Monthly Archives: March 2021

March 22, 2021 · 8:33 am

Purity Culture and Christ

According to the Scripture, purity comes by faith alone. We are clothed in Christ’s righteousness – the white robe of His purity. To seek purity anywhere else is idolatry and a denial of Christ.

(2Co 11:2-4)  2 For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
  3 But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
  4 For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted– you may well put up with it!

When Paul said that he labors to present the church a “chaste virgin” to Christ, he is referring to salvation by faith alone. A “chaste virgin” is one who rejects all other gods and rests in Christ’s righteousness alone.

“Another Jesus” is another gospel. Another gospel teaches that some or all of our purity, our righteousness, our holiness, comes from another source – ourselves, our will power, our “cooperation with grace” or our good works.

To put this together, when we seek our holiness in anything other than the perfect, completed work of Christ, we have forsaken Christ, and embraced “another lover.” This is consistent with the prophets:

6 “Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel, And his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts:`I am the First and I am the Last; Besides Me there is no God.
  7 And who can proclaim as I do? Then let him declare it and set it in order for Me, Since I appointed the ancient people. And the things that are coming and shall come, Let them show these to them.
  8 Do not fear, nor be afraid; Have I not told you from that time, and declared it? You are My witnesses. Is there a God besides Me? Indeed there is no other Rock; I know not one.'”
  (Isa. 44:6-8)

The “purity culture” taught a whole generation of boys and girls that their purity is identical to virginity. Purity balls, purity rings, purity dances, and so one – became a means to dads to keep their daughters pure. This was the fruit of Bill Gothard, a false prophet who taught a false Christ.

In their quest for purity, they became impure. In their quest for righteousness, they became unrighteous. They built on another foundation, and chased after another lover. Her name was “virginity”, and it became another Jesus, another Christ, another gospel.

3 For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. (Rom. 10:3)

In a weird ironic twist, in the pursuit of purity through virginity, they “spread their legs for another lover” in the words of Ezekiel. Blunt, but accurate.

And since God’s judgment is always fitting, the purity culture was actually rife with incest, abuse, assault, fornication, adultery, and all of the works of the flesh. Just as the scripture said it would be.

And because sometimes, things are deeply ingrained in us, I need to say this. “Purity culture” and Christian sexual ethics are not at all the same thing. To reject the purity culture is not the same as rejecting the bible’s teaching on sexuality. It is simply rejecting the false Christ it has become.

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March 19, 2021 · 9:28 am

thoughts on shame

Shame is universal. It isn’t a gender thing. All humans born of Adam are conceived and born in sin. Sin generates shame. Adam and Eve knew that they were naked.

Seeking to cover up that nakedness is also universal. We blame others. We attack ourselves. We sew all sorts of fig leaves and hide in all sorts of bushes to seek to cover our shame.

Shame isn’t an emotion. Shame is the fear that there is a standard to which you don’t measure up.

Sin misdirects our shame. We seek to meet different standards to cover our shame and continually miss the mark.

We cover our shame by destroying what we perceive to be the threat.

We cover our shame by boasting, by our feats of manliness, by works of charity, by taking a gun, by reviling others, by ranting on social media, by storming the capitol, … the examples are as varied as humans are varied…

Covering shame is universal, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

Shame can only be covered one way: Come out of the bushes and stand naked before God and wait for him to clothe you (Please read Genesis 3).

We “come out of the bushes” by acknowledging our sin and shame before God without excuse.

We stand naked by acknowledging our sin without excuse, without shifting the blame on how she was dressed, how drunk you were, how someone incited you, how “the woman gave to me, and I did eat…” Standing naked means saying “Lord, have mercy upon me. A sinner.”

Waiting for God to clothe you is to receive the perfect righteousness, satisfaction and holiness of Christ which only comes as a free gift. It is never earned. It is always free. It is given to all who ask for it.

The call of the gospel is “Where are you?” We come out of hiding. We stand naked before God trembling and afraid. And we receive the perfect clothing of the righteousness and satisfaction of Jesus Christ. This is the gospel. There is no other.

Whenever a pastor teaches that shame can be covered in any other way, he has failed to grasp the power of the gospel.

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March 18, 2021 · 7:22 pm

Pensées (March 18)

When a man is given permission to blame his lust on women, he will never be free from lust. The first step to freedom is to confess sin. No one causes anyone to lust.

It is quite sad to me that a young man could sit in church his whole life and not understand how to be free from the bondage of sin. His failure to grasp the gospel cost lives. It always does.

When men are given permission to view those who look or act differently as less than human, blood will flow in the streets. It always does.

Failure to grasp the gospel leads to fear. When fear takes hold of a man, death follows. It always does.

Perfect love casts out fear. What can separate us from the love of God?

We live in a broken and disordered world. We are quite easy to see the brokenness and disorder and wickedness is the others, but quite slow to see it in ourselves.

When a man thinks that someone must be destroyed, banished, run out, or shunned in order to be free from shame and fear, he does not understand the gospel.

The gospel draws us into fellowship with others. Fear destroys and isolates.

Sandstorm by Passenger is my new favorite song.

Jezebel was a real woman in the Bible. She introduced Baal worship to Israel and put to death the true prophets of God. Her name was used in Revelation to refer to the seduction of idolatry away from the one true God. It has nothing to do with either feminism, working outside the home, or divorcing an abusive spouse. We should stop using that term as an insult.

Name-calling is expected of children. But maturity requires that you put it off.

Reviling always leads to death.

The purity culture of the 90s taught a whole generation of young women that their bodies are impure, objects of temptation, the cause of lust, and something to be ashamed of. We are reaping the results.

If you are reading this, I want you to know that you are important. God made you beautiful and worthy of love and dignity. Jesus came to restore that dignity, not heap more shame on you.

Anyone – especially a pastor – that says “Shame on you” is unworthy of the name of pastor, and should repent. Christ came to do away with shame and we are his ministers with his message.

Shame never heals. Shame never produces good fruit. Shame never brings forgiveness. But it is intolerable. The human spirit always will seek to overcome shame by any means available, up to and including murder or suicide.

A culture that preaches shame will result in death. This is the wages of sin. But the gift of God is eternal life. That is our message.

As a pastor, I want everyone who hears me on Sunday KNOW that Jesus died to save sinners and to take away guilt and shame. If they don’t believe, and think the solution to shame is murder, I don’t ever want that to be on me.

I want to be the kind of pastor that people think of speaking to when they are in trouble. When people say, “Don’t let the pastor ever find this out…” I have failed at my job.

The same goes for our jobs as parents and grandparents.

When I was in college, the cafeteria was closed on Sunday nights. We had a pool table in our dorm. My friend and I played pool and the loser had to buy the pizza. I never lost.

It was the only time I ever won a game of pool. I find that fascinating.

Pizza should be used to motivate more often.

I despise exercise. But every morning my wife and I have started walking thirty minutes through the orchards. We talk about everything under the sun. The morning is ours. For the first time, I look forward to “exercise”.

That tells me a little something about the nature of good works and their connection to love…but you will have to think about it.

Bring light and beauty and hope into the broken world of shame and guilt.

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March 15, 2021 · 4:58 pm

Compassion

There is a certain kind of person who gets very concerned whenever anyone starts talking too much about God’s compassion. They are always the ones to remind you that Jesus was harsh with people at times.

They seem to forget that the people Jesus was consistently harsh with were those who had a problem with God’s compassion.

I think that the reason certain people get nervous about God’s compassion is that God might be compassionate on the wrong sort of people.

It was the “wrong sort of people” that washed Jesus feet with her tears and anointed him with costly ointment.

There are those who view God the way the older brother viewed God – he worked hard for God every day and God never gave him anything. The older brother was angry because the younger brother got to “go out and have fun” and still got the fatted calf.

The older brother never understood sin. So he never understood God’s compassion. God’s compassion meant that someone somewhere is getting away with something – and we have to put a stop to it.

“God’s compassion will lead to chaos. Didn’t you know that? How will society survive if God is compassionate on the wrong sorts of people.

(Jesus never whipped people. He used the whip to drive out the animals.)

These same sort of people get nervous when you talk about empathy. One might find themselves being empathetic with the wrong sorts of people. We can’t have that.

As a disclaimer, I am the wrong sort of person. But Jesus found me. He spoke kindly to me. He drew me into his arms with whispers of love.

Jesus loves me, this I know. For the bible tells me so.

It is not possible to be “too unbalanced” with God’s compassion. It is far greater, far broader, far more extensive, far higher, far deeper than any of us can possibly imagine.

If you are the wrong sort of person, you are just the one that the Father is seeking. Come to Jesus and find rest.

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March 13, 2021 · 5:23 pm

Achan and the Gospel

When Joshua conquered Jericho, God gave Israel specific instructions concerning the goods there. Everything was to be killed, burned or put into the treasury of the temple.

The story of what happened next is disturbing. The next city to be conquered was Ai. It was a far smaller and less powerful city, and the strategy was just to send a few of the army there. But they were soundly beaten, which caused Joshua and all Israel shock and great sorrow. What happened? Why had God forsaken them? Why did the army flee? Had God forgotten about them? What about the rest of the conquest that they were promised?

Joshua fell on his knees and asked the Lord what had happened.

Someone took gold and silver and clothing from Jericho and kept it for themselves against God’s command. Because of this disobedience, all Israel was troubled and God gave them into the hands of their enemies. God pointed out the criminal and Achan was stoned with his whole family in the valley of Achor.

Read the account. It is disturbing. Joshua 7.

This morning, I received a question about the event. The person asking the question was taught that if a parent had sin in their lives that God would punish the church and their children until they confessed it and turned from it. They were taught that this was the message of Achan. If someone is disobedient, the whole church will suffer, and their children will suffer.

I was greatly disturbed by this and have been thinking about it all day.

This, by the way, is not the gospel. The gospel is NOT “if you sin, God will punish your children.” And didn’t Jesus say that all of scripture taught of him?

We do learn of the holiness of God in this account. He is not someone to trifle with. He cannot bless disobedience. He cannot dwell with sin. He does indeed visit the iniquity of the fathers unto the children to the third and fourth generation (Exodus 20:5) and his character does not change.

How can any of us escape? How are any of our children blessed? How can anything unclean stand in his sight, and who of us are clean enough?

The wrath of God and the horrors of sin are the backdrop of the gospel, but they are not themselves the gospel. “Do this and live” is not the good news, for who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?

The stoning of Achan is disturbing, for God does not change.

But centuries later, the prophet Hosea saw the gospel from a distance. Israel had been divorced by God – they were no longer his people. But Hosea was shown a glimpse of the gospel.

14 “Therefore, behold, I will allure her, Bring her into the wilderness, And speak kindly to her.
15 “Then I will give her her vineyards from there, And the valley of Achor as a door of hope. And she will sing there as in the days of her youth, As in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt.
(Hosea 2:14-15).

There will be a new exodus and a new deliverance. God’s bride will be gathered from every land and every nation. The gentiles will be gathered in as well. And the valley of Achor will be a door of hope.

What does it mean? How can this scene of the trouble that came on Israel be a door of hope for God’s bride?

Because Achan pointed to Christ. Achor pointed to Calvary. Christ was taken outside the camp and bore all of our uncleanness. Christ was cut off from the land of the living, bearing our curse. Achan’s sin troubled all Israel, and when he was cut off by stoning, the curse was taken away and they went on to victory. But that victory was short-lived, because all Israel were descended from Adam. All of them were unfaithful, just as all of us are unfaithful. The conquest was incomplete. The book of Joshua concludes with the book of Judges. What hope is there for any of us?

All of us have sinned and come short of God’s glory. All of us are unclean. How can Achan be stoned and take the curse away from us when every single one of us is Achan?

Only in Christ. In Christ, true God and true man, the curse that lay upon each one of us is taken away.

Isaiah puts it so clearly.

4 Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed.
6 All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.
7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His generation, who considered That He was cut off out of the land of the living, For the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due? (Isa. 53:4-8)

That is the gospel. The curse is on us because all of us have hoarded our stolen things. All of us have trusted in our own resources rather than trusting in the living God. If God marked iniquity, who should stand?

But God doesn’t send US outside the camp to bear our iniquities. He laid them upon Jesus Christ. Or you could say that he took them upon himself. Because of the mystery of the Trinity, both are correct. God laid them on Christ. God took them on himself.

The story of Achan is not “Behave or God will curse your children”. It is “come to Jesus, who bore our iniquities in his body on the cross.”

Teach your children about Jesus when you teach them about Achan.

The valley of Achor becomes a door of hope at Calvary.

Praise God!

On another note, if your church has never taught this, then it is not teaching the gospel. If you are being taught that God’s blessing comes on you when you obey and when you disobey you will earn God’s curse, then you are not being taught the gospel. Flee those churches. It is what God calls a synagogue of Satan. Go to where the gospel is proclaimed.

There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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March 9, 2021 · 5:26 pm

Pensées (brief reflections)

The plums and almonds are blossoming. The wafting smells drive my allergies crazy, but the beauty is worth it. “Where no oxen are, the stable is clean.”

Sometimes, you are dropped right into the middle of man’s total depravity and see what some humans are capable of doing to other humans, and it hits you right in the gut.

The only hope for mankind is the cross of Jesus Christ. This is the exclamation point on God’s verdict on humankind, as well as God’s compassion.

If our only hope is the cross of Christ, why are we as Christians so slow to believe the horrible things that humans do to each other. The history of the world and the verdict of the cross shout loudly from every corner that humans are indeed capable of doing great wickedness.

Humans are also capable of great beauty and great achievements. This makes their wickedness so much more wicked. If humans were not image-bearers of God, sin would not be as ugly as it is.

Today I harvested a bunch of dill and hung it up to dry. The oregano also was ready to harvest, so I gathered the firstfruits of much more to come. My tomato seedlings have sprouted. Man’s wickedness is ugly. But God remembers mercy.

Have you thanked God that he has not yet come in judgment? He has not yet gathered in all of his people, and his compassion has not yet reached an end. This is the astounding mercy of God.

And at the same time, sometimes the longing is more intense than other times.

I have had the privilege to know the stories of a few people. Some of them are the strongest, most courageous, most astounding people I know. I am continually floored by their resilience in what they have survived. This reminds me to be very patient with the ones whose stories I don’t know. You don’t know what they have endured.

I stood in line at a pizza place and ordered my pizza. They fixed it just as I ordered it. It was exactly what I expected. God’s providence is astounding. His hand is not only in that which is unexpected, but also in the ordinary and usual. Think, for a moment, about everything that had to happen for the pizzeria to make a pizza just as I ordered it. It boggles the mind, and none of it is out of God’s control.

When I was a teenager, I was in a pizza joint with my brother. He ordered a pizza. They asked if he wanted anchovies. He said “sure”, not knowing what they were. I have a vivid memory of him shouting “Fish? Fish on pizza?! What kind of monster puts fish on pizza??!”

My brother liked to make a scene.  I love that about him.

There is never any reason for anyone to ever listen to the Steve Miller Band. I tried to get my Alexa to make a note that I never, ever, under any circumstances, want to hear the Steve Miller Band. She said, “I can’t do that.” Useless robot.

Every time a pastor cracks a joke about a woman, another soul shrivels a little bit in despair, withdraws behind their wall, and vows to never, ever speak about her pain to anyone, ever. Pastors, is the joke worth it? When it is replayed on the day of judgement, will it be funny then?

Every time a pastor ridicules or scoffs at someone’s pain, mocks a victim of a crime, asks “what were you wearing” or makes a joke about mental illness, yet another soul shrivels inside and hides behind their wall. Is it worth it?

When you hear what humans do to one another in the dark, you have a hard time getting worked up about so many of the things you used to get worked up about.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus. In wrath, remember mercy.

I’m going to water my flowers now.

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March 6, 2021 · 5:28 pm

John Calvin on gifted unbelievers

Jay Adams, the founder of nouthetic counseling, based his entire method on the premise that believers are more qualified to counsel, based solely upon their faith, than an unbeliever.

I found this gem of a quote today from John Calvin (Institutes 2; 2; 15).

Calvin would argue that Adams view is a despising of the gifts of the Spirit, and an insult to the Giver.

Is the status of “unbeliever” a disqualification of all their gifts, wisdom, insights and understanding? According to the Scripture, even an unbeliever is given tremendous gifts by God.
Fundamentalist separatism, in whatever form it takes, is an insult to the Holy Spirit. We ought to know better. Here’s Calvin:

15. Therefore, in reading profane authors, the admirable light of truth displayed in them should remind us, that the human mind, however much fallen and perverted from its original integrity, is still adorned and invested with admirable gifts from its Creator. If we reflect that the Spirit of God is the only fountain of truth, we will be careful, as we would avoid offering insult to him, not to reject or condemn truth wherever it appears. In despising the gifts, we insult the Giver. How, then, can we deny that truth must have beamed on those ancient lawgivers who arranged civil order and discipline with so much equity? Shall we say that the philosophers, in their exquisite researches and skilful description of nature, were blind? Shall we deny the possession of intellect to those who drew up rules for discourse, and taught us to speak in accordance with reason? Shall we say that those who, by the cultivation of the medical art, expended their industry in our behalf were only raving? What shall we say of the mathematical sciences? Shall we deem them to be the dreams of madmen? Nay, we cannot read the writings of the ancients on these subjects without the highest admiration; an admiration which their excellence will not allow us to withhold. But shall we deem anything to be noble and praiseworthy, without tracing it to the hand of God? Far from us be such ingratitude; an ingratitude not chargeable even on heathen poets, who acknowledged that philosophy and laws, and all useful arts were the inventions of the gods. Therefore, since it is manifest that men whom the Scriptures term carnal, are so acute and clear-sighted in the investigation of inferior things, their example should teach us how many gifts the Lord has left in possession of human nature, notwithstanding of its having been despoiled of the true good.

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