God Has Sabbath Blessings for the Christian!

When I defend the confessional (and scriptural) view of the Sabbath, one of the most-common arguments I get is, "Jesus is our Sabbath. We rest in Him." Yet, when I ask where Scripture says that, I get only dodges, generally of the ad hominem sort. I would know that, if I weren't such a legalist, they say. In my mind, a response like that is actually a concession that the person has no evidence for his claim. Just because, like some children would say.

Yet, I would say there are two very clear scriptures against that view.

The first is Hebrews 4:9: "There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God." In the last (or near-last) book of the New Testament, the writer tells us, not that the Sabbath  has been fulfilled, but rather that it yet awaits the Christian!

The other is Revelation 14:13: "I heard a voice from heaven saying, 'Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.' 'Blessed indeed,' says the Spirit, 'that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!'" When do we achieve the fullness of Sabbath rest? Not two-thousand years ago, in the salvation work of Jesus. Rather, we achieve it when we die in the Lord. That is when the futility and labor of the Curse (Genesis 3:17-19) are done away. Only when Jesus returns will the intermediary step of death no longer be necessary.

I am sympathetic with a desire to dismiss legalism. However, how can obedience to a blessing (Mark 2:27) be legalism? God gives us a day to be free from the drudgery of our daily labor, to focus on joy, peace, and rest with Him: "If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken" (Isaiah 58:13-14). Rather than legalism, I would suggest that my anti-sabbatarian brethren have a sinful inability to enjoy our God!

Biblical Church Government: Presbyterian

Before I start, this post makes number 500. I'll pretend that it is in honor of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

My church derives from Scottish Presbyterians who separated from the Church of Scotland, in part, over the issue of patronage. After the Act of Union of 1703, which abolished the Scottish Parliament, the English Parliament passed a law required the Scots to accept pastors appointed by the local landowners, whether those landowners were members of the church or not. The Church of Scotland submitted to that requirement, contrary to her own constitution. This resulted in three secessions: the Associate Presbytery (also nicknamed the Secession Church) in 1733, the Relief Church in 1761, and finally the Free Church of Scotland in 1843.

What was the principle which these secessionists upheld? That a congregation has a right under God to choose her own officers, including the pastor, contrary to the impositions of Parliament. This continues to be what distinguishes Presbyterians from the episcopal churches, especially the Roman Catholic Church, which appoint their pastors, or move them, according to the whims of their bishops.

On what basis do we Presbyterians insist on this principle?

In Acts 6:1-6, we have the first description of the choice of church officers under the Apostles: "Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, 'It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.' And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them." The situation was a result of the growth of the church, both in numbers and in cultural diversity, resulting in interpersonal conflicts. The Apostles were unable both to attend to these conflicts and to evangelize. Therefore, they called for the church to choose (the Greek word means to choose by a show of hands) seven men, who would then be appointed to the office of deacon.

This pattern wasn't created ex nihilo by the Apostles. Rather, they followed biblical precedent. Moses had a similar difficulty as he led Israel in the Wilderness after the Exodus (Deuteronomy 1:9-18). Under God's instruction, Moses commanded the Israelites to "Choose for your tribes wise, understanding, and experienced men, and I will appoint them as your heads" (Deuteronomy 1:13). We see the very procedure adopted by the Apostles, as the congregation  elects men from within, who are then appointed to their authority by Moses.

The Apostles demonstrated their passing on of authority through the laying on of hands (Acts 13:3). With the passing of the Apostles, those who had inherited their authority continued the procedure (I Timothy 4:14, II Timothy 1:6). Thus, we have an orderly distribution of authority from Christ, the only head of the church, to the Apostles, and then to the elders and deacons of the church. There is provision neither for rule by individual men or for imposition of leaders, whether by a man or by the state, against the will of the church. This rules out popes, bishops, men of social standing, or of any authority supposedly over the church. This is the origin of the truth expressed in the Westminster Confession of Faith XXV:6: "There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ: nor can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof; but is that Antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ, and all that is called God."

The Unchristian Doctrine of the Prosperity Preachers

Part of what makes the Prosperity Gospel so evil is that its purveyors teach people that Jesus doesn't allow us to suffer. They claim that the Christian should never know hardship or poverty, or the loss of a loved one. When that teaching fails, as all falsehood must, it isn't the prosperity preachers who are held to account. Rather, the Christian in misery is made to feel that his suffering is the result of his own failure of faith. That can only lead to guilt, anger, and even cursing against God.

That certainly wasn't the teaching of Jesus. Luke, the Gentile Physician, records the account of His healing of the daughter of Jairus, an elder in the Jewish synagogue (Luke 8:40-42, 49-56). Jairus pleads with Jesus on behalf of his dying daughter. Surely anyone can empathize with a father's fear and desperation under such circumstances. Yet, Jesus turns away from Jairus to heal the woman with a twelve-year hemorrhage (verses 43-48). That delay proves fatal for Jairus's daughter, as a messenger arrives to inform him of his daughter's death.

Notice how contrary this story is to Prosperity teaching. Here is a man who believes in Jesus and comes to Him for help. Yet, Jesus attends to other things for a time too long for the little girl to hang on. What suffering this must have brought to this father's heart! What we see, though, is that his suffering is not the last word in the story, because Jesus does, indeed, meet his desperate need.

Why the wait? Well, we know that part of Jesus's timing is so that He could address the need of the woman with the hemorrhage. Also, we (and His Palestinian audience) see His power, not just over illness, but over even death itself!

The Apostle Paul also lived with deprivation, even as he was doing the greatest ministerial work that history has known. "I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:11-13). He testifies that he has had high points and low points, and known both plenty and hunger. Surely this Apostle should have known perpetual prosperity if anyone should. Right? Well, no, not right. The problem with someone who knows no hardship is seen in the last sentence of these words from Paul: "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me." How could Paul have learned that dependence on God if he had never experienced need? And that is where the Prosperity Gospel fails. It teaches, not dependence on God, but rather dependence on belief. Belief in belief. And there can be no assurance when ones faith is in the wrong object.

Jairus Pleads With Jesus

The Diagnosis Must Come Before the Prescription: Total Depravity

A memorial to the victims in Sandy Hook, CT

 The Bible says that "all have sinned" (Romans 3:23), and "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). While I can understand why unbelievers reject what God says here, I am bewildered by the reaction of professing Christians, who want to hold on to a basic goodness in men. I would ask such "Christians," Have people ceased to be sinners? Has there been some miraculous transformation in human nature, such that Scripture doesn't apply any more?

I cannot imagine any person - at least, one who seriously describes himself as a Christian - answering either question in the affirmative.

Rather, man's total depravity is taught all through Scripture. That is not teaching that men, or any particular man, are as wicked as we could be - though I admit that I wonder sometimes, such as after the Sandy Hook massacre. Rather, it is the teaching that every faculty, whether physical, mental, or spiritual, of every man is corrupted by the effects of sin.

While I have cited many passages on this issue (use the "total depravity" tag at the bottom), I want to add one that is rarely considered, Titus 3:3: "We ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another." A key element in this verse is that Paul uses the past tense. He describes the nature that Christians had before our conversion. And he does not paint a pretty picture, certainly nothing that should be a basis for self-esteem!

What changes a person is not increased self-esteem, or social reform, or any of the other progressive psycho-babble proposals that are so popular these days. Rather, the solution is regeneration, that change of a man's heart by which the Holy Spirit gives him a new nature, not free from sin in this life, but free from the dominion of sin: "I [God] will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes and be careful to obey My rules" (Ezekiel 36:26-27).

The problem with the corrupt Christianity preached by Joel Osteen, Robert Schuller, etc., is that they try to hush up what Scripture says about sin and its consequences. Yet, that attitude is contrary to Scripture, such as Paul's comment to Titus cited above. But the question must then be asked of them, How can a man believe the good news of salvation if he doesn't first hear the bad news of the sinful condition from which he must be saved? Imagine the doctor who tries to convince a patient to undergo surgery if he hasn't first told him of the tumor that threatens his life. What would the reaction of the patient be? I know that I would never submit to surgery without a sufficient cause! In the same way, the unbeliever cannot repent and turn to Christ until he first knows his sinful condition and the eternal death that is its consequence.

God's Love: The Fly in the Oneness Ointment

"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as He is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because He first loved us."
- I John 4:7-8, 16-19

This passage was written by the same Apostle John who gave us the Revelation. Yet, while that book can often be mystifying, I don't think anyone can say that of the portion I quote here. There is one central point, and he makes it eminently clear: It is, and has always been, God's nature to love. Therefore, we, His people, can express love confidently.

Orthodox Christians hold that the love God shows to us is a manifestation of that same nature of love that He had shared so intimately within the Trinity, the Father's loving the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Son's loving the Father and the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit's loving the Father and the Son. We have assurance of His love because it is an infinite and eternal love, preceding even our existence.

However, the Sabellian (or Modalist, or Oneness) believes in a monadic deity, a unitary oneness that had no companionship for the unknowable eternity before Genesis 1. He must ask the question, Whom did God love? Since he believes that there was no one else there to be loved, then his answer can only be "no one." And that presents a problem.

We do know from Scripture that it is contrary to God's nature to change: "I the LORD do not change" (Malachi 3:6, compare Numbers 23:19 and I Samuel 15:29). Therefore, since the Sabellian God did not have love in eternity past, then neither could He become loving, since that would have been a change of nature. A God without love would not be a redeemer, a sanctifier, or a merciful Father. Therefore, the Sabellian God cannot be the God of the Bible (John 3:16).

The Ethiopian Eunuch and the Mode of Baptism

On the Desert Road to Gaza

When it comes to the mode of baptism, all Baptists, most (maybe all) Pentecostals, and other groups, claim that it must be by immersion. They often even claim that the Greek word "baptizo" (from which the English word "baptize" is derived) itself means "to immerse." As I have argued before, such as here, that is not the case. I will here offer another proof that "baptizo," in fact cannot mean "to immerse" (at least, in some passages).

Most Christians know the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:26-39). To summarize, God sends an angel to tell Philip to go to a place along the road from Jerusalem to Gaza. There, he sees an Ethiopian riding in a chariot, presumably with a driver, reading the scroll of the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 52:13-53:12). He asks Philip to explain the passage. Philip does so, and the Holy Spirit blesses His word in the conversion of the Ethiopian. Ethiopian Christians claim this event as the origin of Christianity in Ethiopia.

Baptists often point to verses 38 and 39: "And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing." Since the two men went "down into" the water, and then "came out of" the water, the Baptists claim, then Philip must have immersed the eunuch in the water. In fact, pictures based on this story consistently show this supposed scenario.

However, there is a huge problem with this picture. the problem is found in verse 26: "This [area] is desert." Does the picture above show a desert? Obviously not! How likely is it that a desert road will happen to pass a river or pool deep enough to immerse a grown man? Extremely unlikely!

I conclude that this passage cannot be used as Baptists have commonly used it. in fact, I would take it to require the opposite of the claim of the immersionists. It necessarily requires that the baptism here described must have been by either pouring or sprinkling, not by immersion. 

This last image gives a more-likely scenario for the baptism.

God's War on Idolatry

"On the day after the Passover, the people of Israel went out triumphantly in the sight of all the Egyptians, while the Egyptians were burying all their firstborn, whom the Lord had struck down among them. On their gods also the Lord executed judgments. [And God said to Moses] 'Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you pass over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you and destroy all their figured stones and destroy all their metal images and demolish all their high places. If you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those of them whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell. And I will do to you as I thought to do to them.'"
- Numbers 33:3-4, 51-52, 55-56

The main focus in the story of the Exodus is God's redemption of His people out of slavery in Egypt. It is a glorious story to every Christian, because it serves as a type of our rescue from slavery to sin by the atoning cross work of Jesus Christ.

However, that is not the whole of the story.

I want to point especially at the words of Numbers 33:4, included above: "On their [i. e., the Egyptians'] gods also the Lord executed judgments." The ten plagues are seen to be on the Egyptian people, yet, somehow, they were also judgments on the deceiving spirits that they considered to be gods.

Jehovah continues in His exhortation to Israel: "Just as you saw Me destroy the gods of Egypt, so shall you do the religion of the Canaanites" (paraphrased from Num. 33:52). This demonstrates that the conquest of the Promised Land by the Israelites was not the capricious, vindictive act portrayed by liberal theologians. Rather, it was an act of judgment, one that was deserved by the Canaanites. Why? Because God is jealous of His divine prerogatives: "You shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God" (Exodus 34:14). Worshiping any god but Jehovah is to steal from Him what is properly His alone, an act of severe treason. That's why the abolition of it is the first of the Ten Commandments. Is the violation of the Prime Directive (to borrow a Star Trek term) not sufficient reason for capital punishment? I don't believe that any person can say that it is not, except as a self-serving effort to protect his own idolatry (Romans 1:18).