In The Gates

Obey, or Pay

Written by T. M. Moore
Thursday, 02 July 2009

The Kingdom Curriculum III (4)

"Therefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable to you: break off your sins by practicing righteousness, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed, that there may perhaps be a lengthening of your prosperity." Daniel 4.27

Nebuchadnezzar was no friend of God. He destroyed the temple of God and razed Jerusalem, carrying off into captivity thousands of God's people to a pagan land. Daniel was one of them, but, by the grace of God, he was able to achieve a role as adviser to King Nebuchadnezzar. In helping the king to understand a particularly troublesome dream, Daniel warned him that it was a message from God. The king needed to repent of his sin, turn away from his iniquities, and practice righteousness, mercy, and justice in ways that were pleasing to God. Failure to do so would bring calamity.

Daniel did not hesitate to confront a pagan king with his need to submit to God and His Law. Notice that it was not enough that Nebuchadnezzar had spared multitudes of the Jews, or that he had elevated some of them to service in his court. Nor was it enough that he allowed them to continue in their own communities and to worship the God of Israel. It was not even enough that Nebuchadnezzar had borne public testimony to the greatness and wisdom of God (Dan. 2.47). What God required of Nebuchadnezzar as king was that he submit to the God of heaven and bring his reign into line with the just and righteous requirements of God's Law.

Nebuchadnezzar, however, failing to obey, suffered tremendously under the judgment of God. But consider where he ended up: this is the conclusion to the decree Nebuchadnezzar published throughout his empire upon being graciously returned from his time of judgment to his throne: "Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just; and those who walk in pride he is able to humble" (Dan. 4.37). Did God intend for Nebuchadnezzar, the very template of a pagan king and an enemy of God, to live in obedience to His Law? It seems clear that He did, and that He was prepared to do some pretty heavy leaning on the king to get him to come around and see the light.

Has God changed His mind about this? Does He still intend the rulers of the earth, whom He has raised up to serve Him for good (Rom. 13.1-4), to acknowledge Him and to submit to His Law? And if this is to be so, will it not require of the people of God today that we stand up, like Daniel, and call our rulers to turn away from every law or policy that flies in the face of God's righteous demands and to work for statutes and civil codes more in keeping with what the Law of God outlines and explains? This is not a practice wholly foreign to the pagan governments of our day, as we have seen. However, through ignorance or rebellion, governments today are turning ever more pointedly away from the standards of righteousness, justice, and goodness encoded in the Law of God, and are implementing laws and policies which are abominations in His sight. If we fail to challenge all such laws and to point our rulers - by our lives and our words - to the holy and righteous and good standards of the Law of God, then we shall bear a portion of the blame when our rulers and our nation come under the judgment of God (cf. Ezek. 33.1-9). Such determined and consistent involvement in matters of public policy according to the Law of God - where demonstration and persuasion are our tactic, and not coercion - is not only part of our duty to seek the welfare of the nation to which God has consigned us (Jer. 29.7), but, as we have seen, an essential component of our witness to the pagan world around us.

Order your copy of The Law of God today. Go to www.MyParuchia.com, click Publications, Waxed Tablet, to place your order and take up the Kingdom curriculum of our Lord.

 

Every Thought Captive

Revealer of Hearts and Minds

Written by T. M. Moore
Monday, 22 June 2009

Getting at the heart of secular religion

"Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed...so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed."
-Luke 2.34, 35

It was characteristic of Jesus' earthly ministry to drag out for public inspection the deep motives and convictions of the hearts and minds of men. Jesus knew all men, what they were thinking and how they pursued their objectives; He was able to see straight into their souls and didn't hesitate to discover for all to see the folly and rebellion that were lodged there.

Think of His many confrontations with the religious leaders of the day. He saw through the veneer of their false piety to the rotten wood of selfishness, moral compromise, and spiritual darkness that constituted their souls. He exposed them for the hypocrites and toadies that they were. He took the wrecking ball to their house of traditions, legal codes, and self-serving enterprises by which they kept the people of Israel in spiritual chains and secured their own place near the top of the social heap. Jesus was not easy on these people, unless you think referring to the most respected religious authorities of the day as "whitewashed tombs", "hypocrites", and "fools" was the usual way of addressing these men in their day.

Jesus understood that you cannot help a person, or the people who look to that person as an example and leader, until you have made him see the foolishness and sin that lie at the core of his being. Jesus came to expose the hearts and minds of sinful people - their motives, affections, plans, worldviews, and strategies. He came to drag sin into the spotlight of truth so that all could have a good, clear look at what were the dominant spiritual and moral teachings of the day. We have every reason to believe, therefore, that this same mission and task falls to the Body of Christ in our day.

In the early 1950s, shortly after he had defected from Marxist Poland, Czeslaw Milosz wrote a scathing exposé of Marxist ideology, showing how intellectuals throughout Easter Europe had caved in to the lie of Marxism and had become captive to a self-deception. In The Captive Mind he wrote, "It was only toward the middle of the twentieth century that the inhabitants of many European countries came, in general unpleasantly, to the realization that their fate could be influenced directly by intricate and abstruse books of philosophy." Milosz made it his business, both in The Captive Mind and in many of his best poems and lectures, to expose the folly of secular thinking and to call the world to return to a proper orientation toward God and absolute truth.

For this he was awarded the Noble Prize in literature.

In our day the followers of Jesus Christ have allowed a few highly visible church leaders to talk us into what we might describe as a "kindler, gentler" approach to the lost people of our day. Don't talk about sin; bear with the sinner and maybe he'll change over time. If not, bear with him all the more. Don't put people on the spot; accept all people as they are, try to find the good in their lives and in how they think and live. Connect where you can and just love them into the Kingdom. Don't use divisive words when trying to talk about your faith. Picture Jesus as our Friend, talk about the Spirit as our Counselor, point out that God is the Father of all men. But leave the talk of blood, guilt, repentance, redemption, and the Law of God aside. That will only offend your unbelieving neighbor.

Like Jesus did. Jesus came to bear the sword, and with that Sword of the Spirit, to lay bear for all to see the thoughts and intentions of every human heart. We are doing lost people no favor when we fail to draw out, examine, and expose the folly of their deepest convictions, most cherished assumptions, and settled ways of thinking. If we want to be effective in helping people come to faith in Jesus Christ, we first have to demonstrate that the worldview in which they presently have placed their confidence does not work, cannot work, and must lead to disillusionment, disappointment, despair, and death.

But to do this we need to be students of our times. We will have to work hard to understand the secular worldview and other contemporary worldviews, exercising the mind of Christ within us to the task of ferreting out the thoughts and motives of the hearts and minds of our contemporaries. Then we shall have to engage with them, devoting ourselves more to asking, listening, and seeking clarification and elaboration than to insisting on the rightness of our own views.

The time for that will come soon enough. But if we are going to help our unsaved contemporaries escape the captivity of the secular mindset we will first need to follow the example of our Lord Jesus and work hard to bring into the light of God's truth the deep-seated convictions and assumptions of their souls, so that they may come under examination and be exposed for the half-truths, deceptions, and outright lies that they are.

They probably won't give us a Nobel Prize, but be sure of this much: many will turn from what they will now see as the death-trap of secularism and cling to the cross of Jesus.

 

 

ReVision

As GM goes...

Written by T. M. Moore
Thursday, 02 July 2009

...so goes the country. Or, so goes the old saw. Well, maybe the old saw is truer than we thought. GM's bankruptcy may be followed by that of the great state of California before too much longer. Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Connecticut are struggling to pay their bills and may not be far behind. Hints in other states indicate that all is not well. Here in Virginia, for example, Richmond is having to shut down 19 interstate rest facilities because the money to pay for them is already spent and there is no prospect for any more this year. Yesterday the cosmetic retailer Crabtree & Evelyn declared bankruptcy - a course followed earlier this year by electronics giant, Computer City. Who knows how many small businesses have gone belly-up, or will shortly, not to mention individual households? Say what you will about the curious economic structure provided for in the Law of God - with those Sabbath years and Jubilees and proscription of interest on loans and all the rest - one of the principles embedded in those statutes is the discouragement of debt and speculative investment. Of course, what drives debt and speculative investment is greed, or, in the language of the Commandments, covetousness. God forbade covetousness and provided working precepts to keep it from rooting in the economy of the Promised Land. But Israel didn't pay attention to God's Law back then, and we're no different today. We believe that the human mind is a sufficient resource for making our way to economic prosperity, especially given the fact that we believe economic prosperity is the summum bonum of human experience. Neither is true, and the dropping dominoes of bankrupt families, corporations, and states are but the early warning signs of a nation that is beginning to reap what it has sown. One aspect of the judgment of God is that He simply steps back and lets us have what we insist on having, whether it's good for us or not. Sometimes it's good to learn the hard way. But the enormity of the "lesson" that is looming just beyond the horizon is so frightening that, rather than sit by and wait for the inevitable, those who do believe in God and in His sovereign rule over all the nations must begin to seek Him on behalf of their country, crying out for mercy and a renewed measure of His Spirit to revive and renew us, before our covetous ways subvert and undo us.

T. M. Moore