The inspired American Constitution

I was speaking to one of my neighbors recently who is also a fellow believer and we were discussing the election and things to come when he asked me if I believed God was involved in the framing of our Constitution. I told him “NO” I did not believe that but that it was solely the work of men who were merely wanting freedom from tyranny and the right to govern themselves. Did faith play a part? For many personal faith played into their actions, for others it was purely political and like many of our politicians today they just threw God into the mix to sway the masses and make it sound like a divine calling.

There is only one divinely inspired text and that is the Bible. To try and claim that for any other text of man is to place that document on the same level as the Bible. America is not God’s other promised land nor are Americans God’s new nation of chosen people. We are proving that everyday in our churches where men and women called out to serve and live for him do everything but as they strive to enjoy all that this world has to offer and bring shame to the name of Jesus Christ.

We worry more about homosexuals being allowed to marry than we do about Christian couples vowing to remain married. We speak out against abortion as we take our own daughters in secret or force marriages that should never be just to save face. We throw money at problems in our society instead of giving ourselves. And most of us today don’t even know the people living in the same neighborhood who need Christ and someone to care when their lives are turning upside down and the pain is more than they can bear. Most Christians today can do nothing to solve these problems because their living right in the middle of it also with the same lack of faith and loss of hope because they don’t really know the Lord that saved them.

We need to quit worrying about being American citizens and start living like Heaven's citizens being more concerned with living under God’s grace and guidance in our nation and quit trying to make this nation heaven on earth by thinking we can legislate righteousness to a corrupt world. It’s not going to happen, change only comes as God is invited into a life and given opportunity to initiate that change and make it permanent. We change the world ‘One life at a time“ not ”One law at a time“.

Pastor Dennis Miller
The Orchard

I Support President Elect Barak Obama

Yes, brothers and sisters, I support our next president with my prayers for him that as God’s appointed leader of this nation he will be receptive to God’s voice and the leading of the Holy Spirit and act in a way that brings righteousness, peace and unity to our nation in a time of great turmoil. I encourage you to join me in this support and be obedient to God’s will for us.

Pastor Dennis Miller
The Orchard

What constitutes a marriage in God's eyes?

I had a discussion recently with an individual concerning a couple who considered themselves married but had never obtained a license from the state or performed a ceremony before a civil or religious authority. They had been co-habitating for several years and even had children together. I stated that these individuals were living in sin because they had never been legally married. His response to me was, “Why do I judge them to be in sin just because they haven’t gotten a license from the state or had a wedding ceremony, Where does the Bible say they have to have these to be considered husband and wife or married?”

Well, being from the old school as I am, I just gave him the status quo response that I had always been taught and believed but as I pondered it myself after we parted I realized I didn’t have a good biblical background for my beliefs on the subject either. As I got into a study of marriage in the bible and researched resources on the subject, both biblical in nature and historical, I found my ground was even more shaky. The following is from the text “Ethics for a Brave New World” pg. 301.

BIBLICALLY, WHAT CONSTITUTES A MARRIAGE?

Though Paul teaches about Christian marriage (Ephesians 5), he focuses more on how husbands and wives should relate to one another than on what forms a marriage. Thus, this question seems best answered by appeal to the creation ordinances in Genesis 2. Genesis 2 shows that marriage is God’s idea (2:18). After God created the world and the first man, he decided man should not be alone. God created the animals, and Adam named them, but none was suitable as a helper for Adam (2:19–20). God then created Eve from Adam and brought her to him (2:21–22). Verse 23 records Adam’s words of recognition that she was the one suitable to be his helper. The passage ends (v. 24) by setting forth the elements that go into making a marriage in God’s eye.

Verse 24 states that because ( “for this reason”) a man recognizes a particular woman as suitable to be his mate, he leaves father and mother. The word for leave (’āzab) is a very strong word that means more than simple departure. It means “to forsake, leave destitute, or refuse.” The idea is not that a husband and wife no longer can have any relationship with their parents. Rather, they recognize that their relationship to one another must have priority over all other ties. It is in this sense that they forsake or leave their parents.

Marriage also involves a cleaving to one’s mate. The word for cleave (dābaq) means “to cling to, remain close, adhere, be glued firmly.” In this verse it means that once parents are forsaken, the man will not soon return to them. He will stay with his wife and direct his affection and attention to her. She will do the same to him. When the ideas of forsaking and clinging are taken together, it becomes clear that marriage amounts to each partner committing his/her life to the other. It is a pledge to emphasize one’s mate as paramount beyond all other relations (forsaking) and to remain faithful to (cling to) him/her.

The verse concludes by saying they will become one flesh. This speaks of union. The point is not that now there is only one person. Eve still had her own body and mind, as did Adam. Likewise, the phrase is not merely a reference to the sexual union of the partners. Surely, the phrase refers to the sex act, but the context demands that it mean more. We believe the phrase is a metaphor meant to signify the bonding or uniting of the two as a married couple. The sex act outwardly and physically points to the bond that has been created. Some argue that the phrase also signifies the creation of kinship or blood relation (cf. Gen 29:12–14; 37:27; Judg 9:2; 2 Sam 19:13).7

How is this union brought about? It comes into being as a result of two factors. The first is the commitment of life to one another, signified by the forsaking and cleaving of the partners to one another. The second is an act of God constituting or uniting them together. Jesus’command in Matt 19:6 not to put asunder those whom God has joined emphasizes the divine element in establishing the bond.

In my studies of the historical view of marriage I have also found evidence that before the middle ages most legal marriages were either arranged or of mutual consent whereby two individuals, male and female, agreed to a union of marriage and thus became man and wife. There was no secular or religious authority that had to give approval, and the only thing that might be considered equivalent to our contemporary wedding ceremony was the cultural celebrations that might accompany the joining of a man and woman as husband and wife and would sometimes last for days. It wasn’t until the Catholic church attempted to institute the rite of marriage under their authority that the question of legality and recognition before God and the State came into play. Even after this many of the reformers and protestant churches considered marriage to be a secular decision apart from church doctrine or sanction while others felt the clergy were the only ones who could establish a covenant of marriage before God and the Church.

So, I pose the question to those who are much more learned than myself, what constitutes a biblical marriage in our day and is civil license and/or secular/religious ceremony necessary for two people to consider themselves man and wife in covenant relationship with God?

LOGOS BIBLE SOFTWARE FOR MAC

Got the word today that LOGOS bible software for Mac users is now on sale at pre-pub prices. I have been using the Beta version for the last month and have been very pleased with it. I have used LOGOS for Windows for many years and even have it install with Windows on my macbook and it worked seamlessly in parallels while I ran it in XP and put my notes together in Pages on the OSx side. LOGOS was the main reason I installed XP on my mac so to have it natively in OSx will give me less reasons to have to use windows which is just fine with me. The mac version uses the same library files so there is no reason for owners of the Windows version to re-purchase existing library’s. The product should be shipping in time for Christmas. Click the link below to see a demo of LOGOS for Mac and the pre-pub special pricing.

www.MacBibleSoftware.com

Jesus is now considered distracting to America's School Children.

I found this article on foxnews.com and thought it was interesting in light of some other news I heard from a friend who drives and school bus in our area. How many more ways can these public schools find to censor or discriminate against the Christian faith? It has always amazed me that those who cry the loudest against censorship and for diversity are the greatest offenders of both. Why is it that Christianity is being censored from the public arena and not treated with the same diversity as everything else? Sin is actually promoted and justified as acceptable in our society today as we are told, sometimes even coerced by companies and educational institutions, to be diverse and tolerant towards all, all that is except Christians. The article below is a good example of what I am talking about. Notice the comment by the Superintendent.

Eighth-Grade Boy Sent Home From School for Jesus Christ Halloween Costume

Saturday, November 01, 2008

PARAMUS, N.J. —  Dressing up as Jesus Christ for Halloween turned out to be a problem for a northern New Jersey boy.

Alex Woinski, an eighth-grader at West Brook Middle School in Paramus, was sent home from school on Friday because of his costume.
Alex, who has shoulder-length brown hair, wore a white robe, a red sash, sandals, a fake beard and a crown of thorns.
His mother says Alex was told he could keep the costume on if he removed the beard and crown of thorns, but he declined.

Superintendent James Montesano says the district doesn't want students wearing costumes that could be distracting.

Alex's mother is Catholic, and his father is Jewish.
He recently celebrated his Bar Mitzvah and is studying Bible scripture, according to his mom.

Think about this holiday and what you’ve seen advertised for costumes, sexy nurses, exotic dancers, etc, or what you have seen others wearing, witches, vampires, horror characters, and tell me what your definition of distracting is. A neighbor of mine who drives a bus for our school district told me that on Halloween two of his fellow drivers drove their buses dressed as a pimp (man) and the other as a hooker (woman). Do you really think that school age children need to see adults dressed like that. The woman was distracting to my christian friend who told me this woman was a Pentecostal who would normally not even wear pants but came dressed up in a short skirt and revealing blouse that offended him terribly. What do you think these kids thought, would that be considered distracting to them also How about all the witches, vampires, freddie kruger’s, etc. that showed up for school, are any of those distracting? No, but let a kid show up as Jesus or any character with a Christian theme and watch them be censored and sent home as distracting.

My friends, this does not surprise me for we are told that we can expect this kind of activity and the closer we get to Christ’s return the more intense it will become. We must remember that this world is not our home and we are but aliens and strangers here. We must continue to lift the banner of Christ as long as we can and be willing to be persecuted and even die for the Gospel. They might be able to keep our prayers and our costumes out of their classrooms but they can never keep the real person of Jesus out of anywhere his faithful are present as long as we are willing to lift up his name despite the resistance we meet.