Keep Going

There never has been a time, there never will be a time, when I am strong in my own strength or strong because of my outward circumstances. I can only ever be strong in Christ. And it is particularly when I am weak through self and circumstance that I need to remember this, in order that by God's grace I might experience what it means to be strong in Christ. So when the going is hard, do not be discouraged, do not lose heart, do not give up - believe in Christ.

God knows we aren't perfect, so he'll accept us in to heaven just as we are ... won't he?

On Sunday night after church my wife had a fascinating chat with a lady who's only fairly recently become a Christian. She was talking about an opportunity she'd had to witness that week to a colleague at work. Her colleague was apologising for a mistake, and mention had been made of the fact that no-one's perfect. Somehow the conversation then turned to heaven and this lady's colleague commented that it's just as well God accepts everyone in to heaven just as they are, imperfections and all. 

How would you respond to that? 

Our friend's response was brilliant. This is the general gist of what she said:

"Actually I don't want to go to heaven if I'm not perfect, that would ruin it, I would ruin it, it would be no better than here. Only Jesus was perfect, so only he qualifies for heaven, only he wouldn't ruin it. But the great thing is that I know as someone who's trusted him that he's paid for all my imperfections on the cross, and when I physically die he's promised to make me perfect like him, so that I'm fit for heaven too and don't ruin it."

If God accepts us in to heaven just the way we are, then heaven won't be a great place will it! We need Jesus to make us perfect for heaven.

Of Governments and Covenants

Is Britain a nation in covenant with God? 

That might sound like a strange question, but I think it's an important one for Christians to answer well because it impacts on how we interact with our government.

Often I hear sermons, or read articles, that seem to operate on the assumption that the answer to the above question is yes, Britain is a nation in covenant with God. But is that actually the case? No. Under the new covenant, God's covenant people are Christians, collectively known as the Church, made up of people from all different nations and ethnicities, under the kingly rule of Christ. God's covenant people are not a nation state like Britain. That's different to how things were in the Old Testament, under the old covenant. Then, God's covenant people were Israel, a nation state, with a king specifically appointed to rule over them. The king was to rule with and under God's authority, according to every stipulation of the covenant. Sometimes those old covenant kings ruled well, very often they didn't. When they didn't it was quite appropriate for prophets and others of God's covenant people to remind them that their job was to lead in complete accordance with God's covenant - no room was to be made for any religious compromise.

Very often I hear direct parallels being drawn (perhaps inadvertently?) between Old Testament Israel and Britain, between the kings of the old covenant people of Israel, and the government of Britain. But is that a correct parallel? One involves the appointed king of God's covenant people, the other ... well the other doesn't. The king of God's covenant people now is Christ, not David Cameron (or the Queen for that matter!)

Of course it's true that our governing authorities are appointed by God (Rom. 13), but as heads of nations (and we should be subject to them as such) not as heads of God's covenant people, the Church.

It is our government's job to restrain evil, and it's part of our job as Christians to encourage them in that task and pray for them. But let's not confuse them with the king of God's covenant people - they aren't there to enforce every aspect of God's covenant on the whole nation, on people who aren't even part of God's covenant people, which is most people in Britain.

Our king is Christ, and his covenant people, the Church, are always under his gracious rule no matter what laws our national government may be passing. And Christ's kingdom and reign is extended not through national laws brought in by our national government, but through the good news of the gospel. It is Christ's people's responsibility (not the government's) to spread the gospel, so it's important we concentrate primarily on that, rather than investing the majority of our time in muddled expectations of what our national government should or shouldn't be doing.

Linkworthy 16/05/2014

Some bits and bobs worth perusing ...

I don't have any tattoos, and I never intend to. Couldn't agree more with this article though.

The Church needs more Tattoos


Two extremes addressed here. Still, well worth reading if you're a preacher, or if you listen to preachers.

Common Problems in Modern Preaching


Few people seem to speak as clearly, simply, and biblically as Sam Allberry on the issue of homosexuality. He speaks from experience of same sex attraction (SSA) and lists a number of helpful things churches can do for others with SSA.

Same-sex Attraction in the Church


This just makes me laugh.

Bowling lane drives dog crazy

Life's Decisions and God's Secret Will

Last night at the church prayer meeting one of our elders, Steve Tyrer, gave a short Bible study where he touched on the themes of God's secret will and God's revealed will. It's not a distinction that is spoken about that often, but it's a vital one that has some really important implications for how we go about making decisions in our lives as believers.

God's revealed will refers to God's written commands in the Bible. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength is God's revealed will for a Christian's life. So is "do not lie", "do not steal", "do not commit adultery", and "love your neighbour as yourself." These are all aspects of God's revealed will. If the opportunity for you to shoplift presents itself to you, God's will for what you should do in that situation is clear, it has been revealed in the Bible - don't do it!

But what about God's will for what jobs you apply for, or accept? Which church you attend? Who you marry? God's word reveals a certain amount about his will in these situations - don't apply for that pole dancing job, don't join a church that has chucked the Bible out of the window, don't marry an unbeliever, but that still leaves you with options. There are plenty of jobs that a Christian can do, there may well be more than one good church where you live, and you'll search the Bible in vain for the specific name of your future spouse! 

This is where it's vital to be aware of what is called God's secret will. 

Deuteronomy 29:29 reads, "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of the law."

This verse refers to the "revealed" things, God's law, written in the Bible for us to follow - and we should follow it. But it also refers to "the secret things". The secret things are the aspects of God's will that we don't know - and can't know in advance because God hasn't revealed them in his word. God knows what his secret will is, but we don't (until it happens!). What we can know though, with absolute certainty, is that God will work his secret will out, and nothing can defy his secret will. He will also work all things (including his secret will) together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose (Rom. 8:28). That is tremendously reassuring, and it is also freeing when it comes to making decisions in life where God's revealed word doesn't narrow us down to just one option. 

So, say you have two job offers and there's nothing morally wrong about either of these jobs, God's revealed will (what the Bible says) doesn't rule either one out. It would be a good idea to pray about your decision, to ask for God's wisdom (James 1:5), seek the advice of some trusted friends too. But then feel free to make your decision about which job to take. You don't need to fret about whether you've plumped for the one that is truly "God's will" or whether you've missed out on "God's will". If God's revealed will gives you a choice, then prayerfully make your choice - you don't have to try and figure out all the details of what God's secret will is when he hasn't told you! And the fact is you can't ultimately defy God's secret will anyway - the decision you end up making will be the one that God intended.

In life, make decisions in accordance with God's revealed will. But when God's revealed will leaves you with a choice, prayerfully make that choice knowing that you won't be defying his secret will - he'll be working his purposes out through your decision.

God's glory and our happiness are one goal, not two

On Sunday evening I was preaching on Daniel’s prayer in the first half of Daniel 9. It was a bit of trip down memory lane. I first seriously engaged with this passage as a 19 year old student during the late 1990s in Aberystwyth. I was asked to be the Christian Union’s prayer secretary for the year, which involved co-ordinating the CU’s prayer life and having particular responsibility for its prayer meeting on a Wednesday afternoon. Each Wednesday I was expected to lead a 10-15 minute Bible study before a time of corporate prayer – gulp! I ended up doing a series of short studies on different prayers in the Bible; Daniel 9 was one of them. It made a deep impression on me at the time, and has done each time I’ve returned to it over the fifteen years since those Wednesday prayer meetings.

The prayer is a plea from Daniel, asking that God would fulfil his promise of delivering the Jews from exile in Babylon, after seventy years of Jerusalem being left desolate. And it’s an excellent example of searching God’s word (in Daniel’s case reading Jeremiah), finding what God has said he will do (deliver his people after seventy years of exile), and then praying that God would do it. Daniel doesn’t sit back idly waiting for God to fulfil his word, he gets down to the serious business of passionate prayer.

What really strikes me though, is how Daniel ties together a request for God to bless his people by rescuing them, and a request for God to glorify his own name. The two always belong together.

During the prayer Daniel confesses his own sin, as well as the sin of God’s people as a whole. He acknowledges God’s justice in sending the people in to exile, but also reminds God of his merciful character, of his steadfast love. He then asks that God would bless his people once more by bringing them back to the promised land. This is a prayer for God to be consistent with his own merciful, loving, gracious character by doing good to people, his people. But Daniel’s prayer doesn’t stop at asking God to bless people – be that physically, spiritually, or both. Daniel’s final, clinching argument for God to bless his people, is that his people are known by his name (9:19). In other words, for as long as God’s people continue to be in exile, God’s name is dragged down with them, because his people are called by his name. Daniel asks God to answer his prayer to bless his people, because that will also lead to God’s name being lifted up and glorified. God’s glory is at stake, and Daniel is praying for God’s glory.

I wonder how often we pray like that?

“God, bless your people, so that you might be glorified through it.”

“God, bless your church, so that you might be glorified through it.”

Paul’s prayer of thanksgiving in Ephesians 1:1-14 follows exactly the same logic: God has blessed his people, in Christ, to the praise of his glory.

In fact, the whole of God’s word follows exactly the same logic – God glorifies himself through the salvation, the blessing of, sinners.

God has ordered things in such a way that his glory is inextricably linked to him blessing his people. And that is glorious truth. Truth that should increasingly mould and shape our prayers.

I came across a quote recently that brings these twin themes of God blessing his people and God glorifying himself together nicely:

“God’s glory and our happiness are one goal, not two.” (From “A Puritan Theology”)

That sums things up so well.

To borrow another quote from a slightly different context – “What God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Our prayers should keep together, and not separate, the twin goal of God glorifying himself, and God blessing his people.

Daniel keeps God’s glory and the people’s good together as he ends his prayer like this:

“O Lord, according to all your righteous acts, let your anger and your wrath turn away from your city Jerusalem, your holy hill, because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem has become a byword among all who are around us. Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy, and for your own sake, O Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate. O my God, incline your ear and hear. Open your eyes and see our desolations, and the city that is called by your name. For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name.” (Daniel 9:16-19).

Linkworthy

A few things I've spotted on my travels through t'internet this week.

Is it a waste to spend your time working for God's kingdom in an obscure backwater? This post is in a American setting, but it transfers well to a UK one too. No slight intended against ministry in the city by the way - it's just that more rural ministry is close to my heart.

"You won't waste your life"


Rural England is nowhere near as out of the way as where these two went mind. Half an hour went by in what seemed like 5 minutes watching this video - genuinely uplifting to see what God has done amongst this tribe of people.

"Yembi Yembi: Unto the Nations"


One from a former WEST lecturer of mine, Mark Picket. Some great points about making sure that preachers are preaching from the Bible.

"Hunger for the Word"


I always find Thomas Schreiner worth reading. A well balanced article on prosperity and poverty, and how we're to view the two as Christians.

"Prosperity, Poverty, and Wisdom"

A Different Kind of King

Not many kings are born to peasants. Not many kings are born in poverty. Not many kings find that their first bed is a feeding trough for farm animals. Not many kings grow up in obscurity. Not many kings live on the road. Not many kings volunteer for a shameful death.

But then not many kings are like Jesus. Not any in fact.

He is the King of kings and Lord of lords. He is the supreme King over everything and everyone. All things are under his reign.

But why? How come he’s the greatest King?

Because Jesus is God, God the Son, creator of all. And that makes him King over everything, King over me, King over you.

Yet not many people see that that’s who he is.

Not many recognised it when he was born.

The inn keeper didn’t recognise it. The animals didn’t recognise it. None of the people living in Bethlehem recognised it.

The only ones who did seem to know were Mary and Joseph (because angels had told them), the shepherds (because angels had told them), and the wise men (because a star placed in the heavens by God had guided them).

He was born in stable, not in a palace. On the margins, not at the centre. Hidden away, not displayed for all to see.

So in one sense it’s no wonder other people didn’t figure it out – to them he wasn’t born like a king.

But he was a king, the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

Yet he didn’t seem to live a king either.

As he entered adulthood, did he fit the mould of a king?

His adoptive dad was a carpenter plying his trade in the obscurity of Nazareth. Until the age of thirty Jesus did the same.

But it was around that age that he did hit the limelight. Not as a joiner, but as a teacher, and as a man of extraordinary powers.

Still, his lifestyle didn’t exactly seem kingly, he didn’t live in a luxurious citadel surrounded by servants scuttling around to serve his every need.

But he taught with an authority that left people amazed. He did the impossible as he healed the sick, calmed the storm, cast out demons, raised the dead.

Some started to think he should be a king. Indeed many people in Galilee, where he lived and travelled and taught, tried to make him king … in a political sense. But he shunned that and went elsewhere.

They didn’t understand what kind of King he was – and ultimately, to them, he didn’t live like king.

But he was a king, the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

Yet he didn’t seem to die like a king.

Eventually he leaves Galilee and heads south to Jerusalem – the capital city of his homeland. The home of the king. As he enters the city he’s acclaimed like a king, hailed as the Son of David, Israel’s greatest king.

But he hadn’t come to take over the palace in Jerusalem. To steal King Herod’s crown.

He had gone to Jerusalem for a reason very different.

He’d gone there to give life. He’d gone there to die.

He’d gone there to voluntarily breathe his last on a cross – the most shameful, painful death imaginable, hardly one that you’d link with a king.

Hardly a death that seemed to fit with angel fanfare at his birth.

The sign over his head as he died read, “King of the Jews”. But it was mocking, not acclaiming.

As most people looked on they didn’t see a king – to them he didn’t die like a king.

Yet stop and think for a moment about what sort of king you would actually want.

Would you want a king that lords it over you from afar, that has no empathy with you, no actual interest in you, and would give up nothing for you?

A king who was born in to privilege?

A king who knows nothing of life’s hardships?

A king who only takes, but never gives?

Or the sort of King who has breathed the air you breathe, who has faced the struggles you face, and who would give his very life to save yours?

That’s what this King did, that’s what God the Son did.

For the glory of God, for the love of his people.

He left the splendour of heaven for a birth into squalor.

He left the praise of angels for years of suffering.

He left life in unbroken loving communion with his Father, for a shameful death of abandonment on the cross.

The King of kings and the Lord of lords did that for his people to save them from their sin. To pay for their freedom. To bring them to God.

What a King!

Now he’s risen to life again, now he’s in glory again, now he rules at his Father’s right hand with his people’s best interests at heart.

And if you come to trust and follow him as your King, he’ll watch over you as your King for the rest of your life, until he takes you to live with him and reign with him forever.

The King of kings, the Lord of lords.

He’s a different kind of King. 

The God of our Lord Jesus Christ

It really is amazing how cheaply you can pick stuff up on kindle. I bought Calvin's complete Bible commentaries the other day for just over three quid - brilliant! The fact is I've had the hardback versions sitting on my bookshelves for four years or more but barely picked them up, but now I'm burrowing in to his commentary on Ephesians. It's good. Really good.

At one point he picks up on the phrase "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ" in 1:17. He then makes the simple point that, "the Son of God became man in such a manner, that God was his God as well as ours."

Why is that significant? Well I'm glad you asked. Calvin goes on to explain:

"And the reason that he (God) is our God, is, that he is the God of Christ, whose members we are."

The Son of God became a man so that God the Father would be his God. So that in his human nature Jesus Christ would know the Father as his God. We by nature cannot know God as our God - not because we're human, humans are supposed to relate to God as their God, but because we're naturally sinful. The Son of God became a perfect sinless human, who therefore, in his humanity, did know the Father as his God, so that when we're joined to Christ by faith we know God as our God too.

The humanity of Christ, and our union with him as believers, meant that Jesus could say, "I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." (John 20:17)

Passionate

It is possible to have a view of Jesus that almost complete empties him of any passion or emotion, as if being upset or angry about anything would somehow detract from his perfect sinlessness!

But Jesus definitely was a man of passion and emotion - just look at Luke 19:41-48 - and such passion was in no way sinful, actually a lack of such emotion would have been sinful.

He weeps with sadness, then he bristles with anger. And the things he gets so passionate and emotional about in these verses are things we could do with being a bit more moved by.

Firstly he weeps over people that are rejecting his offer of peace through faith in himself. Jesus takes no pleasure in seeing people reject peace with God. He sheds tears as he contemplates the awful reality of what it means to go in to eternity without being reconciled to God.

Am I moved by the same passionate sadness that Jesus had as I see people heading in to a lost eternity?

Secondly he's furious over prayer being pushed aside in God's house. How dare dodgy businessmen fill a place of corporate prayer with so much junk that people can't come before God and pray! We can meet anywhere for corporate prayer, it's one of the beauties of the new covenant that a bricks and mortar temple is no longer needed for that purpose. But there's often so much junk in our lives that there isn't room for meeting together with other believers to pray.

Maybe it's time to get passionately angry about that and make room for prayer, as Jesus did.

Thirdly he's mad about Gentile access to God being blocked and hindered - the full quote from Isaiah 56:7 is "my house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples". The temple traders might have left the inner court of the temple (which was for Jews) free, but they were clogging up the outer Gentile courts. Do we, perhaps without realising it, hinder people's access to God? Especially people very different to us? We can be very insistent on maintaining our traditions, our favourite ways of doing church that we're comfortable with, but not stop to think about whether they're a help or hindrance to someone who doesn't share our cultural Christian background. We need to be all things to all people that by all means we might save some.

Jesus is so passionate about people of all cultural backgrounds having access to God that he gets mad when that's prevented. What about me?

Peace, Prayer, and People. Three things to get truly passionate about.