July 22, 2015 ISI Radio Show with Carl Trueman on his book “Luther” & Bill Shishko on “Creation Ordinances”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister

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George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, listening via live streaming.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 22nd day of July 2015 and we've got two hours packed with great stuff awaiting for you to hear.

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First on our program we're going to have as our guest for the very first time ever, Dr. Carl Truman.

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Dr. Carl Truman has received his PhD from the University of Aberdeen and is the

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Paul Woolley Professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary and pastor of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church, which is a congregation in the

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Orthodox Presbyterian denomination in Ambler, Pennsylvania and he's contributed to numerous books including the

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Dictionary of Historical Theology and the Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology and is the author of Luther's Legacy, Histories and Fallacies and the

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Credal Imperative. Today we're going to be discussing his book, Luther on the Christian Life, Cross and Freedom for the first hour.

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The second hour we are going to have from 5 to 6 p .m. Pastor Bill Shishko of the

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Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, New York, who happens to be a mutual friend of both

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Dr. Truman and myself and Pastor Bill at 5 p .m. will begin our discussion on Creation Ordinances, Work, Sabbath, Marriage, and Procreation.

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But first let's start off the two -hour Iron Sharpens Iron today with Dr. Carl Truman.

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It's a delight to have you for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron, brother. It's great to be here.

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Thanks very much for inviting me. Oh, the pleasure is all mine and we know that we had attempted a couple of times to get you on and we are so thankful that finally our schedules matched each other and I am so thrilled to have you on and I know many people listening are as well judging from some of the emails

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I received prior to the broadcast expressing hearty approval and delight that you're going to be here.

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I just want to read a wonderful commendation for your book by Michael Horton.

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Many of you may recognize Michael Horton from his broadcast of White Horse Inn, also from some of his many books that he has written and his conferences that he has spoken at.

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He's also been a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron several times and has written a wonderful commendation for our program.

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But he says about Dr. Truman's book, if you think you know Luther, read this book.

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It is a remarkably edifying and illuminating piece of work displaying the interests of a pastor and the rigor of a historian.

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Truman provides us with an analysis of Luther on the Christian life that is as human as the

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German reformer himself. And that's Michael Horton of the White Horse Inn broadcast.

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Well, let's begin with why you wrote this book, Dr. Truman. There are other books that have become classics on the subject of Luther.

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For instance, everyone who knows anything about Luther will immediately recognize Here I Stand, A Life of Martin Luther by Roland Baten, and there are many others.

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Why did you find the need in the 21st century to write another book on Martin Luther? Well, a couple of reasons.

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One, at the most simple level, Crossway asked if I would contribute that volume to this series,

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Great Theologians on the Christian Life. But what I didn't want to do was just another iteration of Luther's thinking.

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And I was struck as I was working, doing the background reading of the book, that very little has been written on Luther as pastor.

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So what I tried to do in this book was to look at the Christian life through the lens of Luther as pastor.

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I think there are a couple of books in German, and there's a collection of essays in English, and that's been it on Luther as pastor.

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So what I really tried to do is address the Christian life, but doing it from the perspective of Luther as a pastor, as a shepherd of the flock, as a keeper of souls, if you like.

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Well, that's excellent. And as you know, there's a lot of confusion about Martin Luther.

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There are a lot of different opinions about who Martin Luther was.

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Many Roman Catholics claim he remained more Roman Catholic throughout his entire life than many of us would care to believe.

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There are Calvinists, like you and I, who you could barely distinguish sometimes the way they describe

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Luther from Calvin. And of course we have some Baptists folks who, due to a twisted version of church history, have come to loathe a figment of their imagination.

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They call Martin Luther and make him out to be a horrible tyrant of a person. And then of course you have the

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Jewish folks, and also even Messianic Jewish Christians who view him as an anti -Semite.

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So there's a lot of different theories and statements and beliefs and slanders and caricatures about Martin Luther.

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It's always good to have somebody really give a vividly clear and accurate history of the man.

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And let's start off with the fact that, as I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of people who are within the

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Reformed tradition who seem to paint Luther as if he was in full agreement with Calvin or very close.

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As you say in your introduction, what is Geneva to do with Wittenberg? Well, Luther is really the fountainhead that goes up the point against which one reacts or which one follows.

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So if you look at a figure like Calvin and ask, how does Calvin relate to Luther? I think on matters like justification, the issue of scriptural authority and perspicuity,

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Calvin is very, very influenced by Martin Luther. Where Calvin would deviate from Martin would be particularly on the

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Lord's Supper and on some of the sacramental emphases within Luther.

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So as a Reformed Calvinist, I'm very appreciative of Luther on a positive level for his understanding of justification.

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And even at those points where I disagree with him, such as the Lord's Supper, because he was such a powerful theological mind, reading him and grappling with his thought actually helps me clarify my own thinking on positions.

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I think it's often the sign of a great theologian, where when you read them, and even when you disagree with them, they help you to be a better theologian.

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Luther certainly falls into that category for me. And of course, he is well known by people who even have a cursory knowledge of history, that he nailed the 95

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Theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany in 1517, on October 31st.

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And that was really strictly a protest to the sale of indulgences.

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He had not really developed fully his understanding of biblical theology at that point, did he?

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No, it would be an exaggeration to say that it was a sideshow to his main theological development.

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But it certainly, it wasn't the most radical thing he'd said to that point, it said more radical things earlier.

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And secondly, all he was really doing in nailing the 95 Theses to the castle door was calling for debate on the practice of indulgences.

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It was not clear to him what the church's position on indulgences was. And indeed, as it turned out, it wasn't clear to the

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Pope either, because when the problem is referred to Rome, one of the first things the Pope does is form a committee to tell him what the church's position on indulgences is.

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So the indulgence crisis, which becomes the spark that ignites the

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Reformation, is almost a sideshow to Luther's own theological development. It thrusts

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Luther onto the public stage, but it's actually, in some ways, a bit of a sideshow.

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Why don't you explain also a little bit about the, specifically on the title that you chose,

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Luther on the Christian Life, Cross and Freedom? Yeah, well, the first part of it was decided by the publisher, of course, it's part of the series of Theologian X on the

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Christian Life. Cross and Freedom, I think that the cross of Christ and the freedom of the

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Christian man are two major themes running throughout Luther's writings. The cross is the place where God reveals himself as gracious towards humanity.

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He reveals himself under contradictions, Luther would say. He reveals himself as powerful under the weakness of his flesh.

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He reveals himself as holy by hanging cursed on a cross. But the cross is where God reveals himself and reveals to human beings how he's acting in mercy and grace towards them.

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And freedom is what is to characterize the Christian life. The Christian who is united to Christ is free from the curse of the law and free to serve his neighbor because he no longer has to work to earn

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God's approbation. It frees him up from all kinds of things to be free to serve his neighbor out of love to God his

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Father and love to his fellow man. And you said that this has a lot to do with the pastoral beliefs or expressions of Luther.

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Tell us about what period in this life he would have really begun to focus more on the pastoral aspect of his ministry.

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Obviously, he went through quite a metamorphosis over the years. You have people pulling quotes from him from all different theological and denominational backgrounds who try to claim him as their own.

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You have Roman Catholics who will quote him even after the Reformation, making statements that would give the implication that he was involved in Marian devotion and things like that.

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But wasn't he, obviously, being one of the first to really reform and so on in the 16th century, didn't he have a lot of progress to make after that Wittenberg experience?

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He's pastorally involved really from 1507 when he's ordained. He's not just a monk, he's ordained as a priest.

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So he would have had pastoral... And it's really the the questions that his university studies, his lecturing, his theological development raise for the pastoral context that trigger the indulgence crisis.

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He's concerned that his parishioners are buying these pieces of paper from a neighboring parish, an indulgence seller in a neighboring parish, demanding that Luther therefore absolve them of their sins.

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And he doesn't think this is correct. So Luther is very pastorally involved from very early on in his ecclesiastical career.

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I think what happens after 1517, 1518, as he comes to understand justification by grace through faith, the reading and the preaching of the word move to the center of his thinking about the

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Christian life. And that really does place the gathered worship of the church very much at the center of Luther's understanding of the

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Christian life. If you think about it, most people in Luther's day couldn't read, so they weren't going to be able to read the

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Bible for themselves. They were going to have to go and hear somebody read the Bible to them. Where do you go for that?

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You go to church. So from 1517, 1518, 1519 onwards, Luther is thinking about what has to change in church for my new theology to be pastorally applied to my congregation.

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And there's some simple and obvious... well, they're obvious moves. They're not simple to implement. They're obvious moves. The liturgy needs to be in the vernacular.

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There needs to be a German translation of the Bible. Preaching needs to move to the center of the church service.

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For Luther, the music was very important. The music had to be just right. So he really does engage in a fairly wholesale revision of church practice because he's a pastor, because church is where pastoral care is administered to people, particularly in the 16th century.

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I want to give our listeners our email address. If you have a question for Dr.

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Carl Truman on the book that he has written, Luther on the Christian Life, Cross, and Freedom, you can email us at chrisanzen at gmail .com.

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chrisanzen, that's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please include your first name, your city and state, and your country if outside the

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U .S. And in fact, I've got a surprise for many of you. Include your address as well if you're one of the first three to email us a question that is good enough to be read on the air and applicable enough to the subject at hand.

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You will receive a free copy of this book, Luther on the Christian Life, Cross, and Freedom, complements of Crossway Books.

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We thank them so much for their generosity in that regard. Did a lot of this questioning of the

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Roman Catholic Church tradition and doctrine and dogma, did a lot of that come after his visit to Rome, his pilgrimage to Rome?

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Do you mean Luther's reaction to Roman Catholic doctrine and dogma or the Catholic Church's own formulation of it?

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Yes, I mean Luther's reaction to it, where he really started to rethink everything that he had believed and practiced his entire life as an obedient Roman Catholic.

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Yeah, it's a complicated question. I think in 1510, he has a two -fold reaction.

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On the one hand, he's very impressed by the various opportunities there are for very traditional

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Catholic devotion there. He's very into relics at that particular point in time, and he's overwhelmed by what we might call the devotional aspect of Catholicism.

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On the other hand, he witnesses firsthand the corruption of the papal court. And really, it's that image of the corruption of the papal court that comes to dominate his thinking, certainly as he moves towards Reformation.

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His image of the papacy and of Rome is one of excess, administrative corruption, political corruption.

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So his visit to Rome is profound. But of course, his real objection ultimately to Rome is not that it's morally corrupt.

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He knows, even within Protestantism, within his own lifetime, he sees a lot of moral corruption within the

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Lutheran Church. The problem with Rome is ultimately not its moral corruption, it's theological deviancy.

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And Reformation is not simply about cleaning up the papal administration or the

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College of Cardinals. Reformation for Luther is about bringing the proclamation of the

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Church into line with the teaching of the Word of God. And would you say that the teachings that Luther developed, you said that his main disagreement with Calvin, who came after,

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I mean, they were contemporaries, but Luther obviously preceded Calvin. Would you say that the main disagreement was over the sacraments, but was he in agreement on things like unconditional election and other elements of Calvin's theology that we who are

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Reformed love so dearly today? It would seem, because of his view of the bondage of the human will, the great debate with Erasmus that he had, it would seem logically that he would be in agreement with Calvin.

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But do you know of other stark contrasts with Calvin, the Genevan Reformer? No, I think you're correct, that certainly if we take the 1525 on the bondage of the will as a normative expression of Luther's theology on that point, which he certainly seems to have regarded it as being, he said that the catechisms and the bondage of the will were the only works worth reprinting after he died.

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So he seems to have stood by his thinking in that book. It's classic Augustinianism in many ways, and Calvin too is a classic

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Augustinian on the issue of predestination and election. I would say that it doesn't fulfill a significant function in Luther's thinking.

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It's not something he writes about as consistently and as frequently as Calvin does.

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He really makes his big statement in 1525, and then I think he said all that he needs to say on that issue, so he doesn't keep returning to it.

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So if there's a difference, it might be a difference in emphasis. Predestination and election,

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I think, is more sharply emphasized in Calvin than it is in Luther, but I don't think that there is a major conceptual difference between the two of them on that point.

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We do have a question from a listener. We have a

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Ross who is in, and I'm probably going to be butchering the name of this city in Massachusetts because I always find out later that they're pronounced differently by local natives of Massachusetts than I would ever think that they should be pronounced, but Ross from Leominster, Massachusetts, he writes, in Timothy Lowell's view, or should

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I say in Timothy Lowell's new Luther bio, Resilient Reformer, he mentions that Luther became disheartened toward the people of Wittenberg at the end of his life.

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Lowell writes, it seemed increasingly true that his long work especially his preaching had been in vain in the very place where he had labored the longest and the hardest.

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In light of that, my question is, what can be learned about disappointment in ministry and how can

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Luther teach us whether by good or bad example to temper our hopes and fears? Wow, that's an excellent question.

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Yeah, that's a very good question and I certainly would want to start by affirming the analysis of Luther's later years.

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I mean, not only is Luther suffering from ill health, which never helps one be particularly positive and optimistic,

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I think Luther's a human being and many pastors and ministers, I think, when they reach the end of their careers, sometimes even before that, feel frustration that their preaching is not having the impact that they desire it to have, that people are not showing forth the fruit of the spirit as one would hope they would under preaching the word.

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So Luther's a great example, I think, of what is a fairly common pastoral phenomenon.

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What can we learn from that? I think on one level, we as pastors say, well, we should expect that.

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We shouldn't be, as we reflect upon ourselves and realize at times that we are becoming a bit disillusioned and a bit disappointed with the impact of our preaching, we should understand that that disappointment is to be expected and not to panic about it.

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Sort of an odd way of putting it, but I think it teaches that, yeah, this is going to be par for the course.

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Secondly, I think it teaches us that, well, we have to preach the word and trust

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God for the increase. What can I do in my congregation on a Sunday, week by week? I can try to faithfully preach the word to my best of my ability.

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I can't make people committed. I can't convert people. I can't transform people.

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All I can do is point them to Christ and trust that the Holy Spirit will do that. I think looking at somebody like Luther allows me, well, yes, if Luther at the end of his life was able to look around and say, you know, my preaching has not had a huge impact, then we should all expect that to some extent.

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So I would say reading Luther's life, reading the life of Martin Lloyd -Jones, reading the life of Charles Spurgeon, reading the life of almost any of the great preachers of the past should prepare us for disappointments.

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I remember there was a British politician, Enoch Powell, who made a comment, all political careers end in failure.

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Not quite true in America, because you have these two -term presidencies, but in Britain, you go on until they kick you out.

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All political careers in Britain end in failure. There's a sense that pastoral careers are a bit like that, too.

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All pastoral careers are going to be less than they might have been, less than we hoped for at the start.

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And understanding that, I think, gives us a sober view of our capacities and will hopefully prevent us from despairing.

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Now, I mentioned earlier that when I've been involved in a number of theological debates, not as a debater, but as one who orchestrates the debates with well -known theologians, in particular on the

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Reform side, a friend of yours, Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, and the typical

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Roman Catholic claim amongst the apologists is not only that Luther retained much more of his

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Romanism than Protestants would care to admit, they also, on the other end of the spectrum, vilify him as believing in, basically, a fruitless conversion.

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In other words, he believed that justification was by faith alone, and therefore, he did not believe that there was a necessity of works in the life of a genuine believer.

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And I emphasize the word genuine. And, of course, they always bring up, he wanted to throw

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Jimmy in the stove, referring to the Book of James, which is clearly discussing the need for works as an evidence of a changed heart.

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But if you could comment on that. Is that a slanderous caricature of Luther? Well, a couple of comments to make.

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I think on the first point about Luther retaining more of his Catholicism than Protestants often acknowledge,

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I'd be prepared to concede that, I think. I think that Luther, I mean, for a start, he was a full -orb

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Trinitarian, he believed in the Incarnation, he had a high view of the early Church creeds, he also had a very high view of Baptism and the

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Lord's Supper, which is not the typical one of Protestant evangelicals. There is a sense in which one would have to say that, on certain points,

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Luther would be more comfortable, in some ways, with certain aspects of Roman Catholicism.

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His big differences with Roman Catholicism would really be the nature of authority and justification by grace through faith.

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Those would be the two really big differences. On the idea that he believed in a fruitless

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Christianity, it's something Luther himself wrestled with, and much of the problem,

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I think, comes from focusing upon Luther's writings, say, 1517 to 1522, 1523.

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There, he's very much at the start of his reforming career. He has this great confidence that Christ is about to return, and all that one needs to do is preach the

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Gospel. By the late 1520s, it's becoming obvious to him that the preaching program he set in place is not, well, to use his own phrase, people are still living like pigs.

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And what you see in the later Luther is an attempt to address the issue, I think, of the moral imperatives of the

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Christian life in a more profound and, I would have to say, more biblically balanced way than one finds in the writings of, say, 1517 to 1523.

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Luther lived a long time. He lived through some pretty chaotic periods, and some of the times, theologically, he was flying a kite.

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He was preaching, and he got to wait and see what the impact of this preaching was. So, when you look at Luther's career as a whole, one can see from 1527, 1528 onwards, a much more nuanced way of approaching works.

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Now, the book of James, certainly, he didn't have much time for it as part of a canon, but he did think it wasn't because he thought it was false.

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He thought it just taught the law, that there was no Jesus there. But he certainly thought of James as an excellent exposition of the law.

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He just didn't find Christ there. And he never really removed it from the canon, did he?

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It occupied a sort of appendix position in the canon. And, of course, Luther's own position on James was not that which became the generally accepted one within Lutheranism.

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The successors to Luther tended to have more time, it seems to me, for the book of James than Luther did himself.

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But even so, you don't need the book of James in order to build a notion of the moral imperatives of a

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Christian life. Any of the letters of Paul would require you to do that. We're going to be going to our first break right now.

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If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Dr. Carl Truman, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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And by the way, Ross in Massachusetts, please email us your full mailing address because you have won a free copy of the book we're discussing,

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Luther and the Christian Life, Cross and Freedom. And we look forward to shipping that out to you as soon as possible.

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But chrisarnson at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N is our email address for questions.

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And please include your full mailing address so we can ship you out a copy if you're among the first three.

28:37

Well, now two left that writes a question that we read on the air. We'll be right back with Dr.

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Carl Truman after these messages. So don't go away. Hi, I'm Mike Gallagher.

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That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.

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This is Chris Zarnes and your host of Iron Sharpens Iron. If you've just tuned us in, our guest today for the first hour is

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Carl Truman, and he's discussing his book, Luther, on the Christian life, cross, and freedom.

31:33

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Dr. Truman, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

31:41

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

31:47

Tell us something about the humor of Martin Luther. I mean, I've seen some of the woodcuts that were involved in some of his humor that some people might find offensive, but tell us something about this aspect of his life.

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Yeah, a couple of things one could comment there. I mean, one, the woodcuts you've referred to, typically these were parts of pamphlet wars.

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A lot of the Reformation was conducted by pamphlets. And of course, because a lot of people couldn't read, the best way to communicate your message was by, effectively, cartoons, woodcuts.

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It's kind of ironic how we felt the Protestants, who spent their time at the Reformation telling people that images are deceptive and untrustworthy, actually used images to communicate their message.

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But Luther's humor, he was a very humorous person.

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I think it fulfilled a number of functions. I mean, on one, yeah, he liked to joke. Two, I think humor also rose out of the fact that he knew there was a fundamental absurdity to fallen human existence, is the nature of fallen human beings to think of themselves as God.

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And when you step back from it, that is, it's a tragic situation. But also, like so many tragic situations, it's also a comic situation as well.

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It is comical for human beings to strut around as if they are God. As the Bible tells us,

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God sits in his heaven and laughs at these things. So I think there was a theological foundation to it as well.

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And also, I think there was a psychological aspect to it. For great parts of Luther's life, he was under huge pressure.

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He was being continually attacked. There were points when his life was in danger. And we all know that humor functions as a kind of safety valve in those situations.

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It helps you remain sane during times of terrible stress. So I think there was a third strand to Luther's humor as well.

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It was a good way of him cutting his enemies and cutting the dangers against him down to size.

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Why don't you give us some more explanation of your chapter on theologians, priests, and kings?

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Yeah, well, at the heart of Luther's project was the idea that every human being is a theologian.

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There are basically two kinds of theologians out there for Luther. There are theologians of glory, and there are theologians of the cross.

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In actual fact, all of us are probably some mixture of the two. The theologian of glory is the person who tries to make

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God in their own image and to get him to conform to their ideas of what

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God should be. The theologian of the cross is somebody who looks to how

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God has revealed himself in order to understand him. So a theologian of the cross looks to the cross to see in the broken and crucified body of the

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Lord Jesus Christ the revelation of God. It's one of the reasons why Luther retained crucifixes in the church, because he actually felt it was helpful for people to look upon a crucifix and be reminded of how small and frail

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God had made himself. So we're all of us in some ways a battleground between these two theologians as part of us that tries to make

35:13

God in our own image, and that needs the preaching of the law to remind us that God is transcendently holy, and we are sinful and damnable before him.

35:24

We need the law to break us down, and then we need the gospel to point us to Christ hanging on the cross.

35:31

So that's part of that chapter. The priest's aspect of it is that Luther believed that all of those united to Christ by faith are priests.

35:43

We don't need a human priest to stand between us and God. We have the great priest

35:48

Christ who stands between us and God the Father, and united to him we have access to God the

35:55

Father, and we can also be priests to those around us as well. What does Christ do?

36:01

He brings the good tidings of the gospel to us, and what can we do to our neighbors?

36:06

We can give ourselves to our neighbors, tell them the good tidings, and also engage in works of self -sacrifice on their behalf.

36:15

We're also kings, because Christ, as much as a priest, is also a king as far as that sounds pretty cool.

36:25

Is that a bit like being a Mormon and dying in your own planet? Well, no. From a human perspective, it's what

36:34

Luther means by we rule with Christ, is we rule with Christ in the way that Christ rules. And how does

36:40

Christ rule? He inaugurates his kingdom through the cross. So the Christian here and now rules over suffering by going through suffering, by suffering for others.

36:53

So Luther sees us as priests and kings, but our understanding of priesthood and kingship needs to be refracted through Christ and through the cross in order to understand what these things consist.

37:06

We have a listener in White Plains, New York. Bob writes, What role did

37:13

Luther personally play in the persecution of Anabaptists in Germany?

37:19

There are some who lay the blame squarely at his feet, as if he ordered the torture and execution of Anabaptists.

37:28

Can you please set us straight on what actually happened? Well, the persecution of Anabaptists, of course, was an act of the civil magistrates, and Luther was not a civil magistrate.

37:38

So there was a sense in which he played no formal role in it that way. On the other hand,

37:43

Luther certainly had huge influence on public policy, because he was a very important figure, and the princes would look to him for their theological and ecclesiastical cues.

37:52

So Luther does write some pretty harsh stuff about the Anabaptists, and must therefore, I suppose in retrospect, take his share of responsibility for the persecution of them.

38:02

We need to understand, of course, though, that many Anabaptists, certainly prior to the

38:08

Munster debacle of 1535 -1536, many Anabaptists were quite violent.

38:16

All of them were advocating some kind of withdrawal from society, that even if it wasn't violent, was regarded as inherently subversive.

38:27

So we might look back with hindsight and say that certain Anabaptist groups, all they want to do is withdraw into the woods and live in their own communities, and say they didn't need to be persecuted harshly, and that's a fair comment.

38:39

But at the time, that would not have been obvious. The Anabaptists looked, if you like, the equivalent of Jonestown or the

38:49

Manson family in the 60s. These were scary people who seemed to be arguing for the tearing apart of society.

38:56

So Luther's actions and attitudes look extreme in retrospect.

39:02

At the time, they make a kind of sense as it happens. Yeah, I had heard, and perhaps you could correct me if I'm wrong, but I've heard that the

39:12

Anabaptists were stoning disobedient children in a misapplication of the

39:17

Old Covenant penal law and so on. I've not heard that. It's quite possible that happened. Certainly there were some bad atrocities that happened in Munster in 1535 -1536.

39:27

The thing is that Anabaptists were a very variegated phenomenon. You know, the term

39:32

Anabaptism, the way we use it now, is almost like a scholarly construct to cover a whole heap of different radical groups.

39:39

So there were some very peaceable radical groups, and there were some very violent ones. It's difficult to generalize.

39:46

Well, Bob, you're going to be getting a free copy of the book Luther on the Christian Life, Cross, and Freedom by Dr.

39:53

Carl Truman as well. Thanks for the question. Tell us something more about your chapter on the theology of the word preached.

40:04

Yeah, this is in some ways, I think, the chapter

40:10

I was most concerned with in the book, partly because I think that so much preaching today is poor because preachers don't have a theology of preaching.

40:22

They know they've got to exegete the Bible, but they don't really understand theologically what the act of preaching itself is.

40:31

Luther had this powerful understanding of the word of God as creative and powerful.

40:36

You mean we see it, perhaps most obviously, as a justification. When God says you are righteous, you are righteous.

40:43

No matter what your intrinsic qualities are, you are righteous. The word of God is powerful.

40:49

And Luther built his understanding of preaching on his understanding of the fact that the word of God doesn't just describe things or explain things.

40:57

It brings things into being as God created the world in Genesis 1 by the word of his power.

41:05

So even today when the preacher proclaims the word of God, what is the preacher doing?

41:12

The preacher is bringing about a new reality. He is tearing down, in contradictory terms, he's tearing down the fictional realities that the world around and our own sinful hearts create.

41:25

And he is putting in their place the divine reality of the holy God and the God who has revealed himself as gracious in the

41:33

Lord Jesus Christ. What I wanted to convey in that chapter was something that I wanted preachers today to get a hold of is that when they get up to the pulpit on a

41:41

Sunday, they're doing something powerful and exciting. They're not just describing or explaining something.

41:48

They're actually proclaiming God's word and bringing about new realities. So that was the motivation for that chapter was to try to move people towards thinking about a theology of preaching.

42:03

Preaching mediates the presence of God, one might say for Protestants, as the mass mediates the presence of God for Catholics.

42:12

Perhaps give us more detail on the chapter, the liturgy of the

42:18

Christian life. That's a word that frightens a lot of evangelicals and Protestants.

42:25

Not all, but some. But tell us about the liturgy of the Christian life. You know, certainly, I mean, if you use a hymn book, or you do anything other than scat sing in church on a

42:34

Sunday, you have a liturgy. Yeah, we need to. If you're not a scat singer, you're a liturgist of some kind.

42:43

It's just a question of how elaborate and how well thought out the liturgy is. I guess for those of our listeners who don't know what scat singing is, wouldn't you say that it's freeform jazz singing?

42:53

Yeah, get a hold of some Ella Fitzgerald albums. If you haven't got Ella Fitzgerald albums, shame on you, because she's one of the great singers of the 20th century.

43:02

But Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, great free jazz singers of their generation.

43:10

Yeah, Luther, there are a couple of aspects to the liturgy of the

43:15

Christian life. One, Luther set up the whole of the week, the church week, in a way that reflected different aspects of the

43:23

Christian life. So if you went to church every day that church was available, which pretty much every day in Wittenberg, you would be taken through the rhythm of the

43:32

Christian life on a weekly basis. So you'd have law, you'd have gospel, you'd have catechetical instruction, you would treat different sections of scripture.

43:46

Luther himself was a big fan of formal liturgy for church services, because he felt that worship had to have a pedagogical structure.

43:56

You didn't just learn Christianity from listening to the sermon, you also learn Christianity from the shape of the service.

44:04

And it took him five years, from 1520 when he really first decides he needs a vernacular liturgy, it took him five years, 1525, before he actually implemented a full vernacular liturgy in Wittenberg, because he really wanted to get it right.

44:18

Everything from the words and the order of worship to the music had to be correct, because he felt the service itself taught the participants in the service about God and about the gospel.

44:32

And I think he also, you know, he understood the power of music to focus and to move the human mind and the heart.

44:39

That's why music was so important. So the liturgy of the Christian life, Luther felt that the very structure of the week and the structure of the church service was important for teaching people about what the

44:52

Christian life was, what constituted it. Well, we mentioned before about the caricature of Luther believing in a fruitless

45:01

Christianity, that repentance and good deeds are not a necessary litmus test or evidence or fruit of the genuinely converted.

45:16

In light of that caricature, tell us about the chapter, Living by the Word. You know,

45:23

I've got my book by me. I need to look up my own chapter at this point. That's quite all right.

45:28

Now, while you're looking it up, I will tell our listeners to email us a question at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

45:36

chrisarnson at gmail .com. We only have one copy left to give away of Luther on the

45:41

Christian Life, Cross and Freedom, and so please include your mailing address when you send us a question, and we'll shoot that out to you.

45:51

And that's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

45:59

And have you found that chapter yet? Yeah, I have. It's funny, sometimes I need to remind myself of what

46:04

I actually think on particular subjects. But, what I was trying to do in that chapter is really address how

46:12

Luther would have seen the everyday life of the Christian. And above all, the day -to -day life of the

46:18

Christian is to be characterized by a focus on the Word. The Christian is going to face various pressure points each day.

46:28

There's going to be the sinfulness of their own heart. There's going to be the temptation always to despair of one's status before God.

46:39

Luther lived in a world where the devil was ever -present. I mean, as Orthodox Christians, we believe in the devil, but Luther felt him as a local, physical presence in a way that I think is very alien to the modern sensibility.

46:53

So, Luther was aware that the devil was always there whispering. And the answer to Luther, the primary answer to spiritual problems was the

47:01

Word. Exposure to the Word. One needed to read the Word. If one could not read, one needed to go to church and hear the

47:09

Word sung and hear the Word preached. The problem of temptation was to be addressed by going back to the

47:17

Word and allowing the Word to shape one's heart and one's mind. So, for Luther, it was very much a

47:23

Word -centered Christian life. It could be, and that could include one -to -one.

47:29

I mean, Luther would not have used the term counseling, but he regularly confessed his sins to a friend, to a priest friend, and found it helpful for the friend to read gospel promises to him.

47:43

I thought because Luther knew that his own heart would always tend to distort the Word coming from the inside, it was good to use

47:51

Luther's phrase to have the Word coming from the outside when one has no control over it, being pressed on you by somebody else.

47:59

So, for Luther, the whole of the Christian life was to be focused to a large extent upon the

48:05

Word of God. And there's a secondary element to that also, the sacraments. The sacraments were an adjunct to the

48:12

Word that made the Word more real and pressed the reality of the Word on the heart. Well, that's a good place to ask for some more detail on freed from Babylon, baptism in the mass, especially since we already had brought up the fact of Luther retaining, whether for good or bad, some of the baggage of Roman Catholicism.

48:39

Yeah. Luther on the sacraments is really the point at which I think most evangelicals and most

48:45

Protestants will feel most uncomfortable with him. And yet, I actually think it's in a way where he can be most helpful because it provokes us to think more deeply about our own position.

48:58

Bottom line is, it's very clear from the New Testament that baptism and the Lord's Supper are important.

49:05

Paul talks about those who are very casual about the Lord's Supper, some of them dying, falling asleep, dying.

49:11

It's that serious a thing. And of course, the way Paul talks about baptism is very profound and exalted.

49:22

So one of the things that Luther does, I think he reminds us that baptism and the Lord's Supper are very important parts of church life.

49:30

Now, his own views on them were very different to my own. If you'd asked Luther when he became a

49:36

Christian, he would certainly have said it was when he was baptized. So Luther, when the child is baptized, they become a

49:42

Christian. The odd thing is that the baptism avails nothing to that child unless the child grasps the

49:49

Christ presented in baptism to them by faith. So there is, from a sort of evangelical perspective, something of a tension in Luther's thinking there.

49:59

But when the devil comes to tempt him, one of the things in Luther's arsenal is, I've been baptized.

50:06

And to those who say to Luther, yeah, but you don't remember being baptized, he would respond, well, do you remember being born?

50:12

Well, no, I don't. But the fact that your mom's your mom is still pretty important to you, right?

50:17

That would be how Luther would address that. On the Lord's Supper, Luther's problem with the mass was not so much transubstantiation as the fact that it was a sacrifice.

50:31

The liturgical action was from the church to God, not from God to men.

50:36

So the Roman Catholic Church had made the mass into a work. It was no longer a gospel thing.

50:42

It was a law thing, a work. What about the adoration of the elements of the

50:50

Eucharist in the Roman Catholic Church? How far into his life did he carry that with him?

50:58

I think from 1520 onwards, there's no real adoration of the elements going on.

51:05

The liturgical action is from God to man. The host is not to be held up to God as an offering with the priest's back turned.

51:16

The bread is to be offered to the people as the priest proclaims the promise in Christ.

51:22

So adoration of the elements really plays no role in Luther. Having said that,

51:29

Luther does believe very strongly in the real presence of Christ in, with, and under the bread. He does believe that the whole

51:35

Christ, divine and human, is present in the bread and the wine, and that unbelievers eat the body and blood of the

51:42

Lord Jesus Christ to their damnation. So that's where he would be in some ways on that point, a little closer to Roman Catholicism than to a typical evangelical church, for example.

51:56

And even with the Genevan Reformation as well, they were not following Luther on that point, were they?

52:05

No, and Calvin, I think, struggled with that. I mean, Calvin had a high view of the Lord's Supper. He was not a

52:11

Zwinglian. He did not have any time for seeing the Lord's Supper as a mere memorial or merely symbolic, but he had too good an understanding of the incarnation to believe that the humanity could be present in lots and lots of pieces of bread and glasses of wine all over the face of the earth.

52:32

The humanity of Christ was localized in heaven. What Calvin does is really, he uses the

52:38

Holy Spirit to solve the problem, in that Calvin sees the Holy Spirit as carrying the believer to heaven to feed on Christ at the

52:46

Lord's Supper, not carrying Christ down from heaven to be fed to the believer. We have an anonymous listener who asks, when in Luther's life did anti -Semitism rear its ugly head and why?

53:03

And is it known that he ever repented of it? Well, we know he certainly didn't repent of hating the

53:09

Jews because his very last sermon contains an anti -Jew appendix. So we know that a few days before he died, he preached a sermon with a rather unpleasant anti -Jewish ending.

53:20

I think a couple of comments on this one. One, anti -Semitism is not a particularly helpful category in the 16th century because it's strongly racial.

53:29

Luther really didn't have a category for race. His objection to Judaism was religious.

53:35

In Nazi Germany, if you convert from Judaism to Christianity, it makes no difference because you still are of the

53:42

Jewish race. You have Jewish blood. For Luther, if you're a Jew that converts to Christianity, even though you might still be the butt of Jewish jokes occasionally, by and large, the problem's solved.

53:54

So it's a religious issue for Luther. Secondly, pretty much everybody in Luther's day hated the

53:59

Jews. And it goes back to the Anabaptist problem in some ways. What do you do with these people who aren't baptized?

54:05

What do you do with people that you can't seem to assimilate to a Christendom model of the state and the nation?

54:13

Thirdly, the remarkable thing about Luther is that in 1523, he actually writes a very pro -Jewish pamphlet, that Jesus Christ was born a

54:21

Jew, when he tells Christians to treat their Jewish neighbors really well in order to earn the right to speak the gospel to them.

54:31

In 1543, he writes some very violent anti -Jewish tracts. And I think the explanation is, in 1523, he thought

54:40

Christ was about to return. In 1543, he's getting disillusioned. He's ill. He realizes that Christ is not about to return.

54:47

The Reformation is starting to fray at the edges and suffer setbacks. And he's looking for people to blame.

54:53

And he blames the Anabaptists. He blames the Roman Catholics. He blames the Turks. And he blames the

54:58

Jews. It's not to excuse Luther's attitude at all. I think his writings on the Jews are disgraceful and horrible.

55:05

Sadly, they're pretty conventional for their day and age. They're full of typical 16th century anti -Jewish slanders and cliches.

55:13

So Luther was pretty typical of his age. But I think, really, we're looking at probably the mid -30s, when he starts to really turn against the

55:22

Jews. And no, he never repents of it, because the very last sermon that he preached contained an anti -Jewish appendix.

55:29

Give us a summary of Luther and Christian righteousness. Sorry? Give us a summary of Luther and Christian righteousness.

55:40

Well, Luther believed that righteousness was twofold. It was the righteousness by which we stood justified before God.

55:47

And that was what he called an alien righteousness. That was the righteousness of Christ that was credited to our accounts.

55:54

It was not an actual righteousness within us at all. It was that when we stood before God to plead our case at the end of time,

56:02

God looks at Christ's righteousness, not our filthy rags. But Luther thought related to that was proper righteousness.

56:08

And proper righteousness was, if you like, the outward fruit of that inward alien righteousness.

56:15

So proper righteousness was the good deeds that we do, the kind deeds to our neighbors, the good works that we do for our employer.

56:24

That was Luther's understanding of proper righteousness. And give us a summary, if you could, on the life and death in this earthly realm, government, calling, and family.

56:36

A few things to say there. One, Luther had a very high view of the civil magistrate. The civil magistrate was put there by God.

56:44

He was an unjust civil magistrate. He was put there as a punishment from God on you. So rebellion was not typically to be countenanced.

56:51

Luther does change his opinion a bit after 1530, when the emperor refuses to become a

56:57

Lutheran. Luther comes to the conclusion that the emperor's power derives from the electors of the empire, and therefore the electors can resist him.

57:05

So you have something there of an adumbration of Calvin's later idea that a lower magistrate can resist a higher magistrate.

57:13

Calling, Luther's most, one of his most significant insights, I think, was that it is not the intrinsic quality of a calling that make it a godly calling.

57:25

It's how one does it. Now, there are certain callings, like prostitution, or hit man for the mafia, that are sinful.

57:34

But on the whole, most callings are, we might say, morally neutral, sweeping the streets, teaching at a university, being a photographer.

57:44

These are neutral callings. What makes them holy is not so much the method one applies when one follows them, but whether you do them for the glory of God or not.

57:55

In class, I always use the examples from Dutch golden age paintings of the 17th century that focus often on very mundane scenes of life.

58:04

A milkmaid carrying a milk, a little boy holding a broom. You look at those paintings and they contain something of the sacred.

58:11

And that's Luther's sensibility. Luther, you know, Luther enabled us to see holiness and sanctity in the presence of God in even the most mundane tasks.

58:21

You no longer have to be a religious professional, thanks to Luther, to be engaged in a godly profession, as long as you your calling to the glory of God.

58:33

One final question. I, years ago, heard a Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor preach a very powerful sermon.

58:39

This brother is now with the Lord. He passed away a number of years ago. He preached a sermon, Would Luther be a

58:45

Lutheran today? And much to my surprise, he concluded no, because of what he saw as modernism and a mainline dead religion overtaking the mainline churches.

58:58

What is your answer to that question? It would depend on what you meant by Lutheran. I think, would

59:05

Luther be a book of Concord subscribing Lutheran today?

59:11

Yes, I think he would. Would he have any truck with a Lutheran denomination that ordains transgender people, as I think one of the big

59:21

Lutheran denominations in America has recently done? No, I do not think so. Well, thank you so much for being our guest today,

59:29

Dr. Truman. I eagerly look forward to having you back. If anybody wants to purchase this book, Luther on the

59:35

Christian Life, Cross and Freedom, you can go to CVBBS .com. That's Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

59:44

CVBBS .com. You can also go to Solid Ground Christian Books, another one of our sponsors,

59:50

Solid -Ground -Books .com, Solid -Ground -Books .com.

59:56

For more information on Westminster Theological Seminary, where Dr. Truman serves on the faculty, you could go to WTS .edu,

01:00:04

WTS .edu. Thank you so much, brother, for being a part of our program. Please return soon. Thanks for having me,

01:00:11

Chris. And please don't go away, ladies and gentlemen, because Bill Shishko is going to be our guest for the second hour of Iron Sharpens Iron, talking about the creation ordinance.

01:00:21

So please give us an email with questions for Pastor Bill Shishko of the

01:00:27

Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, New York. And we hope to hear from you soon.

01:00:32

And we look forward to speaking with our guest, Bill Shishko, momentarily.

01:00:38

And may the Lord bless the second hour of Iron Sharpens Iron. Don't go away.

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Or visit Lindbrookbaptist .org. That's Lindbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back. This is Chris Arms, and if you've just tuned us in, our guest today is

01:02:35

Pastor Bill Shishko for the second hour of Iron Sharpens Iron, and he is the pastor of the

01:02:40

Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Franklin Square, Long Island, which is right near the Nassau County, Queens border.

01:02:47

He has been a very dear friend of mine ever since I came to Saving Faith in Christ by his grace and mercy approximately 30 years ago, and he has probably been the very close to the number one, if not the number one, supporter and encourager of me personally and my radio ministry that I have ever encountered in this journey of mine, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron and welcome you for the first time on the all -new

01:03:22

Iron Sharpens Iron, Pastor Bill Shishko. Hey Chris, good to be with you.

01:03:27

I'm getting a lot of static on my end. Can you hear me okay on your end? Yes, I can hear you perfectly fine, so hopefully you'll be able to hear me clearly enough to conduct the interview without much problem.

01:03:41

Can you hear me at least? Can you understand what I'm saying? Yeah, I can, Chris. Boy, so congratulations on your new program.

01:03:47

It's great to be back with you, and I'm honored that you invited me. Well, the honor and privilege is all mine, and one of my favorite programs ever from the old

01:03:59

Iron Sharpens Iron, which I believe helped a lot of people, was our discussion on suicide, and it was interesting that one

01:04:09

Arminian charismatic pastor in some way, shape, or form came eventually to the doctrines of sovereign grace through hearing that program and through meeting you and developing a friendship with you and so on.

01:04:23

Yeah, it was a precious time. I'm sorry it had to come in light of such a serious topic, but the Lord is good to use all of those things.

01:04:30

Amen, and you can actually hear that program on YouTube, and in fact,

01:04:36

I'm going to have our webmaster for the new website of Iron Sharpens Iron post the audio for that as soon as possible.

01:04:45

Well, first of all, before we even get into our discussion on the creation ordinances, work, Sabbath, marriage, and procreation, tell us something about the

01:04:53

Orthodox Presbyterian Church in general and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square specifically.

01:04:59

Oh, thanks, Chris. Well, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church was formed in 1936. We were the fundamentalists in what is now the

01:05:08

Presbyterian Church USA, committed to the Bible as our final authority for faith and for faith and practice, and also to the standards we normally know of as the

01:05:20

Westminster Catechisms and also the Westminster Confession of Faith.

01:05:25

So the OPC, as it's affectionately known, continues to keep those historic Presbyterian and Reformed standards, and praise the

01:05:33

Lord is faithful even in the midst of the severe cultural drift about which we'll be speaking in a little while.

01:05:40

The OPC Franklin Square started in 1939, and I've had the privilege of being the pastor there since 1981.

01:05:49

Wow, that goes, Chris, I think that's before you were born. And we're blessed.

01:05:55

We've been able to be, because we're kind of landlocked there, when we get to about 240 people or so, we start mission churches.

01:06:03

So we've been able by the Lord's grace to start mission churches in Mount Vernon and in Bohemia, New York, and I work now in Syosset, New York, and then one pastored by my own son, one of my sons,

01:06:16

Jonathan, in Queens. So we're the mama church with a lot of little ones around, and we enjoy that ecclesiastical family that we have.

01:06:26

Yeah, praise God for that. It's always good to see when a good church that is begins to multiply like you have, and it's frightening to me to hear about your son being a pastor, not because he isn't qualified, but because I remember him as a little boy, and it just reminds me of how fast the years are whizzing by me.

01:06:48

Why don't you tell us something a little about Queens Reformation, well, the Reformation Presbyterian Church in Fresh Meadows, Queens, New York.

01:06:56

That work began, oh my, I don't know how many years ago, Chris, maybe five years ago or so, and that was when a number of our families in Franklin Square were committed either to move to Queens or to go to a church there because they wanted an inner -city ministry.

01:07:16

Fresh Meadows is kind of a bridge between suburban Long Island and more urban New York, and we've intended it that way.

01:07:25

Jonathan originally had an associate for a while, and then that associate has moved on to some other things, so Jonathan is a solo pastor, at least for the time being.

01:07:35

What's exciting is the outreach that they have in that area, and I reflected to Jonathan that a lot of the things

01:07:42

I just simply didn't have the time to do because I was working with an established congregation and spawning off daughter churches, or leading the spawning of daughter churches,

01:07:52

Jonathan's been able to do, and just getting out meeting people and telling them about Jesus, so it's been exciting to see that.

01:08:00

Well let me, before I forget to, before we run out of time later, I want to repeat the website addresses of both churches, the

01:08:09

Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, first of all. Their website is opcli .org,

01:08:17

that's O -P -C standing for Orthodox Presbyterian Church, L -I standing for longisland .org,

01:08:23

O -P -C -L -I .org, and we have the Reformation Presbyterian Church of Fresh Meadows, Queens, New York.

01:08:31

Their website is queensreformation .org, queensreformation .org,

01:08:38

and I look forward to having your son Jonathan as a part of this broadcast at some point in the near future,

01:08:43

God willing. Yeah, and just keep our website, actually this summer is a lot of redesigning things for us, so this summer we're redesigning our website so people can hold off on it, but it should be up and running in its new format in September.

01:08:57

Great, and I want to give our email address if you have any questions for Pastor Bill Shishko on our theme today,

01:09:06

Creation Ordinances, Work, Sabbath, Marriage, and Procreation, which each could obviously be a program in and of itself, but our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

01:09:20

that's chrisarnsen, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com,

01:09:27

and we look forward to hearing from you with your questions. Please include your first name at least, and your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if outside the

01:09:39

USA, because we do have a number of listeners globally that have been reaching out to us via emails for our guests.

01:09:47

Why the burden on your heart, Pastor Shishko, to speak on the issue of Creation Ordinances? Well, I appreciate the opportunity to do this, and as you said,

01:09:57

Chris, each one of these topics could take not just one program, but many, because as we'll find out, there are just ramifications of each of these things in the nature of the case.

01:10:10

Just by way of a book to mention for your listeners, I have been strongly influenced, as so many of us have been, by the late

01:10:19

Professor John Murray, who was a professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, for many years.

01:10:28

His book that I think originally came out as a series of lectures in, I think, the 1940s, the book

01:10:34

Principles of Conduct. I have gone back to that book, Chris, I don't know how many times, just to help me be reminded again of basics of biblical ethics.

01:10:47

And Professor Murray, at the early part of his book, is the one that lays out these

01:10:53

Creation Ordinances. Others certainly have spoken of them in different ways, but Professor Murray presented them in this way, and I have found that helpful.

01:11:04

Let me begin by saying, I'm assuming that Genesis 1 through 3, in fact all of Genesis, but particularly for our purposes,

01:11:14

Genesis 1 through 3 is not myth, the way many say in a testament.

01:11:28

You have to come to the view that Genesis 1 through 3 is history and not myth.

01:11:35

Matthew 19, Jesus refers to marriage, the creation of one man and one woman, the

01:11:43

Apostle Paul refers to Adam in Romans chapter 5, and even in his development of what's called federalism, the unity of the human race under the headship of Adam, the first, if you will, by whom all people come by ordinary generation, and in the last

01:12:02

Adam, Jesus. 1 Corinthians 15, he does something similar, and of course in 1

01:12:07

Timothy 2, Paul, in dealing with male -female relations in the Church, goes back to Adam and Eve in the

01:12:14

Fall. So I am just assuming, as frankly all those who profess the historic

01:12:20

Christian faith should assume, that Genesis 1 through 3 is not myth, but it is historical fact.

01:12:28

We can debate about how long ago that was, but the fact of the matter is, if you could go back in a time machine, you would have seen those things.

01:12:37

Creation ordinances, and this, Chris, is why this topic is so important in our culture.

01:12:44

The moral law, summarized in the Ten Commandments, while it expresses the holiness of God, it does it against the backdrop of a fallen world.

01:12:57

You don't have to have a command not to commit adultery if you're not in a fallen world. So the moral law is designed, among other things, to restrain iniquity.

01:13:09

Creation ordinances are for people as people, whether they're in the United States, whether they're in Europe or Asia or whatever.

01:13:17

Any time, any generation, any place, these creation ordinances are for people as people.

01:13:24

And as you've mentioned, they are, in the first place, the sanctity of human life, the second, marriage and procreation, which clearly is a lightning rod issue in our day, and then the third is not just labor, but also

01:13:41

Sabbath. Now, I don't want to blather on, so you can stop me at any point, otherwise... No, you can keep going, brother, because the worst thing in the world, as you may know, is a guest where you have to pull teeth to get answers out of them.

01:13:55

Okay, well, yeah, let me just serve your audience, and then you can interact with me, and I certainly welcome the questions as they're going to come.

01:14:02

Sanctity of human life, Genesis 127, this profound statement that God made man in his own image, male and female made he them.

01:14:16

That's the microscopic, or that's rather the telescopic view of God's work of creating man.

01:14:22

He's looking at the big picture. In chapter 2, it's not a different account of creation, it's just a more microscopic account of creation, but the fact that man as man is the image of God, profound...

01:14:37

and that, again, we're not just speaking about Christians, we're speaking about people as people.

01:14:43

Now, you can think of the implications of this. One that's drawn out is in Genesis 9 and verse 6, where after the flood, when

01:14:53

God establishes the covenant with Noah, it's interesting that that's where he inaugurates the death penalty in the case of murder, and the reason is whoever sheds man's blood, man's blood shall be shed for in the image of God made he man.

01:15:11

And you can understand that one of two ways. It can either be that man as man, representing

01:15:17

God who has the power of life and death, has within legal order the right to administer the death penalty.

01:15:24

Of course, that has to be done in a legal structure and so on. Or, as I think it is probably in view here, it's because when there is a murder, or for that matter, a manslaughter, there is a killing of what is image of God, and James reaffirms this when he says with our lips, we either curse man or a blessed man who is made in the image of God.

01:15:50

One, I thought, Chris, so often, if Christians had lived out of just that doctrinal viewpoint in the 19th century, that would have put the axe to slavery very, very quickly.

01:16:09

And in fact, even the whole concept of racism based on a person's skin color, as it usually is, is, in my view, a rank

01:16:21

Christian heresy. Amen, amen. Made of one blood, all nations. And see, we can, as Christians, see, we can go back and give the basis for this that is now a commonplace in our culture, it should be.

01:16:35

But we know the reason for that, because God made man in his image. I mean, that's just one ramification of that.

01:16:43

Certainly the others that come to mind, the killing of the unborn, what's getting publicity now that your listeners should be aware of, this absolutely atrocious and bestial video from representatives of Planned Parenthood regarding selling, quote -unquote, fetal body parts.

01:17:01

Of course, inherently, everyone should get the contradiction. On the one hand, they're wanting to maintain they're not human beings.

01:17:08

On the other hand, they're speaking about livers and brains and so on and so forth. Exactly. Oh yeah, yeah.

01:17:14

But I mean, here, why are we revulsed at this? Because it is the destruction of image of God, and the other end of the spectrum, of course, is euthanasia, and that whole matter of physician -assisted suicide in which man's image of God takes into his own hands the power of life and death.

01:17:35

Now, there's difficult issues there, I realize that. But we've got to begin with the basic that man is man is made in the image of God.

01:17:43

Well, we have the first item under the umbrella of creation ordinances is work and connection with the

01:17:51

Sabbath. Now, obviously, you know as well as I do that within Christendom, even within Calvinism and within the theologically reformed churches of different stripes, and you could even say even within Reformed Baptist or Reformed Presbyterian circles in their own in -house debates, the issue of the

01:18:16

Sabbath will occasionally come up. And because there is no really clear, vividly detailed blueprint in the

01:18:25

New Covenant, in the written word of God on how to observe the

01:18:32

Sabbath other than what we have in the Old Covenant law, and because of the fact that not everything from the

01:18:38

Old Covenant law is carried over, how are we to regard this issue of work in the

01:18:44

Sabbath? Yeah, that's a great, again, here again, Chris, these are things that could take up shows.

01:18:50

Let me deal with the Sabbath part first, and then obviously what should take up more of the time is labor.

01:18:58

I've always been impressed with the fact that the fourth commandment, there's two versions of it.

01:19:04

There's one in Deuteronomy 5, and then there's one in Exodus 20. The one in Exodus 20, remember the

01:19:10

Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh is a

01:19:16

Sabbath, which doesn't mean seventh, incidentally. It means the seventh is a Sabbath.

01:19:21

It's a rest. It's the Sabbath of the Lord your God, you know, and you shall not do any work and so forth.

01:19:28

For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and rested the seventh day.

01:19:35

Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. Now it's on that basis that we say that the

01:19:42

Sabbath is a creation ordinance. In fact, actually, our week, our seven -day week, is a constant reminder to us of God's first creative week in days of ordinary length.

01:19:57

So there's that pattern of six days of rest, or six days of work, and then one day of rest.

01:20:03

Now there are a lot of ceremonial elements in the Sabbath, as you mentioned, in the

01:20:08

Old Testament. When Paul in Colossians 2 speaks about new moons and feast days and Sabbaths, plural, that's what he's referring to.

01:20:20

There was the Jubilee year that was a Sabbath, and at the end of every 50th year that came has a profound significance in the

01:20:30

Old Testament, that at the end of every seven years things were done. Those ceremonial things for Israel as Israel are done away.

01:20:41

It's not so much that they're done away as they have their fulfillment in Christ, because the

01:20:46

Sabbath speaks constantly of rest, and it speaks of freedom.

01:20:52

And in very dramatic ways, even sacramental ways, as in the Jubilee year on the 50th year,

01:20:59

Israel, there was freedom for the captives. I mean, this is the thing that's on the Liberty Bell, you know, let liberty proclaim, be proclaimed to the captives.

01:21:07

But all that was a way, was a signpost to Israel saying, freedom is coming, rest is coming,

01:21:16

Sabbath is coming. Now the writer of Hebrews, who is writing, among others, to converted

01:21:22

Jews who are tempted to go back to the old covenant ordinances, in Hebrews 3 and 4, he opens up the glorious new covenant concept of the

01:21:32

Sabbath when he says there remains, therefore, a Sabbath rest for the people of God.

01:21:39

And the way that he uses the word sabbatismos there, on the one hand he's speaking about a future

01:21:46

Sabbath rest. That's what we're looking forward to as Christians. Christ has inaugurated that.

01:21:53

But I really believe that when he uses that word sabbatismos, which means Sabbath -keeping there, he's saying there is, even in the new covenant, a keeping of a

01:22:03

Sabbath one day in seven, now Sunday, which is to us a concentrated and weekly pointer to the

01:22:12

Sabbath day that is to come. Now that's not going to answer everybody's questions. I think for our purposes here, when

01:22:19

Jesus says in Mark 2 and verse 28, man was not made for the

01:22:26

Sabbath. In other words, we're not enslaved to this thing, but the Sabbath was made for man.

01:22:32

He very clearly reaffirms what quite frankly even people in the medical community will tell you.

01:22:39

We're not made to labor seven days. We are made to rest one, and a part of that rest is worship.

01:22:47

And as far as your beliefs on employment that involves work on Sunday, it is often said amongst those who uphold the perpetuity of the

01:23:03

Sabbath that the liberty that we have in that area are acts of mercy or necessity.

01:23:10

If you could explain a little further on that. Yeah, that's exactly right.

01:23:15

I mean, you have Jesus is lawful to do good on the Sabbath, my usual illustration. If you're driving to worship, we're called to worship the

01:23:22

Lord, particularly on the Lord's Day. The Lord's Day in the new covenant is, and our worship, the means of grace, our fellowship, those things are all, you know,

01:23:33

New Yorkers love this term, they're appetizers of a full course meal in glory, and that's the way we want to look at the

01:23:40

Lord's Day. Well, but if you're coming to worship and you see someone by the side of the road in distress, they've got a flat tire, they've got a heart attack, and they need some assistance, well certainly you, the

01:23:52

Lord delights in mercy rather than sacrifice. You're going to stop, you can use your cell phone, you can help them out, whatever it would be.

01:23:58

So that would be an example of necessity or mercy for that matter. You know, necessity, you've got to change a baby's diaper.

01:24:06

I mean, you know, that would be very simple, but you've got to eat now, which I think what you try to do is, at least in our family, what we try to do is take

01:24:14

Saturday evening along about six, seven o 'clock or so, I love to give my computer a

01:24:19

Sabbath rest. I'm not commanded to do that because I've still got the cell phone and the iPad, but it's a way, it's a trigger, it's a signal for me to say, hey,

01:24:30

I'm not doing this for a day, I'll flip it on maybe Monday or Tuesday or something, but and then to get the meal ready for the

01:24:37

Lord's Day, get the clothes out, get some, try to get a little bit more sleep and so on. It's interesting,

01:24:43

Chris, that often on your show you will rightly show the contrast between a

01:24:51

Calvinistic or a Reformed way of looking at things and sort of broadly, what we call broadly evangelical views.

01:24:58

On this one, interestingly, there's not a few in the more broadly evangelical camp who are kind of raising their hands and say, hey, wait a minute, there's a commandment in the midst of our frantic culture, there's a commandment about rest.

01:25:15

Matthew Sleeth, who wrote the book, I mean, theologically a lot of it's terrible, but his book 24 -6,

01:25:24

Tyndall House, I believe, published it, and he, Matthew Sleeth, is a medical doctor and he just lays out the need that our body has for a day of rest, one day in seven, hence 24 -6.

01:25:38

And we need to be thankful that in whatever communities people are raising this point again.

01:25:44

So that really would be, but see, that's for man is man. Every, whatever culture people need that unless they want to drop dead prematurely.

01:25:52

And the acts of mercy and necessity would also involve people who are nurses, doctors, policemen, firemen, and on and on.

01:26:01

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Don't we need to be very careful if we are ourselves strict

01:26:07

Sabbatarians not to use this as a tool for Pharisaic self -righteousness to be the police, if you will, of how others observe the

01:26:18

Sabbath to an extreme. Obviously, there's all different varying degrees of flagrant disrespect for one thing or another, but don't we have to be careful about being more concerned about the way we ourselves are honoring the

01:26:33

Lord on his day rather than necessarily our neighbor or our brother? Yeah, absolutely. I think in a purely secular realm, if I were a

01:26:41

Christian, if I might be a Christian businessman, if I'm a businessman, I'm going to make provision for having

01:26:48

Sunday off. Now, what my employees would do with that is their business, but I believe that because the

01:26:54

Sabbath is for man is man, people need that day off. And I think, Chris, and I'm encouraged that there's,

01:27:00

I think, a shift in the way people are thinking. If you're always thinking about what you can't do on the

01:27:06

Sabbath, there's something wrong. The means of grace, which are prayer, preaching the

01:27:13

Word of God, especially the preaching of it, prayer, fellowship of the saints, the sacraments or ordinances of baptism in the

01:27:21

Lord's Supper, these are meant to be foretastes of eternity. So my wife and I will come home on Sunday night, and in most cases, we'll say, we've had a real appetizer of eternity today.

01:27:37

If we think of it like that, we'll want to maximize those things.

01:27:42

But the point for the Creation Ordinance is that people need to have one day in seven that they rest, and that's got to be worked out in each individual situation.

01:27:52

And just, not that we can belabor this with the time limitations, but what's your opinion on those churches, even some from theologically

01:28:01

Reformed backgrounds, who, because of the cultural background of the country where their churches, for instance in Israel, I have known of Reformed churches that their day of worship is

01:28:15

Saturday because of the culture of Judaism in Israel, that kind of a thing.

01:28:20

What's your opinion on that? That is to, and I'm familiar with that in the

01:28:25

Messianic Judaism movement, that is to eliminate the profound meaning of Sunday as the

01:28:37

Lord's Day. I'll give you an analogy in a moment, but it isn't even a measure up, but the resurrection of Christ on Sunday, that ushered in the beginning of a whole new creation that is called a

01:28:54

Sabbath. That, there is nothing, I mean, in a real sense, that is as monumental, if not more monumental, than creation.

01:29:05

So that is, whenever you have that Saturday thing, I mean, the best you can say is there's no grasp of the meaning of that.

01:29:13

But that would be a little bit like taking the 4th of July, which is our

01:29:18

Independence Day, our celebration of our break from Britain, whatever you believe about that, and then saying, oh, well, we're just going to do that on April Fool's Day.

01:29:32

I mean, it's kind of trite, but people need to come to grips with, again, the monumental change that came, the technical term is the

01:29:44

Aeonic change, a change of age, that came when Christ rose again from the dead on the first day of the week, and you are, you revel in that.

01:29:53

That's the greatest holiday in the universe. We're going to go to a break right now.

01:29:59

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Pastor Bill Shishko on our theme, the creation ordinances, work,

01:30:07

Sabbath, marriage, and procreation, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

01:30:17

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Bill Shishko of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, New York.

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01:33:08

This is Chris Arms. And if you've just tuned us in, our guest today is Pastor Bill Shishko of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, Long Island.

01:33:16

Their website, just to repeat it, is opcli .org.

01:33:22

O -P -C for Orthodox Presbyterian Church, L -I -dot -O -R -G. Today we are discussing creation ordinances, work,

01:33:28

Sabbath, marriage, and procreation. And our email address, if you have a question for Pastor Bill.

01:33:34

Some people don't realize this is a live show. And if you want a question read on the air and answered by Pastor Bill to the best of his ability, please email it to us at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:33:49

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. We do have an anonymous listener from Lindenhurst, Long Island, who asks the question,

01:33:58

I know that you are going to be discussing marriage as a part of your creation ordinance discussion.

01:34:05

I believe that I have a call to singleness, and yet I receive much pressure from many members of the congregation where I am to seek a spouse, almost insinuating that I am in sin by not seeking a spouse.

01:34:25

What are your comments on that situation that I find myself in? Yeah, I don't want to forget the creation ordinance of labor.

01:34:33

Could I just comment on that first before I answer that question or deal with it? Oh yeah, absolutely.

01:34:39

Yeah, I just, labor, we're to labor six days. The listeners can work on this one a bit, but we really are in a culture that does not look favorably on labor.

01:34:54

I think it's interesting that one of the reasons why immigrants are hired by people and made use of and work is because when they come they work hard.

01:35:06

And Americans, as part of the general erosion of Christian convictions in our land, that high commitment to labor is part of it.

01:35:18

And all I would submit to your listeners is that Ephesians 4 .28, when Paul says, let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor.

01:35:27

And that word really means to work to a sweat. I mean, in the fall, there's now thorns and sweat

01:35:34

It's hard to work. And that's why the Bible uses the language of labor to a sweat, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

01:35:47

That bears on the issue of labor, as does 2 Thessalonians 3 .6 and following, which is really interesting if a man doesn't work, neither would anybody, but I shouldn't want to neglect that.

01:35:57

No, I appreciate it very much. I, if I could put it this way, painfully appreciate the sensitivity of that anonymous questioner that wrote, you know, when the

01:36:11

Bible says it's not good for a man to be alone, I'll make a helper suitable to him.

01:36:18

I'm not even going to say the norm, but in most cases, people are going to have strong sexual desires.

01:36:28

That's when Paul says it's better to marry than to burn with passion, which will impel them to want to be married.

01:36:35

And there's a lot, I mean, that's a massive topic to this whole matter of sexuality.

01:36:41

That's not because of sin. When God created

01:36:46

Adam, and then Eve, and Adam said, this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, there was an excitement there.

01:36:56

And of course, sin makes that kinky and the whole thing. But, you know, in most cases, there's going to be that impulsion to have the companion,

01:37:08

I'm going to put it this way, companionship gratified within the bonds of marriage. Now, the problem, and you can appreciate the evangelical church emphasizing this.

01:37:18

Here's the thing, in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, Paul lauds singleness.

01:37:25

He says he wishes that all people were as I am. Now, he conditions this by saying, on account of the present distress, which is probably persecution.

01:37:35

But the bigger picture there is he says that the married person is going to take care of the needs of his spouse.

01:37:45

The single person is free to be concerned for the things of the Lord. And if a person has that gift, and I want to get to the pastoral aspect of this in a moment, if a person has that gift, in other words, a person is not so burning with passion that he or she must be in that bond with a person of the opposite sex in marriage, where they can have sexual intimacy.

01:38:12

And they are able to be freer to use their gifts, praise the

01:38:17

Lord. I can think of our own denomination, Dr. Craig Reitkirk, who's now retired, who was a nurse and went to some amazing places in the world to minister, and guys would have lined up to marry her.

01:38:35

She was tremendously gratified in giving herself for the good of others as a nurse.

01:38:41

Now, here's the caveat that I would put in all this. The single person is freer.

01:38:48

The single person is going to have a lot of things to do. Single people are still busy, too. But they are not as encumbered with the things of marriage and children, and they are freer to help out families that have a lot of children, maybe to go on a short -term mission trip, to be involved with something themselves.

01:39:08

And this is not the church looking at them and saying, hey, here are some gophers. We can get to go for this, go for that, go for the other thing.

01:39:15

But people who are single, but it's still true, it's not good for a person to be alone.

01:39:21

Men and women who are single need the companionship of other singles, others in families.

01:39:28

They need a healthy outlet for service and love. And that's what I would say.

01:39:35

Singleness to the glory of God is, in fact, somewhere along the line, I've got a message on this. I think it's called

01:39:40

Single to the Glory of God. You can probably get it from sermonaudio .com, where I address these things.

01:39:47

But it is not right for a church to pressure someone into wanting to get married.

01:39:52

We shouldn't be playing Cupid. Clearly, if a person has made it clear that he or she wants to get married and they'd like some help looking for somebody, that's one thing.

01:40:02

You've got a person who says, you know, at least at this point, I am content to serve the Lord in singleness, praise the

01:40:08

Lord, and encourage that, and give healthy opportunities for fellowship.

01:40:14

We do have a couple of other anonymous listeners with questions. It seems that that subject evokes people wanting to remain anonymous to the subject of marriage.

01:40:25

But is there anything that you wanted to lay down on that specific issue before I would take a couple of more listener questions?

01:40:32

And I think maybe, not that I'm presuming on you as the host in this, it might be good, Chris, given the present distress with the

01:40:40

June 26 Supreme Court decision, to take some time just to deal with this. All I'd say is that marriage is a creation ordinance.

01:40:49

In Genesis chapter 2, God creates Eve for Adam. We shouldn't lightly say, you know, it's

01:40:58

Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Let's not use that kind of thing. That's an offensive way to put it.

01:41:05

God made a woman of the man. It's very obvious biologically that a man and a woman are designed for one another, and for sexual intimacy.

01:41:15

You could even say, doesn't even nature itself teach that? I think what we all need to come to grips with is the fact that even though this is a pre -fall situation,

01:41:29

Paul says in Ephesians 5, this, you know, one man and one woman, this is a great mystery, and here he throws the curveball of curveballs, but I speak concerning Christ and the

01:41:43

Church. And it is that absolutely awesome, if I could put it this way,

01:41:50

Christological place of marriage that the Church has got to ponder. But it is one man, one woman.

01:41:57

Scriptures teach that. Procreation, I think, Chris, of a book I read a number of years ago by a

01:42:03

Jewish man just called 1959, and he chronicled things that happened in 1959 that he saw as a

01:42:13

Jew that brought so many of the cultural earthquakes we've experienced in the last half a century.

01:42:24

And what he said was that because 1959 was the year the birth control pill became public, he made the point very eloquently that severing sexual relations, now there are sexual relations for pleasure, not just for procreation, but part of the purpose of marriage is procreation.

01:42:46

And that has, I think for Christians, are going to have to do more to parse the relationship of marriage and children.

01:42:55

Now what do you do if your child, listen, that gets into abortion and issues regarding reproductive technology.

01:43:01

But the fact of the matter is marriage is a creation ordinance. It's for all cultures.

01:43:08

Procreation is part of the purpose of marriage. And to fly in the face of those things, particularly in matters of sexuality, is to, as I mentioned in a recent sermon series, is to enter into the holy of holies of horizontal relationships.

01:43:27

And I think that's why in Romans 1 homosexuality is not singled out in a hateful way, it's singled out in almost a symptomatic way of how the idolatry ultimately of self brings such perversion.

01:43:44

But anyway, that's about all I need to say. I'm interested in the questions that your listeners have. Well, before I even go on to that,

01:43:50

I just wanted to ask you something myself. One of the things that disturbs me about the evangelical response to the sin of homosexuality and the homosexual rights movement and so on,

01:44:07

I think that all too often, and you correct me if you think I'm wrong here, but I think that all too often evangelicals are adopting notions and even phraseology from the world when they begin to speak to those involved with homosexual activity with such love, if you will, in fact

01:44:32

I wouldn't even call it genuine love, but with such softness and kindness and compassion that they begin to buy into the idea that this is a community of people.

01:44:43

And they speak to them and about them very often as if they are an ethnic group or a nationality, just like the liberals have tried to brainwash us to believe.

01:44:55

And even sometimes when these evangelicals would say that these are sinful activities, they treat the people involved in them as if they are from a community like an ethnic group.

01:45:07

But if you could comment on that. That is, I even alluded to this last Sunday in a message, if I were a black person

01:45:14

I would resent that deeply, because what it does is it takes what is a choice, a choice in terms of one's sexuality, and equates it with something that is not a choice, a person's skin color.

01:45:27

Now there's reasons why this logic is used biblically, it's because man's mind becomes debased, he's not thinking clearly.

01:45:35

But of course this is designed so that discrimination against homosexuals can be put, however that works out, can be put on par with discrimination against blacks.

01:45:49

You know, as per, for example, the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And in saying that, I don't believe in bullying or discrimination in terms of not doing business with someone.

01:46:03

I mean, that's a big question. But you do have to respect people's consciences. But no, that is a real, if you'll allow the expression, it's just a bastardization of logic in doing that.

01:46:15

But I want to mention a book for your listeners. I just finished it today, Chris, and I can't commend it highly enough.

01:46:23

It's called Compassion Without Compromise, How the Gospel Frees Us to Love Our Gay Friends Without Losing the

01:46:30

Truth, by Adam Barr and Ron, I think you pronounce it Siplaw, C -I -T -L -A -U,

01:46:36

Compassion Without Compromise. And Chris, these two authors have done, I don't see how you could do a better job dealing with the compassion that's needed that doesn't at any point compromise the truth.

01:46:49

And in fact, the book is so good, I ordered copies for our elders to read so that we can have this just to prompt their own thinking.

01:46:58

Well, perhaps that's a guest idea for the near future. I'd recommend it.

01:47:04

One of the anonymous listeners has emailed us from Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, right in this area that the

01:47:11

Iron Sharpens Iron broadcast is emanating from. I have been married and divorced several times before becoming a born -again

01:47:23

Christian. And I could even say that all three times I was divorced, the fault was in the majority on my end through unfaithfulness and other things.

01:47:37

Now that I am a born -again believer and I'm unmarried, do I have the freedom to seek a spouse?

01:47:44

The church that I am a member of does not believe in divorce and remarriage.

01:47:49

Any comments on that? If you want to give the person my email address, my comment is maybe we better talk about that one on the phone so I can get a little more background because that's a massive question.

01:48:07

And that's like a case -by -case issue, would you say? I'm sorry? Would that be like a case -by -case situation where you'd have to...

01:48:14

Yeah, I mean, there's so many questions. And again, I put my pastor's cap on. When people have had a series of marriages that have failed, for whatever reasons, the first thing is there has to be a real evaluation, a self -evaluation, which

01:48:31

I think your listener is sensitively doing. Where did I go wrong? What happened?

01:48:37

And this kind of a thing. So that, God willing, the same mistakes won't be made again.

01:48:44

But when a person is converted and a person has worked through those issues as part of the transformation process the

01:48:51

Lord has done, is doing in the person, the principle still applies. It's not good for a person to be alone.

01:48:59

So so long as the person meets another believer, is honest with the other believer about his or her background, and I'll make a little comment on that in a little bit, and there's pastoral care in all of this.

01:49:13

No, they're free to remarry. And that, Chris, and this whole marriage -divorce issue,

01:49:20

I go back to this all the time. Baseline is the truth. It is not good for a man to be alone.

01:49:28

And with all due respect to those who hold there's no divorce and no remarriage for any reason, their argument cannot be sustained by the scriptures.

01:49:40

In Matthew 19, Jesus speaks of a divorce, and he says, you know, you are to be reconciled, but he uses the acceptive clause, except for fornication, which isn't lust.

01:49:56

It's fornication. It's an actual physical act of sexual activity, which clearly is outside the bonds of the marriage bond.

01:50:06

And that acceptive clause applies both giving a grounds for divorce, which is the main subject in view there, or, and it also applies to remarriage.

01:50:17

That's just the way the Greek language is structured. That's why Paul can say later in 1

01:50:23

Corinthians 7, you know, if you're married, you know, don't seek to be loosed, but if you're loosed, so forth, and he says, but if you've you haven't sinned.

01:50:32

And now there are cases a person, he says, needs to be unmarried. Now, that would be my main point here.

01:50:39

Whatever, you're this listener, others dealing with this, whatever they do, you've got to do this in working with the eldership of a local church that has a biblical view of marriage and divorce.

01:50:56

We've had any number of cases, Chris, in Franklin Square, where we've had to work with people who, in some cases, there's no marriage at all, and they don't think that they can get a divorce, you know, or there has been a divorce, and things haven't been handled properly.

01:51:14

I cannot overstate the importance of people in those situations working closely with an eldership in a church that has its head screwed on straight regarding the biblical view of marriage and divorce.

01:51:28

But you can feel free, if you want, to give my email address to that caller. Those things you might have to deal with more on the phone.

01:51:36

Now, do you want me to give that out privately through email myself? You can give out my email address. I don't mind.

01:51:42

You know, I've been in the pastorate all these years. I'm fair game for anybody, I guess. It's my last name,

01:51:48

Shishko, S -H -I -S -H -K -O, and then it's dot, and then the digit one.

01:51:55

This is the OPC moniker, shishko .one at O -P -C dot org, O -R -G.

01:52:00

And then I'm glad to field the questions that come in. Yes, the last anonymous listener, who is from Wyckoff, New Jersey, asks the question, is there any biblical principle that opposes an older man marrying a much younger woman of legal age?

01:52:24

I have received some very strong negative feedback from members of my church for an engagement

01:52:33

I am pursuing with a woman who is 25 years my junior. What is your advice on this situation?

01:52:42

Well, I've really been around the block a lot as a pastor. I've run into all these things. The short answer is no.

01:52:51

There is no biblical prohibition of a man and a woman getting married when there's a significant age difference.

01:53:00

But the biblical principle to count the cost is something that applies in every area, and particularly this.

01:53:09

If you have a man, we'll say, who is in his late 40s, early 50s, and has got a girl who's in her mid -20s, they have got to come to grips with what it is, quite frankly, that the woman who still is going to have strong drives and a desire to be out and about doing things may well be taking care of an invalid who is her husband.

01:53:34

Now, is that wrong? No, but they do need to consider that. The other thing, and this is a little bit more delicate,

01:53:41

I guess, marriage is never really a marriage of just two people. It is a marriage of two families, and whenever I've had to deal with that pastorally, it doesn't come up often, but sometimes it does, it's been a matter of having the family members, at least the moms and dads of the older party, but at least of the younger party, meeting and working through these issues together so there's a comfort level doing it.

01:54:08

I don't believe that a couple should get married.

01:54:13

I mean, there may be exceptions to this, but I put it this way, normally, whatever normal is,

01:54:20

I don't think a couple should get married when there's severe opposition by family members, because marriage is a marriage of two families.

01:54:29

They should take the time to work that out, but no, there is no biblical prohibition of an older man marrying a younger woman who is of legal marriage age, and vice versa.

01:54:39

Let's just count the cost. And by the way, just in case anybody's wondering about this, the only reason why

01:54:45

I'm reading City and State of Anonymous listeners is because they're providing them with the obvious intent to provide that information to listeners if they didn't put that in the email itself, it wouldn't obviously pinpoint where they were from.

01:55:03

You have childless marriages, obviously, a part of our discussion is procreation.

01:55:11

Is it ever wrong for couples that, because of medical conditions or what have you, who do not have children, is it ever wrong for them to not to seek adoption because they just don't believe that due to their careers and so on, that it would be conducive to a happy family life for these children if they were adopted?

01:55:35

You have some Christians who believe that childless couples, it's a duty of theirs to adopt if they can't procreate.

01:55:43

So if you could give your comment on that. Well, when I was in seminary, I ran into a situation that came from a hyper -Calvinistic couple that happened to be in the church that we were in, where they believed deeply that if the

01:55:57

Lord hadn't permitted that you have children, I don't know if they would have said it would be sin to adopt, but it would not be right to adopt.

01:56:06

I frankly think that argument is ludicrous. If that were the case, we'd all be going to hell because we're adopted in Christ.

01:56:15

Right, that's a weird one. This is the New York in me. Now, would it be sinful not...

01:56:21

I mean, I can't say, Chris, that would be sinful. I mean, there's a lot of issues in adoption that have to be worked through, and I'm certainly a strong proponent of couples adopting.

01:56:36

Here again, you have to ask questions, you're dealing with issues of background, what age child are you going to adopt, and so on.

01:56:43

In fact, we just a couple days ago celebrated the first birthday of a little girl who was adopted by one of our families about a year ago, and that was a thrilling thing for the church to work through that with them over many years.

01:57:00

But I would say on that issue, whenever there's childlessness, and of course then, you have to even raise the question about reproductive technologies and so on, that's a hornet's nest.

01:57:11

With an artificial insemination, you have these embryos that are fertilized, or eggs that have been fertilized, and they're in some storage center someplace, you know, what do you do with that?

01:57:22

These are things where people really need to confer with their pastor, their elders, and help them do the hard work of thinking through the issues.

01:57:30

Again, the biblical pattern of counting the cost is what they need to keep in mind.

01:57:36

Yeah, I'd like to get Nelson Klosterman on to discuss that regarding bioethics and so on.

01:57:44

Please, in a minute, if you could, just conclude the program with what you want most etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners regarding this issue.

01:57:52

Yeah, I think, Chris, going back to the creation ordinances, it's so important that we set examples.

01:57:58

A lot of Christians are like the person in Psalm 11, you know, when the foundations are destroyed, he's actually being asked here, hey, when the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?

01:58:09

Shouldn't we flee as a bird to a mountain, and so on? And see, there, that's a taunt, almost.

01:58:15

And he says, no, the Lord's testing the righteous, and he's going to bless their obedience.

01:58:21

In all of these things, certainly the sanctity of human life, man, people as people made in God's image, working hard, honoring the

01:58:30

Lord's day, and a high view of marriage and family for those who are married.

01:58:36

We've got to set examples of that in our culture and let our light so shine before others that they see our good works and glorify our

01:58:46

Father who's in heaven. Well, Bill, as always, you always amaze me how you remain within seconds of any given time frame that you're given.

01:58:56

It doesn't apply in my preaching, incidentally. I can do it on a radio show, but not in preaching.

01:59:02

I can remember you doing recordings of special Christmas broadcasts at WMCA, and the reel -to -reel would be going to date ourselves here, and without even me stopping anything, you would conclude a three -hour broadcast within five seconds or two seconds or one second every time.

01:59:23

But I thank you so much for being on the show. I hope you come back very soon. And I know that your website is opcli .org,

01:59:31

opcli .org. God bless you, Pastor Bill. And you also, Chris. God's blessing. And I hope everybody listening will always remember for the rest of their lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

01:59:40

Savior than you are a sinner. We hope you tune in tomorrow to Iron Radio. God bless.