The Cambridge Dictionary and Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary are not the standard…their authority is not final. But there is a book which is the final authority. It’s God’s book, the Bible.

Following the fall of the Cambridge Dictionary, the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary has slipped from the same cultural precipice only to dashed on the blunt rocks of wokeness below.  The evidence? A secondary definition has been added to define the word female. Now, claims the book that is supposed to normalize our use of language, the word female may mean, “having a gender identity that is the opposite of male.”[1] Of course, the words “gender identity” have a hyper-link.  Click and you will be treated to a definition of the concept. And according to Merriam-Webster Online, this is “a person’s internal sense of being male, female, some combination of male and female, or neither male nor female.”[2] Now, since the words “female” and “gender identity” are linked in this cultural standard, let’s use it as a map down this rabbit hole where, like Alice, we will likely be shrunk, stretched, scratched and stuffed into a tea pot before we make it out!
The key words in Merriam-Webster’s Online definition of “gender identity” are “a person’s internal sense.” Let’s take this phrase apart. Internal has several definitions in the Merriam-Webster online edition but not all of them are equally relevant. For example, the first definition is “existing or situated within the limits or surface of something” and an example given for such a thing is that which is inside the limits of the body. However, the second definition is “existing within the mind,” that is, in the thought life of a person. So, the word internal can mean either in the body or in the mind. But since the transgendered person feels that they are in the wrong body the “internal” referenced in the phrase “internal sense” must be “in the mind” or situated in the limits of one’s thinking.
Now, what about “sense”? Well, the Online Dictionary gives several definitions. However, all of them have something to do with either sense perception or a “conscious awareness or rationality.” Again, these definitions have to do with body or mind. Now, those definitions that connect sense with sense perception acknowledge that humans are fitted to the world around them. We see a friend and recognize him as such. We touch a hot stove and pull our hands away. We smell coffee in the morning and know that someone loves us. Senses connect us to the world.
The transgendered person understands this fitted-ness, but thinks it is wrong. Not because the body doesn’t fit the world, it certainly does, but it doesn’t fit their thinking. In other words, a person prior to transition can still recognize friends, smell coffee, and know the oven is hot. Their body fits the world around them. So, apparently the word “sense” in the definition of gender-identity has something to do with “conscious awareness or rationality.” Once again, the problem is in the mind.
Read More
Related Posts:

Expositional preaching requires a living context to be understood. While the Holy Spirit is powerful enough to make the right applications to a completely blinded heart, he usually uses the natural means of family, church, and human culture to give a context to truth. Barring common grace, much in modern culture is useless for teaching the right application of Scripture. That leaves redeemed families and gospel churches to put flesh on the bones of expository sermons.

I enjoy conferences for pastors and training workshops, and recommend them heartily. But I often return from them a little disturbed by the way expository preaching is viewed by some Christian leaders. According to them, expository preaching is the main ingredient for healthy Christianity, and the lack thereof is the reason for its sickness. If only, they say, all pastors were committed to expository preaching, the church would be reformed and revived.
I am committed to expository preaching. I have attempted it (however unsuccessfully) for over twenty years. We teach students in our seminary how to do expository preaching. I prefer to make the mainstay of my preaching expository series of books of the Bible. I believe expository preaching grows out of a conservative view of Scripture. If you believe that God has verbally inspired Scripture, making it the rule for all Christian life and practice, it follows that you submit to its meaning. Therefore, you desire to understand what has already been revealed, submit to it yourself, and make it plain to others. Expository preaching usually goes hand-in-glove with inerrancy, for when you believe the Bible has been given without error, you are fastidious in your approach to understand the very words of Scripture, not just the themes. Expository preaching also reveals a desire to preach the whole counsel of God, not our pet themes or popular topics.
But having said all that, I think many Christian leaders have a faith in expository preaching which is overblown and looks to expository preaching to do what it cannot accomplish by itself.
It is a tempting position to hold. After all, the Bible teaches us about worship. Surely if we preach expositionally, biblical worship will take place, right? The Bible speaks about what affections we should have for God. If we preach the whole counsel of God, won’t it automatically lead to ordinate affection?
Look around for the answer. You have any number of Reformed or conservative evangelicals who are committed to expository preaching, but who come out on almost opposite ends of the worship and affection spectrum.
This elephant-in-the-room fact leads many to relativize our applications of Scripture. If such good preachers who are so committed to biblical authority come out at completely different answers as to what it means to worship, it must be because we’re just talking about ‘styles’ and various ways of “contextualizing” the gospel. So as not to shake anyone’s faith in expository preaching as the be-all and end-all, the quite obvious disparity in worship and affections by those committed to expository preaching is played down in favor of a shared commitment to Reformed doctrine.
I think ignoring this disparity is part of the problem. It’s my contention that expository preaching is not a magic bullet, but it must be accompanied by something to have its desired effect.
The fact is, preaching occurs in a context.
Read More

True humility does not argue with Christ Jesus, but sweetly complies with Him. But let me show you what way false humility works. False humility is always at one of two extremes. It is either lower than God would have it, or it is higher than God can tolerate.
1. False Humility Goes Lower Than God Wants
Leaving our responsibility to God
For example, there are many of you who will leave it to God whether to save or damn you. That is false humility, because He has declared His mind peremptorily to the contrary. People are to keep pressing to get into heaven, until they are actually cast into hell. They will get no thanks from God for that kind of humility.
Giving a latitude to God where He takes none
False humility leaves it up to God to save you whether you believe or not. “We know,” say some, “that people should believe; but He may save us in any way. He may bring folk to heaven equally well without faith as with it.” Do you imagine that God will bring people to heaven if they do not believe? You are making a great mistake. “He that believeth not shall not see life. Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.”
Putting you lower than the reach of free grace
When a man takes such a look of his guilt that he thinks himself below the free grace of God, it is false humility. Though he does not want to say that he has sinned the sin against the Holy Ghost, yet he thinks God cannot pardon him. But it is a sin to think like this, when God has said, “All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven.” In this way false humility justles out the whole of God’s arrangements in the covenant of free grace.
Taking more care of the glory of God than He does Himself
It is a strange sort of humility when someone stands up and says, “I think it would be an encroachment on the holiness of God to show mercy to me. He may show mercy to whoever He pleases, but He cannot pardon me.” That is a strange thing. You do not need to worry about encroachments on His holiness, when He has declared that He has found a ransom. Will you be wiser than God? He will never regard that as humility! It is enough to us that He has made a declaration through the world, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear you Him.” As if to say, “I shall satisfy myself in myself. Don’t trouble your heads about that. I am satisfied.”
Thinking it is a mistake to take little problems to God
False humility goes lower than God allows when it treats it as a faux pas to put little things into God’s hand. Many think it would be injudicious for them at such a time as this to ask God to heal their sore head which incapacitates them from hearing the preaching, or to help their faint heart that hinders them from profiting by the Word. But this is the devil’s humility, for the Lord counts all the hairs of your head. Some think it would be some sort of gaffe to ask for a bag of meal from God, and a coat to put on their back at such a time as this – but He has commanded you to put all your needs onto Him, from your salvation to your shoe-latchet.
Thinking it a mistake to come to God often about the same thing
This humility justles with the majesty of God. This is the case with many of us. You have told God often what you are. You have frequented many communions, and yet you are not the better. You have come often with one and the same thing, and now you blush to come to Him again.
But in this you are humble overmuch.
Read More