Truth In These Days

Heath Lambert
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Pastor Heath Lambert takes the biggest story in the news each week and evaluates it in an intentionally biblical and Christian way.

  1. 5D AGO

    Why I Want to Die a Southern Baptist

    Why I Want to Die a Southern Baptist Heath Lambert Southern Baptist Bedlam Last week I talked about why I am a convictional Baptist. This week—just over eight weeks before the Southern Baptist Convention in Orlando, Florida—I want to explain why I am a Southern Baptist and why I want to be one for the rest of my life.  A commitment to being a Southern Baptist requires a bit of explanation because there are plenty of Baptist denominations that are not Southern Baptist. The Southern Baptists may be the largest Protestant denomination in America, but they are far from the only one. If you want to be a good Baptist, you have options. And many conservative Baptists have been exercising those options lately. We can afford to be honest that in the last several years, the eyes of the Southern Baptist Convention have been blackened and our nose has been bloodied. We have chosen leaders who have embarrassed us, betrayed us, and let us down. We allowed enemies of the gospel to weaken our convention and take our money under the guise of protecting victims from sexual abuse. We have made foolish decisions that have perpetuated debates about the practice of female pastors, which our convention does not embrace but has not fully resolved. The last few years have been embarrassing. Some have decided to leave the convention, many are thinking about it, and others have decided to stay away. But I am not going anywhere, and I hope you won’t either. More than that, I hope you will redouble your commitment to our imperfect convention. There are several reasons why. Southern Baptist People The first reason I want to die a Southern Baptist and hope you will too is because of the wonderful Christians in the Southern Baptist Convention who changed my life. For me, that goes all the way back to 1994 when I got saved. Back then, a Southern Baptist Church paid for me, a poor kid from a broken home, to go on a retreat to hear about Jesus and learn about the Bible. While I was on that retreat, a Southern Baptist layperson named Sue Baumgardner told me I was a sinner and that Jesus died for me. I believed what she said and trusted Christ for the very first time. Over thirty years later, she is still an important part of my life, and my kids call her Mimi. Sue is just one woman from one church. There are countless others. I spent ten years of my ministry serving Southern Baptists as a professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. My classrooms were full of young Southern Baptists sent by their churches to learn about theology and Scripture. Millions of Southern Baptists I never knew paid my salary and trusted me to train the future ministers of our convention. That is a trust I was grateful for every day. Today, it is the joy of my ministry life to serve as the Senior Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Florida. Our church has been deeply invested in the convention for decades—providing crucial leadership during the years of the conservative resurgence and investing many, many millions of dollars over the years. This is a commitment I want to maintain during my time at First Baptist. I love the Southern Baptist Convention because I love Southern Baptists. These people are my tribe, and it is part of my mission in life to care for them and serve them in any way I can. Southern Baptist Convictions Another reason I want to die a Southern Baptist is because of our Southern Baptist Convictions. Those convictions are communicated in The Baptist Faith and Message, and I love them. It was a joy to sign my personal commitment to The Baptist Faith and Message when I was a professor at Southern Seminary, and I am thankful the document has served as the official confession of faith for First Baptist for over a quarter century. The Baptist Faith and Message clearly communicates our belief in the great and glorious God of heaven and earth and the reality of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. It tells the truth about Christ’s ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. It accurately describes the nature and offices of the local church. It reflects the biblical teaching on The Great Commission, human sexuality, Christian liberty, and many more crucial truths than I have the space to relate here. The Baptist Faith and Message has facilitated our denominational unity for decades. And Southern Baptists really believe it. Sometimes people misunderstand the ongoing debate our convention is having about female pastors and think Southern Baptists are compromising on the matter. Don’t believe this. Southern Baptists know the truth and are willing to tell the truth. Our disagreements have been mostly procedural in nature over the best way to address the matter. In a world of confusion and compromise, Southern Baptists stand on the rock-solid truth of the Word of God. I love them for it. Southern Baptist Mission A final reason I want to die a Southern Baptist has to do with our mission in the world. The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest missions-sending agency in Church history. Every year, we fund thousands of missionaries to take the gospel to the world in fulfillment of Christ’s Great Commission. We also plant churches across North America, and every year we train thousands of young men and women who will be the future servants of the church.  The ability to do this comes from individual Southern Baptists and their churches who choose to send hundreds of millions of dollars every year outside their local setting, convinced we can accomplish more together than we ever could alone. Southern Baptists are disagreeing right now about the best way to steward those dollars, but even that cloud has a silver lining. It is a reflection that every Southern Baptist investing money in our mission wants to ensure we are the best possible stewards of precious Great Commission resources.  A Time for Advance, Not Retreat Honestly, every time I think about the Southern Baptist Convention, I get excited, and my commitment to it grows. I know some are deciding in the opposite direction, and I respect the decision of faithful pastors and churches to make wise decisions about the best way to steward their time, money, energy, and relationships.  But for me, I don’t see seasons of conflict and difficulty as times to retreat, but as times to advance. Countless Southern Baptists have made investments in me, and I feel an obligation to make a return on that investment. The vast majority of Southern Baptists fully embrace our convictions and want to see them built up, not diminished. Our missional efforts are worth every effort to preserve and strengthen.  This is no time to back down, but to stand up. That is why I am excited about our convention meeting this June in Orlando. Every week, I talk to pastors who are excited about what is happening and excited about what we have the opportunity to do. They want this year to be the year we take a stand, address problems, and move toward strength and unity. I share that enthusiasm and hope you do too. I hope you and the messengers from your church will make plans to come to Orlando and work to ensure that our convention, which has done so much good in the past, is prepared to do even more in the future.

    7 min

  2. APR 10

    Why I am a Convictional Baptist (And Why I Reject Infant Baptism)

    Why I am a Convictional Baptist (And Why I Reject Infant Baptism) Heath Lambert Debates about Baptism We live in fascinating times when many are evaluating or reevaluating the religious traditions they will join. The people involved in this great reevaluation have not always had a very favorable disposition to the Baptist tradition. Many have looked beyond the Baptists to more High-Church traditions and we have seen important examples of people leaving Baptist denominations to become Presbyterians. For me, this issue is very important because of my personal journey of rejecting infant baptism to become a convictional Baptist. On the one hand, I was saved in a Baptist church and have only ever been a member of Baptist churches. On the other hand, the Baptist church where I got saved was not spiritually healthy back then, and it forced me to turn to other sources for discipleship. For years, those other sources were almost exclusively Presbyterian. One of the most significant was R.C. Sproul. I never had the honor of meeting him, but to this day, I have heard more of his sermons than any other preacher. More personally, both of my ministry mentors were influential and deeply respected Presbyterians: Bill Barcley and David Powlison, with Powlison, like Sproul, now in heaven. Whether through a long-distance preaching ministry or through years of personal teaching and close relationship, I have been exposed to the best and most theologically consistent arguments for infant baptism. I spent years wanting desperately to believe the arguments I heard from the men I respected more than anyone in the world. With all my heart, I wanted to believe what they believed. And there were times when I got really close. But, as I write/speak to you from the campus of the First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Florida, it is clear that years of listening to the best arguments never persuaded me that my respected mentors were correct in their practice of baptizing babies. I love them, deeply honor them, learned from them, and have supported them in every way possible. But over time, I moved in the direction of credobaptism—the conviction that baptism requires the immersion in water of only believers in Jesus Christ. Ultimately, I find no support in Scripture for pedobaptism—the “baptism” of children who have not professed faith. My reasons are many, but here, I will discuss three of the most important. The Word for Baptism To begin, it is important to understand that our English word, baptism, is not a translation of, but rather a transliteration from Greek. When we translate a word in the New Testament, we take a Greek term, determine its meaning, and then use the corresponding word in English to communicate to English readers and listeners. For example, the Greek word metanoia means to turn or to change one’s mind. We translate this word, most often, with the English word repentance. The work of transliteration is a little different. A word is transliterated when we take the Greek letters that make up a word and replace those Greek letters with corresponding English letters in order to create a new English word. An example of this is the Greek word Christos. When that Greek word shows up in the New Testament instead of always translating the word Christos as anointed, we often use the transliterated term, Christ. Our word baptism is a transliteration of the Greek term, baptizo. The definition of baptizo is to dip or immerse. Instead of translating the term every time it shows up in the New Testament as immerse, we mostly just use the transliterated term. Scholars often debate the theological significance of the word baptism, but from the standpoint of linguistics, there is no debate about the meaning of the term. When Jesus and his apostles wanted to refer to the rite that initiates Christians into the church, they used the Greek word that means immerse or dip. This specific Greek term makes the mode of baptism clear. Some theological traditions may baptize by aspersion, or sprinkling. Some traditions may baptize by affusion or pouring. I am a Baptist because it is only our practice of immersion, or dipping that does justice to the clear meaning of the New Testament term. The Picture of Baptism When Christians engage in biblical baptism and immerse believers under water, we are not merely clinging to the definition of an ancient Greek term. We are living out a picture visible to everyone who observes the practice. Baptism paints a portrait of the work of Jesus for believers. That picture is described in Colossians 2:11-14 In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. In the New Testament, water baptism paints a dramatic picture to the watching world of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Just as Jesus was crucified on the cross, buried, in a tomb, and raised on the third day, so the baptizand (that’s what we call the person being baptized), is buried under the waters of baptism and raised up out of them. This portrait of baptism only works with baptism by immersion. So-called baptism by affusion or aspersion fails to portray the biblical picture. This portrait of baptism also only works when the baptizand possesses personal faith in Jesus. The apostle is clear that it is the baptizand who has receives the work of Christ (Colossians 2:11). It is the baptizand who was dead in trespasses but has been made alive together with Christ (Colossians 2:13). It is the baptizand whose trespasses have been forgiven (Colossians 2:13). It is the baptizand whose record of debt has been set aside through the work of Christ on the cross (Colossians 2:14). It is the baptizand—not his parents and not his church—who has faith in the work of Jesus to save (Colossians 2:12). This is only one of multiple places in the New Testament teaching the portrait painted by baptism only makes sense for believers. No faithful Christian believes baptism saves, because salvation comes through Christ alone. I am a Baptist because the Bible makes clear that the realities that baptism portrays can only be true of those who possess personal trust in Jesus Christ as Savior. The Progression of Biblical Covenants Faithful Christians who insist on the baptism of infants do so anchoring their position in a view of biblical covenants. Pedobaptists often refer to this as covenant theology. It is absolutely true that it is impossible to understand God’s revelation without acknowledging the significance of covenant language in Scripture. But it is easy to misunderstand the way these covenants work, as I believe my pedobaptist friends do. Pedobaptists look to the covenant sign of circumcision and acknowledge that it was given to children of the covenant who neither possessed faith in or knowledge of the covenant. From this biblical observation, they argue that just as the covenant sign of circumcision was administered before the presence of faith, so baptism should be given to the children of believers before they profess personal faith. This pedobaptist argument is an interesting one but is unfortunately imposed upon Scripture and not found within it. The only place in the Bible where baptism and circumcision are mentioned together is Colossians 2:11, quoted earlier. In that passage, the ones baptized are those who have received the kind of heart circumcision toward which physical circumcision was always meant to point (Deuteronomy 10:16; Jeremiah 4:4). Colossians 2 absolutely does not teach that because babies were circumcised in the Abrahamic Covenant, they should be baptized in the New Covenant. The pedobaptist argument also does not work because it fails to understand a crucial distinction between the Abrahamic Covenant and the New Covenant, which fulfills it. The Abrahamic Covenant is a relationship between God and the descendants of Abraham, where God is building his people biologically through one ethnicity. In that covenant, everyone has Abraham’s genes, but not everyone has Abraham’s faith. The authors of the New Testament see this as a limitation of that covenant. The Apostle Paul says in Romans 9:7-8, “Not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’ This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.” One of the saddest realities about the Abrahamic Covenant is that the covenant includes people who are Abraham’s biological descendants without being one of his spiritual descendants. We do not have to wait for the New Testament to discover this limitation of the Abrahamic Covenant. The Old Testament itself sees this limitation and looks forward to a covenant that is only composed of those who know God. After the physical descendants of Abraham enter a national covenant with God and receive his law at Sinai, it becomes clear that physical descendancy will never be enough to create faithfulness. In Jeremiah 31:34, the prophet looks forward to a future covenant when, “No longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” These words point to the New Covenant in Jesus. That New Covenant is one where God is no longer building his peop

    13 min

  3. APR 3

    Resurrection Hope for a World at War

    Resurrection Hope for a World at War Heath Lambert A World at War As we approach Easter 2026 few things are more obvious than that we are living in a world at war. Often this war is literal as we have seen this year in Israel, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, and other places. In these literal wars, nation states shoot guns, drop bombs, and deploy troops in an effort to kill enough people and destroy enough property to get what they want. The wars are not only ones that use military power, but also use words. Just this year we have seen verbal conflicts among nations over which country owns Taiwan and the Panama Canal, over which nation is responsible for the national defense of countries in Europe, over what tariffs countries should pay as they engage in international trade, along with many other verbal conflicts. Whether physical or verbal, and in spite of changing rulers and administrations the nations of the world are constantly fighting. The Biblical Reason for International Conflict The Bible is honest about this conflict and gives a surprising explanation for it in Psalm 2:1-3, “Why do the nations rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.’” The Bible looks at this world at war and sees the plotting and raging of the nations as a global rebellion against God. Warfare in the world is a demonstration of the sin of nations just like the conflict in our personal relationships demonstrates sin in the lives of individuals. The conflict out there in the world does not merely exist but is proof of the rejection of Divine Kingship by the global powers of the earth. When Iran imposes Islam, when China imposes atheism, when Russia invades Ukraine, and when the United States attacks marriage, gender, and sexuality it is a demonstration of a global revolt against the God of heaven and earth. God’s Solution to the World at War God intends to solve this problem of global conflict by instituting peace with methods that are surprising and unexpected. In our world today we usually think of solving these problems militarily, politically, or financially. Most believe that if they could only crush enough opposition, or get the right leadership, or raise enough money, eventually the problems would go away. None of these solutions ultimately work because they fall short of God’s solution to the problem of global warfare. God’s solution to this trouble is a King descended from ancient Israel. In Psalm 2:6 he says, “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.” In Psalm 2:7-9, He says, “The Lord said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.’” The New Testament teaches that these words are fulfilled in the resurrection of Jesus Christ that we celebrate at Easter. In Acts 13:33, the Apostle Paul says, “This he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus, as also it is written in the second Psalm, ‘“You are my Son, today I have begotten you.”’” The resurrection of Jesus Christ has everything to do with all the conflict you are watching on your screens this Easter week. Everyone talks about ending the conflicts by personally destroying their enemies. God intends, ultimately, to put to end these conflicts with a risen Savior. This is what the Bible teaches 1 Corinthians 15:24-27, Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” Living With Hope Amid Conflict These truths help us to look soberly at our world at war. We live in a world of conflict that simply cannot be solved with political, military, or financial solutions. Everyone searching for an end to conflict through any human means is destined for disappointment. Every conflict on earth is the fruit of a sinful world that is as sad as it is normal. But these truths also help us to look at our world with hope. A world at war will be a constant as long as sin reigns. But God does not mean for sin to reign in this world forever. Jesus Christ has defeated sin, death, and devil through his resurrection from the grave. The plan for history is for every enemy of Christ to be placed under his feet until death itself is destroyed. That future fact of history will usher every believer in Jesus into an everlasting world of peace, joy, and harmony that will never end. As Christians trust in our resurrected Christ, we can live through these days of conflict looking forward to that great and glorious day when Jesus himself will bring an end to all conflict. As you live out that faith, the very best thing you could do this weekend is go to church. Go to a church that will meet on Good Friday to commemorate what Jesus has done for sinners through his death on the cross. Go to a church on Sunday morning that will celebrate the great hope we all have because Jesus suffered death in order to conquer it. Go to church and celebrate Jesus and remember together with God’s people what he has done and what he will yet do to bring an end to all war and initiate peace on earth through his glorious resurrection from the grave.

    6 min

  4. MAR 27

    President Trump Takes Christians to School

    President Trump Takes Christians to School Heath Lambert Donald Trump and Robert Mueller On March 20, 2026, Robert Mueller, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and United States Special Prosecutor, died at 81 after a battle with Parkinson’s Disease. That announcement would have made the news under any circumstances. But the news got even bigger on March 21, when President Donald Trump commented on Mueller’s death, writing on social media, “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he's dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!” These comments are clearly wrong and way over any reasonable line for how responsible people should communicate. The response of general disgust over the president’s comments indicate that most people agree with this. In fact, admitting that the president’s comments were wrong should be fairly easy work. The harder work is to take a more careful look at the comments and learn the many lessons they teach us. When President Trump made his nasty comments about Robert Mueller, he took Christians to school and taught us several lessons about communication in a fallen world. Jesus Calls Us to Love Our Enemies The first lesson has to do with the main reason why Trump’s comments were wrong. They were a violation of Jesus’s command in Matthew 5:44 when he says, “I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” What is amazing about Jesus’s comments here is that he does not deny that we will encounter people who persecute and mistreat us. His teaching is far more radical than that. Jesus calls us to look honestly at our enemies, to be honest about their wickedness, and then, instead of hating them, we are to respond with compassion. These words apply to everyone on earth whether a president or a peasant. We need to say this because there is a temptation for some to excuse President Trump because he has big and powerful enemies that rest of us cannot understand. This was the argument of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Sunday when defended the presidential remarks saying, “Given what has been done to President Trump it is impossible for . . . us to understand what he has been through.” None of us should pretend that we have experienced the kind of treatment as President Trump. I know I haven’t. But the Christian condemnation of Trump’s speech is not grounded in anyone’s experience but in the words of Jesus Christ that demand love for enemies. Loving Your Enemies Is Hard The second lesson we can learn from Trump’s comments is that loving your enemies is hard to do. That is true because our enemies really do cruelly mistreat and persecute us. The president pointed to this reality in his unfortunate post. He did not just express delight over Mueller’s death, but also made a moral argument. Trump said of Mueller that, “He can no longer hurt innocent people.” The president’s argument is very clearly that because Mueller used his life to hurt people it is good that his life is over. This is an argument we need to take seriously. When people mistreat us, it will not be hard for us to make an argument that hatred for them is the right response. Jesus makes this clear in his comments the verse before his command to love our enemies. He says in Matthew 5:43, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’” Jesus not only acknowledges the existence of enemies, but he also makes clear that some religious communities teach that hatred is an acceptable response to them. When Donald Trump spewed hatred at one of his enemies this week, he was behaving in a way consistent with some of the religious people that Jesus condemned. It is a testimony to just how terrible enemies can be that it is so easy for everyone from presidents to religious leaders to slip into hateful attitudes. That is why we all need to be very careful in our evaluation of the president’s remarks. The president may have provided the most famous example last week of enemy hatred, but he is far from alone. Christians really do have a responsibility to be honest that what the president said was wrong. We also have a responsibility to be honest that the same hatred has flowed out of our own hearts. That is because hating your enemies is easy for all of us. Loving them requires the grace of Jesus. In a Sinful World Death Can Be a Cause for Gratitude A third lesson we can learn from the presidential remarks is the very uncomfortable one that there are times in a sinful world where death can be a cause of gratitude and joy. It has been common for many responding to Trump to say this kind of celebration is never an appropriate response to death. This creates a standard that most people will not be able to sustain. In this messed up world there are times when death is good news. For example, many different kinds of people will express joy or relief when the state executes, by lethal injection, a murderer who robbed innocent victims of life, when a military strike kills a despot who terrorized a nation, or when a car accident ends the existence of a man sexually abusing a young girl for years. The awkward truth is that death can be good news when it brings unrighteousness to an end. The very important point is that any legitimate joy and gratitude that comes from those deaths will not flow from the fact that the deceased person was an enemy of any one person in particular, but rather from the fact that they were enemies of righteousness. The Bible makes it clear in places like Genesis 9:6, that the life of human beings is so precious that anyone who becomes devoted to the destruction of that life is themselves to be devoted to destruction. As true as this is, Christians must be very careful to reserve expressions of gratitude over death for the most rare occasions involving the most corrupt individuals. The death of Robert Mueller is not one of those occasions, regardless of your political opinion. I have no doubt that Trump considers Mueller to have been a bona fide enemy, and that the president could make a solid case for legitimate grievances he has against the man. But when we measure a whole life, we should not reduce entire persons to a single issue or one season of life. This means that Christians cannot—and the president should not—reduce Mueller to one political context, regardless of how consequential it was. Robert Mueller was a husband, father, and grandfather. He had next door neighbors and friends. Colleagues at work loved and respected him. Loving our enemies requires us to see them as something more than people who mistreated us. That requires us not only to listen to Jesus’s command about loving our enemies, but to his teaching about the Golden Rule in Matthew 7:12, “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.” Very practically, Jesus’s words here require us to evaluate the lives of others the way we wish others would evaluate ours. That means, at the absolute least, that we do not speak about people as though the way they may have mistreated us is the only thing true about them. We All Need to Watch What We Say Finally, Donald Trump’s remarks give us a lesson about how we use our mouths. Cherishing hatred in our hearts is one sin. Allowing that hatred to cross our lips is another. Of course, the president verbalized his hate on a global stage, but this kind of hateful expression is also wrong when any of us do it in our living rooms and text threads. Psalm 141:3 says, “Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips!” None of us have a right to say just anything we want. We are required by God to use care in our speech. This may be the requirement in Scripture that Donald Trump violates more regularly than any other. A Lesson of What Not to Do I know my comments about the president’s remarks will make some unhappy. Plenty of conservatives in general and Christians in particular think it is wrong to criticize the president since it potentially weakens his political support as he does battle against people who oppose his policies and are also guilty of sin. I grant that the president’s opponents’ sin plenty and I have been more than willing to criticize them and defend the president when he deserved it. But he doesn’t deserve it this week. This week he deserves a clear rebuke. We Christians need to remember that Donald Trump has a little less than three years to be president. Believers need to communicate in ways that preserve our credibility when Trump is permanently out of public office. That means it is important to be honest when the president is right and when he is wrong. If you don’t like the sound of that, then consider that this kind of talk only hurts the president. One of the reasons for Trump’s election is that people appreciate his bold candor. But none but the vilest people want this kind of hateful rhetoric. The American public is already tiring of it. It is this kind of talk that will make people eager for the president to leave office even when they agree with him on policy because they just don’t want to keep hearing this stuff. This week, the president was really wrong. We need say that not because we want to score points. We need to say it because we need to be honest, because this kind of talk is really bad for our society, and because the president’s public sin has lessons we can all apply to our more-private sin. With his comments about Robert Mueller, the president took Christians to school. Unfortunately, this week, our lessons were taught by someone who earned a Ph.D. in what not to do.

    9 min

  5. MAR 20

    What Christians Should Think of Jews

    What Christians Should Think of Jews Heath Lambert The Jewish People and the Nation of Israel Last week, I talked about the biblical and political reasons to support the nation of Israel. This week, I want to talk about what a Christian view of Jewish people should be, whether those Jews reside in the nation of Israel or not. It is an important question in our contemporary context for surprising reasons. It has become increasingly popular in our contemporary culture to adopt suspicious views of Jewish people that range from ignorance to the blatantly anti-Semitic. Hatred of the Jewish people, exaltation of the legacy of Adolf Hitler, holocaust-denial, holocaust minimization, and conspiracy theories regarding economic control by “organized Jewry” are shockingly and increasingly common. Such talk is spread by those who confuse information consumption with true knowledge and spend more time watching TikTok than they do reading history. Social media celebrities like Nick Fuentes masquerade as authorities and take advantage of the gullible. I get a surprising number of requests to address what Christians should think of Jewish people from parents and grandparents whose children and grandchildren are being confused by conspiracy theories spread by the ignorant and the hateful. Explaining what Christians are to think of the Jewish people ultimately requires an examination of history and a rebuttal to the many factual errors that often get repeated on the Internet. I will save a discussion of those matters for another time. In this article, I want to examine what the Bible says about how Christians should think of Jews. Christians will agree that the principal reality controlling our evaluation of Jewish people is the teaching of Scripture. I will emphasize three responses to Jewish people required of Christians by Scripture. Compassion The first response is compassion that flows from the truth that the Jewish people are lost, apart from Christ, and, therefore, devoid of salvation. The Apostle Paul makes this clear in dramatically personal terms in Romans 9:2-3, “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” The Israelites are cut off from Christ. Paul knows this because he has come to faith in Jesus and has been enlisted as one of his choice missionaries. Paul is utterly convinced that the way to eternal life is not through a relationship with God based on ethnicity or observance of the law but through a relationship with God based on faith in Jesus alone. He says in Galatians 6:14-15, “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.” Because they have not been made new in Jesus Christ, the Jewish people are, in the words of Ephesians 2:1, “Dead in trespasses and sins.” Whenever you see real guilt and sin in the life of a Jewish person, it is not the evidence of some conspiracy theory you heard about online. It is the fruit of sin. Ephesians 2:3 says of those who are dead in trespasses and sins that they are “Children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” The Jewish people are sinners like everyone else on planet earth, whose only hope of salvation is found in Christ alone. It is true that a crowd of mostly Jewish people played a unique role in the crucifixion of Jesus and bears moral responsibility for their involvement. Matthew 27:22-23 says, “Pilate said to them, ‘Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?’ They all said, ‘Let him be crucified!’ And he said, ‘Why? What evil has he done?’ But they shouted all the more, ‘Let him be crucified!’” When Pilate tried washing his hands of the whole nasty affair the crowd said, “His blood be on us and on our children!” (Matthew 27:25). It is also true that 1 Peter 3:18 says, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.” The crowd that demanded Jesus’s blood on that day 2000 years ago included a limited number of people. The mass of unrighteous humanity that required the death of Jesus on the cross includes every sinner who has ever lived. The Bible teaches that all of us are sinners responsible for the death of Jesus. When a person, by faith, comes to realize they are guilty of sin and deserving of infinite punishment that they will never receive because of the blood of Jesus, they will be full of compassion for other sinners who yet remain under judgment. This was the profound compassion the Apostle Paul displayed in Romans 9:2-3 when he revealed his broken heart over the lost state of the Jewish people. Jewish people are separated from the grace of God just like every other person who has not come to faith in Jesus. Christians must have compassion for them and seek to win them to Christ, not grow in hatred toward them, and must never be involved in spreading any hatred to others. Gratitude The second response Christians must have toward Jews is gratitude that flows from the rich theological heritage we have received from the Jewish people. Paul also makes this clear in Romans 9. Having talked about his heart of compassion for the Jewish people who are apart from Christ, he says in Romans 9:4-5, “They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.” These words indicate that we have received at least two realities of inestimable worth from the Jewish people. The first are the Scriptures. This is what Paul means when he talks about the covenants, the law, and the promises. All these are recorded in God’s Word, the Bible. And we are not only talking about the Old Testament, but of the New Testament as well. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter—all the authors of the New Testament books were Jewish men. Christians today would have no access to God’s revealed Word had he not chosen to speak through the Jewish people. The second precious reality that Christians possess because of the Jews is Jesus himself. Paul says the patriarchs were Jewish and that “from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all.” Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of the world, and the Lord and Master of the entire universe, is Jewish. Christians cannot be anything other than grateful for this. God used the Jewish race to create the human ancestry of our Savior. When Christians confess that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin, we are proclaiming that our hope of everlasting life is based on Jewish blood. Christians—God’s New Covenant people—have a unique relationship and camaraderie with Jews—God’s Old Covenant people—that we share with no one else on earth. We should be very grateful. Hope Finally, Christians should look on the Jewish people and have great hope. In Romans 9:2-3, Paul expressed his heartbreak over the separation of the Jewish people from Christ. But this is only the beginning of a larger section where Paul expresses his great hope for the Jewish people. He makes clear in Romans 11:1 that God has not rejected the Jewish people. He teaches in Romans 11:11-15 that we are living in a unique moment of redemptive history where the Jewish rejection of Jesus is allowing for Gentile salvation. In Romans 11:18, he urges Gentiles not to use this as an occasion for pride but for humility. Then in Romans 11:26, Paul proclaims that, “All Israel will be saved.” Paul promises that one great day in the future, the Jewish rejection of Israel will end, and an overwhelming number of Jewish people will repent and believe in Jesus Christ. This is a reality that must fill every Christian with hope. We must long for the future salvation of Israel because of our profound gratitude for all we have received from their race. We must long for the future salvation of Israel because we know what it was to be dead in our own sins, and we do not want this for anyone else. We must long for the future salvation of Israel because everyone who loves God desires to see his victory over all opposition and the fulfillment of all his promises. This kind of hope for the future salvation of Israel eradicates any desire to cherish any hatred in our hearts. It will instead lead us to pray, to thank God for all we have received, to plead with God to bring these precious people to faith in Jesus, and to ask God to use our compassion and our testimony to bring this about.

    9 min

  6. MAR 13

    The American Alliance with Israel: A Biblical and Political Case

    The American Alliance with Israel: A Biblical and Political Case Heath Lambert Arguments Over Alliances The big headline for weeks has been the American bombing of Iran. But beneath the surface of that story is a significant controversy about the American alliance with Israel. The immediate context of the controversy has to do with the close partnership between Israel and America in the conflict with Iran, whether America has any real interest in this conflict, and whether Israel forced America into the conflict in ways that violated both our laws and our national interests. The larger context of the controversy has to do with new questions being asked about one of the closest American allies since World War II. There have always been questions about the American alliance with Israel. The novelty of the current questions is that they are coming from conservatives. These conservatives are often of the “America-First” variety who want to emphasize taking care of our many problems at home in the United States and not borrowing trouble from distant countries that will constantly pull us into destructive, expensive, and unnecessary wars. One of the most outspoken critics of the American-Israeli alliance is Tucker Carlson. In one interview, Carlson said Israel, “Is an insignificant country from the American point of view. . . As a nation . . . there is no strategic interest in Israel for the United States. What are we getting out of this? Nothing. It is only cost.” Video 1: 7:47-8:38—Take out the portion of the clip between 7:58-8:24 to make it more brief. Carlson’s claim is a shocking one that is gaining traction—particularly among younger Americans. More than shocking, the claim is demonstrably incorrect. In fact, there are good biblical and practical reasons why Americans—especially Christians—should desire a strong alliance with Israel. Before I explain the wise basis for this alliance, let me first be honest about a few bad reasons that are often given that attempt to justify a close relationship between America and Israel. What the Political Case Is NOT The basis for an alliance between Israel and the United States is not that Israel is a perfect ally. It is common for many opponents of an American-Israeli alliance to say that the two countries have many different interests, that Israel does things at odds with American values, and tries to push America around. Here is the cold truth. In international relations, no foreign country is a perfect ally. The closest allies are often at cross-purposes, have disagreements, spy on one another, and seek to cajole others to embrace their perspective. America does this to every country, and every country does this to us. We live in a sinful world. Sin and conflict stain relationships between every individual and every country. We do not have the option of a perfect world with perfect friends. Reality requires us to be honest that we will have imperfect allies in an imperfect world. What is true of Israel is true for every American relationship, including the United Kingdom, France, and any other nation. To say we are allies does not mean there is never disagreement, never cause for concern, never a need for rebuke. It doesn’t mean we provide a 100% guarantee of support. A country does not have to be a perfect friend to be a true friend. Israel is not a perfect country any more than the United States. In spite of that imperfection, there are very good reasons for our two nations to work closely together. What the Biblical Case Is NOT Another improper basis for a friendship with Israel is biblical in nature. In just a moment, I will provide a biblical case for supporting Israel, but not every argument that claims to be biblical is a good one. For example, some people claim that Americans should support Israel because, they say, the nation constitutes the people of God. Such a claim is more complicated than it seems. God’s Old Testament people began with Abraham. In Genesis 12:2, God promised to make him a great nation. In the course of time the nation was born through his son, Isaac, and grandson Jacob whose name was changed to Israel in Genesis 32:28. When God delivered Jacob’s descendants from slavery in Egypt he made a promise to them in Exodus 19:5-6 saying, “If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and holy nation.” That is all quite true. What is also true is that God’s Old Testament people repeatedly violated the covenant with God. In the Old Testament itself, God began predicting that one day he would no longer build his people through one nation but through peoples of all nationalities across the entire world. In Isaiah 49:6, God said to Israel, “I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” In Isaiah 56:6-7, he says, “I will also take the Gentiles for my inheritance, and they shall inherit the house of Jacob.” The New Testament is all about the expansion of God’s people beyond the physical nation of Israel to the Church of Jesus Christ, composed of all people covered in his blood spilled on the cross. In Romans 9:6-8, the Apostle Paul says, “Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring . . . It is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise.” Galatians 3:7 says, “It is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.” In 1 Peter 2:9, the Apostle Peter refers to Exodus 19 when he says that Jesus is the fulfillment of all that ethnic Israel was supposed to be. Ethnic Israel gets replaced by Jesus’s church as God’s holy nation when Peter says, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Christians know that God is no longer building his people ethnically and nationally as he did in the Old Testament. Today, he is building a spiritual Kingdom made up of those who trust in Jesus Christ from every nation. Jesus is the New Testament fulfillment of Old Testament Israel, and now, the people of God are the people of Christ—Christians from every tribe and tongue who make up the global church. None of this means there is no place for ethnic Israel—more on that next week—it does mean that Christians don’t support any nation-state as the people of God. That designation belongs to the church of Jesus alone. Americans should not support the nation of Israel because of pie-in-the-sky politics or for biblical reasons that exclude the teaching of the New Testament. There are, however, good political and biblical arguments to support the Israeli alliance. The Political Argument The central political argument in favor of an Israeli alliance has to do with the dual issues of freedom and danger. The tiny nation of Israel is precious real estate in an incredibly risky part of the world. The Middle East has more than its fair share of trouble, and many of the occupants of that region oppose American interests, and others are much more complicated allies than even Israel is. Americans do not have the ability to abandon that part of the world to forces that will oppose freedom. One of the painful international lessons going back to World War II is that the longer you allow a threat to grow and spread, the harder it becomes to defeat. It is a simple fact that trouble that begins in that region never remains there and typically spreads to the shores of the United States. It is absolutely in the American interest to use our friendship with Israel to maintain a foothold in that very dangerous part of the world. It would be unwise for Americans to allow themselves to be guided exclusively by what is in Israeli interests. But this is not much of a risk since America is, by far, the dominant power and American presidents tend to avoid taking action opposed to their long-term political interests. Americans should also be willing to cultivate other alliances in the region, but the most time-tested friend we have in the Middle East is the nation of Israel. It is simply good politics to ensure that the relationship stays strong. The Biblical Argument There is also a biblical argument for supporting Israel. That argument is found in Jesus’s Great Commission in Matthew 28:19, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Because God is building his people internationally and no longer through one ethnicity, God’s people have a command to go to every nation on the planet, appealing to people to turn from their sin and trust in Christ. Christians must be committed to going to these nations when the work is easy and when it is difficult, when it is safe, and when it is dangerous. But if you ask any missionary whether it is better to go to a nation that is safe and free or one that is dangerous and oppressed, they will not hesitate about the answer. Missionary work is most effective when societies are most secure. Believers who desire to see Christianity spread across the Middle East have a vested interest in thriving democracies like Israel, which are the best bet for safety and security in the region. International relations is a complex and fluid discipline. Christians have a responsibility, not only to consider what is in the best interest of the United States, but what is in the best interests of the Kingdom of Christ. The American alliance with Israel advances both.

    10 min

  7. MAR 6

    Facts for Regular Christians on the Bombing of Iran

    Facts for Regular Christians on the Bombing of Iran Heath Lambert Just the Facts For the last several months, the relationship between the United States and Iran has been strained. That is saying something for two countries that have been locked in conflict for half a century. The strain exists because Iran refuses to embrace the American demand that their country must never possess a nuclear weapon. For months, the two powers have been engaging in basically fruitless negotiations while the United States has placed a massive military force in the region. On Saturday, February 28, the American military, in cooperation with the Israeli Defense Force, began an aerial bombardment that killed many Iranian leaders, including the Ayatollah Khamenei. Authorities say the campaign could last for weeks. Those are the facts on the American bombing of Iran. There is a great deal of debate about nearly everything else. In a difficult and confusing situation, I want to speak to regular Christians who do not have jobs in the halls of political power and who do not get intelligence briefings, but who are watching reports on the news and social media, trying to make sense of all that is happening. Here are five facts that can help those regular Christians make sense of the bombing of Iran. The President Can Do This The first fact is that the president of the United States is within his constitutional authority to engage in this military operation. This fact has become confusing over the last few days, with some who differ with the presidential decision calling it illegal and insisting that only Congress can declare war. Regardless of what you have heard, the real debate is not over the legality of the action, but over who supports the current president. With very few exceptions, the people who support the action are the people who typically support the president, and those opposed are usually at odds with the president. The authoritative document that clarifies whether the president can undertake an action like the one in Iran is the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution makes clear that the president of the United States is the commander-in-chief of the United States military and is well within his authority to direct military operations like the current one. That same Constitution does make clear that only Congress can declare war. But the last time the United States Congress used that authority was in 1942 during World War II. Every military conflict in the last 84 years has been prosecuted by Republican and Democratic presidents without a formal declaration of war from Congress. This incumbent president is doing what every president has done since Harry Truman.   It is not usually appropriate for Christians to support or reject an entire initiative based on our opinion of one man. Of course, everyone has preferences and prejudices. But Christians cannot base their decisions on bias alone, but must have positions informed by fact. The Iranian Regime Is Wicked A second fact regular Christians must embrace is that the Iranian regime is wicked. The regime currently being destroyed has been a hostile and terroristic state for my entire lifetime. They have sponsored terror, kidnapped and killed American hostages, jailed pastors, pledged to kill Jews, and have executed their own people into the countless thousands. The people of Iran have been oppressed for decades by a ruthless theocracy that violently suppresses any alternative point of view. Most notably, the Iranian leadership has been desperate for a nuclear weapon that even their allies like Russia do not want them to have. Iran is a rogue, corrupt, dangerous, and isolated state whose neighbors in the region are thankful for the current action, which is crippling their military capability. In a situation like this one, many factors rise to the surface about which good people could disagree. For Christians, the most important issues are the ones of basic morality. The rampant wickedness and corruption of Iran provide the most important moral justification for this military action. The current Iranian leadership has opposed righteousness for their entire existence. That makes it a good thing to oppose them. Getting the Truth Takes Work A third fact that should help regular Christians is that getting the truth takes work. Misinformation is easy to get. Facts take some effort. Over the weekend, I was in a conversation at First Baptist Church about the death of the Ayatollah when a member of our student ministry said, “It’s not true! He’s alive! The president is lying.” The student held up a cell phone revealing a social media post stating the reports of the death of the Ayatollah were false and showing video of him speaking. I squinted, removed my phone from my pocket, and opened my browser to the websites of Fox News and The New York Times. Both websites were running headlines declaring that the Ayatollah was, indeed, dead. All of us regular Christians are required to rely on others for information about this conflict. That means we must be very careful who we trust to give us this information. We need a high standard for what we declare to be a fact. This high standard will not be reached by swapping conspiracy theories in our living rooms or reading social media posts from people with nothing to lose from telling a lie. Christians are entitled to a broad range of opinions. We are not entitled to a broad range of facts. Before you say something is true, you should check multiple credible sources that have something to lose when they report error. Having an Opinion Requires Humility A fourth helpful fact for regular Christians is that having an opinion takes humility. The world is full of talking heads and hot takes that freely share their different and competing opinions about the best thing to do in this current situation. Many of us normal Christians love to share our conflicting points of view about how best to handle this whole thing. It is not wrong to have a fact-informed opinion, but most regular folks could afford to embrace their opinions with greater humility. Romans 12:3 teaches regular Christians to be very humble about how we think about things, “I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment.” You may have a very strong opinion about the Iranian action, and your opinion may be the correct one. But at least two pieces of information will help you have a lot of humility about your own opinion. The first piece of information is that if you are one of the regular Christians I am talking to, then no one has given you any authority to make any decisions about this matter. Neither your strong opinion nor the interest of your friends in it qualifies you to be a decision maker on this issue. Donald Trump—love him or hate him— is the only human being alive elected by a majority of Americans to be the commander-in-chief. When he was campaigning for his office, he openly expressed his willingness to bomb Iran. That means that the system is working, ballots have been cast, and the decisions have been made. In future elections, we will have other opportunities to make different decisions, but not right now. Right now, power has been distributed, and that power has not come to any of us. Neither the strength nor the accuracy of our opinions can change that. It will help us be humble when we remember none of us are the ones anyone trusts to make these decisions. A second piece of information that should humble us is just how little we know. When you take the most care possible in digesting the most accurate information, you are still guaranteed to possess only a tiny fraction of information that those in authority have. Every regular Christian has no option but to entrust ourselves to the people in authority who have more information than we do. That is very humbling. Whether You Agree or Disagree, You Must Pray A final fact regular Christians must embrace is the command to pray. This can be a difficult fact to remember with all the questions people are asking right now: Was a military campaign like this one wise? Was this the right time to do it? Are we going about it in the right way? Will the power that fills the vacuum created by these strikes be better or worse than the power getting eradicated? Lots of folks will disagree about lots of things on a matter as important as this one. If all you do is listen to the regular Christians out there, you might think that the most important thing the followers of Christ could be doing right now is publicly sharing their opinions on these matters. That is not true. God neither commands us to have an opinion on these matters nor weigh in on them publicly. He does command us to pray. In 1 Timothy 2:1-2, the Bible says, “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions of authority.” Christians are free to think this bombing is wise or unwise. Christians are free to express concerns about what happens going forward. We are not free to avoid praying. It is a condemnation of too many regular Christians that they spend mountains of time doing all sorts of things the Bible is silent about and no time doing the main thing the Bible is clear about. Every Christian must pray for the president and everyone else making decisions about this action. We must pray for the members of the military executing the decisions made by their superiors. We must pray for the innocent people of Iran that they would be protected from death and destruction. We must pray for Christians in Iran that God would use this tragedy to expand his church. We must pray for the future of Iran that God would raise righteous leaders and a wise government. We must pray because the God of heaven and earth, who ultimately controls

    10 min

  8. FEB 27

    Seven Years of the SBC Sex Abuse Disaster

    Seven Years of the SBC Sex Abuse Disaster Heath Lambert In February of 2019, the Houston Chronicle ran a story entitled “Abuse of Faith,” which detailed various reports of abuse connected to churches in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). The reports were a mixed bag: some involved cases with guilty verdicts in courts of law, others involved only accusations; some reports involved church leaders, others volunteers; some concerned abusive mistreatment, others the mishandling of information; some involved abuse alleged to have happened on church property, others reports of mistreatment at other locations. All the reports involved numerous independent local churches spread out all across the country. When you added up each different, isolated situation, it amounted to hundreds of cases. That revelation led to the greatest SBC crisis in our lifetime and—perhaps—in the entire history of the SBC. That was seven years ago this month. The intervening period has been filled with independent and federal investigations, formal resolutions, the removal from convention leadership of once-bright lights, the catapulting of other leaders to prominence, task forces, lawsuits, accusations of unethical conflicts of interest, and the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars. The disaster has threatened—and still threatens—the very existence of our convention. No one who loves the SBC can be happy with where we are or how we got here. The story of the SBC sex abuse disaster is still unfolding, and it is too early to tell how it will end. It is not too early to begin learning from our many mistakes. Not every person or group in the convention made the crucial mistakes I will mention here. Many voices over the years spoke much wisdom into the convention-wide confusion. But sufficient numbers of people and sufficient numbers of mistakes combined to create a situation that is regrettable to say the least. As we head to Orlando for the annual meeting of the SBC, it is right for messengers to consider four lessons worth learning on the seventh anniversary of the SBC sex abuse disaster. Scripture, Not Politics, Controls Spiritual Authority God has been abundantly clear in his Word that the task of ultimate spiritual leadership in his church is assigned to men defined by moral purity, marked wisdom, devotion to Scripture, and commitment to their families (1 Timothy 3:1-8; Titus 1:6-9). No one else has a claim on spiritual leadership, and God’s appointed leaders may not abandon this task to others. This clear teaching in Scripture has been unpopular at various times in the last seven years. Many different and competing voices have contended for convention leadership throughout this crisis, including victims heartbroken by their own abuse, victim advocates making demands for those they represented, charlatans, campaigning for power, lawyers, liberals, and, often, a screaming anti-gospel mob that only wanted to harm the cause of Christ. Not all these voices are the same, but none of them are uniquely and necessarily equipped by God for spiritual leadership in the church. Some of these voices made the claim that men—the very people God has raised up to lead—are the exact ones who should be excluded from leadership. A lot of leaders listened to these voices. They allowed those unqualified for spiritual leadership to shame them away from the role God called them to fill. This was wrong and was never going to work. God’s truth may be old and controversial, but it is never out of date and never ineffective. The qualified men God has raised up for leadership can and should get mountains of advice from legions of wise people. But they can never transfer the authority God has uniquely granted them. The belief that they could has made things worse, not better. We Can’t Follow Anyone Who Won’t Follow Scripture Throughout the sex abuse disaster, Southern Baptists were repeatedly encouraged to follow those who rejected the teachings of Scripture. The most famous example was in 2022 when the entity handling the independent investigation signaled their public support for gay, lesbian, and transgender issues. There was an outcry in response to this, but too many leaders failed to recognize the insanity of investigating violations of biblical sexual ethics with a group publicly celebrating violations of biblical sexual ethics. Another example was the repeated demand that Southern Baptists must always believe the victim and that it is ungodly to do anything else. The demand was not to take all accusations seriously or to work diligently to expose truth. The demand was—if you know what is good for you—you will always believe the accuser. This is an obvious violation of Scripture which repeatedly insists that guilt is established by witnesses and evidence, not by accusations alone (Deuteronomy 19:15; 17:6; Numbers 35:30; Matthew 18:16; 2 Corinthians 13:1; 1 Timothy 5:19). Not everyone believed lies like these. Perhaps you didn’t. But too many did, and the result has been disastrous. Proverbs 1:10 says, “My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent.” Solomon said this a few thousand years ago. At least since then, God’s people have known that only trouble comes when you listen to those who won’t follow God’s Word. We preach this truth in our churches, and teach it to our kids. Too many Southern Baptists forgot about it in the sex abuse disaster. Leadership Based on the Fear of Man Never Works Why did so many Southern Baptists so willingly follow those so clearly unqualified for leadership and so openly rejecting biblical truth? It is not as though there were no warnings or alternative voices. Why were the warnings rejected or ignored? One of the most credible options is fear. At a moment when a great deal was on the line, when many had been hurt, when the world was watching, when the very existence of the convention was threatened, and when absolutely no one wanted to be seen as an abuser or as an abuse defender, some in positions of responsibility sought to shield their reputations by seeking favor with people who promised protection from their fears. The gamble worked—for a while. Some who are not-so-friendly to Southern Baptists did extend their wings of protection over some leaders for a time. But the protection they offered has not aged well and did not benefit the whole convention. Many are now very sorry they were ever connected with those who seemed so appealing at the time. In Proverbs 29:25, the Bible says, “The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts the Lord is safe.” God shared these words because he wanted us to know that fear creates a temptation to run for safety to people who promise protection. God identifies the temptation as a trap and says the only safety is found in the Lord. The worst thing to say about this fearful trap in the sex abuse disaster is that it enticed many away from their calling to be pastors. Our calling as pastors is to help the weak and fight the wolves. It is a betrayal of this calling to use people in need of the gospel to protect our public image from the consequences of gospel fidelity. I make no personal accusations here, but plenty of people did this. I pray they would see their blame and ask the Lord for forgiveness. The lesson for every Southern Baptist is that regardless of the issue, we must be people who trust God, who stand on the Word, who are committed to doing what is right, and who seek shelter, not from the people we are called to serve, but in God alone. Never Pursue Sexual Intimacy Outside Marriage Every element of the SBC sex abuse disaster is a vindication of the biblical teaching on human sexuality. Sex is a wonderful gift created by God to be enjoyed by one man and one woman in one marriage for one whole lifetime. Every other expression of sexuality is a perversion. The SBC disaster has revealed many very clear cases of predatory perversion where strong men used their positions and reputations to harm those they were called to protect. The disaster has also revealed confusing cases where both sides agree to the presence of sexual sin but disagree on how consensual it was. The point is that no guilty person in this disaster would be in trouble if they had limited their sexual desires and behavior to loving involvement with their spouse. Every Southern Baptist and every Christian should view this disaster as an opportunity to remember the command of Scripture in Proverbs 5:18 to, “Rejoice in the wife of your youth,” to beg Jesus for the gift of purity, and to never carry our sexual desires outside of marriage. Where to From Here? As a little boy I was the victim of childhood abuse. As a husband, father and grandfather, I would move heaven and earth to protect my family from any kind of abusive mistreatment. As a pastor, one of my most sacred duties is to lead the effort to protect the hundreds of children at my church. The SBC disaster is important to me because in a darkly perverse world I want our churches to be the safest places on earth. Unfortunately, our mishandling of this disaster has not made vulnerable people any safer. May God have mercy on us. The story of this disaster is still being written and I honestly don’t know where we go from here. But I know there is hope for a convention led by godly men who stand on Scripture, who are faithful to their wives and callings, who insist on defending the weak, and who will call out error—especially when that error is popular.

    10 min
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About

Pastor Heath Lambert takes the biggest story in the news each week and evaluates it in an intentionally biblical and Christian way.

Information

  • Creator
    Heath Lambert
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    39
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 First Baptist Church Jacksonville
  • Show Website
    Truth In These Days

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