Introduction: At my core, I’m a man of the soil. I tend to be suspicious of perceived elites–whether they’re that (‘elites’)– labeled that way taxonomically due to wealth, status, power, looks, or whatever.

I’m very much at home with folks who know what it’s like to have worn dungarees, shelled peas with Grandma, and used a weed eater/trimmer when it was known as a sling blade. Some folks are ashamed of sweating and of having shopped at Walmart. I’m not one of those. (I’m a soldier. I sweat daily, and there’s no telling how much money I’ve spent at Walmart over the last 40 years. Maybe their actuaries could tell you.)

Slice of life: Once again I was blessed to be part of serving the saints in a small called-out assembly. They were like me–sinners, hungry for the word from the Lord, hungry to know someone cares about them and puts in the work on their behalf.

We were in Matthew 24 this morning at our assembly. The precious saints again turned out, and we assembled under the authority of Scripture. In short order, we came to highly-controversial sentences:

Then . . . this:

So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), ¹⁶ then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. ¹⁷ Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house, ¹⁸ and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. ¹⁹ And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! ²⁰ Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath. ²¹ For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. ²² And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short. ²³ Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. ²⁴ For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. ²⁵ See, I have told you beforehand. ²⁶ So, if they say to you, ‘Look, he is in the wilderness,’ do not go out. If they say, ‘Look, he is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. ²⁷ For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. ²⁸ Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather. (Mt 24:15-28, ESV)

So what? The So what? is this: Don’t be a fool; be discerning. Be wise. Be a man/woman of understanding and redemption.

Encouragement: Christian pilgrim, are you down? Same here. Are you overwhelmed by the news of your day? Do you feel the temptation to give in to evil, to feel like ‘this present darkness’ overpowers you?

Takeaway: Have you ever read about when Paul was in prison in Rome? Have you read of Bunyan imprisoned in England? Have you read about when Edwards was fired from his church in Massachusetts? Have you read about how he (an intellect like few others) was fired from the church he served for decades? Have you read of Spurgeon’s spiritual darkness in London, or of Sproul and MacArthur, fighting for the sovereignty of God in Orlando, FL and Los Angeles, CA in the 1970s-2000s?

Probably not. It’s glossed over. But it was real. There were warriors in our past. When you think of how the medical Dr. Lloyd-Jones left off his career in medicine to be a doctor of men’s souls, it puts steel in your Christian spine. May we learn from these faithful ones–learn to persevere, endure, and discern wisdom from folly, the genuine from the false, and depth from distraction.

Introduction: I was reading Mark 7 from the New Testament recently and was again struck with how often Jesus the Christ teaches on reality vs. appearance. In short, God hates hypocrisy and posing. God wants righteousness that issues from a gospel-transformed nature. The standard of righteousness is God’s holiness; it is never human vainglory. Nothing is quite so despicable as a man who thinks he is quite something. My precious but now-deceased grandmother might have said, “Rooster, that fella’s too big for his britches.”

Here’s the text from Mark 7:

Traditions and Commandments

7 Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, ² they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. ³ (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, ⁴ and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) ⁵ And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” ⁶ And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,

“‘This people honors me with their lips,
    but their heart is far from me;
⁷ in vain do they worship me,
    teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’

⁸ You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” (Mk 7:1-8, ESV)

Teaching: The Pharisees and scribes were guilty of what, according to Jesus? External righteousness and internal rottenness of soul. Their hearts were cold and hard. But they appeared righteous to the undiscerning.

But whose standard is supreme? The Pharisess’ standards? The scribes’ standards? The standards of Thursday afternoon? Or Tuesday morning’s standards? How about Saturday’s standard? Whose standard is supreme? The question answers itself, if one is faithful to Scripture.

Secular sinful standards fluctuate based upon nothing more than the druthers of the sinners issuing them.

Takeaway: The Lord Jesus told these hypocrites to their faces that they honored Him with their lips but that their hearts (their true natures) were far from Him. In other words, they were rejected by the Holy One, because they loved the applause of man rather than the commendation of God. Let the reader understand. (Nothing quite teaches like authenticity.)

Introduction: This Sunday I am slated to teach on Matthew 24. It is known in church history as one of the most difficult of New Testament passages to teach upon due to its references to timelines (or lack thereof) regarding cataclysmic events. The allusions to Jesus’ return, to the abomination of desolation, etc. have been interpreted in sundry ways. Some view them via a postmillennial framework, others from a premillennial framework, and others from an amillennial framework. And yes, there are other positions, too. Indeed, it’s a packed chapter. Oftentimes when some people reference it, they generate more heat than light. I think if I hear one more joke about being a panmillennialist, where things just “pan out,” I may vomit.

Rather than stirring the waters of controversy this Sunday, I hope to shed light on the major historical views regarding the passage. What’s more, I hope to focus our attention upon one theme in particular: endurance.

Why do that? Well, that’s what Christ did in the passage. Here are Jesus’ words:

⁹ Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. ¹⁰ And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. ¹¹ And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. ¹² And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. ¹³ But the one who endures to the end will be saved. ¹⁴ And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:9-14, ESV).

Endurance. It’s key in the passage for several reasons.

First, many people will miss the point of the passage and be consumed by what I term calendar theology. Dates, signs, etc. That stuff gets crazy quickly. Just in my lifetime, I’ve heard Bill and Hillary Clinton termed the antichrist, Obama as the antichrist, Musk as the antichrist, the various popes as the antichrist, America as Babylon. And I’ve heard Dispensationalists put dates on raptures and second comings, etc. It’s absolutely zany the lengths to which some will go in their speculations wherein Scofield and Darby are authoritative but the text of Scripture isn’t. Um, no thanks.

Second, the main issue in the passage is to endure, not to check off dates on a theological calendar. Why do I say that? Again, because “many false prophets will arise and lead many astray” (Matthew 24:11, ESV).

Verse 12 teaches us that “the love of many will grow cold.” That seems so obvious to me. We’ve gotten to where it’s common to hear folks say they trust no one. At the gym the other day when I was working out, the guy beside me had on a t-shirt with this emblazoned: Trust No One. How’s that for clarity? That’s just one more piece of evidence of love having grown cold. There’s a trust deficit. Postmodernist skepticism has reached all the way to the levels of t-shirt sloganeering.

Third, Jesus ends his teaching in Matthew 24 by reminding His hearers to endure. He says, “be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect” (Matthew 24:44, ESV).

In short, endure. Christian pilgrim, endure. Take the long view, I think that’s what Jesus is teaching. Be faithful, fight the good fight of the faith once for all delivered to the saints, leave the results to God, and just be a faithful enduring soldier for Jesus Christ.

Bottom line up front: There are things that God hates, too. That’s in Scripture, too. So, let us forgo cherrypicking.

Questions: Have you ever heard people spout, “God is love”? Sure, we all have. Does that phrase occur in Scripture? Of course. It’s part of 1 John 4:8–which is part of a sentence, which is part of a paragraph, which is part of a letter, which is part of the New Testament, which is part of the Scriptures.

But is it possible that, if taken out of context, or not read in light of all of Scripture, those three words can be grossly misunderstood? Yes, indeed. Hence the raison d’etre for this piece.

Segue to Scripture: I love the writing of Solomon and the Wisdom Literature. In Proverbs, e.g., we read ths:

12 “I, wisdom, dwell with prudence,
    and I find knowledge and discretion.
¹³ The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil.
Pride and arrogance and the way of evil
    and perverted speech I hate.

Those sentences are Proverbs 8:12-23, ESV.

Teaching: Wonder why we don’t hear folks spout those words about hatred of evil being an indicator of being a believer?

Wonder why we don’t hear that Scripture also records that God hates–let that sink in–hates “[p]ride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech”?

What you do hear is love, love, love–divorced from biblical moorings and context.

There are many other times God is said to hate in Scripture. We might look at the following as just a sampling: Proverbs 6:16-25 is one passage of things God hates. Psalm 11:5 says that God “hates the wicked.” Psalm 5:5 says God hates “all evildoers.” And verse 6 of that psalm says God abhors the “deceitful man.” The list is long in Scripture of those whom God hates and the evils that God hates.

Takeaway: Wisdom entails knowing and accepting all of God’s revelation in Scripture rather than cherrypicking parts of phrases to fit our own sinful desires. Does God love? Of course. But God also hates.

One cannot be holy who does not detest evil and lies. Discern the big picture of who God has revealed Himself to be. Anything less is lazy and dishonest.

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.