day no. 17,372: snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

"While the case itself was heartening, the thing that appears to be really heartening is that Republicans seem to be rejecting their tried and true historical tactic of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory." — Douglas Wilson, Christians, Gerrymandering, and the Legitimate Uses of Political Power

Conservatism has a grand tradition of conserving nothing more than the last liberal victory. It seeks to keep the liberals from advancing any faster or further down the road by keeping them at the same speed and going the same direction as they have been going. In other words, it doesn't conserve much of anything and when it actually has the opportunity to, it usually blushes.

"American conservatism is a party which never conserves anything... it is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader." — R.L. Dabney

Conservatism is either too shy or too coy to win. It either means it, but it too bashful to do it or it doesn't really mean it and that is why it never actually wins. It isn't playing to win against the liberals, it is playing a different game. Its livelihood depends on the existence of liberals. It wouldn't know what to do with itself if it won. It needs something to fight so that it can be re-elected. In other words, it wants to stay in office, not advance its platform.

day no. 17,371: cheat codes and God mode

"Paul once asked rhetorically, 'If God is for us, who can be against us?' (Rom. 8:31). We might think to adjust the words slightly. 'If God is for us, it almost feels like cheating.'” — Douglas Wilson, Queen of the Persians #1

Placing your faith in God feels like taking all the risk out of the equation. If you go with God, what could go against you? But faith requires risk. You have to believe that God is who He says He is and will do what He has said He will do. So, in one sense, going with God is the least risky thing you can do and in another it is the most risky thing you could do. Pushing all in on God goes against a certain sense of self-preservation, but on the other hands, it guarantees another sense of self-preservation.

Matthew 16:25

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.

If you try to save your own life for your own selfish reasons, you will lose it. Like holding sand in your hand, the tighter you squeeze the more you lose. You work against your interests by pursuing them. But if you lose your life for Christ's sake, you will gain it. Like emptying your hands to have something placed into them, the more you give up, the more room you have to receive things from God. This is the way God made the world and He is not mocked; what you sow, you will reap.

"Living in the world that actually exists is an enormous advantage. There are times when it almost seems to me like cheating or something. In the long run, we need not worry. In the long run, blind stupidity never works. The revolutionary alternates between throwing rocks at the moon and barking at it." — Douglas Wilson, Rules for Reformers

Having Christ on your side feels like cheating. It is like learning that a "God-mode" exists. It makes the rest of the game easier, but it does not make the opposition go away. There are still bad guys to fight and end bosses to overcome, but you have a weapon that is powerful to pull down their strength.

2 Corinthians 10:3-5

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

Enemies still need to be overcome and demonic strongholds still need to come down, but with Christ on our side, why should we fear? Every high thing that is raised up against Him will one day bow down and confess that He is King. And that is why, even if you should find yourself outnumbered, you should know that you're not alone (or outnumbered for that matter)

"One man with God is always in the majority.” — John Knox

day no. 17,370: talebearers

Proverbs 11:13

A talebearer revealeth secrets: 

but he that is of a faithful spirit concealeth the matter.

Talebearers call you with news; witnesses are called upon to report.

A false witness tries to report first; a faithful witness wants to report accurately.

A talebearer shares other people's sins; a faithful spirit looks to cover them.

day no. 17,369: black coffee Christianity

“The people always have an earnest desire to have a messenger who is willing to prophesy smooth things for them (Is. 30:10). ‘Prophesy deceits unto us’—they want deceits, boy, and they want them layered on thick. They want to heap up teachers who will stroke their felt needs (2 Tim. 4:3). If a man of wind comes prophesying wine and beer, he would be just the right spokesman for this people (Mich. 2:11). They want prophets who will speak to them in terms of affirming and melted butterscotch. They want pumpkin spice sermons.” — Douglas Wilson, No Such Thing As Bad Words

Everybody wants a sauce. They may vary on what kind of sauce they like, but they all agree that some kind of sauce is needed. Whether it is steak sauce, ranch, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, sriracha, etc... everybody has something they put on the food to flavor it to their liking. 

Christianity does not require any sauce. In fact, in most cases, it actually prohibits the use of most sauces. No adjectives are needed. You don't need progressive Christianity or trad Christianity. You just need Christ. In most cases, the sauce is meant to cover the flavor of something you don't like, not to enhance the flavor of something already present. We like pumpkin spice sermons because they are easier to stomach than black coffee Christianity. 

day no. 17,368: shock treatment

“What does shocking language do? One of the things it accomplishes is that it wakes people up. It brings them to their senses. It smells like burnt Marsh-wiggle.”  — Douglas Wilson, No Such Thing As Bad Words

Niceties and sweet nothings can gloss over a great deal of gross, but one bad word can burn off the fog.

"Nine times out of ten, the coarse word is the word that condemns an evil and the refined word the word that excuses it." — G. K. Chesterton 

Shocking language cannot be overused without it ceasing to be shocking. The whole point of jarring language is that it should jar. If you're always brandishing your pistols, it won't arrest anyone's attention when you wave them around (again). On the other hand, if you always have your weapon holstered, but today you draw, people understand that the situation is escalated. This is how we should be with our words. You should the necessary ones holstered, but you also must be ready to present them should the situation warrant it.

"Do not give fair names to foul sins; call them what you will, they will smell no sweeter." — Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

If you call bad things nice names, you do everyone a disservice. The sinner does not feel the need for quick repentance and resolution, the onlooker does not understand the seriousness of the situation, and the Lord is misrepresented as a moral guidance counselor whose law can be taken or left at leisure.

"Soft teaching produces hard hearts and hard teaching produces soft hearts." — Jim Wilson

Calling bad things bad names produces soft hearts for the law of the Lord. Calling bad things soft names produces hard hearts toward the law of the Lord.

day no. 17,367: bad precedents are called good when used on bad people

“In America they go after the S.O.B.’s first. And nobody cares about them. They establish bad precedents on them, and then they go after the rest of us.” — Allan Dershowitz

They went after the J-6ers because there was not enough public sentiment to support them. All of the Left despised them and most of the right were willing to believe what was being reported about them. So, they roughed them up because no one was found to defend them. Precedents were established, however, that now can be weaponized against others that some may support. Many of those, however, are also supporters of law and order and will say, "Well, they did technically violate the law, so I guess they got what they had coming to them," even though the law was only recently minted and being applied for the first time on their neighbor. We saw this during COVID. Neighbors turned into narcs a lot faster than you would have thought possibly. An entire country became karens and the rest of us were on their nanny cams.

Principles do not accommodate personal preferences. If they do, they are not principles, they are merely prejudices. Principles help you pre-judge by keeping a certain standard. Prejudices make it impossible for outside standards, like principles, to be held. I do not want the Left arrested for hate crimes anymore than I want a Christian to be arrested for them. I say this because I believe that hate crimes are, in principle, unjust. Murdering someone because of their color of skin is no worse a crime than murdering someone because of their political affiliation. They should be illegal for the same reason and punished the same way. Bad precedents often get pushed through by being used on bad people. Because they are bad by our standards, they deserve to have bad things by any standard happen to them. But that smuggles in bad precedent and anything you are willing to introduce can be used by your enemies against you.

In short, if you do not oppose evil in principle, you are merely tolerating it until it comes for you.

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me

— Martin Niemöller

If you allow unjust things to happen to others because you don't identify with them, soon enough the authorities will identify you as someone that unjust things should be done to, and there will be no one left to come to your aid.

day no. 17,366: snake oil salvation salesmen

"Repent of your sins, all of them—lies, adultery, porn, stealing, cursing, sodomy, abortion, hatred, malice, and include in that list, topping it off, your readiness to accept offers of snake oil salvation." — Douglas Wilson, Slicker Than a Pocket Full of Pudding

Steer clear of snake oil salvation salesmen and even more clear of being tempted to hear their pitch. Do not let yourself become so desperate that you are willing to listen to liars. Do not be so faithless so as to entertain unfaithful solutions to your problems. This sounds easy enough, but there is always a temptation to turn to whoever will tell you what you want to hear.

Jeremiah 5:31

The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?

People like prophets who give them what they want. There is a free market prophecy that competes in the open market for the hearts of the people. It markets itself for a share of the market. And that would be bad enough, but then add to that people who enjoy being lied to. They prefer flattery to acclaim. Funny as it sounds, they like to be lied to.

"Tell me lies, Tell me sweet little lies"

— Fleeetwood Mac, Little Lies

There will always be a market for snake oil salvation salesmen. Itching ears will always want to have their felt needs scratched.

2 Timothy 4:3-4

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

Story always wins. When the true story and its Author are rejected, fables and hucksters are accepted.

day no. 17,365: marching orders

"Exodus 32:27 says, 'Let every man put his sword on his side…' This implies that every man was expected to have a weapon. Weapon ownership was expected of all men (Ex. 22:2; Neh. 4:16-18, 23; Esth. 8:11; etc.) and David exercised that right (1 Sam. 16:18; 18:4; 21:8-10, 13; 25:13) even when the Philistines disarmed the population (1 Sam. 13:19, 22) and later when Saul (by inference) seems to have disarmed the citizens (1 Sam. 22:13). Interestingly, Jesus continued that tradition in Luke 22:36. He said that He had sent them out once before without money, extra clothing, or swords to show that He could miraculously provide for them. But now that He was leaving them, He gave an abiding principle: 'But now, he who has a money bag, let him take it [in other words, don’t presume upon God financially], and likewise a knapsack; and he who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.' That passage is saying that owning a weapon is more important than owning a second garment. It is one of the most fundamental of the God-given rights in Scripture. And as mentioned previously, Jesus gave that command in a society that had prohibited sword ownership. It was a clear-cut case of civil disobedience. In other words, Jesus was saying that the illegalization of firearms is not a good reason to avoid owning arms." — Phillip Kayser, The Divine Right of Resistance

During His earthly ministry, Jesus sent His disciples out  into the countryside without money, without extra clothes, and without swords. After His resurrection but before His ascension, He sent them out again, but this time He sent them into the world, not just the countryside, with a money bag, an extra change of clothes, and a sword. In fact, Jesus told His disciples to sell their extra clothes to gain a sword, if they didn't already have one (two did). In other words, Jesus told His disciples that it would be better to be a little bit dirty because you haven't changed your clothes in a while or a little bit cold because you sold your outer garment, than it would to be defenseless. The Lord did not only permit the possession of weapons, He commanded it. He was not reluctantly obliged to allow it, He actively endorsed it. We know He knows how to command otherwise as evidenced by the episode from earlier in His ministry. He did not have to amend His previous marching orders. But He did.

day no. 17,364: reasoning salt

"And you can’t reason your way out of a moral failing; the only thing for it is repentance." — Douglas Wilson, Slicker Than a Pocket Full of Pudding

You cannot talk your way out of something you behaved your way into and you cannot reason your way out of something you sinned your way into. Repentance is, strictly speaking, akin to a change of mind, but it is more than a mere change of mind. Thoughts are involved, of course, but they are not the only thing involved. You can think differently about something you continue to do. You can think differently about things that you've done. But unless you repent and call them what God calls them, you are merely changing your mind. Repentance is not just a change in mind in general, it is a specific change of mind that is accompanied by the will. It is a reorientation.

If bad reasoning led to a moral failure, better reasoning may help you prevent another, but it does not sanctify the sin of the failure. Repentance and forgiveness require humility and a contrite spirit, not a cocksure assurance that now you've got it all figured out. There are good reasons to conform your mind to the mind of Christ, but you are not conformed to Christ merely by changing your reasoning. That is part of it, but far from all it involves.

day no. 17,363: denouncing the denouncement of sin

“There is no shortage of sin to denounce, and yet the only sin that the Christian church is willing to denounce is the sin of denouncing any of it.” — Douglas Wilson, No Such Thing As Bad Words

Somewhere along the line, the mainline denominations of Christianity decided that the most heinous of sins is judging sin as sinful. After all, who are we to judge? But that idea did not originate with Jesus Christ, who judged his accusers incompetent; no, that idea was smuggled in from elsewhere, somewhere where that rhymes with, "Did God really say?" 

Post-modern subjectivism provided a way to tolerate sin and a way to attack intolerance. It gave the carnal a license to sin and took away the officer's ability to write a ticket. It poured gasoline on our worst sparks and poured water on the flames of justice.

We now live in a day where pride is paraded down our streets to the applause of many mainline denominations. The only sin they acknowledge is that of being grossed out by it. That, according to their standard, is truly unacceptable and requires repentance.

day no. 17,362: the chalcedonian

We confess our Lord Jesus Christ,

perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood,

truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body;

consubstantial with the Father according to his Godhead,

and consubstantial also with us as according to his Manhood;

in all things like unto us, yet without sin;

begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead,

and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the virgin, Mary,

according to the Manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably;

the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ; 

as the prophets from the beginning have declared concerning Him, and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has taught us, and the Creed of the fathers has handed down to us.

Amen.

— The Chalcedonian Creed (Cantus Christi pg. 819)

Jesus is not part man, part God like a centaur is part man, part horse. 

He is fully man and fully God. 

He is not a mixture of two things like an Arnold Palmer. 

He is God. He is man. 

day no. 17,361: the Biblical case for limited government

Deuteronomy 17:19-20

And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them: That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel.

The king was forbidden from turning to the right or the the left of the commandments of God. He could not fall short or shirk any of his assigned duties and he could not expand or add to any of his privileges. The magistrate had clearly defined and enumerated powers. He was obligated to fulfill his role in upholding his responsibilities and forbidden from expanding his jurisdiction of authority.

The Word of God advocates limited government, lex rex, not unlimited government, rex lex. The Word of God commands federal government in the original sense of the word "federal" meaning covenantal. Rulers rule by covenant. They are under covenant to God and take vows of office to uphold their duties before him and the people are covenantally represented by him and obligated to obey him inasmuch as he fulfills his role in good and orderly fashion. The people are also obligated to remove him in the event that he becomes a lawbreaker. It is not a sin for a people to remove a tyrannical leader, it is a sin for a leader to become a tyrant. In that scenario, the "ruler" is the rule breaker and the "rebels" are the rule keepers. 

day no. 17,360: revolution, reaction, and reformation

"The hallmark of the revolutionary mind is impatience. The same thing is true over on the other side—the reactionary mind is also impatient. The revolutionary wants his new order now, and is willing to burn everything to the ground in order to get it. The reactionary wants to prevent that, which is fine, but he is just as impatient. He demands that everything be fixed immediately. Both the revolutionary and the reactionary are convenience store activists—they want their results the same way they want their coffee, which is to say, hot and now. The reformer, by contrast, living in the light of eternity, and grounded in the Word of God, can afford to be patient. He can take a principled stand, and leave the results to God. He is not going to be dazzled, or snookered, or beguiled, by payments under the table from the commies." — Douglas Wilson, Hate Farm Subsidies from the SPLC

A principled stance cannot, by definition, wander away. It stands its ground come hell or high water. It knows how to suffer. It is not so hellbent on getting what it wants that it is willing to do whatever it takes to get it. How the ends are accomplished matters. That is the difference between a reformer and a revolutionary/reactionary. The reformer would take reform sooner than later, but isn't so particular about the sooner part as to be willing to surrender certain principles to speed up the process. The principles are the point. And when you have an a priori commitment to your priorities, you take the consequences come what may. You'd rather stick to your principles than gain a particular end by abandoning or ignoring them.

The extreme left and right are not the furthest apart. They are not polar opposites of a long, straight, line. They are opposite ends of a horseshoe. The more extreme either becomes, the closer they come together. Out on the limbs, they are not as committed to principle as they are committed to impatience. On those grounds, the woke left and the dank right have more in common with each other than either of them do with the rest of us principled folk holding down he majority of the curve.

day no. 17,359: sin farms

"If you pay firefighters by the fire, you are tempting some of them to become arsonists. Once a third world country was trying to deal with a rat infestation, and they had the bright idea of paying a bounty to anyone who brought in a rat tail. The natural consequence of this, because incentives work, was that some folks took up rat farming." — Douglas Wilson, Hate Farm Subsidies from the SPLC

You get more of what you incentivize and less of what you penalize. If you pay people for dead snakes, you will not end your snake problem, you will gain a bunch of snake farmers. If you get paid every time someone breaks the speed limit, you will not get less speeders, you will get cameras at every intersection and planes in the air monitoring your speed. 

The civil magistrate cannot profit off of justice. If and when it does, you will find more injustice about, not less. When the authorities make money off of your disobedience, you will be sure to find authorities who are cheering for and sometimes even generating more disobedience in order for them to turn a greater profit, just ask the SPLC.

day no. 17,358: the game of risk

“God requires us to risk things. This risk includes all that we hold dear, and to shrink back from it is to incur the displeasure of God. The wicked and lazy servant was the one who would not risk what had been entrusted to him. To play it safe is to play it dangerous.” — Douglas Wilson, No Such Thing as Bad Words

When it come to faith, safe is dangerous and dangerous is safe. The one who tries to save his life loses it and the one who risks his life for Christ's sake finds it. God is a safe bet, but He is still a bet. You have to push all in on Him. He has promised us what will happen if we do, i.e. we will find life, but we have to believe in His promises. The promises do not remove the risk, but they do reward it. You cannot have the reward before you take the risk, but if you take the risk, you will get the reward. If that doesn't sound like much of a risk to you, ask yourself why you are tempted to hold on to things. Why can't you die to that? Why won't you let that go? Is it because you're worried that the risk isn't worth it? Is it because you don't believe the promises of God? And now you begin to see why faith requires risk. True, it is a calculated risk, but it is nevertheless a risk. 

So, the only question that remains then is this: will you take the risk? Will you believe God's promises and push all in? If not, why not? Do you distrust the promises of God or do you believe that what you have now is better than what God promises to give you?

day no. 17,357: managing monsters

“The shepherd must hate the wolves because he loves the sheep. If he hates the wolves because he loves to hate, then he is a wolf himself.” — Douglas Wilson, No Such Thing as Bad Words

Men must fight monsters, but they must fight them because they love something, not merely because they hate monsters. In other words, men must be bold enough to confront the monsters he encounters out there and humble enough to confront the monsters he encounters within. If he can do that, he can be trusted with a staff; If he cannot, he is in need of a rod.

Hate must be secondary, but it must be. "Hate has no place here" is a surefire way to cater to wolves. Hate must not lead, of course, but it must follow. Hate cannot be the foundation for anything, but it must be built into the structure that goes up. You must hate sin enough to want to change it and love the sinner enough to think them worth changing. You must love the sheep enough to hate what come against them. If you do not hate the wolves, you do not love the sheep.

day no. 17,356: big brother and the brave new world

“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares. But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think." — Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

The oppression Huxley's Brave New World produced was a result of passivity, not passion. Orwell's Big Brother needed you to love him before he could be done with you, but Huxley's Brave New World needed nothing from you per se. We fear fascism while we indulge in nihilism. While we worry that someone may want something so badly that they would try to force us to do want it too, we miss the fact that we want less than we used to as we settle for more indifference. Orwell predicted a world where one thought stomped on every other thoughts, but Huxley predicted that the thoughts would stamp themselves out.

day no. 17,355: penelope is sixteen

Happy 16th Birthday, Penelope!

You are a beautiful, smart, funny young woman. You are taking college level courses and passing them without much effort. You are babysitting and earning some extra cash as  you earn a good reputation with our church people. You are writing songs, writing stories, drawing pictures, and doing shows, and all of that in addition to reading all the books.

You are a good sister. You love your siblings and look after them. You like looking after the babies and you enjoy debating with your older brothers. You like playing with the little girls and you like making or buying the perfect gifts for all your siblings on their birthdays.

You are a good daughter. You love talking to your mom and watching shows with her on restful Sunday afternoons. You like me and enjoy bouncing ideas off of me when you're trying to gather your thoughts.

You are learning how to stretch yourself and how to increase the threshold of your limitations. You are going to more places, staying longer at them, and participating in them when you are there. It is fun to watch you having fun. 

You love discovering new worlds and you enjoy the suspension of disbelief in order to better enjoy fictional worlds. You like story grip and gladly give yourself to it. When you are into something, you are really into it. 

You take yourself seriously enough to know what you believe and why you believe it and you take yourself lightly enough to know what you like even when others are ribbing you for liking it. You know who you are and you know what you want. You are clear headed when it comes to categorical distinctions and when it comes to fantastical creations. You somehow keep all your increasing number of characters straight.

You love music. You like listening to music, singing songs, playing the guitar, playing the piano, and singing with your sister in perfect harmony. I love hearing you play the piano while I am working. I can you you through the floor creating new songs or trying to teach yourself to play a new song you heard during clean up time the night before.

You love to tell jokes and you like finding the wittiest way to say something. You have a good sense of humor and you like enjoying the humor of others. You have a good laugh and we all love it when you're having a good time.

Happy Sweet Sixteenth, Penelope! 

May you continue to grow in wisdom, stature, and favor with God and with those around you.

So, here's to Penelope!

Love,

Dad

day no. 17,354: golf claps and thunder claps

“No reformation worth having was ever accomplished to the sound of polite applause in the background. There will be smoke, and thunder, and yelling, and all the rest of it.” — Douglas Wilson, No Such Thing as Bad Words

Reformation is not revolution, but it is not painless. Revolutions are more spasmodic and eruptive, but they are not more violent than reformations. The violence of reformation is more controlled and less ejaculatory, but it is violent nevertheless. You cannot change long standing problems without causing a few problems.

Hebrews 12:26-27

He hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.

God sometimes take the rug out back to beat the crud out of it. What looks like violence toward the rug, is actually love of the rug. For the love of the rug, it is beaten, seemingly without mercy. It is for the removal of the dust that it is whacked to severely. That which isn't rug falls to the ground, but the rug remains. That which can be shaken falls apart when God gives the whole things a good shake. 

Reformation is God shaking the rug out. 

Revolution is man setting the rug on fire. 

Reformation wants to return to the cleaner rug. 

Revolution wants to see what might rise from its ashes. 

Reformation is a return to the first form of God. 

Revolution is a hope in the next evolution of man. 

Reformation is being formed into the image of Christ. 

Revolution is being deformed into chaos.

Golf claps do not often accompany great feats. Thunder claps are often required in order to change the landscape.

day no. 17,353: the HRification of everything

"I am indebted to Helen Andrews for the pithiest expression of what has happened to us as a result of women coming into these spaces in large numbers. She calls it the 'HRification' of everything. Men and women tend to view conflict differently. Men think of conflict as one of the means for making progress, as one of the necessary tools that will get us to a solution. Women tend to view conflict as the problem that must be solved. All conflict must therefore be suppressed. And from this we get all the woke nonsense, with busybodies trying to stomp out all the micro-triggers. I think it is useless to deny that this paradigm is now the dominant one in our public discourse. And I think the 19th Amendment was one of the original culprits." — Douglas Wilson, On Repealing the 19th Amendment

Is conflict good or bad? If we disagree over the nature of conflict, is that conflict permitted? Lump it in with those who hate hate and are intolerant of intolerance. The micro-aggression mongers show that they know how to make big deals out of little things. They also know how to create conflict in their effort to reduce other kinds of conflict. What is comes down to is the conflict that gets them what they want and the kind that gets them angry. In other words, the kind of conflict they can win and the kind that they cannot.

Isaiah 3:12

As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way.

Women in positions of leadership is a sign of God's wrath. Oppression is the only result of female liberation movements. Women are less free when women rule than when men do. The masculine ideal is better equipped to govern both sexes than the feminine ideal. The feminine ideal has its place and it is good and proper in it, but it is tyrannical and oppressive when it get promoted beyond its ability. The feminine mystique on steroids does not produce a better woman. It does not make her more beautiful, but less. It does not make her as strong as men, it only makes her about as ugly as one. 

day no. 17,352: defending their innocency (exhortation outline)

Christ Church Leavenworth

WLC 144: Defending Their Innocency

April 26, 2026

Defending the Innocent

INTRODUCTION

This morning we are continuing our study of the ten commandments in the WLC and we are still in Q144 which asks, “What are the duties required in the ninth commandment?” The ninth commandment, as you recall, is “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” The answer provided by the Westminster divines is this, “The duties required in the ninth commandment are, the preserving and promoting of truth between man and man, and the good name of our neighbour, as well as our own; appearing and standing for the truth; and from the heart, sincerely, freely, clearly, and fully, speaking the truth, and only the truth, in matters of judgment and justice, and in all other things whatsoever; a charitable esteem of our neighbours; loving, desiring, and rejoicing in their good name; sorrowing for, and covering of their infirmities; freely acknowledging of their gifts and graces, defending their innocency; a ready receiving of a good report, and unwillingness to admit of an evil report, concerning them; discouraging tale-bearers, flatterers, and slanderers; love and care of our own good name, and defending it when need requireth;  keeping of lawful promises; and studying and practicing of whatsoever things are true, honest, lovely, and of good report.”

The phrase we will be focusing on this morning is, “defending their innocency.”

The text cited by the WLC in support of this duty is 1 Samuel 22:14, but in order to understand how this verse applies to the duty to defend our neighbor’s innocence, we will need to understand the context in which it takes place. So, here’s some background. Even though Saul was the king of Israel, he was jealous of David. Saul’s son Jonathan discovered that his father was plotting to kill David. Since David was Jonathan’s best friend, he warned him of his father’s plans. As a result, David fled. He stopped to catch his breath in a town just outside Jerusalem called Nob where a man named Ahimelech was serving as the priest.

Because David had left in such a hurry, he did not have any food or even a weapon with him. So, he asked Ahimelech for some assistance. Ahimelech was happy to help. David was a famous warrior and the news of Saul’s change of temper towards him had not yet reached Nob. So, he gave David some bread and then he gave him the only weapon he had on hand: Goliath’s sword which was being kept on display as a trophy. This was the same sword that David had used to cut off Goliath’s head. A man named Doeg the Edomite was also there that day, however, and saw it all take place. Later, when Saul got word that David had gotten away, he was frustrated and began throwing accusations around. He wanted to know who was helping David. Doeg took this opportunity to report what he had seen and that is where our text picks up.

1 Samuel 22:11-18 “Then the king sent to summon Ahimelech the priest, the son of Ahitub, and all his father's house, the priests who were at Nob, and all of them came to the king. And Saul said, ‘Hear now, son of Ahitub.’ And he answered, ‘Here I am, my lord.’ And Saul said to him, ‘Why have you conspired against me, you and the son of Jesse, in that you have given him bread and a sword and have inquired of God for him, so that he has risen against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?’ Then Ahimelech answered the king, ‘And who among all your servants is so faithful as David, who is the king's son-in-law, and captain over your bodyguard, and honored in your house? Is today the first time that I have inquired of God for him? No! Let not the king impute anything to his servant or to all the house of my father, for your servant has known nothing of all this, much or little.’ And the king said, ‘You shall surely die, Ahimelech, you and all your father's house.’ And the king said to the guard who stood about him, ‘Turn and kill the priests of the Lord, because their hand also is with David, and they knew that he fled and did not disclose it to me.’ But the servants of the king would not put out their hand to strike the priests of the Lord. Then the king said to Doeg, ‘You, turn and strike the priests.’ And Doeg the Edomite turned and struck down the priests, and he killed on that day eighty-five persons who wore the linen ephod.”

In these few verses, we see several examples of people failing and fulfilling their duty to defend their neighbor’s innocency. Let’s begin with the failures. The first example is King Saul. This whole episode is a result of him falsely accusing David in the first place. Instead of defending David’s innocence, he accused him of treason.

Saul was insecure and, just like any of us when we feel insecure or afraid, he was tempted to look for ways to blame others for the way he felt. Because we don’t like the way we feel and because we don’t like taking responsibility for our feelings, it must be someone else’s fault. As Spurgeon once noted, "We accuse others to excuse ourselves.” It is often easier to make up things about our neighbor than it is to face the reality about ourselves. And so, we slander our neighbor’s innocence in order to defend our own guilt. But take heed and take note: the sins of others, whether real or imagined, can never cleanse us of our own.

Another example is Doeg the Edomite. He knew that Ahimelech was not trying to help David usurp Saul’s throne. He knew he was innocent. But he also knew that Saul was looking for someone to blame and he hoped that there would be a finder’s fee. Saul slandered David to try to keep from losing his kingdom, Doeg slandered Ahimelech to try to gain a position in Saul’s kingdom. So, we see that our guilt can lead us to lash out at the innocent, either because we are scared of losing something or because we are greedy to get something else.

Now, let’s move on to a few examples of people fulfilling their duty to defend the innocent. Consider Saul’s servants. When Saul ordered them to slaughter Ahimelech and the priests, they refused. They presumed a standard of “innocent until proven guilty” and defended it by refusing to obey a tyrannical order.

A second example is that of Ahimelech himself. At any given point in his interrogation, he could have changed his story to try to save his own skin, but he didn’t. He could have defended his innocence by casting doubt on David’s, but he refused to bear false witness, even if it meant being falsely accused. He stood by David and his decision to help him. Ahimelech was an innocent man who paid the price of a guilty man in order to defend the innocence of another.

CALL TO CONFESSION

Well, since we are so often more concerned with getting our guilty selves out of trouble than we are with keeping our innocent neighbors out of it, we are reminded of our need to regularly confess our sins, whether they be related to this duty or to others. So, if you are able, please kneel with me and confess your sins, first privately and then corporately using the prayer found in your bulletin.

CORPORATE CONFESSION

Gracious Father, if You were to mark iniquities, who could stand? But with You is forgiveness, that You may be feared. Called by You to the throne of grace, and confident in our great High Priest, we bow before You and confess that we have sinned against You and been unfaithful to Your holy covenant. Our hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately sick, so that we often do what we hate, and neglect what we love. Out of our mouths we both praise You and curse our fellow men. You promised mercy to our fathers through the seed of the woman. Turn our hearts again, Father, to consider Jesus, who crushed the serpent’s head, and saved His people from their sins. Forgive, cleanse, and restore us for His sake. Amen.

DECLARATION OF PARDON

Saints, arise and hear the Good News!

The assurance of pardon today comes from Romans 4:4-8

“Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: ‘Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.’” 

The story of Ahimelech points us to Jesus: he was falsely accused and killed for defending his friend, just like Jesus. He was an innocent man who was treated like a guilty man, just like Jesus. But as good of a man as Ahimelech was, Jesus is better. A man will scarcely die for an innocent person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— as Ahimelech did for David, but God shows His love for us in that while we were still guilty, Christ died for us.

Saints, hear the Good News: in the name of Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven… THANKS BE TO GOD!

Now let us ascend to the presence of God in all worship and praise.

day no. 17,351: cultures are covenantal

"We believe that every healthy culture—and every healthy subculture, like a church—is something that has to be molecular, and that the essential building block of every complex molecule is going to be the family. This is why we vote in the way we do, and why I have written about twenty books on marriage and family. These are Burke’s little platoons, and we honor them." — Douglas Wilson, On Repealing the 19th Amendment

All cultures are covenantal. 

As such, covenant breakers cannot create a culture, they can only feed off an existing one. In that way, they are like locust. They can eat the produce of a land, but they cannot plant. They can only pillage and plunder. Covenant breakers can, like the prodigal, devour a culture, but they cannot create one. They can spend their inheritance, but they cannot save one or pass one down to their offspring.

The family is the first and foundational covenantal reality with which everyone comes into contact. It is there that we learn how to depend on others to do their duty while being dependable in the execution of our own duties. It is there that we learn that we do not need the State to survive, we simply need them to pick up the phone when lethal force is required. 

day no. 17,350: atomistic or adamistic

"The integers out of which the State is constituted are not individuals, but families represented in their parental heads.” — R.L. Dabney

Men are not atomistic, they are Adamistic. They are not made without respect to others like individual widgets on an assembly line, they are made as sons and daughters in a covenantal line. Families are fundamental. Every one is born under the headship of another. No one is born outside of a covenantal reality. As such, we are not individuals, we are, as Rene Girard has noted, interviduals.

The building blocks of society are not individual souls, but independent households. As image bearers, we are molecular, not atomistic. The State wants to destroy our molecular bonds, but since it cannot win a war against reality, it settles for the same subtlety that Satan employed in Eden. It preaches radical individualism reinforced by individual votes. It tries to convince us that freedom is found in being your own god and that obedience to a head is offensive.

Husbands are the heads of their wives and parents are the heads of their children. The civil magistrate is the representative head of those households.

day no. 17,349: the beautiful words that have to wait

"People have beautiful things to say about you, but you must die first." — Fyodor Dostoevsky

We don't build monuments to the prophets until they are dead. When they are alive, we wrestle with them and how uncomfortable their words make us feel. Once they are gone, we can see their point without having to be poked by them. We are only willing to spar with them once they are incapacitated and unable to fight back in real time.

Some people genuinely have beautiful things to say right now, but lack the opportunity or the initiative to tell you. Some people do not have much to say about you, but your death will inspire magnanimity in them and beautiful things will be said, beautiful sentiments that never existed in their heads prior to your passing.

"Well done, good and faithful servant," is reserved for the dead. While those on earth may flatter your memory or finally feel compelled to say the kind things they've always thought, the kindest words one can hear are from Christ. In other words, the best things that can ever be said about you, can only be said about you after you are dead.

Eulogies are literally good words and they only arrive at the end of the story.

day no. 17,348: everything, something, nothing, and anything

“When a man stops believing in God, he doesn't believe in nothing, he believes in anything.” — G.K. Chesterton

Nihilism is a lie. No one believes in nothing. Belief is inescapable. It is not a matter of if you will believe something, but of what you will believe in. If you, in a fit of crestfallen madness, turn your belief away from everything, you do not turn to the nothing. You cannot find nothing anywhere. What you turn to is your belief in nothing. You can believe in your belief, but you can also believe in your disbelief. You may believe your disbelief to be the most reasonable belief to have, but you cannot have no belief. You will believe in something and if it is not everything in Christ, it can be as absurd as putting your everything into nothing, which when you come to think of it, is really quite something.

There is a fine line between inconsolable and gullible. Those who refuse to be comforted by Christ will go as far as to seek comfort in discomfort. Those who stop looking to the one thing begin looking to anything. Those who refuse to go the one way begin considering any way. Those who reject the one life are in danger of seeking life even in death.

Proverbs 8:36

All they that hate me love death.

day no. 17,347: internationally obsessed and domestically ignorant

“Our leaders are internationally obsessed and domestically ignorant.” — Charlie Kirk

We elect our representatives to address our concerns, but they often end up meddling in the affairs of others with whom we have nothing to do. They spend their time passing legislation to take our tax dollars to address their concerns in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Israel, or Iran. As such, our representatives, do not represent us very well. The average Joe is not interested in the middle east other than trying to avoid sending his sons there to die. The more our representatives grab passing nations by the ears, the less they concern themselves with the people playing in their own back yards. And when they begin to bark, they get put in the kennel. 

Our leaders cannot stop minding someone else's beeswax and continually ignore the needs of their own bees. They think of us as worker bees which is to say that they do not think of us. They think of themselves as queen bees which is to say they think only of themselves.

day no. 17,346: never-ending glory and never-ending nuisance

“Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never-ending nuisance.” — G.K. Chesterton

Morning is a juxtaposition. It is the glory of having been resurrected from rest and the misery of remembering that a new day brings new challenges. Christ commands us not to be anxious about tomorrow and that each day's troubles are enough for itself. As long as we stay in bed, we feel like yesterday's troubles are all behind us and today's troubles have not yet begun, but we find that the first trouble with today is having to get out of bed.

“If unwilling to rise in the morning, say to thyself, 'I awake to do the work of a man.'” — Marcus Aurelius

You were born for such a time as this even if you'd rather hit snooze.

“Sleep is a great giant, and the time to defeat it is in the early morning when it has you pinned to the mattress.” — Douglas Wilson, A Hole Under His Nose

We begin each day pinned to the mat. Will you kick out and get back into the fight or will you lay there and let the day's troubles get the victory?

day no. 17,345: 'til death do us part (sermon outline)

Christ Church Leavenworth

Ruth 1:6-18

April 19, 2026

…

OT READING: Joshua 24:14-28

NT READING: John 6:60-71

‘Til Death Do Us Part

READING OF THE TEXT

Our text this morning is Ruth 1:6-18, these are the words of God: 

Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food. So she set out from the place where she was with her two daughters-in-law, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah. But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go, return each of you to her mother's house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband!” Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept. And they said to her, “No, we will return with you to your people.” But Naomi said, “Turn back, my daughters; why will you go with me? Have I yet sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? Turn back, my daughters; go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say I have hope, even if I should have a husband this night and should bear sons, would you therefore wait till they were grown? Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.” Then they lifted up their voices and wept again. And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. And she said, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.” And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more.

The grass withers and 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. We have gathered this morning to hear from You. Give us ears to hear and eyes to see that we might behold wondrous things as we open Your Word this morning. We ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

INTRODUCTION

This morning we are continuing our study of the book of Ruth by looking at :6-18 of chapter 1. To recap, the book of Ruth takes place in the days when the judges ruled and “in those days there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”(Judges 21:25) To make matters worse there was a famine in the land. (:1) Imagine a world full of monsters. Now imagine all of those monsters are hangry. It was already ugly and it’s about to get a whole lot uglier. This is a fight or flight situation. One man, named Elimelech, chose to skip town rather than throw down. So he gathered his wife, Naomi, and their two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, and they got out of dodge.

At this point, I feel it necessary to hit “pause” for a moment. We love kids here at CCL as anyone can see. Our children have us outnumbered. Thanks be to God. The reason I bring this up is because many of you like Bible names. So, let me just nip the names Mahlon and Chilion in the bud right now before any of you get any ideas. The name Mahlon means “sick” and the name Chilion means “dying.” So, as cool as “Chilion” might sound in English, it wouldn’t have sounded that way to any of his friends. “Sicko” and his brother “Deathbed” probably had a hard time fitting in. This would be like one of you naming your kids Cancer and COVID.

Alright, back to our regularly scheduled programming. So, this family set out to sojourn in the country of Moab (:2). Note that word “sojourn.” This was meant to be temporary. They were not relocating, they were killing time until things cooled down. They did not fill out a change of address form. But what happened? They ended up settling down. They stopped wandering. They had moved to Moab. Their sons grew up there and got married. They did not originally set out looking to leave the land of the Lord or the people of the Lord behind for good… but they did.  Life comes at you fast, and herein lies an important reminder: sin will always take you further than you wanted to go and faster than you wanted to get there. It will always cost you more than you wanted to pay and keep you longer than you wanted to stay. Temporary fixes can become permanent problems.

To make matters worse, Elimelech dies. (:3) Remind me, why did he run away from Bethlehem in the first place? To save his life. And what happened in Moab? He died! In trying to save his own skin, he shipwrecked his faith and his family, and the worst part of it is he didn’t even save his own skin. He died. It simply goes to show that “whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for God’s sake will save it.” That idea was so emphatically asserted by Jesus Christ in the days of His flesh that it is referenced by each and every one of the Gospel writers: Matthew 10:39, and again in 16:25, Mark 8:35, Luke 9:24, and John 12:25. Either way, Elimelech was going to die, right? The question is never, “will you lose your life?” the question is always “for what will you lose your life?” The Bible does not tell us HOW Elimelech died, but it does tell us WHERE he was. He was not where he was supposed to be and he was not doing what he was supposed to. Do not be like Elimelech. Do not wander away from the things of God in order to try to find a better life. Listen clearly: there is no better life than being with God. And until you believe that in your bones, you will be tempted to stray. Resolve today to be where God is and where His people are, even if they are being a bit crazy and things aren’t going as well as you had hoped. It is better to be disciplined by God with His people than it is to be punished by God for abandoning your post. 

But what about Naomi and her sons? They ended up living where their head led them. Her sons married Moabite women and they lived there about ten years. (:4) Elimelech left a legacy of apostasy. Fathers are the heads of their households, for better or for worse. Mom gets most of the face time, but dad holds most of the sway. As he goes, the kids go. If he goes to church and worships God, the kids are more likely to do the same. Elimelech “trained up his sons in the way they should go and when they were older, they did not depart from it.” (Pr. 22:6) Ten years away from God and church are a long time. So, why ten years? What happened? Did they finally repent and turn back? No, just like their dad, they died. (:5) Mahlon and Chilion made their beds in Moab, so God turned them into deathbeds. If you live in sin, you will die in your sins. Elimelech’s plan had been to save his family. His rally cry had been “don’t die!” And now his wife was a childless widow. It goes to show that “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” (Pr. 14:12, 16:25) Elimelech did what was right in his own eyes and it ended up killing him and his sons. What a mess. Can any good come out of such a terrible situation? That is where our passage today picks up.

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

:6-7 “Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food. So she set out from the place where she was with her two daughters-in-law, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah.” In the midst of all this bad news, Naomi finally hears some good news. God has provided for His people. Note here that “visiting His people and giving them food” referred to those living where He had commanded and eating what He had provided. God did not send down food from the sky on His people wherever they happened to be at that moment. Naomi did not receive an airdrop of wonder bread. God provides where He promises. He does not promise to bless whatever His people do wherever they are. He did, however, promise that whoever would do His will would be His people. If you set up camp in strange places and marry strange women, you will not find a blessing there. But there is always good reason to expect the blessing to be where God has promised to provide it. Bethlehem was “the house of bread” and though the pantry was empty for a bit, if bread was going to show up anywhere, it was going to be there, where God had promised. 

On hearing this, Naomi finally came to her senses and got up in order to get back to where God is. And that is how it always works. In order for something good to begin, something bad must end. (repeat) So, that begs the question. Are there any people, places, or things you need to walk away from? Is your heart wandering anywhere it shouldn’t be? Are you getting too comfortable with things God forbids? Are there bad habits you are beginning to settle into? Are you getting too familiar with anyone God would not want you yoked to? In order for something good to begin, something bad must end. So, are you ready to turn your back on whatever it is and head home? 

You will not find the bread of Heaven in the pantries of Hell. You cannot flirt with sin and have a healthy relationship with righteousness. Are there good things you desire that you cannot have because of where you are and what you are doing there? Be like Naomi and head home. Cut your losses before you lose everything. If you are baptized, believe and receive the bread of life. If you are not baptized, repent, believe, and be baptized; and then come to the house of bread. You cannot get this bread anywhere else. It is only available at His table and you are welcome here provided you believe. If you have been disobedient before, obey now and come to the table. You will not fix your disobedience by adding to it by refusing to come. So, come and welcome to Jesus. And when you decide to come, don’t be shocked if those around you want to come with you. Faith is attractive. Orpah and Ruth saw the change in Naomi and got caught up in her excitement.

:8-14 “But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, ‘Go, return each of you to her mother's house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband!’ Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept. And they said to her, ‘No, we will return with you to your people.’ But Naomi said, ‘Turn back, my daughters; why will you go with me? Have I yet sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? Turn back, my daughters; go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say I have hope, even if I should have a husband this night and should bear sons, would you therefore wait till they were grown? Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.’ Then they lifted up their voices and wept again. And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.”

So, this unlikely band of widowed brides begins making their way to Bethlehem. Naomi is headed back home, but Orpah and Ruth are headed into foreign territory. So, before they get very far, Naomi pumps the brakes and pulls the car over. She knows what she is getting herself into, but she wants to make sure Orpah and Ruth know what they are getting themselves into before they take another step. Naomi is a native. She knows which side of the road to drive on, which fork to use first, what day of the week to go to church, and what God to worship when you get there. But Orpah and Ruth do not know any of that. Just as Naomi had to adjust to life in Moab, they are going to have to adjust to life in Israel. 

This is the golden rule regarding immigration: guests should wipe their feet at the door. If you leave California because you no longer like it there, you must make sure to wipe your feet at the border so that you don’t turn your new home into California. The same can be said for Somalia. If you like Somalia, stay there, but if you move to Minnesota, be prepared to leave your piracy and your calls to prayer behind you. We don’t do that here. This is how a guest respects his host. The host is already respecting the guest by allowing him to visit. The least the guest can do is reciprocate and honor the house rules of the home he is entering. So, Naomi, suspecting that her daughters-in-law were more attached to their Moabite ways than they were to her, suggests that they should go back home. (:8) She reassures them that she finds no fault with them for it. It’s their home, after all. She gets it. That’s what she is doing after all. They’ve been kind to her and so she lets them off the hook and wishes them well. (:9) But both Orpah and Ruth at first refuse. They confirm that they are committed to Naomi and are “willing to return with her and live among her people.” (:10) But Naomi does not want them to get stuck in Israel the way she got stuck in Moab. She knows that relocation is easier said than done and so she circles back to clarify just how much it might cost them to follow her to Bethlehem in :11-13. Twice she urges them to “turn back” and once she even encourages them to “go their own way.” Recall, these were the days of the Judges, where that kind of thing was everywhere. Everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes and so Naomi gives them that out. “I know you feel an obligation to come, but don’t have to do it for my sake. Do whatever you think is best.”

And if that were not enough, she ups the ante by bringing marriage into it. Note that she presupposes that these young widows will want to remarry. This is the same presupposition Paul had in 1 Timothy 5:14 where he said: “I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander.” Married with children and busy inside her own home is the best way for a young widow to resist the adversary. Paul did not invent this in the 1st century. Naomi knew it thousands of years before. But this intensifies the stakes regarding their commitment to come. Are they willing to be childless widows for the rest of their lives? That is, after all, the most likely outcome should they proceed with a move to Bethlehem. Take note, young people, and parents of young people: the two most important decisions you will ever make are: (1) who you will worship, and (2) who you will marry. And the first must inform the latter, because the latter will influence the first.

Who you marry will affect how you worship and sometimes, it can even change who you worship. Hear the word of the Lord from 2 Corinthians 6:14 “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?” If you are a Christian, you cannot be interested in, date, court, flirt with, get engaged to, marry, or otherwise relationally entangle yourself with an unbeliever. You cannot hitch your wagon to someone going in a different direction. This begins with who you worship, but it goes well beyond even that. Of course, you cannot want to go South and marry someone who wants to go North. That is impossible. You cannot make vows before God to stay with a person who is not committed to God. Either you will break apart as you both pull in different directions or you will end up going their direction in order to avoid a divorce. You cannot serve God and honey.

But beyond that, it is unwise to be going S by SW and marry someone who is going S by SE. The differences aren't as severe and they do not show up as soon as in the first scenario, but they’re not nothing. Someone can compromise SE for SW easier than they can NE for SW, but still, it will cause tension as you pull apart on some particulars. A paedobaptist cannot lawfully marry an unbaptized unbeliever, that is a N vs. S thing. But a paedobaptist can lawfully marry a credobaptist, that is a SE vs. SW thing. But even then, it may be ill-advised since the tension will ramp up once they have kids and a decision needs to be made. The baby cannot be both baptized and not baptized. So all that to say, be careful who you marry. It is hard enough with someone you see eye to eye with. Don’t make it harder than it has to be. Do not take marriage too lightly or simply assume that everything will work itself out. Many times it ends up exactly the way anyone with eyeballs would have predicted: with pain, resentment, separation, hurt, and divorce; or with pain, resentment, compromise, and more resentment. No partner is better than the wrong partner. If you marry in haste, you will repent at leisure.

Getting back to our story, Naomi essentially says, “My sons converted to your way of life and that made your marriages make sense, but where I’m going, they don’t do that. If you want what you have, you will need to go back. You don’t have to come with me, but if you do, you will have to die to your way of doing things.”  This is similar in spirit to what Speirs told Blithe in Band of Brothers, when he said, “The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier's supposed to.” 

You don’t have to soldier on, but if you do, you have to go on like a soldier, committed to the Commander’s intent and ready to die for it. Jesus is our Commander-in-Chief and this is how He put it in Luke 14:33 “Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be My disciple.” Anyone can come, but no one can come without renouncing his claim to himself. Jesus does not oversell it. He does not promise rainbows and unicorns only to turn around to put you through thunderstorms and dragons. He shows all His cards up front. This is going to be worth it, but it is going to be hard. This is eternal life we are talking about, after all. Did you think it would be easy? It may cost you everything, but it will save you. What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul? And what does a man really lose if he dies to the world but gains eternal life?

Naomi is laying out the costs of discipleship on the front end. She loves her daughters-in-law too much to let them suffer for her sake. Besides, there are some costs you cannot pay for others. As Martin Luther once noted, “Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.” And if all that were not enough, Naomi poisons the well one last time by putting a rotten cherry on top. She points out that if they choose to make this trip, they will be making it with a bitter old hag. (:13) “No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.” The Lord disciplines His children and Naomi has been spanked. In fact, she is still rubbing her bottom from the sting and so she says, “Are you sure you want this? (:14) “Then they lifted up their voices and wept again. And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.” This is a hard teaching and not everyone is up to it.

This reminds us of our OT reading from Joshua 24. The conditions of the covenant are laid out for the people. “Now fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Either serve the Lord with sincerity and faithfulness or serve something else, but do not play church. “For if you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you, after having done you good.” To this the people said, “We will serve the Lord.” 

And so Joshua replied, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord, to serve him.” And they confirmed this by saying, “We are witnesses.” So Joshua reiterated the terms and reminded them of what they said they would do. “Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your heart to the Lord, the God of Israel.” And the people replied, “The Lord our God we will serve, and his voice we will obey.” And so Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and put in place statutes and rules for them. He put the words down in writing and he had them sign their names to it. He then completed the transaction by saying these vows would serve as a witness against them, “lest they should deal falsely with their God.”

The same type of interaction occurred in our NT reading from John 6. Jesus clarified the terms of the covenant. It was a hard teaching. Too hard, in fact, for some. “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.” And so Jesus turned to those still standing with Him and asked, “Do you want to go away as well?” Here was the last off ramp. It is like exit 224b for Leavenworth. It is the last chance to get off of I-70 before it starts costing you something to keep going. “Simon Peter answered him and said, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.’” In other words, Peter understood the assignment. Jesus was the only way, the only truth, and the only life and as much as he didn’t want to pay the tolls, he couldn’t imagine taking an off ramp to avoid paying them if Jesus was going straight.

Imagine you’re following a friend on a road trip. You don’t know the way, but they do. As a result, you are forced to match their speed. Sometimes it’s faster than you like, sometimes it’s slower. But you can’t lose them and you can’t pass them because you don’t know the way.  So, you do everything you can to stick with them. That is what it is like to follow Jesus. Sometimes He gets out so far ahead of you that you worry you might lose Him. Other times He is going so slowly, you are tempted to pass Him. You cannot take an off ramp and risk losing Him and you must pay whatever tolls are charged on the roads He takes. If you go too slow or too fast or if you try to find an alternate route without any tolls, you will be lost.

Back to our text. Naomi also awanted Orpah and Ruth to understand that this was not going to be a simple change of scenery, this was going to be a change of life itself. There is no way to go down this road without paying all the tolls. You cannot live a Moabite life in the Kingdom of God. If you want to walk with God, you will have to walk in a manner worthy of those who ride on the King’s highway. There are conditions. The kingdom of God is not a buffet where you get to take what you like and leave what you don’t. You can either come to God’s table and eat what He serves or you can go to Burger King and have it your way. You can either get a golden crown from God or you can get a paper one from the world.

Having heard the conditions clearly and having been warned of the consequences, Orpah decided to kiss Naomi goodbye, but Ruth clung to her. Orpah had come into contact with Naomi, but she did not make a covenant to go on with her. And when the going got tough, she even broke contact with her. Not everyone who comes along for the ride ends up riding it out until the end. So, what about you? You have been in contact with the Kingdom. You’re here, you’ve heard the word preached, and you sit near the King’s table. But have you made a covenant with Him to keep going? Have you counted the costs and determined to cling to Him whatever comes next? That is a decision that lies before you. Is some contact with the King enough for you or will you make the decision to cling to Him? The only thing you need to follow Jesus is nothing. As long as you have that, you have everything you need to begin the journey. Other things will be needed as you go on, but to get started, you have to begin with nothing. Orpah chose the familiar or the faith. She went back to what she knew. She was not willing to give it up.

Naomi points this out to Ruth in :15 “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” But Ruth is resolved and ready to leave everything behind in order to be made new. She is trading her place, her people, and her god for a new place, a new people, and a new God. :16 “But Ruth said, ‘Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.’” Who you worship determines who your people are and where your place is. It is a package deal. That is why who you worship and who you marry are the two most important decisions you will ever make. Discipleship, like marriage, is ‘til death do us part. And that is why Ruth concludes her vows with these words :17 “Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.” Naomi, satisfied that Ruth understands what she is getting herself into, agrees to accept her vows, and begins the long walk home with her. (:18) 

So, what about you? Do you need to end something bad so that something good can begin, like Naomi? Or have you been in contact with Christ, but you need to make the commitment to cling to Him, like Ruth? Take His yoke upon you, and you will find rest for your souls, for His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.

Come, and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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

PRAYER

Heavenly Father, thank You for taking us from where we are when we are not where we should have been. Help us to have the humility to come home and give us the grit we need to make the journey. Help us to cling to You as Your Son clung to the cross. We ask these things in His and we offer up the words of the prayer He taught us to pray singing…