Yesterday, Sunday, September 26, 2010, I preached from Hebrews 11:7 about Noah.

"7 By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith." - Hbr 11:7 NASB

In the sermon I dealt with the foreshortened version of the story of Noah by skipping some of the verses of the lengthy story of Noah as found in Genesis 6.  In the process I deal with the various appearances of Noah in the New Testament, and how 1 Peter 3 used the Noah narrative, and how Jesus used it in Matthew 24 saying:

"38 "For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, 39 and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be." - Mat 24:38-39 NASB

From Ezekiel I showed how that "even though Noah, Daniel and Job were in its midst, as I live," declares the Lord GOD, "they could not deliver either their son or their daughter. They would deliver only themselves by their righteousness."" - Eze 14:20 NASB  Noah could only save himself, if he could save anyone (which he could not do).

What I did not address, or even mention, was Genesis 9:

"20 Then Noah began farming and planted a vineyard. 21 He drank of the wine and became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent." - Gen 9:20-21 NASB

Noah, God's man for his age,

Noah the preacher,

righteous Noah, got drunk! 

Not only that, but in his drunken state he laid about in his tent naked

and his nakedness was exposed to his sons! 

This drunken state was not incidental, Noah had to take specific actions to achieve the state of drunkenness: he had to plant a vineyard, harvest the grapes, press them out, ferment the juice, bottle it (or rather skin it, putting it into wineskins), and drink to the point of inebriation.  He could have prevented the state of drunkenness at any of several points, but he did not do so. Be very careful Christian, for even the best of us can be taken in sinful behavior.

A little over a year ago I replied to a conversation about the place of tradition in the Christian church.

I see that the question has been resurrected in my Xanga community, so (forgive me) I am reposting my article from last year.

Sola Scriptura or Scripture + Tradition?

Of the 16 occurrences of “tradition” or “traditions” in the NASB Bible, all but three of them are negative in tone or meaning.  The three that are positive point to the tradition received from the Apostles by word of mouth (orally) or in writing (Scripture).  Just in case you are interested, here are those verses. If not, please skip below them to read the rest of this posting.

Isa 29:13 NASB - "Then the Lord said, "Because this people draw near with their words And honor Me with their lip service, But they remove their hearts far from Me, And their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned {by rote,}"

Mat 15:2 NASB - ""Why do Your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.""

Mat 15:3 NASB - "And He answered and said to them, "Why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?"

Mat 15:6 NASB - "he is not to honor his father or his mother.' And {by this} you invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition."

Mar 7:3 NASB - "(For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands, {thus} observing the traditions of the elders;"

Mar 7:5 NASB - "The Pharisees and the scribes asked Him, "Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with impure hands?""

Mar 7:8 NASB - ""Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.""

Mar 7:9 NASB - "He was also saying to them, "You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition."

Mar 7:13 NASB - "{thus} invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that.""

1Cr 11:2 NASB - "Now I praise you because you remember me in everything and hold firmly to the traditions, just as I delivered them to you."

Gal 1:14 NASB - "and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions."

Col 2:8 NASB - "See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ."

2Th 2:15 NASB - "So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word {of mouth} or by letter from us."

2Th 3:6 NASB - "Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from every brother who leads an unruly life and not according to the tradition which you received from us."

What tradition did Paul advocate?  That which he passed on to the churches verbally in person, or in his absence in writing?  Sadly, we have very little of Paul’s oral “tradition,” but we have a great deal of his written tradition: most of the NT epistles.  Paul summarized that tradition in this: 1 Cor 15:1-5 NASB - Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

In 1 Cor 11, Paul also says that he received the instruction for the Lord’s Supper (Communion, Eucharist, whatever your tradition calls it), from the Lord Jesus; but even the details for that are sparse enough to accommodate most forms observed by the church catholic (small “c” on purpose).

The problem with tradition comes in the changing of times.  For instance, once upon a time an American woman would never allow her ankles to show below her dress; now, even 'Christian' women think nothing of flashing their cleavage about to anyone willing to look (contra 1 Tim 2:9 NASB - "Likewise, {I want} women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, … ,").  Among Roman Catholics it has been in my lifetime (Vatican II, 1962 - 1965) that the tradition of the Latin Mass was replaced with the vernacular mass, among other things.  Then, the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Assumption of Mary became elevated from long held informal tradition to official Church dogma by a Papal Bull.  This doctrine was dogmatically and infallibly defined by Pope Pius XII on November 1, 1950, in his Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus.   I have also heard some Roman Catholics argue that we would not even have a canon of Scripture if it were not for the bishops of the Church getting together to hash out the content of the canon, thus the Scriptures as we know them would not exist if not for the work of the traditions of the church.  I also have heard that the Roman Catholic Church teaches that the blood of Jesus which washes away the sins of the world flows through the fingers of Mary; can anyone verify that for me?

In my own denomination (SBC) the tradition of not ordaining women is being challenged; partly by liberal feminism (boo - hiss) and partly because the teaching of Paul in the NT, especially 1 Tim 2:12  "But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet," is not in line with the practices described in the NT, especially Acts 21:9 where the four daughters of Philip the evangelist are described as "prophetesses," προφητεύουσαι.  This "Philip the Evangelist" was the deacon that had lead the Ethiopian eunuch to the Lord and baptized him along the Gaza road, (BTW, without specific authority from any church, but following the instructions of Jesus in Matt. 28:18-20).  By the time Paul wrote Romans, the office of ‘Deacon’ was an established office of the church; Paul described Phoebe with that title in Romans 16:2, διάκονον.  We Baptists must be careful to not allow liberal readings and exegesis of the Bible to infiltrate through this argument into the hermeneutics we practice, even though that would make it easier to make the case for ordaining women.  There is work yet to be done in the exegesis of the passages, and we must be careful not to practice eisegesis, in support of traditions either new or old.

The elder’s tradition was condemned by Jesus because it negated God’s Law; God condemned the traditions of Isaiah’s time because the tradition had become rote, and the rote tradition had become traditional ritual; and, Paul condemned the traditions of men because they negated the Gospel he had received from Jesus and had passed on to the churches.  So we see the problem with tradition as a source of authority.

In matters of faith, the only reliable remaining source of authority in the faith once received is Scripture, thus Sola Scriptura.  Tradition, as we have seen, is subject to change.  Scripture does not change.  We need to compare Scripture with Scripture, and be informed by the best and the brightest scholars and holy men of God from the Scriptures.   In this we need to be like the noble Bereans: Acts 17:10-11 - "The brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. 11 Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily {to see} whether these things were so."  Why did the "noble-minded" Bereans not consult with the traditions of either men or the church?  They took their authority from the Scriptures!

²⁶ For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, ^{27 but a certain terrifying expectation of judgment, and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries.}

³¹ It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

(Heb 10:26-27, 31 NAS)

How does one preach a sermon on sin from this text when there is serious, known but unconfessed sin in the membership?

You don't get specific with names or personalities or events, but you address the text faithfully and straightforward.

Then you come to Hebrews 11:7

By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. (Heb 11:7 NAS)

²⁰ who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water. ²¹ And corresponding to that, baptism now saves you-- not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience-- through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, (1Pe 3:20-21 NAS)

So, does baptism save one? Or is baptism the result of the appeal of a good conscience toward God, the new believers’ first obedience in faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ?

Shmuel Goldin, Unlocking the Torah Text; An In-Depth Journey into the Weekly Parsha, Gefen Publishing House, Jerusalem, 2010, Hardcover, 284 pp.  ISBN: 978-965-229-450-0l $29.95

[rate: 4 of 5]

This book is the third volume of a growing Jewish commentary set by the author, Shmuel Goldin.   This volume was written with the partnership of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, and it carries the Imprimatur of the OU.  This Imprimatur gives it the weight of the commanding right of that Congregation as authoritative.

Disclaimers are an intrusion, but necessary part of any book review; and here is mine.  I come to this reading and review as a conservative Southern Baptist pastor, and not as an unobjective reader or Jewish observant.  I still found certain points in common between us.

I am glad to see several things in Rav Goldin’s writing. First, he wrote as a Rabbi in his congregation, both locally and within his Congregation; this makes it useful to me as a preacher. Second, he held a high view of Torah’s authority as having Divine authorship; he perceived Torah as truth with real events “that happened to real people,” and their stories “are not fables.”  This was a welcome discovery in his stated approach and a welcome observation in his writing.  Third, “No part of the text or is contents are off-limits to our search.”  Rav Goldin allowed the text to carry its own argument.  And, finally, he dealt with the straightforward explanation of the text, and also with the commentaries on the text.[1] Because of his approach to the text, there is a common conservatism that obviates the need to reprove the author for dealing falsely with the Word of God.

The book used a series of Hebraisms in its text without explanation: Vayikra, korbanot, Bereishit, Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yakkov, pshat, smicha, and others.  I was able to get a general meaning of these names and words from the context, others were revealed from dictionaries.  This indicated to me that although the book was written in English, it was written for an audience educated in Judaism, but not the Hebrew language.  The only Hebrew was in the chapter titles, the rest of the Yiddish and Hebrew words were transliterated into English.

Rav Goldin’s dealing with the difficulty of the text at even the sentence level was worthy of a scholar.  He addressed singulars and plurals, and redundancy of the wording in the text as he dealt with the meaning of the words and the context they formed.  The effect of the wording on the meaning of the text was thus demonstrated.

Each chapter had portions titled as Context, Questions, Approaches, and Points to Ponder.  Each chapter also had interesting titles that drew the reader into the text to interact with it, “The Anatomy of a Sentence,” “Only a Mistake?,” “The Leadership Quandary,” and so forth.  The author related a personal story in the “Points to Ponder” closing of the first chapter that was revealing of his view of and relationship to Christians.  In telling about a meeting with a group of Korean Christian pastors many years ago, he referred to them as Fundamentalist Christian pastors, implying that he is not a Fundamentalist Jew.  Rav Goldin acknowledged Judaism’s fundamental problem, but did not answer it: the loss of the sacrificial system with the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD.  Rav Goldin correctly stated the doctrinal position of the pastors as the atoning plenary substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus (though he did not use those words), but dismissed their answers to his problem by directing them to the educational and symbolic nature of the sacrificial system.  Still, he did acknowledge that the restoration of the Temple and the sacrificial system as central in many of the prayers of his Congregation(s).  He then wondered if the members of his synagogue would have been able to answer the pastor’s questions.

The author included twenty-nine pages of “Sources,” in which he explains who the authorities he cited were and their contribution to the work.  There was also a nine page index to the text which allows the reader to locate topics across the chapters.  There was not, however, a traditional scholarly bibliography, or end notes, or footnotes.  If there were one thing I could recommend to the author, it would be these scholarly tools.  Not as important, but a welcome addition, would be the addition of a readers ribbon so readers could easily mark where they left off reading.

I hope to secure the first two volumes written by Rabbi Shmuel Goldin for myself, they will be valuable additions to my personal pastoral library.

Amy Gopp, Christian Piatt, Brandon Gilvin, Editors  Split Ticket, Independent Faith in a Time of Partisan Politics, Chalice Press, 2010, 184 pp.

Split Ticket presents itself as a collection of short essays on political and social issues from a balanced point of view, an “Independent Faith in a Time of Partisan Politics.”  Considering the timeliness of the issues addressed in this book, I had high expectations for Split Ticket, and I was interested to see how the current political issues would be presented.  After reading the book, I now know that Split Ticket is not a book I will I keep in my own library nor will I donate it to any library.  From the title and artwork, to the blurbs on the back cover, the book indicates that the old political and religious categories were going to be dismissed. Instead of the old categories, ideas would be presented fairly and thoughtfully, in a healing way, uniting not dividing.  What I found instead was a road map for adopting ideas and practices from the extreme left viewpoint.  Every liberal position in politics and theology are adopted in this book, and conservative positions were ignored or mocked.  Indeed “fundamentalist” and “literalist” are used by the authors, and allowed by the editors, as terms of derision.

For instance, contributors Brian Dixon, “pastor of the only affirming Baptist church in San Francisco” (page 181), and Mary Sue Brookshire, United Church of Christ minister, wrote in the second chapter that they grew up in Southern Baptist (SBC) churches, and the writers implied by silence that their SBC churches, and the SBC at large, endorsed Dixon’s homosexuality.  Dixon stated that his seminary accepted and approved of his homosexuality, without naming the seminary, thus implying that it was a SBC seminary.  This attempts to co-opt the actual positions that individual churches, and the SBC at large, have taken on the issue of gay pastors.  This also ignores SBC ecclesiology.  The SBC does not set policy for individual churches; the individual SBC churches are autonomous and democratically govern themselves, as opposed to the ecclesiology of other denominations.

Amy Gopp, executive director of Week of Compassion, wrote in the third chapter, “It doesn’t matter what is true.  What matters is the meaning we make, the meaning we come to construct.  I don’t care if Jesus was raised from the dead. I don’t care!” (pg. 29).  This denies the first and most basic tenant of Christianity (1 Cor 15:3-4).  In the next paragraph she wrote, “Literalism or fundamentalism cannot take away the meaning we make of the biblical text, the stories that breathe life into our suffocating existence.”  (pg. 29).  Gopp thereby threw away objective and propositional truth, and applied a reader hermeneutic for Scripture.  Actually, that attitude explains a lot about Split Ticket, where truth is what the individual constructs for himself or herself, instead of truth having integral meaning.  In this construct, Scripture only means what the contributor wants it to mean, the meaning they have pre-decided.  With that hermeneutic, there is no such thing as “sin;” and “right” and “wrong” are decided individually, without meaning.  Truth is thereby reduced to the feelings of the individual and the circumstances of the political moment.  But this is not the only problem with this book.

In the fourth chapter, contributor David Ball, self-identified himself as “a Christian anarchist” (page 41).   Ball used Jeremiah 31:28 to justify anarchist positions and actions, but in clear contradiction of the plain teachings of Paul that God is the God of order: “But all things must be done properly and in an orderly manner,” (1 Corinthians 14:40 NAU).  His objections were political, not theological: objections to Western democracy couched in quasi-theological language.  Ball also misrepresented recent history, saying that the Quebec 2001 demonstrations against the NAFTA treaty were peaceful on the side of the demonstrators and violent on the side of the governments represented in the negotiations.  This is demonstrably wrong; the violence at all of the G8, G12, and G20 meetings, including the one at the Quebec meeting, began with anarchists destroying property and causing millions of dollars of property damage, resulting in violence on both sides and the arrest of many.  This violence was unjustifiable for a Christian, anarchist or not.

I say this because in the face of violent state sponsored and conducted persecution, Peter and Paul and the other New Testament writers enjoined Christians to be subject to the state. Indeed, in Mark 12:17 we read “And Jesus said to them, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.’ And they were amazed at Him.”  This refutes anarchism! 

In the fifth chapter, contributor Kharma R. Ramos, D.Min., pastor of Metropolitan Community Church of Northern Virginia, took up a wide range of LGBT issues from a politically correct viewpoint, ignoring the revealed will of God concerning those behaviors.  Ramos failed to address the Scriptural positions on LGBT behaviors, and assumed their rightness without discussion.  In contrast, Jesus was compassionate toward the sinners he encountered, as in the Gospel of John: “And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you; go your way. From now on sin no more,’” (John 8:11).  Endorsement of Ramos’ LGBT answers rob them of real solutions though repentance and forgiveness.

The book continued in this vein for fourteen more chapters, too much to address in a book review.  Split Ticket was not split on any ticket, but uniformly on the far left in presenting every issue and question.  Split Ticket advocated each of the individual causes of liberalism that unify the left branch of American politics, even though some of their issues are self-contradictory.  The split in this short volume was entirely against societal norms, and for agendas that are destructive of families and 5,000 years of society and faith, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian.

Split Ticket denied the existence of discoverable objective truth, denied the existence of Truth, instead advocating for subjective truth that changes as societal norms change.  For the politically progressive, Split Ticket should be encouraging: it gives a religious cloak to far left positions.  For the politically and religiously conservative person, this book is a rehash of everything conservatism has stood against.  Although Jesus was concerned about social, economic, and religious justice, they are not the Gospel, but the righteous outcome for those who follow the Bible as received.

The book is visually packaged for high school and college students with callouts, pre-printed marginalia, study questions, and an edgy graphic design.  The re-occurring leit motif sets the tone for the work.  The editors used the question “WTF?” in every chapter, knowing how controversial and objectionably shocking that phrase is in common culture, reassigning it’s meaning to “Where’s the Faith?”  Shock for shock value alone seems to have motivated the use of “WTF,” and the book’s false objectivity is dressed for a population that is formulating their worldviews in a very impressionable time of life.

This was, to my knowledge, the first time I read a book from Chalice Press; I was not favorably impressed.  Chalice Press has their work cut out for them if they expect this reviewer to purchase their books or render favorable reviews in the future.

Timothy Mills

Pastor, Whitton Baptist Church

Tyronza, AR 72386

www.xanga.com/temsmail

Mid America Baptist Theological Seminary, 2000 Alum

Sep 22, 2010