Volume 4: Issue 1 | February 2021
The Fourth Commandment:
Work! But Not Too Much. Nor Too Little
"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.
On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.
For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.
Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy."
-- Exodus 20: 8-11
God’s first command to Israel after setting them free from Egypt was to rest every seventh day. God spoke to worried people. We understand. You flee your homes with no lunch or snacks, and now you are in the middle of a dry wilderness with no map, just God’s promise that he is will take you to a place of milk and honey. So these former slaves, whom God just saved by bringing them across the Red Sea on dry land, complain. “Moses and Aaron brought us out here just to starve us to death.” Their stomachs were empty, and they were scared.
So God told Moses, “Look. I will send them bread from heaven. Every day they will gather the food they need, then on the sixth day they should get twice what they need, and on the seventh day they will rest (Exodus 16).” Moses then told Israel that God would send them quail that evening and then bread in the morning. The quail came, they caught and killed them, pulled out their feathers, cut out their guts, cooked them, ate them, and went to bed full. The next morning after the dew dried, white stuff was on the ground. They said, “Manna?” (That’s Hebrew for “What’s this?”) That’s what they called it from then on, “Manna,” “What’s this?”
Then God gave them rules about eating manna. First, they had to work: leave their tents, go to the fields, bend over, put the white stuff in baskets, take it home, and fix it to eat. The “What is it?” – “Manna,” remember? – came not in ready to eat packets. It wasn’t like the old American army C-rations or the later and improved MRE’s. (That’s “Meals Ready to Eat,” if you don’t know.) They should gather only what they needed for each day. On the sixth day they were to collect enough manna for two days, the sixth and the seventh. Lastly, they were NOT to go out and get manna on the seventh day, just rest in their tents and eat what remained from the sixth day.
Did Israel obey God? No. Instead, they worked smart, and they worked hard, filling big Tupperware containers with manna and dragging them back to their tents so they could feel food secure. What did their rebellion get them? The next morning the manna was wormy and stank.
God’s rules for the last two days of the week were different than days one through five: gather twice what they needed on the sixth day and then rest on the seventh day. Again, some Israelites disobeyed. They worked only hard enough on day six to get what they needed. Then they went out on the seventh day to get more manna, and nothing was there! First, they did not believe God would feed them so they got too much. Now they did not believe God would give them a day of rest, so off to work they went.
A day of rest! These former slaves never had such a day before, but now God said it was theirs: work hard on day six and then rest on day seven. No wonder what became the Fourth Commandment begins with this word: Remember. Remember what? Work six days, keep the seventh day holy by resting, and God will take care of you. A whole day of rest: thank you, God!
-- Hunter Jackson
Do You Celebrate Christmas?
The Likely Origin of the Question and Answers for Today – Part II
A Paper Submitted by John D. Edgar
DM 08: Biblical Worship
January 11, 2019
II. Questions that arise when reading the Puritans
Reading the Puritans closely reveals large differences between their situation and ours. They were dealing with a state church, run by an Anglican monarch. As Elizabeth I gave way to James I (VI of Scotland) and then Charles I, Puritan suspicions of Roman Catholic tendencies grew. They were not far removed from the Roman Catholic era, in which holidays had multiplied, holidays on which it was declared to be morally necessary to abstain from work and worship in the church. To be compelled to rest on so many holidays was an economic burden in a poor society, and to be told this was morally necessary before God a spiritual burden. The medieval Roman Catholic calendar had at length become oppressive and superstitious.
The American situation, however, is different in many ways. There is no state church. Christmas is a national holiday, but businesses may remain open. No one is compelled to rest or worship. The Puritan's cry against compulsion finds no opponent. His plea for liberty of conscience has been granted in this sphere. Nor is Christmas imputed a place of spiritual necessity. Few Christians would maintain that the keeping of holidays is necessary before God.
We may also note flaws in some of the arguments above. Condemning Christ-mass on account of its name fails for multiple reasons. The meaning of a word is determined by its current usage, not its etymology. 1 Furthermore, in other languages, mass does not appear in the name of the holiday. Nor should it: when a family gathers around a tree and opens presents, it is not celebrating a mass. If believers sing carols together, the mass is not present. As for the celebration of the Incarnation in churches, the celebration predates heretical Roman Catholic teaching about the mass.
Further reading into the Puritan situation sheds more light on their views. Their struggles against Christmas were related to their position on Sundays. 2 They viewed Sundays as the Christian Sabbath, and correspondingly read passages like Isaiah 58:13-14 as being directly applicable to Christians. 3 They wanted the whole day to be dedicated to God, either through public worship, private worship, or acts of mercy. Not only should people cease their labor and attend church, after church there should be prayer, sermon discussion, or visiting widows, not games or recreation. The Puritans thus urged both church and civil magistrates to forbid recreations on Sunday, not only during services, but also afterwards. Some Puritan magistrates enforced such prohibitions.
As one might expect, this policy provoked a backlash, and all the more in that day and age. In a poor, class-based agricultural society, people worked hard for six days and had one day for everything else, both worship and recreation. They also had the old holidays. Take away the holidays, as the Puritans tried to do, and recreation can only happen on Sundays. So the less pious in particular looked forward to Sunday for sports and leisure.
The kings, meanwhile, were quite ready to command church attendance on Sundays, but had an additional goal for the afternoon: archery practice. The bows of England had won a great victory at Agincourt in 1415 and on other occasions, and so the king, being military commander in an era of very small professional armies, wanted a citizenry ready to fight. So King James I decreed (but did not enforce) and King Charles I decreed (and tried to enforce) a Book of Sports that rebuked 'Puritans and precise people' for forbidding archery and other 'lawful games' on Sundays after church services were over. 4
The Puritans, then, ended up on the wrong side of both many of the common people (if not on holidays and Sundays, when would they dance and play sports?) and the king (when would his archers practice?). A culture war broke out in England, which eventually became an actual war, with the Puritans winning the initial battles but eventually losing the war.
But before anyone judges the Puritans too harshly, consider an additional angle: gambling. In this period, gambling was forbidden to the common folk except during the twelve days of Christmas. 5 The upper classes could legally gamble twelve months out of the year (and they did in the court of Charles I), but regular people could only gamble at Christmas. One can see why the Puritans recoiled from the holiday. It was named for the Savior, but in practice was the occasion of licensed sin. One might compare it to St. Patrick's Day. Is either God or Patrick glorified by drunkenness and green beer?
The Puritans wanted to prohibit Christmas, in other words, because it was a season gone out of control. In some places, roving bands of drunken carolers, sometimes in masks, would barge into homes and demand further refreshments. 6 Rejecting the holidays was thus a part of a general campaign to reform England. King, Parliament, and church were to be mobilized to stamp out holidays, purify Sundays, and roll back recreations of all sorts (both the brutal 7 and the harmless). Christmas was a part of the popish past, re-imposed more recently by power-hungry church hierarchies and celebrated with idolatrous services and riotous behavior.
Very little of this cultural background is familiar in America today. With a five-day workweek, there is no shortage of time for recreation. Few Christians are fighting for six days of work and one day of holy rest. With a large professional army wielding fantastically advanced weapons, there is no call from the chief executive for weapons practice. And gambling is hardly restricted in any way at any time.
Christmas simply functions differently in America than it did in 17th Century England and Scotland. The entire American calendar of festivals is thin by old English standards, which were themselves thin compared to European standards. 8 The festivals themselves are celebrated in a variety of ways, which means no one way is culturally overwhelming. Whether due to Puritan and Quaker opposition or not, Christmas in America has always been a reduced version of the past European Christmas. 9
In the present American environment, Christmas arrives as a time for the name of Christ to reenter the naked public square. An old carol may sing the hope of the gospel as it is piped into (or sung inside) a shopping mall. Perhaps the lapsed or the curious may visit a church. At a more general level, at Christmas scattered families gather, lights twinkle festively, the Salvation Army rings a bell for charity, and the mood changes. Is it really a good idea to assist the secularists in driving Christmas underground? In America today, ditching Christmas would seem to further the unbelievers' goal of driving Christianity into the closet.
Please see Issue 3.6 for Part I.
Look for Part III in our next issue.
Footnotes:
1. The same should be said of holidays. The etymology is certainly 'holy-day' but that does not make every celebration of a holiday an illegitimate assertion that a given day is holy. It simply means schools and some businesses are closed, and some have a reason to celebrate. See D.A. Carson for more on etymologies and meaning: D.A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1984, pp. 26-32.
2. See Alistair Dougall, The Devil's Book: Charles I, the Book of Sports, and Puritanism in Tudor and Early Stuart England, University of Exeter Press, 2011.
3. Isaiah 58:13-14 : "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."
4. See King Charles the First's Declaration to His Subjects Concerning Lawful Sports to be Used on Sundays 1633. Reprinted for Bernard Quaritch, 1862.
5. John M. Findlay, People of Chance: Gambling in American Society from Jamestown to Las Vegas. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1986, pp. 17, 19.
6. Consider the background that produces Here we go A-wassailing.
7. It is easy to mock the Puritans for limiting recreation, but those who know that bear-baiting and cock-fighting were regular parts of sixteenth and seventeenth century English recreation should realize they would likely align with the Puritans on some matters.
8. Compare a Roman Catholic private school's calendar to a public school's.
9. See Reston for further analysis, especially pp. 18-20.
Getting to Know You: Introducing New Broomall Deacon
Adam and Lisa Edgar, Broomall RPC
Where are you each from?
Adam - I am from Drexel Hill, PA, which is an inner-ring suburb of Philadelphia.
Lisa - I grew up in Charlotte, NC.
What did you believe about God growing up? What did your family teach you? Did you go to church? Where?
Adam - The Apostle’s Creed sums up what I believed about God growing up. That’s what I learned at home and at church. What I learned in both places was similar since my dad was the pastor at church and he’s the one who led family worship. I went to the Broomall RP Church growing up.
Lisa - I was baptized in an OP church, but I have few memories of actually regularly attending church since from a young age we worshiped primarily at home. We would periodically visit the RP church in Durham, NC, but since that was 3 hours away, we could not attend there regularly. On Sundays we would listen to a sermon at home and sing the Psalms. Family worship was also a daily occurrence in our house. Reformed theology and the regulative principle of worship were emphasized. I grew up hearing the gospel and believing that I was a sinner in need of Christ’s work for my salvation. I honestly cannot remember a time that I didn’t trust in Christ.
How did things change as you went through high school and beyond?
Adam - That’s a vague question. What are “things”? Nothing really changed. My awareness of my sins, and therefore my need for forgiveness, increased as I grew older. When I went to Penn State, I attended the State College RP Church instead of Broomall. I went to a couple of other churches once each when I wasn’t able to get a ride to Grace RPC. Those experiences helped to confirm my belief in the truth of what the RP denomination teaches. The substance of what I believed about the Bible and about God didn’t really change. I hope it matured. At Penn State I also attended Campus Crusade for Christ meetings and most of my friends were in that group. This exposed me to the broader Church outside of the RP denomination.
Lisa - At the beginning of high school, I wrestled with what it means to know the truth vs. what it means to believe the truth. Did I simply know it or had I believed it? I was blessed to attend Christian schools from grades K-12. My school from grades 8-12 was associated with a PCA church. My senior yearbook descriptions given by my classmates were “determined” and “opinionated.” In Bible class I regularly debated the Arminian students so unfortunately I think those adjectives were probably fairly given. I don’t think I was very gracious in the way I spoke to my classmates, and that was something I consciously wanted to change about myself as I went to college. I’m not sure how successful I was, but the intent was there.
During high school I also became convicted of the importance of being a member of a Bible-believing church. When I looked at colleges, I only looked at schools that were geographically close to psalm-singing churches. I attended Grove City College and joined Providence RP Church in Pittsburgh my sophomore year in college.
How did you meet? Get together?
Adam - **chuckles** We met at the RP International Conference at Indiana Wesleyan University in 2012. Somebody organized a game of Capture the Flag. This is when Lisa and I first laid eyes on each other. Lisa didn’t really make much of an impression on me. The next night, several of us were at Buffalo Wild Wings. Lisa showed up a little bit later with a mutual friend. Andrew Ashleigh conspicuously made space near me for Lisa to sit, and then repeatedly kicked me under the table and even texted me telling me to talk to Lisa, even while I was in the middle of talking to her. After that I was fairly uncommunicative, but fortunately Lisa chased me down and my friends Andrew and Will Werts kicked me in the butt to get me to talk to Lisa (although apparently not at the rate at which she would have preferred; hence, their continued involvement). Over the months between the RP Conference and November, my interest in Lisa grew. In November of that fall, I invited Lisa out to a Penn State football game with my friends Will and Mandy Werts, and that’s when we officially started dating, although I was still in Philly, and she was in Indiana. We regularly Skyped for the next several months, and we took turns visiting each other about once a month. We got engaged in May, and we got married in August of 2013.
Lisa - see above.
Adam - That’s surprising. She usually likes to tell her own (funnier) version. Thank you, dear.
Lisa – Your mom, Gretchen, would also be a fun person to tell this story. ☺
What led you to God?
Adam - Being raised in the church and a Bible-believing home. I can’t remember a time that I didn’t know and believe in God. As I got older, being convinced of the truth of the Bible’s claims about Jesus left me with no choice. What else am I going to believe? Everything else is wrong.
Lisa - God’s grace. I am so thankful that I grew up hearing the truth of the Gospel, but I look at my unbelieving younger sisters and I know that that is no guarantee of faith.
What led you to visit Broomall RP Church?
Adam - My dad was the pastor. So growing up, I had no choice. When I came back home from college, I was still living with my parents and Broomall was the closest RP church. After we got married, Broomall was still the closest RP church.
Lisa - I was dating Adam. So when I moved to Philly, I had no choice. Seriously, though, I was blessed to be welcomed by such a kind and gracious congregation.
What led you to join Broomall RP Church?
Adam - I grew up in the church and I joined the church at the age at which people who grow up in the church join the church. I believed what it was teaching.
Lisa - I transferred my membership from Bloomington RP Church when I moved to Philadelphia to marry Adam.
How has God helped you in the last few years?
Adam and Lisa - The thing that stands out the most is God’s faithfulness to our family regarding our son James. In January of 2017 we found out that our pre-born son had a fatal condition called anencephaly. In the months that followed his diagnosis, and then after his birth and death, we were so blessed by God’s peace in our turmoil, his comfort in our grief, and his purpose for our suffering. The beauty of the body of Christ was displayed to us in ways we had never before seen or known. We were upheld by you, our brothers and sisters. While we grieved the loss of our son, we also knew that God was putting together our family exactly the way he wanted.
What are you most thankful for at this point in your lives?
Adam and Lisa - Our marriage and our children. We are also thankful for living so close to Adam’s family and for the opportunities to see them regularly and for our children to grow up knowing them. We are also thankful for our church family and the many ways they minister to us.
-- Adam and Lisa Edgar
Songs of Ascents In Time of Quarantine: The Blessed Life
"Blessed is every one who fears the LORD,
who walks in his ways. "
-- Psalm 128:1
If I asked you whether, on the whole, our society was moving toward Biblical Christianity, or away from Biblical Christianity, the answer would unfortunately be clear. Ours is, tragically, not a movement toward, but away, and many applaud and encourage this movement. So it is curious how much Biblical language we have held onto as a culture. One example is the word “blessed.” It is still quite common for people to talk about being blessed, or to wish blessing on others.
But what does it truly mean to be blessed? What is the blessed life? Without a clear understanding of the Bible’s definition of blessedness, it is an easy word to simply fill up with whatever meaning we want it to have. We use it as an expression of happiness or satisfaction that we have gotten what we want, whatever that might be. At the end of the day, we feel “blessed” when things are going how we want them to go.
How do you define blessedness? For a moment, may I ask the question in a terribly subjective way? When do you feel most blessed? That is a very revealing question, I think. Not, mind you, when are you supposed to feel most blessed? But instead when do you actually feel most blessed? In other words, what brings you true happiness? After all, the Hebrew word translated “blessed” carries with it the idea of happiness (in the NKJV translation the word “blessed” in verse 1 and “happy” in verse 2 are the same Hebrew word!). If we are honest with ourselves about what brings us true happiness, chances are that will reveal to us at least some ways that we are more conformed to the “things in the world” (1 John 2:15) than to the “will of God” (1 John 2:17).
So how does the Bible define blessedness? Every human being seeks blessedness, inasmuch as every human being seeks after happiness. It is in our nature to seek our happiness in that which we perceive to be good (cf. the radical change in what Eve perceives to be “good” in Gen. 3:6). Augustine writes: “Is not the happy life that which all desire, which indeed no one fails to desire (Confessions 10.20)?” And again, “If they [‘Greeks and Latins and people of other languages’] could be asked if they want to be happy, without hesitation they would answer with one voice that they so wish (Ibid).”
But that is precisely our problem. In our estate of sin and misery, we still desire happiness, but we will not seek after God. So our innate desire for happiness is rendered futile because we refuse to seek after and rest in the one and only true source of happiness, God himself. Sinful man is a wretchedly frustrated creature, created to rest himself in the divine happiness, but forever giving himself away to one counterfeit substitute after another, always seeking, never satisfied (see II Timothy 3:7). And so again, Augustine of Hippo: “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you (Ibid. 1.1).”
The Psalter speaks often about blessedness. It begins with blessedness. “Blessed is the man … (Psalm 1:1).” Psalm 1 speaks individually of “the man.” Psalm 128 speaks corporately. “Blessed is every one … (Psalm 128:1).” Praise God that he tells us wherein consists true blessedness, for on our own we do not seek it where (or how) we ought. We must be led by the hand to seek and to desire blessedness aright. And that is exactly what the Spirit does in Psalm 128. He takes our hand and leads us (according to our willingness to be led) into true blessedness.
Where does the Spirit first lead us? What is the burning core of blessedness? Reverence and obedience to God: fearing the LORD and walking in His ways. Here we discover why true happiness is so elusive to us in our sinful state. We do not walk in God’s ways, but “we have turned, every one, to his own way (Isaiah 53:6).” As Paul says in Romans 3, quoting from different parts of the Psalter, “There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside … Destruction and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes (Romans 3:11-12, 16-18).”
Do you see how desperately your heart needs to be changed? If we are honest with ourselves we will find desires in our hearts that bring only “destruction and misery.” Our affections need to be created anew. Our desires need to be turned God-ward. The curse of the fall means that we do not seek after God as our highest and best happiness. The blessing of grace means that the Spirit has given us a new heart to at last seek true happiness in the one place where it may be found—fearing the LORD and walking in his ways.
Insofar as we do not fear God and do not walk in his ways, we labor toward our own unhappiness, no matter how much we may believe the opposite to be true. Let us hear and heed the words of our Savior. “If you love me, keep my commandments (John 14:15).”
Fearing God. Walking in His ways. That is what it means to be blessed.
There is something additional to notice in verse 1 of Psalm 128. The relationship between fearing the LORD and walking in his ways is a both/and, not an either/or. In other words, you cannot claim to fear the LORD if you do not walk in his ways. The Psalmist wants to ensure that we do not misunderstand the fear of the LORD as mere emotion or experience. Feeling a certain way, or having a certain experience does not, by itself, constitute the fear of the LORD. If we have a feeling or an experience, but our lives do not change and we do not repent of sin and turn to paths of righteousness, that is not the fear of the LORD. It is just a fleeting regret and a useless remorse.
Proverbs 3:7 – “Fear the LORD and depart from evil.”
Proverbs 8:13 – “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil.”
There is an emotive aspect of the fear of the LORD. The LORD does mean to enter into and sanctify our emotional life. The fear of the LORD is meant to be felt and experienced. After all, how could a true encounter with the living God not be experienced? Job described his experience this way: “I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you (Job 42:5).” But there are deceiving counterfeit emotions and experiences as well. How do we tell the difference? Repentance. Sanctification. Holiness. Humility. Job follows the words just quoted with this declaration, “Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes (Job 42:6).”
Observe how Paul draws the distinction between the real and the counterfeit: “Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly manner, that you might suffer loss from us in nothing. For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death. For observe this very thing, that you sorrowed in a godly manner: What diligence it produced in you, what clearing of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication! In all things you proved yourselves to be clear in this matter (2 Corinthians 7:9-11).”
Note well, however, that there is a counterfeit on the other side of things as well. There can also be a “counterfeit” obedience as well as a counterfeit emotion. There can be an obedience that is merely outward, motivated not by faith, but by worldly concerns. Our inner emotions can be worldly and not spiritual. Our “obedience” can be worldly and not spiritual. For example, someone can put on a show of obedience so as to be thought righteous by others, all the while hiding away deep wells of ungodliness in the heart.
Inward emotion and experience without change of life is deceptive. So too, outward obedience without the inner motivation of true faith and repentance is deceptive. Fearing the LORD and walking in his ways is the spiritual marriage of the inward and the outward. A true encounter with the Living God, in Christ, through faith, by the Spirit – that leads to genuine transformation of heart.
At the end of it all, brothers and sisters, the way forward is simple and clear. "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you (James 4:7-10, esp. v8).” Believe that God is who he says he is in his Word. Love him. Love others. Flee sin. Yes, there are the crooked paths of dangerous counterfeits that we must learn to recognize and avoid, but praise God the path of faith is straight and clearly lit. Remember, Wisdom cries out “in the chief concourses (Proverbs 1:21).”
Here is one way to examine yourself on this crucial point, to see whether or not you fear the Lord. Think about the particular sins that plague you. What are you more concerned about, God knowing about your sin, or other people knowing about your sin? Are you OK with God knowing about your sin, just so long as everyone else does not? Are you OK harboring certain sins in your heart, just so long as they stay hidden from the sight of others?
To whatever degree this hypocrisy may be true for us, we must repent. To whatever degree this may be true for us, to that degree we are deficient in the fear of the LORD. The reality that should always concern us most about our sin is that God sees it. This is what David expressed in Psalm 51 when he prayed to God, “Against you, you only, have I sinned, and done this evil in your sight (Psalm 51:4).” It is functional atheism to live unconcerned that God sees your sin. “For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and He ponders all his paths (Proverbs 5:21).”
Fearing the Lord is living coram Deo – before the face of God – where the displeasure of your Father is the greatest sorrow; and his pleasure, the greatest joy.
-- Alex Tabaka
Broomall
2020
Report on the Oct 20, 2020 Home Mission Board Meeting
The Home Mission Board of the RPCNA met by Zoom call on Tuesday October 20. The HMB consists of one pastor (or elder) representative from each North American presbytery, plus the denominational treasurer and a woman with church planting experience. It hears reports, makes grants, and provides counsel and encouragement towards evangelism and church planting. Funding is provided by endowments, RPM&M, and individual donors, and goes primarily to new congregations, with smaller amounts provided to residents in training, summer internships, evangelism training, and quadrennial retreats for church planters and their wives. You can give to the work of the HMB through http://rphomemissions.org.
Congregations already receiving funds through the six-year reducing aid program include Living Way RPC in Bryan, Texas, where Steve Rockhill serves as the pastor. Steve was formerly a member of Broomall and a theological student in our presbytery. Harrisonburg, VA and Great Basin RPC in Reno, Nevada are the other congregations currently receiving reducing aid. Dallas RPC was receiving these funds but grew fast enough to decline the final few years; Casper RPC in Wyoming has faced so many hard Providences that the congregation has been closed.
Texas is home to several new works. In addition to Dallas and Bryan, a small group has been meeting in San Antonio for some years, with Jonathan Leach, formerly of Elkins Park and Hazleton, taking a leading role. Another group is just about to begin evening worship in south Houston, and there are now contacts in Waco. Please pray for these works, and if you know anyone in these areas, invite them to find them online.
In our own presbytery, the HMB helped Elkins Park RPC provide a summer internship to Hunter Jackson. That internship went so well Elkins Park independently extended the internship for another six months. The HMB also provided two years of resident-in-training funding to Christ Church RPC for Gabe Wingfield. Gabe has now been installed as pastor in Oswego, NY. And the HMB provided exploratory funding for Harrisburg, a group that is now meeting in Lebanon, PA. Search for Lebanon Area Reformed Presbyterians on Facebook.
We are happy to report that the number of vacant pulpits across North American RP churches is down to 8 or 10, depending on what whether recent calls will be accepted. The Midwest and St Lawrence Presbyteries have no vacant pulpits at all. But an item for prayer is a relative lack of new ministers in training. The Midwest Presbytery has no students at all, for example, and we in the Atlantic have only two, Zach Dotson and Hunter Jackson.
At this meeting the HMB took action on the following matters: Grace Reformed Church in Colombia, Missouri, formerly a preaching station in the Free Church of Scotland Continuing, was granted six year reducing aid, contingent upon its application being approved by the Midwest Presbytery and its pastor-elect, Gary McNamee, passing his ordination examinations. Mr. McNamee recently completed a year as a resident-in-training in Columbus, Indiana. The HMB tabled a request for a new resident-in-training in Durham RPC, as the young man in question has not yet been taken under care of his presbytery. And the HMB granted another year of funding for prison missionary Tim McCracken. The pressing issue of prison missions has inspired a Synod committee to take up the question of whether a congregation can be organized behind bars. If not, the HMB will need to decide whether to make a case to Synod for expanding its remit to include such ministries. To support Tim McCracken directly in his ministry to prisoners in California, see https://give.pcamna.org/to/mna-metanoia-prison-ministries/.
Think for a moment if you know anyone living near any of the congregations mentioned above. Could you make them aware of the new church and invite them to attend? A map of these and more will soon be available. Please pray for the churches and ministers mentioned above. Please pray for additional men for the ministry. And give thanks to God, that the 2020 Vision goal set 15 years ago has been achieved: as of this spring, we have grown to having 100 Reformed Presbyterian congregations and mission stations in North America. We thank God for his blessing and encouragement.
-- John D. Edgar
Atlantic Presbytery Fall Meeting and Elder Installations at Walton
Nothing has come easily in 2020, and that includes presbytery meetings. Fortunately there is a presbytery camp. The fall meeting of September 25-26, originally slated for Broomall PA, was moved to White Lake Camp, so that men from different regions could room with those from their home congregation, and the meeting could be held in the dining hall with the windows open, the better to avoid spreading infection. Bill Chellis was elected moderator and Bruce Martin continued to serve as long-time clerk.
As the spring meeting had been moved to Zoom, some regular spring business was moved to this meeting: each congregation gave its report and was prayed for, the session minute books were reviewed, and the presbytery formally adopted its budget. Student Zach Dotson presented his exegetical paper on Romans 7:14-25, a lengthy and contested passage. His paper was not sustained, and was returned with suggested improvements and offers of help. We anticipate an improved version coming before us this spring.
A lengthy paper dealing with Biblical grounds for divorce came from John D. Edgar, David Merkel (Trinity RPC) and Ryan Somerville (Rochester). Moderator Chellis appointed a five man committee to look it over and make improvements and recommendations for the spring meeting. A similar committee has been erected by the Presbytery of the Alleghenies in response to the same paper.
The presbytery thanks Peter Robson, Bob Allmond, Larry Gladfelter, and members of the White Lake Church, all of whom made staying at the camp in late September possible. We also thank Joe Comanda for his many (and ongoing) years of service as our treasurer. Our students under care are Zack Dotson and Hunter Jackson. The Cambridge session continues to serve as the ad interim commission. The vacant pulpits, as of this meeting, were Walton and Ridgefield Park, while Coldenham-Newburgh continues to be served by student Zach Dotson. But, see below!
On December 12, 2020, the Walton congregation gathered with the session of White Lake and several friends from Pennsylvania to install Bill Chellis as the pastor (teaching elder) of the congregation, and ordain and install John Cripps as a ruling elder. While installing a pastor is the responsibility of the whole presbytery, COVID-related restrictions on travel made gathering difficult. The nearby White Lake session was therefore appointed as a commission to carry out the presbytery’s business and install Mr. Chellis.
The installations proceeded smoothly, as Walton’s elders certified that the necessary steps had been taken in advance, the congregation stood to show their desire to proceed, and David Coon of White Lake preached on Ephesians 4:7-16. John Edgar and Mike DeSocio gave the charges to the new officers and the congregation, and all enjoyed the customary warm Walton hospitality.
One additional blessing came the next day, when Pastor Andrew Kerr of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland informed the Ridgefield Park congregation of his intention to accept their call and become their pastor. Please give thanks with these two congregations for these answers to their prayers, and pray for the Chellis, Cripps, and Kerr families as they enter a new phase of God’s calling.
-- John D. Edgar
Proverbs Exposition: So Who's Stupid Now, eh?
"Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge,
but he who hates reproof is stupid."
-- Proverbs 12:1
People love praise, not reproof; so flattery works. Like honey, praise tastes good. Reproof is like bad-tasting medicine. But learn to love discipline and you will love knowledge. Allowing yourself to hate it makes you like unreasoning animals, the point of the Hebrew word translated “stupid.”
My junior year English teacher, Miss Reid, taught me to write correct English by using discipline and reproof. Every week we wrote a paragraph. Handing back our first effort, she pointed at us and said, “You all think you’re so smart. Well, you’re not. Four of you made the same egregious grammatical error on your essays. Now I’m going to explain it to you once. From now on, anyone making this error will automatically receive a failing grade.”
Miss Reid kept her word. We griped and complained when some papers came back the next week with a large F at the top, accompanied by a short reference to the previous week’s grammar lesson. Parents called the Principal and complained. But when Miss Reid explained grammatical point numbers two, three, and many more – she especially hated the sins of dangling participles and indefinite reference and the failure to understand that “he” is the English generic pronoun for both sexes – we paid attention.
I don’t think Miss Reid much liked us. We didn’t like her. But half way through senior year, we began saying to one another with growing appreciation, “Miss Reid actually taught us how to write, didn’t she.” She did not make us love discipline, but she did convince us that hating her reproof and instruction meant failure.
When God asked young King Solomon in a dream what he wanted, he answered humbly and requested understanding and wisdom to rule God’s people (I Kings 3:5-9). Humility is the soil in which love for discipline grows, and humility like wisdom begins with fear of the LORD. On the other hand, pride, often manifesting itself as “defensiveness,” rejects reproof. The defensive person explains why he is right, why he did what he did, why he can’t change, why he should not be blamed, twisting and turning to evade correction. He wants praise, not reproof. But what happens to a talented, but “uncoachable” athlete? Eventually, he ends up on the bench. If you want to play, being “uncoachable” is stupid. If you want to advance in your job, if you want to grow in faith, if you want to improve family life, refusing reproof is just plain stupid.
God disciplines his sons and daughters, warning them not to despise His reproof (Hebrews 12:5-11). The one who loves His discipline, whether it comes through reading the Word, or hearing it preached, or from a friend, or from the providential circumstances of life, or Miss Reid teaching English, will grow in knowledge. To despise and reject God’s fatherly discipline is to reject knowledge and be stupider than animals. I used to say to my high school classes, “Wise people learn from the example of other people; smart people learn from experience and it often hurts; fools won’t learn.” They hate reproof and just never learn. Stupid!
-- Bill Edgar
To My Grandchildren
All Christian heresies distort the truth about God, or Man, or both. Calvin began his Institutes of the Christian Religion by observing that all our knowledge deals with knowledge of God and of ourselves, and which comes first is hard to tell. When the Protestant churches in our country began abandoning the truth about human nature in the 19th Century, an early step was to denounce the doctrine of Original Sin. Those who believed that doctrine, its enemies asserted, were misanthropic haters of humanity to teach such an unkind thing. It was also un-American because it was so dour and pessimistic, and the nature of America is to be optimistic and hopeful. This rejection of Original Sin did not distinguish between the Calvinist teaching that no part of our being escapes the effect of sin (total depravity) and the less decisive teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on Original Sin. It was the very idea that something is fundamentally wrong with us that they rejected.
When I was in high school, thought leaders in America were still working to stamp out the doctrine of Original Sin. My sociology teacher told us flatly that everyone is born naturally good and that evil comes from a bad society. I told him in class one day that he believed people are born naturally good only because he never knew any little children. He did not like me, but that was okay because I did not like him either, and since I always got the best scores on his tests, he had to allow me to have my A. A decade later a History of Education professor at the University of Pennsylvania was still arguing the point, keeping me after class to disagree with something I wrote in a paper for his class. He believed, he told me, that people are born neutral with regard to good and evil, a blank slate waiting to be written on by parents, teachers, and society, not innately oriented towards doing wrong as I had written.
But heresies never stand still. You will not face the rejection of Original Sin as I did. Oh, it’s still out there, but Original Sin is not where the Enemy is forcing the battle now. Instead, you face and will face an even deeper denial of truth, a denial not of sin’s entry into the world in Genesis 3, but a denial of the Creation in Genesis 1-2. This new heresy, unimagined by the Protestant and Puritan Reformers, denies our kinship with animals. Every kind of animal is either male or female. The only fruitful animal sexual unions are between male and female. Humans, however, it is now asserted, are whatever sex they desire to be and can marry whatever sex they desire. Desire is everything and to cross someone’s claim about their identity is to assault their human dignity. In a kind of Orwellian “doublethink” those who hold this heresy usually believe themselves to be materialists and deny that the Living God made the heavens and the earth and everything within them! When it comes to human desire, however, they set the material reality of XX and XY chromosomes aside. So now it is Christians who must assert the fundamental material reality of humanity. When it comes to human nature and identity, Christians who know that God created us from dirt are the new materialists, and we look forward with unquenchable hope to the Resurrection of our bodies!
Since this new heresy is even further from reality than the prior one denying Original Sin, its proponents will have to use more power and force to make people affirm it. I got made fun of. You will feel greater occupational and social pressure than I did. Here are five thoughts about dealing with the pressure that you will face to affirm the heresy that now grips thought leaders in the West.
1. Jesus said to be harmless as doves and wise as serpents. You will want to deal with this new heresy and the force used to make you say it is true with all the cleverness you can muster.
2. Jesus’ way of dealing with opposition was to tell stories. My favorite story for our new heresy is the story about the emperor’s new clothes by Hans Christian Anderson. You will think of others.
3. You may well be blocked from entering the professions that our thought leaders occupy. Be ready to make your living in useful ways that may not be your first choice or the ones that our society honors and pays well.
4. Know that the Church will be a great source of strength to you, with friends to accompany you on your journey through life. However, the Church’s preaching may be slow to deal with the new heresy. Men trained in seminaries reading old books dealing with old problems will think along old lines. It is true that the Roman Catholic Church does not get the teaching of Original Sin correct, but that is not the problem we deal with today. Preaching that does not deal with issues more current than those the Puritans faced will not help you in dealing with our current thought leaders. As Luther said, anyone contending earnestly for the truth, but not at the point of attack in his time, is a useless soldier. Sadly, you may find a lot of preaching lacking in helpfulness for dealing with the new heresy about human nature, so look for Christian teaching that does help. It is out there to be found.
5. Do not feel sorry for yourselves or adopt a victim mentality. Jesus warned us that all who follow him should expect opposition and trouble. So, whatever happens, keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. In him, we have the victory.
-- Bill Edgar
Book Review:
The Sexual State:
How Elite Ideologies Are Destroying Lives and Why the Church Was Right All Along
by Jennifer Roback Morse
Charlotte, TAN Books: 2018
Morse’s title means that the American government in all four of its branches (judicial, legislative, executive, and independent regulatory agencies) has promoted and protected all facets of the Sexual Revolution since the 1960s.
The subtitle makes two claims. First, the American government has been doing the bidding of American elites, not the common people, in promoting the Sexual Revolution. This claim is less startling than it seems. Elites of one kind or another always direct a country. Second, elite promulgation of the Sexual Revolution have harmed millions of people; it is a wrong path to pursue happiness. The Christian Church from its beginning has taught the right path to personal and family happiness.
Morse analyzes the Sexual Revolution into three components: 1) the ideology separating sex from babies, using the technologies of contraception, its abortion back up, and baby components for sale in artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, and surrogate motherhood; 2) the divorce ideology that separates husbands and wives from each other and children from their father-mother home; and 3) the gender ideology that separates individuals from their own bodies. With many footnotes, she follows the adoption of these ideologies by the government, occasionally by legislative means, but most often by use of the courts. Elite motives for the Sexual Revolution range from concrete Progressive eugenicist aims in the 1920’s to the post-2000 Gnostic-like heresy that one’s body has nothing to do with anyone’s identity.
Many studies that Morse cites date from before 2000. They remain valid because basic human nature does not change with time. Children today, for example, desperately want to live with their own mothers and fathers as they always have. Researchers, furthermore, are more and more restricted in what they can study without ruining their academic careers. There are few studies about what adult children think about their parents’ divorces, and hardly anyone dares to research the outcomes for children raised by gay couples. Furthermore, recent research can obscure important information by its use of inclusive categories. For example, research today examines “intimate partner violence” rather than “domestic violence,” and since 2000 such research has lost its specificity. “Intimate partner violence” studies hide what earlier studies revealed: that live-in boyfriend violence is far more common than husband violence.
Who benefits from the Sexual Revolution, she asks, in her “follow the money” section. Large employers who want the labor of educated, talented hard-working women without the disruption of babies benefit from the separation of sex and babies. The huge State apparatus of “helpers,” who try to pick up the pieces after divorces, benefit from the divorce ideology. Powerful men, who want free and socially cost-free sexual access to many women, benefit from all aspects of the Sexual Revolution. Pornography businesses, especially on the Internet, benefit. Abortionists and their clinics make money. The educated, career women who put career first and children second seem to be winners, but maybe not. Who loses? The purportedly resilient children of divorce lose, the spouse who does NOT want a divorce loses, babies killed before they are born lose, and the entire society loses the freedom and stability the Christian sexual ethic provides.
A strong part of Morse’s book is her attention to the life-long harm that divorce does to children and the studied disregard of the testimonies of adult children of divorce to that harm. Another strong feature is her emphasis on the nature of newborn children: they are helpless and demand care for a long time. Answering the Gender Ideology, she writes, “The human species is a mammalian species. Our reproduction requires one male and one female. Our young are born alive and dependent. The Gender Ideology is an attack on these basic, biological facts. The Gender Ideology makes war on the human body. That means the Gender Ideology makes war on the human race.” (p. 312)
The Sexual State is a readable book. Morse writes for the public. Assertions are footnoted, and there is a full bibliography. Unfortunately, there is no index. Morse writes as a proud Catholic, noting that what the Catholic Church officially teaches about matters sexual is what all Christian Churches taught until the 20th Century. She occasionally observes that the Sexual Revolution has deeper roots than what elites have done in the last hundred years, but exploring those roots would require another book. For example, political and economic theorists from Locke, Hobbes, and Adam Smith to the present, write as though the natural condition of humans is to be independent autonomous adults. They totally fail to take into account the radically dependent nature of children. The Sexual Revolution just carries their faulty starting point further.
At the end of her book, Morse has a fifteen point “Manifesto for the Civilization of Love.” It is a good list, but it does not include the basic need for the evangelization of our society and the abandonment of the always false claim of governmental neutrality about basic questions of existence.
The Sexual State is an excellent book for older folk wondering, “How did our society get here?” It is a great book for younger people susceptible to cries of social justice for “transgender” people or fairness to men who want to marry men. And it is the book that adult children of divorce or no father at all need because it affirms their deep feelings that they have been wronged. They have been wronged and telling them that it was all for the best is a cruel lie.
Buy this 2018 book, read it, and pass it on to family and friends to read.
-- Bill Edgar
A Thoughtful Question: Rendering to Caesar
1. When Jesus said, “Render unto Caesar’s what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s,” what did he mean?
Jesus’ saying in the first place is an escape from a trap. Two opposing factions, the Herodians (friends of Rome), and the Pharisees (emphatically not friends of Rome), cooperated to set the trap. After some opening flattery, they asked Jesus, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” If Jesus answered “lawful,” the Pharisees would accuse him of betraying Israel’s God. If he answered, “No, it is not lawful to pay taxes to Caesar,” then the Romans would be after him.
Jesus escaped the trap by asking to see a coin. They gave him a coin with Tiberias Caesar’s likeness on it, coins usually uncirculated in Judea so as not to upset Jewish objections to making images and likenesses. But here was Caesar Tiberias. Jesus answered, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s,” and cleverly escaped the trap, impressing everyone.
Was Jesus’ answer more than clever? Yes, actually, it was. When a country uses another country’s currency, it implicitly accepts that country’s rule. Were Canada, for example, to start using the American rather than the Canadian dollar, it would mean that Canada had become dependent on the United States. The Jews used not only Rome’s coinage, but also its roads; and the safety on road and sea that Roman soldiers and sailors brought allowed commerce to flow freely, along with safety from potential enemies to the east. To be blunt, Israel owed Rome a lot. Jesus’ answer clearly implied, “Yes, pay Rome its taxes. You rightly owe them.”
But there is a further aspect to Jesus’ answer. A lot of Rome’s taxes, just like a lot of American taxes, went to pay its army. Well before Jesus’ day, a devastating series of civil wars ended with Augustus’ victory over Mark Antony in 31 BC. There were also no foreign conflicts except for Rome’s series of wars with the Parthians to the east of Judea. In other words, there was a long Pax Romana. However, there was one war brewing, a Jewish rebellion against Rome, a national liberation uprising one might call it. Those who willingly paid taxes opposed such an uprising. Those who favored rebellion opposed paying taxes. Jesus himself made it repeatedly plain that he opposed rebellion against Rome and warned that Rome would win. He came to deal with deeper human problems than the oppression of one nation by another. In fact, when he asked his disciples who people said he was, they replied that some connected him to Jeremiah. What did Jesus and Jeremiah have in common? Jeremiah was the prophet who told Judah not to rebel against Babylon, and people could hear the same message from Jesus concerning Rome.
People often miss a fourth aspect of Jesus’ answer. Yes, pay Caesar what is his, and pay God what is his. And what does Caesar himself owe to God? The Hebrew prophets taught that God raises nations up and brings them down according to his plan for history. The most obvious such victor by God’s plan was Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. In Daniel we read how God made it plain even to Nebuchadnezzar that he owed everything to the God of Israel. (See Daniel 4) A fifth point follows the fourth. If a coin belongs to Caesar because it has Caesar’s imprint on it, then we too belong to our Maker, who made us in his image and likeness. No one can rightly claim to be his own maker or his own master.
One final point in Jesus’ answer is that civil governments are legitimate in God’s plan. They restrain evil and promote good, and God gives them the sword to do so. Therefore, we should pay taxes for conscience’ sake, not just because we fear the IRS. (See Romans 13)
Who but Jesus could teach so much in such few words in the context of evading a verbal trap? As men once said when sent to arrest Jesus, “No one ever spoke the way this man speaks (John 7:46).”
What did Jesus’ answer mean? Escaping the trap, he answered “Pay taxes,” “Don’t rebel,” “Caesar’s power comes from God,” “People made in God’s image owe all to their Creator,” and “Governments are part of God’s plan to manage sinners in this world.” One final thought: Is Jesus’ answer about “separation of church and state?” Only tangentially!
-- Bill Edgar
Dear White Lake supporters,
What a year! Just when we were worried that future generations would remember 2020 as the “year without White Lake Camp,” Kaleigh Gibbons, James Allmond, and their merry band of joyful conspirators 1 cooked up Virtual White Lake and served it with panache. They assembled and mailed White Lake kits (complete with s’mores makings and a small slip-n-slide), created a curriculum for children, organized lectures for adults, and hosted a skit night featuring video blasts from the past. If you were a part of Virtual White Lake, I don’t have to tell you how encouraging it was. We might be separated in body, but we are certainly one in spirit.
As if this weren’t enough, two needed projects were completed over the summer. Peter Robson (working with Gideon, Sam, Stephen, and Elijah Robson) removed the McBurney trailer, opening a space between the rec hall and the mess hall and uncovering a 15x60 foot concrete pad. In addition, your faithful scribe worked with a determined volunteer crew 2 for 750 man-hours scraping and painting the nine original cabins and most of the mess hall.
White Lake is looking to the future, and we want you (that’s a very plural all-of-you) to be a part of this future. In 1922, White Lake Camp hosted its first official camp. That means our 100 year anniversary is right around the corner, in 2022. Now there’s a reason to celebrate! In anticipation of our centennial anniversary, the board has identified several projects that we would like to complete in the next year. Please consider supporting these projects:
1. Build two cook’s cabins to replace the bedrooms that we lost with the McBurney trailer’s demise. The trailer was in very seriously dilapidated condition, but it also provided three bedrooms that now need to be replaced. Cost: $8500 each.
2. Build a small extension to the rec hall with a bathroom, so that kids who have to use the bathroom during a thunderstorm can do so without running across the quad. Cost: $3500.
3. Obtain one storage container for the recreational equipment and maintenance equipment that is currently stored in the Rec Hall. Cost: $2500.
4. Support the projects that are already completed: painting cabins ($2500) and demolishing the trailer ($4500). With no money coming in via tuition during 2020, other expenses such as insurance and lawn mowing have continued to accrue.
5. And, lastly -- we are approaching the 100 year anniversary of White Lake Camp. Our centennial project will be a pavilion that covers the concrete pad that was under the McBurney trailer. This pavilion, an open air structure, will be used for gatherings of all kinds, picnics, and protection from the weather. The cost is projected to be $50,000. The fundraiser will extend into 2022, our centennial year.
-- Duran Perkins
October, 2020
White Lake Covenanter Camp is a 501(c)(3) organization.
Contributions are tax deductible.
Send contributions to:
WLCC ℅ Sharon Robson, 195 Wilkinson Rd, Macedon, NY 14502
or use: https://www.whitelakecamp.com/supportus.
Footnotes:
1. The merry band: Wren & Ellie Jessop, Nathan Tabon, Elijah Van Vlack, Elizabeth Chellis, Stefanie Kraack, and Sam Goble.
2. Thanks to Mary, Emma, Pascal & Isaac Perkins, Rachel McDonald, William & Abby Edgar, and Hannah Lee.
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Authors in this issue
Adam and Lisa Edgar are members of Broomall RPC (Philadelphia). Adam is a new deacon there.
Bill Edgar is a retired pastor of Broomall RPC (Philadelphia) and is currently working on the sequel to his History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America 1871-1920.
John Edgar is the pastor of Elkins Park RPC (Philadelphia).
Hunter Jackson is a student under care of Atlantic Presbytery and is studying at Westminster Theological Seminary. He is currently serving as pastoral intern at Elkins Park RP Church.
Duran Perkins is a ruling elder of Elkins Park RPC (Philadelphia).
Alex Tabaka is the pastor of Broomall RPC (Philadelphia).