Responding to sin

How should we respond to sin in our lives?

One response is to think ‘Come on Glen, I’m better than that.’

Another is to think ‘Come on Glen, Christ is better than that.’

The first may produce a very moral life.  But the devil is more than happy to concede to you a Christ-less morality.  Self-righteousness is a far muddier swamp than unrighteous living.  I am not better than my sin.  I am not even better than the foulest evil I’ve imagined.

Instead, when I sin I am revealed as the person I’ve always been.  Psalm 51:5 has often struck me.  Here is David with blood on his hands.  Yet his confession is that the man who committed adultery and murder is the man he had always been.

We think when we’ve sinned that it was just a blot on our otherwise acceptable record.  The word of God says our sins simply express the person we have always been (Matt 7:17f). My gross sins are not ‘out of character’ - they are me with the hand-brake off.

No sin can shock me.  Not my own, nor the sins of my brothers and sisters who confess to me.  If the blood of God was shed for my sin (Acts 20:28) - then my sin is infinitely heinous.  No, I’m not better than sin.  But Christ is. 

This is true in two senses. 

First it’s true in the sense that Christ is more desirable than sin.  In the wilderness of temptations, Satan can only offer me a bucket of salt.  Christ always stands before me with living waters (John 4:10; 7:38; Rev 7:17).  The father of lies tells me life is found in this sin.  Jesus tells me it’s a broken cistern that can hold no water.  Only His waters are truly life-giving. (Jer 2:12-13)  I forsake even my precious sins because I have learnt that Jesus is more desirable.

But Christ is better than sin in another, much more important, sense.  For He is the good person that I fail to be.  He is the reality that stands before the holy Father - not my sin. 

My sin, though it clings to my bones and sinks to the depths of my heart, does not define me, Christ does.  When the Father looks to find me, He does not look in the record that stands against me (Ps 130:3; Col 2:14).  He looks to His Beloved Son and finds me hidden there. 

Which means even as the diseased tree of my flesh produces in me the very worst fruit, Christ is my Plea, my Status, my Righteousness.  Even as the chief of sinners, even in the act of my worst rebellion, Christ - the One who is infinitely better - defines me and not my sin.

So Christ is better in both these senses.  But - and here’s where this post has been heading - without being utterly convinced of this latter sense, the former sense could easily lead to a Pharasaism not unlike the ‘I am better than sin’ response.

How so?

Well if I respond to sin simply by saying ‘Jesus is more desirable’ it basically throws me back on myself.  I am left with my own heart and its ability to desire Jesus.  The work of annihilating sin becomes simply my work of destroying my heart idols.  The work of liberation is simply the work of my affections desiring Christ with sufficient ardour.  Where is the locus of this redemption?  Me.

Now do my heart-idols need crucifying?  Yes.  Do I need Christ uppermost in my affections?  Yes.  But by golly, if I found it hard to reform my outward behaviour - how hard is it going to be to reform my inner world??!  Impossible.

So, you say, that’s why we need the gracious work of the Spirit and diligently to employ the means of grace, etc, etc.  Well… there’s a time and a place for that.  But let’s think.  If that’s our bottom line, doesn’t it sound exactly like the Catholic view of grace?  ”It’s all of grace” says the Catholic ”… supernatural, infused grace worked in us, with which we cooperate, making us better and better over time.”  Doesn’t that sound very similar to “We fight sin by enflaming our affections for Christ - flames stoked by the Spirit via His means of grace”?  

It’s not that there’s no place for the ‘Christ is more desirable’ approach.  It’s that we must recognize it’s true place - i.e. after we’re assured of the extrinsic work of Christ.  “Grace” is not basically a supernatural empowerment to work at my salvation or to enflame my Christian affections.  “Grace” is the work of Christ alone on behalf of sinners who contribute nothing.  (This is similar to the points I made here - grace is not so much the bread David provides as the victory David wins).

Therefore my first reponse to sin is this - even in the very midst of sin, Jesus has been carrying me on His heart before the Father.  Even ensnared in the darkest selfishness, the Spirit has been calling ‘Abba’ from within me.  Even as my heart desired worthless idols, the Father loved me even as He loves Christ.

This is the truth that really changes us.  It reveals to us that not even our sin can separate us from the love of God in Christ.  We realize again that our darkness is not a locked basement to the Lord.  Even our self-willed rebellion cannot remove us from His embrace.  We sin in His face - this drives us down in contrition.  And at the same time He is lifting us up to the Father. 

The truth that really changes us is that our lives are not our own.  Jesus has taken possession of us in spite of ourselves and wills to do us eternal good.  The Spirit of sonship is already praying ‘Abba’ in you.  The affections you are so keen to enflame are already ablaze - and that, even as you quench Him!   

Now surrender.  Now be conquered. Now receive what is entirely beyond you.  And see if you don’t love Him with renewed and supernatural vigour!  But don’t begin with your heart for Christ.  Begin with His heart for you.

We love because He first loved us. 1 John 4:19

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Some responses

I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking ‘Where’s Glen been the last few days?  Why has he abandoned us?  For where else can we go to find such pithy and incisive theological tid-bits??’

Where else indeed dear reader!?

Unless of course you’ve been reading here and here where I’ve been responding to some thoughtful critiques of my Christ in the OT views.  Watch these spaces for responses to the responses.

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Jonah song

 I’m preaching through Jonah this August.  Every service is all-age so I’ve dredged up a song I wrote a couple of years ago.  Here’s how it sounds (click here for a rough recording).  And here are the words - the kids sing (shout!) all the bolded words:

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Verse 1: 

 

God said ‘GO – to Nineveh

All those baddies I want to win-over.’

 

Jonah said ‘NO – not Nineveh

All those people are terrible sin-lovers.’

 

God said ‘GO!’

Jonah said ‘NO!’

The storm went BLOW

Jonah said ‘THROW!’

And down he GO!

Into the Depths of the Sea!

 

 

Verse 2:

 

God said GO – to a giant fish

Save my prophet before he gets smelly

 

The fish said OH what a lovely dish

Swallowed him whole so he lived in his belly

 

God said GO!

The fish swam LOW

Through the FLOW

Jonah said WHOAH!

And down he GO!

Into the belly of the fish!

 

 

Verse 3:

 

Jonah said OH – what a mess

I’ve done things my way I must confess

 

I’m so LOW – I could die

But even now God hears my cry

 

Jonah said ‘OH

You’ve brought me LOW

I’m sorry SO

Save my SOUL.’

And up he GO

Spat up onto the beach.

 

 

Verse 4:

 

God said ‘GO – once again

Nineveh needs your word to repent.’

 

Jonah said ‘OH – alright

I’ll tell them there’s Woe if they don’t get it right.’

 

So Jonah said WOE,

Cos God says ‘NO’

The people went ‘OH!

We’re sorry SO

Save our SOUL!’

And God saved every one!

 

 

Verse 5:

 

Jonah said ‘NO – I guessed

God would have mercy if they confessed.

 

‘God’s so SLOW to judge

He loves to forgive, never bears a grudge.’

 

God said ‘GO!’

Jonah said ‘NO!’

But God changed ROLE

He washed their SOUL

Whiter than SNOW

Cos God’s the best preacher of all!

 

Jesus is LORD - not Son of LORD. Some clarifications

Dave K has asked some excellent questions of my last post on this issue.  Here they are in full.  Afterwards is my attempt to address them. 

I’ve been musing on this post over the last day. This is what I have been wondering:

This is clearly right, in many passages NT writers read Jesus in OT passages saying YHWH, as well as ascribing him the same attributes, relationships etc as YHWH in the OT.

But how do you deal with the psalm in which David says ‘The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”’? The NT writers here interpret ‘my lord’ to be Christ and, at least in Heb 1, ‘the LORD’ as ‘God’. In a way I expect you would draw on what you say that ‘there is more than one Person called LORD’. But is there a danger here that we flatten the relationship between the two persons and lose the clear emphasis of the bible that Jesus receives his authority from the Father. So while he is never called the Son of the LORD, he is called the Son of God.

Also I wonder if there how you would demonstrate that in the OT ‘most often “Lord” refers to the Son’. To me it seems that this is far from clear, and while it is clear that ‘more than one Person called LORD’ in the OT, it is not so clear that you can always confidently identify which person is being referred to. In fact, often it seems that the Trinity and one person of the Trinity is in view.

Thirdly, how confident can we be that NT references to Jesus as lord are primarily about identifying with YHWH, and not the Davidic messiah? Both are obviously in view but, again, it is a lot more murky to me than you I think.

Dave

…nervous that his attachment to the murkiness is diluting Jesus’ claims, but still struggling with the revelation of the Trinity in the OT.

 

Let me begin by trying to say a bit better what I said quite obscurely in my last post.

To say “Jesus is the Son of the God of the Old Testament” is technically true.  The Father (and the Spirit) were equally active in the OT and, just as in the NT, Jesus has always been Son of God Most High.  However it must give us pause for thought that Jesus is never called “Son of the LORD.”  Instead He is consistently called LORD.  I believe that Jesus and the Apostles are telling us not simply that “Jesus is ontologically equal to the God of Israel” but that “Jesus is and always has been the God of Israel.”  ie not just “Jesus has the same status, dignity and attributes as Yahweh” but that “He is and always has been Yahweh.  Here is the One who brought the Israelites out of Egypt etc”  (cf Jude 4,5)

Some further thoughts in no particular order:

• There could be a number of reasons why NT says Jesus is the referent of OT passages saying YHWH.

   1) The second Person of the trinity was not the original referent but He is equal to the original referent (”"God”") and so deserves the title.

   2) The second Person of the trinity was the original referent.

 I go for number 2) because:

A) I find the second solution much more straightforward (to be honest I find the first solution really quite strange.) 

B) I think the pre-existence of Jesus is not just a ‘being’ issue but a ‘doing’ issue.  John 5 says Jesus has been working from the beginning with His Father.  I just find it odd to say the Father was the hero of the OT while Jesus only becomes the hero in the second half.  I’m not sure that takes His pre-existence (and equal deity) seriously enough as an equality of doing as well as being.

C) I see number 2 taught in places like like Hebrews 1 (”About the Son He says…”)

Basically I think that either 1) or 2) could, once assumed, account for the NT data but that actually 2) is taught.  I can’t think of where 1) is taught.

• The equation of “Jesus is Kurios” as “Jesus is YHWH” seems to me the most obvious meaning if we simply let the bible interpret the bible.  (I don’t know about you but I get frustrated when commentators immediately go to Caeser Kurios as the equivalent of Jesus is Lord.  As though the Roman Empire is a more important interpretive context than the OT!?)

Certainly, as you note, the NT cites OT references to YHWH and applies them straight to Christ.  I think the ‘I AM’ statements also function as straightforward claims to being YHWH (see esp John 8:56-58). 

To say that ‘Lord’ could simply refer to the ‘Davidic Messiah’ begs the question about how the Israelites were to understand the High Priest at God’s right hand (see the points below).  Certainly people like Philo called him the ‘deuteros theos’ - the second God!  And Jesus considered the Adonai of Ps 110 to be a far more exalted title than Davidic King (Mk 12:35-37).   

At the end of the day I think that a person reading the Septuagint would get a pretty good idea of what kurios meant (6818 times YHWH!)  When they turned to the Gospels they would be introduced to John the Baptist who prepared the way for the LORD (ho kurios) who was this man called Jesus.  And as they kept reading they’d see ho kurios now eating at a Pharisee’s house (Luke 11:39) etc etc.  And on they’d go.  I propose that if they were reading it according to its natural sense they would simply exclaim: “The Lord God of Israel is among us”

 

• As for how to prove that “Lord” refers predominantly to the Son, I’d say, first of all, that’s virtually undisputed when it comes to NT.  But I also think the NT teaches a similar expectation for reading the OT.  When 1 Cor 8:6 says “for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” OT usage (esp Deut 6:4) is almost certainly in view.

But I suppose you’re only likely to be persuaded that LORD is mostly used of the Son in the OT if you agree with my take on Christ in the OT.  Basically I’d say that the One Word and Image of God Most High has been the eternal Mediator of all the Father’s business (John 1:18).  He is the One walking in the garden, the One who appears to Abraham, who wrestles with Jacob, who brings Israel out of Egypt etc etc.  It takes 70 chapters of the bible before we are brought to the Unseen LORD on Sinai, yet we have been led by the Appearing LORD throughout.  It is He who has been revealing the divine name to us, even as this name has been given Him by the Father (Ex 23:21).  Given that this is just the same dynamic as the NT then in both testaments my default supposition is that ‘Lord’ refers to the Son unless proved otherwise.  Following this pattern, there’s many passages that I’m confused about in the OT.  But there’s also a few in the New too.  (What’s going on in 2 Cor 3:16-18??)

 

• I hear you on not flattening the distinctions between Persons!  I’m the last person to want to do that!  And the truth that Jesus is fully divine in His obedience to / dependence upon the Father is a glorious truth (with much gospel comfort actually - maybe that’s for another post).

 But I also think that this truth is as much an OT as a NT truth.

So, it’s as the Angel sent from the LORD (Ex 3:2) that He is the great I AM (v14) who will bring people to God (v12)

It’s as the Most Excellent of Men that the Bridegroom Warrior is anointed King by God, His God (Psalm 45:6-7)

It’s as the Priest at God’s right hand that He is Lord. (Psalm 110)

So I affirm absolutely that His deity includes and is expressed in His dependence and difference from the Father.  I would add that this is the OT’s teaching as much as the New.  And I also affirm that it’s technically true that Jesus is Son of the LORD who is the Father (since all three Persons can take that name).  But the real issue is whether the Sent One of the Gospels is claiming to be the Sent One of the Torah.  This is my claim.

Jesus is the LORD who remembers meeting Abraham (John 8:56-58), who led Israel out of Egypt (Jude 4,5) and who appeared to Isaiah (John 12:40,41).  He’s not simply closely related to the God of Israel.  He is the God of Israel.  And there’s no better way for the NT to affirm that than to simply say Jesus is LORD.

Paul Blackham sermons and other links

No other preacher has had a bigger impact on me.  Not only theologically but also in terms of what preaching actually is.

The sermon invariably begins ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’  The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.

Immediately he states the passage.  It’s the Scriptures that define the event.

The conclusion is always “Therefore to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit be ascribed all the glory, all the power, all the majesty, all the honour, all the praise and all our love, now and forever, Amen.”  The whole thing is worship.

In between, the content is exposition (most often verse by verse) and the manner is strongly declarative, strongly devotional and strongly Christ focused.   Perhaps most refreshing of all, the over-riding tone of the sermon is a child-like enthusiasm for Christ and the Scriptures that is far removed from the world-weariness of many military-briefing-style preachers.

I’ve linked to some of my favourite Blackham sermons on my new “Other Sermons” page. (It’s a tab at the top).  I’ve also put “My sermons” on a page, but do yourself a favour and work your way through these other sermons - awesome stuff.

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Sermons from All Souls, Langham Place

Sermons from Tarleton Farm Fellowship

 

Some Favourite sermons:

Genesis 3:1-15

“What of those who have never heard?” Colossians 1:15-23

“Why isn’t good good enough?” Philippians 3:1-11

Luke 7:11-16

Daniel 3

2 Peter 3:11-18

Ephesians 3:14-21

Ephesians 6:10-24

 

Other talks and lectures:

“Faith in Christ in the Old Testament”

 Five talks on the Cross 

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Jesus is LORD - not Son of LORD

Just a brief point about my recent posts on the tribal deity of Israel (here, here and here).  

In those posts I assumed that the LORD of the burning bush was the very One who became incarnate of the virgin Mary.  Just to say, that wasn’t sloppy grammar or fuzzy thinking (I don’t think!).  To many of you the point is obvious but I’ve read enough biblical theology around the place to know that other views abound.  So often you hear things like: “Jesus is the Son of the one the OT calls Yahweh.”  Now in one sense that is true.  In the OT, the Father often goes by the name of Yahweh, just as in the NT He often goes by the name Lord.  But most often ‘Lord’ refers to the Son - this is true in both testaments. 

Jesus’ claim, and the claim of the NT, is that He is Yahweh (in Greek ‘kurios’), the God of Abraham, the God of the burning bush (e.g. John 8:56-58).  Now the God of the burning bush is the Sent One from Yahweh (’The Angel of the LORD’ Ex 3:2) and so clearly there is more than one Person called LORD.  But Jesus, the Sent One of the Father, claims to be the One who calls Himself I AM. 

Nowhere is Jesus ever called the Son of the Lord.  Everywhere Jesus is called the Lord.

I just mention this because it seems to me that many, wittingly or unwittingly, dilute the claims of Jesus in the Gospels.  But we must be aware of how radical Jesus’ claims are - He’s not simply saying ‘I am the Son of the God of the Old Testament.’  He’s saying ‘I am the God of the Old Testament.’  The implications are many but I said I’d be brief, so there you are.

For more see Christ in OT.

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What changes the heart?

Tim VB put me onto this 9 week course about Gospel Centred Living which is freely available here.  It looks great.  They draw on material from World Harvest Mission - their Gospel Tranformation and Sonship courses.  To give you a flavour of these, here is the blurb about the Sonship course:

Sonship: Live the theology you believe!

Many of us understand the faith intellectually, but our hearts have not quite kept up with our heads. Sonship is designed to help you take some of the glorious theological truths of the gospel - truths that you may know in your head - and apply them to the nitty gritty reality of daily life.

You’ll find that as the gospel re-makes you, there is greater joy and desire to share the wonderful news of God’s lovingkindness with others.

I have to say I’ve been very impressed by what I’ve seen so far. 

One thing that struck me was this testimony found here in the Sonship course.  It illustrates brilliantly a truth I’ll remark on at the end: 

One day when I was very young, I saw my older sister hanging up my father’s white business shirts on the clothesline to dry. I was suddenly filled with the urge to hang up one of my daddy’s white shirts. He was my daddy too, and I was his daughter; I loved him in my childlike way and wanted to express it. I couldn’t reach the clothesline-it was too high, but I saw a wheel barrow in the yard and its handles were just the right height for me. I didn’t notice how rusty it was and I rather joyfully clothes pinned the wet shirt to the handles.

When my dad got home and saw the shirt on the wheelbarrow, he became very angry with me and punished me severely for ruining his shirt. I had not realized the impact that event and others like it had made on me. However, as I was repeatedly convicted during the Sonship conference for not believing God concerning his delight in me and in the gracious nature of my relationship with him, this memory returned to me. Now, you cannot hardly get through 24 hours of a Sonship conference without realizing that your own heart is as murderous as anyone else’s-so I wasn’t primarily focusing on only being the innocent victim of my father’s cruel anger.

As I remembered these scenes from the past, I saw that through the years I had not been believing that my Father in heaven was any different than my earthly father. I had not been listening when he described himself. In short, I hadn’t been believing the gospel, that by faith in Christ and his perfect atoning sacrifice, he now loves me, and is forever for me and delighted in me. In Christ, he has made me beautiful and pleasing to him forever.

So the next morning I told our counselor that I thought I was beginning to understand. I told him the memory and said that I guess if the Father saw me standing next to the wheelbarrow with the ruined shirt on it, he would forget the shirt and hug me. “You still don’t understand fully,” Jeff said. “God would not overlook the shirt, but take it, put it on, and wear it to work. And when someone commented on the rust marks, he would say, ‘Let me tell you about my little girl and how much she loves me.’” I was overwhelmed with that realization.

What a brilliant picture of the gospel!  Not just overlooking the shirt - wearing the shirt and celebrating his daughter!

Often we think of the gospel as God overlooking our sin, tolerating our presence and simply relenting from judgement.  We are left in the law court, the not-guilty verdict is passed and we’re just relieved to have avoided hell.  But can such a gospel change our hearts?  Somewhat, I’m sure.

But the good news is not that God allows us to live in the suburbs of His presence.  We are adopted, indwelt, sung over, glorified, rejoiced in.  Letting the Father love us in Christ is the kind of ‘overwhelming’ that truly changes.

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Israel’s Tribal Deity 3

We’ve been considering the logic of the OT arguments for the true God.  The argument is not: Think about who the true God is - the true God is actually Yahweh.  The argument is: Think about Yahweh (encounter Him, see Him at work, trust Him) - Yahweh is the true God.

The former argument assumes we know who the true God is and then gets us to re-shape our view of Yahweh around that.  The latter argument invites us into relationship with the tribal deity of Israel and then makes us re-shape our views of the true God around Him. 

Of course the scandal of identifying Israel’s tribal deity as the true God is ratcheted up several million notches with the incarnation.  It’s not just that the God of Abraham is the living God, it’s that the Seed of Abraham is the living God!  Yahweh shows up among us as an itinerant Nazarene Rabbi.  He is not just God in a concrete relation, He is God as a concrete human.  Not only the God of Israel but an Israelite. Nonetheless His claim is not diminished - this Jewish man, born of Mary is the LORD of Israel.

And again His identity as the LORD is seen in His concrete work of redemption.

“When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I AM.” (John 8:28)

How is the true God known?  Look to this particular, historical event.  Look at this act of infinitely costly service for my people.  Look to my redemption.

Yet how often in evangelism do we do things the other way around?  We either assume that people know ‘God’ in the abstract or we actively try to prove to them some kind of ‘God’ in the abstract (the First Cause, the Moral Legislator, the Fine-Tuning Creator).  And then we try to say to them, “Jesus is actually this abstract ‘God’.”  To which people usually frown, cock their head and set about doing the mental gymnastics required to squish the Son of Man into this pre-fab abstract-deity mould.

How many testimonies run along the lines of, “I always knew God and then the preacher convinced me that Jesus fitted the bill of the God-I-had-always-known.”  When this happens both ‘God’ and ‘Jesus’ are going to get majorly distorted.

Let’s instead resolve to tell people, “Whatever you thought God was like, allow the LORD of Israel, the Son of God, to recalibrate all God-thoughts.”

As Lord Byron once said, “If God isn’t like Jesus, He ought to be.”  That’s exactly right - that’s the logic of the bible: Jesus must shape all God-thoughts.  Our ‘God’ must be determined entirely by what we meet in the pre-incarnate LORD and the incarnate, crucified and risen Son of Man.

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Israel’s Tribal Deity 2

Where is the decisive revelation of the name of Israel’s tribal deity?  Mount Sinai:

12 [The Angel of the LORD] said, “But I WILL BE with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” 13 Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE”. And He said, “Say this to the people of Israel, “I WILL BE” has sent me to you.’” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. (Exodus 3:12-15)

Some observations:

1. The name Yahweh is taken by many scholars to be the nominal form of the first person verb “I WILL BE”. (i.e. Yahweh is what we call Him, “I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE” is what He says about Himself).  Thus the burning bush represents His own unpacking of the name of Yahweh. 

2. This unpacking of His own name is not His handing over to us of some interpretive maxim by which we can understand Him.  Emphatically it is the LORD holding onto His own prerogative to self-disclose.  The possibility for knowing the LORD is not delivered over to man - He holds onto it forever.  He will always be the One to intepret Himself.  We must continually come to Him for knowledge of Him. 

3. The future tense is probably the better translation of what’s usually rendered “I AM” - it’s exactly the same Hebrew as v12 “I will be with you…”  It’s therefore not a static thing.  It’s not basically the claim to be self-existent, it’s something much more dynamic.

4. It’s ironic that people use the ‘I AM’ as itself a proof-text for presupposing their own classical attributes of God (like His aseity or whatever).  The whole point of this name is that He defines who He is in contrast to every human definition - even (and especially!) the most philosophically sophisticated.  “I will be Who I will be - not who you say I am.”

5. We must never forget the context of His self-identification - decisive historical action.  Involvement.  Redemption. Exodus.  He will be who He will be in salvation.  He drops His name into conversation first in verse 12 and it’s in the form of a promise:  “I will be with you.“   And He follows verse 14 with the reassurance that He, the LORD, is the God of your fathers - the tribal deity of Israel.

All in all, Yahweh’s declaration that He is the great I AM is not the same as Him claiming to be Unoriginate.  For some the “I AM” is equivalent to some divine attribute of self-existence, as though it’s the Hebrew form of “I am the Ground of all Being.”  It is not as though the philosopher who has thought of the unmoved Mover has thought of Yahweh.  Not at all.  The I AM is met only as the Redeemer of His particular people.  He is met in the context of promise, in the context of covenant.  He is met as the tribal deity of Israel - in this way He proves His unassailable right to define Himself.

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Israel’s Tribal Deity

This week I was reading Jeremiah 10 on the difference between Yahweh and idols.  It struck me that the prophet doesn’t argue the way we often do.  We usually say ‘There are idols that are tribal deities of the nations, but the living God is not like that.  The living God is the uncreated Creator.  (Oh and the uncreated Creator happens to be Yahweh).’  

Jeremiah does something different.  He certainly plays up the worthlessness of the foreign idols (v1-9). But then he says:

But Yahweh is the true God; He is the living God, the eternal King.

Note that his argument is not “the true God is Yahweh.”  Rather he argues “Yahweh is the true God.”  In other words he doesn’t assume some notion of deity and then says Yahweh fits the bill.  Instead he says, in effect, “You know the tribal deity of Israel?  The One from the burning bush?  He’s the true God.” 

He does it again in verse 16.  After continuing the worthlessness-of-idols theme, Jeremiah says:

He who is the Portion of Jacob is not like these, for He is the Maker of all things, including Israel, the tribe of His inheritance–the LORD Almighty (Yahweh Sebaoth) is His name.

Note the particularity of this statement.  The tribe of Jacob will inherit their God called Yahweh Sebaoth, and He in turn will inherit them.  This tribal deity who is strongly (and it seems exclusively!) linked to his particular people - He is the Maker of all things.  Interesting!

Think of how He definitively reveals His name to Moses at Sinai.  The Angel says to Moses “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. At this Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.” (Ex 3:6).  If we were writing Exodus 3 we’d have Moses hiding his face because the LORD says, “I am God the Unoriginate, the Infinite, the Transcendent and Immense.   But no, the LORD says “I am your people’s God, your dad’s God, the God of that guy Abraham and his family.”  The living God is made known as the tribal deity of Israel.  He is revealed in His covenant approaches towards particular people in concrete historical situations.  And from within that particular frame - as Jacob’s Portion - He reveals Himself to be the true and living God.

So often we conceive of the direction of argument as this:

“You know God ??  Well that tribal deity Yahweh is actually God.” 

Instead it’s:

“You know that tribal deity Yahweh?  Well He’s God.” 

The former argument forces Yahweh into a procrustean bed.  The latter argument makes us reconfigure everything we thought we knew about ‘God’ since we’ve met Him as the covenant-LORD.

I’ll look at some implications of this next time…

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Sin is not the problem

I was once in a preaching seminar with 15 other young guns.  We were being taught by someone you might call a living legend.  One session I remember was on how to preach Romans 3:21-30.  The point came when the living legend asked us what we thought the application should be.  Now aside from my various misgivings about application I reasoned to myself that if an application was there in the passage it was probably worth flagging that up.  I looked down and sure enough I saw what I thought was a pretty clear “”application”" of Paul’s teaching:

Where then is boasting?  It is excluded. (v27)

So I stuck up my hand and suggested that the application might be humility.  More particularly it seemed that, since Christ had taken the work of salvation entirely into His own hands (and out of ours), we ought gladly to shut up about ourselves, our morality, etc etc. 

“Wrong!” said the preacher.  “The application should be ‘Repent!’”

“Oh”, I said. “Why?”

I immediately regretted asking ‘why.’  Dagnammit we’re evangelicals, we’re supposed to preach repentance, it’s union rules.  Besides, I don’t want to appear soft in front of the 15 other young guns and this living legend!  The living legend was more than a little irked by my question and replied: “Because, dear boy, verse 23 says all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  Sin is the problem, therefore I would have thought that repentance would be a very good idea!!”

Those who know me may be surprised to learn that I didn’t answer back to this one.  Oh I wanted to.  How I did want to!  But judging by the alarm in the preacher’s voice and the mood of the room it felt wise not to imperil my standing any further among such sound folk.

But sometimes I fantasize about what would have happened if I’d said what I really thought.  The fantasy goes something like this:

I stand slowly, deliberately, with all the solemnity of the lone, faithful prophet.  All eyes are upon me as I bellow with righteous ardour:

“Sin is not the problem!   S i n   i s   n o t   t h e   p r o b l e m !!!“

All hell breaks loose.  Outrage.  Pained howls.  Torn garments.  Hurled stones.  I am immovable in the midst of the storm.

“… Sin is not the problem… God’s wrath at sin is the problem!  No… better… God’s wrath at us in our sin - that’s the problem!” 

At once they are felled by Truth as by lightning.  Cut to the heart, the stones drop to the floor first, then the men.  One by one they slump to the ground, the hand of the LORD heavy upon them.  In breathless awe they ask: “Brave herald, what is this teaching you bring us?  It resounds from the very heights of Zion against our presumption and folly.”

Sporting a fresh cut across my chiselled jawline, I am otherwise unruffled.  Ever magnanimous I continue:

“Dear friends” (the dust in the air has now leant a husky tone to my rich, commanding voice). ”Dear friends, let us not define our predicament so anthropocentrically.”

I leave this dread word hanging in the air.  The mere mention of ‘anthropocentric’ elicits groans from the already contrite gathering.  Here was their shibboleth used against them.  It stung.  Yet they could not deny that they were indeed guilty of this greatest of liberalisms.

“I commend you friends…”  They look up nervously - could there yet be grace for them?  “…While many have merely scratched the itch of the modern age, you have refused to pander to felt needs. You have proclaimed the problem of sin and for this I commend you.”  I pause.  “And yet… and yet… you have defined the problem so poorly, so slightly.  You have defined the problem from below.  If we define the problem as something lying in our hands then aren’t we at least suggesting that the solution is in our hands?  But in fact the problem is above us - just as the solution is.  The problem is not fundamentally our sin, the problem is the Lord’s wrath upon us.”

“What’s the difference?!” cries out one of the younger preachers, “Our sin, God’s wrath, it’s all the same…”  He is hushed by the living legend who slowly shakes his head.  It is clear now how wrong he has been. 

He stands, still shaking his head, unable to look at me or the others.  Eventually he speaks, “Glen’s right. He’s always been right!”  The living legend looks like he’s been hung from the ceiling on meat hooks.  As though in great pain he exclaims, “You must understand…  We faced such terrible dangers in preaching.  We still face such dangers.  I wanted, we all wanted, to resist the me-centred pulpit.  I was so sick of hearing about ‘filling the Jesus-shaped hole in your life’.  I couldn’t stand the invitations to ‘let Jesus into the passenger seat of your life’.  I wanted people to turn.  I still want people to turn.” 

I put a re-assuring hand on his shoulder. He meets my eye for the first time and continues.  “I just thought, if we can show them that ‘fulfilment’ isn’t the issue - that sin is the issue, well then maybe they’d come to their senses.  Maybe they’d see their errors and turn from them.”  I give a look to the living legend, he nods, “I know, I know, that’s the problem.”

“What’s the problem?” asks one of the young guns.

The living legend sighs deeply and turns to the others.  ”It puts the focus on us.  If we just preach sin and repentance the whole focus is on us.”

“It’s anthropocentric” mutters a young gun, latching onto his favourite word.  He looks around to see if anyone else has noticed his firm grasp of the issues.

“I don’t get it” pipes up another, “I thought sin and repentance was God-centred preaching?  Isn’t that what you taught us??”

The living legend is speechless.  I break the silence.  Crouching down to their level, I ask, “If we simply preach sin and repentance how exactly is God at the centre?  He may well be over and above our conceptions of sin and repentance - but how is He in the middle?  In such a sermon isn’t God actually on the periphery?  He’s hardly the principal Actor!”  At this stage the one who muttered ‘anthropocentric’ is nodding in the way failed quiz show contestants nod when they’re told the right answer.

I go on, “It’s like our passage from Romans 3.  Sin is certainly there!  Sin is certainly a problem.  I mean we’ve been told from verse 9 that all are under sin.  And we’ve been told in verse 20 that observing the law will never get us out from under this condition.  But given that this is the case, wouldn’t it be strange if Paul then told us that ‘repentance’ was this new work that was better than the old Mosaic works?  Actually Paul doesn’t mention any of our works in this passage, not our obedience, not our repentance.  No, what does Paul point us to?  Verse 25, the blood of Jesus - a propitiation for our sins.  Now we all know what propitiation means right?”

Young noddy blurts out “A sacrifice that turns away God’s wrath!!”  I gesture with my hands, trying to calm his wild-eyed enthusiasm.

“Ok, yes. Well done.  It turns away God’s wrath.  Because that’s the real problem.  The problem is, chapter 1 verse 18, the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against us.  It will culminate in, chapter 2 verse 5, a day of wrath.  And Paul is at pains to say we all deserve it, we are all unrighteous and there’s nothing moral and nothing religious we can do to turn aside this wrath.  We are helpless.  BUT, a righteousness beyond us has come.  And He is the sacrifice who turns away God’s wrath.  Through His redemption we are justified freely.  That’s the gospel.  That’s what we preach.  And who is at the centre of this story?  Not us.  Him.”

“So we shouldn’t preach sin and repentance?” asks another.

“Of course we should.  But those are comprehended within a much more profound perspective.  Wrath and redemption are the deeper truths.  You know I’ll bet that all the sermons you hear are about committed sin and sanctification?  You know the kind.  ‘God says: Don’t do X, we all do it, let’s ask His help to stop.’  Where are the sermons that major on original sin and justification?  Why don’t we plunge them to the depths and then take them to the heights?  Why all this middle of the road stuff that puts us at the centre?”

A couple of young guns knowingly mouthe ‘anthropocentric’ to one another. 

I continue “Take Islam.  It’s a classic religion of repentance.  God remains far above, it’s down to us to clean up our act.  In fact all human religion is man justifying man before a watching god.  But the Gospel is God justifying God before a watching humanity.  He takes centre-stage and we need to move off into the audience to watch Him work salvation for us.  Christianity is not a religion of repentance, it’s a religion of redemption.  And that’s quite a difference don’t you see?”

As I speak, the young guns have been picking themselves off the floor one by one.  The room has been won to the side of Truth.  I look upon them with fatherly benevolence.

“So now friends - now that you know these things: What would be a good application of Romans 3?”

In unison they reply “Humility!”  And for a moment all is right with the world.

Until, that is, the harmony is shattered.  One of the young guns, no doubt provoked by my impossible smugness, speaks up:

“Hey, if humility is so important, how come you’re so proud?” 

The mood of the room takes a decisive turn.  Another piles in “And how come you’ve been dreaming us up for the last 10 minutes to feed your ego.”  Here’s where the fantasy turns pretty nasty.

“What kind of egotist spends his time winning theological debates in his head??”

“Yeah, debates he never actually won in the real world!”

Another pipes up: “I think I know ‘Where then is boasting?’ - he’s rstanding in the middle of the room!!”

At this point the fantasy is basically unsalvagable.  So then, I hate to do it, but sometimes you just have to pull rank. 

“Quiet all of you!  This is my fantasy.  Either you submit adoringly to my theological genius or you can get out now.” 

Faced with those options they instantly choose non-existence.  One by one they vanish, though somehow their looks of betrayal and disgust seem to linger on.

“You’ll be back” I say to the departed phantasms.  “Pretty soon I’ll need to feel right about something else and you’ll be right back in my imagination, bowing to my unquestioned brilliance.

“Ha!” I say.  The laughter echoes around my empty head.

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Means of Grace not the end of our work

The means of grace (things like preaching and sacraments) are meant to be just that.  Means by which the grace of God reaches down to us.  I’ve been reflecting recently that often we try to absolutize the means of grace so that they become not means but ends in themselves, and not grace (i.e. His initiative) but works (i.e. ours!). 

And then we divide over whatever our chosen ‘means of grace’ might be.

So the danger for the catholic is to see the eucharist not as a means of God’s encounter with man but rather the moment in which they make God manifest (ex opere operato - by doing it, it is done). When the ritual is performed well/reverently/at all, Christ’s presence is enjoyed. Christ is not present through the sacrament but rather the performance of the mass is Christ’s presence. The mass becomes the point.

The danger for the charismatic is to view the singing of spiritual songs in the midst of the congregation not as a means of grace but as the time when ‘God’s in the house’. When the band are playing well, God shows up - ex opere operato. In that case God is not present in and through ‘worship’ but ‘worship’ is equated with the divine presence.  Worship becomes the point.

The danger for the evangelical is to see preaching not as a means of grace but as the action we perform whereby we guarantee a divine speech act.  The Proclamation Trust states ‘When the bible is taught, God himself speaks.’  Now I want to draw the strongest possible link between preaching and God’s speaking (see long paper here) but let’s get the order right.  He graciously speaks through our preaching, we cannot bring Him down through our correct exposition.   The danger is that simple exposition of a biblical passage or theme is itself the encounter with God - ex opere operato.  Preaching becomes the point.

Yet surely, Christ is the point. And the Lord’s supper and worship and preaching are ways that Jesus can and does make Himself known to us, among us and in us.  Yet He will not be brought down by our performance of these acts. They are His means (note means) of grace (note: grace!). He always remains free in His self-giving - in the bread and wine, in our corporate life, in His word.

That’s why it’s often great to hear a catholic preaching well, or an evangelical leading ‘worship’ or a charismatic presiding at the Lord’s table.  For then, they are less tempted to see the simple operation of this act as the point but as a means of making Christ known - He is the point.

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Amen Amen

If you ever say Amen it’s usually a response to what someone else has said or prayed, right?

And it’s usually after what they’ve said, right?

And only if it’s really good do you repeat it: ’Amen, Amen!’, right?

So it’s an affirmation that someone else has just spoken truth (Amen is straight from the Hebrew for truth).

But when Jesus comes along, what does He do?  He gives Amens to His own sayings: 30 times in Matthew alone!  And in John’s Gospel He gives a double-Amen to 25 of His own teachings!

e.g. Amen, Amen I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life (John 5:24)

What’s Jesus doing by prefacing His teaching with ‘Amen, Amen’?  Well let me put words to what this means.  Jesus is basically saying:

“You don’t stand in judgement on my word.  I won’t even wait for your Amen.  Your Amen could only ever be the faint echo of my own Amen!  You do not and cannot stand in judgement on my word.  Before you’ve even heard a syllable of it, I tell you on my own authority that this is truth.  This is the only authentication or approval these words ever could or should have - my own.  This is true because I say it, not because you have some vantage point from which to assess these words.  Let my Amen recalibrate everything you consider to be truth.  You must simply accept my words as the gold standard of truth because it is I who speak them.  In short: It doesn’t matter what you think - this is the truth, deal with it!”

Who speaks like this?  Only God’s Faithful and True Amen (Rev 3:14).

Imagine if our bible reading, our theology, our apologetics, our Christian obedience was shaped not by whether we thought, in all good conscience, we could give our Amen to Christ?  What if we stopped trying to assess Christ’s word with our Amens and instead simply received His Amen in glad submission?

May we hear His word in the Spirit in which it was spoken - as truth itself. (John 17:17)

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Five Smooth Stones - Reward

This is the last in our series looking at various doctrines through the lens of the David and Goliath story. (The other four stones were: preaching, grace, faith and election)

Here we consider why it is that the concept of reward is not counter to the doctrines of Christ alone, grace alone and faith alone.

So let’s ask: Why do people consider the concept of reward to be a potential threat to the doctrines of grace?  Well, often the argument runs something like this:

• Grace means that everything is a gift
• If everything’s a gift then there’s no room for merit (you can’t earn gifts)
• Reward is based on merit (otherwise it’s not reward it’s just random)
• Therefore, grace means there’s no room for reward.

But is this really the definition of grace with which we want to begin?  The whole burden of this series has been to show that Christ - our David, our anointed Champion - needs to be at the heart of our thinking.  And so we saw that preaching is not simply lifting our eyes to some general divine battle plan but focussing us on the King who wins the battle for us.  Grace is not basically God’s empowering of our work but something completely outside ourselves - the victory of our Champion.  Grace is, at heart, Christ’s work for us, to which we contribute nothing. Grace alone is effectively just another way of saying ‘Christ alone.’ It is the affirmation that the victory is secured by Christ without us having lifted a finger to help.

Now with this definition of grace - is there room for reward?  Well yes.  Think of how the Israelites plundered the Philistines

When the Philistines saw that their hero was dead, they turned and ran.  Then the men of Israel and Judah surged forward with a shout and pursued the Philistines to the entrance of Gath and to the gates of Ekron. Their dead were strewn along the Shaaraim road to Gath and Ekron. When the Israelites returned from chasing the Philistines, they plundered their camp. (1 Sam 17:51-53)

On the basis of David’s victory they plunder the Philistines.  Without the victory they would all have died.  In victory none of them could claim credit for securing it.  But in response to it, some will have chased hard, killed many and brought back much plunder.  At the same time it’s conceivable (though we’re not told and I don’t think this happend) that some may simply have gawped in wonder at the victory of David and barely moved an inch.  Both kinds of soldiers win the day.  Some participate in the victory more fully.  That’s really the very simple point I want to make with this post.

Again it emphasises that faith is not synonymous with inactivity!  We get these strange ideas about faith since we’re used to playing off faith against works all the time.  We say things like ‘I’m not saved by my works, I’m saved by my faith’ - which is a really unhelpful way of framing things.  It makes it sound like faith is the one meritorious work (an internal mental act) that I summon up to earn salvation.  The message becomes - “Don’t do works (external physical acts), do faith (internal, mental acts)!”  And then we get our knickers in a twist worrying that any external, physical acts are necessarily worksy.  But no. 

Think about Numbers 13.  The spies come back from the promised land with grapes like basketballs.  Caleb and Joshua say “We should go up and take possession of the land” and the people stay put.  A distinct lack of physical activity. Perhaps they were worried about earning the promised land!  Was this a rejection of works and an instance of faith?  No it is utter faithlessness through and through.  Not going up is faithless in Numbers 13 and going up is faithless in Numbers 14.  Why?  Because of the LORD’s promise.  He promises success in the first instance and failure in the second.  Their response to the promise is what constitutes the faith/works divide.  Inactivity can be utter unbelief.  Tremendous striving can be pure faith. 

Faith is receiving the promise appropriately.  In Anders Nygren’s phrase, faith is being conquered by the gospel.  In 1 Samuel 17 terms, faith is looking at the giant fall and understanding who it is who’s won - your brother and king.  From faith - which is simply looking away from self to the Victorious King - may flow all kinds of things like cheering (emotions) and plundering (good works).  And if you’ve really seen the victory it’s pretty hard to see why you wouldn’t cheer and why you wouldn’t plunder.  But cheering and plundering doesn’t win the battle - the king does.  “Faith” is just another way of directing our attention away from ourselves (even away from our joyous response to salvation) and fixing it solely on the Saviour.  The fruit of this faith will come forth in all manner of affections and works which are the organic outflow of the work of Christ alone.  In 1 Samuel 17 terms the plunder comes from:

• the victory of the king alone
• is empowered by the bread of David (v17ff)
• and is the natural overflow of praise which necessarily attends seeing the victory aright.

Now Christ expects us to go hard after reward.  Otherwise, why dangle it in front of us??  (e.g. Luke 19:17!!)  But just as we’re expected to rejoice, so too with pursuing reward, we simply do not have the resources in ourselves.  Nor is it an abstract providence that grants us divine energies to rejoice and to plunder.  Rather it is a focus again on the Champion, our Brother, that will produce both the shout and the charge into enemy territory.

So having looked again at our triumphant King… Go in war to love and serve the Lord.

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Light Shines in Darkness

Recently I was reading John 1:1-18 with some international students who knew next to nothing about Christianity.  I was bracing myself for all sorts of questions about the trinity and the incarnation.  Actually they understood these quite easily. (After all how difficult is the sentence “God is a loving relationship of three Persons” or “the Word became flesh” - these concepts are only difficult if you’re committed to a whole other raft of theistic suppositions!).  Here is what they really struggled with:

The light shines in the darkness but the darkness has not understood it

Now one issue is the translation of the word for “understood”.  katelaben could be translated ‘lay hold of’, ‘take possession of’ or in the cognitive sense of “understand” as the NIV has it.  Perhaps the English word “grasp” straddles these meanings nicely?  “The darkness has not grasped the light.”

But however you translate it, you have this conceptual riddle: if light shines how come there’s darkness?? 

Well there might be some reasonable explanations like, maybe the Light is not very strong.  Well no, the Light is Jesus Christ - the Light of the cosmos! (v9-10). 

Ok, well perhaps the Light is not shining in the right place?  No - the Light shines directly in the darkness, the darkness that is humanity in its unbelief  (v4-5). 

Hmm, well maybe the Light only shines on some but not on others, leaving the darkness unenlightened?  No, “the true Light gives light to every man.” (v9). 

This is the riddle:  the Light really shines and shines directly into the darkness.  John even says the Light enlightens every man.  Yet the darkness remains.  Somehow the darkness does not receive the omnipotent Light of the cosmos.

These international students were stumped.  And actually so was I.  This should have struck me many times, but it took their fresh pairs of eyes to see what is really a very great question:  How can omnipotent Light shine and darkness remain?

If this doesn’t strike us, it really should.  And we must resist the urge to smoothe the problem away.  The text does not let us off the hook - either saying “He doesn’t really shine” or ”It’s not real darkness.”  No, He really shines and there’s really darkness.

In fact this has been a riddle from day one.  Literally. 

³ And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ⁴ God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light “day”, and the darkness He called “night”. And there was evening, and there was morning–the first day.

Though verse 2 told us of ‘darkness’ and ‘the deep’ (abyss), the Word of God brings a triumphant light.  Yet this light does not extinguish the darkness.  Instead there is a separation of light and darkness.  How strange!  We think of light swallowing up darkness - illuminating it, removing it.  Yet what we see is two realms separated.  The light is clearly superior but the darkness is not obliterated.

Recently 2 Corinthians 5 has come up on two blogs I read regularly - Baxter’s Ongoing Thoughts and Halden’s Inhabitatio Dei.  In particular the emphasis has been on the fact that “God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ.” (2 Cor 5:19).   I heartily agree.  But I took issue with what I see to be the loss of any category for ongoing darkness/alienation/separation.  Paul goes on in the next verse to explain his ministry of reconciliation - he urges people “Be reconciled to God.”  Paul goes around this (in one sense) reconciled world and urges people (with a passive imperative - interesting grammar no?!) to be reconciled.  Why?  Because the light shines but (somehow!) darkness remains.

And this makes the darkness not less outrageous but more.  The sin of those in the dark is not that they haven’t had the light or not pilgrimmaged towards it.  Their sin is that they are being enlightened minute by minute and yet walk in darkness.  Think of Paul in the Areopagus - he tells the Athenians that they live and move and have their being in God - He is not far from them at all!!! (v27-28).  And yet they must repent (v30-31) because judgement is coming.  This is the great problem - not that they have sinned against a ‘god over there.’  Rather, they have rejected the God in Whom is their very life.  The light is shining, they are (in one sense) living in God.  And yet this makes their darkness all the more appalling.

How can we be godless, given how God has lifted the whole creation to Himself in Christ?  How can we shout our ‘No’ to God given His omnipotent ‘Yes’ in Christ?  This is an outrageous conceptual problem.  But it is, even more, an outrageous moral problem.  It must not be rationalized or wished away.  God really was reconciling the world to Himself on the cross.  He really has said Yes to all creation. The true Light really does enlighten everyone.  Yet somehow humans remain godless, they shout their defiant ‘no’, they love and remain in and perpetuate the darkness.

Sin is insanity. There simply is nothing reasonable about it.  We must remember this as we go about our ministry of reconciliation.  (2 Cor 5:18-20).  At the most fundamental level, there’s nothing credible about unbelief.  Let’s not conduct our evangelism as though there is.

We are to urge the people of this reconciled world to be reconciled. How can they not be!?  That should be the flavour of our evangelism.  How can you not be enlightened by Him who is shining with Almighty power??  That urgency and incredulity and insistence and even moral outrage should characterize our ministry.  Christ shines - how can you not be enlightened??  Christ is given to you - how can you not receive Him??  Christ has reconciled the world - how can you not be reconciled??

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For an example of what preaching like this might sound like - here’s an evangelistic Christmas carol talk on Isaiah 9. The concluding challenge in particular is shaped by these kinds of thoughts.

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Church - Jacuzzi or Waterfall??

What is church like?

Is it a jacuzzi? 

Cosy? Relaxing?  A chance for you and your nearest and dearest to recharge the batteries?

Or is it…

A waterfall?

 

 

 Scary?  Exciting?  Expansive?  Never safe?

Or is it… and here’s my new word for the week…

A jacuzzerfall

Here we see the blessings of our close fellowship in Christ flowing out and blessing the whole world.

⁹But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. ¹⁰ Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. ¹¹ Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. ¹² Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.  (1 Peter 2:9-12)

This is what church is like - a jacuzzerfall.  (Now go and use the word this week)

And here’s a sermon I preached on Sunday on the subject.

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Now that’s funny

Ok so you’ve probably all seen this a million times but I’ve only just stumbled across it.  And oh how I did laugh…

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Plenty more hilarity from Adam Buxton here

Four Bishops, Four Pearls

I was reflecting today that in the last fortnight I’ve received four pearls of wisdom from four Anglican bishops.  That’s right, I said Anglican bishops.

The first pearl came from retired Bishop John Taylor who spoke at our ordination retreat.  He told the story of a pastoral visit to a very ill woman in hospital.  It represents brilliantly what I think pastoral practice (and good evangelism) boils down to.  Here’s how I remember his re-telling:

I told her God’s grace was for her - even for her.

She said “No, it couldn’t be, you don’t know what I’ve done.”

I told her “Christ said ‘The healthy don’t need a doctor, the sick do.  I’ve not come to call the righteous but sinner.’ It really is for you.”

She said “No.”

I said “Yes!”… 

…Eventually she received Christ.

 

Brilliant!  The word from beyond comes, contradicts and finally comforts.  It perfectly encapsulates my understanding of ministry.

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The next pearl comes from my Bishop of Chichester in his charge to us priests prior to ordination.   He spoke about public worship:

It is fundamental for biblical faith that God is the subject and not the object of the liturgy.  In [OT] Temple worship, it is God who reveals himself, his presence, his name, his will.  The cultus was not a kind of magical conjuring up of a compliant deity but the place at which by thankful remembrance of what God has done in the past God himself has the opening to disclose himself again, here and now, to renew faith and secure its transmission to the next generation… it is something which lies in God’s own hands…

…Let me finish by trying to draw together a few scattered strands of this charge.  First, I would like you to remember always that true worship is not something we do, but a moment in which God discloses himself to us.  Second, I would like you to remember that both praise of God and thanksgiving for his actual gifts are central to authentic worship and third, I would like you to remember that worship has an important role in reconvincing people of his concrete, actual, historical acts of mercy so that they can become effective witnesses to those who do not believe.  And finally, I would like you to remember that if our worship is genuine, it can be a powerful witness to both those who believe and those who do not yet believe, that God is real and has been among his people.

We do not pull God down (through our faithful preaching, our good music or our sacramental practice).  These things, in God’s good pleasure, are a means of His grace.  The direction of the arrow is DOWN.

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Next pearl was from my area Bishop, Wallace Benn who preached at my ordination.  His passage was John 21:1-19.  He spoke of the importance of feeding the sheep (v15-17) and of the sure expectation of suffering in ministry (v18-19).  But first and foremost he drummed into us the vital importance of ‘maintaining your love relationship with the Lord’ (v15-17).

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Finally, Douglas Milmine - former Bishop of Paraguay - was at my ordination.  He’s been ordained since 1947, been a bishop for 35 years and absolutely brim full of the joy of the Lord.  Just minutes before the ordination service he said to us in the vestry: 

I’ve only one regret in my ministry - that I didn’t save more souls.  That’s the only reason we’re here - saving souls.

 

Go bishops!

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Bobby’s Back!

One of my very favourite blogs from one of my very favourite bloggers.  Back after a break with some thought provoking stuff, especially considering our discussions of faith and election here.

Go say hello.

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