Time for a Jehu

October 23, 2020 in Homosexuality, Israel, Judgment, King Jesus, Politics, Sexuality

No doubt you have heard more than enough political commentary in the past few weeks. Yet several times folks have asked me for whom I plan to vote in the upcoming presidential election. I made quite public in 2016 my refusal to vote for either of the major candidates. I did not consider either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton worthy my vote and I do not regret my decision; nor would I have regretted it had my decision been more consequential and Clinton been elected President. I was and am at peace with the decision I made in 2016. It was not the first time, and it may not be the last time, that I voted for a third party candidate. Yet this year I plan to vote quite happily for President Trump. Why the change?

It is not because I think that President Trump’s character has fundamentally changed – though I regularly pray that God matures him and recognize that the media reports about him (from which our opinions of his character are often formed) are far from reliable. Nevertheless, his tweets are at times embarrassing. His past history of womanizing and breaking his marriage covenants remains. And his boasting and bluster and apparent pride are disturbing. So why vote for the man? There are several reasons.

First and foremost, I have four years of experience on which to evaluate what President Trump will do the next four years. In 2016 I had no confidence that President Trump would pursue any of the conservative policies that he was publicly advocating. Yet here we are several years later, and Trump has followed through with his promises. Working with the Senate, he has appointed hundreds of originalist judges to federal courts including (hopefully) three to the Supreme Court. Working with Congress, he has lowered taxes, reduced regulations on businesses, and negotiated new trade deals that have returned manufacturing jobs to America. As head of the executive branch of government, he has promoted increasing freedom in education, protected religious freedom from the LGBTQ+ revolutionaries, achieved historic peace agreements in the Middle East, pulled the United States out of incessant wars overseas, stood up to China’s communist and godless regime, compelled other countries to contribute to NATO’s expenses, calmed the threat of North Korea, and stifled the flood of illegal immigrants. I could go on. His fulfillment of many of the promises he made has convinced me to support him in this election.

Second, President Trump has been the most pro-life President in history. He is the first President in history to speak at the annual March for Life. His speeches have consistently recognized that the unborn bear the image of God and so are worthy of protection. He has regularly criticized the Democrats for their barbaric commitment to late term abortion. Contrast this with the godless pursuit of the Democrats. Consider that Kamala Harris, Joe Biden’s Vice-Presidential running mate, willfully chose as the Attorney General of the State of California to ignore the immoral and criminal behavior of Planned Parenthood selling the body parts of little babies and instead chose to prosecute the heroic journalist who exposed their butchery. I can understand and sympathize with fellow Christians who vote third party. I do not agree with them in this election, but at least I can understand. But any professing Christian who votes for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is at best utterly confused but more likely on the road to utter apostasy.

Third, President Trump respects the Judeo-Christian and Constitutional heritage upon which our republic was built. He has surrounded himself with advisors, including a Vice President, who openly and publicly claim the name of Christ and live in a way consistent with that claim. He has stated that our rights come from our Creator and that it is the role of government to preserve and protect those rights, not to grant them. He has endeavored to appoint judges who respect the rule of law and understand their limited role in our constitutional republic. Throughout the coronavirus crisis, he has basically followed the principle of federalism, permitting the states to govern themselves and refusing to use the power of the federal government to intrude into affairs which rightly belong to the states. The Democratic party has no such commitments. Joe Biden has signaled a willingness to pack the Supreme Court, has promised to increase taxes, has promoted yet more socialist health care (even going so far as to call it Biden-care already!), and has indicated his willingness to try and implement a national policy on lockdowns, masks, climate change, etc. He will expand the power of a federal government that is already bloated beyond the recognition of our Founding Fathers.

Fourth, President Trump has made all the right enemies. He has unmasked the radical leftist bias of the mainstream media. He has enraged the sexual revolutionaries. He has been willing to critique identity politics and has highlighted its Marxist roots. He regularly warns against the dangers of socialism and praises the blessings of the free market. Though I myself am frustrated with President Trump’s willingness to sign trillion-dollar spending packages, his critique of the socialist trajectory of the Democratic party is heartening. With a Biden presidency, we would get none of this. He will embrace the sexual revolutionaries, abet the socialist “Green New Deal”, enable Marxist ideology in the form of Black Lives Matter and other movements, and fundamentally reshape the nature of our federal system.

I could go on, but these are some of the major reasons I will be happily voting for President Trump. In my own mind, I have regularly likened President Trump to Jehu in the Old Testament. Jehu wasn’t a particularly righteous man. Yet God anointed him to clean house and to purify many of Ahab’s abuses. It is my hope and prayer that God will be more merciful to us through Trump than he was to Israel through Jehu. But at this time in history only a Jehu can do what needs to be done.

Old Covenant vs. New Covenant Worship

June 11, 2017 in Bible - NT - Hebrews, Bible - NT - John, Bible - OT - Psalms, Israel, Liturgy, Meditations, Trinity, Worship
John 4:21-24 (NKJV)
21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and Truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. 24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and Truth.”
On this Trinity Sunday, I would like us to consider the words that Jesus speaks in this text and the way that they help us understand new covenant worship. Jesus is anticipating two changes in the worship of God’s people. Unfortunately, these changes are frequently misinterpreted. Many imagine that Jesus is contrasting the external, formal worship of the OT period with the heartfelt, internal worship of the New. At one time people worshiped externally, now all worship is “in spirit and truth” – that is, heartfelt and genuine.
The difficulty faced by this interpretation is not the insistence that worship must be heartfelt and genuine. That is most certainly true. The difficulty is that this was no less true in the OT than it is in the New. David declares in the psalter, “Sacrifice and burnt offering you did not desire, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”Heartfelt, genuine worship was to characterize the OT no less than the New.
So what are the changes Jesus anticipated in His words to the Samaritan woman? There are two. First, Jesus insists that the corporate worship of the people of God would be decentralized. Remember that in the OT God’s people had a central sanctuary located at Jerusalem. As we will review today in the sermon, three times a year every male had to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to Mount Zion, and worship at the central sanctuary, offering sacrifices, feasting with God’s people, honoring the Lord. The Samaritans, for their part, refused to acknowledge the centrality of Jerusalem but likewise had a central sanctuary at Mount Gerizim. Here the Samaritans had their collective feasts. The woman asks Jesus – “You’re a prophet; so which is it? Mount Zion or Mount Gerizim?”Jesus responds, “Neither! In the Christian era, during My reign, God’s people are not required to gather for corporate worship at a central sanctuary – whether in Gerizim or Jerusalem or Rome. Rather, wherever the people of God gather together in My Name and lift My Name on high, there is Mount Zion, there is the City of God, there is the central sanctuary.” In other words, Jerusalem in Israel is no longer the center of God’s dealings with man; the heavenly Jerusalem, Mount Zion, the Church is the center.
Second, Jesus informs us that not only would corporate worship be decentralized, it would be explicitly Trinitarian. When Jesus rose from the dead and sent forth His Spirit, the worship of God’s people was forever transformed. It became explicitly Trinitarian – worshiping the Father in Spirit – the very Spirit whom Jesus promised would come and lead His people into all righteousness – and in Truth – the very Truth who took on human flesh and declared to His disciples, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through Me.”
Today is Trinity Sunday, the Sunday the Church has historically emphasized the Triune nature of God. It is this that Jesus does in our text. Worshiping the Father in Spirit and Truth is not an exhortation to heartfelt, genuine worship – that exhortation had been given throughout the OT. Worshiping the Father in Spirit and Truth is to worship the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And it was this transformation that Jesus anticipated and announced to the Samaritan woman. “The time is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth.”

So what does this mean for us? It means that this morning as we gather together to worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth, as we gather to worship the Triune God, we are approaching the central sanctuary of God, the place where God dwells. Mount Zion is His dwelling place and it is this place to which we draw near every time we gather to worship the Lord together. Hebrews tells us, “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first born who are registered in heaven…” (Heb 12:22-23) And, like Isaiah, who entered the presence of God in the Temple, the first thing that should strike us is our own unworthiness – in ourselves, we are not worthy to be here. And so let us kneel and seek His forgiveness through Christ.

An Everlasting Inheritance

August 24, 2016 in Bible - OT - Genesis, Dispensationalism, Ecclesiology, Israel, John Calvin, Postmillennialism, Quotations

“For an everlasting possession (Gen 48:4). We have elsewhere shown the meaning of this expression: namely, that the Israelites should be perpetual heirs of the land until the coming of Christ, by which the world was renewed… For that portion of land was promised to the ancient people of God, until the renovation introduced by Christ: and now, ever since the Lord has assigned the whole world to his people, a fuller fruition of the inheritance belongs to us.”

John Calvin, Commentary upon the Book of Genesis