Our Father and our God, your riches abound far higher than the fortunes of Abraham and Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. The cattle on a thousand hills are yours, the wealth of Egypt, yes, even the gold, frankincense, and myrrh of the nations belong to you! All glory and strength to the Epiphany King who revealed himself among the Gentiles and makes himself known even in our presence on this night.
Father, Son, and Spirit, Your majesty is adored by every square inch of creation, for even the invisible things bow down before you. As we gather this evening to celebrate the fruitfulness of life, and the abundance of kindness, the wonder of the incarnation, and now the glory of the revealed Son, we join our voices in triumphal praise to the One who befriended us and established a communion of peace in our midst at Providence Church.
We give thanks that the Nazarite vows have been fulfilled in the greater Samson and that no ruler can keep us from tasting of your goodness in wine; nor the impositions of men can bind our conscience, but only the marker of love and temperance can keep us sober and full of festive shouts in the assembly.
We drink wine tonight, for you are a God of freedom who conquered our hearts when we were enslaved to our passions. As the Apostle declares, where there is liberty, there is love and peace and truth and righteousness. Guard us against abusing your gifts, the gift of wine, and especially the gift of gratitude.
May we see these glassy chalices as signs of the overflow of heaven to earth and heartily give thanks to the giver of all good things. So far be it from us to turn our backs to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose name is blessed and worthy to be praised and who gives us all things richly to enjoy. So, we entreat you; give us hearts that flourish with thanksgiving as we toast the King of glory; who is this King of glory? Yahweh mighty in battle!
May we drink believing that our very bodies and souls are in communion with you, for your covenant promises are yes and amen! As we salute and savor the prince of peace with every glass of wine, may our fortunes be passed down to our children and our children’s children and to those upon whom your favor rests.
May gratitude overflow, may the laughter of the saints outlast and outlive the laughter of the oppressors and persecutors; may your church sing as choirs of angels in exaltation, may wine gladden our hearts, food fill our bodies, and carols fill this house with your presence.
We pray these things in the name of the Lord of glory, the Savior of Israel, the prince of Salem, the Lion of Judah, the One who came, is coming and shall come again, and the One who exults over us with singing, and delights in our pleasure, Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
“Tyranny” is thrown around in our culture much like the word “abuse.” Every time you make me feel uncomfortable, it is “abuse.” Every exercise of authority is “tyranny.” Because words are misused doesn’t mean that genuine abuses and tyrants don’t exist. They do. But we need to know where God draws these lines.
Solomon’s concern in Proverbs is to train his son to be a wise king and, therefore, to exercise authority properly, whether that authority is over his own appetites or the entirety of Israel. Authority is a right and responsibility granted by God to govern. Wherever God grants authority, that authority is real. When that authority is exercised in harmony with God’s authority, it must be obeyed. To disobey legitimate authority is to disobey God himself.
One of my predictions in 2023 is a relatively certain one. It pertains to the continual decline and fragmentation of Mainline Protestant Churches.
In the late ’90s, Thomas Reeves warned the liberal, mainline churches against “smug denominationalism.” He used C.S. Lewis’ language as a cautionary tale about the direction of liberalism both in the political and religious spheres. His book was aptly entitled “The Suicide of Liberal Christianity.”
In 2020, mainline Protestants were bleeding numerically, shutting down their ornate buildings, which were ironically transformed into modern pubs all over Europe. They possessed one of the “lowest retention rates in any tradition” (Pew Research). From 2007-2017, they lost over five million members, and the children of these members were going farther and farther away from any religious manifestation. But even back in 1996, Reeves noted that the decline of mainline churches has “been eroding for better part of this century.”
The culprit in the 20th century is the same in the 21st. According to Reeves, “their defining theological doctrines have been largely forgotten.” While there is a modicum of hope in Reeves’ 26-year-old book, he concludes with profound pessimism. Should the mainline churches continue unchanged in their direction, they will proceed “on their steady slide toward complete irrelevance (211).”
The mainline consisting of PCUSA, ELCA, American Baptists in the USA, United Methodists, etc., have taken trajectories of death throughout. They have sought to bestow power on inclusivism and anointed corrupt priests to lead the way, and to hell, they led.
Conservative ecclesial bodies must invest in catechetical discipleship and build a reservoir of resistance against liberalizing forces without and battle locally and nationally against such forces that seek to crawl their way into the midst of the assembly.
Reeves was right that smug denominationalism is a temptation for many of us. Many of our conservative churches have grown during supposed crises created to ensure complacency among the populace and within the church. But, in God’s kindness, never was reading leaves such an easy task.
The task of the conservative corpus is to seek the good of the city by building on that eternal city. In the midst of the tranquility of growth and theological prosperity, may we not grow weary in well-doing. Smugness tickles our vanity, but humility steadies our march.
Rarely has a film confounded my movie sensibilities so powerfully as Frank Darabont’s “The Mist.” Somehow and in some way it is simultaneously terrible yet entertaining, ridiculous yet strangely compelling, pedestrian yet brilliant.
No, scratch that last contrast.
It isn’t a brilliant movie. It flirts with brilliancy—plays footsie with it—like a pair of middle-schoolers who cannot truly reach the heights of love but mimic its form, perhaps even feeling like they’re swimming in love’s deeper currents.
And yet! I couldn’t stop watching it.
And yet! The ending is so shockingly poignant—so shockingly unexpected (at least for me)—that the last five minutes of the film very nearly absolved all the overwrought and bewilderingly unrealistic moments.
The film was released in 2007. So I’m quite late to the party. Were it not for the personal recommendation from Pastor Brito, the movie likely would have remained forever lost in the endless tunnels of Netflix. But there I was the other night, remote control in hand, the red ribbon of Netflix booting up on my TV, ready to be lost in a horror pick.
In many ways, it was the best of situations. I was sick with a lingering cold and knew next to nothing about the movie. All I had was the vague recollection of flappy, bat creatures terrorizing people in a grocery store from the trailer I had seen years earlier.
My faded memory proved accurate enough. In the aftermath of a nasty storm, a father and son go to a grocery store to restock various food items. Once there, a strange mist envelops the building leaving those trapped inside to decide their next play. Naturally, a little fog never hurt anyone, but various horrors are lurking about in the mist, just waiting to eviscerate the next hapless victim attempting to escape.
There are hints as to why all this is happening, but all that is tangential. The movie is fundamentally concerned with the interaction of (mostly) strangers from diverse backgrounds and worldviews trying to navigate a harrowing situation. In the same way that Signs wasn’t ultimately concerned about the visitation of aliens, this isn’t ultimately about flappy, bat creatures—deadly as they and their fellow minions prove to be.
This is precisely where the movie shines and very nearly flops. On the one hand, the acting and interactions are so questionable and poorly executed at times one should feel a strong urge to move on to better and brighter flicks. But then again, if you view it more as a theater play—one designed to be over-the-top—almost in a Job-esk dialogue kind of way (though not nearly so poetic)—I trust it can be forgiven, even appreciated.
Stated simply, it is intentionally grandiose and blunt.
The characters are not nuanced. The creatures are not nuanced. The setting is not nuanced. Everything is chiseled from the black and white ore of stark contrasts.
And yet, to stress the point again, somehow it works surprisingly well.
Some would no doubt want to pontificate upon the social and political undercurrents running through the film, but I’m not so inclined. They exist, but I think it would be a mistake to take it too seriously. The frame of the script cannot sustain the weight of such symbolism. Or perhaps it would be better to say that the effort of pontification should be reserved for more richly praiseworthy films.
This isn’t snobbery. It’s honesty and practicality. One dare not cheapen the enterprise of unearthing layered meaning and symbolism by hoisting “The Mist” up next to Lewis, Melville, or McCarthy. Popcorn is fine, but it isn’t especially nutritious.
In the end, the ending is what provides a beacon of bold light in an otherwise moderately entertaining fog. I truly love Darabont’s choice of conclusion. And from what I have gathered, even Stephen King said that had he thought of it, he would have done it.
Yet, for all that, I would not recommend the movie unless, of course, you have already seen most of the greats. If you have partaken of Forrest Gump, Whiplash, Band of Brothers, and Children of Men, for example, then please indulge in this fun horror romp on a foggy Friday night once the kids have gone to bed.
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Austin Brown is a mailman with a hunger for theology and writing. He had the good providence of marrying his high school sweetheart, Rebekah, is the father of three, and is an ordained ruling elder in the PCA. He’s also a nerdy gamer, a movie lover, and the author of various theological works and novels, including Walking with the Mailman. It’s true; there is scant fondness for canines in his heart.
Death is not a subject we normally think about this time of year. We are in the Christmas season in which the new life of the infant, Jesus, is celebrated. The New Year is a few days away, and it is a time of new beginnings. The promise of new life in the birth of Jesus and that sense of a fresh start in the new year focuses our attention on life. But just as the shadow of the cross hung over the manger and the infant, so our own mortality casts a shadow on all of these new beginnings. Death is inevitable no matter how many new beginnings we have in this life.
I’m not trying to dampen your spirits and dull your celebrations, but death plays its role in our Christmas celebration. What I call the final Christmas Carol in Luke’s Gospel, the Song of Simeon, is surrounded by and shot through with the realities of death; Simeon’s death, the death of Jesus, and even a form of death for Mary.
The soprano solo begins with an unadorned recitative (that is, a melodic speaking that is essentially rhythmically free): “There were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.” As the narrative moves forward, the accompaniment increases with a sweet but driving rhythm, building to the place where “suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying.” Then, majestically, the chorus joins in singing, “Glory to God, glory to God in the highest!” From that point on, voices sing in harmony and answer one another with the Gloria in Excelsis Deo, the song of the angels when they announce the birth of Jesus. In his Messiah, Handel captures well the mood and glory of the scene. When performed well, the sound that surrounds you and strikes your body with its power, tuning your whole being to its message, is rapturous.
As glorious as a well-performed Messiah is, it must be a dim reflection of what the shepherds heard that night when the angelic armies, the throne-chariot of God, sang the Gloria for the first time. Nevertheless, as dim as the earthly reflection might be, the angelic warriors were drafting earthly warriors to take up this song with them. The church has done so by including the Gloria in Excelsis in its historic liturgies for many occasions. We continue to sing the angelic war song because we continue to fight for that peace which is the aim of the song.
The song is brief, but it is pregnant with meaning. The song is composed with parallels that help us to understand its message. “Glory” is parallelled with “peace,” “highest” is paralleled with “earth,” and “God” is paralleled with “favored men” or “men with whom he is well pleased.”
“Glory to God” is not synonymous with “praise God,” though it certainly includes that. The angels are proclaiming the glory of God, and the glory of God is the manifestation of his life; it is the radiance of his character; it is the expressed fullness of all that he is and does. When paralleled with “peace,” the angelic choir is proclaiming the way God himself lives. God’s glory is manifested in peace. This peace is the full, joyful, healthy life that is shared among the members of the Godhead and those in heaven. God lives eternally at peace as Father, Son, and Spirit, and the aim of the creation project is to bring the earth to enjoy the fullness of this peace. The angels are prayerfully singing that God’s peace will be realized on earth as it is in heaven.
This peace of God will come to those whom God favors or those with whom he is well-pleased. These favored ones, the shepherds, Mary, Elizabeth, Zechariah, and others like them who hunger and thirst after righteousness–for God to set things right in the world–will be the recipients of this peace.
This peace will only come at the end of conflict because the present evil powers who despise God’s peace will not go down without a fight. With our King, we, the armies of God, will fight. The fight is not conventional fleshly warfare. “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly but are powerful in God to the pulling down of strongholds” (2Cor 10.3-4). One of our weapons is to join the song of the heavenly armies. As David drove away the evil spirits through music (1Sm 16.23), so we, through singing with the angelic armies, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace with favored men,” will advance the line against our enemy to eventually bring about the peace of which we sing.
Is Zechariah confused? What is singing about in Luke 1: a political, sociological, national deliverance, or a spiritual deliverance? On the one hand, he prophesies about “being saved from our enemies and all who hate us,” and on the other hand he speaks about John giving the “knowledge of salvation in the forgiveness of sins.” Maybe Zechariah is still trapped in the thinking that the Messiah would come as a military leader to deliver Israel. But wait, he also speaks about the forgiveness of sins. Can it be both?
Zechariah’s song resonates with the song of Moses after Israel’s exodus from Egypt. Words such as “visited,” “redeemed,” and “remember” all have echoes of the Exodus. Phrases such as being “saved from our enemies” and being “delivered from the hand of our enemies that we might serve him without fear” all point to Zechariah understanding what is happening with the birth of his son and of Jesus as being a new exodus.
In the beginning there was God and nothing else. Then Word carried by Spirit begins to pulse in harmonious tones into the nothingness. A world outside of God himself begins to appear. The song sung by the Triune God creates and begins to shape the world. As each element in the cosmos comes into being through this song, the song continues to reverberate in each created thing’s existence. The morning stars created by the song echo back and enhance the song as they become millions of voices (cf. Job 38.7). Mountains and hills, raised from their watery darkness, break forth into singing as they emerge. The trees that spring from the earth clap their hands (cf. Isa 55.12). Sea creatures, birds, and land animals all take up the song and sing the song of their Creator. Then the song shapes the dust of the earth into the form of a man and breathes the song into him. And when the woman is created from the man, the song is then sung in praise to God for the woman.
God is musical. God is a singer. His speech is glorified, and his glory cloud is made up of angelic hosts who surround him with music. The prophet Zephaniah says that he exults over us with loud singing (Zeph 3.17). Is it any wonder why, then, from the beginning of our existence, music and singing have been so prevalent? We are images of the Great Musician. His song, his image, vibrates through every fiber of our being. We are intended to continue this song, continuing to shape and create the world in harmony with God.
But the music in us has become discordant and distorted. Sin has intoned its own tune that is completely out of harmony with the song that is still in the creation. Those who love the old song, the original song, lament the dissonance and long for a new song that will bring in a new creation. That new song begins to be heard in the opening chapters of the Gospel of Luke. First Elizabeth. Then Mary. Then Zechariah. Then the angels. Then Simeon.
The presence of singing is not merely the exuberance of a few individuals (though they are rightfully exuberant). The songs indicate that the old discordant creation is not only getting its song back, but it is getting a new and greater song that will resound throughout the rest of time until the song of earth and heaven become one song.
Mary’s song contains some of the first notes of the new creation. The song is being sung into a world that is upside down. The wrong people are on the thrones of the earth ruling in unrighteousness. The wicked are exalted while the righteous are lowly. The wicked are rich and full, prospering from sinful structures, while the righteous are poor in spirit and hungering and thirsting after righteousness.
But as the song begins to be sung by a young, Jewish, virgin lady, echoing the brooding song of the Spirit that hovered over her to create Salvation in her womb, things are changing. The long-awaited promises given to Abraham that his seed would inherit the world (cf. Rom 4.13) are present, even though immature.
The song will grow louder as the Spirit gathers more singers. The new creation will emerge. Where there are thorns the cypress tree will grow. The myrtle shall grow and overtake the briers. The mountains and the hills will once again sing with joy and the trees of the woods will clap their hands (cf. Isa 55.12-13).
As the darkness continues to be pushed back by the light in this Advent season and throughout the course of history, continue to sing the songs of the Lamb, empowered by and in harmony with the Spirit. New creation is growing by the Spirit who empowers our song. Sing on!
You might think that a previously barren woman who was giving up her three-year-old son to the service of the Tabernacle, only to see him once a year from this time forward, would be mourning her loss and maybe even trying to renege on her vow. But that is not what we see with Hannah. Her heart, bursting with joy, sings a song that picks up melodies from the past and will echo one thousand years into the future as it is taken up by Mary, the mother of our Lord. Hannah is in the Spirit of Christmas a millennium before the birth of Christ Jesus.
Hannah’s exuberance is not grounded in what we find in many popular or even Christian Christmas songs. Her joy is not in the sentiment of memories of family, friends, and romantic interests of the past or present. She is not gushing over being with family at this special time of year. Indeed, she is leaving her son, the son that was the answer to her prayer, because this is her part in God’s grand mission. She is exulting in the true Spirit of Christmas: the fact that God is exalting his faithful people through the crushing of our enemies. The world is upside down because it is being ruled by the serpent and his seed is being set right through the fruit of the resurrected womb of a woman. There is no hint of calling a “Christmas truce” with God’s enemies. This is war, and the birth of this miracle child means that God is fully engaged. Hannah, for one, is quite excited about it. She’s all in with God’s mission for the world.
I recently had the opportunity to meet and participate in a panel discussion with Pastor Douglas Wilson. He is, at least in the small circle of my own denomination, the Lord Voldemort of Reformedom, “he who shall not be named.” But it is past time to admit publicly and with gratitude that Doug Wilson has had more influence on my thinking, theology, and pastoral ministry than any man alive today. His ministry of writing, preaching, and lecturing has informed, instructed, and encouraged me from afar for many years, and I would not be a Reformed minister today without his influence, though that admission will dismay many of my brothers in the OPC.
When I discovered the doctrines of grace while serving as a minister in the Churches of Christ, I became a theological orphan. Men who had been my mentors and fathers in the faith became, in some cases, not all, my harshest critics. I owe a debt of gratitude to those men as well for many things they taught me, and I speak of them frequently with appreciation. They laid the groundwork for me to discover sovereign grace and the covenantal structure of redemption. But I became at that point, and in truth had become some years earlier, a man without any teachers to whom I could turn, and so I had to learn from the dead. I will never have the opportunity in this life to shake hands with John Calvin, Augustine, C. S. Lewis, or G. K. Chesterton, men who became and remain my tutors in faith and piety. I thank God for them and look forward to expressing gratitude to each of them in glory. But there have been few men who were living to whom I could turn and from whom I could learn. (My own father was also a major influence, but I am thinking here about theological teachers.) Many men encouraged me—men who might not want their names listed in an article praising Doug Wilson; you know who you are and how much I love each of you—but without question, and without even a close second, Pastor Doug has been the single greatest teacher and influence upon my theological development of any man still alive today.
When I began moving in Reformed circles, I was reliably informed that Doug Wilson is a no good, horrible, very bad man. God alone knows how many hours of my life have been spent reading every negative story, every criticism, theological and otherwise, every piece of documentary evidence made available online seeking to establish that Doug’s image belongs in the post office rather than in the pulpit. I have not read everything Doug has ever written—who could keep up with his literary output? —but it is safe to say I have read more of his books and vastly more of his articles, essays, and blog posts than any of his critics that I have directly interacted with. His publications fill a considerable section of my personal library. For a while I simply trusted the Reformed leaders who assured me Doug was bad news. To my shame, my children remember my expressing reservations and repeating criticisms about him during that time. It was only after investing so much time over several years trying to discover the truth that I finally came to terms with the man and the controversies surrounding him.
I know something about theological and ecclesiastical controversy. If Doug is a whale swimming in the chilly waters of the Reformed world, then I have been and will remain an undersized tadpole in a rain puddle. But I experienced doctrinal and ecclesiastical war firsthand during the last several years I served in the Churches of Christ, and my own journey into Reformedom was not without its share of controversy. I recognize, in hindsight, and with shame, that I contributed to my own infamy in many ways. I often responded to my critics in ways that were unhelpful and, sometimes, just plain wrong. I was unwise, arrogant, and sometimes confidently confused. It isn’t easy to fit my size 12 foot into my mouth, but we all have our talents, and that is certainly one I have demonstrated on many occasions. I cannot believe, and I think I know better than to say, that Doug has never made the same mistakes. But I also know what it is like to be misunderstood, persistently and consistently so, even after many careful clarifications. I know what it is like to be misrepresented, oftentimes unintentionally, and sometimes not. And I know what it is like to be slandered without cause. The least serious criticisms that have ever been made about me were probably the ones that were most fair or had the most truth in them. The most serious have been laughable, including the one a few years ago that suggested I was flying to Honduras to meet secretly with leaders of the Churches of Christ. Critics in the Church can be creative, though both their criticisms and Christian screenplays suggest they may need to work a lot more on developing coherent storylines.
I am not a seminary professor or widely esteemed leader in the Reformed churches, as many of Doug’s critics are, but I am someone who has tried to read and listen to him and to his critics comprehensively, carefully, and charitably over a number of years. When it comes to Pastor Doug Wilson, there are three kinds of critics. The first are men who have done their homework, at least to some extent, and they have specific and responsible disagreements with Doug on particular points. It may be infant baptism or paedocommunion, it may be on how to distinguish Law and Gospel or how to express the objectivity of covenant union and the sacraments. But these critics are fair. They do not paint with a broad brush. They do not hyperventilate or clutch their polemical pearls. In most cases, they don’t even wear pearls. And they don’t have an archive of Doug Wilson memes ready to post whenever Reformed thought leaders sound the alarm.
The second kind of Doug Wilson critic is far and away the most numerous. These are the men and women who have been reliably informed by their theological betters that Doug Wilson is a very, very bad man. Most of them are not sure why. When pressed, they are confident that he denies justification by faith alone and the imputation of the active obedience and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. They know that he is a racist, hates women, and loves child molestors. And they are fairly sure he was never properly ordained. They may be less confident that Doug was directly involved in the Kennedy assassination, though we should not be too quick to rule it out, but there is no doubt that he is a bad influence and a false teacher about… something.
The third kind of Doug Wilson critic is what we might politely call a damned liar. These are men who either know what they claim about Doug is false or who cannot be troubled to check. They affirm what is not true, and when corrected, they prove themselves unteachable, uncorrectable, and incorrigible. They will not read or listen to what Doug has to say—though they insist they have. Why should they? He is a false teacher. They will not concede when their allegations are proven false by confession and clarification. After all, that’s just the kind of thing a slippery and dishonest false teacher would say. They will never make themselves available for a public dialogue or debate, because everyone knows that Doug Wilson is a false teacher, so why should we give him a platform to create confusion and spread his diabolical cheerfulness? Theological controversy should not be clouded by arguments and engagement. Instead, it should be prosecuted by confident assertions and indiscriminate allegations pronounced in the safety of our own ecclesiastical counties and posted in the echo chamber of social media. These are not unevidenced allegations after all. I have seen the memes and the de-contextualized “quotes,” and I can tell from the black and white photo that accompanied it and the sinister music playing in the background that Doug Wilson really is an enemy agent. After all, doesn’t he love to quote an unrepentant and pugnacious papist?
The first kind of critic makes all of us better, and we should all thank God for the sanctifying providence of having such men in our lives. The second kind of critic needs to do their homework. Read a book or ten. Listen to sermons without malice, and really listen to what is being said. Remember that the Reformed experts you trust are men with feet of clay, just like Doug and the other men they criticize. As for the third kind of critic, you know who you are, and the good news is that Jesus died so that dishonesty, slander, and divisiveness can be forgiven too.I would not be Reformed today if it were not for Doug Wilson. I would not be a paedobaptist. I would be less cheerful, less fruitful, and less faithful if it were not for Doug’s life, ministry, and influence. My marriage has benefited from him. My relationship with my children has for many years. My local church and my fellowship with those I pastor has benefited immeasurably from what I have learned from that man. I only met Doug Wilson once, and he probably won’t remember my name. But I thank God for him. J. C. Ryle said, “The best of men are only men at best,” and I know that is true of Pastor Wilson and every other man, living and dead, that the Lord has used for good in my life. But it is past time to express my appreciation publicly. I thank God for Douglas Wilson.
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’Abraham Kuyper
