05.30.09
What the Bible says about Homosexuality (1)
One of the legacies left to Western Nations from the sexual revolution of the 1960’s has been the increasing incidence, influence and tolerance of Homosexuality in society. Now some forty years on and Homosexuality has become one of the Crises of our time.
Since the turn of the century we (in the U.K.) have witnessed.
1. The introduction of Civil Partnership Legislation to legitimatise same sex relationships.
2. The Legalisation of adoption for same sex couples.
3. The teaching of the validity of Homosexual relationships to children as young as 6 in schools.
4. The increased manipulation of society by minority pressure groups and the media to promote the homosexual agenda.
5. The persecution as ‘homophobic’ of those who would question or oppose homosexuality.
An example of this from the U.S. would be the reaction to the comments of Miss California who had the audacity to say she believed that marriage should be between one man and one woman. There are many advocates of ‘tolerance’ who will not tolerate such a conviction.
Society has largely succumbed to the pressure but as with most things, sooner or later they begin to have an impact on the Church.
1. In 2003 Gene Robinson was appointed a Bishop in New Hampshire (USA). He was joined in civil union to his partner in 2008 & the controversy almost rent the Anglican Communion.
2. Closer to home (Scotland) last Saturday evening the Church of Scotland voted by a majority to induct an openly practicing homosexual minister, Scott Rennie, to the Queen’s Cross congregation in Aberdeen where he will live in the manse with his male partner.
How can this happen? How can something that has been condemned by the Church in both Testaments and in all ages as sinful, suddenly become acceptable? How can a Church that is supposed to follow the religion revealed in the Bible induct a practising Homosexual to the ministry of Word & Sacrament. Even to many irreligious people in the world this beggars belief.
The Answer is that the Church has rejected the Bible. Some Churchmen might boldly confess this. Others will be more subtle, they might say we need to adapt the Bible to the society we live in. We need to change. Others will say that they do believe the Bible and that (no matter about 2000 yrs of teaching) it does not condemn Homosexuality.
Despite all of the above it is our contention that the Bible is clear on the issue of Homosexuality – It is Sin. What has occurred in the Church of Scotland is a disgrace to the Gospel of Christ, and to the Church of God & it is because of this, and with a heavy heart we take up this issue.
G.B.
05.29.09
Remembering the Past
Though not impossible, it is hard to over-state the importance of knowing our history, especially the history of the Christian Church; including, I might add, the period between the Apostles and the Reformation. If we ignore history, we ignore the accumulated wisdom of the ages, and again, particularly the accumulated wisdom of the great teachers and rulers the Lord has granted his Church throughout the centuries. There is truly no new thing under the sun, but those who have historical memory loss tend to think that everything is new, and what’s worse, be fooled by every repackaged error.
“Many Christians treat the past like a dead, and therefore irrelevant, ancestor. As a result, memory has little place in an age that has little vision. Rather than repressing memories about our predecessors and their virtue, remembering may be an undetected aid ‘for the living of these days’ unless, of course, we have definitively judged that our spiritual parents were so feeble, inferior, cowardly, or unenlightened as to be prevented from communing at the same table as we. That is the arrogance of the modern.” (David Hall, Unknown)
The Bible is not one long Epistle to the Romans. There are poetical books, books of proverbs, and such like. It captures the soul with beauty. It gains an ear through the imagination with similes and parables, with passages and stories that are figurative and fantastical, and so on. And it is full of lots and lots of history. For, as the Puritans never tired of stating, “Man is a creature that is led more by patterns than by precepts.” God expects us to learn a great deal from Church history and the lives of the saints – especially within Scripture, but also from all the generations since the completion of God’s special revelation. Take the family, for an example. If you want to know how to live a practical godly life as a family, where would you turn in Scripture? Paul’s Epistles have only a limited amount to say. You will need to study the lives of the godly families in the Church, and most of these, or the fullest cases, are all in the Old Testament historical passages. And to better understand how these principles that you would extract apply to other and more modern situations, you would be greatly helped by studying how godly families through the generations since have done so.
Let me add two similar quotations to the one above:
“Examples do strangely charm us into imitation. When holiness is pressed upon us we are prone to think that it is a doctrine calculated for angels and spirits whose dwelling is not with flesh. But when we read the lives of them that excelled in holiness, though they were persons of like passions with ourselves, the conviction is wonderful and powerful.” (Cotton Mather {Puritan}, Unknown)
“Example is the most powerful rhetoric.” (Thomas Brooks {Puritan}, Unknown)
I would argue for the need to have some acquaintance with our Western heritage, as well the need to learn a few very basic lessons from some of the greatest political and social mistakes that men have made throughout history; I would, of course, argue more strongly for a rough knowledge of Church history up to the present; but at the very least, we need to quicken our love of holiness by reading the lives of the godly, those of whom the world was not worthy.
G.M.
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05.27.09
Christianity and Beauty
“Has the Lord adorned flowers with all the beauty which spontaneously presents itself to the eye, and the sweet odour which delights the sense of smell, and shall it be unlawful for us to enjoy that beauty and this odour? What? Has He not so distinguished colours as to make some more agreeable than others? . . . In short, has He not given many things a value without having any necessary use?”
John Calvin, Unknown
G.M.
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05.21.09
What Christ Can and Shall Do!
As we see the Church in the West in almost continual decline, it is surely good for us to remind ourselves not only of what God can do, but what he will do. There will yet be great revivals, and there will be a time when the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.
“Salvation shall spread through all the tribes and ranks of mankind, as the lightening from heaven in a few moments would communicate a living flame through ten thousand lamps and torches placed in a proper situation and neighborhood. Thus a nation shall be born in a day when our Redeemer please, and his faithful and obedient subjects shall become as numerous as the spires of grass in a meadow newly mown, and refreshed with the showers of heaven.”
Isaac Watts & John Guyse, Unknown
The ‘Puritan Hope’ did not die with the Puritans.
G.M.
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05.19.09
‘An Heritage of the LORD’
Our good friend over at The Young Puritan has started a series on The Parents’ Responsibility in the Home. I benefited from reading his first instalment and particularly liked this quotation from the Puritan Joseph Caryl:
[On "the fruit of the womb is his reward" (Ps. 127:3b)] “Hence note, ’tis one of the greatest outward blessings to have a family full of dutiful children. To have many children is the next blessing to much grace. To have many children about us is better than to have much wealth about us. To have store of these olive plants (as the Psalmist calls them) round about our table is better than to have store of oil and wine upon our table. We know the worth of dead, or rather lifeless treasures, but who knows the worth of living treasures? Every man who hath children hath not a blessing in them, yet children are a blessing, and some have many blessings in one child. Children are chiefly a blessing to the children of God. “Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.” But are not houses and lands, gold and silver, an heritage bestowed by the Lord upon his people? Doubtless they are, for the earth is his, and the fullness of it, and he gives it to the children of men. But though all things are of God, yet all things are not alike of him: children are more of God than houses and lands.”
Do Christians today view children in a similar way? Or have we become conditioned by an age that treats debt as a blessing and children as a curse, rather than children as a blessing and debt as a curse?
G.M.
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05.18.09
Preaching on God’s Sovereignty and Revival
We are often told that it is a great mistake to preach on God’s sovereignty in ‘evangelistic settings’, but Jonathan Edwards, who saw two periods of awakening in his congregation, viewed the subject somewhat differently:
“I think I have found that no discourses have been more remarkedly blessed, than those in which the doctrine of God’s absolute sovereignty, with regard to the salvation of sinners, and his just liberty, with regard to answering prayer, and succeeding the plans, of natural men, continuing such, have been insisted upon.” (Works I, p.353)
G.M.
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05.09.09
A Verse or Two
“The Spirit breathes upon the Word,
And brings the truth to sight;
Precepts and promises afford,
A sanctifying light.
A glory gilds the sacred page,
Majestic, like the sun:
It gives a light to every age,
It gives, but borrows none.”
William Cowper
G.M.
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Perceiving Growth
“Where there is no growth of grace, there is no truth of grace.”
These words of Jeremiah Dyke could have been uttered by any one of the other Puritans (or by just about any one of the great teachers the Lord has given to his Church since the days of the Apostles), but as true as they are, there is more that must be said about perceiving one’s growth. And here the Puritans were equally able, knowing how to comfort those with troubled consciences and persistent doubts.
“And though we are truly said to have come to Christ when we first believe (John 6:35), yet the soul after that is still coming to him by further acts of faith: ‘To whom [coming] as unto a living stone’ (1 Pet. 2:4). The participle notes a continued motion, by which the soul gains ground, and still gets nearer and nearer to Christ; growing still more inwardly acquainted with him. The knowledge of Christ grows upon the soul as the morning light, from its first spring to the perfect day (Prov. 4:18). Every grace of the Spirit grows, if not sensibly, yet really; for it is in discerning the growth of sanctification, as it is in discerning the growth of plants, which we perceive to have grown, rather than grow. And as it thrives in the soul, by deeper movements of the habits, and more promptitude and spirituality in the acting; so Christ, and the soul proportionally, close more and more inwardly and efficaciously, till at last it is swallowed up in Christ’s full and perfect enjoyment.” (John Flavel {Puritan}, The Method of Grace in Bringing Home to Eternal Redemption, p.13)
G.M.
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05.02.09
Evangelicals and Poetry
Here’s a short quotation that touches on not only a more Biblical understanding of the importance of poetry but one that is more historically Christian:
“So we have, on the one hand, conservative (but simultaneously modern) believers who have no soul, or at least souls with no room for poetry. On the other hand, we have gushy souls into which the contents of every Mother’s Day card ever written have been poured.
We must do better than this. Christians who believe the Bible must recover an understanding of the importance of poetry - good poetry. The Word of God, which God gave to us, contains vast stretches of glorious poetry. But we tend to treat it as a grab bag for doctrinal proof texts or inspirational quotes. But in reading the Word of God rightly, we rediscover what might be called the romance of orthodoxy.” (Douglas Wilson, Beyond Stateliest Marble – The Passionate Femininity of Anne Bradstreet {Puritan Poet}, pp.232-3)
We believe that the Church’s (relatively) recent turning away from Exclusive Psalmody was a huge theological mistake and has led to chaos in worship. Interestingly the above quotation partly indicates why the result of that decision has also now led to praise that is quite frankly embarrassing for adults much of the time.
Hard providences – A Puritan poem by Anne Bradstreet
“And when I could no longer look,
I blest His name who gave and took,
That laid my goods now in the dust.
Yea, so it was, and so ’twas just.”
She wrote much that was better than this, but I like these few simple lines and reckon they may prove more applicable in the next few years to many believers.
G.M.
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