Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:16 — 7.0MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | RSS
The Lavish Grace of Christmas! Pastor and Author J. Steven Wilkins discusses the misguided thinking that Christians should not give lavish gifts at Christmas. Our talk centers around a recent movement called the Advent Conspiracy. Pastor Wilkins reminds us of what Christ has done for us at Christmas and how we are to respond in kind. a
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.
(more…)
Proverbs is a training manual for David’s son to learn how to exercise authority wisely. Yahweh promised him the nations as an inheritance (Ps 2); that he would rule over the world (Ps 72). Consequently, he must grow in wisdom to match the responsibility that the Father planned for him.
Standing on a mountain in Galilee, having been recently declared David’s true son through his resurrection from the dead (Rom 1.3-4), Jesus proclaims, “All authority in heaven and upon earth has been given to me” (Mt 28.18). Unlike the first son, Adam, who grasped for authority prematurely, seizing the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which had the power to make one wise (Gen 3.6), Jesus was patient, waiting until the Father gave him the authority. He resisted, what James Jordan calls, “the dominion trap,” on several occasions. During his temptation in the wilderness, the devil tempted him by promising him authority over all the kingdoms of the world if he would pledge his fealty to him. “You don’t need to wait. The world is a mess. You need to be a man of action. Jump out there and do something about it. You have power. You could change the world.” Jesus knew that it wasn’t time. Going about taking dominion without first being established in the fear of the Lord and maturing to the point that he could handle the responsibility was a fool’s errand. No matter how good his intentions might be, without the wisdom to handle the responsibility, the mess made in the end would be worse than the beginning.
(more…)
This is a sad day for my home country. Lula won a narrowly divisive runoff election this Sunday and will begin his third term as president at the age of 77. Convicted of corruption, he served 580 days in prison, and after his release, he became the symbol of victimhood.
He sought old partnerships and was able to reanimate a nation to the old causes of social transformation through the state. It didn’t matter the misery incurred by such policies in Venezuela, Cuba, or Argentina, Lula’s charm and political capital earned him overwhelming victory in the poorest part of my country, the Northeastern part (where I grew up). Lula functions in some ways like a Neo-Pentecostal leader who appeals to the poor through promises of prosperity, offering a Gospel as convoluted as a Marxian paradigm. And the people said, “Amen!”
Bolsonaro, on the other hand, was the Tropical Trump; if Trump could dance and recite the Lord’s Prayer, he would be the Orange Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro is equally charismatic as Lula, and the oddity of the whole thing is that wherever he went in the Northeast, he was received with immense approval. But politics is a tricky business. The people may love a candidate, political inclinations, or moral declarations, but they are easily seduced by flattery and promises of statist charity. I’d also happily admit to Bolsonaro’s number of blunders throughout, but the options were so universally contrary to one another, leaving Brazilians with no excuse.
The tremendous benefit is that this entire thing has awakened a conservative resurgence in my home country. Conservative principles are now much more common than before Bolsonaro’s election. I suspect the various movements will only continue to grow. Certainly, the environment is ripe for a conservative nationalism that sees Brazil’s interests, morally and economically, as the heart of a prosperous nation.
(more…)
At a recent event titled Life After Roe, which was hosted by the Hale Institute of New Saint Andrews College, a panel of four legal specialists discussed the Dobbs ruling which overturned Roe v Wade. Both pro-life and pro-choice positions were present on this panel made up of two legal professors and two litigators. Read this for an overview of the evening.
The striking thing was how this panel captured quite clearly the crossroads before America.
The Dobbs ruling marks a significant transition for the country as we move from Old America into New America. The order of the panel nicely illustrated this transition. On the left, there was a pro-lifer and pro-choicer, both from Old America, who had one kind of conversation. On the right, there was a pro-lifer and a pro-choicer, both from New America, and they had a different kind of conversation. In New America, the end of Roe is an earthshaking fault line that highlights the divide in this country and the reality that there is almost no common ground between the two sides anymore. The striking thing is that this divide runs not only between pro-lifers and pro-choicers, but also between Old America and New America.
(more…)
When I was invited to offer an invocation at #NatCon2022, I knew that I would be preceded by an opening prayer by a Jewish Rabbi and a prayer on day two by a Roman Catholic priest, and I was to conclude.
I was concerned about the amorphous nature of these events, especially in light of the presence of political and media figures–especially hostile ones–in the audience. But the host gave me a green light to pray as a Protestant, and I did. I was extremely honored to do so. My gratitude to Dr. Yoram Hazony and Dr. Clifford Humphrey for the invitation. P.S. The line of my prayer quoted in the media had a larger context, which, as you can see below, was fairly Christian in orientation.
Prayer for #NatCon2022:
Almighty God, Father, Son and Spirit, we give you thanks for your goodness and faithfulness; for the cup of creation, which overflows with praise and adoration to the Triune God in every square inch of this world. We come before you wholly dependent on your care. We give thanks to your holy name for sins forgiven, redemption displayed, love shown, and justification that comes through the resurrection of Messiah Jesus. We bring ourselves–hearts, minds, souls, and strength–to the great God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
We pray boldly that our nation would be uncompromising in her convictions concerning life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. May she preserve life that comes only from the poetic words of a Creator who uttered, “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” May she preserve liberty that comes only from the Gospel-filled language that the truth will set you free; may she find happiness not in the unrestrained sexual revolution but in the marriage between a man and a woman, the bringing up of a godly offspring, the fellowship of the saints, and the love of country.
We pray that you would save and defend your Church universal, which you purchased with the blood of our Lord. Do not allow the Church to be seduced by false messages of prosperity, power, perversion, and self-preservation, but let us be rooted in your love, law, and life. We pray for the proclamation of your Word in this land that it might pierce our hearts and renew our longing to be disciples of the Son of Man who gave his life for us on a tree.
May we not grow weary in well doing, but rather let your Church proclaim the full Gospel that calls kings and nations to acknowledge and serve the king of nations. And therefore, to abandon hope that America might become Christian is to abandon the promise that the nations will be Christianized.
In your infinite wisdom, O God of glory, you have bound us together as allies and co-belligerents seeking the good of the city, the county, and the country. And so, as we pursue the renewal of this nation, remind us that our goal is not ultimately to find refuge in good policies but to find the favor of the good and holy God who made us for his good pleasure.
Bless the labors of Yoram Hazony and NatCon this year and the years to come and prosper this work so that our beloved nation might taste the kind benefits of a society rooted in biblical truth and law.
And so, Father, Son, and Spirit, we pray as Chesterton did, that you may not take thy thunder from us, but indeed take away our pride; the pride that keeps us longing for a new ethic, and ultimately, a new god. Keep us humbled before your truth that it may shine deeply in this dark land; keep us steadfast in thy word that we may always build on the sure promises that are yes and amen, the assurance of a God who does all things well, and on Zion, holy city of our God.
We thank you for your promises in the Psalter that the nations would be your footstool. And so we implore that you would exercise your dominion, O Lord, over this nation. May every valley be exalted and may your throne be established on all the earth.
Enrich us this day with learning that we may grow in wisdom and in knowledge and so find that all wisdom and knowledge is ultimately found in the greater Solomon, Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, Amen!
My church meets in a small city in the metropolitan area of Houston, Texas. Our city council meetings always begin with an opening invocation. A local pastor is invited to lead the prayer at each meeting. I am grateful to be in the regular rotation of pastors. It is an honor to represent Christ before elected officials and pray for them as the Bible commands (1 Timothy 2:2).
How should a pastor pray at such meetings? Praying at a public event can be intimidating. Any type of person, with any type of belief, might be in attendance. You have to assume that a variety of religious and political affiliations will be present: Christians, non-Christians, conservatives, liberals, and anyone in-between. You know going in that not everyone will like your prayer. Some might be offended by it.
Because of this, a pastor could be tempted to offer a shallow prayer. A short, generalized prayer would avoid controversy. Being vague would keep everyone happy. But this temptation must be avoided by every minister of the gospel. We shouldn’t be controversial for the sake of being controversial, but we must proclaim the truth boldly and clearly.
As a public representative of Christ, a pastor should want to emphasize the basics of the faith: The Triune God (not a generic “God”), the sinfulness of man, redemption through Jesus’s death and resurrection, and that Jesus is Lord of heaven and earth. The prayer should then address city-specific issues: That elected officials would rule according to godly wisdom, that judges and police officers would be a terror to evildoers, that crime would cease, and that there would be true peace in the community. At the end of the prayer, no one should have to wonder what you believe or what kind of Christian you are.
(more…)
You are on trial for a crime you did not commit. Your accusers know that you are innocent. This is a setup because they don’t like you; you are on the wrong side of the political lines, shaking everything up. You must be handled. They are aimed at taking away your position, family, fortune, and if they can swing it, your life.They are not like the thugs on the street who will walk up to you and take your life. They are using the justice system that they have corrupted to make it all “legal” and “above board.”
Who is your defense? What should happen to these people? It is not only your fate that is on the line here. This is the fate of Justice itself and with it the survival of society into the future. If the distortion of justice is allowed to go on, the entire society will be turned upside down. To make things right, those that seek to distort justice must be the subjects of true justice.
(more…)
Postmodern Times by Gene Edward Veith, 1994
This is an important book that demystifies Postmodernism. The book is thirty years old but still accurate for today’s world. When the book was written, the postmodernist project was a small seedling which made it hard to see all the parts. Today, the postmodernist project has grown up into a forest and all the parts are clearly visible right in front of us. This book is like a user’s manual for the world we live in today.
Here are three key reasons this book is important to read.
First, this book offers helpful definitions on many of the key terms that are around us all the time: postmodernism, social construct, queer theory, and intertextuality.
Here are some of the most important terms and definitions from the book.
Objectivist: those who believe that truth is objective and can be known (pg. 47)
Constructivist: those who believe that human beings make up their own realities (pg. 47)
Queer Theory: culture as suppression of homosexuals (pg. 53)
Intertextuality: culture is texts interacting with other texts (pg. 52)
Deconstruction: dismantle the paradigms of the past and bring the marginal to the center (pg. 57)
Social Construct: these paradigms are useful fictions, a matter of “telling stories” (pg. 57)
The second reason this book is important is that it clearly shows how the postmodernist project is ultimately aimed at destroying the individual self. That can seem like a strange claim to make given that our culture is so obsessed with identity. Let me explain.
(more…)
The Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco Salvatore Cordileone announced last week the excommunication of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The Archbishop has cited Pelosi’s refusal to back down from her public advocacy of abortion, which conflicts with the moral positions of the Church, Christian tradition, and the Holy Scripture.
Many news outlets have strangely described the event as the “denial of communion” (Washington Post) or a “communion ban” (Fox News) rather than excommunication. One criticism of the excommunication comes from Whoopi Goldberg – who once pretended to be a nun in a movie and now pretends to speak with even greater erudition than the Archbishop. Goldberg claims, “This is not your job, dude! You can’t — that is not up to you to make that decision.”
The term excommunication itself literally means “out of/from communion” and is from very simple Latin: “ex” and “communicatio.” I believe the modern American sees phrases like excommunication as harsh and as with a sense of permanence, yet this is not the historic understanding of the term. The process of removing a Christian from communion is not related to any particular sin, but rather the obstinate refusal to repent. While various sins certainly place individuals in a grave position at odds with Christian teaching in faith and morals, it is impenitence alone that leads to formal excommunication.
The historic understanding of excommunication is lost on many who would rather paint the church’s role in excommunication as harsh, judgmental, and unloving – yet the act of excommunication is by the witness of Christ and his Apostles an act of love toward the wayward. God’s grace is fully present and offered in the pronouncement of excommunication as a final call away from sin and into the free gift of forgiveness – over even the most notorious of sins.
Just a few lines down from, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” (Matthew 7:1) our Lord Jesus also says, “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (v. 19) and “‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'” Jesus clearly expected that there would be situations that demand separation and even destruction from those who departed from his “narrow gate” (v. 13-14) and the, “will of My Father in heaven.” (v. 21). Jesus also passes down the authority to enact this separation through his Apostles with his own words, “And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:19).
St. Paul explicitly continued the practice of excommunication and explains that the act might be for the benefit of those engrossed in sin, “deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” (1 Corinthians 5:5) St. Paul saw excommunication as having the power to save, not as a malicious act to permanently destroy. The Geneva Bible includes these helpful notes, “The goal of excommunication is not to cast away the excommunicate that he should utterly perish, but that he may be saved, that is, that by this means his flesh may be tamed, that he may learn to live to the Spirit.”
Goldberg contends that, “The archbishop of San Francisco is calling for speaker Nancy Pelosi to be denied receiving Communion because of her pro-choice stance…” While this statement is partly true, Archbishop Cordileone claims that the decision is “purely pastoral, not political.” The idea that an activist Bishop might wield the keys of the kingdom for political reasons is rightly to be feared, yet the issue of abortion is not simply political. There is a plainly spoken and unbroken witness in the Christian tradition from the first-century Didache (“you shall not abort a child or commit infanticide.”) through today in defense of the unborn. There is no doubt that ancient Christians consistently held that life in the womb was to be protected and the taking of this life was a sinful breech of the commandment to “do no murder.” Again, it should be reiterated that Cordileone has not excommunicated Pelosi for a belief about abortion or even “the grave evil she is perpetrating”, but rather for obstinately refusing to repent of her advocacy of abortion.
The Archbishop’s position to excommunicate a powerful governmental figure for their support of a grave evil is not new and has precedence in church history. In 390, Bishop Ambrose of Milan excommunicated Emperor Theodosius, claiming that the “The Emperor is in the Church, not above it.” The same could be argued today, in that Speaker Pelosi is in the Church, not above it. Emperor Theodosius’s excommunication was directly related to his role in the massacre of 7,000 men, women, and children in Thessalonica. After eight months outside the church, Theodosius kneeled his heart in penitence and was restored to communion. Through excommunication, the same grace and hope for restoration is offered to Pelosi.
The emperor himself had not driven a sword into a single individual, just as Speaker Pelosi does not herself scrape out a baby using a metal curette, yet the policies supported and advocated by Speaker Pelosi have contributed to the deaths of millions of unborn children through legal abortion in the United States. The Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s research arm, estimates the number of annual abortions to be over 800,000. (from 2017 figures)
In response to the Archbishop, Pelosi has openly criticized the church’s positions, accused the hierarchy of hypocrisy, and went on to receive communion at a church outside of the Archdiocese. Perhaps this speaks to Pelosi’s character or perhaps to the weakness of discipline in the Roman Church, but it certainly is not representative of a spirit of humility or of respect for her claimed ecclesiastical tradition.
During the formative years of my Christian walk I sat under a church that prayed each week for those who had strayed from the Christian faith. We would pray for those who are not saved, but also for those described as “under discipline” (or “excommunicated”). Each week we would recite the names of those under discipline and ask, “that our Lord would bring them to a place of repentance and restore them to the fellowship of Christ’s church.” Seeing them actually return to answer these prayers was always a powerful testimony. My own tradition speaks to excommunication in the Articles of Religion, “XXXIII. Of excommunicate Persons, how they are to be avoided.” Here again, excommunication is affirmed but with the goal that such treatment, “as a heathen and publican” (see Matthew 18:17) would result in reconciliation, penance, and received back into the full fellowship of the church.
Kuyperian Commentary Podcast
