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Know Thy Opponent

This is a theme that I developed in my recent book on the War of the Priesthood. It is articulated so well in Delano’s recent piece:

“The family has been under attack for decades by forces eager to control terms and take territory when it comes to ideas around sex and marriage. Radical ideologues have seized control of academic institutions, government agencies, and media companies.

The question for pro-family conservatives is not whether these ideas need to be defeated. The issue is figuring out which strategies, tactics, and weapons—whether political or rhetorical—are most effective for today’s fight. The battle continues, but one thing is certain: minimizing collateral damage will go a long way toward helping us secure victory.

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Why I Love America!

I have lived in this great country for 29 years, which is double the time I lived in Brazil. In South Carolina, I was exposed to my first Shakespeare plays and some of the finest art in the world. It was in Pennsylvania where I committed my life to Gospel ministry. In Florida, I met my wife and received all of my theological training, and I currently reside as a pastor. I have traveled this country extensively from Miami, FL, to Moscow, ID, and from York, ME, to Los Angeles, CA.

I love this country and treasure its history, people, and land. I believe in the Declaration of Rights and Grievances and the Presbyterian Revolution of 1776. I believe in the Boston Tea Party. I believe in the first constitutional republic of this world.

While much of my Brazilian tendencies remain, I believe in the American way of life and culture. I believe in its unique ability to react at the first sight of government abuse. The COVID response was a uniquely American response. It wasn’t in England, and certainly not in Australia or even my birth country. We produced Fauci, but we also produced millions of anti-Fauci apologists. We stood against tyranny because it was an American thing to do. The world watched, while many of us held our “hell-no” signs in word and deed.

When Chesterton came to the U.S. in 1921, he needed to stop by the consulate to receive his passport. He was asked to answer certain questions. One was, “Are you in favor of subverting the government of the United States by force?” His response: “I prefer to answer that question at the end of my tour and not the beginning.” This comedic gold is a bit of the American dream, which is more than merely enjoying the blessedness of America’s culture but it’s the ingrained sense that Americans are at ease challenging themselves and confronting themselves when wrong-doing is at bay.

There are plenty of concerns that any decent American citizen should have about the trajectory of our nation. The Christian Church in this country should fight for the crown rights of King Jesus in every sphere. We must stand against every moral depravity parading our streets. But the fascinating thing is that though we are being led by a confederacy of dunces, we are still overwhelmingly generous as a nation. And with the exception of large cities run by Democrats, the country is overwhelmingly stunning and fruitful. Evangelical churches abound. This Fourth of July will still be overwhelmingly pleasant and delicious, and patriotic.

Yes, we still live on borrowed Puritan capital, but that heritage is far from done. Revival is always present, and reformation is always occurring. There is great hope for this nation because it is hopeful. There is great hope for this nation because God has not abandoned his Church in America. America is worth preserving, fighting, and defending.

Happy Independence Day to the greatest nation on earth!

May God bless America!

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The Devil’s Bridesmaids

Images of naked creatures roaming the streets of great cities, dressed as bridesmaids for the Devil’s wedding, are the kinds of scenes we should expect as Paul’s words become more and more meaningful. For the Apostle, these grotesque displays are handed over to a reprobate mind. Once you achieve that level of expertise in wickedness, nothing is keeping you from insanity. Even innocent children are not spared from such sights. Their guardians train them in the paideia of depravity to see these aberrations as common.

As evil persists in its schemes, ugliness permeates its actions. The unbeliever gets uglier with each generation as their actions catch up with their persons. Underneath the mountain peaks of facial paint is a valley of dry bones. Its pursuits become even more vile with time until they rot to nothing. The ungodly are like the chaff which the Spirit-wind drives away.

But Christians, in their pursuit of the good, become beautiful. They blossom in their forgiveness and repentance. They cherish life and its goodness. They parade their faith in the public square with modesty and charm. They are like vines with fruit abounding. Their children sing of the mercies of the Lord.

As C.S. Lewis notes:

“We…(want) to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.”

We do not want mere external beauty but the absorption of it in all our doings. We want the normativity of beauty exemplified and contrasted with the ugly displays. Christians are people of beauty who see evil, resist it, and create an alternative that sets the captives free.

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The Church is a Feast-Factory

Christians come into worship to inhabit time. When we forsake worship, we lose track of time; we live in a foreign time zone. But when we come into worship, we come into heavenly time; a time when the Church communes with the king of time, Jesus Christ. Worship allows everyone to be in the same rhythm, marching with the beat of the liturgy.

The pre-resurrection church was in the dark. They couldn’t read the time accurately, and everyone’s clocks were set according to their own schemes. The false teachers drew us away from real-time. They perverted the rules of time. They made up time and forsook the time of the Torah and the prophets.

But the resurrection of Jesus gave us uncorrupted time; without perversion. The Church walked in accordance with the time of heaven.

She has since been feasting since AD 33 with gusto! And as long as she communes with Jesus and continues in this long-time-tested tradition of gathering and lifting their voices, she won’t lose track of time.

The Church is a feast-factory; she produces clocks for a world gone mad; a world lost in sadness that arranges life according to her own time-zone. The world has no sense of time, so she makes her own time. But God has ordained one time, one day, to come as one.

While the world fabricates parties to make sense of time, the church parties on since that glorious day when time saw a stone rolled away and a resurrected Lord triumph over the gates of hell.

Time is on our side. And therefore, let us join the feast! Christ has died! Christ is risen! Christ will come again!

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Church Growth as Stewardship

Providence Church was honored to bring in 46 new members yesterday. We don’t treat these new members like a badge of honor for meeting our annual quota. Quotas be damned! There are blessings for growth to which any congregation must steward well.

We can’t live in the romantic era wishing things remained neat and tidy because romanticism is a subtle form of deception. The parents with five children who long for the good ol’ days of one child are likely failing to handle the present by longing for the past.

Growth can be a sign of health, but if not carefully shepherded, it can be the first real feature of compromise. Like all our members, these new members are aware that to be a formal member means that they are formal representatives of a body. This means that they must take Paul’s words seriously to avoid a quarrelsome spirit, seek the unity of the body, commit to the church’s doctrine and life, and avoid the all-encompassing expressive individualism of our day.

We are also quite aware that there will always be growth areas for parishioners and pastors, but these areas of sanctification occur within an established paradigm of commonality, which does not mean “precise agreement” but general and charitable agreement on the trajectory of our congregation as a local body, and a body within the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.

Pray for us because we pray for many of you (within and outside the CREC) in Escambia County and around the globe.

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The Revival of Psalm-Singing

Psalm singing is experiencing a revival today. Sacred harp groups are increasing in the U.S. and Europe, and Sea Chanties have catapulted in popularity, chanting has also returned to the life of many congregations. Our little band of churches in the CREC has made Psalm singing a central part of our mission. And you may ask, “What is behind such a renewal of interest in singing sacred music?”

Three elements stand out:

First, people seek permanent things whenever a society undergoes tumult and confusion. They flee from the fleeting. They seek things that stabilize their culture and those who they love. Music, especially biblical music, offers consolation and strength when nothing else in society makes sense.

Second, many are discovering that church music is not as complicated as it appears. Reading music, or at least following sheet music, is achievable, even for those who did not grow up in musical homes or churches. All it takes is a few good practices, and suddenly, we are singing things that, on paper, look quite complicated. If you put a few folks together with a few simple songs with a few predictable lines, you can easily sing a metrical psalm, and then if you take it to the next step, you may learn a through-composed psalm and then a fugue tune, and then the sky is the limit. But ultimately, all it takes is a willingness to learn something new.

And finally, this renewal has come because parents have seen the benefits of singing in their own homes. Even if they did not grow up in singing homes, they now see the fruits of singing in their homes and among their children, congregational music moves from the eucharist table to the tables of our homes and even at work.

Tonight, we have a selection of Psalms (and a couple of hymns) that fit lots of these layers of knowledge. We have a chant, which is quite predictable, but then we have a fugue tune that will require a bit of work and several things in between.

I pray this evening will further encourage you to pursue Psalm singing. May this revival be more than a fad or a trend; it should be a way of life for God’s people.

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Our De-Ritualized Culture

I have argued before that we have a de-ritualized culture, a culture that is allergic to rituals. Therefore, we will lose the battle because pagans have rituals as well. Pagans are strengthened by these rituals when they’re exercised in their communities and their religious expressions.
But the Apostle Paul is skilled in the Hebraic culture, and the Apostle Paul understands that the Bible is embedded in a culture where rites of entrance are given to people, and where entryways are needed so that a person can be transferred from one old world to a new world.
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What is Pentecost Sunday?

Here is the bad news: Pentecost will likely not have the prestige of Christmas and Easter. In some ways, we are still trying to persuade evangelicals of the need for the Church Calendar. But we move on with our agenda. It is crucial to know that we are talking only about Classic Reformational and Lutheran celebrations, which include Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost. In other words, these are conspicuously Christ-centered feasts. These feasts exalt the work and name of Jesus.

Some may say, “But we celebrate Easter all year long. Why do we have to set time aside to celebrate it in particular?” While this comment is noble, it is important to note that you can’t say everything all the time lest you say nothing at all. In other words, there is simply no way to celebrate all these events all the time. Hence, the Church has developed a way of celebrating, remembering, and internalizing the life of Jesus throughout the year.

So, what is Pentecost, and what are some ways we can celebrate this Feast?

Pentecost means the fiftieth day because it is the 50th day after Passover. This was also the Feast of the Harvest. In fact, we can say that Pentecost is the great fulfillment of all previous Pentecosts. The Old Testament Feasts led us to this fiery moment of redemptive history in the first century. The Great Harvest Feast is now being fulfilled, and God is harvesting the nations. Christ is sitting at the Father’s right hand, and the nations are being given to Jesus Christ as an inheritance (Ps. 110).

This year, Pentecost is from May 19th to November 30th.

How can I celebrate this Feast?

One way to be liturgically self-conscious is to practice a few things.

First, you should wear something red this Sunday. Remember the promise of Acts 2 that the Spirit would be poured out like fire. Pentecost is the re-birth of the Church. Red symbolizes the fire that came from heaven and empowered the Church as they moved from Jerusalem to the uttermost parts of the earth.

Secondly, use this time to talk to your children about the Holy Spirit. The Third Person of the Godhead is often set aside as the forgotten Person of the Trinity, but he should not be. We must remember that Jesus refers to the Spirit as our Comforter (Jn. 14:16). Reading Acts 2 and other passages about the work of the Spirit is a healthy way of bringing recognition to the One who is truly God.

Thirdly, allow this feast, which celebrates the reversal of Babel, to be a reminder that God has made a new humanity through his Spirit. We are no longer a divided ethnos; we are one new creation of Jews and Gentiles. Live out gospel reconciliation in every possible situation.

Fourthly, educate yourself about other Church traditions. As a Reformed pastor, I can honestly say that I have learned much from my Anglican, Lutheran, and Baptist brothers and sisters. Pentecost is a reminder that our differences should never cause us to divide from other Trinitarian believers.

Finally, do not be hopeless in this season. God has not left us orphans. The absence of Jesus’ physical body on earth means his presence at the right hand of the Father in heaven, ruling and reigning by his Spirit, forming a resurrected creation under his reign.

Christ is Risen! Rejoice greatly! The Spirit is among us!

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The Ascension House

Long ago, our Father in Heaven had a plan. His plan was to create the world as a theater to display his glory. The world was to be a house that reflected his name. The Shekinah glory was to remain there forever. But through many dangers, deceit, and downfalls, the house slowly lost the purpose the Builder had for it.

But you see, God’s construction plans are not like our building projects. His ways are not our ways. He was going to restore, rebuild, and reclaim his own house. This time, the house was not going to be built on spiritual adultery or religious idolatry. It would be built on the Rock, which was Christ.

In the life of Jesus, the foundation was poured on the earth. In his death, the wall and roof were placed to cover and shade the world. In his resurrection, fresh, clean water is available to the nations. He is the fountain of everlasting life. But there is one part of this earthly construction that is missing. There is a foundation, a roof to protect you from the storms, and running water to shower and quench our thirst, but now we need to turn the house on. We need the power to turn the refrigerator, stove, microwave, air conditioner, heater, fan, laptops, cell phones, etc., whatever it is to make this a functional operation. If this will be the kingdom’s headquarters, we need it on! We must activate the house so everyone can live with a purpose; we must ensure that the priesthood of the house is equipped to spread the story of the household far and wide.

The Ascension of Jesus is that singular event in history that gives life to everything; that sets everything into motion. It is the power that the Church needs to disciple the nations.

Without the Ascension, we are living in an almost finished property. But with the Ascension, the kingdom is not just ready, it is eager to be inhabited once and for all. The power is on. We can now move in together as a Church and take care of it. Let us prepare our hearts to celebrate the ascension of the master of the House; the reigning King, Jesus Christ.