In the first part I sought to give context to what’s happening in Minneapolis, especially BLM forces - not “protesters” - bum-rushing Cities Church on Sunday. So what do churches do going forward?

“Act Like Men”

Paul commanded the Corinthian church to “act like men” (1 Cor. 16:13). He meant that they should exercise manly courage to do the hard things they didn’t want to do and to do it all in love. This balance of manly courage and love is not always easy to pull off. But we have Christ as our guide. First the “act like men” part, then love.

To “act like men” first means not defining our actions reactively, in equal measure to the chaos sown by our enemies. Instead we must doggedly hold to Christ, still taking orders from him. When our enemies drive into one ditch, we must not react by driving into the other. An example is obeying God’s command to pray for our governing authorities by name when we worship, so that they would wield their metaphorical sword to ensure we live in peace, not in chaos (1 Timothy 2:1-4). By this we leave vengeance with God. Christians in Minneapolis should therefore pray this Sunday that the authorities would arrest and prosecute those who broke the law at Cities Church, including Don Lemon.1

God never allows us to go further and use the devil’s tactics. Our weapons are still water, bread and wine, deployed first through worship. The BLM protesters seem to see the centrality of worship more accurately than many modern Christians. For in disrupting a Bible church’s worship, they are instinctively acknowledging ground zero of the fight - worship. Worship is warfare. If you change what a culture worships, you will change everything else in that culture, too.

Yet there is a balance to calls for restraint. The Bible does not permit Christians to sue each other, but it does permit Cities Church to sue one and all who took part in this crime. Their civil rights were clearly violated, and if their lawsuits bankrupt BLM of Minneapolis, so be it.

In addition a church security team can be very helpful in maintaining order, so as to avoid being run over but also avoiding a worship service turning into the final scene of “Blazing Saddles.” As Andrew Walker put it:

But do not use this as a cover for not taking manly action yourself. If a “protester” barged in to our church and began shouting obscenities at a child, I would understand if the father gave him a Chicago free lunch, a five-finger, closed-fisted kiss to the cheek. After all, Jesus himself tossed tables in church. Twice. “Don’t take the bait” never means “don’t act like men.”

Repenting From Ambiguity to Clarity

Secondly, we must learn to be unapologetically and biblically specific. We must have the courage to draw bright lines, painted by Scripture. Take again the matter of racism. Here is a good definition (with credit to Douglas Wilson for the word “ethnicity” instead of “race”):

Racism is having pride (or the biblical word “vainglory”) in myself or wishing harm (or the biblical word “malice”) for another based on ethnicity (mine and/or theirs).

This definition can be clearly supported from Scripture, foremost from the fact that the Bible clearly condemns pride and malice. Moreover, it states that there are only two races: that of Adam and that of Christ (Romans 5:17-18). Yet Scripture says there are many ethnicities, even within human melanin groupings (Colossians 3:11 - “Scythian…barbarian”). What separates people today is not an inherent morality of skin pigment but of sin and salvation. Take my own race: we have succeeded because God in His wisdom graciously gave us the gospel before others. Before then my people were still wearing blue face paint and raping and pillaging as they saw fit.

So we must have a clear definition of racism, for three reasons. First, to ensure before God that the charge is always false. Secondly, because it’s become almost axiomatic that a “racist” is someone winning an argument against a leftist. It’s the sin du jour, so the pastor or church doing their job should expect to called it now and then. And thirdly, to not let communist sociologists and race agitators define terms instead of the Bible.

By this when the BLM chaos-troops come accusing, we can ask ourselves if we really are racist, and then reply with either, “Thank you; I repent,” or “Uh nope. Have a nice day, comrade.”

Repenting of Naïveté to Knowing the Times

At the same time we should not naively kid ourselves as to what’s happening when we are called “racist” or “bigot” or “nazi.” Some might argue that it is soft to call name-calling “persecution.” But hateful name-calling always precedes flying bullets. False witness and slander are rehearsals for murder. In order to do the deed, you must first dehumanize your target as being unworthy of even the basic respect of life. As Jesus put it:

But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. Matthew 15:18-19

So we must repent of our naïveté and, like the sons of Issachar, understand “what time it is” (1 Chronicles 12:32). In his famous sermon on decision-making, John MacArthur spoke of having UCLA resist their on-campus evangelism by comparing them to KKK members on the front cover of the campus magazine.2 Charlie Kirk’s assassination is just the fulfillment of that long-simmering impulse. God grant us to understand the year is not 1995.

Some Backbone Required . . .

Our times require a thick skin. The good news is we can get one simply by obeying the commands of Christ. After all, he said that when they come accusing you, falsely calling you “racist” or whatever, go ahead and do a little celebratory moonwalk, for so they persecuted him, and so their persecution serves as God’s confirmation that you’re headed on the right trajectory (Luke 6:22-23).

. . . Wrapped in Love

Then we should ask ourselves afresh just what it means to love in the kingdom of God. It is not love to allow the godless enemies of the kingdom to continue the game they’re running. To give but one example: since illegal immigration has slowed dramatically, so has the number of fentanyl deaths in America. Real people are alive today that would not have been, due to their game being opposed.

Love is doing the law of God to your neighbor (Romans 13:9-10). By extension this means we wish for, pray for and seek in the real world that the law of God be done to our neighbor. For God’s law has the added advantage of agreeing with how God designed the very fabric of the world. It’s therefore within the matrix of God’s commands that people thrive and flourish, which Christians should lovingly want both for ourselves and our neighbor.

Yet love means welcoming our neighbors who hate us. So this Lord’s Day Cities Church and my own will join with thousands of others to joyfully worship and feast and laugh together again, with jolly, open arms to Don Lemon, BLM agitators, paid protestors, ICE agents and everybody else. To you who would tear down God’s house, know that a feast is prepared, and you can come, too. Christ was crucified on a Roman gibbet, the victim of an unjust mob, to pay for the sins of unjust mobs, and mine too. His side was pierced, the water of cleansing from all our sins is poured, and it’s for you, too. The resentment and bitterness that hollows out your soul can be washed away, replaced by the solid stuff of love, light and life. All you have to do is leave behind yourself. But in the exchange God promises to give you back yourself, only new - the “you” you’ve always searched for.

And in the process, He throws in as grace upon grace the unity among the peoples we so desperately want. So come, come one, come all. Come home to Christ.

This past Sunday “Black Lives Matter” forces - yes, “forces” - interrupted the worship service of Cities Church in Minneapolis. Aided by failed TV personality and ever-aspiring journalist Don Lemon, the “forces” - “protesters” is inaccurate1 - surrounded worshipers and began shouting over and over again, “ICE OUT.” One protester - a white man who did the same thing at a church in Washington D.C. - shouted obscenities at the “comfortable white people” and their children for their thought-crimes. They justified their actions because they said one of the pastors was “a member of ICE.”

I should note that Cities Church has more than a passing interest to me. I have a nephew who is a member there, and many of us here in Sacramento have benefited from Joe Rigney’s work, who used to pastor there. Regardless, we are in a non-shooting civil war, and we got here in part because the church has committed two sins: being ambiguous - so as not to offend anyone - and being naive.

Commendations

Before we get to those, I want to commend the pastors and members of Cities Church. They handled themselves with godly aplomb. Good on you, brothers and sisters. I trust you will gather back next week, and I trust God will use this to multiply your numbers. I suspect much of what I have to say in this article does not apply to this church, given that they were targeted and given their response.

The Sins of Ambiguity and Naïveté

The enemies of our culture have used the larger evangelical church’s ambiguity and naiveté to their great advantage. For so long the church has not had any specificity on matters driving our culture. Take racism: we have taken the word at the face-value when our enemies hurl it at us, which then allows us to be pinned down. We are so concerned with being thought of negatively that we never stop to ask, “So just how does the Bible define racism?” By this we allow our enemies to determine the terms of engagement.

This is where the characteristic naiveté of Scandinavians comes into play. Scandinavians have made a remarkable footprint in North America, both here and in Canada. They have mastered the art of getting along in order to get by and thrive, even in harsh, unforgiving climates. The existence of my own church denomination - the Evangelical Free Church of America, or EFCA, which is headquartered in Minneapolis - is a prime example of this success. They figured out how to join together different religious traditions under one “roof” in order to pool resources and further the work of Christ despite their differences. They were real men of genius.

But the soft, vulnerable underbelly of being good at getting along and joining together is the sin of naiveté: that is, willfully not seeing the obvious game being run against you and yours. It’s assuming the best when that defies what your eyes clearly see. Operatives aligned with the Democratic Party have long used Minneapolis as a seedbed to grow a new voting bloc, via scam immigration maneuvers.

So when some clear-thinking fellow gins up the courage to say, “Hey, maybe it’s not the best idea to resettle scads of Islamic, Somali pirate clans in Scandinavian, evangelical Minneapolis,” he’s shouted down as a racist, and that is that. Never mind that if you asked the person shouting “Racist!” to define racism, they would not be able to either, not in any way that a non-communist-sociologist could understand. Ironically to BLM “racism” is more a tactic than a thing. It’s a cudgel to knock down with, not an issue to be defined and solved.

And they succeed (temporarily) because evangelical Christians have long operated with the view that there are magical, neutral spaces in the world, where people can simply talk and hash things out. It’s into these supposed neutral spaces that the sowers of chaos have squatted and taken ownership. As the saying goes: you may not be interested in the culture war, but the culture war is interested in you. The BLM organizers know better than modern evangelicals that the idea of neutral spaces is a fallacy - that even a church worship service is not neutral. And they’re right. After all, Jesus himself said that “all authority . . . on earth” had been given to him (Matthew 28:18). As Kuyper famously put it: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”

Thus in response the lust for power never stays in its place. It never plays fair, because it always wants more, more, more. It’s like an unruly river that floods whenever it wants. Thus sometimes - I think at Cities Church - it foolishly punches through to the other side and harms its own cause. Yet sometimes it works: it’s no coincidence that Stalin saw fit to disrupt, invade and eventually destroy churches. The church of Christ is the body of the reigning, all-authoritative Christ and therefore the only alternative power that can call people together in a solid force of inconveniently immoveable resistance against tyrants.

So then, what shall we do? I’ll discuss this in Part 2.

This morning our exhortation is twofold: lament and press. Lament and press.

Today we lament Iryna Zarutska, Charlie Kirk and in our congregation Jeanne Forbes. To lament means to mourn, to grieve, before God, to God. Lament is Christian. The Bible is full of lament. Lament allows us to bring our very real emotions to God, not pretending like they don't exist. Psalm 139 is one example.1

Lament is in fact required. For when we face darkness, we can choose one of three options. We can ignore it and effeminately pretend it doesn't exist. This has been the church's frequent response. Or we can take the bait and become enraged and violent ourselves. But God never lets us use the devil's weapons.

Or, we can look straight into the abyss and lament - and let that lament press us further in and further up into Christ. We can let it radicalize us, to die to that old coward within, and follow Christ more fully, in all His Word. Which is really to normalize us to where we should have been all along.

For in every video of Charlie Kirk on campus, you will see Acts 17:32 play out. Paul ended his words to the Aeropagus by saying that Jesus is the judge of all, by virtue of his resurrection from the dead. Verse 32 then says:

32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked.

Charlie Kirk did not fear being mocked. He was willing to be mocked, out of love. For perfect love casts out fear. Love for the other people listening:

But others said, “We will hear you again about this.” . . . 34 (S)ome men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.

Today Dionysius and Damaris are still praising God because Paul was willing to be mocked for claiming absolute truth, grounded in the resurrection of Christ. So was Charlie, over and over again. For over the shoulder of every mocker you will see young men listening and smiling, silently wanting to hear more.

Thus the question before us is this: will we allow ourselves to lament? And then will we let it press us past our cowardly love of respectability to publicly proclaim Christ raised, out of love? For God is love, and Christianity is a public faith.

This week my friend Jeanne fell asleep in the Lord. She will be greatly missed by all who knew her, and there will be time very soon to share remembrances. So for now I simply wanted to reflect on something about Jeanne that we could all stand to imitate. Jeanne faced death and fell into our Savior's arms with a beautiful, steady confidence. This freed Jeanne to not be defined by her illness. It is so natural, so common, when we are broken by sickness to curl in on ourselves and to think and speak of nothing else but what ails us. This is so common that our forefathers gave this condition a Latin name: incurvatus in se. But whenever I would see Jeanne, her first words were always a curious love for my family and me: "How is Megan? How are you? I’ve been praying for her."

She was not perfect. She could be stubborn. But nevertheless she was a wonderful model for me to follow when my own time comes. Those of us who are younger always need this. I'm thankful for Jeanne for that gift alone.

Where does such steadiness come from? It comes from two intertwined sources:

a childlike faith and a knowledge of the doctrines of God.

Jeanne had that childlike faith that simply believed what she learned, and that was that. This is the true reason why we study theology. Not to fill our heads with big facts or get into arguments, but so that, when our time comes or that of a loved one, we are not scrambling for solid ground. It's already there, and nothing else needs to be said. What’s revealed then is a calm assurance.

One of my heroes is J. Gresham Machen. His own death resembled that of Jeanne. He was called to preach in the Dakotas, and a friend warned him not to go because he was already not well. But he went anyway and got pneumonia. His last recorded words were a telegram to a friend: "Thankful for the active obedience of Christ. No hope without it." This is both mountain-stream clear theology and solid-granite hope to stand on in the face of death.

That is both why and how we learn more and more about God: so that when death approaches, we may, with a childlike heart, "...draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water" (Heb. 10:22), confident, like a child, that “All that the Father gives [Jesus] will come to [him], and whoever comes to [Jesus] [he] will never cast out” (John 6:37).

Did you hear the writer to the Hebrews say “full assurance”? That is possible for you, too - for those who, like Jeanne, come to Christ and the facts about him like a child. Do you have this assurance, O child of God?

Music has the power to enchant us into its world. Therefore, the theology of the church, I'm convinced, is determined by the songs she sings, as much as anything else, including the preaching.

You can trace this throughout the last 150 years, especially with the Jesus people movement. As the church's songs became thinner and thinner, so did the church's beliefs.

Now, at Grace we don't want to have thick theology in our songs just because we geek out over theology. We don't. Our goal is to be enchanted by the mind of God, and then reshaped into His image. We want *all* that God is for us in ALL of Christ, to reshape *all* of our lives.

And all of that God is for us in all of Christ is a lot. In fact, at the end of time, it will take the worshipful songs of every tongue, tribe and nation to properly communicate it.

Therefore, because we're mining the vast treasures of the whole Christ, not just the parts of Jesus that feel good and don't disrupt our lives, we have set ourselves to be informed by the Bible in everything we do in our worship.

This means that we sometimes choose songs that are really "attractional" - and sometimes not.

For instance, sometimes we will sound really traditional. That's not because we didn't know a snappier song. It's that we want to be in touch with the timeless truths that saints have savored throughout the centuries. We don't want to arrogantly assume we were the first to discover the glories of grace.

Sometimes we will resemble Elijah on Mt. Carmel, drenching HIS sacrifice with water. We will choose songs that, if you come here to be entertained, seem to DARE you to not come back. But the reason is that, with Elijah's holy swagger, we want to prepare a sacrifice that God would be pleased to visit with fire.

That doesn't mean there's no place for 7-11 songs - where we sing seven words eleven times. But it does require us to understand what we're here for. It's not to worship a God of our own fashioning that agrees with our preexisting values, but to worship and be remade into the image of the transcendent, preexisting God, Who has come close to us in Christ.

Today is Ascension Day, the Thursday in the year that the Church has historically remembered the Ascension of Christ. Of all the doctrines around Christ, I would say this is the one that is most neglected, to our detriment. For in my experience, it is the one that fills believers most with an electric charge of spiritual energy.

There are several questions that are answered by Ascension Day. The first is, “Can people fly?” Yes, yes we can. Not yet, but one day we will, just as Christ ascended in the clouds:

Acts 1:9 And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.

1 Thess. 4:16–17 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.

So yes, people can fly, and one day we will. (I can only assume this means we can walk on water, too, but I digress.)

It also answers the question: in this present chaos, is there anyone in charge? Yes, yes there is. The Ascension is the fulfillment of Psalm 110, where David observes in the Spirit Yahweh (“the LORD”) saying to his (David’s) “Lord”:

Psalm 110:1 The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”

We now live in the age of the reign of Christ. He is King. Over all. And all means all.

This leaves us with many questions. If he reigns, why this or that evil? He does not give us many answers, just as he only said to Job, “I am God, and you are not.” But he does wrap us in a covenant of grace, one that promises he will never leave us nor forsake us (Deut. 31:5; Joshua 1:5; 1 Chron. 28:20; Psalm 94:14; John 14:18; Heb. 13:5).

He calls us to trust that covenant and seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. All of which leads us to the Great Commission. Note that it does not begin with something that we do, but something which is true about Christ:

Matt. 28:18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

The Great Commission begins with a call not to action but to faith, specifically in what was ratified in the Ascension - that there is now no square inch over this existence over which Christ does not say “mine.” This is the faith that propelled the Moravians to leave family, lands and culture behind, for they knew that Christ was King over the islands of the Pacific.

And this is the faith that must propel us today, across the street or across the aisle, to share the gospel - that Jesus is King over that house, that living room, that family of Muslims or Sikhs or Hindus or atheists. He reigns. When we get there, Jesus will already be there, reigning and working.

We do not obey the Great Commission in part because we do not believe the Ascension. Yet he is enthroned; He does reign; and not for nothing. He reigns for the hallowing of the name of the Father, to advance His kingdom, so that His will would be done. And so as we believe that and move, he supplies us by His Spirit whatever we need, forgiving us our errors, and leading us every step of the way.

We don’t need better tactics. We need faith the size of a mustard seed, faith in the Ascension of Christ. Hallelujah! Our God reigns!

“Therefore, go . . .”

Our exhortation today is about what we do in this season of welcoming newcomers into our church, whether they are new Christians, young people or new members. It has to with the handshake. Christianity takes even the most basic human greetings and infuses them with Christian meaning; the Holy Spirit wastes nothing.

When you see that new member or promoted child after church, you’re not just extending your hand for a normal handshake. It’s what Christians for generations past have called “the right hand of fellowship.” The word “fellowship” comes from the word “koinonia,” meaning partnership, brotherhood and bonds. It’s what men who fought under the same command at Bastogne or Da Nang or Falluja might feel towards one another when they shake hands. They may have just met, but there’s a bond, regardless of ethnicity or age. They just learned each other’s names, but there’s an instant loyalty and affection.

The handshake recognizes a preexisting unity. For Christians, that unity is not based on what we have done but on the bloody war that was fought FOR us, in our place, by our King Jesus. He and he alone is the basis of our unity. He alone sets the terms of our bonds of brotherhood. Thus even the past and the future are subject to Him.

This means that that handshake is the coming together of an old hand and a new hand - someone who’s been in the church already, maybe for a long time, and somebody new - in unity, in Christ. This means two things.

It first means the newcomer must humbly respect the grace that our King has given this body in the past - its collected wisdom, some of it acquired the hard way.

Yet that past grace is only set in wet concrete. God is adding to it and molding it, through newcomers. Thus that new person is more than a warm body for “your” ministry. They are God’s gift of new eyes and perspective. So then when we extend that right hand of fellowship the “old” hand is agreeing to give the “new” hand’s perspective equal weight with how we’ve “always done things” in the past.

The new member respects past grace, and the rest of the church receives new grace. What matters most is Christ, who pays the same wage to all, no matter where they come from or what time of day they started work (Matthew 20:1-16).

At Grace Church it has now become a tradition for a high school senior to share a thesis for the church on “Graduation Sunday.” This year the honor went to Kingston Adams. His paper is evidence that, despite all the chaos, this generation is doing many things right. God is on the move:

Have you ever heard of the term “rage bait?” Rage bait are controversial statements aimed to bring out a negative emotional response, such as anger, frustration, or outrage. Example: There are only two genders. Abortion is murder. Love is not love. Fruit belongs on pizza. In a worldly setting, those statements, other than maybe the last one, could insight negative feedback, but in a biblical setting, there is one “rage bait” that sends many into a tizzy: “Women should be silent in church.” Perhaps we are looking at this statement through a worldly filter, when we should be using a biblical filter.

The role of men and women in church leadership has been persistent theological “rage bait” throughout church history. From the early church to today, the conversation around gender roles in ministry has generated intense debate, particularly regarding the extent to which women may serve in positions of authority within the local church. However, Scripture provides consistent and clear teaching on this issue. A central passage in this discussion is 1 Timothy 2:8–3:13, based on this passage, men are called to lead in the church while women are instructed to listen and be submissive, aligning with God’s design for order and authority in worship. This passage—and others like it—grounds male leadership not in cultural norms but in theological truths tied to creation and God’s design for the church.

Paul’s first letter to Timothy was written to a young church leader serving in Ephesus, a city heavily influenced by pagan religions, particularly the cult of Artemis, which elevated female deities and priestesses. Paul addresses false teaching, doctrinal confusion, and disorder in worship. In this context, Paul exhorts Timothy to restore proper church structure and authority. 1 Timothy 2:8–15 provides instructions for behavior in worship, culminating in a clear distinction between the roles of men and women. In verse 12, Paul writes: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” This instruction is not arbitrary; it is explained and supported in the verses that follow.

Paul immediately appeals to the creation narrative, stating: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve” (1 Timothy 2:13), and “Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor” (2:14). These references point back to Genesis 2–3, where God created Adam before Eve and assigned him the responsibility of naming, cultivating, and protecting the garden. Eve, created as a “helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18), was given a complementary role. Paul’s argument is that this design continues to inform the structure of leadership within the church. By rooting his teaching in creation rather than culture, Paul indicates that these instructions are timeless and universally applicable.

The pattern of male headship established in Genesis continues throughout Scripture. In the Old Testament, all priests were male, as were nearly all prophets, kings, and judges. While there are notable exceptions—such as Deborah in Judges 4–5—even she functioned more as a prophetess and judge than a spiritual authority over the covenant community in the temple context. Importantly, Deborah herself acknowledges male headship when she summons Barak to lead the military campaign, and he insists she accompany him—demonstrating his reluctance rather than a reversal of biblical gender roles.

In the New Testament, Jesus selected twelve male apostles (Mark 3:13–19), despite having many devoted female followers. This was not a reflection of social norms, as Jesus frequently broke with cultural expectations regarding women (e.g., the Samaritan woman in John 4, Mary sitting at His feet in Luke 10:38–42). The choice of male apostles reflects divine intent for leadership in the church—not societal conformity. Furthermore, the qualifications for overseers (elders) and deacons in 1 Timothy 3:1–13 consistently use masculine language. Paul writes, “An overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife...” (3:2), clearly assuming male leadership. The same language appears in verse 12 regarding deacons.

Some argue that Paul was merely reflecting the patriarchal culture of his time. However, Paul’s own statements undercut this view. In 1 Corinthians 11:3, he writes: “But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.” This verse not only affirms male headship in the home and church but also shows that submission within biblical relationships reflects the divine relationship between the Son and the Father. Christ’s willing submission to the Father does not diminish His divinity, just as a woman’s submission in church leadership does not imply inferiority. This framework is grounded in theology, not cultural accommodation.

In addition, 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 states: “As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says.” Paul reinforces the idea that the pattern of male leadership is not local to one church but is consistent across all the churches he oversees. The reference to “the Law” connects his reasoning again to the Old Testament and creation order, not to Greco-Roman social customs.

Nevertheless, the New Testament affirms the valuable role of women in the ministry of the church. Women like Priscilla (Acts 18), Phoebe (Romans 16:1–2), Lydia (Acts 16), and Mary Magdalene played important roles in the early church. However, none of these women are described as holding elder or overseer positions. Priscilla, for example, helped instruct Apollos privately alongside her husband, but she did not preach or exercise authority over a congregation. Phoebe is described as a “servant” or “deacon,” but there is no indication she held teaching authority over men. Titus 2:3–5 explicitly assigns older women the role of teaching and mentoring younger women—an essential ministry that aligns with biblical gender roles.

A common objection is that restricting women from pastoral leadership is oppressive or sexist. Yet Scripture’s model for leadership is one of servant leadership, not superiority. Luke 22:26 states: “Let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves.” Biblical leadership reflects Christ, who “did not come to be served, but to serve” (Matthew 20:28). Additionally, submission is not a lesser calling. Jesus Himself submitted to the will of the Father (John 6:38), and the church is called to submit to Christ. These relationships display beauty and harmony, not inequality.

Moreover, the concept of submission and headship is not exclusive to leadership roles but extends to family structures. Ephesians 5:22–25 teaches that wives are to submit to their husbands “as to the Lord,” and husbands are to love their wives “as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” This mutual dynamic of sacrificial leadership and willing submission is the same model presented for church leadership.

In conclusion, Paul’s teaching in 1 Timothy 2:8–3:13 provides a clear, theologically grounded case for male leadership in the church. His reasoning is rooted in the creation order, supported by consistent scriptural qualifications, and affirmed by the broader teaching of the New Testament. Leadership roles are reserved for qualified men, not as a matter of cultural tradition, but as a reflection of God’s created design and divine order. While women play essential and honored roles in the life of the church, these roles do not include teaching or exercising authority over men in corporate worship or governance.

The biblical model of leadership and gender roles in the church directly contributes to true human flourishing according to God’s design. Scripture teaches that men and women fulfill their highest purpose not by seeking interchangeable roles, but by joyfully embracing the distinct responsibilities assigned by their Creator. True flourishing arises when men lead with Christlike humility and servant-heartedness, and women exercise their vital ministries within the framework of biblical order. Just as harmony within the family reflects God's design for human well-being, the church, when ordered according to Scripture, becomes a place where both men and women thrive, honoring their God-given dignity and purpose. In this way, obedience to God’s structure for leadership is not oppressive but life-giving, leading the church toward the fullness of joy and peace found in Christ.

Therefore, I urge men to step up, get out of the LONGHOUSE,1 and embrace their God-given role as spiritual leaders with humility, integrity, and servant-heartedness. I encourage women to support, respect, and participate in ministry within the biblical framework—especially in teaching, discipling, and mentoring other women. And I call the church to uphold the authority of Scripture, reject the pressure to conform to shifting cultural trends, and affirm the divine wisdom in God’s design for leadership and order in the body of Christ.

Last week a dear sister spoke up at the end of our Lord’s Day worship service. She had a word from the Lord that she wanted to share with everyone. I replied that we would finish the service, and that’s what we did.

That’s because 1 Corinthians 14:40 tells us to do all things in worship decently and in order. But that was not the end of it. Later I asked her what she wanted to share, in case it was a “word from the Lord.”

This concept overlaps with “prophecy” and “revelation,” which are gifts Paul desired for all the churches. As Paul defines it, it has three characteristics:

• It is driven by LOVE. It’s not self-focused; it’s focused on loving the church, that people would be built up, encouraged and consoled by it (1 Cor. 14:3). And because it is loving,

• It is BIBLICAL. A word from the Lord never adds to or subtracts from Scripture, but completely agrees with it and communicates it such that others receive it. And because it is submitted to the Word,

• It is HUMBLE. The person who receives this “word from the Lord” is not a spiritual diva. They offer it humbly to the elders for their prayerful evaluation and to decide how it should be disseminated.

So I did that - I sent this sister’s word to the elders. And here is how I shared it with the church on Sunday:

For those in our body who are struggling with physical pain or emotional sorrow, the Word of our Lord to you today is this: keep going. Do not give up. Though it may feel like it, your God is not far. He is with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you.

So believing that, the other part of the Lord’s word to us is this:

Now is the time to walk boldly by faith. But what does bold faith look like when we are dealing with pain or infirmity? It can go in many directions, but it seems the Lord would challenge us to not become curled in on ourselves. We must not find our identity in our illnesses and struggles.

Bold faith does not always talk about one’s own infirmities and trials but looks outward to others, in humble love. It prays for others and sends them encouragement. Because it knows, by faith, that this illness or trial doesn’t define me. God’s grace already holds that position.

It gives me such pleasure to be with you today. Justin, having had the honor of baptizing you, and seeing your trajectory towards God. And Megan, you’ve courageously persevered through so much. And I’ve just flat-out enjoyed our time together.

So what I have to say today I say with great optimism, because I see that I’ve only arrived late on the scene, into a project that God has been working on, for a long time.

In the Lord, I want to give you three commands today. If you would devote yourselves to these, I’m very confident that you will do well - more than that, you’ll flourish.

First, you must - you must ENJOY each other. This is why God brought you together: because He loves you, and He wants to be generous to you, through your enjoyment of the other. I know this because this is what God did with the first marriage. He put Adam and Eve together and built a garden for them. And in that Garden there were only two no’s - don’t stop listening to God, and don’t eat of that tree. But everything else - all the thousands of other pleasures in that Garden - God said YES to.

And so today, He is setting you in your own Garden. And you too have two NO’s, which we’ve discussed. But for every one of His no’s, He lays before you now hundreds of yes’s . . . The enjoyment of small talk on the patio, as the delta breeze blows in on a warm summer night . . . The sweet pleasure of reading to each other in bed on a lazy Sunday afternoon . . . The fun of finding out if the couch and the kitchen work just as well as the bed.

So I hereby command you to simply enjoy each other. That’s one of the ways you can glorify God in your marriage.

Secondly, you must carry your own weight, and bear your own burdens. This may seem surprising, given what we’re doing today. But in Galatians 5 and 6, the Bible puts this notion of bearing our own burdens right next to being useful in helping others escape their own trials and temptations.

The reason for this is that those who carry their own burdens know the weight of temptation, and how hard trials can be, because they see it through to the end. And so it is those who carry their own burdens who are able to be gentle and patient with others who struggle. The more you see how much forgiveness you have needed in your failures, the more forgiving and forebearing you will be with the failures of the other. The more you carry your own burdens, ironically, the more useful you will be in helping the other carry theirs.

So there will be a temptation in the near future, to look to the other person to do for you the things that God calls you to do. Don’t give in to this temptation. Out of love for the other, attend even more to your own growth.

And lastly, remember that the promises you make today, they’re not for the happy times. The happy times will take care of themselves. No, it’s for the hard times that you make these solemn vows today. They’re your backbone, to stand firm, and keep dancing, especially when it’s hard.

And when you do, you will be like your God, who is a promising, vowing God. Who says to us, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Yet we need only to look to Him to know that it takes sacrifice to keep our promises. For in order to keep His promise, He had to give up His only Son to the cross.

So you will never be more like God than when you forgive, and keep your vows, through sacrifice. But we also know from Christ that on the other side of the sacrifice comes glory. Your sacrifices will lead to glory to God, and new pleasures for you.

So as I said at the beginning, I have great optimism about you two. Because, though life can be hard sometimes, it’s clearly God working in you. And He has built a Garden for you, too. So enjoy His generous gifts to you; carry your own burdens; and look to Him as your template, in keeping your promises. Do this, and you will do very, very well.

Amen.

The Bible’s take on technology is basically the same as its take on wealth:

• Receive it with gratitude, and

• Hold it with caution

Or as a programmer might put it: “Give thanks for the toaster, and keep a loaded pistol next to it.” There are many blessings to our modern “screenified” world, and there are many dangers, too. With every convenience, cost-savings and advancement, there is also rampant addiction to pornography, gambling and many other sins. In all of it, the internet promises (falsely) that you can enjoy that sin privately.

But in the end, all will be revealed, and the effect of sin is still death. To paraphrase what the Puritan John Owen once said of Romans 8:13: if we are not killing sin, then it is killing us, and there is no middle ground. When Owen says “killing us”, he means it:

1 Cor. 6:9 Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality . . . 10 will inherit the kingdom of God.

So we must fight, with powerful weapons that God hides under humble wrapping: clean water, spilled wine and broken bread. We fight with Word, prayer, and finally, “fellowship.” Which is Christian code for “Ya gotta have yer bro’s.” True “fellowship” is less like a potluck and more like a platoon. No man left behind. This is why Ed Welch, in his most excellent book “Side by Side” says:

“Human beings do best when they take their hardships public to God and at least one other person.”

This is where “Accountable2You” comes in. Accountable2You (A2Y) is a service that you setup on your own device or that of your child. It then alerts you or your trusted friend if the user of the device accesses sinful or problematic content online. The “flags” can be customized, and it does this flagging in real-time, so that helpful discussions can happen, not only about the activity itself but also about the pressures and situations that were occurring at the time. A2Y neutralizes one of the powers of temptation: its supposed “privacy.” It takes it “public,” in a most constructive way.

What is a “trusted friend”? It’s somebody who loves you and will treat you with the balance of Christ: who will not let you off the hook but who will also not crush you with your struggles. It’s someone who has their eye on your trajectory as much as your current place, and who knows how to celebrate your steps of growth, as well as pick you up with the gospel when you fall. Confessing your sin to another brother or sister (someone of the same gender as you) is perhaps the hardest part, but on the other side of that gate is freedom, rest and growth.

Grace Church (my church) has partnered with A2Y to provide a discounted rate for their service, using the following link. Don’t worry - though our logo is on this, we don’t get the reports (unless you arrange for one of our elders to be your accountability partner - and then only that man will receive activity reports). If you are a member of Grace, any of our elders would be privileged to walk with you in this fight. If you are reading this and you attend another church, you might see if your congregation has the same arrangement or ask A2Y how you can set it up. If you have any trouble getting things setup, please contact Accountable2You directly. If you want to talk about how to talk about this with a friend or your child, let me or your pastor or elder know.

May the Lord bless your hands for this war, and may He give you new growth and satisfying victories in your pilgrimage to the heavenly city.

Sign Up for A2Y

Today is Mother’s Day, anno domini - in the year of our Lord - 2025. That phrase seems so quaint today, given that so much of American society is not of our Lord.

Our generation’s calling then is not to just bemoan this but to recover our society for Christ. But that is utterly impossible without recovering the Christian household. For God always builds society on the backs of men with mouths to feed1 and on the backs of the women that inspire them to hard work, as they live out their respective roles by faith, with virtue.

So today we honor you mothers, not because the Hallmark Company told us to, but because God is doing something glorious through you: He is rebuilding society itself. In the midst of the ruins of our present chaos, He is recovering society in the image of His Son,

• In that next diaper change;

• As your strong arms carry a baby in one arm and stir the pot with the other;

• As you notice and celebrate that new skill your child discovered;

• In your sacrifices of money, time and energy to educate them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord;

• In managing your home with a joyful structure that everyone can flourish in;

• In that conversation with your teen that goes way past your bedtime;

• In praying for the one that left the nest and flew into strange philosophies;

• In joyfully accepting the prodigal that returns home;

• In taking the grandkids one night a week;

• In saving up an inheritance . . .

For all these and other things you do, we honor you. Keep going, for not everything gets burned up in the end. God is building some things through you that will go into eternity.

Now, you children: the lesson today is that we must live all our lives with honor to our mothers. Mother’s Day might seem like you should only honor your mother once a year, but Christians view Mother’s Day as training for the other 364 days of the year.

The way we do this is by faith in God’s grace. Faith believes God’s promise to us, that if we honor our mother and our Father, He will bless our lives with grace. Do you want to have a hard, bad life or a happy, blessed life? God promises to give that happy life, through honoring your parents, and especially today, mom.

Of course we all bemoan our tech addictions. The problem with this - first among many - is that if all we do is bemoan it, that is the same thing as coddling it. We’re like Rachel, hiding Laban’s household gods under our dress on the camel. But this will only lead to greater idolatries later. We’re being groomed, you know. You know? The tech that we think we are using is in fact using us.

This is not just a young person’s problem. The bored empty-nester, spending their quiet evenings on their iPad in front of the TV playing a mindless but addictive game is more common than we care to admit. After all, the pioneers of today’s social media apps and games learned their craft by studying gaming machines in Vegas. This is why the app slides up your screen like the fruit of a slot machine. You’ve been studied.

So what to do? Bob Newhart’s famous “Just STOP IT!” routine won’t help.

Here are a few steps to take that should prove helpful:

Test Yourself

Now, you might be thinking, “Nah, this little diversion doesn’t have an enslaving power over me. In fact, in a way it’s freeing - it gives me a little freedom during the day from my cares and thoughts.” Ok, I believe you. But is it only freedom? What if this freedom is actually enslavement? As a friend once said: “All sin feels like freedom until you try to quit.”

You can test yourself by repenting of another sin. Take the Sabbath seriously, and take a 24-hour break from your device. The resultant twitch is telling you something: this thing has its claws in you more than you realized.

Remember Love

Move on to preaching the gospel to yourself. God knows you are but dust, and He loves you anyway. So you’re not doing this to earn His love. You’re doing this because you’re loved. Perfect love casts out fear. Bad habits can become old habits by first remembering love.

Remember Faith

Faith looks both to the past and to the future. Faith looks back to the cross and remembers that (Romans 8:32) God gave us His only Son. This propels us to look forward in confidence that, if He would do that, how will He also not with him graciously give us all things?

To translate this to the problem of mindless screen time: if I give this up, will God meet me and replace it with deeper, superior pleasures? Yes, bet your life on it, for God gave the life of His Son to prove it.

Build Speedbumps

Most devices today have limits you can install. There are ways to self-hack and pwn yourself, to at least make yourself think twice before getting on the screen again. It may seem childish, but it’s still less severe than cutting off your hand or gouging out your eye.

Go Public

In his most excellent book, “Side by Side,” Ed Welch says that we humans operate best when we “go public” about our trials and hurts with God and at least one other human being. Being honest with God about your addictive behavior, about its enslaving tendencies. Confess it and ask Him for forgiveness. Then find a wise friend to tell the same. By “good” I mean someone who won’t let you off the hook about it, but who also won’t crush you with this information. This is somebody who knows 1 Cor. 10:12-14 and 23.

Faith, Working Through Love

Paul could sum up everything Jesus said and did simply thus: “It’s better to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35) And Paul could sum up his own teaching and doing this way: “Faith working through love.” (Gal. 5:6) Much of the problem in the last 70 years is that we have not replaced the work replaced by modern conveniences with more constructive work. But we were all made to work, and that in love for God and others. Work existed before the fall, and work will continue in the new heavens and earth. (It simply will not be infected with futility - imagine that!)

The point here is simple: replace receiving with giving. Replace the mindless time with exercising your mind to give something to others. One woman plants a flower garden, so that she has table settings for the next wedding at church. A man does woodworking to craft gifts for others. Another does light repair work for folks in church. Another prays and visits the infirm.

There’s enough need in this world to go around and then some. And we are part of the solution, the antidote, the immune system. But only by faith working through love. Mindless screen time and this love cannot occupy the same space at the same time.

When Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them to pray, like J the B did with his disciples, he gave them a simple template:

1. Pray for God’s interests first (His glory, kingdom and will), and only then

2. Pray for our own interests second (your daily needs, forgiveness and leading)

Now, there are two ways to apply this, and both are right, and both have their place.

The first is simply “praying Scripture.” That is, we follow the words of a particular passage very closely, perhaps word-for-word. This is especially helpful when you run across Paul’s prayers in Scripture. They are all outgrowths of Jesus’ primary template above, and we do well to simply imitate how he prays. That alone will provide us a spiritual chiropractic adjustment.

But the second way is “praying out of Scripture.” I’ve only added two words, but the difference is important. By “praying out of Scripture” I mean taking any particular passage and using it as a springboard into any number of paths of prayer, all of them shaped by 1) God’s interests first, 2) then ours.

For instance, today in my Bible reading I read about Josiah’s reforms, in 2 Chronicles 34. Check: to call them “reforms” is true but also shortchanging it. Josiah, at age 20, was inspired by the Lord to wipe the land clean of the idols that proliferated under his predecessor Manasseh. The text records that he

• Purged the land of idols (3)

• Ground them down and desecrated the graves of those who worshiped them with their dust (4)

• Burned the bones of their priests and scattered the dust on the residual bases of their idols (5)

• And he did this everywhere under his realm, not just where it was obvious, geographically-convenient or easy (6-7)

Now, the question is, “How to pray out of this text?” Obviously the text is about idolatry. Do we have idols that we harbor in our hearts? Does our family, church and land? Yes and yes, yes, yes. So there is the need for repentance. But why? Here is where Jesus’ template checks us. Our need for repentance is first not about us, but about God. The first and most important thing is His glory, not our holiness. Our prayer for holiness is not about making ourselves better before His face, but seeing His face seen more clearly in us, and in our world.

That kneejerk concern for self is itself the wellspring of all our idolatry. So yes, we are to pray for repentance from idols, but not first for ourselves, but for God. For the sake of the hallowing of His name, in here and out there. This is humbling, and the humbling must go further. There are idols that we know are there, but the reason they remain is that we are more like Manasseh than we think. Our idols have made us sluggish. We don’t want what we should want; we tolerate them because we like them. Thus the next step of the prayer is that God would give us an ambition to tear them all down; to do the hard work that it takes to dig them out, topple them over and grind them up.

And lastly, that He would enable us - not “help” but “enable” - to topple and grind them up everywhere they are present. In the unseen corners of ourselves, our family and our church, but also in the community. Paul got into one of his greatest presentations of the gospel because he was “moved” by all the idols of Athens. The reason our society is the way it is today is because of evil men; yes, that much is true. But it is just as much because good men are too lethargic or disinterested to do anything about it. We are too self-centered with maintaining our comfy lives to care.

To pray “out of Scripture” means praying for God’s glory, in me and in my world, by changing our hearts to possess a holy ambition to see idolatry eliminated, wherever it is found. The post-cross method of idol-elimination is by the preaching of the gospel, starting to ourselves. As one famous sermon put it, when a greater love enters the heart and the world, it leaves no room for and expels the old loves. May God give us a holy, youthful ambition to see it happen.

Day 3 - Tuesday

It’s on Tuesday of Holy Week that Jesus curses the fig tree with no fruit (Matt. 21:18-22). By this he creates a living parable of Israel, who though they appear to be alive, are fruitless and under the curse of death. This is yet another connection back to the creation week. On the third day God caused the earth to bring forth trees and foliage. The point is that God is causing the old creation to pass away, and - soon enough - a new creation and a new humanity will dawn.

Day 4 - Wednesday

On Wednesday Jesus preaches on the Mount of Olives (Matthew 24-25). He vividly describes cataclysmic events to come:

“Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” Matt. 24:29

Once again the events correspond to the creation week, where on the fourth day God puts the stars in the heavens. But now they fall, only to be replaced by others that shine (Daniel 12:3).

God is doing more than we can see in the resurrection. He is shaking everything - every level of reality - that which we can see and what we cannot see. But he is doing it all so that what cannot be shaken will remain forever (Heb. 12:26-27). He is bringing a kingdom that will not pass away, and that will not fail to bring flourishing to all who reside in it, by faith. Or to put it better, in the words of J.R.R. Tolkien:

“The birth, death and resurrection of Jesus means that one day everything sad will come untrue.”

Day 1

In Psalm 24, David asks the question,

Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?

And who shall stand in his holy place?

The answer?

4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart,

who does not lift up his soul to what is false

and does not swear deceitfully.

But who can say that? Only the King, the King of Glory. And

8 Who is this King of glory?

The Lord, strong and mighty,

the Lord, mighty in battle!

10 The Lord of hosts,

he is the King of glory!

That is, the Lord Jesus, riding into Jerusalem on a royal donkey, the return of the King.

Day 2

Thus it is no coincidence that the first thing Jesus did upon entering Jerusalem was to cleanse the temple. He did this for us, because the moneychangers were taking up the court of the Gentiles - the place reserved for Canadians and Bulgarians and Americans to worship God.

This great work he would finish a few days later, when he said from the cross, “It is finished,” and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. The temple is a microcosm of the entire cosmos. On the second day of creation, God separated the water from the dry land. In the fall, man was separated from Eden. But in Christ, the door back to Eden is opened again.

So then, what is our duty in light of this?

First, it is be like the doors of Jerusalem, and let him (7). We have a duty to welcome our King’s reign. The second duty is to have the same good sense that the crowds had on that day, and rejoice. We have a duty to delight in Him. For when he reassumed his throne, he received from God, v. 5,

. . . blessing from the Lord

and righteousness from the God of his salvation.

And we share it with him:

6 Such is the generation of those who seek him,

who seek the face of the God of Jacob.

Under His reign, we share with him in His blessing and righteousness. So we find that our duty to him as King is the same thing as the delight of our souls. They are two sides of the same coin. For we were once far off, alienated from God, but through Him, we’ve been welcomed as sons. Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!

To be aloof means to position oneself away from others, distant from their ability to influence you. We see an example of this in 1 Cor. 16:12. Paul had strongly urged Apollos to visit the Corinthians with the other brothers who had delivered this letter, but it was “not at all his will to come.” A strong statement. Apollos, will you go? No way, no how.

Then Paul adds a note of gracious diplomacy: he will come when he has opportunity.

Why so aloof Apollos?

You’ll remember that in the beginning of the letter, the first problem that Paul addressed was the divisions in the church. They were developing pecking orders and then quarreling over who was baptized by whom. I follow Paul . . . Well, I follow Apollos, 1:12. Oh yeah? Well I follow the great Peter! And then the original Jesus Juke: Well, I follow Jesus . . .

The Corinthians loved gifted speakers who would come to town and command a lot of money to hear them orate. The more money they could charge, the more the Corinthians respected them. And Apollos was right up there with the best of them.

Acts 18:24 describes him as gifted in the Scriptures and eloquent. He powerfully refuted the Jews in public and greatly encouraged the church. He was probably good-looking, too.

So they loved Apollos, and this love was reasonable. He taught them eloquently about the most important question in life - about God. But right at that moment (as C.S. Lewis taught us to see), when love is at its highest and purest, that is when the temptation is greatest to make it a god itself. And then that love becomes as anti-Christ as anything.

You see this when you hear Christians brag about their church, their pastor, or that they used to attend so-and-famous-so’s church. It’s trying to get awesomeness not by accomplishment but by association. Imagine bragging about an organization with a Roman torture device as its logo! Dave and his wife LOVED to casually name-drop John MacArthur, a respected and beloved pastor. “We were talking to John the other day, and . . .”, they would say. And I would reply, “John who? John the Baptist? You were talking to John the Baptist?”

But Apollos will have none of it. He won’t come only to serve as a prop to prop up their pride. After all, if “Christ crucified” teaches us anything, it’s that the way up is to go down.

So Apollos, like an oak, remains silent and immoveable, aloof to the Corinthians and their desire to use him. This too is love. It is not love to feed idolatry, whether in others or in yourself, and especially if you’re a pastor. Then and now, Apollos could have made lots of money. He could have made for himself a great name and ministry. He could have called it, oh, let’s say, “Insight for Living.” But in love, he remains silently aloof.

So then Paul is saying to the Corinthians and to you in your local church: your Chuck Swindoll is not coming. It’s up to you to do what God demands. God did not put your favorite preacher in your town, in your church, on your block. He put you there. And the challenges there will require of you the same kind of sturdy, courageous love.

If you ask some men to do something, they will reply, “Let me check with the boss.” To which some people chuckle, and others cringe. But in order to understand role relationships in marriage rightly, we need to do more than either follow feminism or poke it in the eye. We need to let the Bible define our roles.

1 Corinthians clearly says that the man is the head of the woman. He is the boss. But he is not a boss-man. While husbands are vested with authority over the home, Paul says, so are wives:

I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander. 1 Tim. 5:14

The word there for “manage their households,” like many other words about authority in our day, is softened from the original. It combines two words: “house” and where we get our English word “despot.”1

So then, God gives authority over the home to the man. But the best way to ruin your business or household is to micromanage. So God expects the man to delegate authority of the home to his wife. The husband is the commanding officer; she is the XO.

Thus she has REAL authority. When mom says, no more science experiments with clothing; bring your laundry to the washroom, it shall be so. When mom says, put your shoes here and not here, it shall be so. When mom says, the dishes get rinsed and put in the dishwasher, and not left out, by God, it shall be so.

On the one hand, men are not servant leaders, but serve by leading. Yet one way a husband leads effectively is by setting the right example for the kids in following mom’s delegated authority. If the kids are not listening to mom, the core of the problem may not lie with them but go higher. They may have learned their disregard of mom from the head.

So how do we two square these two authorities, between the man and the woman? You know the answer if you’ve ever learned to waltz. It’s like a dance. The man leads, through many complicated steps, but along the way the woman is featured often, and there’s a lot of learning how not to step on each other’s toes. Laughter, patience and forgiveness are required.

Some books require great effort and meticulous editing prior to publishing. Others encompass topics you know so well that the content simply flows, and the end-product is equally excellent. The latter is the case with the book I’m reviewing today: “What Is the Gospel?” by Greg Gilbert. I briefly met Mr. Gilbert when he was an associate pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington D.C., serving with Mark Dever of the 9Marks ministry. As I understand it, Greg wrote this book to be a simple rendition of the gospel but not as an evangelistic tool. He wrote a book about the gospel for Christians.

The reason is that, as the writer of the forward D.A. Carson is fond of saying, we are always only one generation away from forgetting and losing the gospel. And the gospel is everything. After all, it is our commonly-used name: the word “evangelical” simply means “about the gospel.” But when Paul commanded Timothy, “Do the work of an evangelist” (2 Timothy 4:5), that’s a slight mistranslation. As Carson points out, a more literal rendering is preferable. The original word is simply the verb form of “gospel”: “Do the work of a gospeler.” But it is not at all clear that Paul means only with non-Christians. After all, when he wrote 1 Corinthians, he was writing to Christians, and his whole theme he summarized as “Christ crucified.”

I explain all of this because of a common response I get when I have recommended this book to other Christians: “Oh, we’ve already learned that.” The implication is that we learn the gospel, and then we graduate from it, leaving it behind for grander, more complex thoughts. You see this a lot in good athletes: we get tired of working on the basics, but it’s no coincidence that Vince Lombardi once began a preseason with his Packers by saying, “Boys, this is a football.” The gospel is our frame and our ground for living all of life. Or to combine the theme statements of John Piper and Douglas Wilson: “All that God is for us in Christ is for all of life.” So we must never become so adult-like that we lose our childlike delight in the good news that Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, took on human flesh, lived a perfect life for us, and died for us on a cross for us, in our place, for the forgiveness of our sins. For we have all told God to shove off, and that leads to death. But God loved us too much to leave us dead in our sins, and so he sent His Son.

And to prove that Jesus is the Messiah, because he did all things well according to the Father’s will, God raised him from the dead, proving that he is King. King of what? Yes. Now the path to life is found only under his reign. And we can gain this forgiveness and life for ourselves only by faith in him.

This is the gospel that Mr. Gilbert unpacks for us in this tidy, brief and readable book. He is quite gifted with metaphors - you’ll see what I mean in the opening metaphor of GPS. But he is equally gifted in giving clear definition to the metaphors. The outline of the book is simple: God, man, Christ, and response. Simple enough for any Christian to remember. This of course is not the only outline that may be followed to clearly describe the gospel, but it’s a good one.

So should you read this book? You can answer that by asking this question of yourself:

What would you say, right now, if someone asked you, “What is the gospel?”

How would that go? More than likely the answer means you should get this book, read it, mark it up, and in doing so, enjoy God more deeply, and draw in others to do the same.

P.S. If you attend my church and you’re short on funds, just take a copy from the foyer. Thanks to 9Marks for providing us pricing for that purpose.

Link: https://a.co/d/10ZhW8a

“For I do not want to see you now just in passing. I hope to spend some time with you . . . ” 1 Cor. 16:7

For a man of such high intelligence and accomplishment, it is remarkable how personal Paul was. For instance, in his great theological letter to the Romans, in the last chapter he mentions by name 40 different people or groups of people.

Now, to be clear: it is not at all clear that Paul was what we would call a “people person.” So take heart, autists and introverts: this is not a personality trait we’re talking about. Paul is simply walking in the steps of his Lord, in his own way.

He does this intentionally. His friendships are long-term. After all, after the resurrection comes eternity.

But these people were not projects to the great Paul. Paul needs them and their help just as they need Paul (v. 6). There is a deep mutuality between the great Paul and other ordinary Christians. God designed it that way.

Me Too!

It was one of those Spirit-created moments when you have no idea what’s going to come out of your own mouth, let alone the other person’s. I had been counseling an older woman who had never married and had experienced painful surgery after surgery since childhood. She was a prototype cat lady and understandably curled in on herself.

In the hallway after one session, the words just came out: “You know, I need YOU to pray for ME, too!” I could see in her face that that thought had never crossed her mind. Until that point, our relationship was only like a project. It was professional. But at that moment, it finally became Christian. And she changed: she curved out of herself and became an ardent prayer warrior for my family.

So Paul is intentionally personal and mutual, and he is decidedly unhurried, v. 7. He is not American; he is not one to reach for the quick fix or the trite platitude or the 27-minute sit-com ending. He is there for the duration, because he is there to heal the deep wounds. He is after strongholds to be demolished, not massaged and talked over.

This is because Paul knows that the Christian life is not a matter of talk but of power. And the power is often passed by emulation. Imitate me, as I imitate Christ, he told the Philippians. Which takes time, and exposure, because it requires watching people, when everything is tight and happy, and when they’re getting squeezed.

You Mean . . . Last Week?!

Gabe was single at the time and hung out a lot in our home. Our kids loved him, and he got a taste of what a normal family was like, having grown up in a broken home. One evening one the kids was doing squirrelly, something that kids do, and I lost my temper. Then I went back and confessed that anger as sin to my child and asked for forgiveness, which was sweetly and kindly granted. I was embarrassed for myself, but we went on with our evening.

About a week later, Gabe expressed how much he appreciated being in our home. I thought about it, and said, “You mean, the other night?! You appreciated THAT?! Me failing?!”

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve never seen anyone in a family confess their sin and ask for forgiveness before. Of course - that’s the gospel.” And, indeed, he’s right. God doesn’t need perfect examples. He needs people who know the way to the cross, and who are willing to live personally, intentionally, mutually and unhurriedly with others. By His Spirit, He’ll do the rest.