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By In Culture

The Lord of Creation Has Come

Photo courtesy pexels.com

The Son of God became Man in order to redeem and elevate men so that we might become the sons of God. Many Christians think of the Incarnation only as a solution to a problem, a means of addressing and rectifying sin. But there is a larger context to the first Advent than just correction of a problem. The God-Man came to bring creation to its intended fullness and glory.

Yahweh made Man as his image in creation and gave him dominion over it. But that dominion was lost by means of transgression. The image was marred by sin. The lord of creation rebelled against the Creator, and creation turned against its lord. Now thorns and thistles grow from the ground instead of grain, and the animals once named by Adam flee in fear or turn with bared teeth against his sons. Adam was given authority to rule the world and power to command its obedience. But he lost the power to exercise that authority so that now his heirs cower in terror as the wind and waves batter their boat rather than rising to order the water gods to knock it off and behave.

The problem Christ came to address was not merely that you or I sometimes do bad things or fail to do the good things that we ought. He came to rescue the created universe, to redeem a world in bondage, to repair and restore the temple of God’s glory. Adam forfeited his power and position to grasp a greater, forbidden power, but the Serpent’s promise proved to be a lie. The world descended into chaos as the covenant of life and creation was broken and its curse fell upon us all. Men sought order by looking for a new lord who could master and control the madness. Demons of fire, earth, air, and water were reinvented as gods who could bring order to one’s life and blessing to one’s labor, for a price. Men worshiped creatures rather than the Creator and lost the blessings of communion, liberty, and glory they were made to enjoy.

Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures (1Cor. 15:3). He was delivered up because of our offenses and was raised because of our justification (Rom. 4:25). This means more than merely that Jesus was crucified so that my sins could be forgiven and I could go to heaven when I die. It means more, not less, than a promise of personal salvation. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved (John 3:17). God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them (2Cor. 5:19). For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God (Rom. 8:20-21).

We know these passages and dozens like them, but we often read them narrowly, only in the context of personal salvation. We behold the glories of Christ’s Incarnation and saving work as if through a keyhole. We describe the doctrine of the kingdom and of new creation as would those chained inside a cave, watching shadows on a wall, never realizing the larger reality that surrounds us. The problem is not that what we are saying about the gospel and Christ’s work is wrong. In most cases it is right and good and true. But it is often incomplete, a story of personal relationship, individual salvation, exclusive grace without the greater creational, covenantal, and cosmological context.

Christ is Immanuel, God in the flesh, divine glory united to humanity, but he is also Man united to God, the beginning of resurrection and new creation, the reconciliation of heaven and earth, Man as God made him to be, invested with authority, exercising power, in righteousness and holiness, to bring creation to its intended glory. When we see Jesus, we see God, but we also see Man, true man, the Last Adam, the head of the human race. The Creator made men to be lords of creation, and Jesus is Lord over all lords and King over all kings. Men were made as the image of God, and Christ is the exact image of his glory (Heb. 1:3). Men were made for life with God, to glorify and enjoy him forever (WSC 1), and our destiny from creation is attained by union with Jesus Christ in whom we become partakers of the divine nature (2Pet. 1:4).

The Church’s celebration of Advent is larger and fuller than merely western society’s celebration of Christmas. There is more to be seen than a baby in a manger or an elf on the shelf. The Creator has come into creation. The Redeemer has descended in compassion. The King has come in triumph and brings everlasting glory in his train. O come, let us adore him!

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King!
Let every heart prepare Him room,
and heav’n and nature sing,
and heav’n and nature sing,
and heav’n, and heav’n and nature sing.

Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ,
while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
repeat the sounding joy,
repeat the sounding joy,
repeat, repeat the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
far as the curse is found,
far as the curse is found,
far as, far as the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
and makes the nations prove
the glories of His righteousness
and wonders of His love,
and wonders of His love,
and wonders, wonders of His love.

“Joy To the World! The Lord is Come!” Isaac Watts (1719)

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By In Church, Culture, Postmillenialism, Theology, Wisdom

Pastoral Leadership in an Age of Wokeness

This is a guest post by Rich Lusk, pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church of Birmingham, AL.

Are woke pastors committing vocational suicide? Is it enough to not be woke? Or must a pastor be explicitly anti-woke in order to remain faithful?

I admit upfront I know absolutely nothing first hand about the Scott Sauls case and therefore anything I say here is strictly speculative. The charges brought against Sauls that he has been abusive and manipulative are very interesting because Sauls would definitely have been considered at the forefront of the so-called winsomeness crowd that is constantly arguing for civility and a “third way,” that is, some kind of rapprochement with progressivism, even though he is within a conservative denomination. Now, maybe Sauls has been abusive and manipulative and neglectful. Maybe he has been a tyrannical leader. Sometimes men become the very thing they most rail against; sometimes we fall into the sins we say we are most opposed to. Maybe Sauls was a hypocrite in this way, calling others to be civil in public while being very uncivil behind closed doors. Again, I don’t know. The only knowledge I have of the situation comes from second and third hand reports in articles relying on anonymous sources – and we all know how anonymous sources can be.

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By In Culture, Family and Children

Recipes and readings for Advent (1)

One of our members at Emmanuel in London, Lucie Brear, has compiled a fantastic collection of recipes and suggested Scripture readings for advent. If you want to discover a traditional English way to prepare for Christmas, then just read on! I’ll post them here one week at a time. Here’s the first:

Stir Up Sunday

The first Sunday before advent, which this year fell on November 26th, is traditionally known as Stir Up Sunday, when families gather together to mix and steam the Christmas pudding.

The term comes from the opening words of the collect for the day in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer:

“Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Christmas pudding would traditionally contain 13 ingredients to represent Jesus and his disciples. Practically, stirring the mixture is hard work, so as many family members as possible join in the task. The pudding mixture is stirred from East to West in honour of the Magi (three wise men) who visited the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. The customary garnish of holly represents the crown of thorns.

Most recipes for Christmas pudding require it to be cooked well in advance of Christmas and then reheated on Christmas day – but even though Stir Up Sunday has passed, there’s still plenty of time to prepare your pudding. You may even want to follow this traditional Victorian recipe, made with shredded beef suet.

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By In Culture

Love the Sinner. Hate the Movement.

A MATTER OF LOVE

Generally speaking, every Christian has some level of understanding that God has called us to love. It is kind of the point of being a Christian, right? Paul says if we do not have love, we are nothing. Jesus said that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. And He did not provide such a glorious and precious Son to reproduce more Grinches on Mt. Crumpit or more Ebenezer Scrooges on Business Street in London. 

God saved us and did it through the greatest act of love ever recorded to make us loving people. Jesus even said that they (the world) will know that we are true disciples of Jesus by the way that we love one another, which means how we love other Christians (John 13:35). But, Jesus also taught us that we are to love our enemies and to pray for the ones who persecute us, which means our love must extend beyond the people who attend Church with us. We must be willing and ready to love anyone, even those who hate us most ferociously. 

And this is where the confusion occurs. Just because we are to love people does not mean we are to love what they do or the sinful movements that they have ensnared them. It is my contention, and what I will be arguing here, that standing against a MOVEMENT is wholly necessary, and it is one of the chief ways that we genuinely love the PERSON. 

For a moment, pardon me for my pungency. I will grab the flame thrower to light a couple of candles, and I will do this on purpose. Sometimes, we need a mother’s soothing lullaby to help us fall gently to sleep. Yet there are other times when we need to be shaken from our slumber by the father because the house is on fire. Today will be more like the shaking. 

THE ABORTION MOVEMENT

I said above that we must love the sinners caught in sinful movements while hating the movements that trapped them. This is true. Which means we must not hate women who have had abortions. We must love them (profoundly so). This means we must love them enough to hear their stories of pain, to empathize with their struggle, but also to refuse to sugarcoat what they have done and to bid them to repent for murdering one of their children. If that language seems overly harsh, perhaps you are part of the problem.

Think about it, how many children in this country, and around the world, have to brutally die before we start taking this issue seriously? How many heartbeats need to stop for us to go beyond conservative incrementalism and heartbeat bills to flat-out abolish this disgusting, immoral practice? And let me just ask the obvious question: can our actions really be called loving if we allow this culture of death to continue? Are we really being kind to all the innocent babies who were chopped up into bloody pieces inside their mommy’s womb or chemically roasted by toxic abortifacients when we say things to the mother like: “It wasn’t your fault” or “You had no other options.” How sick and demented do we need to be to believe this garbage? Biblically speaking, abortion is the wanton sacrilege of human life, plain and simple, and total abolition of it is the only just outcome. To tell a woman anything else is to lie to her, make excuses for her sin, and allow her to believe the lie that God is not enraged over the shedding of innocent blood. He is the one who heard Abel’s blood crying out from the ground, and He is the one who hears every tortured fetus screaming from the cold metallic pan. And He will avenge them. 

From a Biblical and ethical standpoint, there is nothing morally different between a woman getting an abortion and hiring a hitman to kill her toddler. In both instances, she bought and paid for a professional to kill someone she was supposed to love, care, and protect. We must stop euphemizing our language and call this precisely what it is. Abortion is not healthcare. Abortion is the intentional, inexcusable, and unauthorized decision to terminate a precious life that belongs to God alone, who endowed it with significance, dignity, and personhood. 

And, while you may still be reeling from my descriptions, this is precisely how we love people. We love them by telling it to them straight and by pointing them to the risen Christ as their only hope. We love man and woman by exposing the lethality of sin, which is awful news, and then by providing them with the remedy, which is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is the only one who can heal the wounds of a mother who killed her child. He is the only one who can forgive a man for pressuring his wife to let medical serial killers in planned parenthood dismember his legacy. He is the only one who can forgive the murderous doctors who have gallons of blood dripping from their hands. And the only way to truly be loving is to point everyone to Him. 

And, what I find most astonishing is how the amazing grace and tender mercy of our perfect spotless savior totally and completely buries all of our sins! As reprehensible as abortion is, and as much shame as that should induce if left to our own devices, a woman who turns to the Lord Jesus Christ is not only forgiven but her shame is also eliminated! Her sins have been washed white as snow, and He restores her to royalty in His Kingdom. She has been given a new and glorious nature that cannot be taken away from her. She is healed! She is loved! She is restored! She is no longer known by a scarlet letter. And she may well worship in eternity alongside her aborted child. How? Because He took the curse that she deserved and gave unto her the honor she could never earn! Jesus Christ, her Lord and Savior, overpowered the putrescence of our iniquities and rescued us for His glory and our great good. This is true for all sinners! Why do we hold back from declaring this message? Why do we think this is unloving? And because of that, why do we entirely pervert this glorious Gospel by avoiding nearly half of it, skipping past the bad news of sin and death, to accommodate a sinner’s fragility? If you throw out the bad news, the good news makes no sense! If you throw out the need for a savior, you no longer have the Gospel! That is not the path of love or how we ought to love anyone. 

At the same time, while I love the woman who has had an abortion, I must hate the abortion movement with every bone in my body. I will ever be at war against this modern day temple to Moloch! Why? Because it is the movement that is promoting, cheering on, and subsiding the murder of nearly a million image-bearing humans every year! This movement was dreamt up in the recesses of hell, fueled by the power of demons, and has captivated a swampy and pathetic government of fiends who would rather kill its citizens than lose political power or funding. I will love the person enough to hate such a despicable movement. And I will hate the movement enough to make war with it all my days. 

THE LMNOP MOVEMENT

We must not hate the sodomites or lesbians who are caught in nature-denying, God-hating behavior. We also must not hate transgender people who have denied one of the most basic tenets of reality: their own biological gender. And, furthermore, we must not hate human beings who are mired in such delusional confusion, that single persons now want to identify as plural pronouns, or the genetic human who now want to use a litter box instead of a toilet. This is not to mention the kind of mental disorder that would cause a homosapien to identify as a two-spirit penguin. This would be hilarious if it were not true. Being true, I am heartbroken for them. I am shocked and grieved that such an apparent mental health crisis, of this magnitude has broken out in the Western world, and the “adults in the room” are trying to cure it with identity politics and clever deceptions. This is like trying to put a fire out with gasoline or trying to plug that hole in the Titanic with bubble gum. Instead of receiving the help they need to confront such vivid and wretched delusions, people today are force-fed horse manure from a society that absolutely hates them and a medical establishment that is profiting from lopping off their genitals. 

Remember, love always seeks the best for a person. And what is best for a person is what God says in His Word. We must love men and women who are being led to the slaughter enough to point them away from these diabolical fantasies, the damned identity politics dreamt up by demons and instead bid them to turn to the truth of the Holy Scriptures. We must love them enough to call them out of their sins and perversions, leading them toward the belly of the fiery abyss. We must love them enough to call them to repent and turn to the Lord Jesus Christ before it is too late. Placating them is not loving them! A parent who gives into every demand of the child to reinforce their inner totalitarianism is not loving them!

In the same way, patting people on the head, leaving them with warm and fuzzies in their sin, while they are eternally separated from a Holy and Righteous God, is to despise them! It is to wish them doubly dead with a disturbing smile on our faces. That is not love; we must love the person enough to behave differently! 

But, simultaneously, I pray that the LGBTQ movement dies a thousand deaths. A movement that cheers on abominations mocks the living God with flags of rainbow-colored debauchery and prays upon the most insecure and impressionable minds. A campaign that calls its victims to abandon nature and reason for social clout and swelling subscriber lists. A movement that is championed by an unhinged government that will take children away from their parents for not allowing them to degrade their own bodies in the most lude, disgusting, and abhorrent ways. A movement that is weaponized by doctors who threaten body butchering as the only escape from suicide. A movement peddled by freaks on Youtube and TikTok that promise you will be well-liked, ever-celebrated, and left always with a feeling of belonging if you would only come out. I loathe that movement. And I will do whatever it takes to see it come to a total and complete end. Why? Because it is destroying men and women, and it is devouring children! It is toxifying the country my children will inherit. And it is damaging the social fabric of the nation. 

Very simply, we are called to love our enemies, love the ones who are caught in soul and body-degrading sins, and love them enough to speak the truth to them before it is too late. Yes, and amen! But we are never commanded to love the ideologies that are destroying them. We are never once called to cheer for the movements that trap humanity like fish in the net. Yet, as I said before, this is where so much confusion has occurred in the Church these days. This is where the enemy has divided and conquered in legionous ways. By leaving the Church in the West so divided on this issue, typically into four camps as it related to this issue, we have become easy pickings for the author of these Luciferian fables, the lord of darkness himself.  

For a moment, I want to sketch out three erroneous views and how those views are wrong, and then I want to end with the right approach. 

THREE ERRONEOUS VIEWS

1) LIBERALISM- THE DEMONIC LEFT 

This view barely needs to be explained. Proponents believe the sinner and the movement should be lauded, supported, and championed. This means that there is no view of sin or hell, there is no Biblical understanding of what love is and what it calls for, and all that is left is just a watered-down “gospel of tolerance,” and the twin bricks of “love is love” and the “you do you’s” that pave the path to destruction. This view is not the Biblical Gospel because it begins with the assumption that what people need most is acceptance of their sins instead of repentance from them. And sadly, this view has infected entire churches, denominations, and conventions.  

Every lumberjack lesbian pastor to every dove-award-winning male musician who now sings in dresses proves my point. This is not loving, and they are not Christians. They have abandoned Christ for hedonism and pluralism. They have abandoned the Biblical Gospel for infatuation with immorality. They have not chosen the path of love but are on a highway to hell. And thankfully, they are not very difficult to spot in the wild. Just look for the bright colors or the 6’4 muscle bound woman on the swim team who still has a cringy bulge. 

We must reject the lie of liberalism. Instead, we must love each and every person caught in sin. We must love them enough to call them to repent. And we must be at war with ideologies that ensnare them. 

2) FUNDAMENTALISM – THE HATE-FILLED RIGHT

On the other end of the spectrum is a nearly equally abhorrent view. Instead of being known for unbiblical and degenerate forms of tolerance and love, this group is known for its rigid intolerance, as well as a refusal to love anyone. And while the fundies rightly understand the need to hate the sinful movements that trap so many souls in the bogs of sin, they forget that they are also sinners and peddle a gospel that is devoid of humility or grace. They turn their pharisaical ire upon anyone and everyone who exists “out there,” and they chide them all to hell. 

Sadly, this view has also infected the Church in small but shrinking pockets that usually do not spread as quickly as liberalism since no one likes being around them enough to join them. Where does this disease show up? It shows up in every megaphone screaming street preacher who is not out there to see men and women saved but to remind them they are damned. It shows up on Sunday mornings in every Westoroesque Church where the blowhard behind the pulpit screams, “God hates fags.” It shows up wherever men and women caught in these sins become the object of our hatred instead of the mission field we have been sent to. 

We must reject the hate of fundamentalism. Instead, we must love sinners enough to get to know them, eat with them, and call them to repent. We must be at war with the ideologies that ensnare them and the pride that entangles us. 

3) EVANGELICALISM – THE MUSHY MIDDLE

The evangelical Church is always trying to land in the mushy middle, whose spine seems to be made of pudding or jello. And, before you object, let me remind you that the vast majority of squishy pastors these days will not preach on the reality of hell, the ugliness of sin, or the dire need for repentance because of the holy, righteous wrath of God. I have been to these churches. I have served on staff in these churches. Where men are so afraid of offending men that they regularly offend their God by either apologizing for God’s Word or refusing to herald it. How many sermons have you ever heard on the covenant curses in Deuteronomy 28, the list of sins that are called abominations, or any other topic that our society is struggling with in any meaningful way? If there is a potential for offense, the modern-day pastor runs like a coward from the battle. And this is not mere opinion. It is an epidemic in evangelicalism. 

This gets to my point. You cannot love someone you are lying to, and if you refuse to tell them the truth or call them to repentance, then you are lying to them. That is like knowing a man has stage 4 cancer, and instead of giving him the diagnosis so that he can begin the treatment or settle his affairs, you refuse to tell him because it may hurt his feelings. That is the opposite of love! That is to become the equivalent of a moral monster. And it was certainly not the way Christ loved people in the Gospels. Yes, He knelt down in the sand to restore a sinner, but He also said, “Go and sin no more.” In fact, there is no single account where Christ doesn’t point out the sin, call the man or woman to repentance, and extol them to holy living moving forward. To adopt an ethic that Christ will vomit out of His mouth just to save face in public is not loving. It is criminal! That is the picture of a very sinister sort of hatred that watches as a person asphyxiates when all they needed was to be turned onto their side. In this case, men and women must be pointed to Jesus Christ! He is the hope! He is the cure! To trade in the Gospel for niceties is repugnant, unloving, and something every cowardly pastor will answer for. 

Furthermore, you cannot hate a movement that is destroying human beings when you refuse to call it out. I am talking to you, pastor yellow-belly, when you sit silently on the sidelines as sexual predators fester, as women in your congregations believe the lie that it was just a clump of cells, and as diabolical trends in Hollywood disciple your people, just remember that your silence was akin to hating them. You wasted your office. You impaled your people on the post you were supposed to care for them with. And you have hated your own ministry. When you have mold growing in your home, you spray it; you don’t ignore it. And yet, your sugar and spice mentality that never rocks the boat, never calls out evil in our society, has let something far more sinister seep in and spread among your people, and you did nothing to stop it! Instead of being the salt of the earth, you have become the high fructose corn syrup that has made our society fatally unhealthy, and I am calling upon you to repent! 

Yes, you should love the person. Love them enough to confront their sin and call them to Christ. And yes, you should grow a backbone to perform the role of shepherd, who not only pets the sheep but takes out a sawed-off shotgun to take down the wolf. Repent, brother! 

THE RIGHT VIEW

4) THE BIBLICAL APPROACH 

Now, the right approach is the Biblical approach. Look at what Paul says about this: 

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. – Ephesians 6:12

Paul tells us that our struggle is not against the individuals caught in the nets of sin. Instead, our war is against the net makers, the wicked powers who are making the traps that drag men and women away to their doom (2 Timothy 2:26)! This certainly includes evil politicians, woke corporations, and degenerate government agencies who spend taxpayers money on evil. But Paul is alerting us to the power that is underneath them all and fueling them. He is telling us of the kind of power that caused Roman men to find it socially acceptable to abandon their female infants to the elements because they wanted a son. We are talking about the kind of power underneath the hubris of the Enlightenment, which captivated men’s hearts with scientific pride instead of humility before their God. We are talking about the elemental forces, the rouge spirits in high places, and the kind of power that gave birth to the bastard child named liberalism, who questions the authority and veracity of Holy Scripture. The kind of power that is underneath every godless movement, from the Freudian psychology that undermines faith in God to the Sangarian ethics inflicting genocide upon the womb to the Kinneyism that unleashed rank sexual perversions upon our populace. Paul is telling us that behind every Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, behind every pagan ideology and philosophy, and behind every movement that brings devastation and rebellion upon man are the demonic forces led by their commander Satan, who want nothing more than to destroy the masterpiece of God’s creation, man and woman. God called male and female – in covenant marriage, reproducing offspring to the glory of God, and extending His dominion to the ends of the earth – “very good,” the hounds of hell cannot keep themselves from trying to destroy us. It is in their nature, and we must resist them (James 4:7). 

LOVE THE SINNER. HATE THE MOVEMENT

I know this article may seem a tad inflammatory to you, but I make no apologies. I simply implore you not to be soft on movements like abortion and sexual deviancy. Because underneath them is the power of demons who want nothing more than to pervert, manipulate, butcher, and destroy God’s creatures. If you are soft on these movements, you are complicit with the war crimes of demons, and you are a reviler of the humanity you claim to love. 

Our job is to love the sinner enough to call them to repentance. And to hate the movements that accost them. Dear Christians, the mission Christ has called us to requires that we declare the true Biblical Gospel no matter who it offends and that we continue advancing until every sulfuric stinking gate of hell falls limply down. We aim as emissaries in His Kingdom to see all of Jesus’ enemies put under His feet. He will do that work, but He has also called us to be about that work (praying, declaring Christ, making disciples, having godly children, attending public worship, feasting at His table, etc. ). We live in the Kingdom of Christ and we pray to see abortion abolished so that no more child is decapitated in her mother’s womb. We labor in Jesus’ fields to see sodomy eliminated and a wholesome, godly, and covenantal view of sex and marriage proliferated. And as Christians, we do not bury our talents in the sand… We keep after it, worshipping, praying, seeking Him, and doing what He has commanded us to do until all two-spirit penguins are entirely extinct because we do not believe allowing people to live in their madness or delusions is healthy, proper, or holy. We labor till every family comes under the blessing of the Lord Jesus Christ, as promised to Abraham, and until our enemy is put swiftly under our saviors heel. Until that day, we must love people enough to herald the one true Gospel to them and we must hate the sinister movements sufficiently enough to work for their demise. No other behavior is Biblically legitimate.  

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By In Church, Culture, Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Wait

We don’t like to wait. Everything in our world is becoming faster and faster, so we don’t have to wait. The information of the world is at our fingertips with our phones so that we can access it anytime we wish. We order packages online that, at times, can be delivered the same day. We are a generation of the immediate.

Built into the Church Year are times of waiting. Advent, the four weeks before the Christmas season, is one of those times of waiting. The Church Year is not a biblical law that must be obeyed lest you be in danger of hell. The Church Year is a discipleship tool, a time of instruction to teach the life of Christ in an embodied way so that people not only think about the propositional truths of Christ but also, in some small way, feel the rhythms of the life of the incarnate Son. Advent is the anticipation of his coming. Anticipation means waiting, and we don’t like to wait.

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By In Culture

Thanksgiving and the Church Calendar

Guest Post by Jared McNaab

As an American, I have always thought that Thanksgiving is our nation’s great holiday. It also seemed especially appropriate to me that Thanksgiving falls close to the beginning of Advent and the beginning of the Church calendar year.

Indeed, the Church’s calendar is a gift to her people to help them remember, celebrate, and participate in God’s acts in history. We begin the church year with Advent by pointing ourselves to our future, reminding ourselves that Christ is coming again, and that this life is a life of longing for that future. We then get out the packages, boxes, and bags to celebrate the Word made flesh, who dwelt among us. We rejoice in the Light of Christ going to the Gentile nations in Epiphany. We remember the life of Christ and particularly his suffering in Lent. We break open the champagne to celebrate the victory of life over death. The party continues with the Ascension of Christ and the sending of the Spirit on Pentecost.

The church calendar is a way for us to mark God’s redemptive acts in the world. But undergirding the feasts and festivities of the church calendar, and underneath God’s redemptive acts in the world, is one major presupposition: all of Creation is, as God pronounced on the 6th day, “Very good.”

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By In Culture

The Discipline of Thanksgiving

Photo courtesy pexels.com

Thanksgiving is not just an American holiday. It is that too, of course, and many of us anticipate celebrating it on Thursday. But the deliberate ritual of giving thanks is not just a national holiday. It is a spiritual discipline.

Biblical thanksgiving is historical, not conceptual. Thanksgiving in the Bible is never just gratitude in general for non-specific ideas. God’s people were taught to give thanks for specific things: God’s wonder, works, and word. The psalms teach us to thank God for who he is, what he has done, and what he has promised to do in the future. They recount specific stories from history. It may seem strange to sing-pray about creation (Psa. 104), the plagues on Egypt (Psa. 105), Israel’s persistent unfaithfulness (Psa. 106), or God killing Egyptian children and Canaanite kings (Psa. 135), but the point is that God has blessed us and cared for us at specific times, in specific places, and consistently throughout the centuries. We are not just to thank God in general. We are to recognize and recall specific instances of his grace and goodness, and give him thanks and praise for them.

Biblical thanksgiving is verbal, not merely emotional. On one occasion Jesus met ten lepers and directed them to go and show themselves to the priests (Luke 17:11-19). As they went, they discovered Jesus had healed them. Nine of them went on their way, but one immediately returned to Jesus “and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving [Jesus] thanks.” Do you suppose the other nine men were glad they had been healed? No doubt, they were. But they were not thankful, because thanksgiving is an act, not a thought, not a feeling. They might have felt grateful to the Lord, but they did not give thanks to him. Certainly our thanksgiving should be heartfelt, but biblical thanksgiving is more than a feeling of gratefulness. It is the communication of it.

Biblical thanksgiving is intentional, not haphazard. There is a specific ritual of thanksgiving. Scripture teaches us to “use our words” when thanking God. The psalms provide many different liturgies for thanksgiving. Consider Psalm 136, an antiphonal song in which the leader or choir sings the mighty acts of God and the congregation responds again and again: “For His mercy endures forever!” Thanksgiving is not merely something we are to do when we think of it or feel like it. There is a discipline to thanksgiving, a structure, a schedule for it. Biblical thanksgiving is a ritual. There may be many different ways to engage in it—Scripture does not provide only one but many models for giving thanks to God—but amid the varieties we see an overarching unity. We praise God for creation, his judgment of sin, his work of redemption, his forbearance, our ongoing sanctification, and for his promises of future glory. There is a gospel-logic to the Church’s thanksgiving. Not every element may be present in every instance, but the narrative of redemption ought to order our expressions of gratitude to God.

Biblical thanksgiving is continual, not occasional. “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1Thess. 5:16-17). God’s people are to be “giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 5:20). Every day, in every circumstance, at all times, we are to be giving thanks to God. We thank him for our pleasure and our pain, for our success and our sorrow, for our strength and our weakness. We know that he works “all things… together for good to those who love” him (Rom. 8:28). Not even evil can ultimately harm us, because God is using that evil to humble us and sanctify us. The things we imagine not even God could make us thankful for are reminders that we are not yet where we long to be, in the glorious presence of our resurrected Lord, so we can give thanks the Lord has not let us get too comfortable in our present state but ordered our lives so that we will fix our eyes on Jesus and “seek those things which are above” (Col. 3:1).

Every Lord’s Day is a day of thanksgiving. The Church has nothing of her own to offer God. The Divine Service is God’s service to us in renewing covenant and blessing his people through the means of grace. The service we offer is a sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise (Heb. 13:15). So bring your bulls of blessing and goats of gratitude, and place them on the altar of God. Light the fire of faith beneath them, and our prayers will ascend like the smoke of incense before God’s throne in heaven. Come, and “let us give thanks to Yahweh, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever” (Psa. 138:1).

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By In Culture

5 Ways to Make Fun of Evil

There is an art to making fun of evil. You have to build a resume. You can’t just throw words at evil things like an amateur. You have to be armed with the right stuff so you don’t mock the faith while attempting to mock unbelief. So, what do you need to make fun of evil like a professional?

You need courage.

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” Courage keeps you focused on the enemy. It keeps our warfare on the right target. It keeps moving when the opposing team seems to have the advantage.

You need biblical fidelity.

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Fidelity to the Bible is indispensable to attacking evil premises. You can attempt cute remarks that will get cheap applauses, but only faithfulness to the Bible will provide enduring mockery material.

You need festivity.

“Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” You cannot be a talented mocker unless you know how to celebrate properly; the church needs to be a place for sincere and true festivity among the pagan festivals of the world. We gather on the Lord’s Day because this is the great festival day. This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

You need family virtues.

“Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house, Your children like olive plants All around your table.” You are to build a repertoire of songs and prayers in your household. Parents are to build memories around the table; children need to embrace doses of virtues in honoring father and mother; in serving around the house.

Finally, take your calling seriously.

“Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble.” You have been chosen by God to do what he has called you to do. You cannot take off the armor of God simply because you decided to entertain yourself in the playground of evil. God has given you a calling. Work. Persevere. Repent and enter into his gates with thanksgiving to mock evil with boldness.

Let us mock evil in the act of praise and adoration. God has called us to make his name holy by mocking the unholy.

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By In Culture

Where are the pro-life majorities?

Abortion is the deliberate ending of a pregnancy somewhere along the path between conception and birth, and it has been the subject of controversy for at least half a century, if not longer. In the United States, the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v Wade (1973) took the issue out of the hands of the several states and declared a constitutional right to abortion, the Court undoubtedly assuming that it had settled the issue for good. That proved to be a severe miscalculation because the ruling sparked an acrimonious division between those styling themselves pro-choice and pro-life. Pro-choicers argued that a woman has a right to her own bodily integrity and that this right includes the personal decision to end a pregnancy. Pro-lifers, to the contrary, argued that the foetus growing in the womb is a person who deserves to live and not merely a mass of tissue to be disposed of at will.

For a time, it seemed that the pro-life position had a demographic advantage. The argument went something like this:

Pro-lifers and pro-choicers represent two divergent subcultures. Pro-choicers are less likely to be religiously observant and generally have fewer children. They disproportionately inhabit the large urban centres where most abortion clinics are located. They are less persuaded by arguments that the unborn child is a human being worthy of protection and have a (religious!) belief in individual autonomy. Many pro-choicers do not even bother to marry and are content to live in childless relationships with members of the opposite sex.

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By In Culture, Family and Children, Men, Women

Men, Marriage, and the Feminine Imperative

Gilder, George. Men and Marriage. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2023.*

By 1973, the hightide of second-wave feminism had flooded the beaches of American culture. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique eroded the shores of traditional female roles by naming and stirring up further domestic discontentment. Kate Millet wrote her dissertation-turned-book, Sexual Politics, which sought to overthrow the patriarchy with her Marxist revolutionaries through the National Organization of Women (313). Against the flood,, conservative George Gilder manned the dikes with Sexual Suicide in 1973. With the rise of intersectionality in third wave feminism, Gilder revised and re-titled the book Men and Marriage in 1986. Besides the 2023 Preface, Canon’s republication is the 1986 edition. While the stats are antiquated, his underlying principles and overall message are clear, and his prescience of future events based on trajectories have far exceeded what he probably imagined.

When Gilder first published Sexual Suicide and then doubled down in Men and Marriage, he infuriated all the right people, drawing the ire of the main players in the feminist movement and exposing the places in our culture where the latest iterations of feminism had taken root. Second-wave feminism fought for equality with men in the workplace and the sexual marketplace. Women wanted to be like men. While the elimination of the differences did not rise to the level that we see today, in which many are claiming that there is no such thing as a man or woman, the equality called for in second-wave feminism helped lay the foundations for what we are experiencing today. Women didn’t want the consequences of sexual promiscuity, and the creation of the birth control pill and swelling tsunami for the legalization of abortion gave their wombs the liberation to live sexually promiscuous lives.

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