Some thoughts on the regnant follies

In the midst of this election season, I’ve been challenged by a seminar Phil Johnson delivered at last year’s Shepherds Conference (at Grace Community Church where John MacArthur is the Senior Pastor). I believe Mr. Johnson offers an important corrective to many of us and so have added a link at the end of this post.

Will I be depressed or elated after election day? Depends on whether my eyes and heart are stayed on His kingdom or this world. I’m also concerned about the way I hear people on both sides of this discussion mischaracterize the views of the other by creating "straw men" that really do not represent the other candidate’s position and then readily demolish views that no one actually holds. Frankly, the way Christians have tried to work through politics as a way to accomplish biblical ends has led to mixed results practically. In terms of public opinion, the result has been disastrous. While I’m not always sure how polls succeed in capturing public opinion, unChristian reports that “a fifth of all Americans believe ‘the political efforts of conservative Christians’ are a major problem facing the country today. Half of the adult population describe the political involvement of Christians as a concern. More than 110 million adult Americans admit they maintain misgivings about the role of ‘conservative Christians’ in politics.”

I had threatened to blog on this issue, but believe Phil’s message is simply the best corrective I’ve found. You may download it here: http://www.thegracelifepulpit.com/audio/GL-2008-03-06-PJ.mp3.

Make no mistake, I've listened to much about what each candidate has said and considered their views across a wide spectrum of their positions, and have made up my mind and will, as always, vote. Nevertheless, what Daniel says about the Lord is true:

He changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding; he reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him. Daniel 2:21-22 (ESV)

More from Owen on the Church and her Lord:



When He should come to take possession of this house, he finds that it is mortgaged, and that a great debt lies upon it; which he must pay to the utmost farthing, if he ever intend to have it . . . . Jesus Christ being the heir, the right of redemption belonged to him. It was not for his honor that it should lie unredeemed. Full well he knew that if he did not, the whole creation was too beggarly to make this purchase. . . . He likes the house, and will have it to dwell in, whatever it cost Him. "Here," says He, "shall be my habitation, and my dwelling for ever." (Psalm 132)

A short detour from Owensiana to my favorite devotional book and the words of John Newton, that most happy and healthy of preachers. This reminder of the importance of suffering for the believer, from a 1791 letter to John Ryland, Jr:

There is no school like the school of the cross. There men are made wise unto salvation, wise to win souls. In a crucified Savior are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And the tongue of the truly learned, that can speak a word in season to them that are weary, is not acquired like Greek and Latin by reading great books--but by self-knowledge and soul exercises. To learn navigation by the fireside will never make a man an expert mariner. He must do his business in great waters. And practice will bring him into many situations in which general theory could give him no conception.

This is the testimony of those believers before us who were faithful to the end. Thomas Brooks, in his (1659) The Mute Christian under the Smarting Rod, a (short) book length meditation on Psalm 39, writes of the work of temptation and suffering, those very things we might most avoid and pray to be rid of, in making us more like Jesus:

Temptations are the tools by which the Father of spirits does more and more carve, form, and fashion his precious saints into the similitude and likeness of his dearest Son. . . . "My grace shall be sufficient for you (2 Corinthians 12:9)." Paul never experienced so deeply what almighty power was, what the everlasting arms of mercy were, and what infinite grace and goodness was, as when he was under the buffetings of Satan.


Brooks enjoins us to look on our sufferings with "Scripture spectacles," to see them as, for example, Paul did. Then he calls us to remember what we may forget under a long season of struggle:

When Hagar's bottle of water was spent, she sat down and began to weep, as if she had been utterly undone, Genesis 21:17-19; her provision and her patience, her bottle and her hope were both out together; but her affliction was not so great as she imagined, for there was a well of water near, though for a time she saw it not. So many Christians, they eye the empty bottle, the cross, the burden that is present upon them, and then they fall to weeping, whining, complaining, repining, and murmuring, as if they were utterly undone; and yet a well of water, a well of comfort, a well of refreshment, a well of deliverance is near, and their case is no way so sad, nor so bad as they imagine it to be.

These are not shallow words, nor Disney-esque, but part of the solid joys that are built on the dependable promises of God's Word, seen with His eyes; the way things really are.

I have been thinking a lot of the Church of Jesus Christ lately and, while I've not written in a bit, I'll likely be using for the next spell of blogs quotes from Dr. Owen on the church. One of my early experiences in the reading of Dr. Owen's Latinate and serpentine English was, once I'd become accustomed to his style, to be given a larger vision of the glory of God. During my seminary years, one of my professors recommending taking on one theologian as your specialty and Dr. Owen has never failed, for all of his prolixity (I probably picked that word up from him), to expand my views of the world as explained and described by God's Word. These quotes are among those from Chapter 16 of Rick Daniels' The Christology of John Owen (yet another pastor whose writings have ministered to me). What follows is a paraphrased (due to archaic words) selection from the works of Owen; volume 8, page 230, as selected by Rick.


Men looking upon the church do find that it is a fair edifice indeed, but cannot imagine how it should stand. A few supporters it seems to have in the world, like crouching clowns under the windows, that make some show of under-propping it: -- here you have a government official, there an army, or so [remember that he speaks as the chaplain to the Protector Oliver Cromwell, whose army were largely Independents, and which army for a short time gave the Independents considerable power in government]. The men of the world think: "Can we but remove these props, the whole would topple to the ground." Yes, so foolish have I been myself, and so void of understanding before the Lord, as to take a view of some props that appeared to be of good quality for holding up this building, and to think, How shall the house be preserved if these should be removed? . . . . when, lo! suddenly some have been manifested to be only posts of ornamental plaster, and the very best to be held up by the house, and not to hold it up. On this account the men of the world think it no great matter to demolish the spiritual church of Christ to the ground:--they encourage one another to the work, never thinking of the foundation that lies hidden, against which they dash themselves all to pieces. I say, then, Christ, as the foundation of this house, is hidden to the men of the world,--they see it not, they believe it not. There is nothing more remote from their apprehension than that Christ should be at the bottom of them and their ways, whom they so much despise.

We've all known or known of pastors who have fallen or friends who seemed such solid believers who have walked away from the Lord. We've had also had those dear gifts of the Lord, in pastors, leaders, and godly men and women, who had represented to us what our churches have been all about and who are now with the Lord. And we have a world around us in which new and articulate adversaries speak out with freedom against the Church. Some even speak of the coming election as if the next president could bring apocalyptic changes that might destroy the American church. Only twelve years after the sermon from which this passage was preached, it seemed the Church of Christ in England would disappear when Charles was restored and the many believing pastors were ejected from their pulpits and distanced from their beloved congregations. Yet the gospel of Jesus Christ and His Church, against all who would prophesy otherwise, still stands. Our own local church faces a time of much change after so many evidences of God's faithfulness. And it is hard to imagine how things will be in five years from now, hard to imagine even what next year might look like. However, our Lord has said that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church. And when he spoke those words, only moments later he would have to say to the leader of the disciples, "Get thee behind me, Satan." He said those words before the one who ran finances for his closest band of 12 would betray him to the authorities, before the spokeman Peter would betray him, before the whole group would sit desultorily after the crucifixion, before the road to Emmaus walk when his disciples had assumed all was lost ("we had hoped"), and before the crew had gone back to their old occupation of fishing. And yet these poor building materials were the very ones he used to create the most world changing organization of the first century, indeed any century. We are all of us less "pillars" that hold up the building and more "ornamental plaster" that is held up by the building. He is the invisible foundation that holds up the building; and on that foundation alone is our church, and is my life, secure. And there, regardless of what future circumstances seem to threaten, is hope, real, substantial hope.

Fading is the worlding's pleasure all his boasted pomp and show; solid joys and lasting treasure none but Zion's children know.