Home | About Us | Ministries | Sermons | Articles | Contact Us | Login
© 2009 Covenant Presbyterian Church
© 2009 Covenant Presbyterian Church
Men who talk like this do not hale from government schools. They are not followers of mass, non-critical opinion. They are not cowed by feminist emotionalism. They do not worship is listening to drums and guitars, watching puppet shows, and having a well-groomed talking head give a feel-good message. They never value security over liberty. Each of them has in common that they were products of biblical culture, of commitment to the idea that God’s principles are more important than convenience, holding on to this world’s possessions, and protecting one’s own life. Some things, they knew, are worth dying for: God, freedom from tyranny, uncensored access to the Bible. Without these, life is not worthy living; to secure them life must sometimes be sacrificed. We have not heard such voices for some time. Were similar statements to be made today, their makers would be institutionalized, called cult leaders, and decried as enemies of humanity, of the new religion of globalized, consumer culture. They would be analyzed, marginalized, and criminalized.
Whether we like it not, human society cannot thrive without the courage of men. Courage is not spending hours each day buffing up, trying to forestall death or look good for the next round of promiscuity. Courage is not bluster, raging against the machine in the evening only to play one’s dutiful, docile part in the morning. Courage is not standing boldly for the right to marry animals, have abortion on demand, or make the world safe for American economic interests. The American way is commercial hedonism, backed by military power, with a covering of democratic language to assuage the simple flag-wavers. Its loudest screamers are not courageous, they are angry - that life is not turning out as they wish, that they cannot escape the tug of conscience, and that they cannot fully convince the majority of our society to let them rule in terms of "man as God." We are a culture of wimps.
There is a reason for this, and thus there is hope. Courage comes from principles that are bigger than the individual, more important than my personal survival, rarely convenient, and almost always misunderstood by the unthinking mass. And not just any principles will generate courage. For example, I can ardently believe that everyone should have unlimited, non-judged access to abortion. But cultures do not survive that are built on the demand for institutionalized murder. Just ask Europe and Russia, with abortion rates now exceeding live-birth rates, which have flattened. Defend away. You may as well as defend the notion that your auto can run on peanut butter. You cannot make up principles in God’s world and expect them to work simply because you like them or make your evil legal. They will burn out. And as they do, you look, sound, and act stupidly in your defense of them.
God’s principles are a different matter. One thing haters of God cannot possibly understand is that honest and sincere defenders of biblical morality have already been struck down by those very principles. That is, those who have courage to stand against tyranny, for the law of God, against banal consumerism and mandated secularist education, have already surrendered themselves to God. They have seen his glory in the face of Jesus Christ. After this vision, nothing else compares with his glory and beauty, the strength of his presence, and the power of his fellowship. After feeling the justice of his law and the unspeakable sweetness of his grace, they stand, like Joshua and the three Hebrew boys, the apostles and Polycarp, Martin Luther and Patrick Henry, with invincible courage. They cannot be bought off by the world for the glory of God cannot be wrested from their souls. They are ever after marked men, indelibly marked by the sight of the thrice-holy God.
This is why the world hates men of principle, vilifies them, and is now criminalizing them. They are a reminder to the world that there is a transcendent law above man, eternal principles of righteousness and judgment, a place of refuge against the storms of wickedness that cannot be touched by the hounds of hell. They are also a reminder that rebellious men are under judgment, that all their secularist palaces are sand castles before the hurricane of the breath of God. This is also why ungodly men fear a resurgence of biblical faith. It is their greatest fear, for if it occurs, history and experience infallibly demonstrate that it cannot be stopped. You can write against it, legislate against it, go to war against it; you cannot defeat it. You see, the seed of the serpent, the line of unbelieving man animated by a principle of revolt against God, also has a history. It knows that its days of hubristic rule have always been numbered and in history defeated whenever God has blown upon his people with the fiery winds of his Spirit. Its historians know the pain of defeat. But, like the child that believes it will not burned by the stove this time, God’s enemies hope this time will be different. It will not.
Courage is resurging because God is blowing faith into life again. It is evident in churches standing for the truth of God against the culturally compromised, package it nicely, make me comfortable religion of consumer-driven religion. In this environment, the Reformed, the Biblical faith, for Reformed Christianity is nothing but the old apostolic faith come into its own, will make a comeback. It is evident in the homeschooling movement, which though it has potential dangers in the hyper-patriarchal, ecclesiastically indifferent "cult of the family" leaders, is nonetheless at its core a declaration of war upon secularism. Secularists know that a culture’s educational system is far more important than its political system; it is thus making a furious charge to criminalize homeschooling. Even in our own state legislature, God has raised up a group of young men who are taking seriously again the claims of God upon broader society. But if courage is to fully revive, to generate the unshakable boldness of previous generations, to storm the sand castle walls of secularism, it must be more grounded in biblical principles - not what works, not what markets, not what we can merchandize, but what God has revealed in his word. Armed with a sense of his glory and majesty, with the untouchable principles of his word, and animated by love for Jesus Christ, courage will rise again. For the Christian faith, when it is not domesticated, is communion with the Prince of life himself. He is fresh from his victory over the Pauper Prince of death. Greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world. In communion with him, it overcomes the world.
T.S. Eliot once wrote that a Christian culture is not something we can aim directly at, a set of guidelines that if mandated by the elite and followed by the masses will produce the desired result. It is rather the fruit of long-term, multi-generational faithfulness. What we must see is that we are sowing the seeds of courage every day, if we will but have the heart and faith to do so. The seed of courage, and therefore of revival, reformation, and victory, is sown by the Christian man who makes a covenant with his eyes not to look upon a maiden - to turn away from all entertainment forms and venues that mock sexual chastity and thus assail the very throne of God. It is sown by the Christian family that continues to educate its children by God’s word even though its extended family and church ridicule them for so doing. It is sown by the Christian man who refuses to compromise biblical principles because his wife pouts or his children buck. It is sown by the Christian woman who proudly and humbly embraces her domestic calling against the scoffing of the hideous vision of womanhood offered by those who view woman solely in terms on her sexual function or usefulness in establishing an egalitarian order of autonomy. It is sown by the Christian young man who rejects the girlfriend, sex without consequences, syndrome of Americanism, earnestly cries out to God for purity and holiness, and dedicates himself to his calling as his dominion marching orders from the living God. It is sown by the Christian young woman who dresses like a daughter of Christ rather than a whore, trusts God for her future, and commits herself to holiness of life. It is sown by preachers who speak the whole counsel of God, not with one finger in the air trying to read the market wind, but with both eyes up to heaven, like Stephen, seeing the glory of the risen Christ and speaking boldly without fearing the faces of men. These, beloved, are not simply the seeds of courage, they are courage. They are growing. Courage does not require battlefields, dramatic moments in history, or a nearby pyre. It can flourish in cities as much as in the country. It can certainly thrive in a consumer culture, for consumerism is nothing but the last bastions of cowards who are trying to buy off their consciences with new clothes, surgically improved bodies, and a new care every three years. To have it courage, we must see past whatever circumstances in which we are providentially placed by God, live by his word in every situation, and constantly commune with him through his Son.
Courage will dawn. It is dawning. It requires your commitment to live by every word that has come from the mouth of God. You must be a man, woman, or young person of principle. More, you must love God’s principles more than your own life. In fact, courageous men and women realize that they have no life of their own; they live only to please God, serve him, and defend his glory. Their lives are hidden with Christ in god; for them, to live is Christ. When such a generation arises, a generation that loves not its own life but the life of God in Jesus Christ, change will come quickly; it always has. It is not difficult to understand why. The other side, the forces of Satan, has nothing with which to counter the power of God. Nothing. Their captain has splinters in his skull, and must now content himself to skulk around, frightening the already guilty and scared. They cannot stand before courage It is a painful reminder to them of their hastening judgment, of their already certain defeat. In the meantime, they will fight. Their lost hope of a world freed from the authority of God deceives and infuriates them. They are convinced this time will be different. The other side seems too distracted to make a stand. Courage has not died, however, for God’s word is living and fresh. It is a fiery sword waiting only to be picked up and used. Do your part, man of God. Remember, post tenebre, lux. After the darkness, light.