God's sovereignty calls us to trust in the promises. The eye of the flesh cannot see how it is possible for God's promises to come true, but the eye of faith looks to the Lord omnipotent. It seemed ridiculous that God would give old Abraham and barren Sarah a son, but he gently admonished them, "Is any thing too hard for the LORD?" (Gen. 18:14). Whatever dangers you may face, believe that God is able to sustain you in them or rescue you from them. Let those in covenant with God rejoice that their Lord is almighty; they have a friend who can do anything. A hearty confidence in God's infinite power is requisite for us to trust his promises, for we must be, like Abraham, "fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able to perform" (Rom. 4:21).

Yet, we must not continue to think that we could not be nourished without ploughing and rain. But let us realize that our Lord, who uses rain today, though he did not use it previously, nevertheless did not prevent the earth from producing fruits. It was clothed beforehand with trees and plants. And how did that happen? We see that everything is attributed to God. It is true Moses says God 'had not yet rained'. That is so we would remember that the rain does not come of its own accord or by chance, but that God sends it, as it is said that the clouds are his containers which he maintains up there, and when he wishes to pierce them, they must all empty (Psa. 33:7), as we will see in the example of the Flood. But the situation is such that we must lift our minds above the entire order of nature if we wish to glorify God as he deserves. We must acknowledge that, as today, he ordered the rain to be of use to us, so the earth will receive the sustenance it gives us, the sustenance the earth was already producing. Whatever drought there may be today and even if the rain should cease altogether, let us hope in our God that he will be able to nourish us and sustain us well when we ask him for our daily bread and open our mouths to be hand fed by him.

Whereas in the first and second worlds, intellectuals and institutions such as universities were the conduits for the transmission and preservation of culture, now the intellectual class is devoted to the opposite–to the subversion, destabilization, and destruction of the culture’s tradition. In fact, so radical and disruptive is this phenomenon that Rieff argues that what these third-world elites are promoting does not even deserve the name of “culture.” culture is, after all, the name given to those traditions, institutions, and patterns of behavior that transmit the values of one generation to the next. But that is not the way of elites in third worlds. Rather, they are attempting to abolish such transmission and the means by which it would typically take place. They are, in the words of Rieff, creating not a culture but an anticulture, called such because of its iconoclastic, purely destructive attitude toward all that the first and second worlds hold so dear.

Christian parents must take into account three things as they consider their obligation to educate their children. The first is the instruction that children should live in an environment dominated by Scripture. We must not dismiss such passages as pertaining only to a simple agrarian culture. If life in the latter half of the twentieth century is more complex, it does not follow that we have less need for instruction in the law of God! If God wanted children then to think about everything in the light of His Word, then this practice is certainly as necessary now. In a more complex society, there is more to think about. Obviously, instruction on Sunday only is not enough. A thorough Biblical instruction can only be provided when related to all of life. Teaching must occur when we walk, drive, sit, and lie down. Nothing can be clearer--God wants the children of His people to live in an environment conditioned by His Word. Parents who want their children to be equipped to face the world that will exist twenty years from now will need to give this kind of comprehensive instruction in God’s word. 


In our family, we have done many things to maintain this kind of environment. Our son has listened to hours of Bible tapes as he has drifted off to sleep. We have sung hymns in the car as we traveled. We have had vigorous dinner table discussions of various theological issues. As our children were learning to talk, I would teach them a word (say, moon), and then I asked them, “Who made the moon?” “God!” God’s Word should not be limited to devotions.” And as our children go off to school, we are grateful that their formal education reinforces what we do as a family.

[S]uffering for the Lord in his service brings a new revelation of who God really is. I have said that the thing that characterizes health is knowing God through the Bible -- Genesis to Revelation. If this Bible is true, the most important question in the world is who God really is (v. 3). Now there are certain things about God which you can only learn experientially in the fire, and this reality goes with you when you come out of the fire. There is a saying in French that, when you translate it into English, goes something like this: 'To suffer, passes. To have suffered, never passes.' What you learn about the Lord in the fire goes with you blessedly long after you have left the fire. Some tests he may not call you through again in this whole earthly pilgrimage, but the effects go with you.

Imagine a whole generation of Christians in exodus, called to put down their phones, close their computers, ignore the SUV in the garage, and walk out of the front door of a home filled with comforts and tools, and evacuate their city on food without looking back. Maybe this will be our generation, or the next generation, or the generation after that one. At some point Christians will heed the angelic decree to leave the city of man with all its wealth and power and gifts and blessings. The Giver will call us away from the wonderful, temporary gifts we enjoyed every day inside the city. Whether or not that is our lot, Babylon's future is meant to change us now. We live inside our cities and enjoy our gifts of tech, yet we live as men and women awaiting our exodus to a greater city. We hold our cities--like our gadgets--loosely.

A total tech disengagement is coming, but not yet.

God destroys cities (like Sodom). And he revives cities (like Nineveh). Whatever his plans for any city, we live inside them as leaven. We will be called from the city one day. But until then we thrive inside the city, even as we resist the spirit of the city in our hope and by our worship.

To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. Once more, all that self-denial can say is: "He leads the way, keep close to him."