Not Silenced

As Paul affirmed God's call upon his life for the ministry in 1st Timothy chapter 1, and he talked about the power of the law to identify and convict sin.  As he wrote in Galatians, the law is to be used as a tutor, a tool, to bring people to Christ.  Here is a passage from the 1st chapter of 1st Timothy:

8 But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully,
9 knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers,
10 for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine,
11 according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust.
12 And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has enabled me, because He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry...

Here, Paul gives a list of sins, actions that violate the heart of God - these have been identified as behaviors that are contrary to God's laws.  We can be thankful that God has given His commandments - He has shown us that we are sinners, but He doesn't want to leave us in that state - He wants to pour out His righteousness in our hearts.  Paul boldly declared God's truth about sin, and we have the call on our lives to speak, to declare, the heart of God - in love, identifying those ways that do not please Him and proclaiming Jesus as the answer.

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The Bible instructs us that we are to grow spiritually and to live and love boldly in Christ. Here are some verses from Ephesians 4:
14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting,
15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head--Christ--
16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

Pastor Jim Garlow of Skyline Wesleyan Church in the San Diego, heard weekday mornings on The Garlow Perspective on Faith Radio, stood in his pulpit 2 Sundays ago, holding the Supreme Court decision supporting homosexual marriage in one hand and the Bible in the other, according to a Christian Examiner report, which referred to a video on the Vimeo website.  Garlow declared, "This happens to be one of those times you will make a choice. I made my choice," as he tossed the decision to the floor and holding the Bible high. This is Who I stand with, not this, and I encourage all to do that same, in the time in which we live."

The same article mentioned Liberty Counsel's admonition for pastors to participate in a "Declaration of Dependence," a dependence on Almighty God, during their sermons on July 5.  Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver, along with Rick Scarborough and James Dobson, were the leading presenters of a pledge a few months ago, a Pledge in Solidarity to Defend Marriage, which included these words:

The Supreme Court was wrong when it denied Dred Scott his rights and said, “blacks are inferior human beings.” And the Court was wrong when Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in Buck v. Bell, “three generations of imbeciles are enough,” thus upholding Virginia’s eugenics law that permitted forced sterilization. Shamefully, that decision was cited during the Nuremburg trials to support the Nazi eugenic holocaust.

In these earlier cases, the definition of “human” was at issue. Now the definition of “marriage” is at issue. The Constitution does not grant a right to redefine marriage — which is nonsensical since marriage intrinsically involves a man and a woman. Nor does the Constitution prohibit states from affirming the natural created order of male and female joined together in marriage.

We will view any decision by the Supreme Court or any court the same way history views the Dred Scott and Buck v. Bell decisions. Our highest respect for the rule of law requires that we not respect an unjust law that directly conflicts with higher law. A decision purporting to redefine marriage flies in the face of the Constitution and is contrary to the natural created order. As people of faith we pledge obedience to our Creator when the State directly conflicts with higher law. We respectfully warn the Supreme Court not to cross this line.

On the day of the marriage ruling, Here We Stand: An Evangelical Declaration on Marriage was released by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.  It was affirmed by some 100 Christian leaders.  According to a piece on the Christianity Today website, it opened by stating:

As evangelical Christians, we dissent from the court’s ruling that redefines marriage. The state did not create the family, and should not try to recreate the family in its own image. We will not capitulate on marriage because biblical authority requires that we cannot. The outcome of the Supreme Court’s ruling to redefine marriage represents what seems like the result of a half-century of witnessing marriage’s decline through divorce, cohabitation, and a worldview of almost limitless sexual freedom. The Supreme Court’s actions pose incalculable risks to an already volatile social fabric by alienating those whose beliefs about marriage are motivated by deep biblical convictions and concern for the common good.

The church is speaking - is culture listening?

The Oregon bakers who have been ordered to pay $135,000 to a lesbian couple whose wedding ceremony they decided not to participate in, have now been ordered to be silent.  The Daily Signal reports on this astonishing development, saying that:

Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian finalized a preliminary ruling today ordering Aaron and Melissa Klein, the bakers who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, to pay $135,000 in emotional damages to the couple they denied service.

“This case is not about a wedding cake or a marriage,” Avakian wrote. “It is about a business’s refusal to serve someone because of their sexual orientation. Under Oregon law, that is illegal.”

In the ruling, Avakian placed an effective gag order on the Kleins, ordering them to “cease and desist” from speaking publicly about not wanting to bake cakes for same-sex weddings based on their Christian beliefs.

“This effectively strips us of all our First Amendment rights,” the Kleins, owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, which has since closed, wrote on their Facebook page. “According to the state of Oregon we neither have freedom of religion or freedom of speech.”

Their Facebook page continues, "We will NOT give up this fight, and we will NOT be silenced. We stand for God's truth, God's word and freedom for ALL americans. We are here to obey God not man, and we will not conform to this world. If we were to lose everything it would be totally worth it for our Lord who gave his one and only son, Jesus, for us! God will win this fight!"

Not silenced.

For pastors who are called to speak truth and may face attempts to force them to accept same-sex marriage and perform so-called "marriage" ceremonies for gay couples, for business owners who may face attempts to force them to perform services for wedding ceremonies with which they disagree, for probate judges who have faced pressure to issue licenses that violate their core beliefs, and more...for you and me - we will have choices to make.  It's important that we make up our minds to speak God's truth, with love, in conviction, and to stand for His principles.   God is calling us to be people of conviction, living out our faith in difficult circumstances, as a witness to the world.