not flood the world, but it does irrigate the entire world. The anchor fastens the ship, the ship does not turn into an anchor. The cathedral is at the center of the town, but does not “take over” all the activities of the townspeople—their printing, their auto mechanics, their software designing, their lawn mowing. In one sense all of that is none of their business. But at the same time the church instructs the townspeople in the adverbs—how these things are to be done, meaning, honestly, before the Lord, and with a hard work ethic.

The church is therefore at the center of the kingdom, but the church and the kingdom are very different.

And Christ is Lord of All

The authority of Jesus—the kind of authority that is granted to a sacrificial king—is an authority that mediates the kindness of the Father, and He mediates that kindness with the center fixed and all the edges in play.

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The Meaning of Love and Justice (State of the Church 2018 #4)

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Introduction

The central difficulty with the great idol of the collective, the false god of statism, is that we have wanted to substitute the word of man for the Word of God. We want to define love according to our own lights. We have wanted to define justice without reference to biblical law, and this then makes us choose between individualism and collectivism. And then, because we have been thrown into a realm where might determines right, the collective wins.

But we are individuals saved by grace, bound together in a mystical body. This has been done in accordance with the Scriptures, which means that love and justice are defined from outside the world.

The Text

“Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:8–10).

Summary of the Text

A community like ours should be bound together by love. Sounds great, but what do we mean exactly? Our bonds to one another need to be stronger than the bonds of debtor/creditor (v. 8). If we love the other, then that means we have fulfilled the law. Paul then mentions the seventh, sixth, eighth, ninth, and tenth commandments, in that order, and says that they are all comprehended in this one commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18). The word rendered as comprehended is a verb that comes from the root kephale, meaning head (v. 9). Paul then tells us why. Love works no evil to its neighbor, and this is why love is the fulfillment of the law (v. 10). Love, in short, refuses to perpetrate injustice, and justice is defined by the law of God, which in turn is shaped by the character of God Himself—and remember that God is love (1 Jn. 4:8). Put all these together, and meditate on these identities.

Sin is Therefore Lovelessness

The apostle John defines sin for us in a very succinct way. “Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4, ESV). Sin is lawlessness. That’s it; that’s the heart of it. But what is to keep the law from the heart? Scripture describes that as love. And so what does it mean to love someone? It means to treat them lawfully from the heart. Note that this excludes a mere ticking of boxes. The emphasis needs to be on the heart.

Jesus teaches us this explicitly. “Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also” (Matt. 23:26). Cleansing the outside of the cup doesn’t get the inside clean. But when the inside is clean, what happens? Jesus says “that the outside may be clean also.”

The Great Clash

In the first message of this series, I said that one of the great enemies of our day is “relativism, subjectivism, the despotism of feelings.” And by this I meant “the idea that the world of facts is not the controlling reality. Reality, in other words, is optional.” We have been taught—ad nauseam we have been taught—that love is what you feel. When the feeling wanes or goes away, as the theory goes, so has the love. This has been the source of untold misery in the world. In a biblical framework, your feelings start to wander off, and love looks up with a sharp maternal gleam in her eye and says, “Get back here.”

In a biblical framework, you and all your feeling are like a first-grade teacher taking her whole class to some busy downtown museum, and every last one of them is on a neon-colored leash.

Covenant Bonds

As we talk about true Christian community, which is based on koinonia fellowship, we have to begin with the nature of covenant commitments. This applies to marriage and family, it applies to membership in the church, and it applies to the rest of life also. I am going to ask you to bear with a few illustrations, but they all line up with what a wise Puritan once said about marriage. “First he chooses his love, and then he loves his choice.”

If you go down in the basement of a house, you will likely be able to find cold concrete in straight lines. Let us call it cold covenant concrete—a bunch of unsentimental concrete. Then go up into the living room, and you will there see curtains, warm colors, cushions, sofas, carpet, and so on. This is where you live, but it cannot be the foundation of the house. Roll up the carpet, mound the cushions, throw curtains on top of it, and then try to situate a stud wall on top of that.

Or imagine you discipline your emotions the same way some folks discipline their kids (or not). Some people are so disordered in this that they have come to believe that if someone’s “children” are not unruly hellions, then this must mean that they don’t even have no kids. No, they have kids, but their kids mind. We like to describe self-controlled people as “unemotional,” but what we really mean is that their emotions are not half-civilized yard apes on a sugar rush. And by the way, before the wrong people start commending themselves for how “unemotional” they are, I would remind them that anger is an emotion.

Recall the three governments mentioned in an earlier message—the family is the ministry of health, education and welfare. The church is the ministry of grace and peace. The civil magistrate is the ministry of justice. The non-institutional government that supports and makes possible all three of these is self-government.

Put On Your Jesus Coat

Because we are forgiven by God through Christ (Eph. 4:32), so it is possible for us to be exhorted to imitate Christ (1 Pet. 2:21). But we are to imitate the whole process. Jesus did what He did for the joy that was set before Him (Heb. 12:2), and because of His obedience true joy is a possibility. But Jesus did not go to the cross on an emotional high. The greatest act of love that was ever offered up to God was the death of Christ on the cross (Rom. 5:8). And Jesus tried to get out of it (Matt. 26:39). But His house was not built on the cushions, and so it is that we are saved. His love for you had a more sure foundation than that.

So put on Christ (Rom. 13:14; Gal. 3:27). Put on your Jesus coat. Make sure you put your arms through both sleeves.

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