Meditations

A Dark Glory

February 24, 2020 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

The Reformed doctrine of Total Depravity is a dark glory. It’s a midnight blackness on the canvas, which gives a stunning relief to the brilliant white of redeeming grace. The doctrine is that every corner of fallen human existence is tainted by sin. It isn’t that we have a scale where the good is piled on one side, while the bad is on the other. The truth about you and me is that without a work of grace, even your good is bad, your best is foul, your light is unlit. If God measured our good and bad on the scales, there’d be no good to put on the scales. For even our righteousness is filthy rags.

Wherever sin goes, it uglifies. You sin by defiantly breaking God’s law, and you sin by thinking you can impress God by keeping His law. You sin by doing what He told you not to, and you sin by not doing what He told to do. Sin makes your beauty ugly, your glory into shame, your morals into manure.

Now take all that ugliness of sin, and show it to God. Take your best works, and see if you can’t find in them some foul pride. Look at your good deeds and see if there isn’t the rust of self-glorification growing in every crevice. Show all that ugliness to God. Will He be impressed? Will He beam over how much better you are than all those other humans? There’s nothing in you deserving His eye of favor.

But here on this table, we taste light after darkness, beauty after ugliness, glory after shame. This table shouts that all the midnight-dark wickedness of your sin––all your envy, lust, arrogance, hatred, laziness, & rage––was laid on Christ so that all His righteousness can be laid on you.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus…

Looking Through the Window

February 18, 2020 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

There are two ways to look at this meal. You can either see this meal as a tapestry or you can look through it as a window. Some look upon this meal as simply a quaint tradition which provides solace and comfort to the emotional and psychological needs of those who take it. They merely see a tapestry of curious anthropology.

But when you look at this meal by faith, you not only look at the elements, but you look through the elements. You see bread and wine, but faith sees and understands that it is really Christ which is beheld.

But let me push this illustration to very corners. A window is useless if there are not beams of light gleaming through it to dance upon the pupil of an opened eye. A blind man, straining his eyes, during a midnight hurricane will never see through that window, no matter how hard he tries. No, the eyes must be opened. The light must beam through. So not only do we look through the window, but the only way we can even see out the window is because the light first blazed through to us.

We see Christ here in this meal, because Christ first shined into our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. We see because He first showed. We behold because He first revealed. We delight in Him as our bridegroom because He first rejoiced over us as His precious bride. We are dead to sin, because He lived in righteousness. We are alive, because He died for us.

Those who merely look at this meal will never truly taste or see the glory of this meal. Only those who look through this window of bread and wine will taste Joy Himself, Life Himself, Glory Himself, Brilliant, Majestic, Boundless, Shoreless Love Himself.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus…

More Not Less

February 17, 2020 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

Sacraments are an inescapable reality in this world. Every false gospel has its rites, symbols, initiations, and sacred ceremonies. But the sacraments of these false gospels are signs which symbolize vanity, emptiness, outer darkness. The religious traditions of pagans, or Muslims, or even secularists are empty motions.

The Muslim’s sacrament of daily prayer is a bare exercise of muttering empty words to a deaf god. The sign is more than what is symbolized. The ritual gives a calloused forehead, but nothing more. Embracing one’s membership in an oppressed class is the sacrament of Modern Progressivism. But again––regardless of how many social media likes it gets––it’s a vain sign which symbolizes a speck of hollow covetousness. All the signs of false gospels are powerless and ineffectual, because their gods are impotent.

Christian Baptism is the inverse of this. What’s symbolized is more––not lesser––than the sign itself. What is here is that this little child, though not deserving the least of God’s favor, will be united with Christ. And in being united with Him in baptism is assured that by evangelical faith, what is true of Christ is true of her. His death is hers. His life is hers. His righteousness is hers. He takes her sin, and gives the riches of His grace. For the believer, the sign of baptism points to something infinitely larger than itself. Indeed, we say with the Apostle John: “Of Christ’s fullness we receive, and grace upon grace.”

So welcome covenant child to Christ.

Grains in the Harvest

February 4, 2020 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

Paul tells us, “we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread (1 Cor. 10:17).” But for grain to be made into bread it must face threshing, milling, kneading, and fire. In ancient times cattle would trample the grain with a heavy wooden sledge, then it would be winnowed with a fan to blow all the chaff into the fire, then it would be ground between two millstones, then of course transformed––by water, yeast, kneading, proving, and finally baking––into bread.

You are grains in the harvest of God. But grains by themselves are quite useless. By God’s providence, various means of the Spirit’s purging flame works in us to unite us into one loaf, that we might be bread to the nations. When we join a local church body, we become mingled with that part of Christ’s body. Thus our duty is to join with the saints we are in community with, and walk alongside each other as the Lord threshes, mills, kneads, proves and bakes us into a loaf for the great fellowship meal of joy in the everlasting Kingdom of our God.

The Ache to Belong

February 3, 2020 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

The ache for belonging is painfully on display in our culture. Entire stores are devoted to clothing and decor and food for each unique sub-culture. I recently overheard a gal telling someone that her boyfriend was really into cyber-goth steampunk style. Whatever in tarnation that is.

We want to belong. So political parties, subcultures, social media channels, and country clubs all offer a means to scratch that itch to belong. But here, in these baptismal waters, we have a sign of true belonging. Here is archetypal belonging. God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit enjoy eternal belonging in the holy fellowship of the Godhead. By baptism, we are brought into Christ, and by Him, we are brought to the Father, and the Spirit seals and bears witness that all of this is good enough to be true.

When explaining to this child what his baptism means, with the sweetest of simplicity these parents can say, “You belong to Jesus.” And because you belong to Him, God welcomes you into His glorious fellowship, promising life everlasting to those who abide in Him by faith.

So welcome covenant child to Christ.

A Meal for Humans

January 27, 2020 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

The first meal was a shared meal at a tree in Eden. Eve hands the fruit to Adam. They both partake. Thus began humans’ enduring feast of rebellion. Every generation found itself partaking of that self-exalting meal of self-righteous pride. It became a tradition passed down year after year, generation after generation (1 Pt. 1:18). Father handed it down to son. Master to apprentice. Teacher to student. Sin was mankind’s treasured hand-me-down.

But as Christ prepared to go to the tree of Calvary to deal with our sin, He too began an enduring feast. Christ invites His bride to a meal, where he hands out the food, week in and week out, year by year, century by century until He comes.

Jesus took the bread and gave it to His disciples. His disciples spread out to give it to the swelling numbers of believing saints. Those saints lived and died while crossing oceans, deserts, mountains, and valleys to bring the feast to every nation. When the minister breaks the bread, he does so as an authorized representative of the first Human who defeated Sin, our Lord Jesus. When the tray is handed to you, it is handed to you by a member of Christ’s body. When you hold that tray and pass it to your neighbor, you do so as brothers and sisters in Christ. He is the One Who presides at this meal. He is the One Who serves this meal. He is the One who partakes of this meal. He is the One Who is this meal.

Mankind’s first meal damned humans. But this meal is real bread and real wine for real humans, served by real humans, instituted by a real Human––who was also God––who came in order to save humans and reunite them, in Himself, to God.

So come in faith, and welcome to Jesus…

The Primary Act of Living

January 20, 2020 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

This meal is for those who are born anew, born again. Once a child is born they immediately begin to suckle at their mother’s breast, and the weeks which follow bring a daily miracle of growth, strengthening, and maturing. A child’s birth is only the commencement of its life, and its life must be nurtured and sustained or else it will languish.

We have heard news stories of children abandoned, abused, or left to starve. This rightly horrifies us. Newborn life is clearly dependent life. It is not able to stand, or hardly do anything more than drink, on its own. But drink it must. And drink it does.

Our baptism signifies the new-birth which must take place by faith. It signifies that in order to enter the kingdom of God, “Ye must be born again.” It shimmers as a beacon of joy, heralding good news that God’s grace makes dead men live. But whereas baptism, like birth, only takes place once, eating and drinking is the principle task of living.

What do newborns do? They eat, they drink, they sleep. If you find that your faith is weak and languishing, I propose that you’ve not been eating, drinking, resting. Remember, it isn’t mechanically partaking of this meal or of the Sabbath which bring renewal. It is faith. It is trust that in Christ’s body and blood is your only hope for new life. Here is your only place to find rest from the guilt of your sin. Here is the only meal which will nourish and grow your faith. Here in the body and blood of Christ crucified, risen, ascended, and reigning.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus…

Clinging to Lady Wisdom

January 20, 2020 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

Solomon repeatedly exhorts his son to get wisdom, be guided by understanding, cling to instruction, and value the knowledge of the Lord as greater than riches. Wisdom is likened to a woman, a lover even (Pro. 4:8). A wise son is to take hold of instruction, and not let her go, for in her is life (Pro. 4:13). This lady should be sought with the fervor of a miner during the gold-rush of 1849.

Picture a man running to his soon to be bride, after his twelve-month deployment. They will take hold of each other, and nothing is peeling them apart. That is how a King commands his son to cling to wisdom. Remember, these are instructions for a son who will soon rule a nation. Governance at every level must be guided not by mere appetite, but by God’s transcendent wisdom.

But another lady lingers in the shadows of the book of Proverbs. Her name is Folly. She doesn’t have any interest in loyalty or fidelity. Her embrace is not one of mutual love; it is the embrace of a boa constrictor. She plans to suffocate, then devour. If you become Lady Folly’s lover, your only loyalty will be to your basest cravings. Food, sex, money, sleep, will become your all-consuming desires. Your pursuit will not be for wisdom, and the blessings which come by it. Your pursuit will be for fleeting pleasures, which will return less and less pleasure, as they turn you into a ghost of a person.

Whereas Lady Wisdom is a tree of life, Lady Folly is a grave (Pro. 2:18). Dead lives, dead families, dead cities, dead nations are so because they have embraced, and been embraced by Lady Folly.

Our governments at every level are in ruins. We are not ruled by Wisdom, we are not found in her embrace. Rather, our nation has embraced the follies of same-sex mirages, abortion, antidepressants, entertainment gluttony, and taxes on others to pay for all these pursuits. It is no wonder that what God said would happen, has happened, “None that go unto Lady Folly return again, neither take they hold of the paths of life (Pro. 2:19).”

Our self-government, family government, and national government have all wandered down the path of Lady Folly, and we deserve the death that awaits us, unless God grants a revival of repentance. Only Lady Wisdom establishes a government for the living. So cling to her.