Happy Friday

The mission of the church [repost]

Check out this definition of the church’s mission.

‘The Church’s commission, which is the foundation of its freedom, consists in this: in Christ’s stead, and so in the service of his own Word and work, to deliver to all people, through preaching and sacrament, the message of the free grace of God.’

That’s it.  That’s the mission of the church.  Proclamation.

Now, without cheating, see if you can guess where this comes from.  And when.

Any guesses?

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Well maybe you think these are the words of some one-eyed fundamentalist, divorced from any pressing social or political needs.  Perhaps you think this definition represent a cowardly retreat from the social and political realities of the day?

Well the year was 1934, the place was Germany and this is article 6 of the Barmen Declaration - the document that founded the German Confessing Church.

And into that context, this determination to view the church’s mission simply as gospel proclamation proved to be the most provocative political challenge possible.  This is precisely because it refuses to engage with the world on its own terms.  The Nazis are confronted because the Confessing Church occupies itself with its one true Fuhrer (Christ), its one true Reich (God’s Kingdom) and its one true commission: delivering ‘the message of the free grace of God’.  Far from creating an ‘ecclesiastical ghetto’ for the Confessing Christians, this single-minded determination to let the Gospel set the agenda for the Church brings it into its most significant contact with the surrounding culture.

Barmen is profoundly political.  But it is so by refusing any other agenda but the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Nothing could be more explosive.

A few years later, Karl Barth (who authored Barmen) was back in his native Switzerland.  (Interestingly it was his lectures on preaching that were the last straw for the Nazis, the Gestapo bursting in and forcibly deporting him.  Apparently his last words to his students on the train platform was the admonition: “Exegesis, exegesis, exegesis!”)  Anway, a young pastor from Brandenburg wrote to him in distress.  He had been sacked after preaching against Mein Kampf from the pulpit.  The pastor expected sympathy.  Instead Barth replied that the pastor had made a “decisive mistake”:

Your job, when you stand in the pulpit, is to again make well the sick church of Germany.  That can be done only by the Word alone.  You are to serve that Word and no other.  But you can’t do that if you seize on Mein Kampf… Was it not a shame, each minute that you wasted with this book instead of reading the Bible?   (William Willimon, Conversations with Barth on Preaching, p248-249)

Interesting huh?

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More help with talks please

Last time I asked for help I got some real pearls. Here are some more talks I’m giving in the next few weeks. Any help with passages and points?

* Who is Jesus – Liar, Lunatic or Lord?

* What would Jesus say about homosexuality?

* Do Christians believe in three gods? (Inviting the Islamic society to this one)

* A short talk in the middle of a pub quiz.

Faith Alone Sermon – Ephesians 2:1-10

Faith doesn’t  twist God’s arm

Faith is the realisation His arms are open to you.

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“A universe with a god would look very different to a universe without one.”

“A universe with a god would look very different to a universe without one.” Richard Dawkins.

It’s one of the wisest things Dawkins has ever said. Believers and unbelievers alike should take heed.

Let’s tease out some implications of it.

1) Dawkins clearly has a doctrine of “god” in mind as he makes the statement.  The flying spaghetti monster wouldn’t affect the kind of universe we inhabit.  But Thor might.  Allah in a different way.  And the triune God, different again.  Therefore it’s not a straight binary choice.

2)  I would look different depending on the existence of God or not.  Dawkins seems to imagine two states (a theistic and an atheistic universe) as alternatives lying before him.  And who is the great unmoved mover in this scenario?  Who is the neutral observer, the one enthroned above all worlds?  The scientist!  But no, Dawkins’ thought experiment – if it takes the word “God” with any seriousness – is one in which everything must be re-imagined.  If I am a creature, made by the Father’s Word, intended for life in communion with God, then everything changes for me.

3) I would look differently depending on the existence of God or not.  If I was a creature of the Word, and if the world  is a creature of the same Word, I would look through the lens of His Word.  I would see all things in relationship to Christ the Creator.  That would simply be good science if the Christian God existed.

But here’s something strange…

4) Dawkins ridicules Christian scientists who do actually deliver a different vision of the universe to his own.  Yet how could they do otherwise, if “a universe with a god will look very different”?

Which only makes me think…

5) Dawkins has not entered into his own thought-experiment for even a minute.  Has he really considered the revolution involved in actually reconceiving Self and World and God according to the Christian vision?  Of course not.  To do so would mean repenting of his position as all-seeing Arbiter.  Or in other words:

“Unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”  (Matthew 18:3)

 

A Wedding Sermon for Nick and Katie (from 2011)

 

Happy Friday

If you’re not a cricket fan, I’m sorry.  Very sorry indeed for you…

 

Why do we insist on Christ alone?

Credo magazine is a free online publication produced bi-monthly.  The January edition tackles the issue of inclusivism under the title “In Christ Alone.”  Matthew Barrett’s Editorial lays out the exclusivist position:

“It is only through faith in Christ that a sinner can be saved from hell and the wrath of God.”

Trevin Wax distinguishes exclusivism and inclusivism by listing the following two propositions:

“Jesus is the only way to God.” “One must place faith in Christ in order to be saved.”

Exclusivism affirms both statements.  Inclusivism affirms the first and denies the second. (He doesn’t address the issue of infant salvation, though other contributors do mention it).

Wax identifies the negative implications of inclusivism in the following way:

“Unfortunately, adopting the inclusivist approach does harm to our Christian witness by lessening the urgency of taking the gospel to people who have never heard of Jesus Christ. It also represents a capitulation to Western notions of “fairness,” subjective views of faith, and worldly descriptions of “goodness.”

So the problem with inclusivism is, 1) we lose the urgency to reach the unreached, 2) it arises when we follow our feelings rather than what the Scriptures actually say.

From here on, the magazine repeats these themes again and again. The urgency of missions and the need to be biblical rather than PC-driven.

I am whole-heartedly with them in these aims.  Christ must be proclaimed in all the nations and there is no other name given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).  But what’s interesting to me is the way in which the question is framed.  Again and again I got the feeling that Christ was being held forth as the sole distributor of eternal fire insurance.  Salvation is defined pretty consistently as “not hell” and Christ is portrayed as the means of escape.  When put like that, the exclusivist position can sound like a heavy-handed assertion rather than something arising from the nature of the gospel.

Many times the magazine’s writers anticipated objections, yet their response was usually a re-assertion of certain verses and a plea to be biblical and not worldly.  All of which begs the question why do we insist on Christ alone?  Is it that the Bible has this embarrassingly narrow doctrine but true believers will stick to the Scriptures, no matter how unpopular?

Or is it that Christ is actually so vast that naming the true Lord of this world means naming Christ alone?

One article stood head and shoulders above the others.  And you won’t be surprised to hear me say it was Mike Reeves’.

Here’s how he began and ended his article:

What does it look like when a church starts to assume that people can be saved without faith in Christ? If I had been left to guess, I might have said it would look much the same, only a bit flabbier: comforted by the thought that good Buddhists and religious Hindus will be saved, the church would lose its evangelistic zeal, of course – but otherwise, life would go on.

However, the situation in Britain today proves that guess wildly over-optimistic. In the last few decades, the belief that people can be saved without trusting Christ has come to be the standard assumption here, even in relatively conservative Christian circles. And wherever that idea reigns, I am seeing a sickness that goes much deeper than apathy. More than no evangelism, it means no real evangel. Quite simply, that is because if ‘salvation’ is thought of as something other than being brought to know Christ, then that ‘salvation’ is something quite different to what Christ himself offers.

…to say that it is not important to know Christ explicitly is to say that salvation is something else….

…Where faith in Christ is considered inessential for salvation, there people are left with little more than a boiled-down religiosity – a tedious God and a meagre salvation. It may wear Christian clothing – as Arius did – but anyone that thinks that knowing Christ is superfluous simply cannot have grasped how different the God he reveals is, the nature of his salvation, how great the assurance to be found in him. In which case, no wonder their Christianity seems lifeless and dreary.

At first glance, of course it seems more generous and attractive to ‘lower the bar’ of salvation and make knowledge of Christ unnecessary. But the joyless, unassured lives of so many Christians in Britain testifies to the fact that when knowing Christ is considered insignificant, there is no truly good news left.

Christ is not the sole distributor of fire insurance.  He is the true God and eternal life! (1 John 5:20)  No wonder salvation is in Christ alone.  Salvation is Christ alone!

Pity the fool who pities himself [repost]

Self-pity is, for me, like a low-level virus, a background throb, a sapping sickness.  It heavies my bones and fizzies my blood.

But the other day I gained instant relief.  I was reading Psalm 103 in the King James version.  Verse 13 says:

Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear Him.

Could this be true?  Does the LORD Himself pity me?  Yes.  With fatherly affection and concern.  I provoke the heart-felt pity of the living God.

You might think this would confirm my dreadful indulgence.  After all, heaven seems to agree with my self-obsession.  Actually no.  He pities the fool who pities himself.  In spite of my wallowing, the LORD’s pity is a great ‘nonetheless.’

A father whose child cries only for attention may still choose to pick up the boy, spin him round and kiss him.  He is not caving into the child’s manipulation.  Instead He is loving from his own free grace.  And the boy is weaned from self by the love of another.

In the same way our Father in heaven reaches down in His Son to self-pitying wretches.  And He lifts us up, not to confirm our self-centredness but to replace it.  Now that heaven pities me, I simply have no need.  What could my own self-preoccupation add to the divine pre-occupation of the LORD, who sets His affections on me?

And so this verse brought a tremendous release.  Just as the LORD’s love frees us from self-love, His service frees us from self-service, so His pity frees us from self-pity.

The Good God – A Tremendous Read!

I’m half way through Mike Reeves new book “The Good God“.

It is…. drum roll… sensational!  It’s life shaping for the reader, and I hope career shaping for Mike.  Let’s pray that Christ-centred trinitarian theology becomes more than a curiosity or a passing fad, but the very atmosphere of our lives, our theology, our ministry.

Below I’ll list some favourite little quotes in my reading so far.  But really I could have picked a hundred others.  And I’m aware that piecemeal nuggets won’t convey the real strength of the book.  Essentially “The Good God” is a luxurious soak in the loving life of Father, Son and Spirit.  It’s mind-stretching, vision-lifting, paradigm shifting and all the things that a radical trinitarian theology should be.  But the greatest strength of the book is simply this: Mike loves God.  Hugely, tangibly, contagiously – he revels in the Spirit’s knowledge of our generous Father in the face of Christ.  And as you read, you cannot fail to love Him more yourself.  I can’t think of a better reason to read a book!

So pre-order your copy here!

“We must confess Father and Son before we can apprehend God as one and true” Hilary

“When you start with the Jesus of the Bible, it is a triune God that you get”

“For eternity the Father has been fruitful, potent, vitalizing.”

“The God who loves to have an outgoing Image of himself in his Son loves to have many images of his love (who are themselves outgoing).”

“The triune God is an ecstatic God: he is not a God who hoards his life but one who gives it away, as he would show… at the cross.”

“God’s pleasure is in diffusing and communicating to the creature rather than in receiving from the creature” J. Edwards

“The world must learn that I love the Father” John 14 means that the world learns from the Son how to be a counterpart to the Father [my summary].

“Absolutely singular supreme beings do not like creation”

“The very nature of the triune God is to be effusive, ebullient and bountiful; the Father…finds his very self in pouring out his love”

“To be coherent and meaningful, maths requires the existence of ultimate plurality in unity.”

“Through the cross we see a God who delights to give himself.”

“To be the child of some rich king would be nice; but to be the beloved of the emporer of the universe is beyond words.”

“Our God does not give us some thing that is other than himself, or merely tell us about himself; he actually gives us himself.”

Christless sermon? Like flour-less bread!

Spurgeon on the terrible danger of Christless preaching: (from Tony Reinke)

“The motto of all true servants of God must be, ‘We preach Christ; and him crucified.’ A sermon without Christ in it is like a loaf of bread without any flour in it. No Christ in your sermon, sir? Then go home, and never preach again until you have something worth preaching.” [7/9/1876; sermon #2899]

“Leave Christ out? O my brethren, better leave the pulpit out altogether. If a man can preach one sermon without mentioning Christ’s name in it, it ought to be his last, certainly the last that any Christian ought to go to hear him preach.” [undated; sermon #768]

“Leave Christ out of the preaching and you shall do nothing. Only advertise it all over London, Mr. Baker, that you are making bread without flour; put it in every paper, ‘Bread without flour’ and you may soon shut up your shop, for your customers will hurry off to other tradesmen. … A sermon without Christ as its beginning, middle, and end is a mistake in conception and a crime in execution. However grand the language it will be merely much-ado-about-nothing if Christ be not there. And I mean by Christ not merely his example and the ethical precepts of his teaching, but his atoning blood, his wondrous satisfaction made for human sin, and the grand doctrine of ‘believe and live.’” [10/23/1881; sermon #1625]

 

Let us have a heart

[On preaching] A simple and conversational yet forceful delivery commands both respect and response. Enthusiasm inspires. Logic is convincing, the illogical confusing. As preachers let us have a heart. Let us stop wearying our audiences. Let us make our preaching so absorbingly interesting that even the children would rather listen to us than draw pictures and will thus put to shame their paper-and-pencil supplying parents. But we may as well make up our minds that an absolute prerequisite of such preaching is the most painstaking preparation.

– R.B. Kuiper, quoted in Iain Murray’s fascinating little article on expository preaching.

Reach Build Send – Three Talks for Rothley Parish Church

Rothley Parish Church asked me to speak on their vision statement for mission: Reach, Build, Send.

Here’s what I came up with (all based in 1 Peter). If you’ve heard 1 Peter talks from me in the past, you’ve heard a lot of this before.

Powerpoint for all talks

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REACH

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BUILD

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SEND

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Happy Friday

Jesus is God-sized. God is Jesus-shaped. [repost]

When preaching on John 1:1-2 (audio here), my last two points were this:

Jesus is God-sized

and

God is Jesus-shaped

I wonder whether much of our evangelism is aimed at persuading people of point number one.  And I wonder whether that emphasis, if divorced from the second point, is quite dangerous.

Here’s what I mean – when we tell an unbeliever that Jesus is God, this is what they hear:  “You know the god of the pub discussion – the distant, arm-chair deity, uninvolved and uncaring?  Actually Jesus is that guy!”

“Oh” says the unbeliever.  “Because Jesus looks quite different to that.”

“Yeah, I know” we say.  “But you need to look past all that stuff.  Deep down he’s really ‘the god you’ve always believed in’ All that other stuff is just Jesus’ human nature.  Yeah, that’s like window-dressing.  Deep down he’s The Big Guy.”

And what’s the result?  Well how many Christian testimonies run something like this…

“I have always believed in some kind of god.  And then I met Jesus.  And the preacher told me that Jesus is the god-I-always-believed-in.  So now I’ve added faith in Jesus to my bedrock belief in a deity.”

Do you see what’s happened here?  Some supposed natural knowledge of God is determining a person’s view of Christ and determining it from the outset.

It should be the other way around.  Knowledge of Jesus should revolutionize our view of God. We should tell people not only that Jesus is God-sized, we should tell them that God is entirely Jesus-shaped.  Let’s introduce them to the God they didn’t know.  Let’s offer them the Christ-like God.

As Archbishop Michael Ramsey once said (riffing on 1 John 1:5): “God is Christlike, and in Him there is no unchristlikeness at all.”

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Help with sermons please

I’ve got four sermons at the start of February answering the following questions:

How can a loving God not accept everyone?

Does God even exist?

If there is a God, why does he allow suffering?

Aren’t all religions basically the same?

What should my passages be?

What should I say?

The questions people are asking…

We have a mission in Eastbourne which finishes at the end of March.  It’s a variation on a theme used in London, Sheffield and elsewhere.  We’re asking people their big question for God.  We’ll poll the results and try to answer the top questions at central events in the town.

The website is looking fantastic – have a visit, but please only ask a question if you’re local to Eastbourne.

Here’s some of the questions I’ve been asked in the last few days:

How can I have the perfect life?

Can you make me magical?

How were you made?

Why does my mum have cancer?

Do you exist?

Why did you take my aunty away so soon?

Why are there different races if we all came from Adam?

Why don’t you come down and show us what you’re like?

What are the lottery numbers for tonight?

Why do you love slavery, oppression, sexism, and genocide so much?

Am I going to heaven or hell?

Why was my baby taken from me before I even got to hold my bundle of joy?

Great intro to the Trinity

Dan Hames has written a lovely little intro to the Trinity at his new blog High Over All.  Check out one of his concluding paragraphs:

Our God is for us.  He puts his eternal life on show for us in history and in our relationship with him.  He doesn’t hide his ‘real’ self, and show us a different version.  It’s not as though the Trinity has a public face which is shown in the Bible and looks all gracious and self-sacrificing, while when they get home from work at 5.30, there’s a ‘real’ Trinity that is finally unleashed: lording it over each other, self-serving, and obsessed with power and glory and the worship of all lowly creatures.  The only revelation of God we have been given is this Trinity-in-action, other-centred, full of overflowing love and delight in one another, in us, in creation.  This is a lovely and lovable God that we know through Christ.

Read the whole thing…