The Scourge Of Racism
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Watching some of the many nature programs on television these days that idolatrously exalt non-sentient “mother nature” as the source cause of behavior programming in things that live on earth, I have come to appreciate and glorify the living God as a faithful Christian all the more for “His handiwork” in all of His creation (Psalm 19:1, NKJV)! That handiwork includes His programming right down into the DNA of most living things on earth. God’s will expressed from the beginning is that every living thing reproduce itself (Genesis 1:11-13, 20-31). It is so. God also programmed His reproducing creatures to act instinctively out of observable and definable roles and responsibilities.
So, for example, science has observed that certain penguins mate for life with the male and female each carrying out their separate duties while both go to get food for their offspring. How did the penguin parents know to do this and who told them they had to? Nobody; it is programmed in their genetic make up to provide food for their offspring! Human beings also have parental instincts programmed in us by God, but the difference between us and the animals is we have been given the freewill to override His genetic programming in sin and willfully rebel against His express commandments and instructions to our detriment as write I in this edited 2011 Commentary.
Originally Published October 2011
Who said it is the man and husband of the family that is responsible to provide for them? God, the Creator of man has modeled and taught so in His Word! But now, near the end of this world as we know it, many are rebelling against the instructions of God for the order of the family including a rising number of professed Christians. They treat the Bible as dated, but the declarations of worldly government officials and science worshipping professionals as sacred. They are more concerned about the world's approval than God's. As a result, their homes are as confused as those of the ungodly. Meanwhile, the wrath of the Bible's God looms on the horizon to destroy our nation and world.
In my book, The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics,1 I am led of the Lord to address the 21st century confusion on male and female roles and their responsibilities in the family. It is not a pretty picture and statistics in the book bear this out. In arrogance, sinful humanity moved by various motivations, but primarily secular humanism, feminism and sexual perversion, have sought to re-define men, women and the family. It is of pure arrogance because in anybody’s worldview, how can you improve upon perfection? God's design presented in His Word is perfect because He is the Perfect One! But these unjust gods would usurp the Almighty and create their own world (Psalm 82).
Let every professed Christian be reminded it is not the roles and responsibilities of men and women that are flawed as God designed, it is we ourselves as sinners. God has already given a helpful fix for our problem in the cross of His Son, Jesus Christ, and new birth through the Holy Spirit. Even in this we are not yet perfected on this side of Heaven. So, in great zeal to please God and do His will we intentionally labor daily in the strength He supplies to live out the roles He has assigned us. The outcome should be that every Christian man, woman and family renders a far superior portrait of God's perfect design than any of the world to His glory (Matthew 5:14-16)!2
In God's design a man is the lead provider in the family because he is so in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26a). God as the Head and Father of Adam initiated his existence and immediately provided for his needs (Genesis 2:7-10). He provided a comfortable environment and shelter, food, beauty, water as well as His up close and personal presence for relationship. Though everything grew of itself, God still made Adam Eden’s caretaker providing Him with responsible work (Genesis 2:15). After Adam fell in sin, God ordained that He should continue to work, but now, it would be harder as he would have to toil to make the earth yield its bounty (Genesis 3:17-19).
In the image and likeness of God a man as the head and father of his family works to provide for them. From Adam, men have worked to provide for their families whether it was building shelter, digging wells, farming, fishing, hunting etc. and then returned home to provide themselves. God also designed men to in general be bigger and stronger than women in order to help fulfill their historically demanding physical assignment as a provider. Indeed, the apostle Paul writes the command, "If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat," (2 Thessalonians 3:10, NKJV). Able-bodied men that sit at home idle while their wives work sin against the Lord despising His order and assignment.
The transition from an economy that was agrarian and agriculture based to one that is city, industrial and now technology driven over the past 200 hundred years has certainly been influential in giving men and women a greater diversity of work opportunities. However, God's design of their roles remains the same. Men have the lead responsibility to provide for their families. God will not be mocked nor will He allow His Word to be discarded without more than natural consequences to those who defiantly insist on destroying His design of male and female roles and their responsibilities.
Truly, the state of our economy and lack of work today is another of the many warning judgments from the Lord intended to be remedial and cause our nation to turn back to Him.3 All of our leaders in and outside of the churches need to consider the nation's greatness to this point was never a matter of so-called “exceptionalism” procured by our own wisdom and might. No, but as the song says, "God shed His grace on thee."4 Therefore, the word of the Lord to our nation is repent lest He pour out on the land the wrath that is deserved even before the time (Jeremiah 25:29-33; Luke 12:47-48)! The risen, living Christ continues His cry among American churches, "Who is on the Lord's side?"
1 Get a print copy or digital download of the book at major internet booksellers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, ChristianBooks.com and Apple (digital only). You can
also get a print copy of the book on sale in the Strong Man Store.
2 Assembled together as God’s house in local churches (Hebrews 3:1-6), the portrait of His perfect design of the family is supposed to be affirmed, not obliterated as is
taking place in clear rebellion with the world against God among many churches. Don’t these folks understand the immutable God never has and never will reward un-
faithfulness considering it blasphemy or rebellion (Ezekiel 20:27; Hebrews 3:7-19)?
3 This was originally written during the economic downturn that had begun in 2008. All such downturns should serve not only as reminders of how precarious human
economies are at any given moment, but for us to also realize it is not a sound idea to purposely offend God upon whom upturns and sustained prosperity depend
(Psalm 107:33-38).
4 Words are from the patriotic song, America The Beautiful, written first as a poem by Katharine Lee Bates in 1895 according to Wikipedia.
After He had sent the disciples of John the Baptist back to him to report what they had heard and seen Him do (Matthew 11:1-6), the Lord Jesus Christ turned to the multitudes present and asked a question that would launch His only recorded eulogy in the New Testament. He asked them once, “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?” Then, he asked twice for a total of three times, “But what did you go out to see,” (Matthew 11:7-9, NKJV)? The first two times the Lord asks the question, He purposely provides an inaccurate description of what John was all about. However, the third time He provides the accurate divine answer--the only one that ever finally matters!
So, now, in providing this opening of His eulogy for John the Baptist as a template in answer to my prayer for how to salute and bid farewell to my retiring Portland, OR friend and mentor, Dr. James Martin, Pastor of the Mt. Olivet Baptist Church for over thirty-two years, I now ask the church he served, the many who visited, heard him on the radio or saw him on television during his tenure: what did you go out to see? Certainly one will say this and another that, but I will tell you three important things I saw from a biblical worldview and intermingled with my personal experience with him for the last twenty-two years to the glory of God. I saw a Pastor/Teacher, Administrator and Visionary!
Dr. Martin is a God gifted and called Pastor/Teacher and Administrator (1 Corinthians 12:4-11, 27-30; Ephesians 4:11-16). I sought him out within the first six months of arriving in Portland to serve as a pastor in 1997 after hearing him on the radio. I had been sent from Fort Worth, Texas with the sound counsel to seek out seasoned pastors with whom I could continue my personal growth and development as well as be benefitted as a pastor in being mentored by such experienced men. Like so many others in all of the Portland/Vancouver Metropolitan area, I was blessed to my soul to hear Doc (my nickname for him) teach God’s Word with His power, clarity, directness and some humor.
As I have often reminded him over the years, God sent him here at the right time and for the right reason as a faithful teacher of His Word since this highly unchurched part of our nation was (and is) so needy spiritually. The proof is how Mt. Olivet grew from about 300 when Doc arrived in 1987 to the nearly 2,000 attending by the time I came to town. Doc made room in his very busy schedule to meet with and welcome me over lunch after I called his office to request an appointment. That first lunch led to us meeting monthly when he was in town over the next twenty years. It turns out, he had been seeking opportunities to help other willing pastors and I knew God was at work.
Besides being a caring shepherd with an emphasis on teaching God’s flock, Doc’s gift of administration was abundantly evident too. I watched him adapt and expand the church’s organizational units to accommodate its growing services, ministries and activities especially when it became “one church in two locations.” During this busy time of expansion, Doc also kept a place in his schedule for me and a couple of other pastors on occasion that met with us--most deeply missed now is the positive interactions he and I shared with Pastor Terry Treadwell who departed to the Lord. Doc also led Mt. Olivet to help our church with building repairs, finances, worship and pulpit supply.
Finally, as a God enabled Visionary, Doc led Mt. Olivet from their original typical church building to purchase an old store and wrestling arena in North Portland to transform into a functional worship, educational and fellowship campus; a suburban storefront into a combination worship center with education, office and recreation space as a second campus. While doing those things, he led the church to plant other churches and send out missionaries to fulfill his commitment to the Lord’s Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). To this end as well, with his leading the church supported this Ministry in conducting the Strong Man Of God Rally in Oregon and Washington men’s prisons and was the first church in 2011 to host a signing for my book, The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics.1
Though our relationship started professionally, Doc and I became friends in the process. We held each other accountable in our personal walk, family life, ministries and doctrine with only a few disagreements. His enduring legacy with me is having helped me to be a better husband and father which I acknowledge in my book. My wife, Mary, and I also enjoyed the fellowship we had with Doc and his wife, Lynetta, out to lunch or dinner in their home (we had some great Thanksgivings at the Martin’s). What did you go out to see? To the glory of God, I with heavy heart, love and gratitude salute and bid farewell to a gifted Pastor/Teacher, Administrator, Visionary, brother, mentor and dear friend in Christ; wishing him all of the best going into his retirement from Mt. Olivet.
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