Man’s heart is tortuous, crooked – it is a Jacob-like deceiver ever resting in the bosom. The human heart is man’s Trojan horse, loved and yet most effectively subtle in its deception.  [...]]]> “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9).

Man’s heart is tortuous, crooked – it is a Jacob-like deceiver ever resting in the bosom. The human heart is man’s Trojan horse, loved and yet most effectively subtle in its deception.  Your heart is the devil’s leviathan within you, for inside your very heart you profess to be wise but have “exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures” (Ro. 1:23).

Scripture is not complimentary toward the heart of man.  Nonetheless, even students of Scripture continue to depend upon man rather than God, though you know that men will disappoint you because of the fallenness of their hearts.  God says, “Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind.  Do not trust in princes, in mortal man, in whom there is no salvation” (Jer. 17:5; Ps. 146:3, respectively).

Disabuse any thought you have of perfectly judging any heart, particularly your own because “there is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Prov. 16:25).  There is but One who can rightly evaluate the heart of man, and He is the One described by the Council of Nicea (A.D. 325) as, “very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.”

The Lord Christ is not deceived by the way you look, by your speech or your actions (Jn. 2:24f.).  His eyes are a flame of fire from whom no creature is hidden, “but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do” (Heb. 4:13).  “God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (I Sam. 16:7).

Your outer man is decaying, and this earthly tent is being torn down, but every Christian has a building from God, a house not made with hands for it is eternal in the heavens so he shall not be found naked (II Cor. 4:16-5:3).  You cannot cure your twisted heart or the hearts of those you love because “that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (Jn. 3:6).  The Lord’s Spirit must bring about a miracle to transform any human heart, including your own.

If you are not trusting God for all things, you are not trusting Him for any thing.  Are you living in a spiritual dark age?  Solomon says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight” (Prov. 3:5f.).  Paul says, “I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day” (II Ti. 1:12).

Why are the ways of those around you so attractive to you?  How did you come to cast your eye upon others in order to determine how you should live?  Who ever told you that the customs [...]]]> “Do not learn the way of the nations… for the customs of the peoples are delusion” (Jer. 10:2-3).

Why are the ways of those around you so attractive to you?  How did you come to cast your eye upon others in order to determine how you should live?  Who ever told you that the customs of your associates should become your regulative principles? God forbids you from practicing the lifestyle of those outside the pale of Christianity – so why do you live a Christian contradiction?

Even Christians want societal acceptance.  Even Christians are so committed to resembling the majority of people that they oftentimes join the wolves.  Nonetheless, God does not leave you without a witness, for you notice in the practice of the Apostle Paul that “when some were becoming hardened and disobedient, speaking evil of the Way before the multitude, he withdrew from them and took away the disciples, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus” (Acts 19:9).  

Your Lord describes the customs of those around you with the word “delusion.”  The Hebrew term connotes the concept of vanity or breath without substance.  The customs of your society included treating Sunday as it would any other day, legitimizing physical intimacy outside the bounds of heterosexual marriage and endorsing materialistic consumerism.  Man is being reduced to a commodity so that he is at best an expendable asset.

In the third century anno Domini, Tertullian said, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”  God’s truth generally takes up residence in minority positions and practices.  Is your practice of Christianity a succession of compromises?  Compromisers discover only too late that they merely journey from one wilderness to another.  Thomas Watson said, “A man may as well expect to find heaven in hell, as in a sinful way.”

Those refusing to conform to the compromises of their culture historically have been called Nonconformists.  Their attitude toward customary practices is uncustomary.  Noncompliance with activity outside the pale of the Bible is the foundation of one being involved in a cultural shift.  Vincent Alsop said, “The work of eternity must be begun in time upon us, and done in time by us.”  You must abort sloth, cowardice and natural imitations – refuse to avoid conflict over God’s truth.  

Pilate knew Jesus was innocent, but he bowed to the demands of the people (Lk. 23:4, 14, 15, 22, 24).  Though his wife told him Jesus was righteous, he chose for his hands to become stained in the blood of the Christ.  Why did Pilate do what he knew was wrong?  He had advanced too far down the abyss of compromise.  Even his wife’s still, small voice was not as powerful the voice of the masses.  By Eve sin came into this world and though this daughter of Eve warns against conforming to the will of the world, this son of Adam followed in the way of his first father.  

There are but two ways: broad and narrow, crooked and straight – no neutrality.  Christians not only avoid evil; they walk in the way of the good.  Christianity is experientially identified by positives and negatives, omissions and commissions.  Cease hiding your talent and make something of it because you must not be an unprofitable servant who will be cast into outer darkness.  You are not good by nature, but you may be by grace.  

God’s word is significant because it is more lasting than even God’s world.  God has made many worlds, peoples and physical phenomena, but only one truth.  Your address to the Bible is your address to God.  Ignoring or disagreeing with the Bible is ignoring or disagreeing with God.  Moses knew that Israel needed to place a Red Sea between them and Egypt.  Conformists and compromisers attend to the externals of their religion but not the internals, whereas biblical Christians sue every day for a divorce from the way of the nations and the customs of the peoples (Gal. 6:14; Js. 1:27).  

God requires nonconformity with ungodliness.  Do not allow the tyranny of a majority to affect you.  Look through the eyes of God, the mind of Christ and the Bible of the Holy Spirit.  Become a living, practicing voice for God rather than a mere echo of men by refusing enslavement to the fashion of the day.  

Based upon the world’s standards (if there are any!), God was and is politically, socially and culturally incorrect.  Nonetheless, is there any one out there soberly and intelligently challenging the world’s definition of the shape our culture should take?  Since we are our brothers’ [...]]]> “They exchanged the truth of God for the lie” (Romans 1:25)

Based upon the world’s standards (if there are any!), God was and is politically, socially and culturally incorrect.  Nonetheless, is there any one out there soberly and intelligently challenging the world’s definition of the shape our culture should take?  Since we are our brothers’ keepers, we certainly are responsible for weighing in on the issues affecting our children and our children’s children.

The Reformation was both a spiritual and cultural event.  The culture was altered by Martin Luther’s ‘Here I stand.’  Perhaps the time has come for Reformation II.  The Christian’s desire is not to wield power, but to influence lives.  Christian influence introduces and produces moral character.  

God allows you sufficient weaponry: His word, His Son, His character and prayer.  Perhaps the problem is that those mounting pulpits and even Christians resting in pews are not willing to challenge their culture.  Perhaps they are willing to shed tears of brine, but not tears of blood.  

The churches of your land are filled with the almost-Christian who may be busy with the ceremony of religion.  He practices a formal religion with a heart untuned to the gravity of his sin.  God describes these men as those who are “holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power” (II Timothy 3:5).  Many of these men exhibit ethical/moral behavior but they are merely unregenerate humanists.  They want their churches to announce their births, perform their marriages and honor their deaths, but they are disinterested in their church life affecting their economics.

Others in your churches are Christians but they possess a shallow spirituality, and they are apathetic concerning their minds and lives being engaged in the things of God.  These single-celled Christians are biblical adolescents and juvenile in their walk with the Lord Jesus Christ.  They continue to retreat from the means to grow in the Lord so their spiritual barrenness increases proportionately.

In the 1830’s Alexis de Toqueville, a noted Frenchman, said, “There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America.”  Would de Toqueville’s statement be true today?

Everyone needs exposure to other Christians who are enthusiastic about their relationship with the Lord.  When you companion with others in your marketplaces who are bold in their witness for Jesus, you become bolder.  The lifestyles and practices of fervent Christians are the scalpels God provides in order that your society may be sculpted more completely into the image of His Son.  Edmund Calamy said, “The nature of man is more apt to be guided by example than by precept.”

God calls each Christian to be an engine for the transformation of his sphere of influence.  You are to serve as tutoring members of the commonwealth where you live (Matthew 28:18-20).  

You know that a person’s walk with the Lord Jesus is dependent on growing in faith (II Peter 1:5ff.).  In order for anyone to advance in his walk he must begin to think and act biblically.  His life must become more ‘theocentric’ (God-centered) at the expense of divorcing himself from a life that is so completely ‘anthropocentric’ (man-centered).  He must become disenculturated from his American Babylon.  

This will only begin to occur when Christians refuse to be passive in the shaping of their marketplaces by making their values known in their marketplaces (Nahum 1:15).  Everywhere you go you see carnal men who are secure in their sinful sleep.  The noisiness of their damned souls is so loud they never experience the cadence of your Christ.  Perhaps you are being called upon by the Holy Spirit to create in His power a national conscience on the things of the Lord.  Perhaps today is being shaped by God to become a market-day for the souls of men.

Although the ages come and go, human nature is the same in every age.  Man is born spiritually lifeless and remains in that state until awakened by God’s Spirit.  Nonetheless, God has chosen to deploy Christians in the business of bringing and living His gospel.  

Numerous denominations and churches are in a spiritual wilderness.  The people God has placed in their charges are not being fed or at least are malnourished in the feeding.  The preachers and teachers are answering questions their hearers either are not asking or previously have answered and now want to grow deeper in their relationship with their Father.  Legions of saints are coming to churches asking for bread but they are being given a stone (Matthew 7:9).  Countless church attendees are fatigued by the church and now attend only out of duty and tradition rather than a love for the Lord.  

Effective Christians feast on the diet of Christ.  They need encouragement.  Political correctness has become the cultural master of America spying and reporting on those spiritually correct, yet culturally incorrect, Christians.  The media and a minority of the populace has said that Christians cannot speak the name Jesus, so now Christians must be reminded that God Himself has given them permission to share their faith wherever He places them (Esther 4:14).

When Christians lose their enthusiasm to declare their allegiance to the God who has saved them, the world squanders its interest in the true living God.  God says, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24).

As is true in any civilization, when issues continue to remain unaddressed by those with responsibility for the nurture of the people, the degeneration excels as the implosion bleeds over into other arenas of human involvement.  Societal boundaries have become blurred, and when boundaries become blurred your senses lose their defenses.  You cease being able to distinguish between vice and virtue, right and wrong.  Abraham Kuyper, the former Prime Minister of the Netherlands, said:

“If your boundary has become uncertain, vague, even invisible, the fear of drawing your sword soon keeps your hand from the hilt and no one fears any blame for taking one step backward after another.  This process continues until finally the sacred domain is totally lost and no courage remains for a struggle that is now useless.  It is precisely that uncertainty which cuts the lines of our power, that lack of firmness which makes us hesitant, that hesitancy which causes us to hang back and procrastinate, and with that procrastination the fire of our enthusiasm dies out before we realize it… the line of defense was shrunk again and again. As soon as principles gain ground that are contrary to your deepest
convictions, then resistance is your duty and acquiescence a sin.  Then, at the price of the finest peace, you must attack those principles, stigmatizing them before the eyes of friend and foe alike with all the ardor of your faith.”

The city fathers are prone to address symptoms rather than the heart of the matter because symptoms are more visible.  Symptoms are also easier to battle than root causes because attending to root causes results in the expenditure of increased resources and assures intensive opposition.

The first century A.D. was a moral sewer.  God Almighty drove a stake into the heart of that era by powering His cross into the earth of that amoral society.  He sent His only Son to anoint His cross of separation “with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless” (I Peter 1:19).  The cross He drove into Palestinian soil continues eternally and is non-negotiable.  

No society wants awakening from its death-assuring sleep.  Those attempting to reestablish moral boundaries should expect opposition.  They must be willing to go into harm’s way by weighing anchor and refusing to pursue diversions.  God says, “They hate him who reproves in the gate, and they abhor him who speaks with integrity.  Hate evil, love good, and establish justice in the gate!” (Amos 5:10, 15).

An uncivil war is being waged for the heart of your American commonwealth.  Tragically, this moral Armageddon is occurring largely unnoticed by churchmen professing Christianity though who are, for the most part, disengaged.  Perhaps their lives are becoming so handcuffed by their confederacy with the world that their public virtue has become private.  Perhaps they are warehousing their Christ rather than proclaiming Him (I Peter 2:9).  Perhaps they are content with an ever-diminishing influence in their world, but God is not.

Christians are becoming increasingly silent on public policy issues thereby forfeiting their defense of the borders of common decency.  The destructive savages of self-centered humanism are ravaging your culture.  Christians seem to forget that Christianity was birthed in conflict.  The blood of the Nazarene was necessary to erect the scaffolding of the culture of grace.  Christianity grows in the midst of cultural conflict because its true adherents are identified and caused to grow deeper roots (Matthew 13:21).

The axe is already laid at the root of your societal tree. The fabric of your society is coming unraveled due to the aggressiveness of those without eternal virtue and the Christian’s lack of concern for what does not immediately and directly affect him (Amos 6:1).  Your nation is dying due to the silence of the lambs – that is what occurs when Christians become indulgers rather than engagers (Mark 8:38).  Epidemic lukewarmness has licensed Christendom’s slumber along with its accompanying spiritual barrenness (Revelation 3:15-17).  

What would it be like to live in a world wherein the world determines the appropriate boundaries rather than God?  What would it be like to live in a world that dismantles its virtuous cornerstones one at a time so that the dismantling is less noticeable (though no less destructive)?  What would it be like to live in a world wherein the worship of man has supplanted the worship of God, the focus of man has shifted from heaven to earth and human opinion has usurped divine revelation (Jeremiah 2:11)?  What would it be like to live in a world where the moral man seeks quiet retreats rather than the endeavor of the public domain?

Faith only matters when it affects one’s choices (Joshua 24:15).  God says, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance” (Psalm 33:12).  The one and only God says, “Righteousness exalts a nation” (Proverbs 14:34).

Biblical morality has become cultural immorality.  Biblical correctness has become political incorrectness (Matthew 15:19).  Nonetheless, God commands those respecting and honoring Him to stand unashamedly in the cultural gap for biblical morality and holiness (Ezekiel 22:30).  When Christians become worshipers of public opinion and social acceptability rather than worshipers of the God of Scripture they refuse to stand in the gap (Jeremiah 2:6; Romans 1:21-25).

In the cultures of the western world, the less faith one professes, the more sensible and well bred he is considered.  The verbal expression of Christianity has become the dividing line between the intellectual and the not so bright.  Your nation has entered a spiritual “Dark Ages” where everyone does what is right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25).

Unless Christians recapture the voice they once exercised, both Christian and non-Christian will become oppressed by unrighteousness, erotically controlled, state monitored and enslaved to an existence that your forefathers not only would have never conceived, but they paid with their own blood to prevent.  The children of your loins will become increasingly the property of the state rather than the parents; educating the public on such unpopular topics as homosexuality, adultery, pedophilia and euthanasia will become hate crimes; and the pagan altar of Satanism will be covered in the blood of silent parents and grandparents who were more fearful of men, of economic reprisals, and of social ostracism than they were of the living God (Romans 3:18).

Jesus was not afraid to address unrighteousness and the unrighteous by name!  Jesus calls the unrighteous culturalists what they really are: “blind guides,” “fools and blind men,” “full of lawlessness,” “serpents,” and a “brood of vipers” (Matthew 23:16, 17, 28, 33).  He never practiced the sin of silence.

In A.D. 98, Ignatius’ expressed faith resulted in him being thrown to the lions of the empire.  If you take culturally unpopular positions, you too shall be scorned and labeled a narrow-minded intolerant prejudiced bigot.  But then, should not every God-fearer always be intolerant of and prejudiced against what has been wrong in every culture since the foundation of the world?  

You must not quail; you must not blink; you must remain unflinchingly biblical.  Every Christian is a God-appointed cultural watchman.  Upon whose hands will the blood of your culture be (Ezekiel 3:18)?  Is now not the season to do right just because it is right (Acts 5:29; II Timothy 4:6-8)?

“A lion has roared!  Who will not fear?
The Lord God has spoken!  Who can but prophesy?” (Amos 3:8)

SOLI  DEO  GLORIA!

Is God’s goodness enough for you?  Does His goodness satisfy you?  If not, ask yourself the probing question: “Am I one of God’s people.”

Dissatisfaction battles satisfaction.  The sufficiency of God’s goodness for God’s people abides.  You are either satisfied with God’s goodness [...]]]> “My people shall be satisfied with My goodness” (Jer. 31:14).

Is God’s goodness enough for you?  Does His goodness satisfy you?  If not, ask yourself the probing question: “Am I one of God’s people.”

Dissatisfaction battles satisfaction.  The sufficiency of God’s goodness for God’s people abides.  You are either satisfied with God’s goodness or you are not.  God says to His people, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness” (Jer. 31:3).  The church of Christ possesses hearts quieted by His everlasting love yet feasting in His lovingkindness.  Graced hearts are satisfied hearts.

God’s goodness is so good that His sons and daughters no longer struggle like the twins in Rebekah’s womb (Gen. 25:22).  One person is not trying to outdo another or to have more than his neighbor.  He is satisfied with all external manifestations of God’s goodness, though many may appear to be afflictions.

Jesus disallowed dissatisfaction in His own life.  He accepted His lot in life knowing that His Father’s providential hand was filled with goodness (Mt. 26:39).  Though hungry and without position in this world, the life of the Lord Jesus Christ was founded upon every word proceeding out of the mouth of God (Mt. 4:4).

The Christian’s “adequacy is from God” (II Cor. 3:5).  The only dissatisfaction saints should experience is with this world.  This present darkness, regardless of its attractiveness, is a disappointing disillusionment. All it offers falls short of what it is able to provide.  Absent God’s blessing, the most splendid offerings of your world are nothing more that wood, hay and stubble.

When the Holy Spirit transforms a man’s heart, that regenerated heart can no longer be satisfied with this world.  The new heart results in a radical change in the man who turns to God from idols because he now desires to serve the living and true God (I Thess. 1:9).  He is transformed so exceptionally that his world is no longer his satisfier.

A Christian no longer possesses just a human nature.  God says, “He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust” (II Pe. 1:4).  The saint’s nature is a divine nature desiring the divine rather than the corrupt, the immortal rather than the mortal, the imperishable rather than the perishable (I Cor. 15:53).

“Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy?” (Isa. 55:2).