| The CROWN of CHRIST - Understanding the Times in the Light of Scripture |
| The CROWN of CHRIST - Understanding the Times in the Light of Scripture |
ARCHIVE - October 20, 2008
Covenant, Corruption
& Compromise
Covenant, Corruption
& Compromise
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Augustine of Hippo warned us not to confuse the City of Man with
the City of God. Zion, or Christendom, is the culture of believers in
covenant with the true God. Its perennial foe is humanism in all its
forms - the lie that men can decide truth for themselves apart from
God. Often a third faction arises, confused semi-Christians too
stubborn to follow God completely, but pretending to be separate from
the ungodly.
In Genesis chapters 13 through 19 we see an example of how this
plays out historically. Abraham is God's elect believer, called to a
Covenant of Life. His faith is credited to him as righteousness in spite
of all his weaknesses and failings. The essence of God's promise to
him is salvation by God's mercy for his progeny. His elderly wife will
bear a son to inherit his estate. He will have many descendants, the
most important being Jesus Christ, who will bless all the world.
God's plan will be carried out through prolific family growth.
In sharp contrast, the cities led by Sodom and Gomorrah are
notorious examples of the Covenant of Death at work in history. They
despise God's law and go about to establish their own lifestyles. Their
perverted activities are aimed at avoiding childbirth. Whereas Sarai
calls motherhood having pleasure, they seek sex as a thing-in-itself,
free of the curse of offspring. They are on the road to self-destruction
by attrition, and God cuts their society short with sudden
punishment.
Then their is Lot, the confused and compromised nephew of
Abraham. He wants to live in Sodom but be blessed by Abraham's
God. His path of self-deception is a serious warning to modern
evangelicals.
First, Lot put material comfort above covenantal unity and religious
purity. He pitched his tent toward Sodom's fertile plains, perhaps
planning to stay out of the city as much as possible.
But when God's angels come with judgement, we find Lot living in a
house in the city, where his daughters are being exposed to the ways
of the ungodly daily.
Third, we see that Lot has allowed his daughters to marry men of
Sodom who think that the impending judgement is a joke.
Fourth, Lot has developed a spirit of pragmatism that justifies the
"lesser of two evils". Living among such perverts has warped his
reason so much that he thinks his deeds are righteous as long as
they are better than the Sodomites! Calling the mob his brothers, he
offers them his daughters, since after all heterosexual rape is not
quite so wicked as homosexual rape!
Fifth, we see the rotten fruit of Lot's compromise in his wife's
double-mindedness. She sentimantally looks back to see what God
will do to her old home town, and is destroyed.
The sixth and last step is the most horrifying of all: cowardly
conservatism. After the destruction of the cities, Lot and his
daughters display the perverted development of a schismatic
pseudo-godly culture. Lot is afraid to live in Zoar, although God has
told him it is an acceptable haven. He moves to the mountains where
his daughters get him drunk so that they can become pregnant
through incest. Obviously, the girls got out of Sodom but Sodom was
still inside the girls.
But we should examine their motives more closely. We will find
that they share their father's half-way covenant with a secular
version of godliness. Consider Genesis 19:31 & 32 -And the
firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is
not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of
all the earth: Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we
will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.
Why did these girls think there are no husbands for them? They
don't want to marry "heathens" a second time, since they lost their
Sodomite husbands to the wrath of God. So they think they are
somehow God's people, above marrying men from Zoar. And they
have a partial memory of the Covenant of Life, wishing to preserve
their father's family line.
But if they fear the God of Abraham, couldn't they get their father
drunk and run away to Abraham's camp for protection? Certainly
there would be husbands for them among the tents of their great
uncle. So the conclusion of the matter is that conservatism is just
another form of humanism, perhaps more twisted than honest
worldliness in its pretension to be godliness.
Today, much of professing Christendom takes the way of Lot.
"Conservative" church-goers have settled for a destructive
compromise with pluralistic modernism. They choose wealth over
godliness, and live comfortably among their unbelieving neighbors,
even joining in the charade that we citizens of this great country are
good by nature. They send their offspring to godless schools and
abandon them to the TV babysitter - then act surprised when their
children and grandchildren don't share their values. And they all
vote Republican because the Democrats are "worse".
After all, don't the Democrats support a "culture of death" by
allowing abortion on demand? Don't the Republicans support a
"culture of life" by calling for an end to partial birth abortion? No, we
are rebels, compromised Sons of Lot, who justify toleration of 99.9%
of fetal murders because we stand against one rare form. It is as if
Christians under Hitler formed a Traditional Nazi Party to call for a
moratorium on gassing Jews less than five years of age.
If our children marry unbelievers or nominal church-goers, we
should not be surprised if divorce and fornication come later. Many
once married Americans blame marriage for divorce to justify sin. I'll
never make that mistake again, we're just going to live together. Our
mess might not be as extreme as that of Lot, but in principle our
rebellion is the same. Rather than return in humility to the tents of
real Christendom, we keep pretending that our ignorant hillbilly
traditionalism pleases the God of the Bible. But there is no true life
apart from the True God.
the City of God. Zion, or Christendom, is the culture of believers in
covenant with the true God. Its perennial foe is humanism in all its
forms - the lie that men can decide truth for themselves apart from
God. Often a third faction arises, confused semi-Christians too
stubborn to follow God completely, but pretending to be separate from
the ungodly.
In Genesis chapters 13 through 19 we see an example of how this
plays out historically. Abraham is God's elect believer, called to a
Covenant of Life. His faith is credited to him as righteousness in spite
of all his weaknesses and failings. The essence of God's promise to
him is salvation by God's mercy for his progeny. His elderly wife will
bear a son to inherit his estate. He will have many descendants, the
most important being Jesus Christ, who will bless all the world.
God's plan will be carried out through prolific family growth.
In sharp contrast, the cities led by Sodom and Gomorrah are
notorious examples of the Covenant of Death at work in history. They
despise God's law and go about to establish their own lifestyles. Their
perverted activities are aimed at avoiding childbirth. Whereas Sarai
calls motherhood having pleasure, they seek sex as a thing-in-itself,
free of the curse of offspring. They are on the road to self-destruction
by attrition, and God cuts their society short with sudden
punishment.
Then their is Lot, the confused and compromised nephew of
Abraham. He wants to live in Sodom but be blessed by Abraham's
God. His path of self-deception is a serious warning to modern
evangelicals.
First, Lot put material comfort above covenantal unity and religious
purity. He pitched his tent toward Sodom's fertile plains, perhaps
planning to stay out of the city as much as possible.
But when God's angels come with judgement, we find Lot living in a
house in the city, where his daughters are being exposed to the ways
of the ungodly daily.
Third, we see that Lot has allowed his daughters to marry men of
Sodom who think that the impending judgement is a joke.
Fourth, Lot has developed a spirit of pragmatism that justifies the
"lesser of two evils". Living among such perverts has warped his
reason so much that he thinks his deeds are righteous as long as
they are better than the Sodomites! Calling the mob his brothers, he
offers them his daughters, since after all heterosexual rape is not
quite so wicked as homosexual rape!
Fifth, we see the rotten fruit of Lot's compromise in his wife's
double-mindedness. She sentimantally looks back to see what God
will do to her old home town, and is destroyed.
The sixth and last step is the most horrifying of all: cowardly
conservatism. After the destruction of the cities, Lot and his
daughters display the perverted development of a schismatic
pseudo-godly culture. Lot is afraid to live in Zoar, although God has
told him it is an acceptable haven. He moves to the mountains where
his daughters get him drunk so that they can become pregnant
through incest. Obviously, the girls got out of Sodom but Sodom was
still inside the girls.
But we should examine their motives more closely. We will find
that they share their father's half-way covenant with a secular
version of godliness. Consider Genesis 19:31 & 32 -And the
firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is
not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of
all the earth: Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we
will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.
Why did these girls think there are no husbands for them? They
don't want to marry "heathens" a second time, since they lost their
Sodomite husbands to the wrath of God. So they think they are
somehow God's people, above marrying men from Zoar. And they
have a partial memory of the Covenant of Life, wishing to preserve
their father's family line.
But if they fear the God of Abraham, couldn't they get their father
drunk and run away to Abraham's camp for protection? Certainly
there would be husbands for them among the tents of their great
uncle. So the conclusion of the matter is that conservatism is just
another form of humanism, perhaps more twisted than honest
worldliness in its pretension to be godliness.
Today, much of professing Christendom takes the way of Lot.
"Conservative" church-goers have settled for a destructive
compromise with pluralistic modernism. They choose wealth over
godliness, and live comfortably among their unbelieving neighbors,
even joining in the charade that we citizens of this great country are
good by nature. They send their offspring to godless schools and
abandon them to the TV babysitter - then act surprised when their
children and grandchildren don't share their values. And they all
vote Republican because the Democrats are "worse".
After all, don't the Democrats support a "culture of death" by
allowing abortion on demand? Don't the Republicans support a
"culture of life" by calling for an end to partial birth abortion? No, we
are rebels, compromised Sons of Lot, who justify toleration of 99.9%
of fetal murders because we stand against one rare form. It is as if
Christians under Hitler formed a Traditional Nazi Party to call for a
moratorium on gassing Jews less than five years of age.
If our children marry unbelievers or nominal church-goers, we
should not be surprised if divorce and fornication come later. Many
once married Americans blame marriage for divorce to justify sin. I'll
never make that mistake again, we're just going to live together. Our
mess might not be as extreme as that of Lot, but in principle our
rebellion is the same. Rather than return in humility to the tents of
real Christendom, we keep pretending that our ignorant hillbilly
traditionalism pleases the God of the Bible. But there is no true life
apart from the True God.
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