Introduction
Previously, I critically examined the first two sermons of Reverend McGeown’s not-so-subtle series on the antithesis. The first article was regarding the sword of Jesus Christ that he sends in the earth as the king of his kingdom, dividing light and darkness, truth and lie, and elect and reprobate. McGeown reduced the sword of Christ to having no effect at all. It might divide between really bad people and the believer, but it never cuts between the child of God who confesses the truth and the unbeliever who holds to the lie. In the second article I considered Christ’s explanation to the multitude of the cost of being his disciple. The cost of discipleship is to hate for Christ’s sake those who turn away from the truth toward the lie of false doctrine. These unbelievers might be my closest family, and I am to hate them for God’s sake and have no fellowship with them. In this final article of the series, I will treat McGeown’s last two sermons. I combine them because in the last two sermons, he does not say anything new or groundbreaking, and I do not want to weary the reader. His doctrine is essentially the same as what he stated in his first two sermons. My intent in this article is to wrap up any final arguments against him.
Once again in these sermons, McGeown sticks with his formula. He sets up his sermons with the express purpose of telling his congregation that those in other churches and denominations whose doctrine is different than Protestant Reformed distinctives are not unbelievers. One cannot hate them as enemies of Jehovah. They are Christians and believers with whom one is equally yoked. Throughout his sermons he continues to minimize the sin of false doctrine. He promotes a sinful unity apart from the doctrine of the gospel. He crafts the entirety of his sermons with his false, sinful, and wicked application in mind. He inserts into God’s word his own earthly, worldly wisdom. He takes away from the word of God what it clearly teaches about division, hatred, and unbelief. For his faithless handling of the name of God, the Lord will judge McGeown.
McGeown shows himself to be a prophet of Baal in the stable of Ahab and Jezebel. There at the top of Mount Carmel was the great contest (which was really no contest at all) between Elijah and a whole stable of four hundred and fifty false prophets. Elijah mocked Baal’s prophets, saying,
27. Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.
28. And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them. (1 Kings 18:27–28)
Reverend McGeown fancies that his god will hear him and that his god is pleased with him in his sermons. He cuts himself in the service of a god made of gold who has no ears, no eyes, no hands, and no feet. But it was Elijah’s God, the God of the Reformed Protestant Churches and of the entire church of all ages, who sent down fire from heaven and consumed the sacrifice and licked up the water on the altar and all around it, meaning that God’s wrath burned against Christ and that in Christ God did the impossible for the salvation of his chosen people. McGeown’s god saves no one and offends no one. McGeown’s god is a god who loves everyone and hates no one.
Hating God’s Enemies
McGeown’s third sermon is on Psalm 139:21–22.1
21. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?
22. I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.
In Psalm 139 things were not going well for David. He had many enemies who sought his life. And in this psalm we find him in prayer. He asks this question as he lays his life bare before Jehovah his God: Do not I hate them that hate thee? And the answer is obvious. Of course, I do. I hate thy enemies, O Jehovah. There was no question about that in David’s own soul. The enemies who cruelly sought his life were enemies of God. The foundation of David’s prayer was God’s unshakable love for David that he knew and experienced. There could be no hatred of God’s enemies if there was not first the love of God in David’s heart. McGeown shows that he never has been struck by the love of God for him. It is the only explanation for why he makes excuses for false doctrine and for the sin of idolatry. It explains why he handles the word of God deceitfully and preaches as he does. The child of God makes this his prayer: “Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee?” Yes, I do.
As a result of the fall, man is a hater of God by nature. Hatred is a loathing and despising of something. Man hates God and his neighbor with all his being. Man loathes God. If man could kill God, he would. And when God in Jesus Christ came down to man in a form on which man could lay hold, man took the Son of God and nailed him to the tree. Man stands at enmity with God. Man shakes his fist at God and rejects God.
Ultimately, man is a hater of God and remains a hater of God because God reprobated man. Man stands at enmity with God because in predestination God sovereignly and righteously reprobated men. God hated Esau and is glorified in the destruction of Esau. The wicked man is not the object of God’s divine love, mercy, or grace; but God in all that he does is against the wicked every day. God is pleased in the destruction of the wicked. The Lord has made all things for himself, even the wicked for the day of evil. And with the whole of man’s life, he stands in hatred against God.
The psalmist says a few things about these enemies of Jehovah who hate him. They are bloody and unrighteous men. They speak against Jehovah wickedly and take his name in vain (Ps. 139:19–20).
And what is McGeown’s application? It is to the antinomian who uses the gospel to cover his wickedness. McGeown shows here that he has his eye on the Reformed Protestant Churches. For years Protestant Reformed ministers have been setting up the charge of antinomianism against the Reformed Protestant Churches for her preaching of the free forgiveness of sins. It is suspect that his first application of these haters of Jehovah is to the antinomian.
These enemies of Jehovah use the name of God to justify their sins. And there are few so dangerous as those who use the gospel to cover their wickedness. They take God’s name in vain. Jude speaks of them in Jude verse 4. They turn the grace of God into lasciviousness. They use the grace of God as an excuse, as a justification, to commit gross immorality and promote gross immorality in the church.
There are always in the church the threats of immorality and worldliness. A carnal man might hear the gospel and intellectually understand it but then use the doctrine of free justification to live how he pleases. But that is not what the psalmist means here by these enemies of Jehovah who are men drunk with blood and violence, who speak against Jehovah and take his name in vain. The text is not just about those who do not keep God’s law or about the supposed threat of antinomianism, but it is much deeper than that.
The name of God is the entire revelation of who God is, or, the name of God is the truth. God’s name is not only his proper names, but also God’s name is truth, as he revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai.
5. The Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord.
6. And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,
7. Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. (Ex. 34:5–7)
God’s name is all the truth of who God is, and he lays that down for us in the scriptures. The scriptures are God’s name. They are the truth. Jesus Christ is God’s name. He is the truth. The Reformed confessions are God’s name because they do fully agree with the word of God. We say that because the doctrine of the confessions is the doctrine of God’s word, and that is the truth. To speak wickedly against Jehovah and to take his name in vain is to believe the lie. That is the fundamental application of McGeown’s text. If God’s name is the truth, then profaning God’s name means rejecting the truth and the three forms of unity. The unrighteous men in the text hated God and profaned his name. It was not only that they uttered religious vulgarities with their tongues, but also that they did not believe the truth and so they hated the truth and God’s name.
David was not concerned in the psalm about those outside of Israel. He did not have in his view the uncircumcised Philistines who never had heard the gospel and never would be brought into the sphere of the gospel. The wicked men of the world take Jehovah’s name in vain by refusing to acknowledge the name of God as he reveals himself in his power and godhead as the creator and sustainer of all things. These men hold the truth of God down in unrighteousness. They worship the creation rather than the creator. They turn the truth of God into a lie.
McGeown rightly states that David had his eye on the wicked in Israel. But McGeown is completely superficial in his explanation.
Here are wicked people who know God’s statutes but do not keep them, who speak of God’s covenant but don’t live as they ought to in the community of the covenant, who break God’s commandments—thieves, adulterers, and all the rest. They are the wicked in the visible church. They are the enemies of Jehovah.
McGeown’s explanation of the wicked as those who do not keep the statutes of God falls short because McGeown has not really examined the root of the wickedness in Israel. If the wicked do not keep God’s statutes, that is only the outward manifestation of an inward reality. The wicked hate the God of Israel, and their lives reflect that. At the heart of it, they live the way they do in the sphere of the church because they do not have faith and do not believe the gospel.
Then McGeown comes to the heart of his message.
This passage does not apply to our fellow believers in the congregation, in the denomination, or in other denominations and churches. About the other members at Providence PRC, in the PRC denomination, and in other Reformed and Presbyterian churches and in other evangelical churches…about believers in other denominations, I say they are my brothers and sisters in Christ. We have the same Father. We have the same savior Jesus. We have the same Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts. We have the same salvation. We have the same hope of everlasting life. I do not hate them, but I love them. I love Christians wherever I find them.
David loved all God-fearing Jews…David hated idolaters, the worshipers of Baal. But Christians in different churches are not idolaters or worshipers of a different God. I do not and I may not hate them.
The text is clear and unmissable. And yet, surprise! McGeown twists the meaning of God’s word and delivers his propaganda to his mass of willing followers. There are unmistakable facts in the text. The first is that there are enemies who took God’s name in vain. They did not believe the truth. The second is that these enemies were religious men. McGeown just stated that these enemies were in Israel. But it was not merely that they lived licentious lives; it was that they believed false doctrine. They profaned the name of the Lord by believing the lie. The precise application of the text is to the nominal Christian in the Christian Reformed Church who holds to common grace. He does not believe the truth of God’s name. God’s name is a name of particular, irresistible, and efficacious grace. The precise application of the text is to the man in the United Reformed Churches or the Orthodox Presbyterian Church who holds to the well-meant gospel offer and to divorce and remarriage. God is the God of a particular promise who swore by his name because he could swear by no greater to save his people from their sins. The triune God in himself is a covenant family, and he is the faithful God who saves his rebellious, treacherous people and who never leaves or departs from them.
If I were to preach on this text, the outstanding application would be to the ministers and members of the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) as enemies of Jehovah. They are the religious men who take God’s name in vain by the lie of salvation by the willing and running of man. They slander the name of God in the confessions. Belgic Confession article 23 teaches that justification is by faith alone and not by the works of man. The PRC takes the name of God in vain and assaults the name of God by attacking that article. The PRC profanes God’s name by teaching and holding to the lie that forgiveness, justification, and assurance are in the way of man’s repentance. God’s name declares that he justifies the ungodly and that he imputes to his elect the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ by grace alone without works. The believer makes this prayer of the Holy Spirit his own: “Do not I hate the PRC that hates thee, O Lord?”
Next McGeown puts on the pom-poms for the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council (NAPARC). He does not condemn this organization as antichristian. Any unity apart from the unity in the truth and in God’s name is fundamentally antichristian. McGeown goes so far as to say that those at NAPARC are his “brothers in Christ” and “sincere brothers.” For McGeown there are “reasons” that they have separate denominations, but he never elaborates. Is it because these churches believe a lie? Is it because of church polity? Is it because they hold to the Westminster Confession? If they are brothers, they have the duty and obligation to join together and manifest the unity of the church. They ought to come together as one big denomination; and someday the nominal church world will unite together in a false unity under the flag of the antichrist.
The confession of right doctrine is the confession of God’s name. The relationship between doctrine and God’s name is shown in 1 Timothy 6:1: “Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honour, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed.” To confess right doctrine is to confess the name of God. To hold to right doctrine is to hold to the name of God. Either one knows that name of God and loves it, or one profanes the name of God and hates it. In his doctrine, man reveals whom he worships, either God or an idol. McGeown continues to minimize false doctrine in disobedience to the testimony of the word of God.
This hatred of God’s enemies is a complete and total hatred of the heart. McGeown defines this properly, and he even says, “Our hatred of God’s enemies means simply this, we will not have fellowship with them…[It] is a refusal to enter into a common cause with the wicked.” He launches into a nice explanation of the sinful alliance between Ahab and Jehoshaphat. But he takes it all away when he says,
“Depart from me” is not our response to fellow Christians. Ahab was an actual hater of God, as were Ahab’s children, Ahaziah and Jehoram. They worshiped idols. They persecuted the prophets. They were the false church of the Old Testament. But our brothers and sisters in other denominations do not hate the Lord. One who believes the three points of common grace does not hate the Lord. He’s mistaken. I disagree with him. But he is not a God-hater. Or one who thinks the covenant is conditional does not hate the Lord either. He is mistaken but not a God-hater. Or one who denies infant baptism is not a God-hater either. He is mistaken but not a God-hater. And if I believe that every sincere Christian who is mistaken in doctrine or practice hates the Lord, then I am a fanatic and a bigot. And that means it is not a faithful application of the text to cut off family and friends who are Christians but members of different denominations.
Ahab was an “actual” hater of God, according to McGeown. McGeown sets up a false contrast between nominal Christians and Ahab. Ahab and his rebel kingdom were the false church of the Old Testament. Ahab stood as king in the apostate kingdom of the ten tribes that had said, “We have no part in David.” With Jeroboam Israel had a form of religion, but she had departed from God, Christ, the covenant, and the promise. Israel would have said, “We serve God at Dan and Bethel. We have prophets. We have a priesthood and sacrifices. We have altars and holy days.” She had to have a certain outward form of religion to deceive the unwary. And that religion and its form became increasingly corrupt with each king who sat on the throne. That is the state of the church world today. The Protestant Reformed Churches, Christian Reformed Church, Orthodox Presbyterian Church, United Reformed Churches, and even Rome have a form of religion. And with each passing generation, these false churches degenerate further from the truth. Yet they all will say, “We confess Jesus Christ.” But when there is no Christ ruling as Lord over his kingdom, there is only the lie, deceit, and the profaning of God’s name.
McGeown is just a babbling idiot at this point. One who believes the three points of common grace, a conditional covenant, or denies infant baptism is only mistaken! What a whitewashing of church history! He despises his forefathers in the PRC, Reverend Hoeksema and Reverend Ophoff. Those men bled and died over the doctrine of particular grace. They did not think that the Christian Reformed Church was mistaken when they were cast out of her fellowship. They knew and believed that the Christian Reformed Church was malicious and deliberate in the lie and that she profaned God’s name. They believed that the Christian Reformed Church deceitfully handled the name of God in the Reformed confessions.
McGeown cares so little for God’s name. He shows himself to be an enemy of God. “For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take thy name in vain. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred.”
I hate them as they are thy enemies, O God. I love them as they are my neighbors.
Unequally Yoked
McGeown’s final sermon of his series is on 2 Corinthians 6:14–18.2
14. Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?
15. And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?
16. And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
17. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.
18. And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.
McGeown begins on the wrong foot right out of the gate.
As we come to the Lord’s supper next week, we must ask ourselves this question: Have I sinfully formed an unequal yoke with an unbeliever? Have I defiled myself by contact with an unbeliever? Is there a yoke in my life that I must cast off before I come to the table of the Lord?
The problem is that he makes self-examination about what man must do to come to the table to eat and drink Jesus Christ. The week of self-examination does not have as its purpose the cleaning up of your life that week. It is not about being a good person without sin that week. That is what the Form for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper says: “We do not come to this Supper to testify thereby that we are perfect and righteous in ourselves; but on the contrary…that we seek our life out of ourselves in Jesus Christ” (Confessions and Church Order, 269). The week of examination in essence is this: By faith I must see that I am worthy to come and eat and drink Christ on Sunday. That is the conclusion a believer makes at the end of his self-examination. He says, “I may come, and I must come,” not because he is not a sinner or because he is a good person, but because of what Christ did for him.
As is typical in Protestant Reformed preaching, throughout the sermon McGeown says a lot of true facts. A yoke joins two creatures together in labor or service. An unequal yoke is when a believer and an unbeliever are joined together in some spiritual activity or task. He comes close to the gospel when he notes in Matthew 11 that Christ took our yoke upon himself. He makes a few passing remarks about the yoke of Christ, but they are small and insignificant in light of the whole sermon. Much of the sermon he spends classifying various activities as an equal yoking or an unequal yoking, explaining which activities are okay for a believer to perform alongside or with an unbeliever and which are not.
McGeown fails to explain that a yoke implies that two are joined together in fellowship and communion. Why does not a believer join with an unbeliever? The ground is the covenant of grace and the antithesis. The covenant of grace shines through brilliantly in the text: “I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people…I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters” (vv. 16–18). Negatively, if you are the friend of God, you are an enemy of the world. Believers are united to God in Jesus Christ by faith alone. We are under Christ’s yoke. Our burden and guilt he has taken on himself; he has paid for all our sins and redeemed us from the law. He labored and toiled and gives us the rest that he earned. He earned righteousness and perfectly obeyed the law of God, and that is counted as ours. Because we are taken into God’s covenant, believers are not yoked with unbelievers. What fellowship, communion, concord, and part do believers have with unbelievers? There is none.
Failing to address either the covenant or the antithesis, McGeown plows on to the crux of his sermon.
An unequal yoke is established between a believer and an unbeliever, not between two Christians who are different theologically or who go to different churches or to different denominations. Now, obviously, the closer they are theologically, the easier it will be to work together harmoniously.
Regarding the interdenominational revision of the Psalter, McGeown’s proof for why the PRC was not compromised in working with the other denominations (whom McGeown admits hold to the well-meant gospel offer and a conditional covenant) is that there is no evidence that these denominations tried to influence the songs with common-grace terminology and conditional language.
We were not working with unbelievers. We were working with fellow believers from different denominations. We simply do not and may not view other Christians as unbelievers. They are children of God. And if we go around calling other children of God “unbeliever,” shame on us. The word unbeliever is not applicable here to members of other Reformed and Presbyterian churches, to members of Baptist churches or evangelical churches. They are not unbelievers. They are children of God.
Nor may we weaponize against them the Belgic Confession, which defines the true church this way in article 29: “If the pure doctrine of the gospel is preached therein.”
This Baal prophet stands exposed to the wording of article 29 of the Belgic Confession. The chief mark of the true church is that she preaches “the pure doctrine of the gospel” (Confessions and Church Order, 62; emphasis added). Do I have to say more to prove that McGeown is lying about what the confession teaches? He hopes that no one in his congregation will open the back of his or her psalter to see what article 29 teaches.
The true and false church are easily known and discerned. A church that preaches false doctrine, that God has a common grace toward the wicked, that the promise of the gospel is for all who hear it, or that in a certain, vital sense man precedes God, is false. She does not teach the “pure doctrine of the gospel.” And members who are joined to that church and sit under that preaching are, by definition, unbelievers. Believers are those who by faith receive Jesus Christ, follow after righteousness, and love the true God and their neighbors. Unbelievers are those who do not receive Christ by faith, follow after unrighteousness, and hate the true God and their neighbors.
McGeown adds the qualifier, “When Paul says, ‘be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers,’ he means actual unbelievers.” What is an “actual” unbeliever? McGeown does not say, but one needs only to refer back to his previous sermons—it is the drunk in the gutter, the whore on the street corner—really bad people who live really bad lives. McGeown does not believe that an unbeliever of the “pure doctrine of the gospel” is as wicked, if not more wicked, than the mere profane man of the world.
McGeown waxes bold.
Apply those questions [from 2 Corinthians 6] to your relationship with other believers in other denominations and churches. Do you dare call believers in other denominations, do you dare call them unrighteous, darkness, Belial, infidel, idols? Do you dare say that about them? Do you dare call those to whom God has given his Spirit and life and salvation unrighteousness, darkness, Belial, infidel, idols? You then deny that members of other denominations are righteous in Christ…If you deny that, then you are an extremist and a bigot.
I will in fact dare to call them those things. I will because when I examine their doctrine, I do not see those who believe in Jesus Christ at all but those who seek their welfare and advantage in themselves. I see those who believe in a half-savior, who is not a savior. I see open profaning of God’s name. I do not see the Spirit, his life, or salvation in those who confess the lie. Why would I join myself to them? Why would the Reformed Protestant Churches seek fellowship with unrighteousness, darkness, Belial, and an infidel?
McGeown labels the Reformed Protestant Churches, never by name, as extremist and bigoted. He stands in the line of ungodly men who called Jesus Christ mad and insane for his doctrine and teachings. “Many of them said, He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye him?” (John 10:20). The servant of Christ is no different than his master.
Thus concludes the examination of a wearisome set of sermons, lest the reader tire of reading of McGeown’s repetitive and predictable fables. At least the world knows how to write interesting ones.
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