The Gospel Coalition

“All that is meant by Decadence is ‘falling off.’ It implies in those who live in such a time no loss of energy or talent or moral sense. On the contrary, it is a very active time, full of deep concerns, but peculiarly restless, for it sees no clear lines of advance. The loss it faces is that of Possibility. The forms of art as of life seem exhausted, the stages of development have been run through. Institutions function painfully. Repetition and frustration are the intolerable result. Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces.”

“Behold, I am making all things new.” Revelation 21:5

See Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present, page xvi.

Jean-Paul Sartre said, “Revolution is seeing each other a lot.”

The power of a cohesive church. Acts 2:42-47.

Quoted in Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts about the Sixties, page 80. Amazing book.

Flannery O’Connor described our times as “an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.”

Pain management.

Flannery O’Connor, “Novelist and Believer,” in Mystery and Manners, page 159.

Malcolm Muggeridge went to Stalinist Russia in 1932 as a journalist for the Manchester Guardian. He had to submit his reports to a government censor before they could be sent back to Britain for publication. One day the censor looked his story over, shook his head and said, “You can’t say that, because it’s true.” Muggeridge commented, “It seemed like a basic twentieth-century text.”

See Malcolm Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time: The Green Stick, page 223.

“By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day — and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it.” Revelation 21:24-27a

In October Jani and I were in Beijing. One evening we went out for dinner at the 300-year old home of a Chinese prince, now a restaurant. The menu offered, among other dishes, deer afterbirth. With that exception, we loved it all. Traditional Chinese dress, dance, food, music. I thought of John’s vision of the holy city where we’ll live with God forever, this passage in chapter 21, and I thought, “All this human fascination here in this restaurant — a preview of coming attractions. Modernity will not succeed in grinding these glories of human creation into indistinguishable gray mush, these glories which the Lord Jesus wired into us in the beginning. The redeemed will bring into the holy city the glory and honor of their nations. The languages and literatures, the music and the dances, the sports and the jokes — all the charming, impressive, venerable and hilarious creations of man, but now purified and consecrated to the Lord Jesus Christ, who will rule over us all with great joy.

Streaming through the gates of the New Jerusalem I see a Scottish pipe band in their kilts, and here come some amazing African dancers, and (my personal favorite) a garage band from 1960′s California. Here comes Jane Austen with her novels. Here comes some shepherd boy from Greece in the second century A.D. with his little home-made pan pipe. No one is excluded. Everyone is treasured, rejoiced over.

The Savior of the world says to us all, “So then, what are you? What are you, London, Tel Aviv, Nashville? Whatever you are, bring it on. All you stand to lose, by coming to me, is your damnation. And everything else about you I will make eternal, to the glory of God.”

How can we not love Someone like that?

Paul sees maturity as growing up “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). To rise to such grandeur, we are not helped by a diminished view of Christ. We need to see his fullness again and again, Sunday after Sunday.

On August 18, 1955, Carl Henry wrote Billy Graham a letter full of the wisdom and courage we need in our generation. The issue at hand was the formation of a new magazine, though the relevance of his outlook is far broader:

“I have carried with me into and through the night the burden of the new magazine, Christianity Today. There has come to me the growing conviction that, at its present level of editorial projection, it carries, if not a compromise of principle, at least a sufficiently perilous strategy as to render its ultimate effectiveness insecure and uncertain, and enough of a disposition to introduce a sturdy theology only by degrees as to give me grave doubts that it offers me justification for stepping out of my present theological responsibilities. I have no personal reputation for bitterness; my friends have included men in all theological brackets. But in evangelistic and missionary thrust, I have but one uncompromisable zeal — that Christ be known in His total claim upon the life. At the beginning of our century, the question raised by the sponsors of that fine series “The Fundamentals” was, Have we told the whole truth? We seem to be wondering when we may dare tell some of it.”

Quoted in Wilbur M. Smith, Before I Forget, page 181.

Yes, let’s be ready to give intelligent, respectful answers to current objections (1 Peter 3:15). But let’s never treat Jesus as a problem, as if we’d better hide some aspects of him. There comes a point when we trust him so much and admire him so much that we risk offending our unbelieving friends, lest we offend our glorious Lord. Let’s not slight the Lord of glory. Let’s display his fullness, not holding back at all. Let’s see what he will do with that. And along the way, we ourselves will grow toward his grandeur.

I wish I could influence year-end givers to consider two ministries. One is Covenant Theological Seminary, and the other is The Gospel Coalition. Both are being used by God to raise up a new generation of faithful ministers of clear gospel conviction. Anyone can find out more at:

Covenant

Coalition

George Whitefield (1714-1770), the Anglican evangelist, said, “God can send a nation or people no greater blessing than to give them faithful, sincere and upright ministers.”

Quoted in J. C. Ryle, Select Sermons of George Whitefield, page 75.

My dad died this year. I think about him a lot. I drew strength from his love. I miss him.

As a kid growing up, I didn’t need an alarm clock most mornings. I woke up to the sound of my dad, down the hallway, singing in the shower. Every morning he sang heartily, cheerfully, with zero irritation to me, this hymn:

When morning gilds the skies
My heart awaking cries
May Jesus Christ be praised
Alike at work or prayer
To Jesus I repair
May Jesus Christ be praised

I never wondered about my dad. Never once. Never. I knew where he stood. Unlike so many others, he was not hard to read. He did not take a wait-and-see, keep-a-low-profile, play-it-safe approach to life. Jesus was too real and wonderful to him. He praised the Lord openly throughout the whole of his life, public and private. What a man!

I want to be unmistakably easy to read, beginning with my dear family.

William C. Burns was preaching in Perth, Scotland, in 1840. His biographer writes,

“The power indeed that attended his words, and the effects which often in the most unexpected quarters followed them, was at this time most remarkable. ‘I never thought,’ exclaimed a strong, careless man, who had heard him, ‘to have been so much affected; it is surely something altogether unearthly that has come to the town.’”

Taken from Islay Burns, Memoir of the Rev. Wm. C. Burns, page 144.

Cultural relevance in preaching is good. I don’t want to preach to yesterday. God has made me responsible to the actual people around me. I accept that. I like it. I want to get better at it. But there is more. Shouldn’t a message from the King make people say, “Something altogether unearthly has come to us, something from far away, beyond ourselves. That’s why it’s so helpful”?

I want to re-learn how to preach.