Creation Ordinances

I was preparing my sermon on the fourth commandment this week. I was re-reading the book, The Market Day of the Soul by James T Dennison, Jr. where he shows the development of the Puritan doctrine of the Sabbath as a creation ordinance. The concept of a creation ordinance got me thinking about the news today of the action of the PCUSA affirming so called “homosexual marriage.” I refer to this as “so called” because by definition the term “homosexual marriage” is nonsense by definition. Marriage is a creation ordinance instituted by God as the mutual and intimate covenant relationship between a man and a woman and it has been acknowledged as a cultural universal for the history of humanity. Clearly the promoters of homosexual unions as “marriage” are on the wrong side of history, but I digress.

An acquaintance of mine wrote on his blog about the present state of the PCUSA. This action does not make them apostate. That sad fact occurred when that branch of Presbyterian Churches embraced “liberalism” and denied the scriptures as the infallible rule of faith and practice. J. Gresham Machen understood this in the 1920s and wrote the book, Christianity and Liberalism, in which he affirms that Liberalism is not another form of Christianity but entirely different, so different as to belong to a distinct category. The actions of the present General Assembly have their roots in this sad history of denying the scriptures. I am saddened by this expected result in the church of my youth. I was a member of the then UPUSA in Ohio. I remember as a teen when my family left with other families to start a new as a congregation of the newly formed PCA in the early 1970s that homosexuality was already an issue in Eastminster Presbytery of the UPUSA. The issue then and now is not homosexuality per se; it is the authority of God’s word. While I am not surprised, I am still saddened and even weep before God for the Church of Jesus Christ.

But my thoughts are not solely focused on the news of the PCUSA but really about creation ordinances. It absolutely astounds me that modern man has the very audacity to attempt to over throw the creation ordinances of God. To be sure, no lightening is immediately striking the arrogant rebels. They think God either doesn’t exist or doesn’t care. I think otherwise (Romans 2:3-7). Indeed God must sit in the heavens as ruler and king and laugh at our puny efforts to overturn His order (Psalm 2). A school boy learns that one can fight against God’s natural law of gravity only so long but in the end it will overtake you. We are creatures of this creation. God’s order, whether natural law or spiritual law, wins in the end. It is the reality we must deal with. We are not God. We bought the lie of Satan that we can be but that doesn’t make it any more true.

So my heart grieves for those who set up their own laws to replace the laws of God. This is nothing but self-destructive behavior. The reality and futility of sin will be made manifest but how many lives will be eternally ruined because of the present purveyors of such monstrous thinking and teaching? How many families will be torn apart by this irrational stupidity? In fact, I believe is it the goal of Satan and those that follow his perverse thinking that people should tear apart their most cherished relationships, kill their unborn offspring, and destroy themselves physically and spiritually by outright rebellion against God. What is the end? I marvel that many don’t see it. The end is the enslavement of all under sin and evil. Without spiritual discipline and the truth of God all we have is slavery and death. It seems ironic that this should be most manifest in America, “the land of the free and home of the brave.” America that has become the land of political correctness and government tyranny by regulation. America, the place where anything is tolerated so long as it isn’t the truth and true freedom.

But back to creation ordinances. They are the fabric of life in this age. They will not disappear whatever human beings may do. Only one man has kept them. That man is the man Jesus Christ, the Son of God come in the flesh. Only by faith in his righteousness and self-sacrifice is there life for the souls of men, women, and children. If we want to be true patriots we need to do two things. We must call men and women to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus. We must defend and practice the creation ordinances of God. If we wish to remain free we must preserve the sanctity of marriage and the family, we must defend the necessity and legitimacy of labor, and we must observe and rest in the hope of the Sabbath (Genesis 2:1-3; Heb 4:4ff).

Our Resurrection in Christ

Doubtless there were many sermons preached on Easter Sunday, April 20. I did preach on the theme from I Corinthians 15. While I think that recognized religious holidays give pastors an opportunity to preach and that such holidays give churches an opportunity to share the essentials of the gospel, I think there is great benefit in the position that every Sunday is “Resurrection Sunday” and that the Christian Sabbath is the great day of week. It is a promise of the believer’s rest in Christ (Heb 4:1-10).

The idea of the Sabbath that Jesus taught that “…the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath,” relates to the promise of the resurrection and our union with Christ Jesus by faith. I am referring to the immense and often under rated benefit of the Christian believer’s union with Christ or, as it is commonly referred to, one’s relationship with Christ.

John Calvin argues thoroughly in his commentary on I Corinthians 15 that there is “a mutual and reciprocal result” established from Christ to us and from us to Christ. Behind Paul’s argument in that chapter, stands the reasoning that if Christ has risen then believers will be raised and if Christ has not risen then believers will not be raised. Equally, if believers are raised then Christ must be raised and if we are not raised from the dead then Christ has not been raised. He even goes so far to reason that “Christ did not die or rise again for Himself, but for us…” and he states further that Christ’s resurrection finds its purpose not in himself but in its result of the resurrection of his own members.

There is a connection or rather a union here. This is a relationship but more than a relationship defined in the common sort of way of an emotional connection. Nor is the believer’s relationship with Christ merely economical where we simply get things (salvation, justification, redemption, resurrection, heaven, etc.) from Jesus. As real as emotional and economical benefits in Christ are, something more profound is expressed.

What we should understand is that our relationship with Jesus by faith is one of union or identity. Christ’s death becomes the death of the believer by faith. Christ’s resurrection becomes the believer’s resurrection by faith. By this I do not mean to imply that ours is merely a spiritualized death or resurrection. No, we must truly die to self and our body of sin must die yet the penalty of death for sin is fulfilled by Christ for us so that our death is not penal (see Westminster Larger Catechism Q85). The essence of the substitutionary atonement is that Christ bears the believer’s sin, its guilt, and its required punishment for them. In this faith union believers are also sharers in his resurrection. As surely as he was raised from the dead believers will be bodily raised from the dead too. Indeed, the purpose of the resurrection of Jesus is the resurrection of believers in him. Christ has entered into his glory. Believers, by their faith union in him, enter into their share of his glory. The great Sabbath Rest is pictured and promised at every public Sunday/Sabbath worship. You see, every Christian Sabbath is Resurrection Sunday.

Christ was raised for us! (Romans 6:1-14)