day no. 16,991: good war and bad peace (sermon outline)

The following is my original manuscript for my sermon over Judges 20 at Christ Church Leavenworth. After listening to some feedback from the elders and my wife, I went a different direction, focusing more on application. Here is the original, more conceptual approach to this passage:

Christ Church Leavenworth

Judges 20

March 30, 2025

…

OT READING: Numbers 25:1-13

NT READING: 1 Corinthians 5:9-13

"Good War and Bad Peace"

READING OF THE TEXT

Our text this morning is Judges chapter 20, these are the words of God

Then all the people of Israel came out, from Dan to Beersheba, including the land of Gilead, and the congregation assembled as one man to the Lord at Mizpah. And the chiefs of all the people, of all the tribes of Israel, presented themselves in the assembly of the people of God, 400,000 men on foot that drew the sword. (Now the people of Benjamin heard that the people of Israel had gone up to Mizpah.) And the people of Israel said, “Tell us, how did this evil happen?” And the Levite, the husband of the woman who was murdered, answered and said, “I came to Gibeah that belongs to Benjamin, I and my concubine, to spend the night. And the leaders of Gibeah rose against me and surrounded the house against me by night. They meant to kill me, and they violated my concubine, and she is dead. So I took hold of my concubine and cut her in pieces and sent her throughout all the country of the inheritance of Israel, for they have committed abomination and outrage in Israel. Behold, you people of Israel, all of you, give your advice and counsel here.”

And all the people arose as one man, saying, “None of us will go to his tent, and none of us will return to his house. But now this is what we will do to Gibeah: we will go up against it by lot, and we will take ten men of a hundred throughout all the tribes of Israel, and a hundred of a thousand, and a thousand of ten thousand, to bring provisions for the people, that when they come they may repay Gibeah of Benjamin for all the outrage that they have committed in Israel.” So all the men of Israel gathered against the city, united as one man.

And the tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe of Benjamin, saying, “What evil is this that has taken place among you? Now therefore give up the men, the worthless fellows in Gibeah, that we may put them to death and purge evil from Israel.” But the Benjaminites would not listen to the voice of their brothers, the people of Israel. Then the people of Benjamin came together out of the cities to Gibeah to go out to battle against the people of Israel. And the people of Benjamin mustered out of their cities on that day 26,000 men who drew the sword, besides the inhabitants of Gibeah, who mustered 700 chosen men. Among all these were 700 chosen men who were left-handed; every one could sling a stone at a hair and not miss. And the men of Israel, apart from Benjamin, mustered 400,000 men who drew the sword; all these were men of war. The people of Israel arose and went up to Bethel and inquired of God, “Who shall go up first for us to fight against the people of Benjamin?” And the Lord said, “Judah shall go up first.”

Then the people of Israel rose in the morning and encamped against Gibeah. And the men of Israel went out to fight against Benjamin, and the men of Israel drew up the battle line against them at Gibeah. The people of Benjamin came out of Gibeah and destroyed on that day 22,000 men of the Israelites. But the people, the men of Israel, took courage, and again formed the battle line in the same place where they had formed it on the first day. And the people of Israel went up and wept before the Lord until the evening. And they inquired of the Lord, “Shall we again draw near to fight against our brothers, the people of Benjamin?” And the Lord said, “Go up against them.”

So the people of Israel came near against the people of Benjamin the second day. And Benjamin went against them out of Gibeah the second day, and destroyed 18,000 men of the people of Israel. All these were men who drew the sword. Then all the people of Israel, the whole army, went up and came to Bethel and wept. They sat there before the Lord and fasted that day until evening, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord. And the people of Israel inquired of the Lord (for the ark of the covenant of God was there in those days, and Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron, ministered before it in those days), saying, “Shall we go out once more to battle against our brothers, the people of Benjamin, or shall we cease?” And the Lord said, “Go up, for tomorrow I will give them into your hand.”

So Israel set men in ambush around Gibeah. And the people of Israel went up against the people of Benjamin on the third day and set themselves in array against Gibeah, as at other times. And the people of Benjamin went out against the people and were drawn away from the city. And as at other times they began to strike and kill some of the people in the highways, one of which goes up to Bethel and the other to Gibeah, and in the open country, about thirty men of Israel. And the people of Benjamin said, “They are routed before us, as at the first.” But the people of Israel said, “Let us flee and draw them away from the city to the highways.” And all the men of Israel rose up out of their place and set themselves in array at Baal-tamar, and the men of Israel who were in ambush rushed out of their place from Maareh-geba. And there came against Gibeah 10,000 chosen men out of all Israel, and the battle was hard, but the Benjaminites did not know that disaster was close upon them. And the Lord defeated Benjamin before Israel, and the people of Israel destroyed 25,100 men of Benjamin that day. All these were men who drew the sword. So the people of Benjamin saw that they were defeated.

The men of Israel gave ground to Benjamin, because they trusted the men in ambush whom they had set against Gibeah. Then the men in ambush hurried and rushed against Gibeah; the men in ambush moved out and struck all the city with the edge of the sword. Now the appointed signal between the men of Israel and the men in the main ambush was that when they made a great cloud of smoke rise up out of the city the men of Israel should turn in battle. Now Benjamin had begun to strike and kill about thirty men of Israel. They said, “Surely they are defeated before us, as in the first battle.” But when the signal began to rise out of the city in a column of smoke, the Benjaminites looked behind them, and behold, the whole of the city went up in smoke to heaven. Then the men of Israel turned, and the men of Benjamin were dismayed, for they saw that disaster was close upon them. Therefore they turned their backs before the men of Israel in the direction of the wilderness, but the battle overtook them. And those who came out of the cities were destroying them in their midst. Surrounding the Benjaminites, they pursued them and trod them down from Nohah as far as opposite Gibeah on the east. Eighteen thousand men of Benjamin fell, all of them men of valor. And they turned and fled toward the wilderness to the rock of Rimmon. Five thousand men of them were cut down in the highways. And they were pursued hard to Gidom, and 2,000 men of them were struck down. So all who fell that day of Benjamin were 25,000 men who drew the sword, all of them men of valor. 

But 600 men turned and fled toward the wilderness to the rock of Rimmon and remained at the rock of Rimmon four months. And the men of Israel turned back against the people of Benjamin and struck them with the edge of the sword, the city, men and beasts and all that they found. And all the towns that they found they set on fire.

The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the Word of our God stands forever.

PRAYER

Our Father and our God, we come before You this morning through Jesus Christ, our Lord, and in the Holy Spirit. All Scripture is breathed out by You and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, Give us ears to hear and eyes to see that we may behold wondrous things in Your Word and be equipped for every good work. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.

INTRODUCTION

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.” (Ecc. 3). 

War and peace are a part of life. There will be war and there will be peace. So, this then begs the question, “With whom will you be at war and with whom will you be at peace?” There are wars worth fighting and peace worth keeping, but there are also sinful conflicts and sinful compromises. That said, war and peace are not simply equal: a good peace is better than a good war, but you cannot have a good peace without a good war. A good war is defined by its attempt to produce peace. A bad war, on the other hand, does not want to beat its swords in plowshares, it wants to turn every plot of land into a hill to die on. So, peace is better than war, but only if it is produced by godly warfare. This is why the birth of Jesus was proclaimed by the angels as “Peace on earth” and why during His earthly ministry He proclaimed, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” The mission of Christ was peace with God, but that meant conquering the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Peace and quiet are great, but not all peaces are created equal. Peacemaking and peacekeeping produce very different results. Christ called peacemakers “children of God,” but He called the Pharisees “children of the devil.” Peacemaking is Christlike. Peacekeeping is Satanic. Peacekeeping would rather tolerate the presence of evil than confront it. It may compromise or cajole, but it does not confront its problems. Instead, it declares war on the presence of conflict. It refuses to fight, unless it is fighting about the need to end all this fighting. It is at war with the idea of war. But the worst part of peacekeeping is that it does not keep. It can’t. It does not begin with peace with God so it cannot end with it. It goes rotten in the end because it was rotten to begin with. It is a bag of apples with a rotten one hiding near the bottom. Kids, this is why your mother turns the bags around and upside down at the grocery store. If you buy a bag of apples with a bad one on the bottom, it won’t be long before all the apples have gone bad… even the ones on top that looked good. That is peacekeeping. 

Peacemaking, on the other hand, as the name implies makes peace. It makes it and preserves it. It looks for the bad apple before it buys the bag. And if it finds one, it removes it in order to save the other apples. In a world full of sin, peacemaking means war. We cannot make peace with anything without bringing some other things to justice. Chesterton said it this way, “If we have accepted everything, we have missed something—war. This life of ours is a very enjoyable fight, but a very miserable truce.” Paul’s first letter to Timothy begins by instructing him to “wage the good warfare,” in 1:18 and ends by reminding him to “fight the good fight of the faith,” in 6:12. Thus, his letter is literally bookended with war. The Christian life is a fight from beginning to end. J.C. Ryle said it this way, “Every baptized churchman is by his profession a 'soldier of Jesus Christ,' and is pledged to fight under His banner against sin, the world and the devil… Where there is grace there will be conflict. To be at peace with the world, the flesh and the devil, is to be at enmity with God and in the broad way that leads to destruction. We have no choice or option. We must either fight or be lost."

Holiness requires conflict. We saw this in our OT reading. Phinehas was not content to coexist with sin. He had to do something about it. Many were distraught about what they were seeing, but Phinehas stood up. He confronted it. And God rewarded his warfare with a covenant of peace and credited him with righteousness as it states in Psalm 106:30. His good war gained him good peace.

Peace is not possible without getting a little punchy. We need a theology of fist fighting because we will find ourselves in situations where we will need to decide if we can hit and if so, how best to do it. The old reprobate, Ambrose Bierce, in his Devil’s Dictionary, defined a non-combatant as “a dead Quaker.” That is to say, there will be fighting whether you engage or not. The Spirit and the flesh will never play nicely. The seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman will never sign a peace treaty. So, any time spent on wishing there wasn’t war is wasted. We cannot expect the enemy to give us the courtesy of time to work this all out. That is something our side is too often in the business of doing. But there are no time-outs in conflict. You cannot expect your enemy to grant you a ceasefire so that you can figure out how you feel about fighting. You cannot form your convictions under fire. That is where your convictions are tested. Martin Luther said it this way, “Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved. To be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point." All that to say, in order to keep your conscience clear before God and man, your convictions must be resolved before you end up in the fox hole.

Now, because a good peace is better than a good war, many Christians reason that any peace is better than all war. As a result, many now pursue peace treaties with sin instead of insisting on being in conflict with it. But enough about the Gospel Coalition. If you contend that any peace is better than any war, you will end up with sin in your camp. If you are on good terms with sin, you are at odds with God. As James 4:4 points out, “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” Enmity, as it turns out, is inescapable. There will always be alliances and warfare. The only question, then, is “Whose side are you on?”

Life, like eternity, is binary. Recall what God said to the serpent after the Fall in Genesis 3:15 “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring: He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” God here declared war on sin and established the antithesis: the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. This is why egalitarianism in all forms is a Christian heresy. It seeks to erase the distinctions God ordained. To be at war with the distinctions is to be on the side of the serpent. So, we receive the world as it is, and that means accepting the fact of warfare. Spurgeon said it this way, “Better a brief warfare and eternal rest, than false peace and everlasting torment.”

With that in mind then, let’s review this morning’s text.

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

The shocking news of sexual immorality coming out of Gibeah brought all of Israel together as one man at Mizpah. They gathered to hear the story firsthand from the source. The Levite who sounded the alarm retold the story and begged the question, “What should we do now? How then shall we live?” All of the men, again as one man, stood up and declared that they would not stand for this kind of thing and vowed that they would not go home until this evil was addressed and dealt with. They made peace with each other and pledged a tithe of their people to make war with Gibeah. For the third time in our text, the Scriptures testify that they were united as one man in this resolve.

The people of Benjamin, however, contradicted the assembly and decided to stand with the city of Gibeah. Gibeah was in their territory after all and rather than acknowledge that this evil had happened on their watch, the Benjaminites refused to deal with the sin in their own camp and doubled-down on defending the sin of their kin. They choose peace with perverts over peace with God’s people. They picked war with the Word of God over war with wickedness. The people of Gibeah were not just perverts, after all, they were family… and they were excellent marksmen to boot. So, confronting them would certainly be very uncomfortable and more than likely very costly. So, they determined to cut their losses and cut themselves off from the people of God in order to make peace with perversion.

So, the respective armies assembled in opposition: Benjamin, on one side, rallying to defend rebellion and Israel on the other, gathering to confront it. In keeping with their commitment to His Word, Israel sought the Lord and asked Him who should lead the charge. As per usual. Judah was selected to lead. The lion would lead the charge. In this first fight with sin, however, Israel came out the worse. They lost 22,000 men. To put that in context, that would be like losing every man in the city of Leavenworth in one battle. This helps explain why a tithe from each tribe was taken. If all the men had gone, it could have eliminated every head of every household of an entire city in just one battle. Despite this discouraging setback, however, the men of Israel took courage and took their stand against sin the very next day by redrawing the battle line in the very same place. 

Again, the men of Israel inquired of the Lord. Previously they were confident in the going, but unsure of who should go first. This time, after the defeat the day before, they asked if they should even go. God confirmed their zeal and commanded them to get back into the fray. Round two, however, proved no better than round one. This time Israel suffered the loss of 18,000 men. So, between day one and day two, a total of 40,000 men of God had given their lives in the fight against sin.

As a result, the men who survived day two sat before their God and fasted. They offered sacrifices for their sins and sought peace with God as they once more committed to make war with sin. Phinehas, who was no stranger to taking sin seriously, inquired of the Lord once more and begged the question: “Shall we continue to battle our brothers?” The Lord said, “Yes,” but this time He added that this would be the last time: He would give Gibeah into their hands. So, on the third day, Israel rose again to engage Gibeah. This time, however, Israel had a plan. They prepared an ambush. Most of the men engaged Gibeah head on and then turned tail and ran. They made themselves vulnerable and were willing to look like cowards in order to give their brothers in ambush a chance to end the war. 

Gibeah took the bait and chased the men retreating, assuming that they had again won the day. As they did so, the ambush entered the unoccupied city and set it on fire. The smoke of that wicked city served as a signal. It told the retreating men of Israel to turn back once more into the breach and it told the men of Benjamin that they had been tricked. None of the Benjaminites of that age understood that they had brought this destruction upon themselves. If they had, they would not have pursued the people of God nor would they have resisted them to begin with. The ambush would not have worked had Gibeah not taken the bait. But sin always takes you further than you want to go, faster than you want to get there, costs you more than you meant to pay, and holds you longer than you meant to stay.

Gibeah’s sin found them out. The same hubris that led them to defy the laws of God, led them to overplay their hand. 18,000 men of Benjamin were killed on the battlefield, another 5,000 were cut down running away, and 2,000 made it to Gidom where they made their last stand before being defeated. In total, 25,000 Benjaminites died on the third day. Only 600 survived by fleeing into the wilderness. They would end up wandering there in their unbelief for four months. Israel, however, marched home triumphantly, and as they did, they burned their bridges with sin and set the cities of Benjamin on fire.

UNITY AND DIVISION ARE BOTH REQUIRED BY CHRIST

In Ephesians 4:3, we are called by Christ to “make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” This kind of peace does not come by accident. It requires, as the Word of God commands, effort. And not just any effort, but EVERY effort. In other words, peace is costly. You cannot have peace and unity without paying something. Sometimes that means letting something go. Sometimes it means picking something up. Sometimes the record of wrongs must be thrown away. Sometimes the benefit of the doubt must be given. Sometimes you must ruin a Tuesday night and have that hard conversation. Sometimes you must build trust by not sending that particular text. Love covers a multitude of sins. And if it can cover real, solid sin, then it can certainly cover imagined, petty grievances. So, in order to pursue unity with a brother or sister, we may have to divide ourselves from our feelings. You cannot draw near to God and to your grudges. You cannot serve two masters. You will either love the one and begrudge the other or begrudge the one and love the other. Forgiveness is no friend of bitterness. Friendship with bitterness is enmity with God.

Again, unity requires effort. Laziness looks for similarities and lets them settle the matter. To borrow an illustration from Pastor Wilson, consider a divided highway with two lanes running in each direction. Now, imagine a Ford and a Chevy both headed one direction on one side of that highway and a Ford and a Chevy headed the opposite direction on the other side. Laziness looks to brand loyalty. The Ford looks up with disdain at the Chevy in front of him heading north. But then it sees a Ford headed south on the other side of the highway and its heart is filled with warm affection and reassurance that the world is not going to Hell in a Chevy-basket. But this is overly simplistic and short-sighted. The Ford has more in common with the Chevy going the same direction than it does with the Ford going the opposite direction. Direction, after all, determines destination and they are going to different places. To further complicate our analogy, imagine the Ford has a Chiefs flag flying from its window and it spots a Chevy with a Chiefs flag going the opposite direction. They drive different trucks and are going different directions, but they both cheer for the Chiefs. In this case, a shared obsession with the Chiefs may produce more affection than a shared destination. Life is complicated. And so, we must consider what God says about ranking our interests.

ENTER ORDO AMORIS 

We need properly layered loyalties, or as Augustine called it, “ordo amoris.”

Consider the KJV’s rendering of Colossians 3:5

Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

In Paul’s instruction to the Colossians, he lists several things that God expects them to put to death within themselves. Not surprisingly, fornication, sexual immorality, and impurity are listed, as well as covetousness and idolatry. If those show up, you must do your Christian duty and show them the door. These sins will not go quietly or accidentally. They will not just go away. They must be chased down and frogmarched to their death. Sin is serious business. As Jesus pointed out, It is better to gouge out an eye and go to Heaven than to go to Hell with both your eyeballs. Ok, so mortify your sins, like lust and idolatry. Got it. But who had “inordinate affection” on their serious sins bingo card? But there it is, sandwiched between the sin of sexual impurity and the sin of thinking about sexual impurity.

So, what exactly is inordinate affection? It is having your affections out of order. Merely having affections is not a sin and not in view here. Passions are not a problem if they are properly ordered. We are not gnostics or stoics. Feelings are not bad per se, but they certainly can be. They may come along for the ride, but they cannot be allowed to drive. They will wreck your ride every time and usually cause a lot of injury and property damage in the process. Now, the sin of inordinate affection does presuppose lawful affection. Many affections are Scripturally justified and others are Scripturally mandated. Our feelings must be under authority. The problem then is not in having them, but in having them disorganized or disproportionate to their assignment. Your affections cannot be out of sorts without you being in sin. Some passions are sinful to have too much of and some are sinful to have too little of, but all can be sinful if not put in their place. And they won’t sort themselves out. They all want to first. Which is why some must be subordinated to others. The solution to inordinate affections is subordination.

Consider the three following texts:

Luke 14:26

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

1 Timothy 5:8

If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

Galatians 6:10

So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.

Each of these verses pits one affection against another in order to establish their rank: You must love your God more than you love your wife. You must love your wife more than you love other women. You must love your siblings more than you love your friends. You must look to the needs of your family before you look to the needs of your neighbor’s family. You must love the Lord more than you love your own life. These loyalties, remember our Ford and Chevy friends from before, can get complicated with all kinds of combinations that test our affections and reveal the order of our respective loyalties.

UNITY, DIVISION, and ORDO AMORIS IN TODAY’S TEXT

Benjamin should have sided with Israel against Gibeah. They should have picked loyalty to the Lord over loyalty to family. But they chose Gibeah. Their affections were inordinate. They either felt too strongly toward their kin or too weakly to their Lord, but the end result was the same: Benjamin backed the wrong horse and sided with sin.

As we saw in our NT reading, peace with God really may require us to distance ourselves from others, especially those who call themselves “Christian” but refuse to be called out on their sin. Those who choose to be unified with their sin are choosing to be separated from God and His people. 

But they do not often go quietly into that bad night. They sometimes insist on making you remove them. In these unfortunate circumstances, it is the duty of a faithful church to discipline or even excommunicate a persistent, unrepentant sinner. As you hear on a weekly basis, those under church discipline in this or any other Bible believing church, are not permitted to partake of the Lord’s Supper. As Paul points out, you cannot distance yourself from sin in the world without being removed from the world altogether, but you should work hard to distance yourself from that kind of thing if it shows up in your heart, in your family, or in your church. In other words, we must be in the world, but the world must NOT be in the us. A boat needs to be on the water, but water must not be in the boat; likewise, we must be on the water taking on the world instead of in the world taking on water. 

Abraham Kuyper, the 19th century Dutch theologian and politician, said it this way, “When principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then battle is your calling, and peace has become sin; you must, at the price of dearest peace, lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy, with all the fire of your faith.”

Back to Judges, while Benjamin sided with sin, the rest of Israel agreed with God and with each other. We are told three separate times that they acted as one man as they gathered to stand united against sin. They came together to go against sin. Doing the right thing, however, does not guarantee a victory. There are casualties on both sides of the battlefield. We place our faith in obedience, not results. We live and die according to His Word. This is a good reminder, especially for you who are younger. Many good men died fighting sin. They did not die because they were in the wrong, they died because others were wrong. Sin is never a private matter. What you do behind closed doors does not stay hidden. What you think between your ears makes its way out into the world around you. The men of Gibeah indulged in gross sin, the men of Benjamin got sucked in, but many men of Judah died. A few played with fire and many got burned. Let this serve as a reminder, your sin will find you out and you won’t be the only one who suffers. The nation lost many men: some good men fighting sin and some wicked men indulging in it, but every loss was a loss to the nation as a whole. We will see next week how this sin hamstrung the entire nation.

SO LINES MUST BE DRAWN

Just like Israel, we must draw the line according to God’s Word and return to it even if we get whooped there over and over. It is better to be beaten defending God’s standard than to succeed defending a different standard. It is better to die where God says than to live where He forbids. To borrow from Chesterton again, “Morality, like art, begins by drawing the line somewhere.” That somewhere is the Word of God.

Do not be too quick to cancel people. Of course, you must cut yourselves off from cancer, but you also must not treat every wart like it’s a cancer. Some warts are just warts, not a reason for war. And remember, in all likelihood, you are somebody else’s wart. You are the one that is being patiently put up with. Romans 15:1 says, “We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves.” The weak cannot put up with the failings of others. It is one of their many weaknesses. So, if you imagine yourself strong, prove it. Put up with something. Don’t melt down like a snowflake. Stand up and bear up under adversity like a man. If you can’t, or won’t, you are the weak one everyone else is putting up with, not the strong one everyone needs to listen to. 

So, yes, we must not pursue unity at any cost, but we must not accept disunity simply because it might cost us something. There is a unity that costs too much. It gives up too much to gain too little, like a young woman making her case for purity to a young man from the discomfort of his backseat. But there is also a disunity that is too cheap. It gives up too quickly. It hits unsubscribe on real people before it knows the whole story. It throws shade too freely at anyone who disagrees with them about anything. In other words, it does not have a sense of proportion. It is out of order. As much as we need our affections rightly ordered, we also need our hostilities properly ordered. We must have character, but we must be charitable. We must have resolutions, but we must be reasonable. We must be wise when we shake someone’s hand… and when we shake our fists.  Simply stated, we must be Christian. We must join the apostle Paul in saying, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (2 Tim. 4:7) 

THIS, OF COURSE, REQUIRES US TO CONSIDER CHRIST

He was tough and tender. He waged war on worldliness in order to save the world. The world had its affections out of order. So, He came to declare, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” The only way for the world to be saved was to honor God more than itself. So, Jesus led by example and left Heaven in order to lead the world back to its proper station.

1 John 3:8

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

Note that He did not live righteously, die sacrificially, rise triumphantly, and ascend gloriously to simply frustrate the serpent. No, He did it to destroy the devil and his works. “The Son of God goes forth to war, a kingly crown to gain; His blood-red banner streams afar! Who follows in his train?

We have been commissioned by Christ to conquer the world as we have been conquered. Just as He has made a conquest of us, we are now to make a conquest of His world in His Name by His Spirit according to His Word. We are not to settle for Christian-ish. We are to pursue Christendom.

Pastor Wilson in Rules for Reformers says it this way, "We are not to fight to the point of predominance, we are to fight to the point of complete victory... Pursuit is the principle neglected by the currently strong. Many wars have been prolonged because the victorious army did not press its advantage in the immediate aftermath of a critical battle."

While we are postmillennial, we are not trying to prolong the war. We should not make it last longer than necessary. Settling for sanctified-ish does honor God. He wants to do for the world what He is already doing for us. 

He has saved us, He is saving us, and He will save us. He has established a beachhead from which He is endeavoring to push His influence into every nook and cranny of our hearts, souls, minds, and strengths. He is Heaven-bent on occupying every square inch of us. He will push His presence all the way into every corner, and He will not stop until His Kingdom is fully come in us and on earth as it is in Heaven. 

To quote Kuyper again, "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, 'Mine!'" 

God will not allow any ghettos of sin to remain in us or the world. There will be no junk drawers in the house of God or the hearts of men. “The Lord Jesus Christ will transform our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body, by the power that enables Him even to subject all things to Himself.” (Php 3:20-21) He will not leave well enough alone. He will not settle for less. His glory demands more. He will not stop short. His design for the entire world is the same as His design for us: to conform it to Christ.

While there may only be two kinds of people in the world, neither of them is a kind that can escape Jesus. Everyone will have to deal with Him.

Christ declared war on sin and came to destroy the works of the devil. He came to unite us to God by dividing us from our sins. He, who knew no sin, was united to it on the Cross so that we, who have known sin, might be divided from its wages. We have died with Christ to sin that we, like Him, might rise to life. So, fight sin where you find it, beginning with your own heart. Kill the dragon you know best before you hunt for more. Romans 16:20 The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

PRAYER

Heavenly Father, purify Your people. Send your Spirit to root out any and all sin in us, in our homes, in our churches, in our nation, and in our world. Do not stop until every inch of every heart is cheerfully submitted to Your will. Give us grace and grit to do what You have commanded that we might give You the glory You deserve. Let us fight the good fight and enjoy the good peace.

We ask these things in Jesus’ name and we offer up the words of the prayer He taught us to pray singing…

day no. 16,990: Penelope is 15

Happy Birthday, Penelope!

Your body may be 15 years old today, but your brain was 15 years old like 5 years ago. You have always been ahead of your time. 

You like to do shows for Lolo before bed. You like ice packs on your neck and hot water bottles on your belly. You like the Last Airbender and you like playing piano after dinner. You like taking naps and you like sleeping in. You like having the AC on in the van and you like typing on Sunday afternoons. You like having the first crack at the Epoch Times and you like having the last crack in a conversation. You like Parmesan cheese and you like salt. You like peanut butter caramel chip keto ice cream and you like gingerberry kombucha. You like being in charge and you like being left alone. You like singing and you like listening to music. You like long lists of things and you like it when a good list reaches its end. So, you're welcome.

You are beautiful, smart, funny, talented, well-worded, quick-witted, creative, and confident. You know who you are and what you are about. You are a gifted story writer and teller. You like making up characters and enjoy being in character. You are good at world building; so good, in fact, that you sometimes get so caught up in the worlds you have made up that you forget that there is a real one back here with the rest of us. Tolkien famously quipped that one could hope that Middle Earth was real and I believe you share that same sentiment about the worlds you create. If they aren't real, you wish they were. Chesterton urged us to remember how wonder filled our world was and many times the quickest path to seeing the amazing in the day to day is to create stories that must borrow their brilliance from the world that is always around us. God shows us the glory of His creation by allowing us to be sub-creators. You have taken this charge in stride. You write poems, you create worlds and draw maps of worlds, you invent people and languages, you write songs and pen lyrics. You love making much with the raw material God has provided. You see the possibility in things. This, again, is a great blessing, but it does come at the cost of sometimes being discontent with the way things are.The pleasant arbor on the way up the Hill of Difficulty was a great place to rest one's head, but as we saw with Christian, it can also be a place where one loses his head for a while. So, keep building worlds and populating them with the best characters your mind can create and with the best ideas this world has to offer, but remember to return home and hang your hat in reality with the rest of us. We miss you when you're gone, but we always look forward to having you back.

I love being your dad, Penelope. I am proud of you. I like you and I love you.

Happy birthday, Nen.

Love, 

Dad

day no. 16,989: fear God, hate evil; love the Lord, oppose the horde

PROVERBS 8:13

The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil. 

This establishes the fact of the matter. The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil. They are six of one and a half dozen of the other. If you fear the Lord you will hate evil. If you do not hate evil, you do not fear the Lord.

PSALM 97:10

O you who love the LORD, hate evil! 

While the verse from Proverbs established the fact of the matter, this admonition from the Psalms emphasizes the application. You say you love the Lord? Prove it. Hate evil, beginning, of course, with your own.

day no. 16,988: all swords in the same direction

“The logic of Christendom is that of multiple countries, multiple nations, all calling on the name of Christ, all having the option of living under the promised Deuteronomic blessings. As this goodness gradually takes shape, these Deuteronomic blessings will gradually become the Isaianic blessings, and the wolf will dwell with the lamb.” — Douglas Wilson, American Milk & Honey

Christendom is all swords in the same direction. This will result in every nation no longer needing swords. As all nations eventually commit to Christ and His Word, they will aim their efforts at eliminating sin., not eliminating each other. This will look like repentance and a return to the law of God in addition to a reluctance to relearn war. This is the natural result of Jesus putting all of His enemies under His authority.

1 Corinthians 15:25-26

For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

At some point the only enemy left will be death, and then, even death will bow the knee to Christ. In Him is the light of life. He shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.

day no. 16,987: heart attacks

Jeremiah 17:9

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

Heart attacks are par for the course. No one can understand his own heart because it is lying to him. Ignorance is an inside job.

Proverbs 16:25

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.

What seems right to you often isn't. 

James 1:22

Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

Willful ignorance is not ah excuse for not knowing; it is an additional offense.

“Complete self confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness.” — G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Strong self-assurance is weak self-awareness. 

Anyone left to his or her own devices fails, even if they consider it a victory.

day no. 16,986: immanentizing the eschaton

“Friends don’t let friends immanentize the eschaton.” — Douglas Wilson, Shall I Explain What’s Going On? No, Seriously...

Rushing the future is always ill-advised. You can't get to tomorrow any faster than today will allow for, so don't make a mess of things today trying to turn it into tomorrow.

“The Christian faith lives in the light of eternity, and can afford to be patient.” — Christopher Dawson

God is playing the long game. That doesn't mean He is letting everything go to Hell in a hand basket for an indefinite amount of time before finally stepping in to save it all at the eleventh hour. No, He has many minor victories prepared for us before the major denouement.

1 Corinthians 15:58

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.

So, rest assured, the future is Christian, but be assured, there is a lot of good, hard work to do between now and then. So, hop to it, huckleberry.

Matthew 6:34

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

You cannot carry two days at once. Today is heavy enough. So, stop trying to carry tomorrow too. First of all, you can't; and secondly, you'll still have to deal with tomorrow when you get there.

*in political theory and theology, to "immanentize the eschaton" is a generally pejorative phrase referring to attempts to bring about utopian conditions in the world, and to effectively create heaven on earth.

day no. 16,985: postmillennial perspicuity and divine indifference

“Prudence and unruffled dignity are excellent things.” — G.K. Chesterton, The Taboo Lifted

Thinking a lot about the future and a little about what others think of you are great qualities to possess. In fact, having them often protects you from being had.

Proverbs 4:26

Ponder the path of thy feet,

and let all thy ways be established.

If you're not thinking about the future, someone else will be and their vision for your future will have a head start when you get there. 

Proverbs 29:25

The fear of man bringeth a snare:

but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe.

If you're thinking a lot about what others think about you, you will end up doing what they want instead of what you want. 

Ecclesiastes 12:13

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

Postmillennial perspicuity spreads the leaven through the loaf and divine indifference protects the project from outside interference. The one who is unflappable and unruffled will go far.

day no. 16,984: make common sense common again

“Common sense is even a celestial thing. Common sense is not of this world.” — G.K. Chesterton, Common Sense in Politics (1907)

Common sense is Heavenly grace.

Common sense is not the kind of thing you can simply take for granted. It doesn't come pre-loaded. You can appeal to it, but the fact that you have to makes the other person's point: if it really were that obvious and ubiquitous, the other person would already agree with you. You can assume it to be universal, but you cannot then explain why it is currently being ignored. You can decry a lack of it or bemoan its absence, but you can be sure you will not find it everywhere.

Common sense, then, is common enough to show that God is kind, but uncommon enough to reveal that men often aren't. It is given by grace, not fixed by fate.

God have mercy and make common sense common again.

day no. 16,983: i don't care

“Be careful in choosing your carelessness.” — G.K. Chesterton, Platitudes Undone

We cannot care about everything. In fact, we shouldn't. We are commanded by Christ to discount certain cares and concerns and to cut others off altogether.

So what should we do when the world condemns us for not caring about it? Not care.

"What is the solution to all this? The solution is the divine gift of not caring what they think. But of course, not caring at all is apathy, and that is also a sin. Caring is another inescapable concept—not whether, but which. It is not whether your conduct will be approved, but rather which group will approve it. It is not whether you care if your conduct is approved, it is rather which group’s approval you care about." — Douglas Wilson, Real Offense and Not So Much

We cannot be careless across the board, of course, but we must not care what the world thinks about us not caring.

Mark 4:19

And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.

Being overly concerned about what the world cares about is a great way to choke out your concern for Christ. No one can take care to two master. Either you will love the one and hate the other or hate the one and love the other.

1 Peter 5:7

Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you.

The cares of the world should not concern us as much as the cares of Christ. He cares for us and for our cares and that is something we should care a great deal about.

day no. 16,982: and all the king's men

Acts 13:22-23

And when he had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their king; to whom also he gave their testimony, and said, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfil all my will. Of this man's seed hath God according to his promise raised unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus.

King David was a man after God’s own heart, but Jesus Christ was God with the heart of a man.

Revelation 5:9-10

Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;  And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.

The King of kings became a man in order to make men into kings.

day no. 16,981: courage and its counterfeits

“We need not teach [children] to admire courage; they do admire courage.” — G.K. Chesterton, Moral Education in a Secular World

Anyone can appreciate the brightness of boldness. It's value is obvious.

Everyone, especially children, however, need to be trained to discern between boldness and brashness. They do not need to be taught to be drawn to initiative, but they do need to learn the difference between risk-taking faith and reality-ditching folly. Both look like bravery, but one is fighting an armored giant with a sling and a stone while the other is jumping off a cliff without a parachute. The one is rewarded by God and the other is admired by men. The one ends in glory, the other ends in gory.

There is a bravery that puts itself in peril for the sake of something greater and there is a brashness that puts itself in harm's way because it has nothing better to do. 

Celebrating courage is contagious. Your kids will catch a case of it. You cannot vaccinate them against it. Your job is to make sure they catch and keep the kind that Christ commends and call out the kind that is its counterfeit.

day no. 16,980: grace upon grace

“Those who are saved by grace through faith need to make sure that they leave material evidence of that grace behind him. We are not plowing the sand. The gospel really is a gospel that is all of grace, nothing but grace. And at the same time, we are commanded to walk in a manner that is worthy of that grace (Eph. 4:1; Phil. 1:27; Col. 1:10; 1 Thess. 2:12; 2 Thess. 1:11). And walking worthy has an impact. Walking worthy gets things done (Eph. 2:10).” — Douglas Wilson, Healing for George Washington

If you have received the grace of God, give your loved ones the grace of not having to guess.

Demonstrate your faith by your good works.

Work hard to store up a lifetime of tangible evidence so that those you leave behind might not have to work so hard to be amateur Sherlocks in order to figure out if you were a Christian.

In addition to that grace you give them, the good works you leave behind go to work on your behalf for your people after you are gone and provide them with foundations on which to build and scaffolding from which to keep the building project going forward. It is grace upon grace. You received it and you give it to your descendants. What you received you give. You make it easier for them to obey God in honoring you and make it easier for them to impress their merits upon your grandchildren.

Grace saves, but not without doing something about it. 

Those who want us to plow sand can pound sand.

day no. 16,979: courage makes the cut

“For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point and does not break.” — G.K. Chesterton

There is no such thing as untested courage. Courage is what we call passing the test. It is the word we apply to what makes it through. 

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.” — C.S. Lewis

Untested virtue is not virtue. It may be virtue in seed form, but it has not yet matured to earn that medal of honor. Only after the seed has survived the test can it rightly be called virtue.

1 Kings 20:11

Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.

You should not be content to call yourself brave until you have come back from battle. Do not boast before you have survived the conflict and stood your ground. You should not brag about victory before the battle begins, but only after it is finished (and even then, maybe not).

Proverbs 20:6

Most men will proclaim every one his own goodness:

but a faithful man who can find?

Do not proclaim your faithfulness before you face your fears. It is easier to call yourself "faithful" beforehand than it is to be faithful after the fact There are more who want to wear the crown than those who finish the race to obtain it.

Proverbs 24:10

If thou faint in the day of adversity,

thy strength is small.

Strength boasted of beforehand is weakness. If it is only strong until it isn't, it isn't strong at all.

day no. 16,978: battlegrounds and boot camps

"You should also especially impress upon rulers and parents that they should govern well and take their children to school, pointing out how it is their duty to do this and what a dam­nable sin they commit if they fail to do it. For in this way they topple and ruin both the kingdom of God and of the world, as the bitterest enemies of both God and men. Show them clearly what dreadful harm they do when they do not help raise children to be pastors, preachers, writers, etc., that God will punish them terribly for such neglect. For there is a need to preach about this. It can hardly be expressed how greatly parents and rulers sin in this matter at the present time. The devil also has great calamity in mind with such behavior.” — Martin Luther, Preface to the Small Catechism 

It is a Christian duty to provide Christian children with a Christian education.

Ephesians 6:4

And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Christian children are OWED a Christian education and NOT providing them with one provokes them to anger. In addition, you incur the wrath of God for defying a direct order. To call a child to Christian battle without putting him through Christian boot camp is not only evil, it is retarded. You cannot just throw arrows at the enemy. You have to fire them. You cannot just toss your children into the fray without first teaching them how to handle themselves under fire. You must train them and teach them before sending them out. You cannot expect the school, which is the church of the state, to help you train your children to be apologists and missionaries of the Christian faith. You cannot send your kids off to learn the secular catechism and be shocked when they reject the Christian creeds. 

"You may not be paedobaptist or postmill, but the left is and that's why they're winning." — Ben Merkle

You may not lay claim to your kids or to their future, but that won't keep someone else from doing it. Someone will want your kids and someone will have plans for them in the world to come. 

“Whoever trains the children controls the future.” — Steve Wilkins, The Public School Movement

Since we, as Christians, know that Christ rules the world and the future, we are subjecting our children to lifelong trouble and eternal turmoil by turning them over to secular schooling. In other words, the secularists will not control the end of the story even though they lay claim to it, but they can control certain plot points between now and then and all the more so if we surrender our kids to their grooming. We cannot submit our characters to their editing and have a happy ending. When we do so, we make our children their accomplices.

One can imagine a time of such intense battle that all hands are needed on deck regardless of how well trained those hands may be, but one cannot imagine a time available to train that is instead spent sending your troops to be trained by your enemy.

day no. 16,977: thin soup with people you love is better than thick steak with people you hate

Proverbs 15:16-17

Better is little with the fear of the Lord

than great treasure and trouble therewith.

Better is a dinner of herbs where love is,

than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.

Better to have thin soup with people you love than thick steak with people you hate.

Proverbs 17:1

Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith,

than an house full of sacrifices with strife.

Better to have some stale bread with brothers than a battle over bounty.

Ecclesiastes 4:6

Better is an handful with quietness,

than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit.  

Better to have less stress in one hand than more drama than you can handle.

Psalm 37:16

A little that a righteous man hath

is better than the riches of many wicked.

Better to have nothing but righteousness than all the wickedness you want.

In short, the quality of the company is more important than quality of the cooking, but the best of both worlds is good fellowship over a good feast. If you have to choose, pick better people over better provisions, but if possible, create a community that includes great characters having grand celebrations.

day no. 16,976: Juniper is SIX!

Happy 6th Birthday, Juni Cartooni, you did it!

You are such a fun little lady. You love it when I throw you up into the air and catch you. You always request that I throw you as high as I can, but as you getting bigger, that is getting less high each time. You like playing rock a bye baby and being dropped. You are a tiny thrill seeker. You live life on the edge. That said, you also like cuddling and sitting on my lap during watch time at night. You like to hug me before I leave for my walk and once I walk through the door when I get home. You like to be tickled. Scratch that. You LOVE being tickled. Most people reach a point where they can't breathe and ask the tickler to take a break. Not you! You keep giggling until the tickler is too tired to keep going. You outlast your tickle torturers. You have a unique voice. It is very Juni and I love it. The way you say "adorable" it adorable. You like getting treats at church after our fellowship meal. You like playing in the dirt and you like turning the dirt into mud. You love your chewie, but you often can't find her. You like sips of my coffee. You like Studio C. You like your fairy gardens and you like tea parties just like a Grandma June should. As I said, you are fun little lady. You like being a girl and you're very good at it.

I like being your dad. It is fun watching you grow up. You are still very you, but that you is getting bigger. You like it when I walk with you on my feet and you like running around on your own. You like being little and you are excited to be big. You are living the six year old dream.

You are beautiful, funny, smart, and strong. I look forward to watching you continue to grow in wisdom, stature, and favor with God and others. You are already so great, I am excited to see what more God has in store for you.

To Juni!

Happy Birthday, sister friend!

Love, 

Dad

day no. 16,975: on topic, off white

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” — Mark Twain 

The difference between white and off white is the difference between right and wrong.

Hebrews 5:14

Strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

Anyone can see the difference between pure evil and very good, but discernment is needed to tell the difference between the lesser of two evils and the good that's isn't good enough.

Isaiah 5:20-21

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!

The fact of black and white is fixed by God. Because there is black and white, however, there is also gray. All gray is merely some ratio of black to white.

Genesis 3:1

Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.

Subtlety is the sweet spot of sin. It thrives in the ill-defined. All the more reason to have your reasoning in good shape. 

1 Peter 1:13

Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind.

Exercise your discernment. Practice. Lift heavy topics. Get after mental gains. 

Don't let your brain be the belly fat of your head. Flex the facts and get your brain in shape. Your mind is a muscle. Don't let it atrophy. Stay sharp. Stay fit.

day no. 16,974: love fights fear

“Fight the thing that you fear.” — G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

If you fear anything more than Christ, you must fight it. 

Proverbs 1:7

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

You must be more afraid of failing God than you are of failing to captivate the crowd. You must pursue the approval of your Father in Heaven more than you flee from the disapproval of the world.

Matthew 10:28

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Many fear for the lives, but too few fear for their deaths. They are scared of the wrong end of the equation. They exhaust themselves trying to escape the inevitable as they perform for the fickle, but the fear of God is a source of strength.

Genesis 31:42

Except the fear of Isaac had been with me, surely thou hadst sent me away now empty. 

The fear of God provides power to push on and perspective for that which we encounter.

Romans 8:37

Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

We are, of course, more than conquerors in Christ who loved us, but we are not less.

So, let us face our fears and put them down.

1 John 4:18

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.

The fear of God fights your frights. It casts them aside as it conquers. 

Love fights fear.