Culture tries to forcefully reconstruct what cannot be of maleness and femaleness and humaneness.  Let us recognize a dangerous modern source of monstrous gender mimicking, manipulation, mutilation, and malfunction—the theory of evolution.  And that Denial of Sex Distinctions is Devolution.[5]

God reveals Himself not as “Mother,” but “Father,” and so fatherhood is foundational[1] as is maintaining Biblical gender designs during the annual Gay Pride Month this June.
While prototypical man and woman were in many ways the same, they also were given sex distinctions so that they could fit together and function as one amazing whole.
Mark 10:6 reads: But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.  Here, Jesus instructs that correct marital (and thus sexual identity) roles are determined by referring back to God’s pre-fall creation design of mankind as unalterably male and female.
We are wise to go back to Genesis 1:27; 2:18, 21-23; 5:2 to appreciate received gender designations.  Notice, “helpmeet” for woman means “counterpart”.
Indeed, woman has a God-given way about her that is self-evident.  Her gender’s distinctions, with myriad superior subtleties, are of no little significance.
Females are unmistakably and wonderfully not masculine. They exude more feeling in a manner that feels like more.  They smell different.  They sound different. They move differently.  They look unique and look at things uniquely.  Their ears and hearts have nuanced sensitivities that round out their coarser counterparts.  They touch us, both men and fellow-women, with a distinctive instinct that is meaningfully softer and smoother.
Only woman can be mother.  Only female can be wife.  Her nature is so naturally hers that both the Hebrew and Greek words in the Bible for “wife” are interchangeably “woman” and only discernible by context.
It is abnormal for men, as effeminate as many are today, to actually be feminine, and frankly, impossible.  What woman has inside her can only be cheaply imitated by a man to another man.  She alone can shine as female from within.  Only Hannah can cry and sing over motherhood.

Read More
Related Posts:

As God’s chosen, Christians must carefully choose how to live where they live.  You are not to be anything like those living around you.  Especially if it is a place like Sodom.

During this month, as the LGBTQ+ community annually parades its banner colors they blasphemously hijack from God’s noahic covenant,[1] Christians will benefit revisiting Genesis 19:1-25[2] (as Carl Trueman has recently called for such posts in this World Magazine article).  Here, God visited Sodom and destroyed the sexually wicked majority while mercifully rescuing the righteous remnant within it.
Look to Lot as your example of righteous living amidst wickedness.
Lot responded to the angels’ presence exactly like his uncle Abraham, with reverence, deference, supplication, faith, and obedience.  While in the midst of a diseased orchard of wickedness, yet Lot grew and produced different fruit while righteously grieving over the filthy debauchery of his neighbors (2 Peter 2:7-8).
As God’s chosen, Christians must carefully choose how to live where they live.  You are not to be anything like those living around you.  Especially if it is a place like Sodom.
See how Sodom is a warning for you to be in the world but not of it.
As Genesis 13:13 forecasted, …the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly, so in Genesis 18:20-21, God revealed to Abraham that there were not even 10 righteous left to justify sparing the city.
The angels sent by God found the Sodomites to be inflamed with unnatural sexual relations warned about as a final judgment upon a people gone wild in Romans 1:24-28.[3]  All the men, young and old, tried to force themselves inside Lot’s house to sodomize his visitors!  They despised his appeals, pushed in further, and threatened worse evil upon him!  The angels pulled Lot in, barricaded the door, and blinded the aggressors.
Read More
Related Posts:

Fear is your situation.  Faith is your solution.  That is, trusting or believing God.  This is a volitional act. So David proclaims to himself before God, “I will”.  Faith relies on the Lord by choosing to pray, sing, and study instead of worrying, fretting, and fleeing. Notice especially how much God’s Word is spoken of frequently in this Psalm to conquer fear and foes. 

About one year ago while lying in bed I whispered to God in desperation: “I am so afraid.”  It was the most heightened sense of dread I had ever experienced (and I and my household had already made it through some pretty horrific times over the last half decade).
Then the voices of children from a Psalm CD we often listen to came to me: “When I am afraid, I will trust in you God.”  Singing these words lifted me out of bed to do what had to be done.
So may you in any trial recite Psalm 56:3 for your resolve: What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.  It teaches us that when Christians are scared of what people will do to them they must strengthen themselves in God.
There are times when you will feel terrified by what’s happening to you.  What should you do?  When You’re Afraid Trust in God.[1]
There are many times you will be very afraid of people and problems pressing in on you.
Imagine that everyone around you is coming to kill you.  You would not likely sleep soundly unless you know your rescue is raising dust smoke on the horizon.
David’s situation in this Psalm is imminently dangerous and terrifying.  The Geneva Bible Study Notes of Reformation times explain, He shows that if God will help him, it must be now or never for all the world is against him and ready to devour him.[2]  This context is clear from the title: … Michtam of David, when the Philistines took him in Gath.[3]  Thus he cries out in verses 1-2 and 5-6 for God’s speedy deliverance because his daily experience is being surrounded by enemies gathering together to “swallow him up” in a fight.
Read More
Related Posts:

Real, Christian peace only comes through Jesus (Col. 1:20; Eph. 2:14-15). True peace-making declares repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ in how we handle our other relations (Rom 10:15).  For the fruit of the Spirit is peace (Gal. 5:22) which grows with the mind of God for making more (2 Cor. 13:11) and an endeavor for its unified bonding (Eph. 4:3).

In Matthew 5:9, Jesus preached, Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God, proclaiming that God’s children are shown to be His by extending their Father’s peace to others as something they enjoy, often by exertion.
Peacemaking is not keeping the peace at all costs, which really just leads to war.
When England and France signed the Munich Agreement to appease Hitler’s deceptive, insatiable aggression, it inevitably led to the Second World War.
Sometimes, the only way to make peace is war, as Paul recognizes in Rom. 16:20 that peace on earth only comes by putting down the Deceiver.  Thomas Watson warns, “One bad member in a parish endangers the whole … There are many [who] would have peace with the destroying of truth … This is a peace of the devil’s making.”[1]
The Greek for “peacemakers” means not “peace-keepers” but “peace-doers.”  A.W. Pink qualifies, it is “not a peace at any price … that is a false peace, unworthy to be called peace at all,”[2] of which Jer. 6:14, 8:11 and Ezek. 13:10, 16 bemoan.[3]
Jesus later explained, Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. (Matt. 10:34)  We may not sheathe Christ’s Word (Heb. 4:12).  Peacekeepers do not avoid conflict but confront and resolve it.
Peacemaking actively reconciles at great risk and personal cost, which alone creates real peace.
Mike Wallace reported this remarkable peace seeking in the Middle East:
On November 9, 1977 … the president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, dropped a diplomatic bombshell.  In a speech before the Egyptian parliament, he said that his desire for a permanent peace in the Middle East was so strong that he “would go even to the home of the Israelis, to the Kneset, to discuss peace with them.”

Read More
Related Posts:

R.C. Sproul writes, “The covenant of grace, rather than annihilating the covenant of works, makes provision for someone else to fulfill the covenant of works for us…We are still justified by works—the works of Jesus, not our own.”

Previously, we saw the importance of understanding a covenant as an agreement in Scripture, and that the Covenant of Works existed with Adam before the Fall with the promise of life for obedience (which we qualified typologically as temporal, not eternal—earthy, not heavenly). All these details were to fully appreciate God’s plan for Jesus Christ to fulfill the Covenant of Works as eternal God and earn Christians eternal life. Now the Confession transitions into the Covenant of Grace stressing that the only possibility for anyone’s everlasting security is Solus Christus (in Christ Alone).
WCF 7.3:  Man by his fall having made himself incapable of life by that covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second,(e) commonly called the covenant of grace; wherein He freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in Him that they may be saved,(f) and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto life His Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe.(g)[1]
After the Fall, the Covenant of Works is still binding on all Adam’s posterity, but it only condemns. Adam became “incapable of [maintaining] life.” E. Clark Copeland explains, “… that the covenant of grace brings to consummation the covenant of life and confirms its principle of perfect obedience to the Lord God is confirmed through the Scripture in the command to be perfect as He is perfect, and in man’s accountability at the judgment …”[2] The Covenant of Grace is gracious in terms of what it bestows to us, but it is a reward for perfect obedience in relation to Jesus Christ on our behalf.
Still, the Confession teaches that this salvation does have a condition: the requirement of faith (see WLC 32).[3] Without faith, it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6), and thus to be saved. Copeland writes, “The gospel offer is made in covenant terms.”[4] Wayne Spear instructs, “In one sense, then, the Covenant of Grace may be said to be conditional. Its command is to believe, and the promised salvation is given only to those who believe … those whom God has chosen from eternity are enabled to fulfill the condition of the Covenant of Grace.”[5] Indeed, faith is a gift (Ephesians 2:8-9). God ordains our salvation, and He meets His condition by making us “willing and able to believe”—so it is all His sovereign grace.[6]   Still, as Watson emphasizes, “Faith is the condition of the covenant of grace; without faith, without covenant; and without covenant, without hope.”[7]
Some add a distinction of the “Covenant of Redemption” as the Trinity’s eternal commitment to the Covenant of Grace for the redeemed realized in time.  However, A.A. Hodge instructs that our standards
“…say nothing of two covenants…but assume that there is but one covenant contracted by Christ in behalf of the elect with God in eternity, and administered by him to the elect in the offers and ordinances of the gospel and in the gracious influences of his Spirit…The Confession of Faith in these sections teaches how that same covenant is administered by Christ to his people.”[8]
So the Westminster Larger Catechism Q&A 31 reads, “The covenant of grace was made with Christ as the second Adam, and in him with all the elect as his seed.”[9]
WCF 7.4: This covenant of grace is frequently set forth in Scripture by the name of a Testament, in reference to the death of Jesus Christ the Testator, and to the everlasting inheritance, with all things belonging to it, therein bequeathed.(h)[10]
The Greek word for “testament” is usually translated as “covenant” in Scripture, but it is appropriately rendered by the Confession here reflecting Hebrews 9:15 with Christ passing on our inheritance to us through His “last will and testament” enacted by the cross.[11] O. Palmer Robertson points out that “the theme of Hebrews 9:15ff is covenant inauguration,”[12] and explains that the idea of “testament” here relates to Christ agreeing to take on the death penalty of the Covenant of Works and so put it and its curse to death, thus bequeathing us His righteous life in the Covenant of Grace (see Rev. 21:7).
WCF 7.5: This covenant was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel:(i) under the law, it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all fore-signifying Christ to come:(k) which were, for that time, sufficient and efficacious, through the operation of the Spirit, to instruct and build up the elect in faith in the promised Messiah,(l) by whom they had full remission of sins, and eternal salvation; and is called, the Old Testament.(m)[13]
Read More

Those who object to Adam meriting in Eden seem to neglect the distinction of his living continually before the Fall as righteous and good and thus enjoying further living communion with God.

In the first article of this series on covenant theology, we saw that “covenant” is, exegetically, essentially an “agreement.” Isaiah 28:15, 18 practically demonstrates this by twice using the words interchangeably as poetic synonyms. We also noted that some take strong exception to such an understanding of “covenant.” Much of the impetus of that concern seems to be what receives even more angst: the concept of the “Covenant of Works” and Adam meriting life with God in the Garden, of which the Confession next speaks.[1]
WCF 7:2: The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works,(b) wherein life was promised to Adam, and in him to his posterity,(c) upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.(d)[2]
The Threat of Death Implied the Promise of Life in Eden
Again, some particularly express disdain for this section of the WCF because they think it makes man an equal partner with God,[3] and they especially reject the idea that man could have ever merited anything from the Lord based upon his behavior. But we do see the elements of a covenant of works in the Garden with righteous Adam before the Fall: parties, stipulations, wages of reward for obedience (continuing in life as they knew it) or disobedience (death, see Romans 6:23). In pre-Fall Paradise, God imposes the covenant and is the sovereign party to it, and He justly chooses to reward obedience with life.[4] Spear affirms life’s conditions in the Garden: “The Covenant of Works expresses the terms upon which God established a relationship with Adam immediately after his creation.”[5] The fact that there is only an explicit prohibition with the promise of punishment does not negate the implied opposite of the reward of life for obedience.
The guidance of the Westminster Larger Catechism (WLC) Q&A 99:4 on interpreting the 10 Commandments is helpful to remember in this discussion: “ … where a duty is commanded, the contrary sin is forbidden; and, where a sin is forbidden, the contrary duty is commanded: so, where a promise is annexed, the contrary threatening is included; and, where a threatening is annexed, the contrary promise is included” (emphasis added). J. Gresham Machen explains:

“It is true, the Bible does not describe the covenant in just exactly that way. It does not describe it in positive terms but only in negative terms, and it does not describe it in general terms but only by the presentation of a concrete example of the kind of conduct on the part of man that would deprive man of the benefits of the covenant … But although the covenant is directly put only in a negative form, the positive implications are perfectly clear. When God established death as the penalty of disobedience, that plainly meant that if man did not disobey he would have life. Underlying the establishment of the penalty there is clearly a promise … The Bible seems rather clearly to teach that death, even physical death, was the penalty of sin, and that life, even physical life, would have been the result of obedience.”[6]

Adam agreed as a willing party of the covenant by virtue of his obedience; otherwise, it makes no sense to say he disobeyed and fell from life and original righteousness. Adam was obedient to God’s terms of life in Paradise, a covenant. One is faithful to a relationship by virtue of its mutual terms of agreement (written or oral, explicit or understood). Adam’s reward was promised life “upon condition of perfect and personal obedience”, says the Confession. He had to obey and thus maintain his original righteousness (given to him no doubt) to stay in the garden.
Adam Was a Good, Moral Being Living God’s Law Righteously Before the Fall
Those who object to Adam meriting in Eden seem to neglect the distinction of his living continually before the Fall as righteous and good and thus enjoying further living communion with God. Machen points out:
“Man as created … was like God not only in that he was a person but also in that he was good … How utterly the plainly intended parallel between the new creation and the first creation [in Col. 3:10 and Eph. 4:24 with Gen. 1:27] would break down if the image of God were to be interpreted in entirely different senses in the two cases—as involving righteousness and holiness in the case of the new creation and as involving the mere gift of personal freedom without moral quality in the case of the first creation! … So moral likeness is certainly not excluded when the first book of the Bible tells us that God created man in His own image … Man was created in knowledge, righteousness and holiness.”[7]
Read More

McKim points out that “The first act of Paul after he was converted was to pray! Richard Baxter referred to this incident and wrote the following: ‘Prayer is the breath of the new creature.’” McKim comments and asks, “our breath should be devoted to prayer! Do you regard prayer as essential to your life as is breathing?”

“We sometimes use the phrase ‘the breath of life,’” writes Donald K. McKim. “This usually refers to ongoing life marked by and expressed in the act of breathing. Without the breath of life, only death is possible. So too in the life of faith. Our faith ‘breathes’ through prayer.”[1] His book, Everyday Prayer with the Puritans, offers Christians expert assistance in breathing better.
McKim instructs that, “The goal…is to present Puritans’ understandings of prayer and show how these can nourish our Christian faith today.”[2] Each page presents a themed day with a featured Scripture opening a lesson that applies select Puritan writings to prayer, followed by his own closing reflection or prayer point. He quotes William Gurnall: “Prayer is the very breath of faith; stop a man’s breath, and where is he then?…But for faith to live, and this breath of prayer to be quite cut off, is impossible.” McKim adds:
“In…Scripture, we see prayer as the expression of faith, just as breath is the expression of life…When our prayer life wanes and our ‘breath’ becomes sporadic, our spiritual lives are in danger. Physically, we cannot live without breathing. Spiritually, we cannot live in relationship with God without praying…Prior to your prayer and at points throughout, breathe in and out, remembering that prayer is the breath of life.”[3]
The book provides useful ideas and phrases for one’s daily prayer life, much like Matthew Henry’s Method for Prayer, while also peppering in longer written prayers by Puritans on myriad subjects before each new section, reminiscent of those collected in The Valley of Vision. Yet McKim’s work is more like a daily devotional in format, similar to Spurgeon’s, Morning and Evening; and this makes it especially accessible.
The Motive for Spiritual Breathing
McKim points out that “The first act of Paul after he was converted was to pray! Richard Baxter referred to this incident and wrote the following: ‘Prayer is the breath of the new creature.’” McKim comments and asks, “our breath should be devoted to prayer! Do you regard prayer as essential to your life as is breathing?”[4] In addition, he asks: “What would your life be like if gratitude for prayer was your main motivating factor for living?”[5]
And prayer not only is to express gratitude to God, but also grief.  McKim notes that “God hears the voice of our tears.”[6] He also counsels, “What is the work of God in the midst of our afflictions? Said [Vincent] Alsop, ‘Prayer under affliction, witnesses that we believe our God to be good and gracious in it: that he can support us under it, can do us much good by it, and deliver us from it.’”[7] As Arthur Hildersham wrote about Psalm 34:15, “No tender mother is so wakeful, and apt to hear her infant when it cries; as the Lord is to hear his children whensoever they cry unto him …”[8] On Psalm 94:18, “Edward Reynolds wrote that we are eased when we realize ‘prayer lightens affliction where it does not remove it.’ … Our prayers help us through afflictions.”[9] Even when words escape us while our hearts beat for hope. John Bunyan wrote, “When thou prayest, rather let thy heart be without words, than thy words without a heart.” McKim agrees, “God knows your heart. God will hear your prayer, however it is expressed.”[10] William Gurnall, “wrote that in prayer, we have ‘the bosom of a gracious God’ to empty our ‘sorrowful heart into’ … Prayers offered in faith keep our heads ‘above the waves.’”[11]
For the day entitled, “Our Confused Prayers” based on Psalm 38:9-12, McKim encourages: “There are things deep within us, unformed in our minds, which are longings or sighs perhaps ‘too deep for words’ (Rom. 8:26). In the jumble of all these, God hears. Richard Sibbes wrote, ‘My groanings are not hid from thee [Ps. 38.9]; God can pick sense out of a confused prayer.’”[12] Including during difficult, perplexing providences.
John Flavel instructs how, “Prayer honors Providence, and Providence honors Prayer.” For “you have had the very Petitions you asked of him. Providences have borne the very signatures of your Prayers upon them.”[13] Similarly, Thomas Taylor wrote that “God hath decreed as well how to do things, as what he will do: and therefore God’s decree takes not away prayer, but establishes it;” McKim, agrees: “ … our prayers are important because they are used by God to carry out the divine purposes. Prayer is part of the process of God’s fulfilling God’s will.”[14] What’s more, Anthony Burgess wrote, whoever “lives without prayer lives as if there were no God as if all things came by a natural necessity or uncertain chance, and not from a wise God.”[15] This is especially helpful when waiting on God’s timing.
On Psalm 40:11-17, McKim counsels, “Our trust is that God will answer our prayers in God’s time, which will be the best time. We know this, but we often have to remind ourselves of this.”[16] Thomas Watson reasons, “A friend may receive our letter, though he doth not presently send us an answer of it. … God may delay prayer, and yet not deny.”[17]  Further, citing Malachi 3:16-18, Paul Baynes wrote that “God … bottles up our tears, files up our prayers, putting them on record before him.”[18] On Psalm 56:8, McKim writes, “Our prayers are not launched into empty space. They are heard and stand before God, who will answer in God’s time.”[19]
Yet there is a place for beseeching immediate answer. On Psalm 50:12-15, “The psalmist recorded a key text about God and prayer when God said, ‘Call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me’ (Ps. 50:15) … David Dickson said, ‘What more absolute promise can be made to a believing supplicant?’ … God’s promises are reliable. God says, ‘Call on me!’”[20]
Further, “prayers are an expression of faith.”[21] It is how we reach out and receive. John Downame wrote, “ … God hath appointed prayer as the hand of the soul, to be thrust into his rich Treasury of all grace and goodness for a continual supply …”[22] McKim advises, “God invites our prayers so that we can unburden ourselves of thinking we can do it all or solve all problems … John Owen wrote that ‘if we would talk less, and pray more about them, things would be better than they are in the world; at least we should be better enabled to bear them and undergo our portion in them with the more satisfaction.’”[23]
The opposite also is true; on Psalm 55:22, McKim writes, “worry is like a rocking chair—you go back and forth and never get anywhere! … The antidote for worry is prayer,”[24] and “Without prayer, our lives lose their way … Prayer sweetens the mercy!”[25] Indeed, as Thomas Watson explains, “Prayer does to the heart, as Christ did to the sea … Prayer makes a gracious calm in the soul …”[26]
Read More

God is shaping the perfect figure of you into what will be your resurrected body and glorified soul.  You’ve been sanctified positionally so the sanctification of your person is sure to continue until it’s completion. 

Think of a cup being filled to the brim—or inflating a children’s play castle or a basketball to its entire design.  The thing being pervaded is what it is, but it is in the process of functioning fully and living up to its potential and peak performance until completely full.
Such gets at the sense of the Hebrew for “perfect” in Psalm 138:a[1], which reads, The LORD will perfect that which concerneth me.  David takes consolation in the idea that God will completely fulfill him and accomplish His purposes in him toward his chief end.  The text teaches that our perfect God will perfectly perfect His people.  So Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:24, Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.
God never discards His people as unfinished projects.  First Corinthians 1:8 reads, Who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
What is the basis of this profound assurance that Christians will undoubtedly have fought the good fight and finished their race?  The second part of Psalm 138:8 tells us: … thy mercy, O LORD, endureth for ever.  God’s mercy, ḥesed in the Hebrew, is a word pregnant with promise expressing His covenant loyalty to His people.  It is used in Psalm 136 at the end of each of twenty-six verses as a corporate, antiphonal exclamation.[2]  God’s faithful covenantal mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23).  So Christian, you can never lose your salvation and you will grow in your sanctification into the perfect you in Christ.  In answer to the last part of Psalm 138:8, Jesus says He will never leave you nor forsake you (Hebrews 13:5)![3]
Read More

And what is the most sure way to be so firmly fixed? “Catechising is the best expedient for the grounding and settling of people.  I fear one reason why there has been no more good done by preaching, has been because the chief heads and articles in religion have not been explained in a catechistical way.  Catechising is laying the foundation.” (Heb. 6:1).[16]

“There is a great deal of comfort in skepticism,” writes Gordon H. Clark.  “If truth is impossible of attainment, then one need not suffer the pains of searching for it… Skepticism dispenses with all effort… Skepticism is the position that nothing can be demonstrated.”[1]
Sadly, rather than displaying a Berean spirit in sanctified searching and confirming God’s truths, many Christians express a default “authenticity” in skeptical generalities to excuse themselves from determining and affirming specifics in deference to Scriptural authority.
Ministerial candidates take flabby, unproven exceptions to the Church’s time-tested confessional standards almost as a rule these days.  Few believers would be compelled by R.C. Sproul’s appeal to engage in strenuous study and show oneself approved: “I think that we should seek to be faithful in small things that we may be prepared to be faithful in many things.”[2] Yet, as comfortable as skeptical non-commitment may feel, Clark warns, “Suspension of judgment… is but a disguised, if dignified, form of unbelief.”[3]
How refreshing to encounter Thomas Watson’s opening chapter to his book, A Body of Divinity, made up of his sermons through the Westminster Shorter Catechism. [4]   In “A Preliminary Discourse to Catechising,” he writes, “Intending next Lord’s day to enter upon the work of catechising, it will not be amiss to give you a preliminary discourse, to show you how needful it is for Christians to be well instructed in the grounds of religion.”[5]
Watson’s text for this opening sermonic discourse is Colossians 1:23: If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled …  His emphasis is on being settled in Christianity, and he would have us look not to succor ourselves in suspended reservations but to secure our resolve in the details of what the Scriptures principally teach regarding our belief concerning God and His required duty of us.[6]
Citing 1 Peter 5:10 and Jude 13, Watson writes, “It is the duty of Christians to be settled in the doctrine of faith … that they might not be meteors in the air, but fixed stars”.[7]  He continues:
“To be unsettled in religion argues want of judgment.  If their heads were not giddy, men would not reel so fast from one opinion to another.  It argues lightness.  As feathers will be blown every way, so will feathery Christians.”[8]
Such theological lightweights are the opposite of the church being “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15).  Thus, “…unsettled Christians are childish; the truths they embrace at one time, they reject at another.”[9]  And isn’t this constant wavering in fact to be the wayward man James exposes as always unsettled and thus “unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8)?
Watson particularly warns would-be preachers and their Presbytery examiners about being unsettled:
“It is the great end of the word preached, to bring us to a settlement in religion … This is the grand design of preaching, not only for the enlightening, but for the establishing of souls; not only to guide them in the right way, but to keep them in it.  Now, if you be not settled, you do not answer God’s end in giving you the ministry.” (He references Eph. 4:11-14 and Jer. 23:29.)[10]
Read More