Author Archives: Jason Dohm

My Parker Pen

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

This is me and my Parker pen.

It goes with me everywhere. I can’t imagine not having it. I don’t know if it is the best writing pen because I don’t try other pens. When it finally stops working and the time has come to replace it, I will buy – you guessed it – another Parker pen. To what does the Parker Company owe such undying brand loyalty? My Dad carried a Parker pen. Just like this one. Period, end of story. I am forty-three, and I always carry a Parker pen because my Dad carried one and I love my Dad. I am deadly serious.

Dads are not like other men. They enjoy an enormous God-given advantage for influencing their sons. I know this as a son. I know this as a father who looks into the eyes of a son. Tragically, many fathers squander their advantage. My Dad didn’t. He used it. He used his God-given influence in my life to give me an incredible foundation to build on. He gave me a head start in so many different categories. My Mom did too, and it has made a tremendous difference in my life. I could never forget it, and I am crying while I type. So don’t laugh at my love for my Parker pen. It isn’t the pen.

Some Dads are reading this. I want to address you, to plead with you to recognize the advantage God Himself has given you so that you can disproportionately influence your sons and daughters. Use it! Leverage it for the glory of your Redeemer! It will make a world of difference in each life, and maybe one day you will notice that they have an irrational attachment to some silly thing like a pen, and you will know that you are dearly loved for who you are and all you have invested in them.

Making Our Children Ready for Kingdom Battles

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

Last year Jeff Pollard of Mount Zion Bible Church invited me to address their annual family conference on the topic of making children ready for kingdom battles. Jeff is a dear friend and one of my favorite preachers, so I was delighted to be asked, especially since this gets right at the core of what we are praying would be accomplished in our local church life.

This message is about 50 minutes long, and it represents the “why we do what we do” with respect to Sovereign Redeemer’s weekly schedule, particularly the outreaches.

Listen to it here.

A Sifting Time Ahead

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

I am part way through “When a Nation Forgets God”, a book by Dr. Erwin Lutzer, the senior pastor at Moody Church, Chicago, Illinois. Dr. Lutzer portrays Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, showing that many of the trends in modern America correlate with that time in German history. His point is not that today’s America is the same as Nazi Germany, but that our trajectory is similar. In other words, if we continue down this same track, the American church can expect to face similar challenges. The question: Will we be ready?

As part of his analysis, Dr. Lutzer gives the history of two German pastors who were prominent during this time: Martin Niemoller (a name I don’t know) and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (a name everyone knows). In 1934, seeing what was on the horizon, Niemoller said the following in a sermon to his church:

“We have all of us – the whole church and the whole community – we’ve been thrown into the Tempter’s sieve, and he is shaking and the wind is blowing, and it must now become manifest whether we are wheat or chaff! Verily, a time of sifting has come upon us, and even the most indolent and peaceful person among us must see that the calm of a meditative Christianity is at an end… It is now springtime for the hopeful and expectant Christian Church – it is testing time, and God is giving Satan a free hand, so he may shake us up and so that it may be seen what manner of men we are!… Satan swings his sieve and Christianity is thrown hither and thither; and he who is not ready to suffer, he who called himself a Christian only because he thereby hoped to gain something good for his race and his nation is blown away like chaff by the wind of time.”

It is hard to read this quote and not think that such a time will be upon us in our own lifetime, or if you’re an optimist, in the lifetime of our children. Will we be ready? If we aren’t asking the question, what is the likelihood we will be? I want to be a genuine Christian, seeking the Lord and being sanctified by His Spirit day by day. Then I know I’ll be ready. I want the same for my family and our church. I know that God will make us ready to serve Him faithfully in the midst of trial and persecution if we call on Him now. In Matthew 7:7-8, Jesus exhorts us, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” I intend to ask, seek, and knock, knowing that our Father gives good things to those who ask Him. Join me.

I also commend the book to you. Happy reading!

J.C. Ryle Warns Against Driving a Hard Bargain

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

First, this post signifies that I am back in the blogosphere. My last post was October 10, 2012, and it was sparse before that. Self-admittedly, that is pitiful. So while I’ll never be up for blogger of the year, I am rededicating myself to regular entries because there are simply too many benefits to the thinking and precision required by the discipline of writing. Even if no one ever reads a single entry, I will be more well thought-out, more precise, and more articulate on the topics I undertake. Those things are all important.

Now to a piercing quote from J.C. Ryle:

“I do urge on every professing Christian who wishes to be happy, the immense importance of making no compromise between God and the world. Do not try to drive a hard bargain, as if you wanted to give Christ as little of your heart as possible, and to keep as much as possible of the things of this life.” (Holiness, chapter 10)

I will save you the commentary on how hard this hits me personally, and get straight to the question: Do you find yourself wanting to give Christ as little of your heart as possible? There is only one solution: REPENT. True repentance secures times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord (Acts 3:19, and though this verse speaks of the initial repentance of salvation, it is also true of the ongoing repentance of believers as they are sanctified).

Finally, a dear friend and Deacon of the church had a celebration to honor the contributions of J.C. Ryle on May 10, Ryle’s birthday. Though he has now been dead for more than a century, his writings may be having a greater impact now than at any other time. I am a grateful student.

(Yes, the books were edible!)

The Great Commission and Repentance

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

I am getting more and more excited about the upcoming “White Unto Harvest” conference, and I suspect I’m far from alone. In preparing for the address I will be giving – “Profile of the Evangelistic Church” – I have been assessing my own history in the category of the Great Commission. Here is my conclusion, and where I believe we must start: Repentance is required.

It will not do to simply resolve to make progress, or even to admit that evangelism has been a significant shortcoming. We do need to make progress, of course, and for most of us evangelism has in fact been a major shortcoming, but leaving it at that is woefully insufficient. Why? Because there is grievous sin that needs to be acknowledged and forsaken. One fact is clearer to me now than it ever has been, which is that the Great Commission is the natural and inevitable outflow of the Great Commandments.

The Great Commandments

When asked which is the great commandment in the law, Jesus responded this way: “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40). The two greatest commandments are commandments of love, and they perfectly summarize all the Law and the Prophets. And they stand in priority. First love God. How? With an all-consuming love – heart, soul, mind and strength. Then love your neighbor. How? As yourself, meaning “a lot.” Two great commandments, supreme and inseparable.

How Does This Relate To The Great Commission?

Okay, so I’ve only said what every Christian already knows, which is that loving God and loving neighbor is the supreme summary of what God requires of us. So what? Here’s what: the Great Commission is simply an extension of this, not a separate category. If I love God with all of my being, His praise is on my lips incessantly. If I love my neighbor as myself, I care deeply about his eternal condition and open my mouth with the mighty remedy of the gospel. Loving God without speaking of His greatness, His ways, what He has done through Christ? Inconceivable! Loving neighbor without speaking to his desperate need? Unbelievable!

Our gospel failures represent more than needing progress. They are indicators that our love for God isn’t what we thought it was, and neither is our love for our neighbor. To persist in the faith without the gospel on our lips is to reveal a profound inconsistency that will have to be dealt with. It can’t simply be swept under the rug as we drum up a new wave of evangelism.

Why It Matters

If we skip repentance and go straight to activity, our new found evangelistic zeal will be short-lived. We’ve all been in the church with the strategy-of-the-year, and we need for the Great Commission to be infinitely more than that. It starts with repentance. My silence reveals that I have not loved my God as I ought. My apathy and fear of man reveals that I have not loved my neighbor much at all, let alone as myself. Friends, this is sin. Long held sin. Revealing and humiliating sin. If we are going to be different five years from now, ten years from now, we must own our sin and then forsake it. Mourn, and then by the grace of God, by the Spirit of God, change.

Brothers and sisters, this is our finest hour, if we will follow the author and perfecter of our faith. There is nothing more exhilarating than to demonstrate a true love for God and for our neighbor by engaging the lost with the gospel for the glory of God. May God give us the grace to love more, spending and being spent for this Great Commission.

Wanted: Hard Muscles

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

Friends that will tell you the truth as they see it are a rare blessing. I have a friend like that in Malawi. The day before leaving Malawi, after an invigorating two weeks there, this friend asked me, “What are you taking home with you?” We had done some souvenir shopping the day before, so I asked for clarification. Souvenirs were not what he was asking about. He wanted to know what we had learned from the church there that we planned to share here at home.

It didn’t take me long to answer. Two things. First, their church drips evangelistic zeal. We need more of that, and time with those brothers helped our team make progress that can spread here. Second, they are starting to make waves in areas of sound doctrine, biblical manhood and womanhood, and homeschooling, and even though it is already costing them with family and friends, none of them are blinking. In Acts 20:22-24, Paul says this: “And see, now I go bound in the spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies in every city, saying that chains and tribulations await me. But none of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.” It is not overly dramatic to say that these are unflinching sons and daughters of Paul. We need more of that kind of resolve and courage too.

Then I flipped the question on him. What should I be taking home with me, not in souvenirs but in lessons learned. It didn’t take him long to answer either. “Tell your young men to WAKE UP!” Huh? Clarification, please… Last November, this friend had come from Malawi to North Carolina and stayed with us for almost a month. He watched, and his observation was simply this: our young men have the luxury of not fighting for their faith every day. By contrast the young men of their church in Malawi, almost to a man, are first-generation Christians, many of them saved within the past year or two. They might be behind our young men in doctrine, but because they are swimming upstream every day, contending with active opposition against their faith at every turn, their spiritual muscles are hard. They are ready for battle because they are in the battle. Ouch. I think my friend’s observations extend beyond the young men.

I shared this at a joint gathering of Hope Baptist and Sovereign Redeemer, the two churches that sent our team. Afterwards, my eight-year-old daughter said this to me: “It’s not our fault we have Christian parents!” Fair enough. And I thank God for every advantage that is gained from a Christian heritage. There are many and those advantages are obvious enough not to need listing. But something needs attention when having Christian parents puts children at a disadvantage, and it has me thinking about my own spiritual muscles, and those of my children. Yes, I am as committed as ever to keeping our family “unspotted from the world” (James 1:27), and no, the answer isn’t throwing our children to the pagans under the banner of “salt and light.” But in between, second and third and fourth-generation Christians have to be ushered into the fight earlier, at the elbow of parents who have hard muscles themselves and a clear vision for hills to be taken for the kingdom of heaven, by God’s grace.

At least in Malawi it is abundantly clear that a war is on, and to whatever extent we have lost sight of that here, we are terribly deceived and desperately in need of this wake-up call (thank you, friend from Malawi). We have a great King and his kingdom is advancing, and to participate requires hard spiritual muscles.

So I leave you with this question: Into what part of the war to expand the kingdom of heaven are you ushering your sons and daughters, so that their muscles become a little harder and they become a little more ready for the day when you won’t be at their elbow? May God give us grace to enter the fray for the glory of God, bringing our sons and daughters with us wherever it is wise.

The Great Commission

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

In just a few short hours, I will board a plane with Scott Brown and two young men from our congregations and start the two-day journey to Malawi Africa, where we will engage in ten packed days of evangelism and discipleship. Accordingly, here are five thoughts about going to the nations:

Going is a privilege. Imagine the privilege of being an ambassador for a great king. Actually, we don’t have to imagine it. We are it. 2 Corinthians 5:20, “Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.” Knowing Jesus Christ, and the joy that He brings wherever His atoning mercy and government spreads, makes the Great Commission not a task but the Great Privilege. I can’t wait to get there and share the good news with the lost.
We are going in order to give. Looking back on the last decade, I am so grateful that God has firmly established biblical teaching for the reformation of the family among us. He has given us something so practical and helpful to impart to brothers and sisters in another nation, and we know from our own experience that it will be a blessing to marriages and families as we preach in churches and conferences in Malawi. May God use this time mightily to revive and strengthen Christian families there.
We are going in order to receive. Having been on similar trips before, I know we are likely to be the great recipients. God has been firmly establishing particular and precious truths among our brethren in Malawi, and we will be carefully watching and listening, hoping to identify and acquire them. I already know that these are joyful men, humble men, praying men, and I need that to rub off on me. We will be on the lookout for other areas where they excel us so that we can grow and progress in our faith.
Brotherhood is an amazing joy. This past November, five of these brothers from Malawi were with us in North Carolina for nearly a month. We know them. We love them. My family was one of the host families, and the man who stayed with us lost his guest status early in his stay, becoming family in a profound sense. Getting off the plane in Malawi and embracing these men will be a special moment. I have missed them.
Why wait? The Great Commission – making disciples, baptizing, teaching them to obey all things that Jesus Christ has commanded us – is the great occupation of the church. Not one of us can wait for a mission trip to another continent. It is a sin to wait. How foolish to wait for a grand event far away when our neighbors, our co-workers, our children, are perishing in their sins, without Christ, without hope and without God in the world (Ephesians 2:12). The Great Commission must not be a separate category, waiting for the next special event – it must be a part of every Christian’s DNA, having a significant impact on how we spend each day.

We covet your prayers for the power of the Holy Spirit in all our doings there and for exponential fruitfulness for the kingdom of heaven, and we hope to share many stories of God’s faithfulness when we return.

Living in Close Quarters

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

THIS JUST IN: Local church life isn’t for the faint of heart. There are people in those churches, and that means challenges for everyone who dares to engage in a meaningful way. That is as much a reality as gravity. What will we do with this reality? By the way we order our lives, we are choosing one of these options:

Option 1: Forget It

Simply exempt ourselves from it all. The bride has spots and wrinkles, so just steer clear. Sorry, not an option for Christians. Baby Christians might think like that, but people who have lived with that view for a long time need to be asking serious questions about why they are still so disconnected with the mind of Christ. Though she does have spots and wrinkles, Jesus Christ isn’t running away from His bride, He is running towards her: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25-27).

This text helps correct our inclinations to exempt ourselves from the local church in two ways. First, it forces us to consider that we, each of us individually, contribute to the spots and wrinkles. Not the nebulous “them”. The specific “me”. A heaping helping of humble pie is essential for life in close quarters. Second, if the goal is to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ and to have His mind, we need to see the church, and that means our local church, through His lenses of the ongoing, progressive sanctification that He is accomplishing in His people.

Option 2: Find the Perfect Church

There was a perfect church – God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden in the cool of the day for two whole chapters, and then came chapter three. Sin entered the world, and churches have never been the same. Deal with it. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be careful about what church we join, and I’m not saying people can never leave one church for another. I am saying that too many people have wasted too many years chasing a fantasy. Find a sound church and literally spend your life there, by Paul’s definition: “And I will very gladly spend and be spent for your souls; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I am loved” (2 Corinthians 12:15). As you can see, Paul did not suffer from naivety about church life. He simply pressed forward anyway.

Option 3: Keep It Unreal

Sinners in the church? No problem, we can just keep interaction at the surface level. Pre-damage control, as it were. Minimize the contact, minimize the risk. That way we can love doctrine without having to love people. But wait – isn’t the doctrine so we can love people? Matthew 22:36-40, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

If love for God and neighbor is the great frame for all of this law that we are so eager to parse and nuance, if love is the fulfillment of the law (Romans 13:10), then loving the law of God without loving each other – as the Bible defines love in 1 Corinthians 13 and elsewhere – is way worse than silly. And for anyone who thinks they can nurture love for God while staying above messy entanglements with fellow believers, check 1 John 4:20, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” It is clear that love for God and love for each other have an unbreakable connection, and that this isn’t cotton-candy emotion only love, it is meat-and-potatoes sacrifice for each other love.

A local church where everything operates at the surface level is a Frankenstein of our own creation, not the Bible’s. Search the New Testament for the phrase “one another” and feast your eyes on how God actually wants us to live together.

Option 4: Embrace, Cultivate, and Maintain the Close Quarters

Oh, that God would give us hearts so full of His forgiveness, grace and love that we could look at the inherent dangers of living in close quarters and say “BRING IT ON!” Let it be said that I feel the full fury of the proverbial three fingers pointing back at me. What rises in my heart during the inevitable dust-ups that occur when we live together in close quarters condemns me for my own lack of love. But I have hope, because I know that I need to be different, I want to be different, and little by little I am starting to be different.

What about you? God brings His people together into close quarters for His own purposes. Proverbs 14:4, “Where no oxen are, the trough is clean; But much increase comes by the strength of an ox.” Do we want clean, or do we want strength for the kingdom of God? We have a big commission, a Great Commission, and when we settle for clean, we must understand how much strength is lost.

Trust God. He is right about the way we should live together. He is teaching me how to live in close quarters in a local church for His glory, and He is teaching you the same. Don’t exempt yourself. Call off the search for the perfect church. Commit yourself to a sound one and get below the surface in close quarter relationships for a long time. When we do that, though life together won’t always be “clean”, we will have the strength for serving God that we need and want.

How Should We Think About Birthdays?

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

Studying to preach on Matthew 14 has me thinking about birthdays. There are two, and only two, birthday celebrations mentioned in the Bible. The first is Pharaoh’s birthday feast, recorded in Genesis 40:20-22, where Pharaoh restores his chief butler and has his baker hanged. The second is Herod’s birthday celebration, recorded in Matthew 14:6-11 (parallel account in Mark 6:21-28), where John the Baptist’s head is brought on a platter.

Suffice it to say, the celebrating of birthdays is off to a rough start. And why not? Birthdays have always been a me-me-me proposition anyway, have they not?

Now consider the thoughts of John Calvin:

“The ancient custom of observing a birth-day every year as an occasion of joy cannot in itself be disapproved; for that day, as often as it returns, reminds each of us to give thanks to God, who brought us into this world, and has permitted us, in his kindness, to spend many years in it; next, to bring to our recollection how improperly and uselessly the time which God granted to us has been permitted to pass away; and, lastly, that we ought to commit ourselves to the protection of the same God for the remainder of our life.” – Calvin’s commentary on Matthew 14:6

That is a different angle entirely, and one worthy of some reflection. Calvin counsels us to use birthdays as a tool to do three things:

Thank God for life. Life doesn’t result from boy-meets-girl. It is a gift from God. David declares this in Psalm 139:14, “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.” We have something to celebrate: God gave us life and has sustained us for another 365 days. That is praiseworthy, worth a day of intentional thankfulness.
Reflect on the use of time. There may be no better day for taking inventory. How are we investing these lives God has given us? In Matthew 25:14-30, the parable of the talents, one man exercises good stewardship, turning his five talents into ten, and he is greeted by his Master, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Another man buries what his Master has given him, and his Master calls him wicked, lazy, and unprofitable and casts him out. Ephesians 5:15-16, “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”
Commit ourselves to God. Don’t we need to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? Don’t we want to? Then let birthdays be days of pleading with God for progress, consecrating ourselves to His use in the coming year. As Paul writes in 2 Timothy 1:12b, “…I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.”

It is small wonder that pagan kings use their birthdays for all manner of self-serving wickedness. The people of God, however, are a peculiar people, turning our sights to our glorious God and King at every opportunity. A birthday is one such opportunity. Use birthdays to acknowledge God as the giver and sustainer of life, to reflect on the use of the past year, and to commit to His good pleasure as many years as He would be pleased to give.

Thinking Differently About Small Compromises

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

Our current circumstances relating to church discipline have me reinspecting my own life and patterns, and I know I’m not alone. Every one of us should be looking for the little root of sin that, left undisturbed, will grow into something monstrous which strips from us so many of the things we should cherish and jealously protect. Undoubtedly one of the reasons God has brought the present circumstances to us is so that we would wake up and ruthlessly pluck out those roots in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Paul says this in Romans 8:12-14, “Therefore, brethren, we are debtors—not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.” Did you catch that? If we are sons and daughters of God, we will be led by the Spirit to put to death the deeds of the body.

Or as my favorite commentator, J.C. Ryle says, “Nothing darkens the eyes of the mind so much, and deadens the conscience so surely, as an allowed sin… Take my advice, and never spare a little sin. Israel was commanded to slay every Canaanite, both great and small. Act on the same principle, and show no mercy to little sins.”

Most of us have known this in our minds for many years, but I doubt we have known it as deeply or as urgently as we know it today. Depth and urgency are good, and we should praise God for being so merciful in teaching us. Ignoring this shot across the bow would be to our shame and harm.

So what is the little compromise you should have treated as a mortal enemy, but instead have hidden away and fed enough to keep alive? It is not your friend, you know. When the time is right, it will treat you as a mortal enemy, strip you bare, humiliate you, and leave you for dead. Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, identify that small compromise, call it what it is, and put it to death by the Spirit.