The news broke this morning that freight rail companies and unions representing tens of thousands of workers have reached a tentative agreement to avoid a strike. Following all-night talks, the agreement now heads to union members for a ratification vote. While the vote is tallied, workers have agreed that they will not strike.

Why is this news important to you?

The Association of American Railroads trade group estimated that a strike would cost the American economy $2 billion a day. According to the Associated Press, railroads carry cars, coal, chemicals, grain, imported goods, and other products and raw materials throughout the country. A shutdown, even if brief, would delay critical shipments and ripple across the economy.

A railroad strike would cancel commuter trains, cause energy prices to rise, disrupt deliveries of produce, meat, and building supplies, and add to inflation.

I do not know a single person who works for a railroad. Before this morning’s news broke, I had no idea that a railroad strike could impact me personally. But problems we cannot see are no less real. Because we don’t know they exist, we don’t respond to them until they grow so large we must.

As a result, our unseen problems can be the most dangerous problems we face.

Therein lies my point today.

“No creature is hidden from his sight”

Yesterday we discussed the power of private character. Today let’s focus on the alternative: the peril of private sins.

This topic became urgent to me when I read a verse in the book of Ezekiel that arrested my attention. The Lord said of his sinful people: “I have been broken over their whoring heart that has departed from me and over their eyes that go whoring after their idols” (Ezekiel 6:9a). We cannot see the “heart” of another person or the images their eyes see, but God can: “No creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13). His heart is “broken” by such “secret” sins.

In addition, what God sees in a sinner’s heart and mind will eventually be known to the sinner: “They will be loathsome in their own sight for the evils that they have committed, for all their abominations” (Ezekiel 6:9b). And to the rest of us: “Nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light” (Luke 8:17).

As a result, our response to sin should always be immediate and courageous: “Thus says the Lord Gᴏᴅ: ‘Clap your hands and stamp your foot and say, Alas, because of all the evil abominations of the house of Israel, for they shall fall by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence” (Ezekiel 6:11).

Why Satan loves to use “secret” sins

Let’s take a moment to unmask Satan’s strategy behind “secret” sins.

Our enemy wants us to commit adultery, but if we refuse, he tempts us to view pornography with the justification that at least we are not committing adultery. If we will not view pornography, he tempts us with lustful thoughts with the justification that at least we are not viewing pornography. This is because he knows that, as Jesus warned us, “Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28).

If you are thinking that this paragraph does not apply to you, beware: Satan will then tempt you with other sins with the justification that at least you are not committing sexual sins.

Why does the devil love to use “secret” sins? Because he knows what they do to us: “desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:15). And he knows that any sins, known by others or not, are enough to grieve and “quench” the Holy Spirit’s work in and through our lives in the world (Ephesians 4:30; 1 Thessalonians 5:19).

Oswald Chambers warned: “Even the very smallest thing that we allow in our lives that is not under the control of the Holy Spirit is completely sufficient to account for spiritual confusion” and “can only be conquered through obedience.”

“Secret” sins and public religion

Paradoxically, Satan is pleased when we commit “secret” sins while maintaining public religiosity. When we persist in private sin while preaching sermons, leading Bible studies, attending worship services, or writing or reading articles like this one, we are tempted to believe that our “private” sins are not harming others or we could not be engaged in such religious activity.

However, because the Holy Spirit cannot fully use a person who persists in unconfessed sin (cf. Romans 8:6–8), our spiritual activities have little effect on the larger culture. Our salt “has lost its taste” and our light is “under a basket” (Matthew 5:13, 15). Neither can then fulfill their transforming purpose in the world.

The lure and prevalence of “secret” sin help explain the truth of A. W. Tozer’s observation: “If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference.”

How strong are your batteries?

You have perhaps had this experience: the power goes out at night, so you hunt for a flashlight. You find one in a drawer and turn it on, but the bulb barely glows in the dark. You replace the batteries, but the flashlight still doesn’t work. It turns out that the contacts between the flashlight and the batteries are corroded with disuse.

Only when you clean out the corrosion and replace the batteries can the flashlight dispel the darkness it was created to defeat.

When the batteries are weak, the darkness is strong. When the batteries are strong, the darkness is weak.

Is the spiritual darkness of our day growing weaker or stronger?

Denison Forum

Kenneth W. Starr, a former federal judge and US Solicitor General, died yesterday of complications from surgery. Judge Starr served as president and chancellor of Baylor University and dean of the Pepperdine Law School. He argued thirty-six cases before the US Supreme Court and served as Independent Counsel for five investigations, including Whitewater and President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.

I was honored to be his friend. We met when he came to his post at Baylor in 2010 and stayed in contact across the years after. He was gracious to appear on our Denison Forum podcast; I was privileged to interview him for an Institute for Global Engagement event earlier this year at Dallas Baptist University.

He combined brilliance, sincerity, transparency, and humility like few people I have ever known. In my review of his 2021 book, Religious Liberty in Crisis: Exercising Your Faith in an Age of Uncertainty, I called his work “an indispensable guide to defending religious freedom.”

Judge Starr is survived by his beloved and brilliant wife, Alice Mendell Starr, to whom he was married for fifty-two years, and by their three children and their families.

“The rock on which modern Britain was built”

History is often made by exceptional people like Judge Ken Starr whose names are known to history.

More than twenty-six thousand people filed by Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin in Scotland yesterday before it was transported to London and spent last night in Buckingham Palace. A procession including King Charles III, Prince William, and Prince Harry will accompany it today as it travels to Westminster Hall, where it will lie in state for four days ahead of the queen’s state funeral on Monday, September 19.

The reason for such a national outpouring of grief and affection is simple: as Prime Minister Liz Truss observed, the queen was “the rock on which modern Britain was built.”

In other historic news, Francis Scott Key penned the words of “The Star-Spangled Banner” on this day in 1814. Two years earlier on this day, Napoleon entered Moscow in an invasion that eventually failed and cost his army more than four hundred thousand men.

On a happier note, after Albert Pujols hit his 697^th home run, moving into sole possession of fourth place on Major League Baseball’s all-time home runs list, he gifted the ball to the fan who caught it and then signed two more balls for him. In other sports news, baseball great Ty Cobb’s dentures are going for more than $11,000 at auction. Neither Pujols’s home run ball nor Ty Cobb’s false teeth would be valuable if they were not associated with such historic figures.

However, history can also be made by people whose names are unknown to history.

The US has reached the historic milestone of one million organ transplants; each donor, while unknown to the rest of us, changed a life with their gift. A political leader in Idaho protested a planned “Drag Kids” performance including children “from ages 11–18,” leading to the event’s eventual cancelation. And a nurse saved a three-month-old baby who had stopped breathing during a flight Thursday night. Whatever the little girl grows up to accomplish will be an extension of that nurse’s compassion.

Traits that “were once considered normal”

Watching news coverage of the death of the queen, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas observed: “One is struck by the adjectives used by reporters, commentators and people interviewed outside Balmoral Castle and Buckingham Palace: sense of duty, virtue, integrity, service. What astounds is that these and other character traits the late Queen exhibited were once considered normal and worthy of being taught to children, but today stand in sharp contrast to what is modeled and accepted.”

He added: “One commentator said the Queen’s death is the symbolic end of the Greatest Generation. We pay lip service to the virtues that made the greatest generation great, but no longer promote them, whether it is in public schools, social media, or the wider culture.”

What is being said of Queen Elizabeth II could be said of Judge Ken Starr as well: both were known publicly for traits that were deeply personal. Their exemplary character and humble commitment to service were grounded in the sincerity and depth of their faith.

The queen was tutored as a young girl by the Archbishop of Canterbury and called Jesus “an inspiration and an anchor in my life.” Ken Starr’s father was a Congregationalist minister; the judge’s often-repeated maxim, “Truth is a bedrock concept in morality and law,” came from his family and from his personal faith.

“The true measure of all our actions”

C. S. Lewis noted, “Integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching.” But here’s the point: someone is watching.

Our names may never be known to history like the queen and the judge, but someone knows us as personally as anyone knew them. The people we live, work, and go to school with matter just as much to eternity as a queen or a federal judge. If they do not follow Jesus, we are the only Bible they may read, the only sermon they may hear.

This makes our personal integrity, or lack thereof, a kingdom issue of eternal consequence.

We cannot expect the people who know us to follow Christ if we do not. We cannot expect them to embrace biblical morality if they do not see that morality reflected in our daily decisions and actions.

By contrast, if Jesus is our first love, the passion of our hearts and king of our days, those who know us will see him in us and be drawn to his transforming love.

The writer of Hebrews encouraged his readers to “remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith” (Hebrews 13:7). When those who know you “consider the outcome” of your way of life, will they want to imitate your faith?

Queen Elizabeth II said, “The true measure of all our actions is how long the good in them lasts.”

What will be the “true measure” of your actions today?

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The Emmy Awards were held last night. Among the honorees: Zendaya won best lead actress in a drama series for HBO’s Euphoria, which is so sexualized and graphic that even Common Sense Media’s review is forced to use descriptions I will not repeat here. The same goes for their review of HBO’s The White Lotus, which won for outstanding limited series. I could go on.

When a political leader claims that drag queens are “what America is all about,” transgender characters are increasingly featured in video games and on television, and a Texas teacher tells students to refer to pedophiles as “minor-attracted persons,” it is clear that our moral compass is not just broken but nonexistent.

Australia’s Margaret Court, winner of twenty-four Grand Slam singles titles, made news during the recent US Open when she disclosed that she has become a persona non grata in the tennis world because of her Christian beliefs. She opposed same-sex marriage when it was proposed in her country, and the backlash has been severe ever since.

For example, LGBTQ lobbyists are calling for Melbourne Park’s Margaret Court Arena to be renamed. She replies, “They got everything they wanted in marriage, and everything else. So I think, ‘Why, when you should be so happy you’ve got that, are you still taking it out on people if they haven’t got the same beliefs?’ That’s what I don’t understand.”

Closer to home, LGBTQ activists are currently lobbying US senators to support the so-called Respect for Marriage Act, legislation that would expand same-sex marriage protections with no religious liberty protections. And a Justice Department official recently labeled the religious liberty legal group Alliance Defending Freedom as a “hate group.”

Drag queens as worship leaders

In Ezekiel 5, the Lord says of Jerusalem, “She has rebelled against my rules by doing wickedness more than the nations, and against my statutes more than the countries all around her” (v. 6). Her “wickedness” was “more than the nations,” not because it was objectively worse but because she knew better.

Scripture warns, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness” (James 3:1). The more we know, the more we are responsible for what we know.

Satan has added an additional layer of deception in our day.

Not only do many Americans reject the moral truth of Scripture, but they claim the mantle of Christian faith in so doing. From praying for God to bless clinics that perform late-term abortions, to citing Christian “compassion” in support of euthanasia, to enlisting drag queens as worship leaders, to claiming that abortion does not contradict the Christian faith, many so-called “people of faith” have been busy undermining the faith.

When I am a Cowboys fan

Such deception is even more powerful when the ones doing the deceiving are themselves deceived.

This is possible and even popular because, in our postmodern society, we think we are Christians if we say we are. This makes sense in cultural context: I am a Democrat or a Republican if I say I am, regardless of how or whether I vote. I am a Cowboys or Steelers fan if I say I am. In our culture, I am “non-binary” or transgender if I say I am. We think the same way with Christianity.

But relational reality is different. I could not claim to be married to Janet until she agreed to marry me. I could not claim to be a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary until the seminary conferred such status on me. I could not claim to be the pastor of the churches I served until they called me to be their pastor.

In the same way, we are Christians only if Christ says we are. And he says we are Christians only if we have made him our Savior and Lord and thus have “become children of God” (John 1:12). Our religious claims are true only if they are biblical. Our lives are pleasing to God only when we do what he says pleases him.

“Save others by snatching them out of the fire”

Jude warned his readers that “certain people have crept in unnoticed . . . who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality” (v. 4). As a result, he called his fellow believers to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (v. 3).

To “contend” (epagonizomai in the Greek) is to “make a strenuous effort on behalf of.” This command applies to every dimension of our lives, every day of our lives.

This “strenuous effort” begins at home. You and I need to measure everything we think, feel, say, and do by the authority of God’s word (Hebrews 4:12) under the leading of God’s Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). The first step in the wrong direction can lead to all the rest. An airplane one degree off line will miss its destination.

The more our culture rejects biblical truth, the more passionately we must embrace it.

And this “strenuous effort” extends to everyone we influence. The stakes could not be higher: we “save others by snatching them out of the fire” (Jude 23) when we lead them from the deceiver to the Savior.

“You can give me the power to do good”

If you and I renew our commitment today to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints,” our Father will help us.

John Baillie testified to God, “The good that I want to do, I fail to do, but you can give me the power to do good.” Thus he prayed: “Dear Father, take this day’s life into your keeping. Guide all my thoughts and feelings. Direct all my energies. Instruct my mind. Sustain my will. Take my hands and give me the skill to serve you. Take my feet and make them quick to do whatever you ask. Take my eyes and keep them fixed on your everlasting beauty. Take my mouth and give me the words to tell others of your love.

“Make this day a day of obedience, a day of spiritual joy and peace. Make this day’s work a little part of the work of the kingdom of my Lord Jesus, in whose name these prayers are said.”

Amen?

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