Introduction: Recently I was on another flight. My eyes were burning from reading, and so I chose to listen for a while in order to give my eyes a rest. Joe Rogan’s podcast with Chadd Wright appeared on my iPhone’s recommendations on YouTube, and so I listened. I was captivated. Why? Well, for several reasons.

First, Rogan is perhaps being gripped by God. He’s still very much questioning and seeking answers to ultimate matters. That is evident to any honest listener to the conversation here.

Second, Wright is a veteran, a former Navy S.E.A.L., very much a man’s man, who was brought from spiritual death to a state of regeneration by the triune God, and he’s now an ambassador for Christ.

Third, millions upon millions of people have now been exposed to the Gospel via the largest and most listened to podcaster in the world, Joe Rogan.

Fourth, and this is what I wish to emphasize in this short post, is that Wright rightly explains that salvation is 100% of the Lord; it is God’s sovereign effectual grace, not a man-made machination/effort/accomplishment.

I’ve heard countless Gospel presentations in my life, but Wright’s here is so clear, so biblical, so humbling, that I do not know how one might improve upon it. It is genuine, clear, humble, biblical, and altogether pride-crushing. (And that is the key issue.)

Connection: In Mark 2, there is a perfect example from Scripture of what Chadd explains to Joe. Here it is:

¹⁵ And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. ¹⁶ And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” ¹⁷ And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2, 15-17, ESV)

Question: Did you catch it? Did you see what God taught there? The spiritual dead men (scribes and Pharisees) hated Jesus. Why? Well, Jesus came for sinners, for those who know they’re broken, helpless, and dead in trespasses and sins.

But that’s the opposite of how scribes and Pharisses saw themselves. They viewed themselves as the righteous ones, the ones who had it all together, the ones that those dirty sinners should have aimed to emulate.

Takeaway: What unfolds in this passage from Mark 2 is precisely what Chadd Wright explained so well to Joe Rogan. It’s all of grace, if and when God saves a person. It’s not something the spiritually dead sinner accomplishes via his/her merit or effort.

If a person is born again, he/she is born from above (John 3:3, ESV). It is possible that Joe Rogan is not far from the kingdom of God. Can you imagine the impact that his conversion might have? I thank God for Chadd Wright’s faithfulness and courage when he was on Rogan’s podcast. Indeed it is so: “Christ came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” May God grant us the accuracy and wisdom to admit we’re in the second category.

Introduction: Hebrews is a New Testament letter. We do not know who the human author was. Maybe it was Paul, but we do not know for certain. But the letter was written to do several things. One of those things was to encourage Christians whose faith was being tested, whose faith sometimes waned.

Questions: Do those issues perhaps apply to any of us today? That is, do any believers today battle spiritual defeatism? Do any believers seem to throw up their hands and siliently preach, “Just forget it. The secularists were right. We’re just cosmic accidents. And the goal of life is entertainment and scrolling on Instagram”?

That would never happen, of course. Folks are much too refined for that. Right? Um, okay.

No; the results speak for themselves. I’ve read books where the statistics reveal that people are spending up to 16 hours each day on screens. They are on screens at work, at screens at home, then at screens at leisure. It’s nearly endless. Their face is in a screen. And all is documented. Scores are being kept. The more time folks are scrolling and clicking, the better for the purveyors of products for sale. For example, newer screens. And the world grows dumber still.

Say what you will, but screen time is endlessly entertaining. I jumped on YouTube recently to listen to one of my favorite bands; the next thing I knew, two hours had elapsed, and all I had to show for it was listening to Dickey Betts’ masterful guitar skills–yet again. But those hours were gone. And what had I to show for them?

But What about Timothy? Hebrews ends (not quite the last sentence, but close) with this: “You should know that our brother Timothy has been released, with whom I shall see you if he comes soon” (Hb 13:23, ESV). Scholars understandably suggest, given the history of 1st c. Christianity under the Roman Empire’s paganism, that the writer is referring to Timothy’s release from prison. No one thinks Timothy was checking out of Rome Regional Hospital, in other words. The Roman government bureaucracy hated Timothy for his Christian witness and they were set upon his death.

Encouragement/takeaway: Have you ever viewed your sufferings as God’s gift? That is, have you seen that suffering as a Christian does at least a couple of things? One thing it does is that it reveals the genuineness (or lack thereof) of your faith in Christ and in the truth claims of Scripture. A second thing it does is bear witness to those who are teachable.

Be encouraged, Christian pilgrim. God has His sheep; they will hear His voice (Jn 10:27-28).

Introduction: I was reading Jeremiah 20 again and again. Why? Jeremiah was ministering at a time (500s B.C.) when Judah continued its spiritual and moral decline. They’d grown spiritually fat and happy, so to speak, thinking judgment would not really fall. Enter Jeremiah, God’s man.

Historical context: Jeremiah had the divine but difficult commission to tell the truth about his times. He was like the men of Issachar in that he understood the times and knew what the nation should do. But knowing that, and being faithful to herald that message, entailed many risks and great suffering. (Sound like the gospel, perhaps?) Scripture is one coherent story; it all hangs together.

The religious leadership in Jeremiah’s day was especially corrupt. Those who are supposed to be set apart for leading people in the things of God were the most morally compromised and corrupt. Therefore, they hated the truth-teller, Jeremiah. That’s what Jeremiah 20 is all about. But Jeremiah was faithful to his call from God. He had counted the costs of being a disciple of God.

Text: “But the LORD is with me as a dread warrior; therefore my persecutors will stumble; they will not overcome me. They will be greatly shamed, for they will not succeed. Their eternal dishonor will never be forgotten” (Jer 20:11, ESV).

Teaching: The true prophet of God (Jeremiah) calls the Lord a dread warrior. In other words, God’s a warrior. He is fierce. He is a fighter for light and truth. He is sovereign and the king. Though sin darkens the souls of men, though spiritual wickedness infected the religious leadership, God was still God and still had his prophetic truth-teller Jeremiah to herald the truth of God in an environment where most did not want to hear it. But here’s the good news: some did long for the truth and did have the intestinal fortitude to receive it and live by it. There’s always a remnant, in short, due to God’s sovereign grace.

Most will take the broad way of destruction; that is the clear teaching of Scripture (Matthew 7:13-14, e.g.). But some will recognize the darkness and turn to the light. Why? Because they, like Jeremiah, understand that God is their Dread Warrior.

Encouragement: Scripture teaches “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). Why? Because God is the Dread Warrior. That reality should drive us to God, not away from God, when we realize that God’s grace is extended to us in the Gospel. Jeremiah would go on and on in his ministry to teach faithfullly. He labored profoundly to reach the people. He loved them enough to warn them of the biblical commands to discern the true from among the false. And Jeremiah’s one of the greatest of the prophets in history. Why? Faithfulness. It comes down to that. He knew God was his Dread Warrior, and that there’s no ultimate success in hiding from Him.

Amuse-(vb.) “To divert the attention, beguile, delude,” from Old French amuser “fool, tease, hoax, entrap; make fun of,” literally “cause to muse” (as a distraction), from

Discern-(vb.) “To perceive or recognize the difference or distinction between (two or more things);” also “distinguish (an object) with the eyes, see distinctly, behold;” also “perceive rationally, understand;” late 14c., from Old French discerner (13c.) “distinguish (between), separate” (by sifting), and directly from Latin discernere “to separate, set apart, divide, distribute; distinguish, perceive.”

Introduction: When I was a college kid, there was a popular grunge band named Nirvana. I never cared anything for their music, but I do remember a lyric from one of their songs some of my peers played often: “Here we are now; entertain us. I feel stupid and contagious. Here we are, now; entertain us.” Well, there you have it.

Connections to Depth: Over the last many months in teaching through Matthew’s Gospel to the saints, again and again I discover that Scripture is replete with the command for Christians to be a people of discernment. We are commanded to be a people of wisdom and depth. We are not to be children in our thinking. Here’s how Paul penned it: “Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature” (1 Corinthians 14:20, ESV).

Samuel Johnson wrote that discernment is “the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit” (see Bowell’s Life of Johnson).

Remember when Paul wrote to the Christians at Philippi? Do you remember what he wrote? Here’s just a sample. Again, it’s about discernment:

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God (Philippians 1:9-11, ESV).

There’s a world of difference between amusement and discernment. The word amuse literally means “to not think.” A is the negative in Greek. And muse means “to think.”

As a publication of a few years back was titled, Let My People Think. To that, all I can say is, yes and amen.

Bottom line up front: A Conversion Story

Context: Just for the sake of candor, Ecclesiastes is probably my favorite book of Scripture. It is part of the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament, so that is appealing to me. And it’s highly literary; that also appeals to me. Plus, it is penned by one who lived life to the max, and eventually found out the hard way that wisdom is found not in indulgence but in God. That, too, appeals to me.

Solomon, for all his faults, was a man who laid it out bare. As I’m wont to say, he went from hero to zero (and back again) many times. But the context of the one verse I want to look at today concerns the conversion of R.C. Sproul, indubitably one of the 20th and 21st centuries’ greatest theological minds. R.C. said he was converted by God, and Ecclesiastes 11:3 was instrumental in that conversion.

Text: “If the clouds are full of fain, they empty themselves on the earth, and if a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie” (Eccl 11:3, ESV).

Takeaway: One might scoff and mutter, “Really? That verse? Are you kidding me?” But slow down and think. What’s the book of Ecclesiastes about? Vanity of foolish pursuits vs. fulfillment in God. Wisdom vs. folly. Under the sun vs. under the Son. And so when Sproul’s friend confronted Sproul with Ecclesiastes 11:3, God used the word picture in that verse to quicken Sproul’s soul. He (Sproul) saw that if he continued to live a life of self-indulgence, it was just so much vanity and futility. He would be like that tree that fell in the forest of the cosmos–utterly insignificant. But if he understood that he was not just a random collocation of atoms, if he understood that he was created in the image of the sovereign God, suddenly everything made sense. And Sproul was converted, and he became a massive influence on his and subsequent generations.

Here’s the way one writer describes this event: “A fellow student of R.C. Sproul read this verse to Sproul while the latter was a freshman in college in September 1957. Sproul was immediately convicted, seeing himself as a dead tree, fallen and rotting on the ground. After a few hours of wrestling in prayer, seeking the mercy of God, R.C. Sproul was converted. He later confessed that he is likely the only person in church history to have been converted by this verse.”

Let us not underestimate God.

Introduction: For many months now, I have been teaching through the Gospel of Matthew verse-by-verse. This coming Lord’s Day, we are in Matthew 22:23ff. This passage is where Sadducees and Pharisees continue to try to entrap and outmaneuver the Lord Jesus. Let that sink in. Outmaneuver God incarnate? Man’s hubris knows no limits.

The hostility of religious people who hated the Lord Jesus knew no limits either. This all precedes the “Seven Woes” Jesus pronounces in Matthew 24, a blistering divine rebuke of the Scribes and Pharisees. When I read these passages over and over, I shake my head at the image some professing Christians have of a Jesus who is meek and mild.

The historical record of the Christ is quite different. Jesus rebuked people to their faces by calling them snakes, vipers, whitewashed tombs, and hypocrites. He didn’t bow his head and say, “Let’s just pray about it.” He called out mendacity and false shepherds, and the lying world hated Him for it. But He was on the side of truth, because He was and is truth incarnate.

In Matthew 22:29 and following, Jesus told the Sadducees plainly, “you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.” Then in Matthew 22:46, the Apostle reminds us, “And no one was able to answer him [Jesus] a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.”

The Biblical Account: In other words, when truth dominates, every mouth is stopped. Truth means light–and light exposes the darkness (John 1:5; 3:19-21; Romans 3:19; Ephesians 5:13).

• “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5, ESV).
• “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God” (John 3:19-21 ESV).
• “Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God” (Romans 3:19, ESV).
• “But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible” (Ephesians 5:13, ESV).

Takeaways: It really comes down to something quite simple: Do we believe God? When I ruminate upon things, it is hard not to think that most people fear men rather than fearing God. And of course, God has spoken to this clearly: “The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is safe” (Proverbs 29:25, ESV) and “For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ” (Galatians 1:10, ESV).

Does anyone think that’s unclear? Should not believers love the light? Is that in fact not commanded by the Lord from Genesis to Revelation?

“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5, ESV). Light and truth. They’re metaphors from the very beginning of redemptive history to its consummation. Light and truth.

As I finalize my notes for teaching Sunday, that’s my prayer for God’s people. May we be known for light and truth. Anything less than that comes from not from God but from a quite different source.

Introduction: I was with the saints from class recently, and one of them spoke up and called attention to something foundational about the teaching of the Lord Jesus. He, a saint in class, said, “He [Jesus] always went to motive, the motive of the people.”

Context: For over a year, I think, I have been teaching through the Gospel of Matthew. I read the Bible a couple of hours each day as normal regimen, but when I’m teaching through a particular book, I read, reread, and read again that particular book, especially, in addition to the daily regimen.

For many moons now, that book has been Matthew’s Gospel. And what the man from class was addressing was the increasing hostility that the Christ was experiencing at the hands of scoffing Pharisees, scribes, Sadducees, and others. They mocked; they tried to entrap and entangle Jesus, again and again, usually over some detail in Scripture. (Just let that sink in: you try to ‘entangle’ God the Son in theology? Um, okay; good luck with that.)

Text: Solomon wrote one of my favorite zingers in theology: “Commit your work to the LORD, and your plans will be established” (Pr 16:3, ESV). Know what that entails? The motive of the Christian must first be Godly; the Lord blesses Godly motives by way of fruitful ministry/output.

The commitment by the believer must first be to the Lord. It’s why Bach signed his musical pieces the way he did; it’s why C.S. Lewis wrote the way he did after he was converted; it’s why Flannery O’Connor was unflinching in her literary genius and her short story and novelistic portrayals of evil and hypocrisy. They’d all first committed to the Lord their giftedness. It wasn’t about them; it was about the truth of God. They understood their identity as servants of God.

Encouragement: The Lord sees. Do we believe that? I do. And it terrifies me. Why? Because I blow it–so often. I let my sin nature get the better of me. It’s possible I’m not alone. What if we labored to commit our best efforts first unto the Lord and His truth? Why? Because truth is inseparable from God, because God is truth and in Him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5, ESV).