Jesus calls us to learn about our enemies and about ourselves—and to spread the aroma of Christ through the world by the ministry of the word for the salvation of the elect. To this end, he bids us understand that we are like sheep in the midst of wolves, so that we will seek to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves.

One of the remarkable features of Jesus’ teaching is the way in which he drew simple analogies and metaphors from the world around him in order to instruct his disciples about the most profound truths of the kingdom of God.
Jesus spent much time reading the book of nature. He could point to a simple flower in order to explain to his disciples the mystery of God’s providential care and provision for them (Luke 12:27). Some of Christ’s most impactful illustrations came from the agrarian culture in which he lived and traveled. He expended prolonged periods of mental energy meditating on the birds of the air and the livestock that flooded the Palestinian landscape. At the inauguration of his missionary enterprise, Jesus gathered the twelve to himself and said to them,

Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues,  and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the Gentiles. When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.(Matt. 10:16–20)

Jesus is preparing his disciples for spiritual warfare in Matthew 10:16-20.
In a day when Christians have all but lost the culture war in America—and the prospect of the persecution of true believers is imminent—it is incumbent on us to listen carefully to what the Savior told his disciples upon their first missionary journey. In the ancient wartime manual, The Art of War, Sun Tzu explained,

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

In Matthew 10:16-20, Jesus is essentially giving his disciples his manual of spiritual warfare for the mission of God. The danger of the task that lay before the disciples required a clear illustration from the Savior regarding the way in which they should prepare themselves for the opposition they would encounter.
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Perhaps today you are experiencing a difficult season and you feel like the Lord is asleep instead of coming to your aid. Let Psalm 44 encourage you. Look with eyes of faith to the Lord and affirm, “You are my King, O God” (v. 4). Take comfort in the truth that He ordains your suffering (v. 19). And cry out to Him, “Rise up; come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love” (v. 26). 

It had been a hot summer in the south, but the heat didn’t match that of my own heart. I felt like I was trying to walk through a desert with no water, or slug through mud without getting anywhere. Years of battling chronic pain had worn me down. A ministry plan that didn’t materialize the way I had hoped had eroded my confidence to continue writing, teaching and speaking. I was raising four children, ranging from ten years to six months, and I was homeschooling the older two. I felt very much in need of help. Thankfully, by God’s grace, I cried out to the Lord and I studied Scripture. Through the study of the psalms, like Psalm 44, the Lord came to my aid.
You also know what it is to like to be in need of help, don’t you? Whether it’s a strained relationship, financial difficulty, unemployment, illness or injury, a hard season of ministry, parenting challenges, or marital strife, all of us have cried for aid at times. Perhaps even today you are crying for someone to assist you. Be encouraged, dear believer. Our great King will come to our help in the midst of difficulty.
Delight in the Past
Psalm 44 begins, “O God…our fathers have told us, what deeds you performed in their days…for you delighted in them” (vv. 1, 3). The psalmist’s confidence in the Lord is rooted in the delight He showed Israel in the past. He chose them as the apple of His eye and entered into a relationship with them. The Lord chose Israel to be His treasured possession because He loved them and had made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He delivered them from Egypt and gave them the land of Canaan. They won victories by His strength, not their own. Such magnificent stories of redemption were passed from generation to generation in order to encourage the people’s faith.
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Who may (or ought to) read scripture in public worship is severely limited by the words and implications of our standards and even sanctified common sense. And I hope PCA officers will consider that our fathers in the faith may have been right about these things.

The reading of scripture in public worship is an essential, though undervalued, part of worship for confessional presbyterian churches, whose greatest distinctive (aside from their eponymous form of government) is their doctrine of worship. Reading is an element of Reformed worship, meaning it cannot be omitted and must be done properly.1 The Westminster Divines understood this and evidently they believed that the weightiness and importance of public scripture reading meant that not just anyone could do it:
Is the Word of God to be read by all?Although all are not to be permitted to read the word publicly to the congregation, yet all sorts of people are bound to read it apart by themselves, and with their families: to which end, the holy Scriptures are to be translated out of the original into vulgar languages.—Westminster Larger Catechism 156
For 300 or more years after John Knox began reforming the Scottish church, all presbyterians understood that trained, ordained men (or those being trained) ought to read scripture in public worship services. This fact is obvious to any fair-minded student of ecclesial history. There have been no presbyterian Shakers or Quakers…at least not until recently.2 So it must be that either our forbears were wrong or that things have changed.
It’s a rare week when I don’t receive a message from someone in the conservative Presbyterian and Reformed world reporting a practice that the scandalized sender has witnessed in a NAPARC3 church. Often the report is of females reading scripture or leading some other part of worship, such as the call to worship, confessions, “pastoral” prayer, distributing Lord’s Supper elements—pretty much anything except sermon and benediction. Unsurprisingly, these reports usually concern PCA churches—unsurprising, I say, for two reasons. First, the membership of the PCA makes up about two-thirds of the 600,000 members in NAPARC churches, so there are proportionally more PCA churches to, well, do stuff. Second, there is simply more diversity of practice (i.e., doing stuff) in the PCA. This diversity of practice, some will aver, is because of the diverse geographical and cultural contexts that PCA churches and church plants inhabit compared to their stodgier NAPARC cousins. Missional faithfulness, some will say, requires contextualization, and contextualization requires adjustments. But the question may be asked: What is the real (or first) context that ought to govern practice in a presbyterian church?
I would argue that the primary and governing context of a confessional, constitutional presbyterian church is…the confessional, constitutional presbyterian church and her standards. Church websites often extol a congregation’s unique “DNA,” but all presbyterian churches in a given denomination have the same DNA: their biblical (not to say biblicist) confessions and constitutions. Such a presbyterian church ought not be so “outward-facing” (a popular concept) that it turns its back on its confessional-constitutional core. Nor should it be pharisaically legalist…but more about that below.
The Fifth Commandment enjoins us to honor our fathers and mothers, and the Westminster Standards apply the commandment to the honoring of our betters and our elders more generally. As presbyterians who stand on the shoulders of five centuries of churchmen in our tradition, the principles of the Fifth Commandment imply that we should consider what our faithful fathers in the faith found in the scriptures and passed on to us.4
The PCA Historical Center has done helpful work which allows us to trace the mind of the presbyterian churches on the matter of public scripture reading. This is the Historical Center’s data, presented in reverse order (compared to the original article) with bolding added:
The Directory for the Publick Worship of God; agreed upon by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, 1645, III-1 & 2Reading of the word in the congregation, being part of the publick worship of God, (wherein we acknowledge our dependence upon him, and subjection to him,) and one mean sanctified by him for the edifying of his people, is to be performed by the pastors and teachers.Howbeit, such as intend the ministry, may occasionally both read the word, and exercise their gift in preaching in the congregation, if allowed by the presbytery thereunto.
PCUSA, 1786, DfW, 2d DraftThe reading of the Holy Scriptures in the Congregation, is a part of the public worship of God; and ought to be performed by the Ministers and Teachers.
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