“Because the word of the LORD was made to me a reproach and a derision daily. Then I said, ‘I will not make mention of Him, nor speak anymore in His name.’ But His word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I was weary of holding it back, and I could not” (Jer.20:8b-9 NKJV).
Any genuine “Golden Age” of American greatness will only be due to the blessing of the Most High God not man’s political ambition. God’s Holy Word reveals that any kind of human flourishing that is aspired to as an achievement of civilization must start on the grassroots level right where we live every day. In other words, greatness begins with a biblical reformation, spiritual revival, and bonafide revitalization of the church and family beginning right at your house not the White House. Faithfulness to God’s design in creation order magnifies His glory as homes are well-established and churches thrive as the pillar and buttress of doctrinal truth in their respective communities and champion the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.
Whereas the late Ronald Reagan’s famous statement that “It’s morning again in America!” is applicable to Donald Trump’s second inauguration as president, nevertheless, there is much work to do in every arena of our culture. The forces of secularization are massive and have launched a coordinated attack against the church and family and therefore the greatness of God’s design for building civilization. With characteristic poignancy, Al Mohler explains that “any Christian living in this present age knows we are facing an epic crisis. That crisis is moral, but not merely moral. It is cultural, but not merely cultural. It is ideological, but not merely ideological. At its heart, our crisis is theological.”[i]
Such an intelligent understanding of the times in which we live today is built upon a sound knowledge of history. This is the kind of insight that is needed today in order to chart a pathway forward for the sake of making church and family great again. For example, Mohler further explains that:
“Alexander Solzhenitsyn courageously defined the crisis when he stated, in the last century, that the fundamental and inescapable problem is that ‘men have forgotten God.’ But, as Solzhenitsyn knew from tragic personal experience, this ‘forgetting’ of God did not happen by accident. It was the result of the deliberate undermining of theistic belief, driven by those who, from the commanding heights of the culture, sought to subvert Christian belief and displace Christian morality. In the Soviet Union, the effort was led by Communist ideologues. In the West, the same effort was led by hedonists and self-declared cultural revolutionaries.”
“A look across today’s conservative landscape reveals a near-universal sense of cultural crisis. But far too many conservatives place their confidence in some form of cultural rescue from our crisis. Biblically minded Christians know that we bear an important moral, cultural, and political stewardship in this age. And yet, we also know that salvation will not come by means of politics. The base problem is theological, and the only rescue that matters is, first of all, a theological rescue.”
“We do not face a set of isolated and disconnected challenges. The rebellion of this age is both comprehensive and systemic. We have been called to faithfulness in this generation, and that means engaging the battle and not running from it. [We must] start by outthinking the world by the development of a mind and heart truly grounded in God’s Word and fully alert to the critical challenge of our time.”[ii]
May we, as God’s people, endeavor to be used of Him in our generation toward making church and family great again through faithfulness to ten golden truths for perilous times. This can only be embarked upon by His grace, ignited by His Spirit, and therefore to the praise of His glory in Christ Jesus. Otherwise, we are doomed.
Golden Truth #1: Spirit-Inspired Sufficiency of God’s Word
“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Tim.3:16 NKJV).
The Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy is the final letter that he wrote prior to his departure from this life via execution courtesy of the Roman Emperor Nero in about A.D. 68. Paul’s “last will and testament” is written from prison to this young pastor in Ephesus as his spiritual father and mentor in the faith. These parting words were designed to embolden Timothy to gospel faithfulness amidst the spiritual darkness of a pagan culture in ancient Ephesus.
First century Ephesus was a cosmopolitan city being the site of one of the wonders of the ancient world namely the temple of a pagan fertility goddess called Diana or Artemis. A dynamic economy, diversity of culture, and the depravity of man’s rebel darkness produced formidable opposition to the gospel. Despite the seemingly insurmountable odds, Paul’s ministry in Asia was undeterred by such a capital opportunity as recorded by Luke in the book of Acts. The transforming power of the light of the gospel had infiltrated the perverse darkness of this ungodly culture and a grace gospel church was established there by Apostle Paul himself. As a ministry leader in the Ephesian church, Timothy needed this soul-stirring challenge as he had been entrusted with a stewardship responsibility to the praise of God’s glory in Christ Jesus.
The late Voddie Baucham once described the divinely inspired or God-breathed out nature of the Bible as follows:
“The Bible is a life-changing collection of historical documents, written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies, and they claim that their writings are Divine, rather than human, in origin.” [iii]
Since the Bible is God’s Holy Word, it is our first and final authority for all matters of faith and practice. What we believe and how we are to live is determined by the Bible. Scripture teaches us what is right, what is wrong, how to get right, and how to stay right. Throughout every age and dispensation of redemptive history, God’s people have had a responsibility to heed the Word of God.[iv] Biblical revelation renders us accountable before God for the spiritual state of our own lives but also that of others as we have been entrusted with the stewardship to engage church and culture with absolute truth. There is no direction we can travel in which God’s Word has not spoken for the sufficiency of Scripture affirms that the Bible applies to the full spectrum of life. Once again, Baucham boldly heralds the counter cultural truth of this all-glorious reality:
“Truth is under attack in modern American culture. The person who believes in ideas, concepts, values, or facts that are true for all people in all places for all times is rare indeed. [The truth is that] there is a God, and He has revealed Himself. Therefore, if we have access to that revelation, we have access to truth—the kind that is true for all people, in all places, at all times: truth that is absolute.”[v]
Golden Truth #2: Supremacy of God’s Grace for Life & Ministry
“That the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim.3:17 NKJV).
The Bible reveals that God’s grace is how rebel sinners are saved but it is also how His people are to live a disciplined and industrious life that honors Him. Being rescued from the wrath of God in hell is by grace alone through faith alone in the Person and finished work of God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace is aptly defined by Jerry Bridges as “God’s free and unmerited favor shown to guilty sinners who deserve only judgment. It is the love of God shown to the unlovely. It is God reaching downward to people who are in rebellion against Him.”[vi] Living a God-honoring life is also by grace as the child of God lives in total dependency upon Christ and the Word of God. This is the supremacy of God’s grace that anchors our spiritual lives and fuels ministry. The all-encompassing paradigm of grace is further explained by Bridges:
“We’re brought into God’s kingdom by grace; we’re sanctified by grace; we receive both temporal and spiritual blessings by grace; were motivated to obedience by grace; we’re called to serve and enabled to serve by grace; we receive strength to endure trials by grace; and we’re glorified by grace. The entire Christian life is lived under the reign of God’s grace.”[vii]
Being zealous for good works is about yielding by faith to the practical reality of Christ’s indwelling life day by day. Bob George explains that “until you rest in the finality of the cross, you will never experience the reality of the resurrection.”[viii] Why we do what we do in the Christian life is not to get saved or stay saved but because we are saved by the grace of God (Eph.2:10; Phil.2:12-13; Titus 2:11-14). More on this in the next chapter.
Golden Truth #3: Sovereign Majesty of God’s Holiness
“I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Tim.4:1a NKJV).
If there is anything that the church and family needs today, as we are nearing the midpoint of the 21st century, it is a megadose of the sovereign majesty of God’s holiness. Every one of us live coram Deo, “before the face of God.” Apostle Paul understood this full well and accordingly challenged Timothy. Whenever it came to encouraging younger men in grace gospel ministry, there was a dead serious urgency at the forefront of Apostle Paul’s heart and mind. This man was a seasoned veteran who knew that there was less time ahead of him than there was behind him. Similarly, John Piper said when he was asked about an intense season of life and ministry:
“There’s so much mealy-mouthed hesitancy to talk about the most important things in the world, namely, getting right with a holy God who will crush you forever if you don’t go to the Son that He provided. I came away feeling like I just don’t want to play games anymore. Life is short. I don’t know how long I have. Jesus as He stands forth from the Gospels is spectacularly supreme and beautiful and glorious and tough and tender and worthy and attractive and satisfying. Why wouldn’t you want to give your life to this?”[ix]
A dedicated married couple with a few young kids was heading to the mission field in Southeast Asia for the sake of reaching Buddhists for Christ. I asked them the following question: “There is coming a day when your back will be up against the wall, your heart will be in a dark place, and you will be ready to throw in the towel and just go back home. What will anchor your soul in the darkness of that day?” In a fallen, broken, and sin-cursed world, sometimes life hurts really bad. Our hearts must have something bigger than merely a horizontal compassion for souls. We need a BIG GOD. The vertical reality of His sovereign majesty and awesome holiness will bolt our hearts to the deck of objective truth whenever the torrents of adversity come crashing into our lives.
Back in the mid-point of the 20th century, the late A.W. Tozer announced that “There’s an awesomeness about God which is missing in our day altogether; there’s little sense of admiring awe in the Church of Christ these days.”[x] Since that time, the secularization of culture has only accelerated this problem as the modern church is increasingly humanistic and steeped man-centered pragmatism. Oh, that God would raise up a new generation who has eyes to see very much like Tozer did back in his day:
“The Church of Christ today, the born-again evangelical Church, is in Babylonian captivity. We are among people that speak another language. We are learning their ways, and we are giving up to their morass and their moral codes and their way of living. Because of the disgraceful fornication of the Church with the world, we are in desperate need of restoration.
Remember, until we are restored and the Church is restored, even our missionary endeavors won’t be successful, because all we’ll be doing will be transplanting a scrub Christianity on foreign soil. That’s all. Remember, missionaries, you can never produce anything better than you are yourself. The Bible says, ‘Let it bring forth after its kind.’ Send a missionary over there with a cheap concept of God and his head filled with jingly choruses, and that’s the kind of Christianity he will produce over there. All he will be doing is transplanting a degenerate Christianity on a foreign shore.
More than missionaries, we need a reformation of the whole Church of Christ in America. When that comes, then we will get more missionaries and their quality will be higher and the result will be that they will produce a higher type of Christian.”[xi]
Golden Truth #4: Sobering Reality of God’s Justice
“…who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom” (2 Tim.4:1b NKJV).
Since there are only two days that matter in life, God calls us to be prepared for His return by living in surrender to Christ on THIS DAY knowing that we are accountable to Him on THAT DAY as He is increasingly day by day the most urgent need of the world.
The aim of our hearts on THIS DAY is the glory of Him who is worthy of all praise because of who He is and what He has done. We do this by living in surrender to Christ through total dependency upon God and His Word. This counter-cultural endeavor is not conformed to the world’s system as God’s Spirit transforms our minds to live according to biblical priorities.
There is coming a day, at the Judgment Seat of Christ, when our lives will flash before our eyes as we give an account before Him for the duty-bound stewardship responsibility of the gospel on THAT DAY (2 Cor.5:10). The testimony of our lives, as members of the Church, the Body of Christ, in this age of grace, will bear witness, at the Bema, as to how faithfully we defended the faith as a soldier, advanced the faith as an athlete, and cultivated the faith as a farmer (2 Tim.2:3-6). Investing the time, talent, and treasure of our lives in eternity through evangelistic outreach, cross-cultural missions, and establishing believers in the faith by training them in sound doctrine, biblical/creation apologetics, and the comprehensive nature of the Christian worldview is the responsibility of every believer on THIS DAY in light of THAT DAY.
Suffice it to say that the reality of absolute truth and Christ’s exclusive nature is a counterculturally radical truth to champion in this present evil age. Erwin Lutzer speaks to the urgency of what God has called us to in Christ and how that Christians must be resolute and driven by the gospel in our lives and witness. Apostasy in the church is rife as he points out how many Christian Millennials have jettisoned biblical evangelism for the sake of a false gospel of social justice. He further explains that:
“According to Barna Group, many Christian Millennials are unsure about the actual practice of evangelism. Almost half (47%) agree at least somewhat that it is wrong to share one’s personal beliefs with others of a different faith in hopes that they will one day share the same faith. They also ‘somewhat agree’ that if someone disagrees with you, they’re judging you. And, I might add that in the responses, the most oft-quoted verse of the Bible is Matthew 7:1 ‘judge not, that you not be judged.’
To believe that Christ is the only way to the Father is regarded as bigotry, and belief in hell is viewed as a regression to medieval notions of primitive and cruel judgmentalism. God is seen as so tolerant that He extends grace even to people who don’t think they have sinned enough to need it. Jonathan Edwards’ classic message ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’ might today be reworded as ‘God in the Hands of Angry Sinners.’
This is a tragic loss. If we lose our passion for making the gospel known, if we abandon the biblical teaching about heaven and hell and Christ as the only way, if we work to make life better in this world and ignore the reality of the life to come, we are sacrificing the eternal on the altar of the temporal. We are trading heaven for earth and eternity for time. We are forgetting that ‘it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God’ and that ‘our God is a consuming fire’ (Heb.10:31; 12:29).”[xii]
“Pay day someday” is a reality as the awesome terror of God’s holiness demands that the righteous standards of His justice be satisfied on that judgment day of reckoning before His great white throne (Rev.20:11-15). This is where the unsaved of all ages will stand before Sovereign Majesty and behold the sobering reality of God’s justice. As ambassadors for Christ, we are not ashamed of the gospel because the power of God to salvation is not in the winsomeness of our personality or the wittiness of our methodology but in the message of the cross. May we faithfully proclaim Christ DAY BY DAY and thus prepare not only ourselves for His return but also a world in urgent need before it’s eternally too late.
To be continued…
[i] Erwin W. Lutzer, The Eclipse of God: Our Nation’s Disastrous Search for a More Inclusive Deity (And What We Must Do About It). (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2024), 11.
[ii] IBID, 11-12.
[iii] Voddie T. Baucham, Jr., The Ever-Loving Truth: Can Faith Thrive in a Post-Christian Culture? (Washington, D.C., Salem Books, 2023), 153-154.
[iv] See W. Edward Bedore, Unlocking the Scriptures: The Key to Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth (West Bend, WI, Berean Bible Institute, 2018) for more information on the dispensational framework of God’s Word.
[v] Voddie T. Baucham, Jr., The Ever-Loving Truth: Can Faith Thrive in a Post-Christian Culture? (Washington, D.C., Salem Books, 2023), 153-154.
[vi] Jerry Bridges, Transforming Grace: Living Confidently in God’s Unfailing Love (Colorado Springs, CO, NavPress, 1991), 21-22.
[vii] Jerry Bridges, Holiness Day by Day (Colorado Springs, CO, NavPress, 2008), 52.
[viii] Bob George, Classic Christianity: Life’s Too Short to Miss the Real Thing (Eugene, OR, Harvest House Publishers, 1989), 56.
[ix] John Piper and Justin Taylor, eds., The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World (Wheaton, IL, Crossway Books, 2007), 150.
[x] A.W. Tozer, WORSHIP: The Missing Jewel in the Evangelical Church (Harrisburg, PA, Christian Publications, Inc., 1961), 9.
[xi] A.W. Tozer, Fellowship of the Burning Heart (Alachua, FL, Bridge-Logos, 2006), 32-33.
[xii] Erwin W. Lutzer, We Will Not Be Silenced: Responding to Our Culture’s Assault on Christianity (Eugene, OR, Harvest House Publishers, 2020), 248-249.
