On more than one occasion, I have heard the CREC and particular churches within the denomination labeled as “a cult.” This puts us right there with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Jim Jones, and David Koresh. Apparently, we are a dangerous heterodox group of over-zealous extremists following some sort of charismatic personality. Our Book of Confessions puts us in the stream of Reformational Christianity, but somehow, we are still labeled as a cult. Maybe it is our acceptance of paedocommunion, but that is far from new to the Christian faith. Maybe it is our optimistic eschatology, but many Christians have been optimistic about the kingdom of God in history. Perhaps it is because we have Doug Wilson, and, well, they just don’t like him. I don’t really think any of those particulars cause people to label us as a cult.
From my own observation (and this is my personal opinion), what seems to chafe the average American Christian about the CREC is the commitment. The commitment level of the average CREC family to attend worship regularly, participate in the church’s life, and live out the faith in a counter-American-cultural way is staggering for the modern American Christian.
I was teaching a Bible study on Judges 9 the other night and it occurred to me just how relevant this chapter is to many of our current issues. (We will eventually get audio up on the TPC website.)
First, anyone who wants a so-called “strong man” to rule should pay close attention to the beginning of this chapter. Abimelech offers to become king over the people of Shechem instead of Gideon’s 70 sons — why decentralize rule into 70 men when you can concentrate it on one man? Of course, as you might expect, when they accept Abimelech’s offer, it turns out to be a disaster.a
Abimelech was a revolutionary and revolution always breeds revolution.b Revolution always breeds anarchy, tyranny, or both, but it is never stable. Revolution leads to more revolution. Revolutions easily become rolling revolutions that steamroll everything in sight. Not surprisingly, Abimelech has rivals who rise up against him in a revolutionary way. A man named Gaal throws a big party, everyone gets drunk, Gaal curses Abimelech, and then inspires the men of Shechem to turn against him.c Abimelech manages to put the revolt down – the men of Shechem pay a huge price for their unstable political loyalties. But then Abimelech, power-hungry and over-confident from his victory, decides to try to expand his territory. He goes after Thebez, a peaceful Jewish town. He traps the people of Thebez in a tower when a woman drops a millstone on him and crushes his headd. Abimelech dies in a shameful and humiliating way, at the hands of a productive woman (note that a millstone is a domestic tool used for making bread).
One interesting thing about a number of stories in the Bible is that God often gives his people victory by causing the wicked to turn against one another. For example, when Gideon fights against the Midianites in Judges 7, the Midianites get confused and turn their swords on one another. This is the point: evil ultimately self-destructs. This is one reason we should be confident even in the face of so much cultural upheaval in our day. It’s not just that stupidity doesn’t work. It’s that evil doesn’t work. Living contrary to the way God made the world, living contrary to God’s law, will always bring disaster and ruin — which means the righteous will always inherit what the wicked leave behind when they fall. In our own day, we are not seeing the wicked turn on one another just yet, but we are seeing hints of it. For example, look at what progressive student protestors have done with progressive-run universities; the “L” and “G” have turned against the “T” amongst the alphabet people; etc.
Here’s another way to put this: Progressives will not make very much progress. Progressivism is a dead end. Think about what Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:1-9. Paul describes what people will be like in the last days.e Paul lists a number of vices in verses 2-5, and a great many of them sound a lot like modern-day progressives – people who are lovers of self, lovers of money, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, lacking self-control, lovers of pleasure, etc. But note what he says in verse 9: “The will not make very much progress.” Or “they will not get very far.”
That’s the bottom line: progressives will not make very much progress. And that should be a hopeful sign for us. Progressivism is not sustainable. It cannot go on forever. Progressives are only making progress into greater and greater evil. As they increasingly lose touch with reality, their movement will self-destruct and come to a grinding halt. The only question is whether or not God’s people will be ready, with millstones in hand, to get to work at building something better when the progressive movement gets crushed.
I realize that most guys who talk about the rule of a ”strong man” today in Christian nationalist circles are not advocating for it, but rather pointing to its inevitability given the collapse of our constitutional order. But this is still a point worth making. (back)
Think of the French Revolution — I always feel sorry for those French kids who have to memorize that period of history because it’s such chaos, with a constant cycle of regime churn and change — until the anarchy finally gives way to the tyranny of Napoleon’s dictatorship –- a true “strong man” if there ever was one. (back)
The party/orgy is another sign of revolutionary decadence. (back)
an obvious allusion to Genesis 3:15, with the twist that it is the bride/mother who crushes the skull of the serpent in the garden this time; cf. Romans 16:20 (back)
Whether you take “last days” here to reference the whole inter-advental age, the last days of human history, or the last days of the covenant doesn’t much matter for my point. Paul is giving us a principle here that applies in many situations. (back)
I realize that most guys who talk about the rule of a ”strong man” today in Christian nationalist circles are not advocating for it, but rather pointing to its inevitability given the collapse of our constitutional order. But this is still a point worth making.
Think of the French Revolution — I always feel sorry for those French kids who have to memorize that period of history because it’s such chaos, with a constant cycle of regime churn and change — until the anarchy finally gives way to the tyranny of Napoleon’s dictatorship –- a true “strong man” if there ever was one.
The party/orgy is another sign of revolutionary decadence.
an obvious allusion to Genesis 3:15, with the twist that it is the bride/mother who crushes the skull of the serpent in the garden this time; cf. Romans 16:20
Whether you take “last days” here to reference the whole inter-advental age, the last days of human history, or the last days of the covenant doesn’t much matter for my point. Paul is giving us a principle here that applies in many situations.
Anger characterizes our present culture. We live in a victimized, aggrieved, and, therefore, angry society. Anger is always simmering beneath the surface and frequently erupts. We will see more volcanic activity as campaigns ramp up and elections draw near. Battle lines are drawn. People will yell and scream at one another in person and online.
Our capitalist culture has learned to monetize anger. Anger is good business for social media influencers, whether non-Christian or Christian. Rage bait receives clicks; clicks are traffic, and traffic means money and fame. Anger is big business.
The broader challenge of interpreting 1 Corinthians stems from the fact that Paul sorts out a seemingly unending list of problems and we are privileged to hear (read) only one side of the conversation. Paul’s First letter (as we know it) may very well be a second or third letter, and we know from 7:1 that the Corinthian church had written to Paul, asking a series of questions. These other letters are now lost, and what remains for the church is 1 & 2 Corinthians. To make matters more interesting, the Greek language doesn’t use punctuation marks, so we have no quotation marks to rely on, nor do we have question marks to tip us off. Because of these hermeneutical hindrances, interpreters need to make sure that they are reading things in context, and this includes picking up on some of Paul’s linguistical ‘cues’ that are sprinkled throughout the text. We are not in a position to draw unassailable conclusions solely based on what a Greek word may or may not have meant. Sound interpretation requires contextual considerations, both in the immediate context and in the larger context of a particular epistle. While knowing some of the cultural background can be invaluable for doing exegesis, this, too, isn’t always a foolproof process. There are a lot of opinions regarding the cultural background of this particular passage, and it can be helpful to trace what may or may not have been the case regarding head coverings in the Roman city of Corinth. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, we need to be able to do the exegetical work necessary to reach our conclusions—cultural ideas notwithstanding.
My goal in this article is straightforward: to provide an exegetical interpretation of the text that (1) Consistently makes sense of all aspects of the passage; (2) Resolves any potential contradictions in the passage; and (3) Provides a healthy framework for interpretation that will hopefully alleviate besieged consciences that are struggling with whether or not to wear a head covering. Because there has been a recent uptick in advocacy for head coverings from various social-influencing pastors[1] who are (rightly) frustrated with feminism, I found it important to answer these questions by giving a biblical defense for abstaining from head coverings. Many pastors have seen first-hand the divisive nature of head coverings in a congregation, and because our culture continues to reject God’s ordering of the sexes, the allure of covering a wife’s head in response has become an increasingly exciting option for those wishing to establish patriarchalism in the home and church. I have no doubt that there are many men and women who read this passage and think to themselves, Why haven’t we been obeying this? Obedience to Scripture will always be, indeed it should always be, a motivating factor in the life of the Christian.
However, to suggest that the passage is ‘obviously pro-head covering’ is dishonest. It may be obvious to you because your righteous anger at our culture overfloweth and you’re looking for a fight. Furthermore, to suggest that ‘all of human history did this’ and ‘basically every theologian taught that a woman should cover her head’ is equally dishonest. Were head coverings argued for in the early church? During the Reformation? Yes. Still, there were others in the early church and during the Reformation who suggested otherwise. My point is this: there is no uniform position of adherence to head coverings throughout church history. An appeal to history just doesn’t work.
Many of us Gen Xers, Boomers, and Silents are staggered by the rapid descent of our society into sexual insanity. Sexual perversions have been present in all our generations. Quite frankly, older generations bear a great deal of responsibility for the present lunacy, but the rapidity of the Romans 1 sexual death spiral is bewildering. Identifying LGBTQ+ has become almost fashionable. According to a recent Gallup survey, LGBTQ+ identification in the U.S. is now at 7.6% of the population. One out of every five Gen Z (1997-2012) adults say they identify as LGBTQ+. In the past twelve years, the percentage of people identifying this way has doubled, with women outpacing men by two-to-one.
The problem is only in the sexual alphabet soup. Heterosexual sin remains a problem. One pornography site dwarfs visits to Amazon by seven hundred million more visits. When you throw in the sexually explicit content on social media, the numbers are staggering.
The Church has traditionally and historically confessed three purposes or functions for marriage. The WCF, for example, says: “Marriage was ordained for the mutual help of husband and wife, for the increase of mankind with legitimate issue, and of the church with an holy seed; and for preventing of uncleanness” (24.2). We might summarize these three purposes as: procreation, protection, and pleasure, and I want to use these three as an outline for my remarks this afternoon.
Sometimes in God’s providence a couple will be unable to bear children. This may be due to age or physical disability or infertility or similar factors, but it should not ever be simply because the man and woman do not wish to be bothered. Children are a bother, but they are also an heritage of the Lord, a gift of God. The fact that this gift is sometimes inconvenient does not change its fundamental nature. God’s gifts sometimes don’t sleep well at night. They fuss when they are teething. They test the limits of mom and dad’s patience. In fact, God gives us children as a means of sanctification rather than simply for multiplication. When the Lord gives you a gift, you are supposed to say, “Thank you.” You should never say, “No, thank you” or “please give it to someone else.”
God created marriage, in part, so that human beings would have babies. But this was not only so that the human race would continue. God does not mean for us to bear vipers in diapers—he wants a godly seed. That means you must bring your children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Better never to have children than to neglect their spiritual formation. You are not merely raising future citizens. You are raising your own brothers and sisters in Christ. You will spend eternity with these little people, and they will not be little anymore. They will be glorious and glorified worshipers, so love them and lead as those who understand what God is making of them one day.
We are not only formalizing a marriage today; God is creating a new household. Aiden and Rachel, you are no longer independent people. You are becoming one flesh, and that unity is not for yourselves; it is for the glory of God, the growth of the kingdom of Christ, and the fulfillment of God’s eternal purpose to redeem and save the world. God will give you children as a gift of his grace, so be thankful for them when they come, and use those gifts well.
Marriage is also for the protection of the man and the woman. The Devil has many tools and enticements with which to lure and subdue the servants of Christ. Sometimes he even manages to use our own marriages against us. But marriage is not meant as a snare; it is more like a mine detector that helps us identify, avoid, and defuse threats along the way. You are to study each other, learn each other, and know each other so deeply and so well that you can sympathize when the other needs sympathy and refuse sympathy when the other needs to toughen up and be strong.
It was not good for man to be alone in the garden. Adam’s singleness was the first thing in all of creation that God said was not good. He needed a helper, someone to walk and work alongside of him, to help him fulfill his mission and ministry. The first world fell into sin and condemnation because Adam and Eve neglected this basic reason for their existence and relationship. Adam did not protect Eve when she was seduced by the serpent, and Eve did not help Adam when she gave him the forbidden fruit and led him to disobey God, even though he knew it was wrong. Both of them neglected their God-given responsibilities, and here we are, making marriages in Wray, CO rather than in the Garden of Eden.
Most people understand how a wife is able to protect her husband from the sexual temptation that is ubiquitous in this world. Aiden, there is nothing that a strange woman —whether in the workplace, on the roadside, or on a computer screen—has to offer in comparison to the delight and satisfaction that a godly wife can offer in your own bed. But you must protect her as well, not only from sexual impurity—though that too—but also from the more common dangers that surround women: the temptation to be vain or to measure her worth by her physical appearance, the appearance of her home, or worldly metrics. She may be threatened by sadness, discouragement, or the lies that the world whispers in her ear rather than the truth and promises God speaks to her heart. Rachel, you must keep Aiden strong and focused so that he can build the kingdom and battle the dragon every day, and Aiden you must keep Rachel happy and content in the way that you love her, praise her, and cleanse her daily with the water of the truth, God’s word.
Finally, marriage is for pleasure, the “mutual help” of the husband and wife. Being married is not always fun, but it can be and, most of the time, it should be. If you are not ever having fun, then something is wrong; you are doing it wrong. God did not bring you together to share misery; he gave you each other to create memories, share happiness, and help one another on the road to glory.
You may not always feel happy. There will be many things that are hard and heart- breaking in the days and years ahead. But you can choose to Rejoice in the Lord, always, and you should. You must. It is your God-given responsibility. The Lord does not ask you to rejoice in the bills, the baby’s colic, the boss’s godlessness, or the bumps and bruises in your own relationship. He commands you to rejoice in Christ, and to do so every day. Who God is, what Christ has done, and what he has promised to those who love him: these truths never change. They are objective, and they form the basis of our joy and hope. You must learn to look beyond the moment, to revel in transcendent joy. The house may burn down, the baby may be hospitalized, and our bank account may be empty, but Jesus died for us and rose again. Therefore we are loved and accepted by God, and the sufferings of this present time are not even worthy of comparison with the glory that awaits.
Aiden and Rachel, we have enough Christians who walk around looking like they were weaned on a dill pickle. We don’t need any more of that. God is calling you to joy today in your life together, just as he is calling you to eternal joy in union with his Son. Our lives are but a vapor, and your marriage may last seven days or seventy-five years, so make the most of it. Do not waste a moment being bitter, resentful, or ungrateful. Many enjoy joking about how miserable their marriage is. Let them be miserable, and heap coals of fire on their heads by being unashamed and unreserved in letting others see how much you enjoy one another. Your brethren should see you smile at one another across the room on Sundays, your neighbors should see you holding hands when you walk around the block, and your children should see you kissing in the kitchen… a lot. Marriage is a gift from God, and it is not wrong to enjoy God’s good gifts. In fact, it would be wrong, and I mean sinful, not to. So have fun, give thanks, and encourage each other, even when you have to do so through tears.
Aiden and Rachel, we love you and thank God for you. We thank God for his grace and mercy in your lives. We thank him for the kind of people you already are, and we are thankful for the kind of people we expect you will continue to become. We thank God for your relationship, and we look forward to seeing its fruitfulness in the years and decades to come. May the Lord richly bless you and continue to bless all of us through you. May your marriage glorify God and be faithful and fruitful in all the purposes for which he has established it: for procreation, protection, and pleasure, now and forever. Amen.
As summer heats upon us, many will be vacationing all over the country and the world. As a pastor, I have noticed that church members generally don’t think much about the role the summer season has on their lives as parishioners.
I am particularly troubled by Christians who treat vacation as a break from work and Church. To some, if vacation involves a Sunday, so be it. It becomes the ideal day to travel to your favorite summer destination. After all, you are not missing work; you are only missing Church.
Hebrews does not treat this subject lightly. The author forbids the non-assembling of ourselves. The Apostle treats forsaking the assembly as a kind of mini-schism. Hebrews calls us not to forsake the gathering, which is simply a re-affirmation of the motif explored all throughout the Old Testament Scriptures.
The angels and archangels engage in heavenly worship day and night, and we are invited to join in this duty of worship each time we are gathered together on the Lord’s Day. After all, God has made us one.
Vacation is no substitute for worship. Missing the Lord’s Day gathering on vacation for any trivial reason is to mock the veil-tearing, which gave us access to the heavenly throne of grace. It belittles the work of Christ, who conquered our divisions and united us to Himself.
Have you ever known an obsessive person? He is preoccupied, possessed, driven, and singularly focused on accomplishing an objective. Nothing else matters. His mind is consumed with thoughts about the task. His time, energy, and resources are used for the mission. He lives life with blinders on.
“Obsession” comes with a great amount of negative baggage in our parlance. The obsessive person has unhealthy fixations that cause him to lose broader perspectives. While obsessions can be taken to unhealthy extremes, “obsession” is close to what Paul commands the Colossian Christians to do when he tells them to “seek” and “set their minds” on things above (Col 3:1-2).
Open the Bible and you will see prophets calling both king and priest to faithfulness to God. In David’s Palace, the prophet Nathan stands with his finger pointed, crying out “you are the man.” As Jeroboam approaches his idolatrous altar to make sacrifices to an idol, a man from Judah marches up to that place of idolatry and calls down the judgment of God on him. Amos, that rough and tumble farmer from Tekoa, cries out for the northern kingdom to return to the Lord. John the Baptist is beheaded for challenging Herod on his adulteries. The Apostle Paul goes right for the center of power as he is hauled off in chains to Rome, where Christian tradition claims that he died for his Lord.
In his commentary on I & II Kings, Peter Leithart writes (p. 97): “Prophets break into and out of the normal ‘chronicled’ history, the usual progression of kings and successors, as Yahweh slices across the grain of history with his prophetic word.”
In revolutionary times, pastors must never underestimate the power of the Word preached faithfully, in the power of the Spirit and pointed at the glory and majesty and mercy of Christ.
But there are a number of ways to empty the preaching of its power. There are a number of ways that this can be done in our time.
First, the preaching of the Word can be emptied of its power by becoming a fun little TedTalk, with all the right hand gestures and voice inflection. Not that these things don’t matter (it is said that Isaiah was silver-tongued), but is a man with great rhetorical ability drawing the attention to Christ, is he faithfully dividing the Word of Truth, or is he building a ministry on a persona?
Second, the preaching of the Word can be overpowered by the beauty of the liturgy, the presence of the sacraments, the glory of song. Word and sacrament come together. Apart from the Word, the sacrament is an empty symbol, and the sacrament is the visible sign & seal of an invisible grace that the Lord uses to confirm the Word. The song is a means of employing the Word to praise God, but it is not the teaching and application of the Word. The liturgy plays a role in effectively teaching the patterns of Biblical repentance and grace and thankfulness, but again, the prophetic Word is the centerpiece that humbles the pride of man and raises him up again to serve the Lord with a thankful heart.
Third, the preaching of the Word can get lost in the pathways of a mad pursuit for political power. Rather than allowing God through His Word to do the great work of humbling the pride of kings & popes as Luther did when he was drinking beer with his friends in Wittenburg, there is a temptation for pastors to drift from their mission and seize earthly power through unlawful means that are outside their calling. A pastor is lawfully given the task to preach the Word (also to teach that Word from home to home), to administer the sacraments and church discipline under the authority of a session of elders. This does not mean that there is no place for Christians to acquire political power, but that is not the duty of the minister of the Word and sacrament. He is not called to administer God’s wrath by the power of the sword as the civil magistrate is called to do (Romans 13).
The modern Christian, and especially the modern Christian pastor, must see then the unequivocal power of the Word. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:3–6: “For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete.” If it is a revolutionary aim, then it is only revolutionary in the sense that kings are established in their rule when they bow the knee to the true sovereign over the whole universe, which is Jesus Christ, the King of kings and the Lord of lords. And the way that we effect this as the pastors of the Christian Church is through the bold preaching of the holy gospel and by not backing down from that high calling and task when the state threatens to disband the gathering through lockdowns or locking up a pastor in prison.
The duty of the pastor then is to bind Himself to the Word and let the Word bind his speech, his actions, everything. It is in this manner that he becomes an example to kings of the great power of the Word to transform nations by transforming individual men and their families by the power of the gospel. The minister who places himself so firmly under the Word of Christ, will be an example to his flock and to the gathered church across the nation of what fidelity to Christ looks like, imitating Christ as Christ was exalted through humiliation.
In this we ought to become an example to the kings of the earth. Every godly king to must go through a humiliation, whether that be David in the caves, King Alfred in the forests of Britain, or all the kings of both the Old Testament and New Testament times who were humbled through Christian repentance and a turning to the Lord in faith.
But remember the ministers of the gospel will break. They go into stages of depression. They are on the run. They are killed and sawn in two and live in the dens and caves of the earth from time to time. But it is when the ministers of the gospel break, that the light of Christ shines out through the cracks of earthen vessels (II Cor. 4). It is the breaking of the ministers of the gospel that God has ordained as the means by which His Word will break the pride of men. Just as Gideon’s armies moved to victory when their earthen vessels were broken open, so the armies of the Lord come to victory when pastors are “are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;” (II Cor. 4:8-9)
The Word of God is the hammer that will break the pride of men and pound out Christian men into sharp pointed weapons who are able to be more and more effective with the Word in the business sphere, in the workplace, in their homes, in the town hall meeting, equiped to love and serve their communities in truth. The pastor is the vessel that the Lord raises up to bring that Word into collision with the pride of nations. This is why Paul is so concerned that Timothy be a faithful expositor of the Scriptures. Timothy and Paul are both men under orders: farmers who patiently sow seed, athletes who obey the rules, soldiers who faithfully listen and obey the commands of their Lord & Master Jesus Christ. If we would see revival & reformation sweep our land then we must see the Holy Bible faithfully opened and applied across our nation again. We must see pastors willing to take a hit and broken open, rather than deny their Lord and Master who is the sole Head of the Church. We must grow pastors who relentlessly believe that the Word is above all earthly powers and show that they believe by obeying its commands of Christ even to the point of martyrdom.
This is the prophetic Word that slices through the grain of history. As Peter writes to the Christians in exile: “…since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God, for ‘All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.’ And this word is the good news that was preached to you.” (I Peter 1:23-25).
This is the Word above all earthly powers. God has invested it with the power to regenerate wicked kings, homeless men & women, and sanctimonious Christians who have a veneer of holiness but are full of dead mens bones.
So submit to it, study it, search it, love it. And preach it.
Note: this has also been posted over on Susbtack here.
In an historic ruling on June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the rulings of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. America has lived for 49 years under the tyrannical bloodshed of Roe but God sent a Jubilee release for us and our children. We must not let that great answer to prayers go unnoticed. Pro-Life wins. This is the month to mark and remember God’s goodness to us.
June is strategic ground to claim
The rainbow mafia has been trying to claim June for a long time. They have many corporations behind them shoving their agenda in everyone’s face. But the Dobbs ruling in June gives a legitimate and prominent way to push back. We should not let this opportunity go to waste to claim June as a celebration of life, God’s goodness to his people, God’s ordinance of marriage, and so much more. Claim June as Pro-Life Month.
Being Pro-Life cuts to the heart of the Godless agenda
Celebrating Pro-Life month is a great way to cut to the center issue of our time. The godless world is trying to claim that the autonomous self is god. They want their lusts and desires to reign supreme. They are trying to reject the way God made the world: sexuality, gender, when life begins, the nature of being male and female, God’s design for marriage. It is all connected and the godless hate it. The Dobbs ruling is a reality check on their bloodlust. God is God and you are not. Celebrate June as Pro-Life month.
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’Abraham Kuyper
