The month of June has been usurped by the “father of lies,” (John 8: 44) who “deceives the whole world,” (Revelation 12: 9), and who disguises himself as “an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11: 14).  In other words, many churches and our nation have readily turned over an entire month to serious evil—serious, yet so deceptive that it is embraced by so many, even believers in Jesus Christ.

June, which some have designated as “Gay Pride Month,” is not the time for church leaders to be silent.  It’s the most appropriate, opportune, pertinent, and relevant time to address the heavy spiritual darkness hanging over the Church and our nation.
Pastors and elders, follow the model of the Apostles who addressed serious issues as they arose.  Remember the Jerusalem Council in Acts.  Remember the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans—especially chapter one, his letter to the Corinthians dealing with incest in the church, and Jude’s short epistle dealing with the sin and doom of ungodly people.
The month of June has been usurped by the “father of lies” (John 8: 44); who “deceives the whole world” (Revelation 12: 9), and who disguises himself as “an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11: 14).  In other words, many churches and our nation have readily turned over an entire month to serious evil—serious, yet so deceptive that it is embraced by so many, even believers in Jesus Christ.
Pastors and elders, this is not the time to ignore such evil, to be cowardly in the face of such evil, or to be compromised by such evil.  Your flocks, your sheep desperately need your faithfulness to God’s Word in exposing evil for what it is. See Ephesians 5:11-12: 1:
“Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather even reprove them; for the things which are done by them in secret it is a shame even to speak of” (ASV).
“Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.  For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret” (ESV).
“Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.  It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret” (NIV).
The your sheep are inundated with deceptive messages deviously proclaiming sexual immorality and more as blessed, good, loving, righteous, wholesome and legal.  Your flocks contain some mature believers, but many new believers, many youth believers, many parents, and many children—all of whom are vulnerable to such strong messaging.  Sadly, many churches and Christians have not only accepted the message but have embraced and even practiced it.  The deception is so appealing, attractive, beguiling, captivating, enticing, seductive, and subtle.  These may be many words, but they powerfully define and describe Satan’s devices.
Growing up in a Presbyterian, Reformed Faith church, it wasn’t until later in life I realized that any Scripture relating to the sin of homosexuality was skipped over in sermons and Sunday school lessons.  We never learned there was such a sin being practiced. As a result, no young person was warned about the dangers or the temptations to these sexual sins and how to resist and renounce them.  In other words, we grew up naïve and ignorant—thus vulnerable.  Do you wish that for your young people and flock?
Pastors and elders, now is the time to address such a sinister sin.  Do it in love, but firmly.  Don’t soft-pedal it with jumping onto other sins such as greed, gossip, etc.  In the hierarchy of sins, this is a serious one because God commanded death to anyone guilty, and He used the harshest of adjectives and modifiers to describe how heinous and serious it is.  When preaching on the sins of greed, pride, adultery, concupiscence, one doesn’t veer off to other sins to soft-pedal those.  The Church is dealing today with what is termed the “Third Way.”  The emphasis is so much on love or ignoring some issues that truth is canceled out or dismissed.  When it comes to sin, whether immorality or other acts of unrighteousness, there is only “One Way,” and that is to proclaim what God said about them– to expose them, call for confession and repentance, and then forgive and restore the sinners.
It gives me no personal pleasure in focusing on or writing about this topic, but the force of the advocates for sin are so strong and taking prisoners—even deluding Christians—that it demands being addressed openly, cautiously, firmly, lovingly—but above all faithfully and truthfully.   Many lives are at stake, especially the lives of members of your flocks.  “Let God be true, and every man a liar” (Romans 3: 4) relative to this issue.  Don’t you wish to instruct and protect them?  If you genuinely love your sheep, you will sacrificially protect or rescue them as much as you would feed and nourish them.
Pastors and church leaders, now is the time to stand up and step up to the present challenge.  And while doing so, assure your flocks that believing God over Satan or the world does not make one “homophobic.” That has to be one of Satan’s shrewdest tricks.
Helen Louise Herndon is a member of Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. She is freelance writer and served as a missionary to the Arab/Muslim world in France and North Africa.
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Every generation has had to reckon with those words and the subtle but terrible charge they bring against the Word–and therefore the character–of God. Those four words are much more than an innocent question; they strike at the core of our faith. This simple phrase, for all time since the garden, is an expression of whether God can be trusted. Is His Word true? And is His Word to us a loving Word?  

Every couple of years I need a refresher on language.
Most of the time this happens through our children. They will say something, some word or phrase, and I will not understand. I’ll ask for a clarification, a definition, and maybe even for another example in context… and I still won’t get it. Most of the time I still need the help of Urban Dictionary to know what I’m supposed to be talking about. But even then I’m not really allowed to use these phrases.
The kids cringe with I do, and I get that.
I did the same thing.
And I assume my parents did the same thing when their vernacular was discovered and tried to be put in use by the previous generation. And so it goes, one generation after another, being linguistically left behind. And yet through each and every generation of human history, there is a link. The link is not a particular language, but instead four words translated into a multitude of dialects. It’s these four words that bind all the generations of humanity together:
“Has God indeed said…”
Way back at the beginning – in the very first generation – everything was good. Very good, in fact. All creation existed in perfect harmony, and at the center piece of everything was the crown jewel of creation. The man and the woman lived in perfect fellowship with God, walking without guilt, shame, or any other hindrance with Him. And into this harmony slithered the cunning serpent armed with what must have seemed like a very innocent question and just a few short sentences that followed it:
Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. 
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Written by R. C. Sproul |
Monday, August 1, 2022
Indeed, in the Pentateuch, the entire New Testament is concealed, yet the revelation therein opens a gateway for us to understand all of the rest of the revelation that God provides from Joshua through Revelation. In our day the covenantal structure of redemption is often obscured. What should be plain by even a cursory reading of the Pentateuch is passed off into darkness and replaced by some other structure or framework invented by human speculation. The covenant structure of redemption does not end in the fifth book of the Pentateuch. It continues throughout the Old Testament.
 
“The new is in the old concealed; the old is in the new revealed.” This famous statement by Augustine expresses the remarkable way in which the two testaments of the Bible are so closely interrelated with each other. The key to understanding the New Testament in its fullest is to see in it the fulfillment of those things that were revealed in the background of the Old Testament. The Old Testament points forward in time, preparing God’s people for the work of Christ in the New Testament.
The history of redemption began with creation itself. The book of Genesis, the first book of the Pentateuch, starts with the beginning, or the “genesis,” of the universe as expressed in the revelation of God’s mighty work of creation. The creation of the universe culminated in the narrative of the creation of humanity. This was followed very shortly by humanity’s cataclysmic plunge into ruin as a result of the sin of Adam and Eve. From the third chapter of Genesis through the end of the Bible, the rest of the narrative history is the history of God’s work of redeeming a fallen humanity. Genesis shows that the same God who is the God of creation is also the God of our redemption.
The book of Genesis gives us an overview of the patriarchal period and the covenants that God made with them. They form the foundation for everything that follows in redemptive history. Beginning with Noah and moving toward Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the sons of Jacob, the story unfolds God’s consistent pattern of redemption, which looks ahead for centuries, as God’s people awaited the ultimate fulfillment of the patriarchal promises. These promises were fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus.
The book of Genesis ends with the children of Israel migrating into Egypt to be rescued by the intervention of Joseph, who ruled as the nation’s prime minister. Exodus opens with the scene having changed from one of benevolent circumstances under Joseph to one of dire circumstances, as the immigrant nation of Israel had been enslaved by Pharaoh. The stirring account in Exodus is the Old Testament, watershed work of divine redemption. It sets forth for us the narrative of the divine rescue of the slaves held captive in Egypt. The captives were redeemed by the triumph of God and His mercy over the strongest military force of this world embodied in Pharaoh and his army. It points forward to an even greater liberation by a greater Mediator from slavery to sin.
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