Faith Evangelical Presbyterian Church is proud to announce our next "Level 2 Adult Mission Trip"-- to New Orleans! The dates of this trip are October 30-November 6th. Applications are now available at the Church Office. A $50 deposit is required to hold your spot.

All applicants should have a willingness to serve as a witness for Jesus, a desire to be part of a team of obedient Christ-exalting servants, a spirit of adventure, and an ability to do light physical labor.

Please pray about this great opportunity!

By Pastor Matthew Everhard


1) Definitions of Differing Positions Regarding Gender

•    Complementarian: Men and women are created equal in value; and yet distinct in role. God ordained that men and women would each have unique gifts and abilities; among them is the male’s leadership role in the church and home. This view holds that men alone are to hold the position of Teaching Elder in the Church.  This is the traditional position of Reformed Theology, and is espoused by the leadership and pastors of Faith Church.

•    Egalitarian: Men and women are created equal in value and equal in role. God created men and women as virtual equals in all things. This position can be summarized with the motto, “Whatever a man can do, a woman can do.”  Egalitarianism is non-traditional in Reformed Theology, but gaining ground.

•    Heirarchical: Men are created superior to women in value and/or role. This position is rejected in Reformed Theology.

•    Hyper-Feminist: Women are created superior to men in value or role. This position is rejected in Reformed Theology.



2) Several Main Points to Consider in Support of Complementarianism:
a.    God created men and women equal in value (neither gender is superior, per the hierarchical and hyper-feminist views). This is made explicit in the Creation account where Scripture says in Genesis 1:27,

So God created man in his own image,
       in the image of God he created him;
       male and female he created them.

This declaration is repeated in 5:2. It is important to note that 1:27 occurs before the Fall, whereas 5:2 is repeated after the Fall. In other words, the Fall did not change the equality of value between male and female.

b.    Nevertheless, males and females are consistently given different roles to play in the home and the Church;  specifically, the male is given headship (or primacy of initiative) in both Church and home. The account of Creation in Genesis 2 makes this explicit, where Adam is given the primary charge (Genesis 2:15).  We note Eve’s God-designated role as helpmate to Adam. This assumes Adam is on a mission of obedience already! Eve would not have anything for which to “help” Adam if he were not a man-on-fire for obedience to God!

c.    It is NOT undesirable or oppressive to submit to one who is being obedient to God already! This is true of course, assuming that the “helpmate” has already determined to follow Christ in her own life as well. Assuming both marriage partners are Christ-followers, they ought to be walking in the same direction and with the same conviction. If the husband is being obedient to God, a wife’s submission is therefore an extension of her obedience to God.

d.    The husband/wife covenant is to be modeled after the Christ/Church covenant as Ephesians 5:22-33 shows. If male headship and female support are compromised, the covenant of marriage fails to do what it was originally designed by God to do, viz. illustrate the authority of Christ over His grateful and joyfully obedient bride, the elect.

e.    Biblically, “submission” not at all a bad word as our culture suggests, but is rather a beautiful picture of honor. The Greek word hypotasso (submit, cf. Ephesians 5:22) is used several times to describe the wife’s obligation to her husband, but we must not forget that hypotasso is a verb that is used to describe the disposition of Christ as well. For instance Jesus was said to hypotasso to Joseph and Mary in Luke 2:51. Christ is also said to hypotasso the Father in 1 Corinthians 15:28. Obviously, this verb does not imply any sort of inferiority (as Christ is fully divine and worthy of all praise) but rather a loving inclination towards honor.

f.    Submission for the wife ought not to be a burden, but rather a joy. After all, the man is told to love his wife “as Christ loves the Church,” which means he ought to be ready to bleed, suffer, and die for her! We note that in Ephesians 5, after Paul counsels women to submit to their husbands, he does not tell the men “therefore subjugate your wives.” On the contrary, the parallel command is not to oppress them but to love them. He even says to do this “as Christ loved the Church,” that is, unto His own death by crucifixion. For this reason, a man ought to love his own wife, even if doing so should result in his own torture or death.
 
g.    Egalitarianism (see above) is in error because it robs BOTH genders of their God-given uniqueness. By minimizing the differences between genders, our culture is headed towards becoming an increasingly androgynous (asexual) society. Consider this example. The Navy has just changed its longstanding policy regarding women serving aboard submarines. While gender roles are obviously complicated within the Church, how much more complicated is social policy outside the Church! Christian sociologists are beginning to notice how the very idea of gender is being stripped down to nothing. Current trends such as homosexual marriages, same-sex couples adopting children, and the epidemic of the fatherlessness of American children further underscore an almost incessant urge to strip both genders of all intelligible giftedness and meaning, rendering one (or both) utterly inconsequential.
 
h.    On the other hand, complementarianism is written into our very DNA. For instance, if a criminal or wild animal breaks into the home of a married couple in the middle of the night, the course of nature suggests that a man should automatically rise to defend his wife and children, not push his wife into the way. This comes instinctively as he is created to lead and defend. On the other hand, women are uniquely gifted in other categories of life experience. For instance, a wife may be much better at tending to a child with an inconsolable earache, and may possess special gifts of tenderness, compassion, and mercy. This comes instinctively, as she is created to care and nurture. Obviously, while women can fight off intruders and men can tend to hurting children, nature itself dictates that each gender has unique and special properties given by God that cannot be extinguished without harming the human race in general.


3) Recommended Reading
For more information of complementarianism, please consult the exhaustive and extremely helpful work on this subject, entitled Rediscovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism (Wheaton: Crossway) edited by Wayne Grudem and John Piper. This comprehensive work defends complementarianism in a thoroughly Biblical manner.


 

“A Recipe for a Meaningless Life”
by Matthew Everhard

I have to confess that one of the sins that I really struggle with is the sin of worry. Sometimes, when I lie in bed at night, my mind cannot rest. I bet I could out-worry any one of you reading these lines. I worry about my health, my job, my education, my finances. I worry that something bad might happen to me or my wife or my children. I know I shouldn’t do that—I’m a pastor. I also know that worry is wrong, so please don’t quote Matthew chapter six to me. Besides I am in good company—you worry too.

But can I tell you a secret? I want to tell you what my number one worry is. Deep down, I am just like Solomon who wrote Ecclesiastes. My number one fear is that I might live a meaningless life. I am afraid that I might live my whole 90 years or so and miss opportunities to love my wife. I’m afraid that my children may grow up too quickly, and I will have missed out on chances to mold them and form them into the people that God wants them to be. I am afraid I will miss opportunities to obey my God.

You see, to me, living an utterly meaningless life is a fate worse than death. Nothing could be so hopeless, so futile, so inept, as to live an entire existence and not love people like crazy, touch the hearts of others, impact society, and worship the Living God.

Those of you who like to cook recognize that if you add certain ingredients in specified amounts, and follow a prescribed series of steps, you will inevitably produce a specific result. Let me put it bluntly: If you don’t mind living a meaningless life, follow these five steps. If, however, you abhor the thought that your life could be wasted, then avoid the following ingredients like the plague.

Number one (and these are in order from bad to worse by the way): If you don’t mind living a meaningless life, waste as much time as possible on irrelevant trivialities. Watch as much TV as you can consume. If no TV is present, substitute sports, the internet, video games or anything else that burns away hour after hour. One evening, I was watching television and I let an entire evening drain away. I found myself watching the nature channel, featuring a man tromping through the woods looking for bear scat. This man was way too excited about looking for stool! And finally he finds the object of his affection, bends down, takes a whiff, and then looks right into the camera and says, “Ahh, that’s fresh!” At that moment, I thought to myself, “Man, what a loser!” But no sooner had the words flitted through my brain did I realize, that the only thing worse than actually sniffing bear scat is watching someone else do it on TV!

Listen, no one ever enters the gates of heaven saying, “My only regret is that I didn’t watch more television!” Now, I know there are some good things on television, but at this point in my life, I’ve come to realize that practically anything is more significant than watching someone else live, instead of actually living.

Secondly, if you want a meaningless life, devote your existence to gaining as much money and possessions as possible. Solomon tried that. He wrote,

“I undertook great projects, I built houses for myself and planted vineyards… I bought male and female slaves… I owned more herds and flocks than anyone in Jerusalem before me… I amassed silver and gold for myself and the treasure of kings and provinces… Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind” (Ecclesiastes 2:4-11).

Even rich Solomon fell into the trap that he so desperately wanted to avoid. You see, he learned the lesson that there is nothing more meaningless than setting as your primary objective those things which have no value after death.

Thirdly, if you don’t mind living a meaningless life, be sure to avoid all significant relationships with other people.  Have you ever tip-toed over to your neighbor’s mail box to drop something off so you don’t have to actually see them? Have you ever called someone on the phone and been disappointed when they actually answered it instead of the machine? I have! Some people never take risks in relationships. Some never take a chance on love. Some never take a risk to share Christ with a neighbor. Some never want to get involved with other people, because they don’t want to be hurt. Some people just view others as inconveniences at best, or obstacles at worst! And all the while they ignore the fact that God has designed us to live in fellowship with one another. The New Testament word for this is koinonia. It means “fellowship, sharing, participation, cooperation, partnership.” Koinonia is one of the richest experiences that life has to offer. But let’s face it: in the world of text messaging, it’s so easy to avoid real relationships!

Number four: Toss in the whole bag of “chips on your shoulder.” Let grudges, gossip, and bitterness consume all of your strength and dominate your mind.  You’ll find that every other component of your life will be flavored like the chips.

Finally, and this is so important that you might want to double the recipe, if you want to cook up a meaningless life, convince yourself that you are not interested in the “God stuff.” Try to use words like “organized religion” which sound so dreary instead of Biblical phrases like “following Christ.” You’ll further justify your own disinterest that way. Reassure yourself that theology is probably too hard for you to understand, and totally irrelevant to your sophisticated life besides. Remind yourself that the Bible is really, really, old and that you never liked history anyway. Counsel yourself to believe that prayer is unproductive time better spent on more modern affairs.

Listen friends, if you add these ingredients together in any measure, stir them up and make sure they are half-baked—you can be virtually assured that you will get the product that you’ve always wanted: a meaningless life. You will have contributed nothing, changed no one, never having said or done anything worth remembering, and most of all avoided a real encounter with God. But if that’s not really what you’ve wanted, and like me you find yourself lying awake at night wanting something more, let me show you another way…

In Acts chapter 20, we see the Apostle Paul living out the last known days of his life. He will soon be arrested on charges of preaching the gospel. He doesn’t know it yet, but he will soon be facing trials in front of the power-brokers in the ancient world. No matter—Paul is on a well-defined mission. He says in Acts 20:23, “I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me.” He was right about the hardships. He would soon be shipwrecked, almost starved to death, and then survive a near-deadly snakebite. And he was right about the prison too. In fact the book of Acts closes with Paul sitting in prison for two whole years.

But it is what Paul says in the next verse that intrigues me. He says, “But I do not count my life of any value to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus Christ, to testify to the good news of God’s grace.”  Now this is a man who has received some clarity regarding his mission! He knows his purpose statement and he wastes little time in getting right at it!

Paul’s life-goal is concise and sharp. He has no concern for anything that may hinder him along the way. Come what may, he is ready to set out to accomplish his one primary goal in life, and in fact that is the only thing we see him doing in the book of Acts. Hopefully with our remaining time I can point out some life-lessons from Paul’s purpose statement.

First of all let’s notice that Paul’s purpose is short. I used to work for a company during college that had a 22-point purpose statement. And every single one of us had to memorize it. In fact we had to carry it around on a laminated card in our pocket. Listen, if you have more than a dozen purposes, that’s a pretty good sign that you have no idea what you are trying to do. Paul’s statement is only nine words (seven in the Greek) “to testify to the good news of God’s grace.” That’s it. Sharp as a spear. Focused like a laser.

But notice too, that His purpose in life isn’t just “made up.” It’s not just scribbling. He has received it from Jesus Christ Himself. He says, “If only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus” (emphasis mine). He understands it to be a divine commission. He considers himself a soldier ready to be dispatched at the Master’s command.

As Jesus said it, “Whoever wants to save his (own) life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.” Or to say it another way, “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world yet forfeit his own soul?” If you value your own self above all other people, if you see yourself as some big important person that others should bow down to, if you see your life as one big chance to satisfy every urge that you ever wanted, then like Solomon you will end up broken and weary and unfulfilled at the close of your life.

But if you humble yourself, and begin with an empty account, devoting yourself to the glory of God, so that God’s grace flows over the walls of your life like a broken dam, you’re going to find that at the end of your life, you will have opened a treasure chest whose contents are so brilliant that you would have never settled for anything less.

What sets this man, the Apostle Paul, apart from 99.9% of the rest of the world’s population is the utter selflessness of his entire existence. Like Jesus Christ Himself, he claims no property, demands no promises, and settles for no counterfeits. His life is thoroughly God-centered. Just as Christ lived His human life entirely for the glory of the Father, so Paul intends to live his life as a living sacrifice to the Son.

Does your life have a clearly defined purpose? Can you sum up the intent of your existence in nine words or less like Paul can? I’m not talking about crafting some catchy little slogan— we get enough of those on commercials. I’m talking about a matter of the heart. I’m talking about identifying the meaning-bearing content of your life. Is Jesus Christ, the Risen King at the center of your life, as He was for Paul? I hope so.

The following was posted by Mars Hill Church in Seattle, home church of Pastor Mark Driscoll. I thought this was an interesting article on the origin of Santa Clause. I was particularly disturbed to find that the German word "Christkindl" (meaning Christ Child) had morphed over time to become Criss Cringle, a common name for Santa.

-Pastor Matthew

Saint Nicholas

Posted: 15 Dec 2009 12:32 PM PST