Selected Scriptures

August 20, 2017

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

Download the bulletin.

Download the Kids’ Korner.

The sermon starts at 13:45 in the audio file.

Or, What is a Kuyperian Dispensationalist?

Why do we do what we do? This is a question for individuals and for groups, for me and for us. Every person does what he most wants to do, whether or not he thinks in those terms or is conscious of his intentions. We all have wants, we all have reasons, we all make choices how we will spend our resources (time, money, skills, interests, etc.). And what we believe about God’s plan for the future will shape what we believe about God’s will for today.

In history, most Dispensationalists have considered their lives, and the world, to be in a sort of throw-away category. We say catechesis matters, our lives not so much. Our lives are a vapor, as James wrote, but Dispensationalists tend to apply that to the worth of one’s life rather than the duration of it. Compared to eternity our lives on earth don’t last very long. That doesn’t make our lives here less valuable. It’s actually the opposite.

A Dispensationalist sings about how this world is not his home, he’s just a passing through, and he sings how the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of Christ’s glory and grace. A Dispensationalist runs everything through the comparative grid rather than the integrated grid (categories Joe Rigney described in his book, The Things of Earth). Compared to Jesus everything else is worthless, “there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25), but we have trouble comprehending that Jesus gave worth to what He made for us. We tend to be best at building Dispensational Bible colleges as well as walls between Denominations. We are good at seeing and criticizing and condemning sin in the culture. We major on strident apologetics and urgent evangelism and rapture fiction. We believe that Israel is still significant in God’s plans and promises, and we expect that God will work all that out on the other side of the globe. We’ll wait here, at home, in our prayer closets, and Jesus will be back to make things right at any moment.

The part about Israel is good (the rest not so much). There are great promises of God to His elect people in the Old Testament. He made great and unbreakable covenants with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We looked specifically at the New Covenant promises to “the household of Israel,” promises to give them a new heart and the indwelling Spirit, as well as to return them to the land of their forefathers (Jeremiah 31:31-40; Ezekiel 36:22-32). Then we saw Paul’s long section of confidence in Romans 9-11. God chose the nation of Israel for Himself, He chose to save many within the nation. He also purposed for many to reject His Son for time, before He will save all of them in the future. God is faithful. He will finish what He started. While the fullness of Gentiles are grafted into salvation in Christ, the ethnic people of Israel will also be grafted back in. This what it means to be a Dispensationalist.

What does that have to do with being a Kuyperian? We took a couple weeks to consider the adjective “Kuyperian” as a nickname for a way of looking at all the world as a good gift from God. Not anything that was made was not made by Him. He sustains it, and He’s interested in it. He also made image-bearers to reflect His interests, and commissioned them to steward and build and subdue the earth. Marriage and family, medicine and technology, a father’s labor and a mother’s labor, are all ways to glorify God, not things that keep us from glorifying Him. Any created thing could become an idol, but so can Bible reading and religious service. Lots of religious people go to hell.

A Kuyperian is a Christian who acknowledges Christ’s lordship over every thumb’s-width in creation. Earthly callings are God’s idea. Presenting our bodies as living sacrifices is His choice for our response to His[...]