Some manly things Jesus did

 

Three pictures of manliness in the gospels:

ONE.  Jesus, pictured as the father in Luke 15, (seriously the father is Jesus.  Just straightforwardly and obviously Jesus.  It’s demonstrable beyond any question of refutation.  Really).  Where was I?  Oh yes, Jesus, pictured as the father, is turned in his stomach with compassion, hitches up his robes, runs to his good-for-nothing son, flings his arms around him and kisses him.

Here is the most poignant picture of Jesus’ love for sinners.  And Jesus chooses a patriarch to show it.  We might think he looks pretty motherly and not fatherly.  We might question the masculinity of this scene.  We’d be dead wrong.  Here is a picture of total Jesus-shaped manliness.

TWO.  Jesus gets up from the evening meal, downs his drink in one, belches and tells a cracking gag about women drivers.  No wait.  That’s not John 13.  In John 13 He gets up from the table, takes off His robe, picks up a towel, and He gets down on His hands and knees to wash and pad dry the dirty, naked feet of His friends. 

Was this a detour from His otherwise robust masculinity?  No, it was the expression of it.  Here was Jesus showing the full extent of His love (v1) – the Bridegroom washing His bride in sacrificial service. 

THREE.  Gethsemane: Jesus, overwhelmed with sorrow, actually lets His friends in on His distress – inviting Peter, James and John to watch with Him.  The Passion of the Christ gets this wrong – Jesus does not say ‘I don’t want them to see me like this.’  The only reason we know about this episode is that Jesus must have told them all about it.  Desperate praying, sweating blood, heart poured out, never has Jesus looked weaker.

I’ve heard Driscoll repeatedly describe Gethsemane as a portrait of femininity – Jesus in submission to His Head, the Father.  Of course both men and women need to look to Christ as Model.  But frankly I think Driscoll is avoiding something that ought to challenge his macho-man masculinity. Here is Man in submission to God.  This is what man is made for.  The Ruler under God, in the garden, obeying submissively in total dependence and willing to die for His bride - here is the Last Adam, the true picture of manliness.   

Of course it doesn’t look very macho.  It isn’t.  But it’s what Jesus-shaped masculinity looks like.

To be a man like the Man doesn’t look manly to men.  A man must be man enough to reject men and follow the Man.

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Newbiggin Lecture

Wonderful Lesslie Newbiggin lecture on Nihilism.  Nihilism as the fruit of a divorce between faith categories and certainty/knowledge categories.  And it started a lot sooner than Kant.  Go listen.

h/t Dave K

Passover is…

… the ultimate plague (i.e. judgement)  (Ex 11:1)

… judgement upon the gods (Ex 12:12)

… the defeat of the Enemy (Ex 6:1)

… liberation from slavery to overlords (Ex 13:14)

… liberation to the service of the LORD (Ex 8:1)

… the cause of unparalleled sorrow for the enemies (Ex 11:6)

… the cause of great joy for the redeemed (2 Chron 30:21)

… the distinction between the LORD’s people and the world (Ex 11:7)

… in darkness (Deut 16:6)

… a sacrifice (Ex 12:27)

… substitutionary (Ex 12:13)

… bloody (Ex 12:13)

… a sign for the LORD’s people (Ex 12:13)

… for the LORD Himself to see (Ex 12:13)

… to be memorialized in perpetuity (Ex 12:14)

… community-defining (Ex 12:47)

… open to non-covenant people (Ex 12:49)  but…

… for those who enter the covenant and own its sign (Ex 12:48)

… time renewing (Ex 12:1)

… the ultimate revelation of the LORD (Ex 6:7)

 Any more??

 

What is the cross?  The same.

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Bad news for England

Australia’s batting looks fragile and apart from Lee the bowling seems toothless.  So I was relieved to watch this the other day:

 

And just a reminder of what Warne can do

 

If cricket’s not your thing, I’m sorry.  I really am sorry.

Here – watch Robert Webb flashdancing…

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Thawed out Thursdays

The dumb thing about blogging is that you’re always burying your old stuff with whatever nonsense occured to you in the shower that morning.  Almost 500 posts on it occurs to me that newer is not necessarily better and, apart from Bobby, I’m not sure how many of you were following the blog from the beginning.  So because of that (and because I’m lazy!), I’ll repost some older stuff.  Probably not every Thursday, but getting old stuff out of the freezer on Thawsdays appeals to me.  Anyway, here’s my third ever post.  It’s called:

God is not revealed in His Twin

This should be very obvious, but we easily forget it.  Even in the verses that most directly uphold the full and complete revelation of the Father in the Son, the differentiation of Father and Son are also prominently in view:

“Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9)

“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.” (Heb 1:3)

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.” (Col 1:15)

“…see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God… For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” (2 Cor 4:4-6)

The Father is perfectly revealed, not by His Twin, not by a Clone, but by Someone who is His Complement.  The Father is revealed in His Son, the Firstborn, His Image, His right-hand Man-Priest.  Self-differentiation is at the heart of God’s revelation.  Jesus is not the same as His Father and yet fully reveals Him. More than this – this difference is of the essence of the divine self-disclosure.  Self-differentiation in communion is the being of God – all of this is perfectly revealed in, by and through Jesus of Nazareth.

Now to say that Jesus is other to His Father is not an Arian position.  On the contrary this is a determination to see Jesus’ revelation as a full disclosure of the life of God.  It was Arius who would leave us short of full revelation in Jesus.  Here we are embracing the otherness of Father and Son as the very deepest revelation of the divine nature. It is because of His equality with the Father that Christ’s otherness must be taken as part and parcel of the divine revelation. Because Jesus fully reveals the divine life by speaking of Another, thus He is not obstructing our view of this Other.   Rather the interplay of He and the Other are constitutive of the divine life which He reveals.  Arius is refuted at the deepest level, and all by heeding this simple truth: God is not revealed in His Twin but in His Son.

This should be so obvious and plain and yet so many take their opposition of Arius in precisely the opposite direction.  Their first and fatal move is to maintain that homo-ousios commits us to three-fold repetition.  They assume Father and Son are identical from the outset – all in the name of Nicene orthodoxy (of course ignoring ‘God from God…’).  Now when they approach the eating, sleeping, dying, rising Jesus they must account for these differences while upholding that the Father and Son possess identical CVs.  What to do with the discrepancies?  Simple.  Ignore the fact that Nicea pronounced the homo-ousios on Jesus of Nazareth and instead attribute all discrepancies to a human nature that is distanced from His divine nature. 

The cost of such a move?  Immediately, the otherness of Jesus is not revelatory of the divine nature, in fact it impedes our view of God. Now to see Jesus is not to see divine life, but merely human.  We have in fact lost the one Image, Word, Representative and Mediator of God.  Jesus of Nazareth has become, to all intents and purposes, homoi-ousios with the Father.  Question marks hover over everything we see in Jesus as to whether or not this reveals the divine life.  We have returned to Arius’s problem via another route – we are left short of full revelation in Jesus.

Now if we took seriously the fact that God is not revealed in His Twin but in His Son we would be saved from all of this.  Christ’s humanity neither commits us to an eating, sleeping, dying, rising Father, but nor does it distance us from a true revelation of God.  Instead Christ’s eating reveals a Father who provides in our frailties, His sleeping reveals a Father who protects in our weakness, His death reveals a living, judging Father, His resurrection reveals a justifying, reconciling Father.  We see into the very heart-beat of the eternal trinity when we see Jesus of Nazareth in all His glorious humanity. 

And all because we have remembered the simple adage: God is not revealed in His Twin, but in His Son!

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Apologetic Christianity

In a Christian book shop this morning they were promoting a new apologetics book with the strapline:

Why God probably exists.  Why Jesus is probably divine.

Hardly the language of revelation (i.e. of the gospel!)

The book consisted of four theistic proofs, a couple of chapters on Jesus and then some answers to thorny questions.  An epilogue asked readers for their verdict on Jesus.

I mean really.  What the?? You might as well say,

Here’s little Jesus.  He stands in the dock, but thank God he’s got some excellent advocates called apologists.  And they can prove there’s a good chance He’s God (and don’t forget God probably does exist after all).  So won’t you please find in favour of the defendant? 

 

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How are you?

How do you answer that question?  You’re going through the mill all week, sipping a cuppa after the service, and someone asks cheerily ‘How are you?’  What do you say?

We’ve had experience of chronic illness for many years now.  I confess that when people ask about it we don’t really know what to say.  I know other friends who have degenerative illnesses.  And every week the questions come at church ‘How are you?  Any progress?’  And they answer ‘Yes indeed – the illness has progressed… and barring divine intervention it will continue to progress.’  The person frowns and asks ‘So the doctors haven’t helped?’  And of course the doctors have helped… as much as they can.  But…

- …’Oh, because I read in ‘Chintz!’ magazine about a woman who recovered after eating a diet of Goji berries and Quinoa – perhaps you could try that.’

- ‘Maybe!’

- ‘Give that a go and let me know next week.’

- ‘Look forward to it!’

Don’t get me wrong, I know the trouble from the other end.  In our home group we have a woman who’s struggled with insomnia for 50 years. Fifty years!  But when she reveals this, what is our response? 

“Have you tried a hot bath with a drop of lavender?”

“Long walks in the sea air.”

“Listen to the shipping forecast”

“A drop of badger blood on the pillow…”

She shows extraordinary patience, listening to our home spun wisdom for a good quarter of an hour.  Eventually she says, “I have struggled with this for 50 years you know”. 

Hmmm. 

Our trouble is we don’t know what we can offer unless it’s a quick fix.  So when we run out of fixes all we can think to do is offer prayer.  Which is good I suppose.  But even then – what’s our goal?  The fix!  And how are we treating the other person?  What are our interactions all about?  Solving problems? 

Here are some questions for us: 

Can we handle sickness that doesn’t yield to the quick fix? 

Can we face the struggles that aren’t solved by the tried and trusted common sense we take pride in? 

Can we enter into the struggles of others and not make ‘the fix’ into the goal?

Can we simply journey with others in their mess and allow the Spirit to encourage us both in the Christ who is known best in the storm?

And, on the other end of things, when people ask us about our long-term stuggles, what can we say?

I’ve recently taken to one particular line that I picked up in a Tim Keller sermon, I’d love to hear any you have.  His was this:

- How are you?

- Nothing a resurrection won’t fix!

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Golden-Blogger does it again

They called the early church’s greatest preacher John ‘Chrysostom’ meaning ’John Golden Mouth’.  He reigned supreme in the style of preaching from that era which involved weaving together a rich tapestry of biblical images.  These preachers simply inhabited and spoke the language of the Scriptures, fitting together themes from all corners of the canon.

Friends, Golden-Blogger is among us.  And his name is Dev. 

Go and read Redemption through Exile.  And, if you’re not a regular reader – get cracking on the others!

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Gonna mess you up

There are two things that will really mess you up in life.  Getting married and becoming a Christian.  You can poodle along quite contentedly before either of these states.  But once you enter marriage, or once Christ enters you – life as you know it is over.

I know a good number of people who have developed and/or exacerbated serious emotional and psychological problems upon entering one or both of these states. 

How come?  Well here’s one thought.  In both you have the unconditional presence of another.  Not even your sins can keep people at bay now.  In fact now sins just become the occasion for a much deeper engagement.  Conditionality used to keep your sins underground and your critics distant.  When things were conditional you knew that the presence of love in your life was directly related to your ability to keep unloveliness hidden.  Now you have unconditional – and therefore inescapable - presence.  

Ironically it’s not law that shines a torchlight into our basements.  It’s grace.  There’s no hiding place from unconditional love.  

Barth used to say ‘God’s grace shatters men.’  George Hunsinger wrote a book on Barth’s theology called ‘Disruptive Grace.’  That’s the true nature of covenant relationships.  Yes they are the context in which true growth and godliness occur.  But only because first of all they totally mess you up.

What do we expect in Christian discipleship? What do we expect in marriage?  I say prepare for massive disturbance – and I mean disturbance in the fullest sense of the word.

Ten words on the preached word

Just some fairly random thoughts on what I’d like to see more of in my own preaching and the preaching of others…

 

1. Thou shalt worship Christ from the pulpit.  The priestly task of declaring the gospel of God (Rom 15:16) entaileth a twofold direction to the sermon.  The preacher not only standeth before a congregation to declare truth, but before the Lord to worship Him.  Of course ‘worship’ does not mean putting on airs – feigning the manner of a Cranmer, Spurgeon or Piper.  It does mean happy and humble gratitude in the presence of Jesus.  And of course this twofoldness is accomplished in one and the same task – proclaiming ‘Worthy is the Lamb.’
2. Thou shalt communicate, through both content and style, a tangible sense of the newness of God’s revelation.  May such phrases as these perish from our lips: ‘Of course we all knoweth do we not…’  We really do not knoweth.  We need to be toldeth.  Hence preaching.  Therefore preach with eager and childlike enthusiasm for the surprising and always disruptive grace of God.
3. Thy tone shalt be declarative and devotional.
4. Thy method shalt be expositional and christocentric.  (Of course expositional does not necessitate ‘verse by verse’)
5. Thy fevered entreaty shalt not be ‘DO’ so much as ‘LOOK’.
6. Thou shalt not apologize for the word, whether for its supposed harshness or obscurity or backwardness or unbelievability.  In truth the word is capable of defending itself on all these counts.
7. Thou shalt not go searching for illustrations.  Thy passage no doubt has plenty of good ones of its own.  Anyone that spendeth time looking for stories to ‘lighten up their talk’ must be cut off from the congregation.
8. Thou shalt not go searching for jokes.  There is no doubt plenty of humour in the Scriptures themselves without you searching lamepreachergags.com.  Anyone found guilty of the needless and clumsy insertion of ‘a joke’ shall be stoned to death.  Show no mercy.
9. Thou shalt not preach that ‘Christ is God’.  Thou shalt preach that God is only and always the God revealed in Christ.
10. Thou shalt not lift up the Lamb because thou art supposed to but because thou canst do no other.

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99 Balloons

I’m absolutely blown away by this.

What gets me is the combination of sadness without any self-pity.

It’s utterly tragic but not told as a tragedy.  Somehow the whole thing is a celebration shot through with praise, thanksgiving and gospel hope.

Praise Jesus.

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The fruit of the Spirit as works of the flesh

For years I prayed for the fruit of the Spirit every day.  (Galatians 5:22f)  Yet, looking back, I prayed for the fruit in an altogether fleshly way.

How so?  Well basically my prayers were petitions for the moral character of ‘love, joy, peace…’ as abstract qualities. I would judge my own spiritual walk that week by how loving, joyful, peaceful… I had been. In short I had turned the fruit of the Spirit into a check-list of works which I either did or didn’t practice that week.

One morning, as I was praying for the fruit, I got an image of the Spirit coming to my door with a huge basket laden with choice fruits.  And my response was to say ‘Thanks for bringing the fruit.  Just leave them inside the door and I’ll see you later!’

I wanted the fruit not the Spirit.  I wanted the fruit apart from the Spirit.  Yet the fruit is fruit of the Spirit. It grows organically from a relationship with Him.  Henceforward I prayed for the Spirit Himself.

How quickly we turn gospel into law.
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Eat Dirt Man Eater!

Satan must eat dust all his days (Gen 3:14)

Man is dust (Gen 3:19)

Satan is a maneater (1 Pet 5:8)

Yet Christ will join man to crush the maneater (Gen 3:15)

He does this by being Man eaten (John 6:51)

Only in this way does He swallow His enemies (1 Cor 15:54)

Those who don’t eat (with) Christ get eaten (Rev 19:18)

Those who eat Christ join Him in crushing the maneater (Rom 16:20)

In this way Christ humbles Himself in order to be exalted (Luke 14:11)

Meanwhile Satan, who exalted himself will be humbled (Ezek 28:11-19)

Eating dust is the lot of the defeated enemy (Ps 72:9)

And Satan will eat dirt all the days of his life (Micah 7:17; Rev 20:10)

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So eat dirt man eater!  There’s one Man you couldn’t swallow.  He’s swallowed you.  Our food will be the Man eaten.  And you will eat dirt forever.

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Fake Purse Ninjas

Happy Friday

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1 Corinthians 13 sermon

 

How do you think of 1 Corinthians 13?  Is it a warm, relaxing bubble bath?  Does it make you forget your cares and give you the warm fuzzies?

 

 

I’m here to tell you, this chapter is not a bubble bath.  It’s a scalding hot bath full of antiseptic!

And we are covered in cuts and bruises and deep wounds.  And 1 Corinthians 13 hurts.  It hurts!

That’s the kind of wake-up call Paul wanted the Cornithians to have.  No Corinthian read this chapter and thought, ‘How sweet!.  They thought ‘Yikes!  I am in deep, deep trouble here.’

There are three paragraphs in this chapter.  Paragraph 1 will put the fear of God into us, paragraph 2 will make us despair of ourselves, but only then will paragraph 3 give us some hope.

There’s hope in the end, but Paul wants us to soak long and hard in some painful truths.  

Listen here.  Or keep reading…

The context is key. The context is mission.

In preaching through 1 Corinthians recently I listened to a lot of sermons on chapters 9 and 10.   Two themes in particular were hammered home by preachers. 

In chapter 9 there’s the olympic training regimes (v24-27).  In chapter 10 there’s ‘glorifying God’ in all circumstances (v31).  But so often the context of these verses is ignored.

So in chapter 9 we read this:

²⁴Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. ²⁵Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. ²⁶Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. ²⁷No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.

That’ll preach won’t it?  Go into strict training people!  There’s a medal held out.  Be an Olympian Christian.

And what did all these sermons mean by being an Olympian Christian?  Personal holiness.  Devotional disciplines.  You know the drill.

But what is the context?  Verses 19-23 – becoming all things to all men so that by all possible means we may save some.  It’s a missionary context.  Beating our bodies and going into strict training is a description of how we order our lives with evangelistic priorities.  This Olympian spirituality is an outwardly focussed determination to move out into the world for the salvation of others.  That’s quite a different sermon.

In chapter 10 we have that famous verse:

³¹So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

What does this mean?  How would it look like lived out?  Well if you listen to these sermons it’s mainly about personal holiness.  Devotional disciplines.  You know the drill.

But again, what is the context?  It’s eating and drinking in the context of food sacrificed to idols.  The context is a world full of unChristian and anti-Christian cultures and practices which, nonetheless, the Christian is compelled to engage.  And so verse 33 says:

I try to please everybody in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.

It’s about adapting all things, even eating and drinking, to the end that Jews, Greeks and the church of God is built up (v32).  Effectively verse 33 explains verse 31.  Doing all for the glory of God means doing all for the good of many, so that they may be saved.  This makes sense of the ‘glory of God’ which is not a static quality but an outgoing salvific movement. 

To have your life ordered by God’s glory is not simply to do your daily devotions – it’s to live in outgoing invitation for the salvation of others.  Verse 31 is not some abstract call to look pious at all times.  We know what 10:31 looks like – it looks like Paul’s ministry.  It looks like 9:19-23.  It looks like the missionary determination to become all things to all men that some may be saved. 

So please, keep the context in mind.  And remember, the context is mission.

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All in the mind?

What’s wrong with solo sex?

Here CCEF has an 11 minute podcast on masturbation.  While there are some good points (like husbands prefering solo-sex to talking to their wives about the bedroom), it takes that age-old evangelical line: the problem’s all in the mind.

Have you ever heard the line, “If you can do it thinking about a brick, go for your life”?  I hear people giving this advice all the time.  As though the problem was simply one of fantasies.  And as though the body doesn’t really matter.

Of course in the event of an affair I’ve yet to hear of a spouse placated by the line ‘It’s alright honey I was thinking of you all along.’  So why this uncritical assumption that the body’s not really important, it’s the thoughts that count?

Let me state my position – you can discuss it:

The physical acting out of solo-sex is as damaging as any mental fantasy that may or may not accompany it. 

Masturbation is the very incarnation of homo incurvatus in se (man (or woman) curved in on himself (or herself)) – which simply is the essence of sin.  It is to enact an anti-gospel / anti-Christ proclamation.  It is the blasphemous dramatization of Christ remaining in heaven to please Himself or the church closed to her Lord but indulging her own desires.  It is taking an inherently mutual and other-centred activity and perverting it into self-adoration and self-service.  

In all this, I haven’t begun to consider the fantasies that may or may not attend masturbation.  This is simply a consideration of the physical act of solo-sex.  In and of itself it is an anti-gospel proclamation.  In an of itself it is an indulgence of and encouragement to selfishness, closing us off from Christ and others.  This alone makes masturbation wrong. 

I just don’t understand a position that says – “Do it with your body but beware your thought life.” 

To think that the body does not matter is to adopt a position completely opposite to Scripture.  The body is not an amoral zone.  The body is the very battleground between the old realm of Adam and the in-breaking realm of the Spirit.  Yes our minds need renewing (Rom 12:1) and this is the well-spring of our transformation.  But the flesh is not therefore neutral.  Quite the opposite.  Our Adamic bodies are precisely the root of our problems until resurrection and precisely the context of our discipleship.  Bringing our bodies into subjection to Christ is a massive biblical theme (cf Rom 5-8!).  

So why do we miss it in so much evangelical spirituality?  You know… the same evangelical spirituality that rarely or barely touches on the wallet or the wardrobe or diet.  The same spirituality that’s neurotically suspicious of the sacraments.  That same spirituality that never teaches on fasting, let along practices it? 

What lies have we swallowed to believe that discipleship is only in the mind?

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Paul Blackham on the Sermon on the Mount

Having thought a bit about preaching this week, here is the preacher who has helped me see the nature of true preaching more than anyone. 

 

Here Blackham is at his best unpacking the Sermon on the Mount at Tarleton Farm Fellowship.  (Also see the “Other Sermons” tab above for some brilliant All Souls sermons from him).

 

Matthew 5:1-12 – Blessed are the Spiritually Rubbish

Matthew 5:13-20 – Making a difference

Matthe 5:21-26 – Violence 

Matthew 5:27-32 – Sex

Matthew 5:33-37 – Truth

Matthew 5:38-48 – Revenge and Love

Matthew 6:1-4 – Generosity

Matthew 6:5-8 – Secret prayer

Matthew 6:10 – Your kingdom come

 Matthew 6:11 – Daily Bread

Matthew 6:13 – Deliver us from the evil one

Matthew 6:16-18 - Fasting

 

Matthew 7:1-7 – Judging others

 … More to come…

 

Other topical talks focussing particularly on the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus and Money

Jesus and Power

Jesus and Sex

Jesus and Violence

 

More talks from Tarleton Fellowship (including sermons covering most of John and Acts)

 

Three favourites from the above are Jesus and Money, Matthew 5:27-32 – Sex and Matthew 6:13 – Deliver us from the evil one.

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Chicklit is not porn for women

Chicklit and chick flicks are not pornography for women, pornography is pornography for women.

Ros Clarke writes on the two-fold error of saying popular romance functions as porn for women. 

A) One in three visitors to porn sites are women.

B) Stop dissing romance – it’s at the very heart of the gospel!

She says it much better though – so go and read.

She follows up with some stats on women and porn here and here.

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A theology of preaching – part 6 (final part)

Christ must be proclaimed biblically.

Nothing has been said yet about the character of the preacher.  This has been deliberate.  It’s not the character of the preacher but the character of the word that is determinative.  It’s not ultimately the skills, gifts or even godliness of the preacher that will bring the word home to hearers.  The Second Helvetic Confession continues its article on preaching by saying…

… the Word itself which is preached is to be regarded, not the minister that preaches; for even if he be evil and a sinner, nevertheless the Word of God remains still true and good.

Whatever we say about the character, gifting or expertise of the preacher it must begin with these immovable indicatives.  The preacher is, first, recipient (and a thoroughly unworthy recipient) of God’s overflowing revelation.  We gratefully hear this word, knowing its divine source and character.  Preachers though find themselves carried along in the same movement to testify to this same Word that holds them captive. 

Thus the preacher is never a person capable of preaching.  Really the true mark of the preacher is that they are incapable of doing otherwise.

 “If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,” there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, indeed I cannot.” (Jeremiah 20:9)

 

Conclusion

This paper has sought to provide an answer to the ‘How can?’ of preaching.  Hopefully, along the way, some of the ‘How to?’ has been addressed as well.  Yet, in the end, a true understanding of preaching should always propel us to the most urgent question: ‘How can we not?’ 

“I am compelled to preach.  Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16);

“Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak.” (2 Cor 4:13)

“The love of Christ controls us …  Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us…  (2 Cor 5:14-21)

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The whole paper is here.

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I wish I never sinned

“I wish I never sinned” said the Israelite at the head of the queue.

The others waiting to make their sacrifices nodded.

The priest narrowed his gaze.  “Why do you wish you never sinned?”

The Israelite was amazed that the priest would ask.  The answer was so obvious it hardly needed saying.  “So I don’t have to keep returning to this altar.”

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A theology of preaching – part 5

Christ must be proclaimed biblically

Hopefully it is not a new thought that Christ is the Word of God.  Perhaps, though, it is a new thought to consider preaching as the word of God.  Therefore some may wonder whether we have lost the vital importance of Scripture as the word of God.

Absolutely not.  Without Scripture we have no Christ.  Without Scripture we have no preaching.  Yet here is the irony. When the preacher is viewed simply as ‘explainer and applier’ of God’s word (the bible), this results in a lower view of Scripture.

If preaching is simply explanation and application of the bible then it’s difficult to avoid the impression that the Bible stands in need of our interpretive and psychological expertise: the Bible needs explaining as an obscure text and it needs applying as a distant text.  On this understanding preaching either doubts or dilutes the authority of the Bible.  It doubts it if the preacher ‘comes between’ word and congregation as the word’s helper.  It dilutes it if the preacher ‘comes between’ simply to pass on Scriptural information.  In either case we are left with this question:  Why should the preacher even attempt to offer words in addition to the written word?  If, as the reformers contended so fiercely, the Bible is perspicuous, why should the preacher take up thirty minutes of the service but the Bible reading only three?  If all that can be called ‘word of God’ exists in the Scriptures alone, how do we dare to embellish with our own blessed thoughts?

Here is the problem: if the preacher is reduced to a bible-expert we inadvertently reduce the bible to a difficult text.  And simultaneously the preacher is raised up to stand in the gap.  The ‘scholarly’ among us will dissect and expose the text with expert exposition.  The ‘dynamic’ among us will ‘enliven’ the Word with rhetorical flair, persuasive apologetics and well-aimed application.  However, in either case, whether as explainers or appliers, preachers become essential aids for a word that seems less than ‘living and active.’

In all this we communicate the idea that the bible is actually obscure, boring, weak, vague and disjointed.  So then the preacher’s task is making the obscure clear; making the ancient relevant; enlivening the dead letter; making pointed application where we find the bible too vague and providing cohesion to the disjoined Scriptures – bringing things back to ‘the gospel’ or ‘the kingdom’ or ‘the cross’ etc.  Yet the bible is already perspicuous, already living and active, already a persuasive word, already a pointed (application-making) address, already a witness to Christ. 

Perhaps the greatest need for preachers today is to understand the significance of this ‘already.’ 

We think of the bible as an obscure and distant text given to the individual believer for the sake of their personal morality. On this understanding the preacher comes along merely to strengthen Scriptural admonishments to piety.  Yet the bible was not given for the prayer closet but the pulpit.  The Scriptures are the Spirit’s living testimony to the Son, addressed to the church and intended for proclamation to the world. 

What then is the role of the preacher?  We don’t ‘stand in the gap’.  We stand in a stream.  We don’t draw out the living waters.  The Scriptures overflow.  Already the written word has this out-going character.  God’s word cannot be chained (2 Tim 2:9).  Preaching is simply the expression of the Scriptures’ own uncontainable witness.

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Happy Friday

Telemarketers beware

A theology of preaching – part 4

Go to theology network for the full paper on preaching.  I’ll post it here in chunks.  Be great to talk about it if you want to comment.

 

We’ve made the claim that preaching is God’s word when Christ is proclaimed biblically.  Now we will tease out some implications of this central conviction:

 

Christ must be proclaimed biblically.

We proclaim Him (Colossians 1:28).  The point of the sermon is not to inspire certain feelings, to convey certain doctrines, to enjoin certain ethics, to dissect certain passages.  The point of the proclaimed word is precisely the point of the written word – to witness the eternal Word (See John 5:36-47).  We don’t preach Luke or Ecclesiastes.  We preach Christ from Luke or Ecclesiastes.

Perhaps the Lord’s Supper provides a helpful analogy (it too is proclamation – 1 Cor 11:26).  Just as the point of  communion is the receiving of Christ by faith, so the point of the sermon is the same.  He is as vital for sinners as bread to the famished.  He is as available to sinners as the bread on the table.  And in preaching, as in the sacraments, He is handed over to sinners for their nourishment.  Where Christ is received by faith, proclamation has done its work.  Where Christ is not graciously held out to the congregation the preacher has spoken in vain and the people go hungry. 

What does this mean for the ‘application’ of the sermon

Often ‘application’ is taken to mean distilling the text into timeless doctrinal propositions to be turned into contemporary moral injunctions.

 

Application on this understanding is a discrete portion of the sermon.  Once the preacher is done explaining, then come exhortations about our practical response. Usually the application is something along the lines of ‘read your bible, pray, evangelize.’ Occasionally it’s ‘Give money, cut out the porn, volunteer more.’

Now besides being a suspect view of sanctification, this betrays a deficient view of revelation.  Here the bible is ‘God’s instruction manual for life.’ The preacher is the expert coach.  And Christ?  Where is Christ on this understanding? 

On the analogy with communion, such preaching is like the minister pressing into our hands not bread but a ‘To do’ list.  We leave the communion rail (or rise from the sermon) not so much savouring Christ as resolving to improve.  Not glorying in His work but plotting our own.

 But what if we took to heart the theology of revelation outlined here?  In that case application would be by the pointed driving home of the gospel. 

 

 

On this model, application is not what we must do on account of the word.  Rather, application is what the word itself is doing to us and in us.  The Word is being applied to our hearts in lively, surprising, evocative, nourishing ways to the end that He might be trusted.  We hear in order to believe (Rom 10:14).  This is the work of God – faith (John 6:29).   The work of God for which the preacher aims is not so much what the congregation will do on Monday morning having been inspired by the word.  The work of God is what God Himself does to the congregation right there in the Sunday sermon.

Application then is the Spirit’s work in driving home the Christ whom we proclaim.  It is a work which we cannot perform as preachers but to which we are called nonetheless.  In prayerful dependence we follow the way of witness in the Scriptures as they point to Christ.  And we point, too.  With excitement, with passion, with entreaty.  And we say as Moses did regarding the bronze serpent: Look and live!

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A theology of preaching – part 3

Go to theology network for the full paper on preaching.  I’ll post it here in chunks.  Be great to talk about it if you want to comment.

The Word of God

In saying that preaching is itself the word of God, it should be made clear that the bible has a vital role.  The law and the prophets proclaim the gospel of the Son in advance – a gospel which was ‘according to the Scriptures’.  The apostles attest its finished truth and significance for the global church.  Both Old and New Testaments are the Spirit’s perfect and authoritative testimony to the Son.  This completed canon stands above the church as its infallible rule and the test for all its proclamation.  It is enduringly and entirely the word of God written. 

Yet, to be true to these same Scriptures, we must confess that the title “God’s word” does not simply apply to the bible.  Already we have seen how the Son is originally and definitively ‘the Word of God’.  But we can also identify a third sense in which it is right to use the phrase ‘word of God.’  The witness of the church – a Scriptural, Spirit-empowered, Christ-focused witness – can also be called ‘the word of God’. 

Consider how the book of Acts describes the growth of the word. 

Acts 6:7:  And the word of God continued to increase

Acts 12:24: But the word of God increased and multiplied. 

Acts 13:49:  The word of the Lord spread through the whole region

Acts 19:20:  In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.

Where there is Scripture-consonant, Spirit-empowered witness to Christ, not only does the church grow – the word grows.  And it is God’s word, His presence and power attending and enlivening it.

Consider also these verses from the epistles:

“…when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.”  (1 Thessalonians 2:13) 

“You have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; ²⁴ for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, ²⁵ but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this is the word that was evangelized to you.” (1 Pet 1:23-25)

“Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God.”  (Hebrews 13:7)

So we see that the reformers did not overstate their claims.  The preacher’s lips are speaking God’s living and active word!  What does this mean?

Recently I sat in a friend’s living room on a Tuesday afternoon.  There were about ten teenagers present and we had John chapter 20 open on our laps.  I looked them in the eye and told them that the risen Christ had entered this living room and was confronting each one of us in a way more blessed than Thomas’s own encounter (this is the clear implication of verses 29-31).  I called on them all to confess Christ as their own Lord and God to receive the life that was on offer.  Now, here’s the question.  If they refused to do so, had they merely disobeyed me?  Had they merely disobeyed Glen Scrivener the preacher?  No, to refuse my words in this context is to refuse Christ Himself.

 

When are the preacher’s words God’s? 

Here is a vital question.  What is the context in which such feeble and faltering human words carry divine authority?  I rarely expect teenagers to notice my words let alone submit to them as divinely authoritative.  In what context are my words to be heeded as God’s?  

The first thing to say is that the initiative lies entirely in the hands of the Speaking God.  No human technique conjures Christ into the upper room.  Equally no locked doors can keep Him out!  Revelation is always grace.  So then, perhaps we should rephrase our question.  Not, How can we bring God’s word down?  But, How is it that God chooses to speak through our human words of witness? 

Here is my central conviction: 

At God’s initiative, preaching is God’s own word when Christ is proclaimed according to the Scriptures.

This draws together the three senses in which we have spoken of the ‘word of God’: Christ, Scripture and proclamation. 

This is the key context.  And we must be wise to perceive when this context holds.  We still listen as Bereans to discern its biblical character (Acts 17:11).  We still ‘test the spirits’ to discern its Christ-focus (1 John 4:1-3).  If proclamation fails these tests it fails to be proclamation.  Yet where Christ is proclaimed biblically there we can (and we must!) prayerfully expect divine encounter. 

Before we go on, you will notice that this context is not an institutional or situational context.  It is not God’s word because it is Sunday, this is a pulpit, and the preacher is ordained.  The context I am putting forward could apply to any number of situations – a bible study, a drink with friends, a greeting card, even a text message.  We can speak words of immeasurable comfort to one another in a thousand different situations.  Yet the focus of this paper will be on preaching to the congregation gathered around word and sacrament by those the Second Helvetic Confession referred to as ‘lawfully called’.  It is not that genuine proclamation only occurs in the Sunday sermon or only from the lips of the ordained.  Not at all.  But there especially we are to prayerfully expect the voice of the living Christ.

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How to put on a pre-evangelistic event

Follow my simple scheme:

STEP 1:  Ask yourself this question.  What is more attractive than Jesus?  Let’s call this thing X.

STEP 2:  Lift X high.  Be loud.  Be proud. 

STEP 3:  Celebrate a job well done when unbelievers agree that X really is better than Jesus.

 

Presto!

 

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Evangelistic talk for youth

Stef Liston preaching to youth in an evangelistic meeting last month.  It was part of Bible by the Beach 2009.

 

It was an absolute pleasure to be there.  I’m glad I stumbled on the blog link this week given I’m blogging on preaching.  This is a great example of holding out the word of life. 

 

It’s called “One kind of God, three kinds of people.”  (No it’s not on the trinity.) He begins by demolishing all other gods than the Christian God.

There is no other message than the Christian message.

Every other ‘message’ is not a message at all.  Ultimately, if you get beneath the jargon into the content, every religion says this:  Try harder… Do better.  Come on.  If you just… If you just… If you just… then maybe.  If you just, then who knows. If you just, then you could be in it.

Christianity is completely different.  It’s a declaration of what’s been done.

The good news is ‘It is finished’.  It has been done. Now you just come into what has been done for you.

 

Then he gives the gospel as the vicarious life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus.  (And yes he used the word vicarious, repeatedly. Unashamedly.  Glorious!)

Then he goes on to talk about Luke 15 – the lost sons.  He talks about three kinds of people. 

First there’s the naughty sinner.  Second there’s the nice sinner.  Different temperaments, both as lost, both as far from God. 

If your Christianity consists of reading your bible, praying and not swearing that is as foreign to Christianity as Islam.

You need to be a category three person: You must be born again.

What is the stance of the person who is born again?  It’s not kneeling.  It’s standing in the Father’s embrace.

Throw yourself into His arms.

 

Listen here.

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A theology of preaching – part 2

Go to theology network for the full paper on preaching.  I’ll post it here in chunks.  Be great to talk about it if you want to comment.

The Speaking God

Let’s begin at the beginning.  Our God is the Speaking God.  The eternal life of Father, Son and Spirit has ever been an out-going, communicative life.  Because our God simply is Trinity there has never been such a thing as a God who then comes to speech.  Arius was wrong.  There is not a God who then has a Word.  God’s existence does not precede His expression.  Rather God’s expression, His Word, is eternally constitutive of His life.  God is always and eternally the Speaking God.  To encounter His Word is not to be obstructed or distanced from a divine reality behind His disclosure.  Rather to receive His Word is to be drawn into the depths of His eternal reality as the Speaking God.  Revelation, as the unfolding of God’s own life in Word and Spirit, is not simply what He does.  It is who He is. 

From the overflow of this communicative life came creation.  Again, by His Word and through the Spirit, God brought all things into being (Genesis 1; Psalm 33:6; John 1:1-4).  The universe exists in correspondence to God’s Word.  “God said… and it was.”  This means that to be is to be an obedient hearer of the Word.  The universe is His congregation and, derivatively, His herald (Psalm 19:1-6). Humanity, as the pinnacle of creation, is supremely called to appropriate God’s revelation.  Our vocation, not simply as Christians but as creatures, is to receive the Word.  And in receiving the Word we participate in the life of the Speaking God. 

What is more, He comes to participate in our life.  In incarnation, the Word comes not simply to man or even just in man, but as man.  God’s revelation could not be louder or clearer.  The Word, Jesus Christ, reveals His Father through His words and actions (e.g. John 14:5-11).  Both these words and actions were committed to Him by the Father (e.g. John 5:19ff; 8:26,38; 10:37f; 15:15; 17:6,14).  These words were entrusted to the disciples and these actions were witnessed and remembered by them, all through the power of the Spirit (e.g John 16:12-15).  In the power of that same Spirit, these disciples proclaimed them to the world (e.g. John 20:21-23; Acts 1:8).  The world’s response to this witness is their response to Christ, and their response to Christ is their response to the Father (e.g. John 14:22-26). 

To put it another way, the Father Himself confronts us in the Person of His Son and the Son Himself confronts us in the Spirit-empowered words of His messengers (e.g. Matthew 10:40).  From Father to Son, from Son to His bride and so out into the world the Spirit carries divine revelation. 

Contemporary proclamation is not simply the remembrance of past events or the recitation of ancient words.  To proclaim this Word in the power of this Spirit is to stand in a stream of revelation which both preceded and produced the universe.  Our words witnessing the Word have their source and authority in the Speaking God who graciously includes us in His ongoing life of self-disclosure.

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A theology of preaching – part 1

Go to theology network for my paper on preaching in full.  Here I’ll post it in chunks.  Be good to talk about it if you want to comment… 

Introduction

It is often said that the real issue in preaching is not ‘How to?’ but ‘How can?’  How can a preacher stand before a congregation and dare to speak ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’?  The ‘How can?’ is by far the more pressing question.  And yet, in the textbooks, at the conferences and in preaching groups it seems the ‘How to?’ is the perennial concern.  Notes or full script?  Powerpoint or no?  Topical sermons or lectio continua?  These questions abound.  Even issues like ‘how to address the heart?’ or ‘how to preach wisdom literature?’ threaten to drown out proper theological reflection.  All the while the ‘How can?’ question stands above our practice demanding an answer. 

Our silence on this issue could simply reflect the pragmatic spirit of our age.  We want to know what ‘works’ so we can copy it.  But I suggest there is a deeper problem.  Fundamentally we have an impoverished theology of revelation which fails to appreciate what evangelicals from another age held dear – namely that God Himself addresses us in preaching. 

Consider this classic statement of reformed faith from the Second Helvetic Confession:

“The Preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God. Wherefore when this Word of God is now preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe that the very Word of God is proclaimed and received by the faithful.”

Luther would agree:

“Tis a right excellent thing, that every honest pastor’s and preacher’s mouth is Christ’s mouth, and his word and forgiveness is Christ’s word and forgiveness… For the office is not the pastor’s or preacher’s but God’s; and the Word which he preacheth is likewise not the pastor’s and preacher’s but God’s.”

 Or consider this from John Calvin:

“When a man has climbed up into the pulpit… it is [so] that God may speak to us by the mouth of a man.”

The reformers viewed preaching as God’s own word proclaimed in His name, by His power and with His authority.  More to the point this is the bible’s own teaching, as we’ll see.  Proclamation of the word of Christ is not simply an explanation and application of the bible.  It is itself a divine encounter in which the Spirit again confronts the hearers with the omnipotent force of God’s own Word.

In the face of such an audacious claim, the ‘How to?’ must be put on hold.  This paper seeks a theology of revelation that is able to address the question ‘How can a preacher dare to speak the word of the LORD?’  What is the nature of divine revelation such that this is even possible?  Once we have we addressed this we will find that the ‘How to?’ has been decisively and much more faithfully shaped.

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Thick skin, open heart

In his commentary on 1 Corinthians, David Prior speaks of prophets as having thick skin and open hearts.  I think that’s a good definition.  And quite apt given our recent discussions on personality etc.

Think of Jesus, the Servant:

⁴ The Sovereign LORD has given me an instructed tongue,
       to know the word that sustains the weary.
       He wakens me morning by morning,
       wakens my ear to listen like one being taught.

 ⁵ The Sovereign LORD has opened my ears,
       and I have not been rebellious;
       I have not drawn back.

 ⁶ I offered my back to those who beat me,
       my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard;
       I did not hide my face
       from mocking and spitting.

 ⁷ Because the Sovereign LORD helps me,
       I will not be disgraced.
       Therefore have I set my face like flint,
       and I know I will not be put to shame.

 ⁸ He who vindicates me is near.
       Who then will bring charges against me?
       Let us face each other!
       Who is my accuser?
       Let him confront me!

 ⁹ It is the Sovereign LORD who helps me.
       Who is he that will condemn me?
       They will all wear out like a garment;
       the moths will eat them up.

The Father gives Him words of comfort for the sheep and He is sensitive both to the Father’s help and the people’s need.  But He is also ‘like flint’ for the opposition that will come.

Often we simply have thin skin and mistake that for kindness.  Or we have a hard heart and mistake that for bold defence of the truth.  But no, Jesus shows the way - Thick skin, open heart.

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