Reading the Bible in Public Worship

December 5, 2008

"Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture” (1 Timothy 4:13).

We’ve all experienced it at some time or another: the minister gets up to read the Bible and then stumbles over every other word, or inserts words that are not there! It happened to me on Sunday evening. I read aloud from Nehemiah 8 about the occasion when thousands of men, women and children gathered in the square before the Water Gate for six hours of Bible reading and exposition. I said, “And the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law.” All the ears? I heard myself say it and then just continued on hoping no one else had heard it (with only two ears!). It should have been, “And the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law” (Neh. 8:3).

It had to happen on the very occasion when the passage I was reading spoke about the importance and solemnity of reading the Scriptures. Hardly anything like it had happened in two hundred years (not since the time of King Josiah). The people stood for the reading – actually, they stood for entire service it seems, all six hours of it!

One of the things this passage teaches (and something we didn’t get around to saying in any detail on Sunday evening) was that the reading of Scripture was itself an act of worship. We need to think carefully about that. Sometimes we can create the false impression that the most important thing in a service of worship is the sermon. It is very important; but it is only one of many important things in worship. We shouldn’t think that what happens up to the point of the sermon is merely preparatory – a bit like the relationship of an appetizer to the main entrée. A worship service consists of several “elements” of worship – things which Scripture commands we must do whenever we gather together as the people of God to worship Him. We sing. We pray. We read the Bible and listen to a sermon. All of these we do because Scripture tells us that this is what we ought to do in public worship. On some occasions, we also baptize and have Communion, or the Lord’s Supper. Or, since what we sing and what we pray must be grounded in Bible truth we could say: when we worship on Sunday, we sing the Bible, pray the Bible, read the Bible and preach the Bible (and when the sacraments are celebrated, these too are visible pictures of the Bible’s message – “visible words” as Augustine called them).

Reading the Bible, then, is an act of worship to which we must give our entire attention. For me, that means I must have a copy before me (but careful listening is perfectly acceptable, too). The Westminster Divines wrote a Directory in which they gave much valuable advice on all matters relating to worship. “Of Public Reading of the Holy Scriptures” this is what they said: “All the canonical books of the Old and New Testament… shall be publicly read in the vulgar tongue, out of the best allowed translation, distinctly, that all may hear and understand.”

Distinctly! O dear, “I did not mean to say, ‘all the ears of all the people…’” But while I take the chastisement on the chin, let’s all of us make sure that when we listen to the Scriptures being read, we do so with seriousness, attention and faith. It is the Word of God that we are hearing.
 

Bring on the Hard Times!

October 17 2008

Bad mortgages, fiscal greed, market liquidity, and government interventionism versus the free market… no, these were not words drawn from the newspapers in recent weeks but from a sermon I gave recently on Nehemiah! Seems that the Preacher’s phrase in Ecclesiastes, “there’s nothing new under the sun,” is right after all!
    On a rainy day last week I watched the financial channel for a few minutes – usually a cast-iron soporific exercise; but not that day! Prophets of doom issued jeremiads by the truck-load and I imagined fiscal psychologists were seeing dollar signs as clients called to make appointments for the couch.
    These are troubling times to be sure, but what else can we expect? I happen to think that Adam Smith – a dour Scottish moral philosopher and a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment – was right when he said (in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations) that capitalism loosed from its Judeo-Christian moorings will always fail us. It’s not that capitalism is bad; on the contrary, as Max Weber has argued forcefully, capitalism is an offshoot of Calvinism. Perhaps, more accurately, Calvinism provided a framework in which capitalism flourished. To be sure, Smith’s portrayal of capitalism shows little in common with its modern manifestation.
    Recent events force us to ask: “How will recent market forces affect our stewardship?” This is an important question because kingdom work depends on it in so many ways. But perhaps a better question can be asked: “What can I learn from these providential events?” Listening to the car radio on the way to seminary this morning I heard a disturbing report about the number of people psychologically and physically affected by the market plunge, folk whose livelihoods depend on invested income. Without the stabilizing influences of the gospel, secular reassurance sounds all too vacuous. The gospel, on the other hand, provides us with the certainty that we have “received a kingdom that cannot be shaken” (Heb. 12:28).
    At times like these we need to learn the lesson taught by some of the first settlers in our country. I refer, of course, to the Puritans whose constant charge was to live sub specie aeternitatis – in the light of eternity. If we place our trust in “mammon,” in the shifting sands of the modern global market, we are doomed to disappointment and failure. It is sobering to reflect how unstable our future can be – and that, not only for ourselves or our families, but for the nation itself. In this crisis, it is all too clear that a great deal of what we regard as “American” is, in fact, owned by foreign companies! Conspiratorial scenarios are fairly easy to imagine in all of this, forcing those of us who are Christians to reflect at a deeper level.
    If, for example, I am forced to wait on the Lord for tomorrow’s provision; if, for example, I am placed in a position where all I have are promises – divine promises which I must trust with all of my heart; if, for example, I am placed in a position to take seriously the petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” then I must reckon these circumstances to be a good thing.
    Being forced to lean on the Lord is always a good thing! For then, we can better understand what Paul meant by saying that we ought to “rejoice in our sufferings” (Rom. 5:3). How come? Because sufferings produce “endurance … character … hope” – rock-solid hope in a Savior who never leaves us or forsakes us (Heb. 13:5).
    With such hope, we may even dare to say, “Bring it on!

Passion Fruit

October 3, 2008

It has become a common word in Christian circles these days: passionate.  I hear of “passionate Christians” or more commonly that someone is “passionate” about something or other. Its meaning can range from something bordering on an obsession to a sexual connotation (which is how the ESV employs the word in Col. 3:5, 1 Thess. 4:5 and 2 Pet. 2:10). A dictionary definition describes it as “having, compelled by, or ruled by intense emotion or strong feeling.” This latter sense seems to epitomize what Paul seems to be saying to the church in Philippi when he describes himself this way:

“But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:13-14). Or, earlier in the same letter, “For me to live is Christ” (Phil 1:21).

These represent significant statements in the life and experience of Paul in which he declares himself wholly committed to one thing. It is a mind-set, a heart-set intent on ensuring that God is at the center and periphery of everything. It is a passion for God’s glory above everything else.

In my study of mathematics as an undergraduate student in the 1970s, I recall reading the works of the French mathematician Blaise Pascal. In a work entitled Pensees he wrote: “All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”

It is a sobering but true assessment of the natural man that he is always seeking his own pleasure. Indeed, it might be argued (and it has been) that the pursuit of happiness is nonmoral, something which Americans in particular should feel free to indulge in view of the Declaration of Independence, so long as the pursuit stays within the bounds of moral obligation.

To others, the pursuit of happiness is immoral since it is the justification most often given for immoral actions that it was done in “to make me happy.” Indeed, “so long as you’re happy” is a mantra often uttered to suggest a neutral stance to whatever lifestyle has been chosen.

True happiness, however, can only be found in God. As Augustine wrote: “[God] Himself is the fountain of our happiness; He himself is the end of all of our longing. In choosing Him, or rather, since we had lost Him through neglect, in re-choosing Him . . . , we strive toward Him by love, so that by attaining Him we might rest, happy because we are perfected by Him who is our end. Thus, our good, the end which is extensively disputed among the philosophers, is nothing other than to cling to Him. (City of God, X.3).

Passionate Christianity is the result when we are caught with God and are consumed with living out-and-out for Him. It is a passion for His holiness to be patterned in us. It is a passion for His love to be “gospelled” as a way of life. It is a passion for those things which God Himself has signaled as important: the Bible, the church, the family. It is a passion for life – or, to cite a title of a puritan classic, it is a passion for “the life of God in the soul of man.” In the end, it is a passion for God Himself.
 

Brief Encounters: Mary of Bethany

August 8, 2008

Jesus was on His way to Calvary. He had made it increasingly a matter of conversation since the time He spoke with Peter at Caesarea Philippi (Mark 8:27-38). In this, the last week of His life, He made trips each evening to Bethany, a small town a few miles away from Jerusalem. He had stayed there on previous occasions at the home of a family of two sisters and a brother: Mary, Martha and Lazarus. Those who lived in Bethany were still talking about the day Jesus had stood outside of Lazarus’ tomb, when he had been dead for three days, and said, “Lazarus, Come out” (John 11:43). The sight of him emerging bound head to toe in bandages was a sight few would ever forget!

On this occasion, Jesus has been invited to the home of “Simon the Leper.” At the meal, while Jesus was reclining in typical eastern fashion: head and shoulders faced inwards toward a low table of some sort, something embarrassing occurs. There is the sound of breaking glass and then a pungent smell —the kind of odor that would remind some of the first century equivalent of embalming fluid. Mary is pouring the entire contents of a bottle of this liquid on Jesus head! The liquid is estimated to have been roughly equal to the average man’s annual wages, and the sheer extravagance and social faux pas of this situation has everyone upset.

Mary had intended to do something for sure—this was not the kind of liquid a woman would carry with her in her purse! She had taken it to Simon’s house with the intention of doing something. We cannot be certain what exactly she intended to do. It rather looks like she may well have done what she did as an act of spontaneous emotion, overcome by the sight and sound of Jesus. Perhaps she had thought of giving Him the bottle of fluid since He had been talking with increasing conviction about being crucified in Jerusalem.

She did an extravagant thing! And she did it out of a heart of love. Whatever her precise motives (and the fact that Jesus provides an interpretation of it later does not necessitate Mary herself understood what she did), what she did was an act of selfless love for Jesus Christ.

The guests considered what she did as reckless and wasteful: “There were some who said to themselves indignantly, ‘Why was the ointment wasted like that?’” (Mark 14:4). Mark employs a word that suggests that they were in fact “snorting.” She was behaving with unimaginable serenity and they were responding like wild animals. There were suggestions that this ointment could have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor. All they could see was money. All Mary could see was Jesus.

But Jesus said that what she did was a “beautiful” thing (Mark 14:6).

Jesus, in fact, did three things: first, He defended her, He stood up for her. Isn’t that a wonderful characteristic of Jesus? Second, He asked the guests a question: “Why are you bothering her?” It suggests, of course, that the answer lies in a sense of guilt on behalf of the guests. They had done nothing! Third, He provides Mary’s action with an interpretation: “She has done a beautiful thing.” She had understood who He was, why He had come into the world, what the significance of His death was. She did it as a preparation for His burial! It was, as it turns out, the only anointing Jesus’s body was to receive, for on the Sunday morning when the disciples came to anoint Him His body wasn’t there.

Have you such love for Jesus as this?

Reflecting on a Mission Trip to Peru, Sort of...

July 11 2008

Last week, my wife and I spent a week, along with some thirty or so other friends from the church, on a mission to Cajamarca, Peru. We have known of the church in Cajamarca and Alonzo Ramirez since the late seventies. In God’s providence, my former church in Belfast had mission work in Peru in its sights long before I was called as a minister there in 1979; an elder’s wife had served as a missionary in Peru in the late 40s and was determined that I should make Peru a priority in my prayer life. Visiting Cajamarca was a little like seeing a long-lost relative for the first time. What follows is not a report as such; “Dr. Danny” will give that as our peerless team leader. Mine is a personal reflection – a theological reflection, if you will, in which I want to “air” some things that I’ve long been pondering but only now seem eager to emerge.

My main thought is an overwhelming sense of gratitude in seeing servant hearts in the lives of friends I thought I knew fairly well, but now realize that I did not know them well enough. If you wonder what members of First Presbyterian Church do on short-term mission trips, the answer is work! I watched these folk work 12-13 hour days without pausing for breath, giving themselves tirelessly to help others. True, the Peru mission trip is a combination of teaching-evangelism (principally with children) and mercy-ministry (dental and medical).

I have long since wondered as to the exact place of mercy ministry. As a young believer I thought deeply about joining some mercy ministry, but felt in the end that God had called me to teach and preach. But Jesus sees care for the poor as being of the essence of Christianity. Tim Keller’s book, Ministries of Mercy: the Call of the Jericho Road, is helpful here in ways that are worth noting:

“Mercy to the full range of human needs is such an essential mark of being a Christian that it can be used as a test of true faith. Mercy is not optional or an addition to being a Christian. Rather, a life poured out in deeds of mercy is the inevitable sign of true faith.”

“To say that evangelism can be done without also doing social concern is to forget that our goal is not individual “decisions,” but the bringing of all life and creation under the lordship of Christ, the kingdom of God.”

It is not the church’s business, as such, to address the issues of social justice/injustice head-on. Social engagement is largely motivated by the correct sense that the Kingdom of God should be felt and seen wherever Christians are: in the workplace, at school, in the neighborhood, etc. But being creatures of modernity, we immediately think in terms of programs and structures, which lead us to think that the way this should be done is through the church itself. But it is not the church’s business to address the problem of homelessness or disease in society at large (though it better make sure that its own members aren’t homeless or wanting for medical care!) It is, however, a Christian’s responsibility, as servants of Christ, to address these issues, as we seek to display the saving reign of God in every sphere of life.

Mercy ministry is not the gospel, but it is hard for those who are hurting to hear the gospel when those who present it are indifferent to human suffering. Mercy ministry enables the gospel to be “heard.” It paves the way for the church to do what it is called to do – preach the unsearchable riches of Christ. Because Christians believe in a God of mercy, they should engage in acts of mercy.

The incarnation is an illustration of mercy. Through His preaching and miracles, Christ demonstrates how the kingdom of God restores all of creation and how the effects of sin are healed under His rule.

Brief Encounters: The Woman of Samaria

June 20, 2008

 They met at a well, Jacob’s well. It is meant to bring to mind the fact that a courting ritual had taken place at this well. Jacob’s father, Isaac, sent his servant Eleazer to find a bride for his son. He found her at a well. John (the author of the story) is telling us that a wooing of sorts is taking place here, too: Jesus, the great Evangelist, is wooing this woman into the kingdom of God.

It is very probable that this woman had something else on her mind as a stranger begins to talk to her. They are alone. And she has something of a disreputable reputation. The man she is now living with is her “sixth” partner! Danger is written all over this story if only we allow ourselves to think it. However unpalatable it may be to suggest, Jesus is in a place of temptation! “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).

How does Jesus the Evangelist deal with this woman? He begins by drawing the conversation in the direction of water. He was at a well after all. And He was tired. And she had come to the well to draw water. He asks her for some water. The woman responds, firstly, by saying Jesus isn’t for the likes of me. It is not initially on the grounds that she is a sinner that she says to Jesus, “How is it that You, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?”

At this point it isn’t at all obvious she has any awareness of her sin. Her sense of impediment comes from racial and gender differences. Samaritans and Jews didn’t talk to each other, and the ancient world, before the onset of Christianity, had a low view of women.

In contrast to today, religion in those days was thought the province of men. “My dear woman,” Jesus seems to be saying to her, “if only you knew what it is I can give you!”

The second objection she raises is that what Jesus says is nonsense! Jesus has said to her that He could give her living water. But how could that be? He had no means to get the water from such a deep well. “This man is talking nonsense,” she seems to be saying.

But “the kicker” (as they say today) comes when Jesus says to her, “If you draw from this water, you will be thirsty again.” It is a classic statement of the futility of this life. However we compute it, we will always come up short if all we live for is that which can be seen and heard. This woman needed to appreciate that there was what Blaise Pascal called “a God-shaped void” in the center of her life.

I tried the broken cisterns, Lord
But ah! The waters failed…

The whole conversation has been directed toward this goal: to show this woman her true need, her true condition in order that she flee to Jesus Christ for refuge and forgiveness.

Thirdly, having sensed what Jesus is doing, she does what unbelievers so often do: she turns the situation into a joke by asking Him for this water that will mean she will never have to come to this well ever again.

It is time for the Evangelist to get serious: He asks her to send for her husband. This is the doorway to underlining her great need. She is a sinner if ever there was one!

Fourthly, she tries to evade the growing conviction by saying (what was technically true) that she didn’t have a husband. It was an attempt at evasion. Her question about the mountains of Gerizim (where Samaritans gathered) and Zion (where Jews gathered) is a further attempt to change the conversation entirely. Even her off-handed remark in which she admits to knowing that Messiah was coming and that when He does He will explain everything to us (v.25) is a further attempt at evasion: “I will think about this later” is what she is really saying!

But Jesus will have none of it. “I who speak to you am He” He said (v.26). And it must have come to her as something of a bombshell. The Messiah was standing right in front of her. She could reach out and touch Him.

The story ends with the woman leaving to tell her friends and perhaps her “husband” that she met the Savior. The Evangelist had broken down all her defenses!
She left the water jar behind (v.28). It was a symbol of her past life, one she had now left behind. She had tasted the living water – Jesus!

Nicodemus:When Knowing the Bible Isn’t Enough

June 13, 2008

Nicodemus was Jerusalem’s most outstanding Bible teacher and a member of the Jewish Ruling Council. Only the High Priest gained more recognition in the capital city than Nicodemus. Yet, despite all his learning and privileges, he did not know God. He knew about God, but he did not know Him. And as we listen to Jesus the Evangelist engage this man in conversation the darkness in his soul quickly becomes apparent.

The story is found in John 3 and three features of the conversation are worth noting.

First, the Master Evangelist reveals to Nicodemus the reality of his need. The story begins with Jesus saying to him that those who are outside the kingdom of God cannot understand the things concerning the kingdom. And what does Nicodemus say in response to this: “I cannot understand what You’re saying!”
Nicodemus’ inability to grasp what Jesus was saying was indicative of his fallen heart. Spiritual things are not grasped because of superior intelligence, because we are able to grasp some proposition of Ludwig Wittgenstein. “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14). Until we come to realize the gravity of our condition – that by nature we are all outside of the kingdom of God, we can make no progress toward redressing this problem.

Second, Nicodemus is told of the remedy that lies wholly outside of any ability of his. He must be “born again” (John 3:3, 7). He must be born from above (to employ a more literal translation). Nicodemus took the allusion to birth literally, asked how exactly he could enter again into his mother’s womb and be born! But Nicodemus is still thinking in terms of something he can achieve. Think of the “wind,” Jesus says to him. “You cannot command it to come; all you can do is to feel it when it blows. The new birth is like that! You cannot command it to occur by something you do; you must resign yourself to doing nothing and let God do this work in you.” The solution to our native darkness is God’s ability to transform us. All we can do is cry for mercy and ask God to change us, and cleanse us (the allusion to being born “of water and the Spirit” in verse 5 is probably a reference to Ezekiel 36 which speaks of washing and cleansing).

Third, Nicodemus is told to put his trust entirely in Jesus Christ. Since Nicodemus is a Bible teacher, Jesus alludes to an incident in the time of Moses when the Israelites were cured from venomous snake bites by simply looking at a bronze replica of the serpent that was hoisted into the air. The point is that Jesus, too, will be “lifted up” – first on a cross, and then into the clouds in the course of his ascension to the Father’s right hand. We enter the kingdom by recognizing who Jesus is – the Son of God, and “look” to Him in faith:

There is life for a look at the Crucified One,
There is life at this moment for thee;
Then look, sinner, look unto Him and be saved,
Unto Him Who was nailed to the tree.
(Amelia M. Hull)

All the incentive we need to believe that this is indeed so comes from what is perhaps the best known verse in the Bible, one which is found in the course of this conversation: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God loves the lost, gives the best, and asks the least!

There is evidence that Nicodemus did receive mercy. He came on this occasion “by night” for fear of the Jews, but at the end of the Gospel openly purchases the necessary spices for the anointing of Jesus’ body (John 19:39). The Master Evangelist had done His work. He had brought a Bible teacher into the kingdom of God!
 

Faux Spirituality

June 6, 2008

It was a thought I had preparing a message on what Ligon called, “a dog of a text!” Those who were present last Sunday evening heard me announce my text: Ezra 8:1-14. Just in case it doesn’t quite come to mind, it is a list of names, “heads of families” who returned to Jerusalem from Babylon in the middle of the fifth century b.c., along with Ezra the scribe. The specific details need not detain us here, but the fact that those who returned are grouped in families, listing only the names of the family “head,” appears countercultural.

The bonds of family lines were strong in Jewish society as even a cursory reading of the Old Testament reveals. But in a culture like ours in which the breakdown of marriage and family is one of its chief characteristics, contributing to what David Wells has called “the loss of our virtue,” we may find such a passage as this patriarchal and antiquated. However, it was a footnote in a commentary on Ezra by the Old Testament scholar, Derek Kidner, which held my attention. Kidner pointed out that this passage may appear counter-intuitive (and certainly counter-cultural) to the modern church, let alone modern secular society. This is what he wrote: “It is at least food for thought that church strategy often appears to reverse this order, concentrating on the children, the tail-end of the family, to the neglect of the head.”1 It got me thinking.

Our society shows increasingly scant disregard for older members. No, I’m not about to engage in a tirade against ageism, though at 55 I am tempted to suggest that age often (though not always) brings with it maturity and levels of expertise from which both society and church may profit. But we increasingly live in a culture (both religious and secular) where the youth rules the roost. Youth ministry, a necessary and valuable ministry, can take on levels of importance that invade, even dominate all other considerations. Church mission statements, hiring policies, worship values, and financial budgets can be tailored in such a way as to suggest that this or that church will do anything to keep the youth happy. In an interview with Mark Dever on the marks of a healthy church, he was asked a question about the relationship of youth ministry as typically practiced in churches in the United States and church health, to which he gave the response: “The most important teaching the youth receive is from the home, if they are from a Christian home, and from the pulpit.”2

When a society departs from the biblical norms, one of the signs it manifests is a disdain for the older generation. A keynote speaker at a Bible Conference in Toronto a few years ago was billed in this way:
                    “St. Thomas Church in Sheffield, England has grown to be one of the largest churches in England
                    with 2,000+ in weekly worship, 70% of which are under the age of 35.”

The point being made is his greater credibility because he appeals to youth rather than the elderly. Somewhere, R. C. Sproul has written, “When I last crossed a decade barrier in my own aging process, God was good enough to grant me this small bit of wisdom—the Bible honors age, not youth. I came to understand that the disappearance of my youth was something God thought a good thing, and if I were wise, I would agree.”

Food for thought?

Yes, for as the Psalmist says: “Those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bear fruit in old age; they shall be fresh and flourishing (Psalm 92:13,14).”
_____________________________________________
1 Derek Kidner, 64.
2 http://jimhamilton.wordpress.com/2007/06/22/interview-with-mark-dever/.Accessed May 31, 2008.
 

Eudemonism

May 23, 2008

Eudemonism –a word that I discovered years ago reading something J. I. Packer had written. I can’t recall now what the article was, but the word has stuck with me ever since. It comes from the field of ethics and means a moral system based upon the performance of right actions to achieve happiness or personal well-being. Thus “eudemonistic” is the mind-set that is bent on the pursuit of happiness. The word itself stems from its Greek root: eudemonia, meaning “happiness.”
Of itself, the idea is a bad one. Yes, the preamble to the Declaration of Independence refers to the “pursuit of happiness” as an “inalienable right” (my wife and I stood in Independence Hall in Philadelphia just a month or so ago pondering the events that led to the writing of this document, but I digress).

But though happiness, or the pursuit of it, is a natural right and a good thing, the pursuit of it as an end in itself is not. It (eudemonism) spells in a word all that’s wrong with our modern world, drunk – or perhaps a better description might be “high” on the narcotic of personal happiness. Without the fabric of Christianity, the pursuit of happiness becomes a selfish goal, reinforcing the Edenic gravitational force to self-aggrandizement. Pleasure-seeking as an end in itself is a barren business; happiness is never found until we have the grace to stop looking for it and give ourselves to others external to ourselves.

But eudemonism is a good thing, too, a Bible teaching reinforced in recent weeks by our Sunday morning studies in Philippians where happiness, or joy, is the main theme of the letter. Responding, or so it might seem, to the wistful lament of Jeremiah, “I had forgotten what happiness is” (Lam. 3:17), Paul’s prison letter on the verge of what could have been his imminent death, bristles with elation: “rejoice with me… rejoice in the Lord... Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice” (Phil. 2:18; 3:1; 4:4).
 

Happiness comes, as Paul knew all too well, through and because of the gospel: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness…” (Isa. 52:7). Saved sinners who have tasted the Good News of sins forgiven and peace with God, who have been declared “righteous” by virtue of what Jesus Christ has done on their behalf, who have been called “sons” in God’s family, are supremely happy people. Christians, who know their destiny as the Celestial City, “rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Pet. 1:8).
 

Alexander Solzhenitsyn has written, “Happiness does not depend on the actual number of blessings we manage to scratch from life, but on our attitude towards them.” And he was right, of course. It is the attitude that emerges in the form of a thankful heart. Paul harps constantly on the blessing of constantly giving thanks to God. “Be filled with the Spirit … giving thanks always and for everything to God” (Eph. 5:18, 20). “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him … abounding in thanksgiving” (Col. 2:6-7). “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thess. 5:18).
 

Glum Christians who say they have not much to give thanks for are just that – glum! So I say: Look for those things in which true happiness is to be found. List them, right now.
 

Faux Spirituality

May 2, 2008

    Folks are “into spirituality” these days. Postmodernity has spawned an acceptance of the weirdest kinds of personal religions from tree-huggers to Zen Buddhist expressions of humming E flat. Evangelicals, never shy at joining the latest craze and “winning it for Jesus,” have produced a ton of paper (much to the chagrin of the tree-huggers) advocating this or that means to personal enrichment designed to produce beautiful feelings. People like to say, “We have discovered ourselves through reflection.” It’s more Buddhist than Christian.
    How far it all is from the blood and agony of a crucifixion! How false that sense of self-worth when compared to, “My richest gain I count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride,” or as we heard last Sunday morning, “I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and may share His sufferings” (Phil. 3:10).
    Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 5:3).

    Poverty of spirit! What does it mean to be poor in spirit? The word translated “poor” is a good deal stronger in the Greek. It means, literally, “beggars.” We’ve all seen them and turned away perhaps in embarrassment; outside a grocery store, on the sidewalk, with hands outstretched, begging for food. What Jesus is saying is: “Blessed (happy, privileged) are the spiritual beggars; those so aware of their condition that all they can do is beg – openly.
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me…
    Jesus is challenging the idea that one can belong to the kingdom of God simply because of one’s status as (in this case) a Jew. The sobering truth is, and without it we can have no part in Jesus’ kingdom, none of us have anything whatsoever to commend ourselves to God. We are undeserving of His grace. We are all “guilty, vile and helpless.”
    The relationship which makes us partakers of the kingdom of God is one of poverty of spirit. It is the way we enter and it is the way we must continue. We are poor men and women in ourselves, with no righteousness of our own to plead before God. We are bankrupt and debtors to mercy alone.
I am sometimes asked why it is I cite so frequently Augustus Toplady’s words when I pray. I cannot help it! Every time I come before the Almighty God of heaven and hearth, I am conscious that I have no right to come in and of myself:

    Nothing in my hands I bring,
    Simply to Thy Cross I cling;
    Naked, come to Thee for dress;
    Helpless, look to Thee for grace;
    Foul, I to the fountain fly;
    Wash me, Saviour, or I die.

Is this the way you see it, too?

Doing Church in Europe

April 11, 2008

    You need not be too informed about current trends in Europe to know that planting churches in Lyons, Dieppe, or Dusseldorf is not without its difficulties.¹ Deconstructionism abounds in every corner of the continent – as much in former Eastern Europe as in the West – and church planters are all too conscious of the need for contextualization. Nor is merely an issue “over there.” What works in Gluckstad, Mississippi does not in Pontypridd, Wales. Or, so the mission strategists would have us believe. Some would have us believe that church planting must move with the times and accommodate to changing cultural shifts. This means that old ways of “doing church” simply won’t work anymore. And what they mean, more often than not, is that classical, traditional worship won’t work and everything has to undergo the scrutiny of cultural acclimation.
    There is obviously some truth to this! Try singing the sixteenth century Genevan tunes set to the psalms by Clement Marot.at the request of John Calvin! They are fascinating but decidedly different and it would take a musically advanced congregation to sing them today. Similarly, the all-black-suited attire of early twentieth century west island Scottish churches has fallen by the way side even in Scotland (today, it would not be unusual for a minister to wear a somewhat shabby sweater to lead in worship even in the most theologically conservative churches – no names mentioned!). Though a case can be made against both of these trends – musical style/genre and fashion – neither are beyond some reasonable criticism and it is surprising that reformed Christians seem to yield surprisingly quickly to the neutrality of both when matters of worship are in view, but not if the occasion is a presidential inauguration or a wedding (notwithstanding that the latter has been regarded in reformed liturgy as a worship service). But this is not my present concern.
    To get back to the point, my concern in this column is simply to ask whether we can identify a minimum profile for “doing church,” the parameters of which translate into any culture at any time. Are there a set of principles, or one overall principle (a worship/church planting metanarrative,” if you will) that may be regarded as culturally unconditional?
    The Reformed church (or churches) has answered this question with an indomitable “Yes!” It is called The Regulative Principle and it is found in at least three of the chapters of The Westminster Confession (in chapters 1, 20 and 21).
    Why in three chapters, you ask? Mainly because at its heart lies the issue of freedom of conscience – that only God has the right to dictate how we are to worship him. This, as a rudimentary knowledge of church history in the seventeenth century will show (especially among the settlers of the new world), was an issue of paramount importance. For that reason, it has always baffled me how American Christians show such disregard for a something that lies in its essence, at the heart of the founding principles of the America! But again, I stray from my point.
    The Directory for the Public Worship of God, first published in 1645 by the eminent “Divines”of the Westminster Assembly – who produced both The Westminster Confession and The Shorter and Larger Catechisms among some other important documents – is a document that deserves to be better known that it is. Its aim was to express a way that churches of widely differing views on polity (church government) and worship. It did so in a way that sought to identify and distinguish what they saw as cultural from biblical principle. It can be done! But my allotted column has come to an end and I’ll have to return to this next week.
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1 I am writing this in Madrid airport on my way to Malaga, Spain to speak to some MTW missionaries, many of whom are well known at First Presbyterian Church, on the topic I write about here.

Deconstructing...Musing on Some Modern Problems About Words

April 4, 2008

A quarter of a century has now passed since Jean-François Lyotard’s book, "La conditione Postmoderne" (published in French in 1979 and the English translation in 1984). Not on your bookshelf? That’s not surprising since by all accounts it is a pretty dull read. Still, it was something of a bombshell in the world of the literati, since (and I cite the great man himself) he coined the sentence, “I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives.”
    What is he saying? That he doesn’t agree that there are unifying ideas or constructs of the world in which we live. He’s not only attacking a Christian worldview which sees coherence in a doctrine of creation and, therefore, everything makes sense and has definable meaning because God made it all and holds it all together. Lyotard is also attacking every other view which attempts to understand the world as a unified system—Marxist utopia, or Freudian psychoanalysis for example or (what was all the rage in the 1960s and 1970s) the confidence in science, otherwise known as logical positivism based as it was on the early work of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Have I lost you? Persevere!

    Let me put it in a simpler way: Lyotard is (or more precisely, “was” since he died in 1988) opposed to any single explanation of reality, as for example, is given in the Constitution of the United States, by the Founding Fathers, along with its legislative enactments. But he’s French, you say, meaning “Surprise! Surprise!”
But there’s more to it than ethnic bias. I, too, am against many metanarratives—explanations of the world based on egg-head assumptions like trees are more important than human embryos, for example. One of the immediate casualties to the postmodern assault was history. Re-writing history is now so commonplace, that recent news coverage of a presidential candidate’s account of snipers on a visit to Bosnia was in itself worthy based as it was on the assumption that “facts” are not only identifiable, but do matter when relating the past.
    Then along came Deconstructors who took things further. Philosophers like Hans-Georg Gadamer, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida (“more Frenchmen” I hear you exclaim, but Derrida was technically born in Algeria). Derrida’s point is (well, “was” since he is also dead—in 2004) that even the very words themselves employed to describe such a view are an impossibility since words have no stable relationship to reality. Nothing new here, in fact: Wittgenstein had been saying this for quite some time and Lewis Carroll has that memorable passage in Alice in Wonderland (written in 1865!) in which Humpty Dumpty says to Alice, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” For Derrideans, all words are relative and insisting on one interpretation is a futile, naïve thing to claim.
    Where does this skepticism come from? The answer is—unbelief! If people cease to believe in God, then “meaning” becomes problematic. Underneath the postmodern loss of confidence in meaning is a loss of the sense of God’s transcendence and presence.
    And how do I know that words have real, definable meaning? Because God spoke in words! And Jesus—God-incarnate—spoke in words, which men remembered and wrote down in Scripture. The WORD was made flesh (John 1:14) and in being made flesh He spoke… words, with real, definable meaning that provide a metanarrative for all reality. It’s all about Jesus in the end.
 

Empty Tomb Theology

March 21, 2008
On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus (Lk. 24:1-3). It’s a familiar tale that Christians like us insist is true in the most literal sense. But what’s the big deal? Would the bottom fall out of Christianity if the tomb actually contained the body of Jesus? The answer that Scripture gives is “Yes!” Everything about Christianity would fall apart if the tomb had not been empty.
    Now, let’s be clear: we are talking about the resurrection of a dead body. That’s more than the resuscitation of a corpse. True, Jesus’ body did come to life again, but it then had abilities it did not possess before. For one thing, Jesus’ humanity after the resurrection was able to appear, vanish, and move unseen from one location to another (Luke 24:31, 36). And what’s more, we’re not talking about Jesus having been raised “in my heart” or in spirit so that I now can “feel” His presence with me wherever I go. When Bible writers describe the resurrection in physical terms first century readers would not think: “Cute! Do you mean you had a vision, or you feel Him risen in your heart?” No, he would say, “Well, that’s all fine and dandy, I’m glad you had that experience. But why did you say He’s been raised from the dead?” Modern critics who dismiss first century readers in that way really are very silly indeed. It is always a mistake to think that the first readers of the New Testament were not as intelligent as we are! It didn’t take Einsteinian physics to conclude that dead people do not normally walk out of tombs three days after death!

    But let’s get back to the question: why is it essential that He be raised from the dead?

    The answer to that is multidimensional, but let’s stick with this idea for now. Christianity promises me a new existence, one we generally, though unspecifically call “heaven” but better termed “the new heavens and new earth” (Isa. 66:17, 22; 2 Pet. 3:13). The resurrection of Jesus introduces me to that world that He intends for us. It is a sign that death is not the end. Even though we die physically, we shall be raised again physically. Christianity is more than a good feeling here and now or a set of moral principles for this world’s existence. It is a promise of eternal life in a physical world.
    This is Paul’s sustained argument in 1 Corinthians 15: death has been swallowed by the victory of the resurrection of Jesus. Some believe that Paul is arguing in 2 Corinthians 5:1-5 that even before the Second Coming, those who die in Christ are given physical (though temporary) bodies in what is sometimes called the “intermediate state.” The point being is that without the resurrection of Jesus, there is no basis for assurance that sins have been paid for. The resurrection of Jesus therefore informs us in about as dramatic a way possible that the penalty of sin (death) has been paid and that as our substitute and sin-bearer Jesus has received the Father’s “Well done, good and faithful servant!” His resurrection is a sign that the price He had paid on the cross for sin was enough. He had met the full demands of justice.
    When Jesus walked out of the tomb by the power of the Holy Spirit and the authority of His Father in heaven, He was signaling to us what we can expect in union with Him: we too shall rise, in a new body as corporeal as His (remember, He ate fish for breakfast on the edge of the Sea of Galilee with some of the disciples and it doesn’t get more physical than that (Lk. 24:43)!
    The resurrection of Jesus is the dawning of the new age, a glimpse of what is not come in the here and now. A bit like a a trailer for a big forthcoming movie that ends in bold letters – COMING SOON!

March 14, 2008

How Bad Can It Get?

I have been procrastinating for some time now over a lecture I need to prepare for a conference on eschatology in South Carolina. I’ve known about it for about a year, but I have not the desire to write it. And now, it is upon me. By the time you read this, it will have been delivered. The topic? Hell! Its existence and reality.

No one wants to speak on this subject even when we know it to be true. And for those of us who have known relatives of ours who died in unbelief, the subject gets personal in a way that forbids any kind of prolonged concentration on it.

To this I must add the disturbing thought, taught by Tertullian in the third century, and Aquinas a millennium later, and by Jonathan Edwards in the eighteenth century that the sufferings of those in hell will be a joyful spectacle to those in heaven. Whatever we may make of this—and it is difficult to gainsay if heaven is to be a happy place that this must indeed be so, however dark a thought it may appear to us now.

There are alternatives, theoretical alternatives, including universalism— the view that everyone, no matter who they are or how evil they were, are saved in the end. It has been regarded as a heresy since the fifth ecumenical Council of Constantinople in a.d. 553. At issue was Origen’s doctrine of apokatastasis, a doctrine which he condemned along with his view of the pre-existence of the soul. Let’s be honest, we can sympathize with C. S. Lewis when he writes, “I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully, ‘All will be saved.’”¹

It is a brave soul that upholds this view, suggesting that the cruelest masochistic despots of history share the same future as the kind and gentle—that Idi Amin, Genghis Khan, Nero, Adolph Hitler, and Pol Pot are all saved in the end. It is a brave soul that believes the third century Christian martyr Perpetua (gored to death in the arena at Carthage on March 7, a.d. 203 by a wild cow) and her assassin, Emperor Septimius Severus whose birthday celebrations had called for the death of Perpetua and six others as entertainment for the crowds who had gathered, are all saved in the end.

All in “heaven” in the end. Who genuinely believes such a thing? Only those who believe that all religions or none at all amount to the same thing in the end, and the Bible cannot possibly be more than a book of truth and error—the former discerned by sifting through the pages of Scripture according to self-made criteria of what is credible and what is not.

More appealing is annihilationism, a view that suggests that the wicked are, in the end, snuffed out of existence so as not to endure the pains of hell for ever. It is a view held by John Wenham and John Stott and Michael Green and Philip Edgcumbe Hughes. But such a view falls short of plain exegesis of Scripture, not least the fact that the New Testament stubbornly uses the same word for “eternal life” as it does for “eternal damnation.”

I mentioned the fact that this lecture was upon me by someone recently in another city and he replied in jest, “We don’t talk much about that round here.” It wasn’t funny and both of us knew it for in truth, if hell exists, if there is the slightest possibility that someone may end up there, we ought to speak about it and do everything we can to warn people of its danger. Truth is, we are far more governed by the whims of sentimental secularism than we imagine! We don’t want to believe that things are as bad as the Bible says they are. Our skepticism about the consequences of personal morality speaks of our loss of conscience. Truth is, hell is worse than we think and none of us can imagine how bad it will be.

Truth is, no one spoke with greater clarity and conviction about hell than did Jesus.
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1. C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (London: Bless, 1940), 107.

February 29, 2008

    By any standard, poor doubting Thomas as he is portrayed in John 20, a week after the other ten (minus Judas and himself) had seen the risen Jesus in the Upper Room, is a broken vessel. Jesus humbled him by telling him to thrust his hand into His side, and to do so not in disbelief but belief. I have often wondered if Thomas actually did so—the text does not tell us and somehow I have come to believe that he did not. He had no need for the empirical evidence that he had asked for since the sight and voice of Jesus was surely enough. Instead, he proclaimed, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28).

    Jesus had broken his prideful spirit, taking a temperamentally suspicious and melancholy soul and shaping him into a bold and useful vessel that, according to tradition at least, would eventually die a martyr’s death in India.

    God does that, all the time, with those whom He purposes to use. It is what Peter had seen again and again, warning his readers that “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble,” adding the exhortation, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you” (1 Pet. 5:5-6). It is what he had heard Jesus say to him and the other disciples: “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:12).

    God uses broken vessels like the poet and hymn writer, William Cowper, author of “God Moves in a Mysterious Way.” A melancholy soul, shattered early in life by a spurned marriage proposal, he would spend his days living next door to John Newton who gently counseled him through several attempts to take his own life. A weak and unattractive man whose poetry spoke of pain and fear, Cowper’s hymns reach sublime heights dealing with life and assurance of God’s grace.
There is something gospel-shaped about this. We tend to think that our usefulness depends on our ability and gifting as though in order for God to use us we must gain His approval in some way by commending ourselves to Him as useful. But God uses us in such a fashion that when all is said and done, the glory is His and not ours: “we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Cor. 4:7).

    Pausing on this passage in 2 Corinthians we may see several things to encourage us. Whatever condition God has brought us into (and whatever condition it may be, we are to be assured that God is the One who has ordered it thus), we can always find reasons for seeing the hand of God in it:
The power of God and the life of His Son are manifested in our weakness (2 Cor. 4:7).

    The life of Jesus is flowing through your suffering into the lives of other people: “death is at work in us, but life in you” (2 Cor. 4:12).  Our afflictions are momentary. They are only for now, not for the age to come. Compared to the pleasures that are to come, our afflictions are light
(2 Cor. 4:17).

“I am like a broken vessel” (Psa. 31:12). Is this you?