Listen to this message:
Albert N. Martin
The announced subject for our meditation in the Word of God, today, has been Our Vision for These Days. In October of 1988, this was the subject announced for the Monday evening session of our pastor’s conference on that occasion, and since then there have been three additional installments on this identical theme. Each time I have begun by making several basic assertions, and I will make them again.
First of all, a word of explanation. When we think of “our vision for these days,” I’m merely seeking—by the use of those words—to express our perception of some of the most critical areas of need for the people of God in our day and in our circles, and what we, as the servants of God, in particular, ought to do in response to that need.
Therefore, in speaking of “our vision for these days,” we are merely expressing in human terminology what is said of the sons of Issachar in 1 Chronicles 12:32. We read concerning them, verse 32, “And of the children of Issachar, men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do.” They were marked out by the fact that they had perception of the particular circumstances of the people of God at that period in their history, and were able to give wise direction with reference to a judicious course of action. So, this title that has been carried on over these past years has reference to those principles.
Secondly, on each occasion, I have not only sought to give that simple word of explanation, but to make a very clear word of disclaimer. When we speak of our vision for these days, we are not speaking of any claim to an extraordinary commision from the Lord Jesus Christ. None of us claims to have heard a voice from heaven, to have had an angelic visitation, to have had a personal word of prophecy; and, furthermore, we make no claim to an exclusive commission from the Lord with respect to these concerns. However, if in the context of this kind of family intimacy, with a shared perspective, committed to shared doctrinal and experimental convictions, if we cannot—in this forum—seek to hammer out what it is that we ought to perceive as the great needs of God’s people, pray tell, in what forum would it be legitimate to do such a thing?
Now, in our previous messages I sought to address the subject of Our Vision for These Days in terms. First of all: the recovery of the biblical gospel. Secondly: a renewal of biblical holiness. Thirdly: a return to biblical churchmanship. And last year: a restoration of biblical preaching. This fifth installment in this serial of messages on Our Vision for These Days is this: a recognition of the watchman identity and function of the pastoral office.
I will seek to open up this material under two major headings, beginning, first of all, with an overview of the watchman motif in the Word of God.
1) An overview of the watchman motif in the Word of God.
Where do we gain the concept of the servant of God ministering under the New Covenant as a watchman amongst God’s people?
When we turn to the Old Testament and seek to discover the beginnings of the biblical concept of a watchman, we find that the watchman was the man assigned the responsibility of standing upon the wall of a city or a military garrison in order to look out for approaching dangers to that city or to that garrison, and with a solemn responsibility in a context of conscious alertness and wakefulness, when perceiving that danger, to alert the proper authorities. Whether it was the general or the military leader within the garrison, or whether it was the populous of the city, whoever stood in the place of danger, whoever the watchman was accountable to, to such a one he was to give a warning.
Turn, please, for a specimen example of these perspectives, to 2 Samuel chapter 18. As we seek this brief overview of the watchman motif in the Word of God, 2 Samuel 18:24-27 gives us a very clear example of the basic concepts of the function of a watchman.
2 Samuel 18:24, “Now David was sitting between the two gates; and the watchman went up to the roof of the gate unto the wall, and lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold, a man running alone. And the watchman cried, and told the king. And the king said, ‘If he be alone, there is tidings in his mouth.’ And he came apace, and drew near. And the watchman saw another man running; and the watchman called unto the porter, and said, ‘Behold, another man running alone.’ And the king said, ‘He also bringeth tidings.’ And the watchman said, ‘I think the running of the foremost is like the running of Ahimaaz the son of Zadok.’ And the king said, ‘He is a good man, and cometh with good tidings.’”
Now, surely, stamped upon the face of this simple, historical narrative are those dominant concepts of the identity and the function of the watchman. In this case, his primary responsibility was to David and to the porter or gatekeeper of the city; and as he looked out and saw someone coming, he was to cry out and apprise his senior officer of the approach of that person. He looked with such keen-eyed concentration, that he was able to tell from the very stride and running style of the second runner who that runner might be. Here, then, the watchman is upon the wall. The watchman looks with concentration and undivided attention right to the horizon, and what the watchman sees of anything unusual approaching the city or the military garrison, he is to report to his superior or to those for whom he has special accountability.
That idea is scattered in several places throughout the historical narratives of the Old Testament, but the idea of the watchman comes into the realm of the ministry of the Word of God in the person and function of Ezekiel. It comes to its fullest and most clear and concentrated expression in conjunction with a minister of the Word of God in the person and ministry of Ezekiel the prophet.
When we turn to Ezekiel chapter 3, we have the account of Ezekiel’s commission. Towards the end of that account of the commission of Ezekiel, we read in Ezekiel 3:16 these words: “And it came to pass at the end of seven days, that the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, ‘Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel.’”
Now, the concept of a watchman was already clearly embedded in the minds of the ordinary, or in the mind of an ordinary Israelite, and now Jehovah says to Ezekiel, in the midst of commissioning him to the prophetic office, that in the fulfillment of that office, “I’ve constituted you a watchman. You will have functions as a mouthpiece of Jehovah that have great and serious parallels with the functions of a watchman upon the city walls or upon the wall of a military garrison.”
He goes on to amplify the significance of that analogy.
“Therefore, hear the word at My mouth and give them warning from Me. When I say unto the wicked, thou shalt surely die and thou givest him not warning nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way to save his life, the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity but his blood will I require at thy hand. Yet, if thou warn the wicked and he turn not from his wickedness nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity but thou hast delivered thy soul.
Again, when a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness and commit iniquity and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die, because thou hast not given him warning, he shall die in his sins and his righteous deeds which he has done shall not be remembered, but his blood will I require at thy hand. Nevertheless, if thou warn the righteous man that the righteous sin not and he doth not sin, he shall surely live because he took warning and thou hast delivered thy soul.”
Now, the unique contribution to the concept of a watchman that comes with the transferal of that concept to the ministry of the prophet is this matter of delivering his soul or blood being required at his hand. There is no explicit reference in any of the other Old Testament data concerning the function and ministry of a literal watchman over a garrison or over a city in which the language of ‘delivering thy soul’ or ‘requiring blood at thy hand’ is used.
Secular writers on secular assessments of the function of watchmen may tell us that such a concept was there, but it is not there—having looked up every watchmen reference in the Old Testament. The concept of a watchman having blood guiltiness attributed to him or delivering his soul comes to the fore only when the concept of a watchman is incorporated into the identity and function of a prophet of God.
That which was so central to the commission of Ezekiel is again picked up and repeated in Ezekiel 33. It was read in your hearing by Pastor Brevard and therefore I will not repeat it, but then, coming over into the New Testament, as we continue our brief overview of the watchman motif in the Word of God, where do we find this watchman motif coming to its clearest expression?
We find the answer to that question coming to such an expression in Paul’s discourse with the Ephesian elders.
Turn, please, to Acts chapter 20. You will remember that as Paul gathers the Ephesian elders to himself, he begins by reviewing the pattern of his own life and ministry among them, and then he says, towards the conclusion of that review (verse 25 of Acts 20),
“And now behold, I know that you all among whom I went about preaching the kingdom shall see my face no more. Wherefore, I testify unto you this day.”
Now, of all the terminology he could have used to say, “I testify that I have a good conscience, that I have fully delivered my soul of my gospel duties and responsibilities,” isn’t it interesting that he takes the language of the blood guiltiness of the watchman motif out of Ezekiel and says, “Wherefore I testify unto you this day that I am pure from the blood of all men”?
In other words, “No blood of an unfaithful watchman will be found upon my hands, for I shrank not from declaring unto you the whole counsel of God. All that I saw upon the horizon of the revelatory data committed to me by my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as an apostle of Jesus Christ and a shepherd to His people, I did not shrink from declaring the whole body of that revelatory data, the whole counsel of God.”
Here, I say, is the watchman motif coming to the fore in the apostle’s own religious consciousness. Then, when he turns to charge these elders with their task, notice how the concept of their function as pastors is interwoven with the watchman motif.
“Take heed unto yourselves, and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of the Lord which he purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departing grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves shall men arise speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them wherefore.” Now he focuses upon the watchman motif again. “Watch ye.”
Be continually alert. Stand upon the walls of the sheepfold of Christ and look out with concentrated attention for the gathering of the wolf-packs that would prey upon the flock and keenly look closely to the wall where apparent friendly neighbors may indeed be fifth columnists who will rise up from your own ranks in order to draw away disciples after them.
“Watch ye, remembering that by the space of three years I ceased not to admonish every one day and night with tears.”
So, I say, there are indeed echoes and overtones of the watchman motif as they come to expression in Paul’s own consciousness of moral and ethical responsibility as an apostle of Christ, and he seeks to load the consciences of the Ephesian elders with their responsibilities not only under the imagery of those who are to perform the manifold functions of shepherds to a flock of sheep—though that is the dominant imagery and that is carried through in the language—but they are to be intensely watchful. They are to be watchman upon the walls of Zion caring for the wellbeing of the people of God.
In a very real sense, as I reflected upon this and just ran through my mind many of the epistles of the New Testament, could we not say without straining reality that this watchman motif becomes the undergirding principle of many of the epistles of the New Testament?
Paul and Peter and John and James and Jude saw the enemies of the church approaching and when they saw them approaching they sounded an alarm, and that alarm comes in the white hot burning language of the book of Galatians when the apostle sees the enemy of justification by faith alone based upon the imputation of the righteousness of Christ—and he doesn’t even pause to be the gracious Christian gentleman he most often was in his letters, but bursts in upon that situation, sounds an alarm, and says, “You who would be justified by works have fallen from grace.
Does he not do the same thing with the Colossians letter? As he sees (as he stands upon the wall as a keen-eyed watchman) the influence of gnosticism, both in its theories of many intermediaries and with its practical system of asceticism that would undermine both the freedom and the simplicity of the gospel, does he not take the posture of a watchman? He cries out through his pen in that epistle to the Colossians, “Christ is all, Christ is enough, in Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge and ye are complete in Him.”
Was not Jude a watchman upon Zion’s walls? He desires to send an epistle to the inhabitants of Zion that will cause them to run through her streets, exulting and rejoicing in further unfoldings of the glories of their common salvation, but he says, “As I set my mind and heart to write to you concerning our common salvation, I was constrained to do something else.” What was that? To be a watchman upon the wall, crying out. Certain men have crept in privily and have brought with them damnable heresies and as a faithful watchman he stands upon Zion’s walls warning her inhabitants of these who would rob them of their salvation and would bring them into bondage to error.
In John’s epistles we have a similar emphasis, and so brethren, in summary, I trust you do not regard it in anyway as forced to say, in the light of this brief overview of the biblical data, that one of the functions of the pastoral office is that of an alert, keen-sighted, morally courageous watchman upon Zion’s walls.
It is not the primary function of a pastor. It is not to be his continuous and sole occupation, but surely we are warranted to say that in the pastoral office is bound up the function, the identity, the responsibility of a watchman upon Zion’s walls.
Remember in the passage in Ezekiel it says, “If the people shall take one of their number and appoint him to be a watchman over them,” that’s what your people have done when they’ve recognized you as a gift of Christ.
Think of the imagery of the Old Testament setting. Why would they take one of their number from his previously acquired trade or occupation and make him a professional stander upon the wall, so the women can be at their kneading troughs and in their kitchens and nursing their babies without fear that invaders would come upon them without warning, that men could go off with their bag lunches to their shops in the morning and know that if some invading army were coming on the horizon, they had set one over them to be a watchman to warn them that they make might due preparations to preserve their persons, their wives, their families and their possessions?
Dear people of God, in a very real sense, this is what our people have done in recognizing us as gifts of the ascended Christ to be pastors and teachers.
Bound up in that office and in that function is the task of a watchman, and they have voluntarily set us over them in the Lord as well as Christ giving us to them that we might by the grace of God give them in a very real sense the luxury—not of being spiritual imbeciles and spiritual incompetents with no discernment having a superstitious dependance upon professional clerics, I do not mean to suggest that at all, but where their life is lived out to the glory of God primarily in the legitimate calling to which providence has assigned them, we are set apart from that ordinary means of providing for our families and our persons that we might be alert, keen-eyed concentrating watchmen upon Zion’s walls with the moral discernment to know an enemy when we see one and the moral courage to cry out and warn the people of God when their safety is in jeopardy.
Machen, speaking to the students at Princeton’s seminary, back in 1926 brought a message on the subject, “Prophets False and True.” It’s a powerful sermon in the little paperback God Transcendent, and listen to Machen as I complete this brief overview of the biblical concept of a watchman.
What will be the kind of message God has given you men to proclaim? In the first place it will unquestionably be a message of warning. You will be called upon to tell men of evil that is to come. That will no doubt make you unpopular. Men like encouragement. They like to be told with regard to the Ramath Gilead of their pet projects to go up and prosper for the Lord will deliver it into the hand of the king. They do not like to see gloomy visions of all Israel scattered upon the hills as sheep that have not a shepherd. Is it not Michaiah the son of Imlah, but Zedekiah the son of Chananiah that has often had the favor of the crowd?
I am going to venture, however, to say a brief word in defense of pessimism. There are times when pessimism is a very encouraging thing. Last summer I took a voyage down the New England coast one foggy afternoon and night. It was one of the thickest nights that I’ve ever seen in those fog-bound waters. Now I’m glad to say that the captain of each of the two boats on which I travelled was a thorough pessimist. For a time the boat would plough along at full speed but then, for no apparent reason, she would stop and walk quietly upon the gentle swells and then proceed at a snail’s pace. Presently the mournful sound of a buoy would be heard and then the buoy would come into sight. The buoys were usually exactly where the captain expected them to be but unless he saw them, he took a thoroughly pessimistic view of their whereabouts. The results of such pessimism was good. The sound of the fog horn was indeed lugubrious and hardly conducive to a sound sleep but at least we got safely into Boston next morning.
There are ship captains who are less pessimistic than the captain of that boat. Such a one, for example, was the captain of the ill-fated Titanic. He hoped that all was well and kept the engines going at full speed. I’m certainly not presuming to blame him. Perhaps every captain not gifted with superhuman vision would have been as optimistic as he, but whether excusably or not, optimist he certainly was, and his optimism was fatal to many hundreds of human lives. The great ship plowed onward through the night and now she lies at the bottom of the sea. Oh that no mere weak mortal but some true prophet of God had been upon the bridge of the ship that fateful night.
That disaster is a figure of what will come of optimism in the churches of today. Superficially our ecclesiastical life seems to be progressing as it always did. The cabins are full of comfortable passengers. The orchestra is playing a lively air. The rows of lighted windows shine cheerfully out into the darkness of the night, but all the time death is lurking beneath. In this time of deadly peril there are leaders who say that all is well. There are leaders who decry controversy and urge peace declaring that the church is all perfectly loyal and true.
God forgive them, brethren. I say it will all my heart, may God forgive them for the evil they are doing to Christ’s little ones. May the Holy Spirit open their eyes while yet there is time. Meanwhile in the case of many churches the great ship rushes onward to the risk, at least, of doom.
You see, Machen understood, speaking to prospective ministers at Princeton in 1926, that an essential function of the pastoral office is to be understood in terms of the watchman motif of the Word of God.
2) An application of the watchman’s function.
Now then, having sought to convince your judgment that this watchman motif is indeed a vital element of the identity and function of a pastor, let me in the second place, seek to make an application of the watchman’s function in this present hour.
Under this heading I want to identify some of the major dangers to the people of God, dangers concerning which warnings must be given or we shall be held accountable with the blood of the souls of men.
As I wrestled with how to organize the identification of these major dangers it seemed to me that Paul’s twofold perspective of the wolves from without moved into the imagery of the watchman approaching armies from without the walls who would attack from without (who would set up their battlements and seek to storm the city), and then he speaks of perverse men from among yourselves (those who would from where the very presence of the city itself just outside her walls knocking on her door as friends or within the city walls apparently a part of the body politic and yet nonetheless perverse who would do harm to Zion).
So, under those two headings I want to give a note of alarm and warning and urge you, my brethren, to warn your people of the major enemies that face them from the world and the major enemies that face them from within the professing church; all I can do is just identify these, nail down what I mean by the terminology, give a specimen epitomizing text or two and pass on.
What I’m doing, brethren, is not in any way intended to be exhaustive, it is intended to be the discharge of the stewardship of seeking, as your brother, to ask you prayerfully to consider whether or not it is not part of your responsibility to your people to perform the function of a watchman in these areas.
1. Warn your people of the major enemies that are approaching them from the world.
The first category: I urge you, warn your people of the major enemies that are approaching them from the world, and what are they?
1- Warn of the evils of a militant secularism.
Number one, the evils of a militant secularism. To secularize, according to the dictionary, is to deprive of religious character, influence and significance.
Anything that is deprived of religious character, influence or significance has been secularized. In God’s world there is nothing that in reality is secularized, for the earth is the Lord and the fullness thereof, and from the full sweep of human history with the rise and fall of nations to the rising into the air and the falling and death of a sparrow, the Scriptures tell us that of Him, and through Him and unto Him are all things to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. There is no secularism in reality! This is God’s world made of God’s stuff, with God’s creature and even with devil and evil spirits who are God’s devil and God’s evil spirits and yet, we are witnessing in our day and our dear people are being bombarded with the evil of a militant secularism that would seek to take one category of reality after another and utterly deprive it of religious character, influence, and significance.
We are witnessing, at least in my lifetime of nearly sixty years, an unprecedented, aggressive manifestation of Romans 1 and verse 28, “And even as they refused to have God in their knowledge.”
Whatever man in our day desires to know, whatever field of endeavor he sets himself to pursue and to investigate, he has one fundamental presupposition that goes before him, surrounds him, presses in upon him, “Whatever I see, whatever factors I seek to analyze and synthesize, and make pronouncement upon, one thing I am determined: God is irrelevant in the equation.” I say that is a militant secularism, a militant secularism that is continually bombarding our people, and as watchmen we need to see it for the enemy that it is. We need to sound the alarm and help them to identify this enemy.
We need nothing more than a careful, practical exposition of Psalm 1, where the blessed man is described in his resolute refusal to become a secularist. “Blest is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of God, and upon His law doth he meditate day and night.”
He says, “There is no facet of reality that does not have its true significance in the light of God.” For it is in the language of the Psalmist that in “Thy light that we see light.”
2- Warn of the evils of an aggressive feminism.
Secondly, brethren, we must stand upon the walls and seek to be faithful watchmen not only warning our people of the evils of a militant secularism but the evils of an aggressive feminism.
Why do I single this out? Because as I’ve watched the emergence of the so-called feminist movement and seen its development into its screeching, howling, militant and almost paramilitary form, I’ve asked myself, “Lord, why so aggressive?” That question is troubling me. I think I’m beginning to see the answer.
Could it not be that the answer lies right in the Bible?
When we turn to Genesis chapter 1 we read, “And God says, let us make man in our image and after our likeness and in the image of God created He him, male and female created He them.”
According to Genesis 1:26-27 there is no such thing as innocuous, neutral personhood. Every one of us here is a male or a female image-bearer of God and there is no ‘it.’ I, you, he, she, each of us bears the image of God in distinctive sexual identity!
Now, if the carnal mind is enmity against God Himself and murder is said to be an affront upon God, in whose image man is made, and therefore warrants capital punishment (the rationale of Genesis chapter 9), do you see what aggressive feminism is? It’s an attempt to kill God. It’s an attempt to go after the God who reflects His image in man in the maleness and the femaleness of mankind!
As surely as capital punishment is warranted for the wanton taking of of the life of another who is made in the image of God, do we not see, brethren, that behind aggressive feminism is an attack upon the tangible expression of God? Those peculiar God-like qualities in femininity and masculinity are an irritant to a hater of God, therefore the hater of God will go after those dimensions of God’s image peculiarly revealed in sanctified masculinity.
So, feminism castrates men and makes them into wimps, makes them tentative about leadership, tentative about headship, tentative about aggressiveness. Why? Because God is a leading, aggressive God. Our people need to recognize that this is not a matter of whether women get equal pay for equal jobs, whether or not it’s right for men to be allowed to pinch the behinds of women in the office. My friends, this is not the issue. The issue of aggressive feminism is a destruction of both man and women in the image of God and an attack upon any of the new humanity in Christ who are determined to demonstrate in the dynamics of grace godly masculinity and godly femininity.
So glad our brethren will be addressing this at the young people’s conference in Grand Rapids this December. Let’s pray that God will own the cry of their watchmen to these young people because the pressure comes from every quarter, and we must warn as faithful watchmen concerning the evils of an aggressive feminism.
3- Warn of the evils of a ubiquitous New Ageism.
Thirdly, we must stand upon the wall and with keen perception and moral courage warn our people of the evils of a ubiquitous New Ageism.
Ubiquity is the quality of being everywhere at the same time, or at least appearing to be. Therefore I’ve used the word ‘ubiquitous’ because it’s the only word that fits with reference to New Ageism. This present American religion that is a combination of pantheism in which all is God and God is all, and therefore a spotted owl has as much dignity and even more than a baby in a womb. In which a certain life form that one can only see under a microscope has more worth and is worthy of more protection than a human being in a mother’s womb.
It’s self-deification, it’s worship of the earth combined with it’s eastern mysticism (finding the god within) and joined to astrology (in which guidance and destiny are determined by the positions and movements of heavenly bodies,) all the way to so-called holistic medicine which is nothing in many places but glorified shamanism.
Surely Romans 1:18 and following are being lived out before our eyes. As they have kept down the knowledge of God, did not want to worship and serve the Creator but the creature, God gives them over.
Dear people, I’m amazed at how undiscerning some of our people are with respect to this New Ageism, because, as the Scripture tells us, no wonder Satan himself, Paul says, comes as a messenger of righteousness and as an angel of light, and into corporate America have come seminars by the dozens, apparently calculated to make men more efficient in the corporate structure when in reality it is New Age religion being floated in the name of greater efficiency.
The whole concept of positive imaging, finding the little child within you, all of this—(dear people, we need to be faithful watchmen standing upon Zion’s walls)—will threaten and undermine the very vitals of true biblical supernaturalism, the Creator-creature distinction which lies at the heart of our very existence and every tenet of theism and of the Christian faith.
Then, I say, if we are to be faithful watchmen upon Zion’s walls, we must not only warn our people of the evils of a militant secularism and aggressive feminism, a ubiquitous New Ageism, but the evils of a materialistic determinism.
4- Warn of the evils of a materialistic determinism.
The evils of a materialistic determinism. What do I mean by those words?
Simply this: determinism of any kind is the belief that things do not just fall out by chance, that there is what some might call ‘fate,’ what the child of God calls a wise, loving, intelligent, sovereign God ordering all things in all realms for His glory and the accomplishment of His purposes and a generation that gnashes its teeth at the thought that God is upon His throne. “If there is a God, why hurricane Andrew? If there is a God, why the monsoon rains that swept away tens of thousands in India?” They hate the thought that there’s a sovereign God when things don’t go as they would order them were they in control, but these very same people have concocted a materialistic determinism that ultimately says no one is accountable for what he is or for what he does. “What I am and what I do is all the result of my genetic programming.” Hardly a week passes but that some so-called responsible medical spokesman comes out with another area in which human behavior is being tentatively viewed as absolutely predetermined by body chemistry, by genetic structuring and programming.
What a horrible determinism, but it won’t wash in a man’s conscience, and it won’t wash in the day of judgment for my Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5:10,
“So then each one of us shall be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ that each of us may give an account of the deeds done in the body.”
Can you imagine a materialistic determinist standing before God and being charged with his sin of drunkenness and saying, “But oh, God, you didn’t understand, I have such and such a predisposition to drunkness because of my genetic structure!” Being charged with the sins of sodomy and the sins of adultery and sexual perversion and he says, “Ah, but God, did you not know I was genetically predisposed to abnormal sexual obsessions? I was only being true to my internal monitor and as the tape of my genetic programming unfolded I became what I was predetermined to be.” My friend, it will not wash in the day of judgment. It will not wash in a conscience that is accusing the sinner, and we must cry out against this vicious evil or the edge will be taken off the consciences of our people and they will be altogether too willing to go into the blame shifting mode Eden, but instead of saying, “The woman Thou gavest me,” it will be, “The genes Thou gavest me; the genetic predisposition Thou gavest me. It urged me, oh, yes, and I complied.” Eden’s blame shifting, now with fancy terminology aided and abetted by computer technology! It’s as old as Eden and it is the lie of Eden, and we need to sound an alarm to our people.
5- Warn of the evils of total moral relativism.
Fifthly, we need as faithful watchmen upon the walls of Zion, seeking under God to see our people preserved from the dominant anti-Christian thought patterns of our day, we need to warn them about the evils of total moral relativism.
It’s the idea that there is no fixed standard of right or wrong in any realm, different strokes for different folks. “If I enjoy it and harm no one by it than it is all right for me.” Ah, but you see, here’s the catch. Who determines whether someone is harmed by it? “My own subjective judgment, that’s all.”
Total moral relativism; without any sense of shame. It is one thing for a community of self-confessed perverts who know by nature that their so-called sexual preference is against the very dictates of what they see and observe in their physical constitution, it’s one thing for them to say they want protection from being brow-beaten and being ostracized and not given due, basic protection of the law (I’m not debating that issue, I’m not saying I approve of it, I’m not discussing it), but that’s not what they want. What they want is for you and for me to place our imprimatur upon the screamings to their own consciences that their lifestyle is perfectly acceptable. That’s what they want, not merely one that we shall tolerate graciously in a so-called free society, but one that we will approve unqualifiably! Total moral relativism.
If ever the language of the prophet found a contemporary fulfillment surely it is in this area, when the prophet cried out in Isaiah chapter 5 and verse 20, “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.”
Having given up the law of God with its moral absolutes, having sought to scrub it from their very consciences until I believe God has given millions over to an utterly seared conscience, woe unto them that are now wise in their own eyes to make moral judgments.
Dear people of God, my fellow ministers, our sheep are subjected in greater or lesser degrees to these vicious enemies of our God, of His truth, of His Christ, of a life of holiness, and of a mindset that is consistent with disciplined discipleship to Jesus Christ.
According to Romans 12:2, the world’s system at any given point in time, whatever its peculiar aggressive manifestations may be, is always attempting to pressure the believer into its mold. “Be not conformed to this world.”
Dear brethren, how are our people going to obey that injunction unless as faithful watchmen, standing upon the walls we see with keen perception these enemies to their souls and with moral courage, armed with the Word of Truth and with a life that embodies the power of that truth lift up our voices and warn them? Lest failing to warn them they make shipwreck, their blood be required at our hands.
I hasten on, and I will seek to be more brief, to that second category of concern.
2. Warn your people concerning the major enemies they face from within the professing church.
I urge you, my brethren, not only to fulfill the function of a watchman in your pastoral office by warning your people concerning the major enemies that they face from the world, but warn your people concerning the major enemies they face from within the professing church.
1- Warn of the evils of the self-esteem gospel.
Number one, warn them of the evils of the self-esteem gospel. It’s everywhere.
It was interesting, after my wife and I read through together Jay Adams little book in the past year, The Biblical View of Self-Esteem, Self-love, and Self-Image. It was amazing how our consciousness was raised and we saw the self-esteem gospel not just in the secular press but oozing out of Christian literature, Christian radio broadcast, Christian sermons. It’s assumed as a given that whatever the gospel of Christ does, it elevates, enhances and enshrines your self-esteem! It’s been thumped and thundered and whispered so long and so frequently that people imbibe it and never even question whether it’s taught in the Word of God, whereas if I read my Bible aright, the first call in discipleship is to a radical self-denial.
“If any man would come after me, let him repudiate himself and take up his cross and in loving attachment to Me for what I’ve done upon My cross let him follow Me in evangelical obedience out of evangelical motives”.
As Paul put it in Pauline language, 2 Corinthians 5:15, “And that He died for all that they who live should no longer henceforth live unto themselves but unto Him who for their sakes died and rose again.”
That same apostle could say “for to me to live is Christ” and the great passion of His heart in Philippians 3, “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death.” There isn’t a word to suggest he even thought of himself, let alone his self-esteem, his self-worth, his self-actualization!
We need, dear brethren, to look upon this evil that so often is propounded very close to Zion’s walls and even within her walls. We have a problem that watchmen in the first century didn’t have. The false teacher had to get into people’s houses. Remember Paul spoke about those who creep into houses and lead captive silly women? All our people need to do is flip a dial on the television, on the radio, and the false teacher is right there, in their ear, before their eyeballs. Doesn’t even need to come near the door of the house. They can expose themselves to the horrible diluting, if not damning influence of false teaching at the flick of a dial! God help us to be faithful watchmen.
Are you warning your people about the TV evangelist and the radio teachers and preachers and authors that they pick up at their Christian bookshops? Alas, I’ve been surprised, I’ve found in certain bookshops of Reformed Baptist churches with self-esteem gospel in it.
We need to warn our people as faithful watchmen of the evils of the self-esteem gospel.
2- Warn of the evils of the church marketing movement.
Secondly, we need to warn them of the evils of the church marketing movement.
We need to identify this great enemy to all that is distinctively supernatural and otherworldly and counterculture in the biblical gospel and in the community of the new humanity: the evils of the church marketing movement, the idea that we must be and we must have and we must promote a user-friendly product.
There must be nothing about us individually or corporately that makes any sinner in any condition, from whatever background, under any circumstances feel the slightest twinge of discomfort. So, some are told, “Don’t bring your Bibles to Sunday services,” because, if a visitor comes in who doesn’t have a Bible, he doesn’t feel socially acceptable and he’ll feel awkward, so don’t bring your Bibles to church. Oh, yes, yes, don’t bring your Bibles to church, and of course, since a man standing up here with a Bible and quoting texts and identifying sins and crying out against them and talking about hell and judgment and error and moral absolutes, why that will just blow someone clean out the backdoor five times faster than he came in!
That product stinks from a distance before you even look at it and handle it and see if it feels good, he’s going to chuck it. (Excuse me, Chuck.)
God have mercy on us if we do not warn our people because our people long to see growth and increase and people interested and excited about the gospel.
As we were reminded yesterday by Pastor Lamar, there is no true Christian who doesn’t want to be more greatly used in the salvation of sinners and the edification of saints, but the question is this: how are we to market the divinely given product?
Is it—in the language of 2 Corinthians 1:12—is it to be done with fleshly wisdom? Paul says, “No, we did not minister in fleshly wisdom. The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh.” A fleshly adaptation of the gospel and of Christian worship and of the Christian community adapted to the sensibilities of a given market whether it’s yuppiedom or any other kind of dom.
The evils of the church marketing movement, my brethren, we must cry out and warn our people and seek to preserve them from its influence. If we don’t, serious worship will be the first thing that will begin to erode in our congregations. Serious God-centered worship will begin to give way to a little more relaxed, user-friendly climate, until you will end up with plastic, phony grins.
“All you lovely people, it’s so nice to have you here.”
How in God’s name can rational people do anything other than puke? But we’ll end up there if we buy in; one iota and the pressure will be on your people!
They’ll get bullied from other evangelicals,
“Say, hey, we’ve grown thirty percent last year, how about you Reformed Baptists?”
“Well, thank God, we’ve seen three conversions.”
“Three conversions?”
Your people begin to feel the pressure and the reproach.
“If you guys would just loosen up a bit; you’re just a bit too high-bound.”
Serious worship will be the first to go. Structured, intellectually demanding, passionate, morally searching preaching will be the next thing to go. Then you’ll have nice laid-back Bible-talkers who can tie together a few verses, make you laugh, and just at the point where you might get serious, relax you again through something that brings a titter and a smile.
In God’s name, my brethren, be watchmen at the walls. Warn your people of the evils of the church marketing movement.
3- Warn of the evils of psychologizing the Bible.
Thirdly, warn them of the evils of psychologizing the Bible. What the Bible describes as sins, and my parents taught me were sins, and I was brought up believing were sins are now ‘syndromes’—lovely term.
“When He, the Spirit is come, He will reprove the world” of syndromes? Not so, reads my Bible. “He will reprove the world of sin, and a righteousness and of judgment.” Sins are now syndromes and functional disorders. What the Bible calls slavery to sin are now addictive sicknesses. Drunkness is a ‘sickness.’ A man committed to chronic addiction to pornography is not a slave to the sin of uncleanness, he has an ‘addictive sexual disorder.’ Isn’t that a lovely name for a rotten, stinking, vile, filthy slavery to uncleanness. No wonder there’s no conviction. He can read his Bible, “Be not deceived, neither fornicators, nor adulterous, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men, nor railers.” He can read all of that and say, “Heh, doesn’t speak to me. Hasn’t talked about an addictive disorder.” Doesn’t say anything to me.
Brethren, words carry concepts. This is why the Scripture tells us in 2 Timothy 1:13, “Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me.” Holdfast the form of sound words.
1 Corinthians 2:12-13. Paul says that things that were previously hidden and are now revealed. He says, “Which things we speak we speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teacheth but in words which the Holy spirit teacheth.”
Don’t you play light with God’s words. Beware of the evil of psychologizing the Bible. Disobedience to Biblical norms where husbands do not love their wives as Christ loved the church and wives will not submit in all things to their husbands—these are now not homes where the Word and Law of God are defined, they are ‘dysfunctional families.’ What’s a dysfunctional family? Well, anything you wanna make it.
When was the last time you came under pungent, tear wrenching conviction for dysfunction? Well, a dysfunction was when I was throwing the ball and my shoulder went out or something and it was out of joint and I had to go to doctor and he put it back in. I never got under conviction of sin when a limb was not functioning as it ought or I had some mechanical breakdown. It hurt. I went to a doctor, and if I did it was because I did something stupid. I might confess to God my stupidity, but I didn’t confess to God that my arm wasn’t functioning right. So, if there’s something in the soul, and in interpersonal relationship that’s not functioning right, how can you feel convicted about that? It’s just a ‘breakdown in the system.’
Brethren, this is not playing about words. This is not a logomachy, a war about words. This is preserving the vitals of true and biblical Christianity! Warn your people of the evils of psychologizing the Bible.
4- Warn of the evils of politicization of the church’s mission.
Fourthly, warn them of the evils of politicization of the church’s mission. Again, I use the word, not to use a big word, but because I want to condense the concept. By it I mean simply this: the church being urged to form a power block for moral and ethical issues as church.
I’m amazed at how many evangelical and reformed people have fallen prey to this politicization of the church’s mission. Find one directive from one apostle for one rally to attack one evil in the massive mountains of evils of the Roman empire. I challenge you to find one. The evils were great, from slavery by conquest to abortion, infanticide, polygamy.
Read Romans 1. No apostle, in the age when the Spirit of God most powerfully worked in bringing—some estimates say, one twentieth of the Roman empire to faith, if ever there was a time to organize church into political power blocks it was then, when she was in her pristine glory and power and had living apostles to tell us how to do it, but what they said is, “Pray for your rulers,” and they knew who the scoundrels were. The very one who wrote that would lose his head at the edge of the sword, one of them. He said, “Pray for them.” Peter, who had known what it was to be abused by the semi-religious civil authorities in Jerusalem said, “Honor the king. Obey governors, honor to whom honor is due.”
You see, dear people, it looks so impressive. You can stir up a bunch of people to go and ticket an abortion clinic. Try to get that same group of people to get together for an hour of intense, fervent, gut wrenching prayer with the understanding they couldn’t lay hold of God until every issue that could be dealt with and should be dealt with in the way of unconfessed sin was dealt with before they could have dealings with God.
“For if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.”
That means, you see, that if I’m to have a conscience void of offense to God and man I’ve got to get it in the only way God’s provided it, and that’s in the path of repentance and faith, faith in the Jesus of the Bible who died once for all for sinners, the Just for the unjust. So I can’t then pray with the Roman Catholic who fumbles through her rosary and prays to Mary and to Joseph and who trusts the sacrifice of the mass.
I remember in this very building some years ago discussing with an elder of a Reformed Baptist church why he should not be involved in a movement and in activities that come under this category of seeking to form a power block as church in carrying out a given mission, and I said, “How would you feel at your next gathering in front of that abortion clinic if I came up to the two hundred that were there, Roman Catholics and Mormons and all the rest, and I began to preach the gospel and lovingly and yet passionately showed from the Bible that the Roman Catholic is an idolater if he’s a true Roman Catholic and that the Mormon is an idolater and no idolater shall enter the kingdom? How would you like it if I busted up your rally with some basic gospel street preaching?”
His mouth was shut. Another cause had overshadowed the gospel, but my Bible says, “God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
“I want to come to Rome,” Paul says, not because there was a large and thriving multi-ethnic church at the nerve centers of the Roman empire, in order to politicize. No, no, he said, “I want to preach the gospel because the gospel is the dynamis of God unto salvation.” The politicization of the church is really a wretchedly eloquent testimony of unbelief in the power of the gospel.
5- Warn of the evils of a Laodicean spirit.
Finally, my brethren, I urge you as watchmen upon the walls, not only by the grace of God to warn your people of the evils within in terms of what I have called the self-esteem gospel, the church marketing movement, the psychologizing of the Bible, the politicization of the church’s mission, and here I speak tenderly, but I speak with constraint, the evils of a Laodicean spirit.
We need to warn our people, as we warn ourselves, of the evils of the Laodicean spirit; and what do I mean by that? Just what Jesus said in Revelation 3:14 and following speaking to the church at Laodicea. This is your disposition and this is my response to it,
“Unto the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ‘These things saith the Amen, the faithful and the true Witness, the Beginning of the Creation of God. I know thy works; that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou wert cold or hot! So, because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot..”
Literally, “I am about to puke you.”
When’s the last time you said, “I got sick to my stomach and I spewed”? You said, “I vomited; I puked.” That’s the word used.
The Lord says, “You make me nauseous. If only you were burning hot, I would find in you an answer to My own zeal which consumed Me in the days of My flesh and continues to burn upon the altars of My heart at the right hand of My Father. Zeal for His house eats Me up.” If you were cold, I’d be able somehow to get you to see and to face the reality of how desperate your state is, but because you’re tepid—there’s been a raising of the temperature enough that there is no chilling blast coming out of your life, but neither is there that fire that is a dangerous, uncontrollable and contagious element of religious passion. How was it manifested?
He describes it in verse 17, “Because thou sayest.” He takes them to task for their language, for remember the mouth is the echo of the heart. “I’m rich, and gotten riches, have need of nothing.”
I’ve become the form. My theology is straight. I’ve become set in my ecclesiology. We’ve got our eldership in place and our deacons are functioning and we have benevolence—brethren, in the light of this afternoon’s discussion I demean none of those things. We better be able to say those things, but oh, if we say them in this spirit, in the light of all of this, there’s nowhere to go, we’ve arrived, and there’s no longer the plaintive cry, about our leanness, no longer the earnest, passionate pleading with God, the holy wrestlings that mark some of us in the days when we didn’t know our left hand from our right theologically! We knew what it was to lie on our faces half a night in hunger for God, crying, “Oh God, fill me with your Spirit, use me to do something for the glory of the Christ who’s captured my heart.”
We weren’t satisfied with any present level of attainment in grace. We weren’t satisfied with any level of knowledge and understanding. We were an irritant to every smug Christian that got around us. Some of you can remember when that was true of you. Remember when you were an irritant to every smug Christian that got close to you? How long has it been since you’ve been an irritant to anybody?
Lukewarm things neither shock with their coldness nor with their heat. They create no reaction. Brethren, brethren, I beg of you, I beg of you, ask God for an eye to perceive this horrible enemy within the walls of Zion: this Laodicean spirit that manifests itself in a smug self-contentedness and an ignorance of one’s true state. “And knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.”
Someone says, can that be said of a true believer?
Verse 18, “I counsel thee to buy of Me gold refined by the fire.” Verse 19, “As many as I love I reprove and chasten.” This is Jesus speaking to His own people; and I plead with you, my brethren, that with passion and earnestness and at whatever cost to your own personal reviving and quickening, be a true watchman, crying out to your people with respect to the evils of a Laodicean spirit.
In conclusion, let me say, I am not pontificating and saying you must, if you’re going to be a faithful pastor functioning in due proportion as a watchman, bring a series of messages on all ten things that I’ve addressed. I’m not saying that. I have no right to say it. I have no desire to say it. I haven’t said it.
Whatever your method may be, in whatever way you and your fellow overseers judge to be in the best interest of the well being of your flock in all of its peculiar needs, surely, brethren, over the course of the coming months and several years, unless God is pleased to do something unusual in mercy or in judgment, these evils will continue to threaten Zion’s well-being as they come from the world, and threaten her health and usefulness as they come from within her own ranks, and may it not be said of us—this is my final text—Isaiah chapter 56. May it not be said of us, oh my fellow watchmen.
Isaiah 56, verse 10, “His watchmen are blind.”
Think of it, a man up on the wall, placed there by his fellow citizens for their safety and security, and he peers out to the horizon with sightless eyes. What imagery! “His watchmen are blind; they are all without knowledge.” They have no discernment. They can’t tell an enemy from a friend, and then God descends to insulting imagery. “They are all dumb dogs that cannot bark.” You plunked out five hundred dollars for a purebred German Shepherd whose roar ought to make the rafters shake when a burglar comes near the house, and all he does is sit there and lick the back of his hand. He doesn’t even bark! He says this of the watchmen. “His watchmen are blind; they’re without knowledge; dumb dogs; they cannot bark, dreaming, lying down, loving to slumber.
May God grant that not one of those characteristics will be true of us, but may we be His watchmen who see with Spirit-wrought, twenty-fifteen vision, who have discernment and knowledge hammered out upon the anvil of the Word of God and close dealings with God in the theater of our own hearts, that whatever else is true of us in all the rough edges and all of the things about our preaching and pastoral work that cause us shame—may we at least be able to say, “I’m a dog that can bark in the presence of a burglar.”
Whatever else we can say, we say, “Oh God, at least I don’t day dream sitting on the wall, taking siestas every other hour on the hour, loving to slumber. Oh God, I’m seeking to keep my spiritual eyes free of the grit and the dust of this world, and I’m seeking, oh God to keep my mind honed by my Bible daily feeding on the Book, that my moral discernment might be kept keen in an age of abounding wickedness. Oh Lord, I wait upon You for moral courage that when I see an enemy I’ll bark! My bark may be unrefined and rough, but the person delivered by my bark will never fault me for the quality of the bark. They’ll bless me for the deliverance that it wrought.
My dear brethren, in the name of our blessed Lord Jesus may we be faithful watchmen to the house of Israel to the glory of God, and to the good of our people.
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