2 Things We Must Do Because the Bible Calls us Sheep
We are sheep and Satan wants to destroy us, so we are wise to be shepherded by godly leaders who care for our souls (Peter’s emphasis in the first five verses of 1 Peter chapter 5). We are wise to be in community. The posture of “I will love Jesus but not the church” is absent in Scripture. We need community because of the suffering in this world and because of Satan’s prowling. We need encouragement, prayer, support, and love from the community of faith.
Our dog Roscoe sometimes wanders away from home, but thankfully he is smart enough to come back home or even smarter to go to Brian and Marianna’s home – friends of ours who live on the next street. Roscoe likely prefers their home to ours because when they watch him for sometimes, they feed him bison as opposed to the boring dog food we feed him. Dogs are smart. When we compare ourselves to animals, we sometimes compare ourselves to dogs because we like to think of ourselves as smart. More than a dozen division one universities have bulldogs as their mascots. We even call ourselves dogs (What’s up dawg? Where my dawgs at?) We don’t affectionally call each other sheep and there are no universities with the fighting sheep as their mascot. Yet the Bible compares us to sheep. The Bible calls us sheep not to devalue us, but to remind us that we cannot get back home on our own. We need Jesus, the Chief Shepherd, to bring us back to the Father.
As the apostle Peter closes his first letter, he reminds us that we are sheep in the flock of God. And because we are sheep we should resist the devil and run to being shepherded, in being cared for in community. While the Scripture encourages us to resist Satan and run to being shepherded, in our foolishness we are prone to the opposite – to resist shepherding and run to evil.
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Tucker Carlson Calls Out the ‘Professional Christians’
Tragically, Moore, French, Moore, and Keller are far from alone. As I’ve noted multiple times in the past several years, whether “professional Christians,” “Christian celebrities,” pastors and priests, Tucker Carlson, or everyday Christians, for far too long, far too many Christians have sat on the sidelines when it comes to the grave moral issues that demand our attention. Thus, in a matter of just a few short years, we went from a near nationwide rejection of same-sex “marriage” to a widespread — and now often legally enforced — embrace of it.
In one of his monologues last week, Tucker Carlson called Merrick Garland “the weakest attorney general” in American history. Tucker added, “Merrick Garland has presided over the most aggressive attack on civil liberties, in particular, an attack on the practice of traditional Christianity, than any living American has seen.”
Tucker’s comments came on the heels of Garland’s recent testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. During the testimony, GOP senators Mike Lee and Josh Hawley confronted the attorney general on the Biden Justice Department’s heavy-handed and disproportionate attacks on American Christians, especially noting the attacks against Christians who protest abortion centers.
The senators highlighted the FBI’s shocking raid of Mark Houck’s home, where 20 to 30 agents with “full SWAT gear, heavily armored vests, ballistic shields, helmets, [and] battering ram” terrorized Mr. Houck, his wife, and their seven children simply because Mr. Houck shoved a pro-abortion extremist who was harassing his 12-year-old son.
Tucker also noted the incident involving Paul Vaughn, a pro-life father of eleven children:
In March of 2021, Paul Vaughn and 10 others were peacefully praying at an abortion clinic in Tennessee. They didn’t damage any property. They hurt no one. More than a year after they dared to do that, to pray, Merrick Garland sent the FBI to terrorize Vaughn and his 11 children at their home…
Paul Vaughn and his co-conspirators now face more than a decade in prison.
After highlighting these gross injustices against American Christians, Tucker makes what I believe is his most important point:
You have to wonder when you see a tape like that, where are so-called Christian leaders? Where’s Russell Moore and all the other breast-beating Christians as that happens, as the U.S. government cracks down on Christianity, on prayer? Silent.
The “People’s Republic of Canada” has been even more hostile to Christians. Things have gotten so bad for Christians in Canada, that in February of last year Senator Hawley reiterated his call for Canada to be placed on a special watch list of religious liberty violators. Hawley’s statements were mostly due to Canada’s then ongoing treatment of Pastor Artur Pawlowski.
A day after Fox News reported on Senator Hawley’s call, in a piece entitled “Free speech and the Bible on global trial,” the Washington Times reported,
Canada’s recently unanimously passed law, C-4, prevents its citizens from spreading Biblical views on marriage and sexuality. Canadian parents, faith leaders, and citizens who hold traditional views of marriage and sexuality will now face up to 5 years of jail time for providing spiritual guidance to those seeking counseling.
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Pride Month & the Lost 2nd Use of the Law
As the culture celebrates that which should be suppressed, and kids are encouraged to explore hints of desires that were once easily corrected through both social stigma and proper understanding of desire as it relates to sexuality, we can expect more people to identify as other than “straight”+ their biological gender. In the end, it’s a disordering of the order of creation, a destruction of society, and an attempt to dethrone God.
Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.—Romans 1:32
“George, what are you afraid of if Gay Marriage is legalized? Its not like people will become gay. People don’t choose to be gay.” That was an oft-repeated point in the time leading up to the Obergefell decision. In the years since, we have seen homosexuality go from merely tolerated to Gay Marriage being legalized, corporations tripping over themselves to cash-in, school books celebrating it and kids encouraged to explore it, dragshows for children, and now the Presidential Declaration that June is Pride month.
In the midst of all of this, I have heard repeated concerns from parents with stories of gender and sexual confusion running rampant in their children’s middle schools. One friend in North Carolina told me that in the public school where his daughter goes that 50% of the girls identify as other than straight-female. A friend in Florida laments how all the middle school girls have girlfriends. One man in a Christian Facebook group asked for prayer because his daughter who is struggling to make friends came home and told him that she is bisexual because a popular girl in her class came up and spoke to her and she became flush. Naturally, this to her meant she must be gay, because that’s what she’s hearing in school. It can’t be that she was just glad to be noticed.
Are these stories just anecdotal? Or is something going on? And why is this phenomenon heavily weighted toward adolescent girls? Abigail Shrier, who is not a Christian, explored an aspect of this in her 2020 book entitled Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze that is Seducing Our Daughters. Her observations are heartbreaking, the statistics are telling, and what is happening is nothing short of child abuse.
And while 50% may be difficult to believe, the statistics do bear out a huge increase in youth identifying as something other than heterosexual + their biological gender. In reporting on this phenomenon, US News cited a study showing that 17.8% of girls between ages 15-17 identify as other than heterosexual. Nearly 18%! This compared to a much lower 6% for boys. When both genders are taken together, that is an overall 41% increase in just 5 years! A Christianity Today piece cites a recent Barna Study that shows that “Teenagers in Gen Z are at least TWICE as likely as American adults to identify as LGBT.” That’s a 100% increase between current teenagers and adults.
It is common for social scientists to explain this phenomenon in this way:
…we cannot be certain if this represents a true increase of this magnitude, or if it reflects at least in part, greater comfort by teens with acknowledging a non-heterosexual identity on an anonymous questionnaire…—Dr. Andrew Adesman
It is reasonable that this explains some of the increase, but 41% over 5 years, and 100% increase over adults? Not likely.
What’s this have to do with the Moral Law?
This is where Calvin’s Institutes, Book II helps us out. Calvin explains that while Christians are saved by Grace through faith there is still validity to the Moral Law of God. In that, he gives his “3 uses of the law”:It is a Mirror – It shows us that we don’t live up to God’s standard.
It Restrains Evil in Society – Civil Law is modeled after the moral law.
It shows us what is pleasing to God and encourages us to walk in that manner by the Power of the Holy Spirit.While there has been much controversy over the 3rd use of the Law being abandoned among Christians, we are seeing the same happen with the 2nd use of the Law. This has even occurred among Christians who have bought into the lie that gay marriage should be allowed because we aren’t a Christian nation. We are supposed to after-all have a separation between the Church and State, so the argument goes.
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“The Shadowy Nature of Theonomy”? A Reply to Batzig
The term theonomy implies nothing more than the application of God’s Law to all of life. It is true that the sundry laws of the Old Testament expired with the state of that people, but the Westminster Confession of Faith clearly teaches that the general equity of the Old Testament law did not expire with the state of Old Testament Israel. This general equity is normative and regulative not only for the church today, but also for the civil magistrate since he is a minister of the same God as the God who rules the church.
In the recent article, The Shadowy Nature of Theonomy (Nov. 22, 2022), Nicolas T. Batzig takes to task that grand old nemesis of post-modern and Reformed churchmen: Theonomy. He draws the conclusion that the judicial laws of the Old Testament are ecclesiocentric rather than theocentric, i.e., that the judicial laws of the Old Covenant are fulfilled in the New Testament Church alone. As a shadow of the future, their application was limited to the church only. The earthy Old Testament laws are spiritualized and solitarily find their home in the ecclesia. This thinking fits well with the radical two-kingdom theology prevalent at Westminster Seminary in California. The assertion is that these Old Testament laws have nothing to do with the realm of the modern civil magistrate today; the church is spiritual and she only becomes soiled when dealing with politics.
However, God’s Kingdom not only includes the church, but also extends beyond the church. The God of the Bible is sovereign and the center of the universe. All of life (including the civil magistrate) is under him and his law, thus the term theocentric.
I know Mr. Batzig’s arguments well since I was once in his camp. I studied at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia (when there was only one) during the late 1960’s and the early 1970’s. I came out of Seminary teaching Mr. Batzig’s views to the churches where I pastored.
Eventually, I concluded that Christ Kingship extends beyond the church into all areas of life. If Christ is not King over all, then he is not King at all. I became a student of Rushdoony, North, Bahnsen, Gentry, and DeMar. I was delivered from my “dogmatic slumber.”
The term theonomy implies nothing more than the application of God’s Law to all of life. It is true that the sundry laws of the Old Testament expired with the state of that people, but the Westminster Confession of Faith clearly teaches that the general equity of the Old Testament law did not expire with the state of Old Testament Israel. This general equity is normative and regulative not only for the church today, but also for the civil magistrate since he is a minister of the same God as the God who rules the church (Rom. 13:4).
Because of this silence of the church, many Christians today are struggling to find a way to push back against what they see as the deterioration of America. Hence, the rise of the conversation about Christian Nationalism. The modern church and her ecclesiocentricity has left a vacuum, and many Christians are looking for something to fill that vacuum. I have spoken against the use of the term Christian Nationalism (see my article on Christian Nationalism – Dump the Term While We Still Can), but I have also spoken for the concept of Christendom and the concept of a Christian Nation (e.g., here, here and here).
The Apostle Paul was an apostle to the church and not to the Empire of Rome. The early church was a persecuted church in embryonic form, and Paul did apply the Old Testament laws to the church (like not muzzling the ox, excommunication, and the necessity of two or three witnesses), and rightly so.
However, just because Paul limited their application to the church in her nascent form does not negate their regulatory purpose in the world outside of the church at other periods in history. The same general equity of these laws also applies to every other institution of life, especially the civil government. The experience of the New Testament church with the civil magistrate is not normative for all ages. Paul’s teaching in Romans 13 is the standard! The civil magistrate is to promote good and mitigate evil. The definition of good and evil is found only in the Bible, and the general equity of the Old Testament judicial laws have much to add to our knowledge of good and evil.
For example, in the Old Testament there was a law that demanded a parapet be put around the roof of a house. There was also a law that a kid shall not be boiled in its mother’s milk. In specificity, these laws are irrelevant to our society today, except where the general equity does apply. The law requiring parapets teaches us to love our neighbors by taking every precaution to preserve their life. My neighbor has a fence around her swimming pool. The boiling-milk law teaches us that mothers are to give life to their children and not death.
Christ told us that when we pray, we should ask that his Kingdom come. His Kingdom is clearly seen by God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven. We do not pray that his will be done only in the church today, but rather on the whole earth in every part of life. The Lord’s Prayer is not ecclesiocentric. It is theocentric.
The consequences of ecclesiocentricity have been devastating for our nation and will likely bring a curse upon our children and grandchildren. This is not mere academics, but real life in a real world. Ideas have consequences. When Christians stopped believing in a theocentric world where God’s law reigns supreme in all areas of life, we, de facto, delivered the realm of the civil magistrate (and all other institutions) over to the religion of Neo-Marxism. Our silence to speak to the issues of our society helped create the lawless world in which we live today. Unlike John the Baptist, we failed to confront the king with the law of God. We neglected our duty as prophets.
America has been de-Christianized over the last 50-70 years, and consequently abortion and homosexual marriage are now legal. Men dress like women and dance before our youth. Young children are being groomed into changing their gender by surgical mutilation. Laws (e.g., the Respect for Marriage Act) are presently being promoted to silence all opposition coming from Christians in the public square. This is because what our enemy desires in the end is not toleration but domination.
We are in a war, and ecclesiocentricity is no option for Christians.
Larry E. Ball is a retired minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is now a CPA. He lives in Kingsport, Tenn.
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