Pastor, Give the People What They Need, Not What They Want
My pastor has long used the phrase, “Preach the Word and let the chips fall where they may.” In a nutshell, this encompasses his philosophy of ministry (and my own). The central task of the preacher is to preach. This should be a relatively uncontroversial statement to make in one sense, but in our current church culture, where the pastor is more often seen as a CEO or “brand builder” rather than a shepherd, it is an unpopular statement to make. The expectations placed on pastors are often flatly unbiblical ones, partly owing to the congregant’s lack of biblical wherewithal, yet partly owing to the pastor’s neglect to preach the full counsel of God (Acts 20:27).
There are obviously many other duties tasked to the shepherd of God’s flock, but they all invariably flow from the ministry of the Word and prayer (Acts 6:4). Visitations, funerals, weddings, counseling, even administrative duties, all must fall under the auspices of this primary duty. When they don’t, these duties invariably transform into something other than what is intended of them. In other words, these duties, when done rightly, are an extension of the pastor’s primary task of preaching and teaching. Counseling, marrying, burying, and more, are to be born out of the pastor’s obligation to the Scriptures rather than simply a perfunctory duty, and especially the main duty.
There are constant temptations to let the central task of the preacher be something other than the ministry of the Word and devotion to prayer. The obvious example of becoming the next big name in celebrity evangelicalism is relatively low-hanging fruit to identify, but it is nonetheless something the broader church culture places high currency on. However, the more subtle examples of this abound in the various ministries that churches can participate in. That is not to say it is inherently evil that someone desires the church to have a soup kitchen, for example, but good social deeds are not the primary focus of the church. Rather, the Great Commission is (Matt. 28:16-20).
Yet if you were to ask the average layperson what the primary duty of the church is, it is highly doubtful the Great Commission would come to mind for many. Some would say social justice is, others would claim that a vibrant youth group is what’s needed. For many though, the last thing that would come to their mind is making disciples of Christ. Even for those who would lift up the Great Commission as the primary task of the church would not adequately define what that actually means or would place heavier emphasis on one of the three means Christ has given us rather than encompassing evangelism, baptism, and teaching as the way one makes a mature disciple. I have sincere doubts that many pastors would even adequately define this as the church’s primary duty; after all, the positions of those in the pews is often a reflection of what comes from the pulpit.
It is of no small consequence that Paul’s dying exhortation to young Timothy was to, “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction” (2 Tim. 4:2). The reason? “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths” (2 Tim. 4:3-4).
Brothers, we are living in this “out of season” time, where the multitudes prefer fables fit for old women to sound doctrine.
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Sheol
Written by Bryan D. Estelle |
Thursday, August 11, 2022
With the death, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, the understanding of death and the afterlife changed radically for the saints. Here it is important to understand our Lord’s seventh saying on the cross: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46). This final saying was a statement of consolation and filial trust. It was an act of offering His human spirit to His heavenly Father (meantime, His divine nature remained united with His human nature, even as He lay in the grave; see Belgic Confession 19). By making this final statement on the cross, Christ gives us an affirmation of the uninterrupted life.What is this place called Sheol for the Old Testament saint? In most Old Testament references, “Sheol” is used to describe human fate. A pallid aura hovers over the concept. Sheol is often described by the righteous as a place that one does not want to go to—an “unwelcome fate,” such as in Psalm 30:3. Often, when the psalmists refer to Sheol, what they most feared was not death per se, nor that they might lose themselves in death. Rather, they feared that they might lose contact with God. For example, Psalm 6:5 says, “For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who will give you praise?” The number of words for this place of the dead is striking in the Scriptures: “Sheol,” “pit,” “grave,” “depths,” “place of perdition,” “land of oblivion,” “Abaddon.”
Sheol was often thought of as a place of divine punishment, a destiny often wished on the ungodly. The psalmist often speaks in a metaphorical manner about Sheol. Sometimes “Sheol” is used to metaphorically describe the strength of affliction by someone who is not literally in Sheol. For example, in Psalm 88, the psalmist cannot literally reside in Sheol, because clearly he is still alive; therefore, he is using metaphorical language to describe his existence as if he is already in the realm of those who dwell in Sheol. Sometimes “Sheol” is used to describe the pain of being in exile. Sometimes “darkness” is used as a metaphor for a Sheol-like state, as in Psalm 143:3: “For the enemy has pursued my soul, he has crushed my life to the ground; he has made me sit in darkness like those long dead.”
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Christ Came to do the Will of the Father
By His obedience to God’s will, even in the things that He suffered, He secured salvation for us. As our high priest, Christ teaches us that we have no other way of dealing with our moral failure and its penalty than to come to God and say, “Nothing in my hand I bring, / Simply to thy cross I cling.”
For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. — JOHN 6:38
Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God. — HEBREWS 10:7; CF. PSALM 40:7–8
Jesus came to earth to do the will of the Father. Ultimately, the will of God is His righteous decree that determines all that comes to pass and causes all things to work together for His glory (Eph. 1:11; cf. Deut. 29:29). Everything that comes to pass is the will of God, and He accomplishes that in Christ (Col. 1:16–17). But when Christ speaks about coming to do God’s will, He is referring to the will that God has revealed “unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deut. 29:29). God’s revealed will is breathed out of His heart and establishes His expectations for His people.
It may surprise us, then, to hear Jesus refer to two wills: His own and His Father’s. In doing so, Jesus opens a window on His humanity. As Andrew Murray says, “Christ had a human will. For instance, he ate when he was hungry, and he shrank from suffering when he saw it coming.”1 While His will was not sinful, Jesus still had to deny it. In taking on flesh, Christ undertook the ultimate challenge of conforming His human will to His Father’s divine will.
Jesus met that challenge; He did the will of God in all things. He performed every duty of the law (Matt. 5:17) and resisted all temptation to transgress it. At the end of His earthly life He could say, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do” (John 17:4).
James 4:17 says, “To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” We commit sins of omission every day, but Jesus never did. Indeed, He sometimes went out of His way to heal just one person (Mark 5:1–20). He showed compassion to people who were guilty of notorious sins (John 4:1–30; 8:1–11). The disciples accused their master of being unreasonable when He fed crowds of five thousand and then four thousand, because no one could be expected to provide for such multitudes (Mark 6:35–37). But Jesus had compassion on them (Matt. 15:32).
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Does the Bible Limit Gender to Just Male and Female?
When God chose to remake the world, he only preserved males and females because those two exhausted the gender categories of both humans and animals. The reason behind this decision seems consistent with the reason found in the initial creation of Genesis: The gender binary was directly tied to procreation. Only a male and female (no more and no less) are needed to be fruitful and multiply.
There’s a trendy new idea that denies God created only two genders (male and female). What’s the proof? Frogs. That’s right. Proponents of this view claim frogs are evidence that the gender binary of the Bible is a myth. If you’re puzzled by this, that’s understandable. Here’s how the argument works.
Defenders of this position point out that in Genesis 1, Scripture says God made creatures that live on the land and creatures that swim in the water. Frogs, however, are amphibians and aren’t exclusively land or water creatures. They don’t fit neatly in either of those creature classifications. So, although Genesis describes the creation of land and water creatures, it does not account for every kind of animal that God made.
In the same way, so the argument goes, even though Scripture says that God made humans “male and female” (Gen. 1:27), those two categories can’t account for every kind of human. God also created non-binary people—those who aren’t either male or female.
Now, there is some truth to what is being said. Many of the binary categories mentioned in the Genesis narrative don’t fully account for everything that’s created. For example, the Bible says God made day and night—allegedly the only two categories during a 24-hour period—but there’s also sunrise, sunset, dusk, and dawn that are neither day nor night.
Notice, however, in those cases (land/sea creatures, night/day), Scripture later references some of the natural variations between these binary extremes. For example, the Bible mentions frogs over a dozen times, acknowledging the existence of animals that are neither land nor sea creatures. Scripture also references dawn and twilight, even though they don’t fit the binary category of day and night.
This, however, is not the case with the binary category of male and female described in Genesis. There is never a later scriptural reference to another kind of human that falls outside the binary male-female gender category. If humans were made that were neither male nor female, why doesn’t Scripture say so?
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