The Bible is no longer accepted or believed as fully trustworthy by many.  As one seminary professor described it, “What we are experiencing is an existential mood in the country.  Many of our students come to us with a relative view of the Bible.”  If the evangelical Church does not awaken to this situation, it will not be able to stand for or recognize God’s truth in an increasingly unbelieving and pluralistic world.

As Stephen Nichols writes in his biography, R. C. Sproul: A Life, “The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy made and makes some wince.”[1] Perhaps the main reason for that wince is the nature of the Statement. It is a line in the sand. It is a boundary marker. In our day, when something as sturdy biology becomes elastic, many fail to appreciate such lines. However, the council creating that statement, The International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, was led by two friends: R. C. Sproul (President) and James Montgomery Boice (Chairman). Lines did not make these men wince. And under their leadership a document was created that has guided generations since.[2]
The story of the Council’s beginning and first formal meeting at the Hyatt Regency at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport on October 26-28, 1978, is a human-interest story in itself.  The Bible was under attack and in 1976 Harold Lindsell published a bombshell of a book titled, The Battle for the Bible. To say that it caused a stir is an understatement. However, despite the Council’s beginnings, the statement they produced is chiefly what matters most because the attack on God’s word never takes a respite.
But why is the ICBI still necessary?  The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals web page answers that question.
The authority and accuracy of the Bible are foundations of the Christian faith.  Yet we are witnessing the erosion of these foundations.
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How is this faith, which has been gifted to me, strengthened? According to the Divines, I engage the means that God has appointed for its growth, the preaching of the word (the ordinary means by which faith is wrought), the administration of the sacraments, and prayer.  These are the means through which God is pleased to increase and strengthen faith that we might have an ever increasing sense of His abiding love and care for us.

Once the Spirit of the Lord has resurrected a dead sinner by the divine breath, life begins. This is the monergism that theologians reference in the work of regeneration. The dead sinner lives through God’s singular work. He initiated the life.  The spiritual cadaver is no longer cold and icy but is now oriented and animated toward God by grace alone. And as life comes so too does the fruit of life or conversion. Conversion is shorthand for faith and repentance. This article will deal with the former and it will do so by following the three sections of chapter fourteen of the Westminster Confession of Faith.
The Origin of Faith
Here the Divines want us to make no mistake. Faith does not originate with us. Faith is a “grace” whereby the person is “enabled to believe” and that “to the saving of their souls” because it is the “work of the Spirit” in the heart of the believer. The thread that is sown through this first paragraph leaves us with no doubt as to the origin of belief. Believing begins with God. However, we should not make the opposite mistake and so believe that faith is God’s activity.  In other words, though God enables faith, He does not do the believing for us.
The Nature of Faith
This brings us to the nature of faith. The second section of the Confession tells us that a believer believes whatsoever is in the Word.
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The Mosaic Law is not contrary to the gospel.  In fact, the Mosaic Covenant is an exfoliation of the Covenant of Grace.  However, John 9 helps us to understand the division when the Pharisees say to the now healed blind man, “You are his [Jesus] disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.  We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” Moses is being set over against Jesus. 

Think of the story of the man born blind (John 9). It’s well known and well thought of.  It’s one of those stories that take work to read because we must disabuse ourselves of contemporary concern for those with disabilities.  For example, there were no Seeing Eye dogs, Braille books or reading machines.  This man was a beggar whose hope of social advance, marriage, or even a job was a pipe dream.  He was an unnoticed beggar.  He was alone.
For example, notice the man’s neighbors after he is healed. The man is obviously making a stir and those who have lived closest to him say, “Isn’t this the man who sat and begged?”  And some said yes but many of those same neighbors said, “No, he just looks like him.”  And all the while the man who was blind said, “I am the man.”  That’s amazing. How unnoticed he must have felt for all those years.  Not only was he blind but they had been blind to him.
So, they brought the man to the Pharisees, and things got worse. But before saying more about the blind man and the Pharisees we must understand that the text. Like all of John’s Gospel, this text reaches back to his Prologue (John 1:1-18).  For example, in those early verses John writes that the law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Christ.  Now, the Mosaic Law is not contrary to the gospel.
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Where are you today? Is someone quarreling with you? Are you experiencing someone’s hatred? As hard as it is to hear, you are being given opportunities for faithfulness. Don’t shrink back from them. Don’t wish them away. Don’t curl up in the fetal position and engage in self-pity. See these moments as opportunities to be faithful knowing that the Lord who is faithful is with you. 

I was recently struck anew by reading Genesis 26. It’s the story of Isaac dwelling in Gerar. The story is familiar. We might read it in “like father, like son” fashion. As Abraham told Abimelech that Sarah was his sister, Isaac did the same. Yes, we sometimes learn from our parents. Even the patriarchs passed on what was not good.  But that’s not what struck me.
There was a famine in the land and the Lord told Isaac not to go down to Egypt but to dwell in the land of Canaan. There is direction and wisdom here. In other words, Egypt was forbidden by divine precept, but the land of Promise remained open before Abaraham’s heir.  So, he thought it wise to go to Gerar. While there he prospered but also encountered conflict. The Philistines were quarreling with him and displacing him. They chased him from water, which was needed in the best of times but especially during famine.  But eventually we read in Genesis 26:22,
And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name Rehoboth, saying, “For now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.”
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Remember that you are glorifying God, but in worship, God is doing something in you and your family that will last for all eternity.  Brothers and sisters, take heart, Christ is being formed in you.  Let me tell you what that means practically.  It means that God is shaping you and your family.  No, you will not be perfect this side of eternity, but from the inside out, you will grow more and more Christ-like – and so will your family.  

I love to see families walking through the doors of the auditorium on Lord’s Day morning.  I see each of them as a living stone coming together to form a living temple in order to worship the living God.  They were once like the dry bones of Ezekiel’s vision scattered about in the valley of the shadow of death.  But now, by God’s sovereign grace, they have spiritual muscle, saintly sinew, and a renewed and healthy heart beats within each breast.  These belong to Christ and they are glorious to behold.
However, I am under no false impressions.  I realize that these beautiful families have their mornings – even on the Lord’s Day.  In other words, there are some Lord’s Days that these same folk might describe their trip to church using the language of Ezekiel thirty-seven, “There was a noise, and behold a rattling; and the bones came together”!  Especially on mornings like these, it is important for us to keep a checklist of things we must not forget when we go to worship.  So, let me give you five crucial things to remember when going to church – no matter what the morning may be like.
First, remember that worship is not about you, but it calls for your full participation.  Likely, every believer would give this a vigorous “amen!”  On difficult mornings, the one thing you are thinking about is yourself and your family – and not all of it good.  For instance, on the way to church maybe your heart is still stewing about the kid’s bad behavior and perhaps their hearts are stewing about yours.  What a great opportunity to bring the gospel to bear on the life of the family!
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We have come to believe that we deserve to be happy and if our particular Bubble Tree makes us happy, well then, why should we plunge in headlong?[1]. So, perhaps the first thing we need to do is answer the question, why. In other words, why should we restrain ourselves? Proverbs 30:8-9 gives us the beginning of an answer.

As a believer, if I always entertained thoughts and engaged in deeds that are suitable to one who enjoys life in Christ, then self-control would not be an activity with which I would need to be concerned. However, undergoing regeneration does not mean that all my sinful thoughts and desires have been banished from the boundaries of my person. In this life there is an irreconcilable war waging within my members that won’t be fully and finally reconciled until my last day. I am a sinner still and therefore I must be occupied with controlling myself.  
A quick etymological search shows that control is likely made up of two words that mean something like against the wheel. The picture it creates is certainly apt.  In C. S. Lewis’s space adventure Perelandra, Ransom is transported to a planet of pure beauty. It was like a dream, he thought, this was the most “vivid dream I have ever had.” And then, there were the trees. Bubble Trees they were called. And when he touched one of them it burst on him and “drenched with what seemed (in that warm world) an ice-cold shower bath, and his nostrils filled with a sharp, shrill, exquisite scent that somehow brought to his mind the verse in Pope, “die of a rose in aromatic pain.” In other words, it was wonderful, and Ransom wanted more. But Ransom had always disliked those who encored at the opera – “that just spoils it” and now the principle had “far wider application.” In other words, Ransom practiced self-control.
Of course, Lewis is teaching us what he first learned from Paul. The Apostle was a man who knew how to abound and how to be brought low. He said in a verse often stripped of this context, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13). 
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When confrontation is required, to fail to do so is not gentleness but cowardice.  Of course, even this confrontation needs to be done with gentleness. However, gentleness does not mean that we omit the hard things that need to be said, but it does mean that we say them for Christ’s sake and not our own.

What is it to be gentle? Everyone has an image in their mind’s eye or an idea. But it’s probably best to start with the One we ought to model and so ask, what did gentle look like on Jesus? Perhaps the first place we might go is Matthew 11:28-29. There Jesus tells us that he is “gentle and lowly in heart.” Gentle here means meek or humble.  We might say that to be gentle is not to think of oneself more highly than one ought to think.  B. B. Warfield once wrote, “No impression was left by his life-manifestation more deeply imprinted upon the consciousness of his followers than that of the noble humility of his bearing.” Jesus was humble.
What is more, he called others to be the same. In the Sermon on the Mount, we find that Jesus gave the qualifications for kingdom citizenship. One must arrive at a true sense of their spiritual poverty, mourn as a result of it, and humble themselves as they reach for a righteousness that is not their own. Humility is essential to the way that God leads us to Himself.
Paul, a man who was made aware of his jealousy by being bested by Stephen (Cf. Acts 6:8-9, 58; Romans 7:7-12), learned this lesson and taught it in Romans 12 saying, the transformation of the mind has to do with not thinking more of ourselves than we ought to think (Romans 12:1-4).
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What is the difference between an ancient man calling a piece of wood a god and a modern man calling a biological man a woman? They are both a fabrication. The ancient may have been able to work out a pulley system to move the arms or head of his wooden idol but how different is that from injecting a hormone into a male breast so that it will lactate? Both are a fiction. Both are manipulations of reality.

Whatever we may think about an idol, foolish as it may be, we must not be in doubt about the infatuation that these chunks of metal and blocks of wood inspire in their worshipers. idols are precious to idolaters. What is more, idolaters are often witnesses for their idols, even though their witness proves their folly. In fact, idolatry is the epitome of sin lacking sense. We see that in the Scriptures. Just think about the description in Isaiah 44:12-17. The prophet tells us that a man plants a tree, he prunes it, cares for it and when it is tall enough, he cuts it down and cuts it in half. With one half he builds a fire. He cooks his food and warms himself with it. And he says, “Ah, I am warm; all is well!”
But with the other half of the log, he takes a chisel and shapes it. He measures it and uses a chalk like to make sure the lines are straight. He labors long like this even going without food and water using his strength to craft the wood and in the end the piece of wood looks like an image. The man sets up the image and then does the oddest thing, he bows down to the wood in worship and even prays to it saying, “Deliver me, for you are my god!
Now, anyone who hears that story from Isaiah is going to laugh because it sounds so utterly foolish.  In fact, people are wont to disparage the ancients for being primitive, underdeveloped, and lacking in understanding. But let’s wait just a minute. What if we were to ask one of those ancients about this story.  What might they say?
Well, we might be surprised at the sophistication of their answer. Take Psalm 135 as an example. There, in verses 16 and 17, the Psalmist explains the psychology of idolatry. He writes that idols have “mouths but cannot talk…eyes but cannot see…ears but cannot hear…noses but cannot smell, throats but cannot make a sound.” All very obvious observations. But notice verse 18, “Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them.” What’s the point? Simply this, idolaters make their idols in their own image. The idolater has no instincts for God. He has no eyes with which to see him, no ears with which to hear him, and no mouth that he might praise him. Idolatry illustrates ignorance. Certainly, that is an answer steeped in reflection.
Now, what’s my point in bringing this to your notice?
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Whether Crane is a racist is not the issue. I don’t know Rep. Crane and I am not interested in defending him personally at this point. The issue is that too many politicians are answering their foolish colleagues according to their folly. No wonder those of us along for the ride feel as if we are going crazy on a ship of fools.

As of late, there was a scuffle in the House because Rep. Eli Crane from Arizona used the term “colored people” instead of “people of color.” Rep. Joyce Beatty (OH) responded immediately “asking for unanimous consent to take down the words of (sic) referring to me or any of my colleagues as colored people.”[1] Shortly thereafter, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett took to Twitter, “Rep. Eli Crane just referred to Black service members as ‘colored people’. You can’t make this up. This is who these people are, and who they’ve always been.” After seeing the exchange and reading about the fallout I couldn’t help but wonder why.  Let me pose a simple question. Was Rep. Crane’s use of “colored” as a descriptor a moral failure?
This is not a hard question to answer. If the use of the term were a moral failure, then the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or the NAACP would have changed their name long ago. Instead, they defended their use of it saying,
Times change and terms change. Racial designations go through phases; at one time Negro was accepted, at an earlier time colored and so on. This organization has been in existence for 80 years and the initials NAACP are part of the American vocabulary, firmly embedded in the national consciousness, and we feel it would not be to our benefit to change our name.[2]

Clearly, the NAACP is not so insensitive to the people they represent so as to leave a morally offensive moniker in place for the simple reason of name recognition. In other words, they might prefer to be called the NAAPC but name recognition outweighs any other concern.
But let’s ask the obvious. Why is the moniker “people of color” acceptable but “colored people” not? Let’s put our grammatical caps on for a minute. The adjective “colored” in “colored people” expresses the same relationship as the possessive in “people of color.” This is not too difficult when you think about it in relation to other examples.  A moment of silence is a silent moment. An honor code is a code of honor. A battle plan is a plan of battle.  So, what’s the difference? Really. What is the difference between “colored people” and “people of color?” This is not a harangue but a legitimate question. If the word is morally offensive, then by all means, let’s not use it.
Some might say that it is. For example, it might be argued that the phrase is like the N-word and therefore should not be used.  Not all slang is appropriate or welcome and so the N-word has been expunged from public use, at least in some spheres.
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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.
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