Lord of Hosts
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Blood Cries, “Binary!”
Each cell in every boy declares his masculinity, “I am male!” And each cell in every girl of her femininity, “I am woman!” And no amount of medical mutilation and diplomatic manipulation from without can muffle these voices within our society’s collective conscience while our children’s blood always will be crying out about our mutually inherent and lovely differentiated binary sexual biology.
On the April 15 airing of SNL’s “Weekend Update,” the show’s first openly nonbinary cast member, Ms. Molly Kearney, though still using her singular female name yet celebrated being referred to by obliging backstage staff with the neuter pronouns “they” and “them” (reflecting “their” references to her elsewhere).[1] In so doing she not only defies her God-given and biologically determined female identity but also denies the obvious reality that she is not plural—exposing the arbitrarily ludicrous LGBTQ+ agenda being pushed to new schizophrenic heights.
While there is no mistaking Kearney’s unoriginal attempts at being the female version of Chris Farley in the segment, there also is no missing her intention to exit with the air of angelic authority being lifted up with ropes as she declared,
If you don’t care about trans-kids’ lives, it means you don’t care about…kids’ lives.
… They got my pronouns right [nonbinary “them” instead of “her”]! Let’s go!
What’s happening kids is wrong and you don’t need to be scared. Our job is to protect you and your job is to focus on being a kid…There’s a bunch of dudes asking you about your crotch and controlling when and where you’re allowed to pee. But if you just hang on you’ll look up and realize, you’re flying kid!
Trans rocks!
First of all, let’s hope parents in fact care enough about their precious boys and girls to guard their vulnerable worlds from being rocked by viewing SNL, let alone not to permit them to be confused and brainwashed into risking psychological harm and physical abuse in bathrooms and locker rooms or mutilation on operating floors.
The damage could go beyond corporal and emotional repair (see firstthings.com/article/2004/11/surgical-sex and firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2022/07/mutilating-our-bodies). And the truth is that rather than seeking to protect children, societal predators like Ms. Kearney are grabbing at their underaged zippers and pulling them by their immature ears to turn our minors into suicide bombers of political warfare and cultural launchpads for rocketing queer careers.
My wife, who is very thankful to be liberated from what she laments as her native land’s more deeply and widely infested culture of sexual degradation and transgender disfigurement, recently shared an Instagram video with me of a Brazilian woman whom I would have otherwise never questioned to be a man by all outward appearances. I couldn’t help but admit it was impressive how much mankind, made in God’s image, can so convincingly disguise sexual identity with modern technology. A mastectomy and hormonal manipulation had flattened her chest; broadened her face, neck, torso, and appendages; grown dark bristly hair on her tattoo-graffitied arms and shoulders; deepened her voice; and even topped her off with a receding hairline. (My understanding is that other methods were used to demolish and erect new pretend anatomy underneath her unmentionables.) It was shocking to see pictures of her feminine beauty before her deformation; she had even been a professional model. (One wonders if she tired of being objectified in a fallen man’s world, especially in her country.)
But with all the rejections of binary biological classification, a person’s maleness or femaleness can never be modified inwardly. Crossdressing homosexuals and spayed and neutered transgendered folk will never be able to reproduce themselves other than by Pied Piper child trafficking that deceptively coerces adoption of their dogmatists while stealing away unadulterated childhoods.[2]
Not only does one’s soul truly know what his or her body and organs and hormones testify outwardly, a man or woman’s DNA cannot be denied by his or her heart of hearts. What may be manipulated crudely from without can never be actually altered within. Every one of our estimated 60 to 100 trillion cells (amidst 200 cell types) would need to have an X or Y chromosome replaced; yet this utter impossibility would still not recreate functional physiology opposite from how one was born.
Rev. Terry Johnson appeals to our reason:
Follow the science…The culture is willing to do anything but follow the science…how about the normalizing of transgenderism and that you can be a woman trapped in the body of a man and a man trapped in the body of a woman? What does the science tell ya? The science tells ya that every single cell in every single body is either male or female. Your genes are either male genes…or they’re female genes. The science would say you are in terms of gender what you are in biology and that’s all anybody in the human race in all of recorded history has ever understood until the recent, like five minutes ago…[3]
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The Expectation of a New Covenant Sabbath
Scripture indicates the Sabbath will be kept until the end of history. Isaiah 66:22-23, regarding the new heavens and earth, says, “For as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the LORD, so shall your offspring and your name remain. From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, declares the LORD.” This passage speaks of “all flesh,” a reference to all humans that includes the Gentiles (“all mankind,” NASB95). That the Sabbath continues in the new heavens and earth indicates the Sabbath did not end with resurrection of Christ.
The Fourth Commandment is of great controversy in the modern church. Many Christians today entirely ignore the Sabbath, and even many Reformed and Presbyterian ministers have moved far from a Sabbatarian position. Much has changed since early America, evidenced by the words of Conrad Speece (1776–1836), a Presbyterian pastor from Virginia, who said in an 1801 newspaper article, “Christians are generally agreed, in the belief of a divine warrant for the observation of the Christian sabbath.” Speece said this at a time when Christians in Virginia were a mix of Presbyterians, Anglicans, Methodists, and Baptists.
Yet it is ironic that the only one of the Ten Commandments debated as to whether it still applies today is the one explicitly rooted in the creation account—“Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God… For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day” (Exodus 20:9-11, ESV). Yet this rejection fits with the widespread cultural rejection of creational norms.
It should also not be missed that the only one of the Ten Commandments outright rejected by American Christians today is the one regulating time. American life has become so busy, sometimes with both parents working outside the home and children’s sports crowding evenings and weekends. (And don’t forget the NFL on Sundays.) Is it just coincidence that Christians now reject God’s demand to devote an entire day each week to worship? Yes, there are theological arguments put forth against the continuing practice of the Sabbath, as we will see. But it cannot be ignored that there is increasing cultural pressure to abandon the Sabbath.
Sadly, American Christians have abandoned their Sabbatarian heritage brought by the British to the various colonies, including the Puritans in New England and the Scots-Irish in the backcountry. Even Virginia, which disestablished the Church of England in 1786, enacted that same year “A Bill for Punishing Disturbers of Religious Worship and Sabbath Breakers”—a bill ironically drafted by the rationalist Thomas Jefferson. Yet the American church played a large part in abandoning Sabbath practice by (1) providing little resistant to the repeal of Sabbath (“blue”) laws, (2) providing little resistance to professional sports being played on Sunday, which began in the early 20th century, (3) and outright rejecting the existence of a Sabbath day (and thus embracing Sabbath-breaking).
What I want to do in this article is argue that the Bible expects Sabbath practice to continue in the new covenant. In a subsequent article, I will respond to objections to Christian Sabbatarianism, including the objection that there is no evidence the Sabbath day changed from Saturday to Sunday. To be clear, Christian Sabbatarianism generally consists of the following affirmations: (1) The Fourth Commandment has a moral component, not just a ceremonial one; (2) The day has been changed from the 7th to the 1st day of the week because of Christ’s resurrection; and (3) The day should be devoted to the worship of God, not employment or recreations.
The Expectation of a New Covenant Sabbath
While the Fourth Commandment is not restated in the New Testament, it is important to acknowledge that none of the first three commandments are explicitly restated in the New Testament (no other gods, no images, not taking God’s name in vain). Jesus and the apostles did not need to restate these commands relating to God’s worship because they obviously still applied to Christians. Often called the “first table” of the law, the New Testament assumes these four God-directed commandments still apply.
The Sabbath command broadly concerns the regulation of time, with the requirement that God’s people work and then devote one entire day to restful worship. On what basis could such a command not apply in the new covenant? Does God no longer regulate man’s calendar or time in creation? Thus, while there is room to debate the specific application of the Sabbath command in the new covenant, we are arguing that the Sabbath command must continue to apply to the Christian. The reasons are as follows.
First, the entire Ten Commandments are the foundation of God’s law, or what Reformed theologians historically have identified as the “moral law.” The Westminster Standards teach that “The moral law is the declaration of the will of God to mankind, directing and binding every one to personal, perfect, and perpetual conformity and obedience thereunto” (WLC 93). So the moral law applies to all men, and it is written on the heart of Christians (Jeremiah 31:33). And what is the content of this moral law? “The moral law is summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments” (WLC 98), which of course includes the Fourth Commandment. Hence the apostles can freely quote the Ten Commandments as binding on the church (e.g., Ephesians 6:1-3). While there were civil/judicial penalties in the Mosaic law for Sabbath-breaking, as well as ceremonial laws falling broadly under the Fourth Commandment (feast days and Sabbath years), the Sabbath command at its root is moral. The day has been changed to Sunday in the new covenant, but the specific day was ceremonial and could be changed, seen in that the Sabbath principle of six and one is upheld. Accordingly, God has established the Sabbath “in his Word, by a positive, moral, and perpetual commandment binding all men in all ages” (WCF 21.7).
Second, the weekly Sabbath command is rooted in creation (“For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth,” Exodus 20:11). What makes this relevant is that we still live in this created world. We live in the same world that Old Testament Israel did, and there is no basis for overturning such a creation principle. Nothing has changed in human nature that we no longer need weekly rest and worship. Our weekly schedule is regulated by God’s pattern set at creation (Genesis 1:1–2:3). Further evidence of such a creation order is that the Sabbath was practiced prior to the Mosaic covenant (Exodus 16).
Third, the weekly Sabbath is an important part of life as God’s redeemed. While the Sabbath was given for all mankind, the fall corrupted worship and Sabbath practice. But God restored Sabbath practice to its rightful place for His redeemed people. This is seen in that God delivered Israel out of oppressive slavery and into Sabbath rest, declared in the prologue to the Ten Commandments—“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:2). In fact, God’s redemption from slavery is given as the basis for the Sabbath in the restatement of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy 5:15— “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.” Such weekly holy rest was a blessing as Israel anticipated eschatological (i.e., final) Sabbath in Christ (Hebrews 3–4). We still await the ultimate fulfillment of this rest in Christ’s return, so we still practice the weekly Sabbath as a foretaste of what is to come. Accordingly, if the Sabbath command no longer applies, then the new covenant is worse than the old covenant, not better (Hebrews 7:22). If the Sabbath command has been entirely abrogated, then Christians are no longer given a day each week devoted to God’s worship for their spiritual benefit. The Sabbath is for our good—we may not feel like spending the entire day in worship, but we need to spend the entire day in worship. So God calls us to set the day apart.
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Pastor, You Don’t Have A Job
Written by T. M. Suffield |
Saturday, September 16, 2023
If you spend your days in prayer, in the Bible, walking the hills, visiting the sick, dreaming about the future, and gazing on Jesus’ face? That is ministry. If you then spend the occasional day and your evenings and weekends weeping with those who weep, rejoicing with those who rejoice, enjoying life around the table with friends, and releasing others to do what Jesus did? That too is ministry.Pastors hate being told that don’t have a real job—the old joke being that you only have to work one day a week. The thing is, it’s more true than you think.
I’ve been an elder in a couple of churches for around ten years now. Which makes me pretty green in the pastoral stakes, but not completely new to the game. I’ve not been a salaried elder in that time, though my ecclesiology makes me just as much a ‘Pastor’ or ‘ordained’ as those that have been. For ease in this post though I’ve used ‘pastor’ to distinguish those elders that are paid by their churches.
Churches have to follow all the same employment law as anyone else. Your trustees, or however that works in your setting, will have to ensure they are following the law. Someone has to sort payroll, make sure employment rights aren’t breached and all those things. That’s important, because it’s the law. I also think churches should be the very best employers around, following kingdom employment values rather the World’s. Your encouragement to your people to start businesses and employ people well will fall very flat if the church is a terrible employer.
But, in the midst of all that, I think it’s important that whatever the technical legal situation might be, no one thinks the Pastor or Pastors have jobs. Or salaries for that matter.
It is, I would contend, better to think in terms of stipends to cover the costs of living—which means whatever it costs to live in the area your church needs your pastor to live. It may be more than the median income if you expect him to have a slightly larger house so he can host large groups and meetings there, which is something you’d often expect him to be doing.
There’s not a legal difference here, by the way, not least in the UK anyway. You pay the same tax on a stipend to a salary, but I’m talking about the way that changing terms can (slowly) change thinking.
As a small detour, there is an argument in here for paying all of your staff the same amount. Becoming a Pastor from some other church role isn’t career advancement, it’s a release to follow the call of God on your life. Pay them all what’s needed to live, perhaps plus a housing allowance or similar for those who you require certain things of, and let them get on with releasing the people into ministry.
Not doing ministry, but that’s another story.
Why is this helpful? Because if you think you have a job you tend to think about contracted hours and about productivity.
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