But lay aside the practical consequences of ordaining women pastors, as well as its obvious violation of the clear commands of Scripture….This notion that it is unfair to deny office on account of things outside the conscious control of those that want it if they have the same abilities or moral character that others who attain to it possess. It would be easy to imagine that God is unjust on this point and to ask: why, when all believers participate in the Spirit and receive understanding and spiritual gifts from him, has he not seen fit to enable all people, men and women, to be fit for all the duties and offices of the church? Because God is sovereign, and his will is independent of ours.

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Rom. 12:2)
Our culture cannot abide the notion that any position should be denied someone who wants it on account of any trait that is outside that person’s conscious will. This is often presented as a just desire for equality between persons, but what it actually represents is the elevation of the individual will and its imagined rights above the will of the corporate bodies of which the individual is a part. The modern spirit of absolute individual autonomy says that the individual has rights where the corporate does not, and that in any conflict it is the corporate that must yield to the claims of the individual. Indeed, it is felt that the corporate body only exists to empower, affirm, and celebrate the individual in his or her attempt at self-realization.
To present an example in the civil realm, there are many who act as though the military does not exist to defend the nation, but to provide an environment in which people can climb the ranks and acquire as much remuneration, prestige, and power as they are able. It is thought unfair to prohibit women serving in the combat arms, for example, for that would limit their opportunities for advancement, as if their career ambitions are the important thing in such cases, rather than the actual needs of infantry or artillery battalions.[1]
That same spirit shows itself in the church. It is felt unfair that women should be denied the ruling and teaching offices in the church if they desire them and show themselves as having excellent moral character and much talent in teaching, administration, etc. Great numbers of people, whose sincerity and good intentions I do not for the most part doubt, are therefore agitating for change on this point, and many have gone ahead and elevated women to positions of leadership.
It is an endeavor which is somewhat understandable, for many of the practical considerations of ministry seem to commend it. We see how badly great multitudes need mercy and the good news of eternal life; and we see how many zealous and compassionate women there are among us; how much more opportunity they have to work than many men; how many of them have many useful talents that can be deployed to this end; how many of the people who need help or who have open ears to spiritual concerns are themselves women; and how many men seem apathetic about the work of ministry, and we think that practical concerns and simple fairness commend extending office to those who are eager to carry out its labors.
And yet to do such a thing encounters insuperable difficulties. Paul’s apostolic instruction concerning such matters is, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man” (1 Tim. 2:12). Elsewhere he says, even more restrictively, that “women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says” (1 Cor. 14:34). Discussing this in a 1919 article, “Paul on Women Speaking in Church,” B.B. Warfield says that “it would be impossible for the apostle to speak more directly or more emphatically than he has d[one] here. He requires women to be silent at the church-[meeti]ngs.”[2] Nor can this be regarded as being non-binding or only the apostle’s opinion, for he explicitly claims divine inspiration for it, saying promptly thereafter in 1 Cor. 14:37 that “if anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord.” (And of course, being part of the canon, 1 Corinthians participates in the attribute of divine inspiration with all the other books of the Old and New Testaments, as explicitly declared by 2 Tim. 3:16’s assertion that “all Scripture is breathed out by God.”)
There are practical concerns as well, such as that women seem to not desire office as much as is thought. The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA) greatly wishes to achieve a version of equality which includes parity in the numbers of men and women leaders. But their report upon the matter, Gender and Leadership in the PC(USA), says women are underrepresented, accounting for 58% of members and only 38% of active teaching elders in 2016, even after generations of ordaining women. Perhaps the familiar refrain that women are more spiritual than men is false, then, or at least does not have anything to do with their desire to hold church office.
(And as an aside, the picture of the PCUSA’s efforts at gender equality that report portrays does not suggest an equitable or pleasant outcome, but rather a situation characterized by widespread, continuing discord. Either extending office to women has not meant them also achieving the same prestige as their male counterparts, or else such as has been achieved is deemed insufficient. Neither suggests the experiment has been particularly successful: either official equality did not mean actual/practical equality, or else equality really has been achieved and its beneficiaries do not like its true nature in comparison to what their ideal visions imagine it should be like.)
Then there is the practical concern that the churches that have ordained women as pastors, far from increasing their appeal, have been struggling with severe membership losses. That which was supposed to increase ministerial effectiveness has not done so, at least for many of the major denominations that have pursued it. The PCUSA’s constituent predecessors had about 4.25 million members in 1965. It is now down to 1.14 million, and loses about 110 churches and 50,000 members every year. The national population has meanwhile increased from about 195 million to an estimated 334 million. This represents the PCUSA’s percentage of the population dropping by about 85%. That is not winning the culture, and represents demographic difficulties reminiscent of the Jewish nation during its judgments (Jer. 4:26).
But lay aside the practical consequences of ordaining women pastors, as well as its obvious violation of the clear commands of Scripture, for these objections have often been pointed out before. Consider again the idea upon which it precedes, this notion that it is unfair to deny office on account of things outside the conscious control of those that want it if they have the same abilities or moral character that others who attain to it possess. It would be easy to imagine that God is unjust on this point and to ask: why, when all believers participate in the Spirit and receive understanding and spiritual gifts from him, has he not seen fit to enable all people, men and women, to be fit for all the duties and offices of the church?
Because God is sovereign, and his will is independent of ours. He does not rule to do our bidding (Lk. 17:7-10) or to bring about perfect equality of authority (1 Pet. 5:5) and opportunity (Matt. 19:30) between people, nor to make it so our faith is easily palatable to unbelievers who ascribe to the phantasm of absolute individual autonomy (1 Cor. 1:23; 1 Pet. 2:8). The church belongs to him, not us, as do its offices and gifts: he may give them in whatever amount he wishes to whomever he wishes, and he may deny or withdraw them as he sees fit. They are his to do with them as he pleases.
We cannot say this is unfair because 1) we are creatures, and creatures have no right to criticize or question their creator (Job. 40:2; Isa. 45:9-11; Rom. 9:20); and 2) none of us deserve anything from God except rejection and punishment (Rom. 3:9-20). All we have is a gift (Jn. 3:27; 1 Cor. 4:7; Jas. 1:17), and gifts are matters of grace, not justice (Matt. 20:1-16; Rom. 12:6). For his own reasons God has given office and gifts to some (Eph. 4:7-14) which he has not given to most others (inc. the present author). That is his prerogative, and you can either accept it or rebel against it. You cannot deny God’s rights to freely do with his own whatever he wills, for that is to deny his independence and sovereignty as creator and governor of the world.
And in that is seen the essential evil of rebelling against him by disobeying his commands against women pastors. It is an act of gross impiety that denies essential attributes of his character and seeks to supplant his will with that of mere sinful humans. Now God says in his word that “rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry” (1 Sam. 15:23). He forbade such offenses absolutely in the Law, prescribing the death penalty as punishment (Lev. 20:27; Deut. 13:1-18), and in the New Testament says that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of heaven (1 Cor. 6:9; Gal. 5:19-21) but will perish in the lake of fire (Rev. 21:8). Let the gravity of that sink in: those that ordain women are engaged in a sin that God regards as the moral equivalent of idolatry and witchcraft (as some translations have 1 Sam. 15:23’s “divination”). If something is the equivalent of such heinous sins we should not toy with or study it, but rather reject it outright without delay.
That may yet be a snare for many, for I fear that some are content to oppose it, but with a manner and conception that is at least partly of their own choosing and not with the full force of Scripture’s denunciations of such open rebellion. There is a brand of conservative thought that desires to oppose what it regards as error, but in a respectable – dare I say, winsome – way that it (vainly) hopes will not be open to the accusation of fanaticism or fundamentalism. But in such matters we ought to oppose wrong in God’s way, not our own, which means describing sins as they truly are, not in a purposefully restrained manner that fears lest it seem too harsh or offensive. The future will reveal whether the opponents of this error oppose it as though it is a matter of life and death, or whether like Joash they fight with less zeal than is required and ultimately fail (2 Kgs. 13:14-19).
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks (Simpsonville), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation, available through Amazon.

[1]      When all specialties were opened to women in 2015 it was on condition that they be able to meet the standards required for each, which suggests that my perspective here is false, as doing so expanded the available candidates to fill combat positions. I.e., it put the military’s needs first and without compromise. However, there are no shortage of men who could fill those positions – the vast bulk of the military serve in administrative and support capacities – and many of the people who pressured the military to make such changes seem to have been motivated less by a desire to expand our combat forces than by concerns about perceived fairness to women.
[2]      The manuscript has a tear where the text in brackets is located above, and the words “done” and “meeting” have been inferred as the proper ones from the context.
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Public speaking can be terrifying, and even more so without a manuscript. How does the preacher not give way to fear and anxiety? Only by depending on God. “Everything depends upon your being cool and unflurried. Forebodings of failure, and fear of man, will ruin you. Go on, trusting in God, and all will be well” (243). This doesn’t mean we can count on the Spirit’s help if we’ve been lazy. But if we have studied, prepared, and prayed, then we can trust the Spirit to be with us as we seek to serve God’s people.

On February 23, 1856, Charles H. Spurgeon found a spare moment to write to a friend about the remarkable revival that was happening under his preaching. He had been in London for less than two years, and in that short time, his popularity had grown such that no building could hold the thousands coming to hear him. England had not seen the likes of Spurgeon since the days of Wesley and Whitefield. “Everywhere, at all hours, places are crammed to the doors. The devil is wide awake, but so, too, is the Master.”
With this growing popularity, the invitations to preach were pouring in. Just that week, Spurgeon had already preached eleven times. His letter concluded with a list of the fourteen preaching engagements he had the following week, preaching two to three times a day (Autobiography, 2:101–2). He would maintain this preaching pace for the first fifteen years of his ministry, and even as poor health began to limit his activity, Spurgeon still regularly preached four times a week in his own church, and usually two or three more times in other venues.
How did he do it? Amid pastoring a growing church, preparing sermons for publication, mentoring pastoral students, caring for his family, and more, how did he find time to prepare so many sermons? For Spurgeon, an important key was learning to deliver his sermons extemporaneously.
What Is Extemporaneous Preaching?
Spurgeon once delivered a lecture to his students on extemporaneous speaking, summarizing his approach on sermon delivery (“The Faculty of Impromptu Speech” in Lectures to My Students). He divided extemporaneous speaking into two categories: “speech impromptu” and extemporaneous sermon delivery.
‘Speech Impromptu’
The first is what he called “speech impromptu,” that is, preaching “without special preparation, without notes or immediate forethought” (227). His general rule was that no ministry should be made up primarily of this kind of preaching. Quakers or Plymouth Brethren preachers had the distinctive practice of not preparing and simply waiting for the Spirit to provide them a sermon. But Spurgeon believed such sermons tended to be repetitive and often void of solid teaching. “Churches are not to be held together except by an instructive ministry; a mere filling up of time with oratory will not suffice” (227).
At the same time, many unforeseen opportunities to speak arise in ministry: A church member speaks divisively at a meeting, and you, as the pastor, need to respond. A public meeting goes off course with unhelpful comments, and you are burdened to “counteract the mischief, and lead the assembly into a more profitable line of thought” (234). At a funeral, you are unexpectedly invited to say a few words. In all these events, the ability to speak clearly and compellingly without preparation can be a tremendous gift to the church.
Extemporaneous Sermon Delivery
The second kind of speaking is extemporaneous sermon delivery, where “the words are extemporal, as I think they always should be, but the thoughts are the result of research and study” (230). This was Spurgeon’s preferred preaching method. Spurgeon’s prodigious study habits are evident in his library, much of which resides today at the Spurgeon Library in Kansas City, Missouri. These six thousand volumes (half of his original library) contain works of theology, biblical studies, preaching, church history, poetry, fiction, classics, and much more. They give ample evidence of his wide and thoughtful study. Of course, his most important study was in the Bible, and his many Bibles reveal not only discipline but also prayerful meditation.
Beyond his reading, Spurgeon was always on the lookout for illustrations, anecdotes, helpful sayings, and anything else that could be used in a sermon. From his observations on the train to the latest headline in the newspaper to a bird on his windowsill, everything around him provided fresh insight into the truths of God’s word, and he attentively stored them for future use.
Of course, Spurgeon also dedicated time to prepare sermons. Throughout the week, he was constantly jotting down potential sermon outlines (he called them “skeletons”) out of the overflow of his Bible study and meditation. He spent the most time on his Sunday-morning sermons, devoting his Saturday evenings to preparation. A few hours on Sunday afternoons were spent preparing his Sunday-evening sermons, which tended to complement the morning sermon. For Monday and Thursday-night meetings, Spurgeon usually preached a more devotional sermon based on the things he found himself meditating on that week.
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The High Priest was entirely disqualified to stand in God’s presence. He bore all the sins of the people of God and the stink of their sins was unbearable. God removed the defiled garments demonstrating to Zechariah that God indeed forgave the sins of His people and will not abandon His people despite what they deserve.

God’s faithfulness to His people is astounding; His loyalty to His people is staggering for its unwavering character. God’s people do not earn this astounding, staggering loyalty and faithfulness; in fact, they do not deserve it at all. Even more remarkable is that God’s faithful loyalty to His people is also characterized by rich and deep covenant love. The Hebrew Church had a single word for this: hesed.
Because of God’s faithful, loyal covenant love for His people, despite their sins God does not abandon them. The Old Covenant Church sang about this reality:
Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion, and to you shall vows be performed. O you who hear prayer, to you shall all flesh come. When iniquities prevail against me, you atone for our transgressions. (Psalm 65:1–3)
And this truth remains precious to the New Covenant Church:
Praise waits for thee in Zion; all men shall worship thereand pay their vows before thee, O God who hearest prayer.Our sins rise up against us, prevailing day by day,but thou wilt show us mercy and take their guilt away.(Trinity Hymnal No. 372)
The saints in the Old Covenant Church knew their sinfulness well. And the psalm suggests, they also knew well the attacks of the Devil and his minions: to remind the people of their sinfulness, unworthiness, and lack of deserving any good thing. When under such attacks by the Devil, God’s people can draw strength from the truths of Psalm 65.
Because the Accuser has a limited number of tactics to deploy against God’s people to rob them of their joy or entice them to sin, he uses those same, tired tactics frequently.
I. Old Offenses
God’s people were cast out of the Promised Land because of their sinfulness and covenant breaking, but God did not cast off His people. He brought them back to Jerusalem and provided the means for them to rebuild the Temple.
Although the people were physically in the Promised Land, yet for many of them their hearts had not returned to the Lord their God. But God still did not cast off His people; instead he sent Haggai and Zechariah to call them to repentance afresh.
To encourage His prophet and to demonstrate His unfailing commitment to His Church, God gave Zechariah a vision of the unseen realms.
Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the LORD said to Satan, “The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?” Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. (Zechariah 3:1–3)
The prophet saw Joshua, the High Priest who represented the Old Covenant Church before God and God to the Church, clothed in filthy garments, wholly unsuited for ministry. The garments were filthy because of the people’s sinfulness.
There stands Satan, the Accuser, ready to lodge all manner of charges against the High Priest regarding the past sins of the people, which have defiled him and should render him disqualified for his priestly duty.This is a common tactic of the Devil: bring up old sins to rob God’s people of our joy, to discourage us from seeking God’s grace, and to try to disqualify us in our own minds and the minds of others from God’s service by alleging: Behold, a sinner! Look how bad this person is! Look what he did! Look what he said! Behold, a sinner!
This demonic tactic is effective because what the Devil or his minions allege – in this regard – is often true. We have committed horrible sins; we have brought grief upon ourselves and others. We rightly deserve to be clothed in shame and filth.
But God’s people must not allow these demonic attacks to prevail in our minds or hearts; we must remember neither our sins nor the Devil’s accusations define us.
II. New Righteousness
Zechariah’s vision did not end simply with the Lord’s rebuke of Satan’s accusations. The Lord acted to overcome the defilement of sin, to overcome the truth of Satan’s allegations.
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