nice church discipline
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

The children of Israel were dejected. God, who is big, had promised big, but to their eyes, He had delivered only small. Their temple was small. Their power was small. Their numbers were small. Their wealth was small. Their faith was small. Such is the context of that passage that gives us our theme for this issue. The trouble is, even when we reject a dispensational understanding of the Bible, even when we say we love all of God's word, not just that which is written to us who live in the parenthesis, we still don't actually learn from God's word. We despise the day of Israel, the Old Testament.

Oh, to be sure, this story, with its memorable injunction, "Do not despise the day of small things" can serve us well. We can always hang a sermon on it. We can use this phrase as a jumping off point for how we look at our families, how we look at the culture, even how we understand our labors here at the Highlands Study Center. But what, after all, could this tell us about the church?

Here's a thought: perhaps it's telling us to not despise the day of small things. Despite managing paradoxically to be both immature and rickety, dispensationalism serves up a double whammy here. First, of course, it keeps telling us the bad news. If the soon return of Christ requires things to go poorly here on the late, great, planet earth, and if the prospect of the soon return of Christ is necessary to selling books, then q.e.d., good news is no news. How are we going to sing "I Wish We'd All Been Ready" while millions are coming to faith in Christ all over the globe? We paint the church, the unsinkable Molly Brown, as Calamity Jane. It's just good for business.

Secondly, dispensationalism has given us a telescoped understanding of time. First, it parades itself around like the doctrine of the church, despite its being less than half the age of that other hoary doctrine, credo-baptism. A.D. in the Dallas idiom must mean, "After Darby." (That is John Nelson Darby, not the covenantal Darby, Darby Maeve Sproul.) But it also joins the chorus of environmental Chicken Littles in insisting that time is almost up. In the world, the nuclear sword of Damocles hangs over our head. And in the church, we have four reasons Jesus is coming back in 2004. Either way, we all agree that time's running out, that we're on the eve of destruction.

The good news is this: a good dose of hermeneutical literalism can cure this problem. We all know the second commandment. We're not supposed to make idols, or bow to them. But God, in His grace, gives us some more information on why we're not supposed to do this. He reminds us that He is a jealous God. His jealousy is such that He will visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Him. But lest we think God is only jealous, He reminds us of His mercy, "but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments."

Here's where the soon return of Christ runs into problems. God promises to bless those among the children of Israel who obey this command to a thousand generations. A generation is roughly forty years. This promise was made roughly 4,000 years ago. Do the math. We have another 36,000 years to go. Oh, it may not be exactly that. 1,000, after all, could be a symbolic number, or a round one. But if Jesus comes back tomorrow, 1,000 symbolizes 100.

This is why I describe myself as a patient postmillennialist. I do not intend to usher in the golden age in my lifetime, nor in my children's. In true historical terms, in fact, the day in which we now live will one day be jumbled together with Edwards, with Calvin and Luther, with Anselm and Augustine, with Athansius and the Ante-Nicene fathers as "early church history." My distant descendents, even if they receive a classical education, will one day have a hard time remembering whether Francis Schaeffer or Francis of Assisi was born first.

We wisely look back at the acts of Christ in the first century and are filled with awe as He grows His church, as a band of fishermen and tax collectors become these who have upset the world, as faith moves to faith, grace to grace, and the elect are gathered. But we foolishly forget that our descendents will see us in the same light. Just as we cannot fathom a world in which chattel slavery exists, so they will be shocked that we lived, in relative ease, in a world where one in three unborn children are brutally murdered. We are still living in the day of small things. Christ is indeed busy about the business of putting all things under His feet. But He yet likewise has a long way to go.

Such ought not, however, diminish our urgency. Rather it should feed it. For we have the opportunity, living in the day of small things, to labor on the very foundations. We do not grow cold in doing good, knowing that there will be a great gap between ministering to our children and consummation of the kingdom. Instead we rejoice that our labors will multiply over hundreds of generations as our children go forth and multiply. Just as our fathers first wrestled over, and then settled many of the conundrums connected with the incarnation, and just as our fathers first wrestled over and then settled the issue of justification by faith alone, and in so doing set the course for the church for the remaining 36,000 years, so we might faithfully settle some of the great disputes that yet trouble our age. As one of the great theologians of the early church put it, right now counts forever. This is the day of small things that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.