THE CHIEF SEATS  10-04-2009

(Luke 14:7)

  When Jesus visited the home of a prominent Pharisee he was closely watched by members of that party who formed the strongest opposition to his ministry. The invitation may have been bona fide and the host somewhat sympathetic and curious about Jesus and the motive and meaning of his message, but other guests were definitely there to entrap the Saviour and he knew their scheme. So he pre-empted their plan by posing a question they dare not answer for fear of revealing their legalistic lack of compassion in their literalistic application of Sabbath law (vv5, 6). Their silence made it obvious that they were dissembling by nature and ill disposed toward him. Already there was an air of arrogance in the room as Jesus alluded to the preciousness of all life, human and animal, and the need to alleviate suffering. Pride and punctiliousness is indifferent to the misfortune of others and “stand offish”. The absence of identification with the unfortunate is the root of non-involvement. The principal concern is the welfare of number one in situations where “me and not thee” is the dominant consideration – the source of most disputes.

  Whilst Jesus was being carefully watched by his enemies he was keeping a discerning eye upon them and couldn’t help but see the human preoccupation with social climbing in action before him. It was obviously a feather in the cap to attend a function at the prominent man’s house and to be seen among such society as he had invited. The atmosphere bred self-display. Jesus noticed how the guests “picked the places of honour at the table” (v7).

  The natural ego rates itself above others. This self-estimate has to be demonstrated in every way possible according to the standards by which human worth is measured by the world – pedigree, position, performance, and possessions. It all adds up to a sense of personal prestige, which we want to be evident in everything we are associated with from background, to school, to college, to career, to church, to residential location. It is true that many people of prominence can be characterized by a sense of their poverty of spirit before God and their genuine humility possesses a true beauty and exerts its charm, but social climbing has its allurements for everyone, and it can exercise a subtle influence even in the life of the church where distinctions between social groupings are drawn (demographics), and the patronization of certain folk can come into play. The quest for kudos is foreign to the family of Christ and our elder brother forbids it in his parable. “Take the lowest place” (v10) – an instruction that has little appeal and irks us.

  False humility is obnoxious as Charles Dickens shows us in his delineation of the character of Uriah Heep (I am very ‘umble) in the novel David Copperfield, and often this sinful tendency is detected within us when we silently register an offence to our pride and sense of place in the scheme of things. Prominence and power are often our prevailing pursuits in almost any activity, but the urge is so instinctive we are scarcely conscious of it. Jesus must have been shocked to see so many seemingly decent and respectable folk vying for pre-eminent position; grasping at honour from dishonourable motives. Often it is not affection or admiration that causes people to associate with the well placed in the social order but the desire to snuggle up to power and advantage for one’s own ends. Flattery can turn into fierce antipathy when it doesn’t seem to be paying dividends. It is the speech of the deceitful tongue. It is the fishing for favour with the hook of false praise.

  The most notorious example, perhaps, of climbing the ladder to prominence is exhibited in a certain mother’s request on behalf of her two sons (Matthew 20:20-28). Zebedee’s wife made a bid for advancement in the coming kingdom for James and John. “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left.” Amazingly, Jesus’ response was not scathing but sensitive, pointing out that such presumption emerged from ignorance. Mark tells us that the sons themselves were complicit in what amounted to family ambition (Mark 10:35-37), a not unknown phenomenon, and this sense of entitlement rankled with other disciples who disputed the claim and desired such rank for themselves (Matthew 10:24-28, Mark 9:33-37). Climbing and competitiveness not only emerges from our hearts, but also infiltrates even our best service. We, as believers, possess two natures in conflict and the conflict spreads if it is not promptly contained and cleansed within.

  The One who “made himself nothing” (Philippians 2:7) is not impressed by attempts at self elevation, but distressed at false classification and proud discrimination within the people of God. There is certainly respect to be accorded to genuine worth, expertise, and responsible authority, but there is also to be mutual respect and high regard all round for those who, by grace, will be royalty in heaven whatever their rank on earth, royalty not as a desert but a donation from he who won participation in his glory for us though his voluntary humiliation as the suffering servant.

  It is salutary and lovely to ponder Paul’s words to the believers at Corinth: “Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him” (1 Corinthians 1:26-29). Paul does not exclude the aristocratic, affluent, and able, nor does he favour the lowly and the poor. He simply says that no one may crow before God, nor can any qualify in themselves, or above another, for God’s acceptance. All without exception gain the divine approval in the same way: “It is because of him (God’s grace and calling) that you are in Christ Jesus (1 Corinthians 1:30). Whatever the circumstances or station in life of any believer there is the instinctive avoidance of the place of honour, the chief seat, on the basis of merit or attainment. We are honoured to have a place at Christ’s table (Matthew 8:11) and we honour those at table with us. If they are Christ’s friends and family then they are ours also, receiving our affection, fellowship, and courteous acceptance.

  Brokenness, humility, and contrition are the marks of the believer and these qualities serve to put the brakes on assertiveness, rivalry, and self-interest in the family of God. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.(Philippians 2:3).

THE LOSS OF FORCEFUL THEOLOGY - 09/20/2009

The vocabulary of contemporary Christianity has gone soft. We are no longer a serious people. Our religion is light and flippant and pandering to self-centered desire. You would not deduce that our faith was preparation for death, judgment, and eternity (hell to be avoided or heaven to be attained). It is now to be pleasurable and palliative, never to be disturbing or disciplining. Ostensibly, the strong terms and hard sayings of the Scriptures have been edited out of our discourse. The meat of the Bible, and even the milk of the word, have been set aside for a sickly-sweet diet of marshmallow. The forceful faith of our fathers has been either feminized or forsaken. The grand old doctrines of the historic church have been diluted or discarded so that patent inanity and silly sentimentality rule the day in the interest of the "feel good factor" and pleasing the public. The people cannot stomach truth anymore. "For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear" (2 Timothy 4:3). "Desiring" and "itching" indicate that the audience dictates what is to be taught and heard, and the pulpit now prefers to play to the gallery rather than preach the word. There is the fear of man and the craving for favour. The proclamation of the cross will guarantee persecution or rejection, so the message of the cross as the only means of salvation, and the daily sanctifying experience of the cross as the only path to life, are best ignored and left alone.

The retrieval of a historical perspective and a return to our heritage are essential for a recovery of a robust and authentic Christianity, and just as the foundational fact of the exodus was embedded in the consciousness of the Hebrew people so the recurrence of the fundamental truths of the gospel is to be retained in the Christian mind and rehearsed repeatedly.

Our minds quickly wander and the appeal of novelty is always a temptation. Solid conviction is established gradually over the generations and its enduring worth is proven through the ordeals of conflict and adversity in the life of the people of God. Whilst we strike out to meet the challenges and needs of our times we also keep a keen eye on the certainties of the past that ensure a soundness of thought and stability of posture for the present, thus avoiding the hazard of being like infants, "Tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching" (Ephesians 4:14). Fashion in theology can be the current that sweeps us away from safe moorings. The lessons of the past, hard won by heroic confessors of the faith, are precious and not to be demeaned through our contemporary sense of superiority and arrogance towards former generations. The allurements of "new discoveries" and revised emphases are perilous. In the main Scripture is plain but the tendency to tamper with it is perennial. Providence has given us "reminders" to keep us on course - the testimony of our predecessors, the accounts of their pilgrimage, the record of their prayers offered in varying circumstances, and the outline of their worship preserved in hymnody and liturgy. We have a rich spiritual legacy to plunder and explore in creeds, confessions, and ceremony, and a compilation such as the Cranmerian Book of Common Prayer can be a daily companion and dependable directory of doctrine and devotion. Use of liturgy does not suffocate spontaneous expressions of piety and prayer but actually stimulates them whilst helping to eliminate unfortunate personal idiosyncrasies and erroneous tendencies in sentiment and thought that cloy our prayer life and fellowship with God with the dross of our self-centred preoccupation and preferences. Liturgy cultivates the perfect blend of subjectivity and objectivity, leading us to thoughts of God and away from the cul-de-sac of self-absorption and excessive introspection in our emotional states, mental frames, and transient moods and circumstances. Liturgy irons out the quirks of our nature and supplements our meagre spiritual resources, in prayer and meditation.

It is in the well-wrought language of our forbears that we keep in touch with spiritual realities. Many of them lived in times and through experiences that were harder than ours. They soldiered through hardships physically more difficult than ours, and fought through situations of persecution and controversy more intense than we are accustomed to, and they could not be satisfied with superficialities and trivialities. Sin and salvation were starkly present to their minds, and the modern safety and certainties that we rely upon were not available to them. Faith had to counter now forgotten fears, and that faith had to be firm. Its realism should not be forgotten, for the eternal facets of their faith that loomed large to them are just as consequential to us. More than ever the church needs to encounter forceful theology that is not nullified by the comforts and distractions of our era. In spite of our focus on the temporal and material there are still the ultimate concerns of death, judgment, and eternal destiny to deal with. Our liturgy keeps these things before our minds, and our standard liturgy (1662) must never be lost or superseded by sentiment of a softer sort. The realism of our Reformers will brace us for the realities of time and eternity and not allow us to seclude ourselves from likely and definite eventualities.

The prayers for The Visitation of the Sick are not squeamish as to the hand of God in our afflictions and the possibility of his healing mercy in our recovery. Their language brings us face to face with God, both for repentance and restoration*O blessed Lord, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comforts: We beseech thee, look down in pity and compassion upon this thy afflicted servant. Thou writest bitter things against him, and makest him to possess his former iniquities; thy wrath lieth hard upon him, and his soul is full of trouble…give him a right understanding of himself, and of thy threats and promises; that he may neither cast away his confidence in thee, nor place it any where but in thee* We fly unto thee for succour in behalf of this thy servant, here lying under thy hand in great weakness of body…strengthen him, we beseech thee, so much the more continually with the grace of thy Holy Spirit in the inner man. Give him unfeigned repentance for all the errors of his life past, and stedfast faith in thy Son Jesus; that his sins may be done away by thy mercy, and his pardon sealed in heaven, before he go hence and be no more seen. We know, O Lord, that there is no word impossible with thee; and that, if thou wilt, thou canst yet raise him up, and grant him a longer continuance amongst us.

Such directness of speech, perhaps strange to modern ears, drives us to God in our hearts, as do the petitions of The Litany, so comprehensive in their coverage of every human concern and circumstance* From all evil and mischief; from sin, from the crafts and assaults of the devil; from thy wrath, and from everlasting damnation, Good Lord, deliver us* From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us* By thine Agony and bloody Sweat; by thy Cross and Passion; by thy precious Death and Burial; by thy glorious Resurrection and Ascension; and by the coming of the Holy Ghost, Good Lord, deliver us*That it may please thee to strengthen such as do stand; and to comfort and help the weak-hearted; and to raise up them that fall; and finally to beat down Satan under our feet, We beseech thee to hear us, Good Lord. Such vivid address to God alerts us to both dangers and deliverances according to the dispensations of a sovereign God, and they connect us immediately to him as our only effective refuge and aid.

The Absolution points us to the gracious disposition of God towards contrite sinners, but points also to the necessity of a genuine heart before him* Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who desireth not the death of a sinner…He pardoneth and absolveth all them that truly repent and unfeignedly believe his holy Gospel. Grant us true repentance, and his Holy Spirit, etc. Spurious repentance and counterfeit faith are always possible because of the deceitfulness of human hearts, as is related in the Venite (Psalm 95), "Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said: It is a people that do err in their hearts, for they have not known my ways".

A sound Scriptural liturgy searches our hearts, sifts away our unworthy thoughts, edifies the mind, and confirms our convictions. It stands outside of ourselves to monitor our spiritual health and regulate our theological development in an essential saving sense. At the same time its content enters into us, purifying us of our personal eccentricities and oddities that mar our spiritual character and retard its advance to the likeness of Christ. The impact of forceful theology is necessary if divine truth is ever to gain our attention and sweep away our comfortable assumptions about ourselves and about God.

RJS

THE CHIEF END OF GOD 09-13-09

Happiness is regarded as a legitimate human pursuit to which all men are entitled. Yet happiness, in the strict sense of high spirits or pleasure, seems to be elusive when sought and transient when found. If it is thought of as glad feeling or good fortune it cannot be identified with an established condition of wellbeing. Happiness (hap) is “accidental”, a happening that brings good luck. Wellbeing is the result of purpose and wisdom. Happiness is the experience of pleasure. Wellbeing is the possession of soundness and security. Happiness is fleeting. Wellbeing is formed through experiences that are not pleasant, but trying and tough. God’s highest purpose for his people is not happiness but holiness, a holiness that is attained through striving with sin and the endurance of suffering. This is the process of “soul making” throughout our time on earth that fits us for fellowship with a holy God in whose companionship we find our ultimate satisfaction and everlasting joy. Man’s chief end is not happiness as a transient and temporal gratifying experience depending on luck, creating a pleasant mood, and which quickly expires. Man’s chief end, according to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, is to glorify GO (khOWhini aclcnowledge him, extol him, and serve him) and enjoy him forever (revel in his attributes, admire his actions, and enter into his friendship).
The sinful self-centredness of fallen man is inclined to suppose that the chief purpose of God is to serve the happiness of his creatures. But above our sense of pleasure God is more concerned to establish our wellbeing, and beyond our wellbeing his chief purpose is to glorify his name. Creation and redemption are designed to magnify the greatness and splendour of the Lord and to demonstrate his marvellous perfection as perceived in his incomparable qualities and attributes. As sinners we are apt to overlook the prime reason for our existence, its chief end, and to view God as being ever available to serve our ends as we dictate them to him through our prayers and pursue them through our endeavours which we counsel him to prosper. Our estimate of self in the scheme of things is disproportionately large, and our conceptions of God are greatly diminished. In our view of reality man is central and God is peripheral. It is a huge distortion of perception that has its repercussions in our outlook on so much else. So much of our theology proceeds from this premise, the ultimate importance of man, and the effect of this assumption is the unconscious adaptation of Scripture to notions of “free will” and universalism in our presentation of its vital salvific message, which we have reversed from the supremacy of God in the donation of mercy to the supremacy of humanity in the exaltation of man’s choice, or man’s worth, as determinative of who will receive it. “Free-willism”, the rise of which the English Reformer and martyr John Bradford regarded as more dangerous than the Romanism against which he contended to death, suspends divine sovereignty in a tate-of impsteicentil it receives huilian “tay so” orpermissioli togo ahead. hi imitation of the evil one we have usurped the sovereignty of God reducing him to the service of our desires and decisions. Even Christianity can function as the religious expression of the determinative significance of man, homage to our own hubris, through the manipulation of divine power. Such religion inflates our ego by associating ourselves with the source of power rather than revealing our essential nothingness and recruiting us submissively to divine service. Scripture has been tamed to suit our self-pampering preferences and the only corrective is a concentration upon the sovereignty passages that portray the splendour of God and present his will and power as determinative in the course of events and their consummation.
However “comfortable” believers may rightly feel in the presence of God through the gospel he is also and always to be approached by his creatures, who are also sinners, with the reverence Scripturally described as trembling. A frisson of fear accompanies our tingle ofjoy in him whilst we are, “Walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 9:31). As our Litany expresses it, we desire to dread God as well as delight in him: “That it may please thee to give us an heart to love and dread thee.” David Broughton Knox reminds us that our fear of God is akin to the fear we normally feel when in danger or
surprised by any threat. He points out that the weakness in our testimony to God in evangelism is rooted in the absence of fear as a strong element in our proclamation. Sinners are bold because they are not taught to fear God. The Lord is almighty and awesome, a terror to sin, and even when cradled in his care we feel the strength of his muscle and quiver at his majestic holiness. Our God is not to be trifled with. “Let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our ‘God is a consumingfire” (Hebrews 12:28-29).
This is the God whom Scripture describes in terms of absolute and indisputable sovereignty. “His dominion is an eternal dominion: his kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: What have you done?” (Daniel 4:34b-35). This is a sovereignty that administers judgment and salvation according to God’s determinative will, “in order that God’s purpose in election might stand” (Romans 9:11). The apostle, in a chapter that sweeps away all human vanity and boasted ability and worthiness before God, portrays God as the One who hardens impenitent sinners and enables the unwilling to come to him. “It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy” (Romans 9:16). Mercy is not within human reach to claim or call down at our bidding. It is a sovereign dispensation utterly undeserved, and this is acknowledged in the sincere and urgent cry, Lord, have mercy! It is a blessing besought without entitlement and bestowed without obligation. “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (Romans 9:15). Ours is a humble, penitent, patient waiting upon a royal decision. There can be no presumptuousness in appealing to God, no arrogant claim to his favour, no cosy assumption that we can turn his mind because we are who we are i.e. of enormous importance to ourselves. The attitude of the contrite heart is thus: “Who knows? God may yet relent, and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish” (Jonah 3:9).
Being at ease with God is not our natural birthright. We are his enemies and have offended him. Only his grace can admit us to friendship and win his approval. The expectation that he is on our side as a matter of course is a dangerous falsehood. It can evoke slick, superficial avowals of faith and allegiance that vanish like a “morning cloud”. We acknowledge him when convenient or we want something. But God is not indebted to us and owes us nothing. Yet this assumption underlies so much in the contemporary attitude to God: “He will bless us, of course he will “. We recite the mantra in our hearts without sincerity, self-examination, or repentance. God’s priority is not my happiness but his glory. In eternity I shall serve his purpose as an object of wrath if I do not turn to him, or as a trophy of grace if I call upon him whilst the period of amnesty affords opportunity. My grounds for hope in his mercy are not in any importance or worthiness in self. No arguments put before him can be on this basis. The sinner can only look to the compassion of God revealed in Jesus Christ, the efficacy of his cross as the means of atonement, the righteousness of Christ as the reason for acceptance. In his Person is pure mercy toward contrite sinners, and faith must cling to him alone.
Our liturgy informs us that God’s primary purpose, goal, or end - his glory — coincides with the exercise of his compassion: 0 God, who declarest thy almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity (Collect for the 11th Sunday after Trinity). Here lies incentive for every anxious soul to turn to God in confidence and hope. Well may the believer say, I have no desert but God delights in mercy. I look to the disclosure of his grace in the Lord Jesus and lean my whole self on him. God is sovereign but I take my cue from John Calvin when he says, “Christ is the mirror in which it behoves us to contemplate our election “. In him, by him, through him, because of him, we are saved — and that is faith that humbles man and honours God. “Twas grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved” (John Newton).
RJS

A DOOR OF HOPE (Divinely Wrought Reversals in Hosea) 09-06-09

Hope – genuine, heartfelt, confident hope – is often at low ebb in human experience. Hope in the Biblical sense is certainty based on trust in the Word of God, knowing that the Lord’s promises, pledges, and assurances will be upheld and fulfilled. Hope in the worldly sense is mere wishful thinking and vague longing with no guarantee attached. Such hope is easily dashed and often disappointed because human intentions usually fail or fall short of expectations and because human desire and purpose has little control over all the factors that prevail, and not infrequently the pledges and plans of men are riddled with deceit, incompetence, and lack of resources to attain projected ends. Our confidence in our fellow creatures is necessarily limited because their ability is limited and their trustworthiness is not absolute. The cry of the Christian can only be, “All my hope on God is founded”. There is no other reliable source of hope.
Hope is one of the major themes of Holy Scripture. It runs counter to human self-reliance, and heals the pain of human inadequacy. Israel (OT) lived in the hope of a Saviour. The Church (NT) lives in the hope of eternal life that he has won for us. There was never anything unsure in God’s word of hope to Israel. There is nothing to doubt in God’s promise to those who truly believe in Christ. Human confidence may wax and wane because of our frailty, but God’s guarantees stand forever. Our moods and convictions fluctuate in strength. God’s sworn intentions are unchangeable.
It is not only that God grants hope in circumstances that are favourable and filled with confirmatory signs, it is also true that God issues grounds for hope in situations that are desperate and where the possibility of good fortune is utterly dead. God delights in a pattern of behaviour that baffles human expectation and which calls for a faith that surmounts disaster, defeat, and death. God majors in performing that which we declare impossible. We are not able to determine or demand specifically where, when, or how, but we are to entertain hope from our side because we know that “God can”, and that in his sovereignty “he may”, effect a marvellous deed on our behalf. There is a dimension of divine activity beyond all that we can sense or see, and whilst, in awareness of his power and compassion, we cannot dictate any outcome, we may present our holy desires and urgent needs to him knowing that if our requests accord with the advancement of his kingdom he will deftly coalesce our prayer with his performance, for we regard him with Scriptural warrant as the One “who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20). He can order external circumstances and also reach and move us in our internal reluctance or residual impediments of soul. He can make things happen through his personal and enabling intervention. Our particular plight may not point to the door of hope that he intends to create and open for us. Our efforts are often obstructed and frustrated by walls, but God opens doors for our deliverance where no way out can be perceived.
Hosea was a prophet who proclaimed a message of divinely wrought reversals. The symbols of his “strange” message were geographical and domestic. They did not seem to admit of any hope, and yet he was to uphold symbols of hopelessness as examples of the hope that God would produce and perform from a faithful lovingkindness that would overrule the faithlessness and sin of his disobedient, undeserving people.
The vibrant message of future hope that Hosea declaims employs the change of historical significance in place names, and the removal of negatives from his children’s names.
1) Jezreel (1:4) Hosea’s son is to be called Jezreel as a reminder of the town where massacre and mayhem occurred in Israel’s violent history and where eventually the nation was undone by its own sin and God’s punishment. The name was a portend of the divine retribution that would occur where death was sown and crimson blood was spread over the soil, appearing ominously like some ghastly crop sown by the evil of man. Jezreel (2:22) means, “God sows” and in that condemned and most unlikely place God avers that he will plant Israel once again as his precious possession and lavish favour upon her. God may sow life where death and disgrace prevails; where there was no expectation of the land receiving favour and yielding prosperity. The place of doom and divinely wrought destruction becomes a field where gracious salvation is the luxuriant harvest.
2) Lo-Ruhamah (1:6) Hosea’s daughter bears the unfortunate name “Not Loved” as a sign that God has ceased to love his people because of their spiritual infidelity and promiscuity in religious devotion. The marriage covenant has been broken and God accepts the reality “as final”.
3) Lo-Ammi (1:8) Gomer, Hosea’s errant wife, had another son to be named “Not My People”, the notification of divine rejection, and in terrifying terms, the reversal of the covenant arrangement: “For you are not my people, and I am not your God”. This is the ultimate consequence of stubbornness in sin. It emphasises the human plight beyond help or hope and fixed in despair and destruction. And yet God reverses the irreversible curse, showing that although man is beyond any desert or expectation of deliverance (presumption disallowed) yet mercy cancels the decree of judgment: “Say of your brothers, ‘My people,’ and of your sisters, ‘My loved one’ (2:1). The sinner is scarcely saved (1 Peter 4:18) yet lavished with divine forgiveness and love. God relents and, after all, chooses to recall men to himself as his purpose of grace unfolds throughout history (1: 10-11).
4) The Valley of Achor (2:15) Achor (trouble) was the place where Achan, having grievously sinned against God by stealing and concealing the plunder of holy war, was punished for withholding the spoils of victory (devotion) that were due to God alone in acknowledgement of his glory (Joshua 7: 18-26). Hosea is caused to proclaim that the place of trouble and administration of divine wrath – Achan’s miserable end – will no longer represent the inescapable displeasure and vengeance of God upon the rebellious, but afford the prospect of hope and great rejoicing in restoration to fellowship with God and the enjoyment of his blessing

Believers are the beneficiaries of divinely wrought reversals or supernatural changes. God’s hatred of the offender converts to love through a sovereign and unconditional decision. The sinner’s nature is transformed from evil to holy. The sinner’s direction is altered from taking him away from God to turning toward God in repentance. The believer’s impossibilities vanish as God shows his hand and bears his arm, and cul-de-sacs become doors to hope through divine command of difficult situations.
Hosea shows us that what is lost may be restored, what is wasted may be retrieved, what has been forfeited may be re-found, not through human ability and endeavour, but because of God’s irreversible love that threatens abandonment but cannot bear to his give his chosen ones up (11:8a). “My heart is changed within me: all my compassion is aroused (11:8b). God alarms us as to our condition, fills us with dread at our desert, and overwhelms us by his compassion.

RJS

ASK THE ANIMALS (JOB 12:7) 08-30-09

The whole earth is full of the glory of God (Isaiah 6:3). His holy presence is everywhere. His wise government extends over all creation and all events. His handiwork in nature reveals marvel upon marvel and excites wonder and admiration. Man is to recognize that beyond human life and the complexity of our affairs, there is also the adjacent realm of nature and the animal kingdom in which God displays his sovereignty, wisdom, and care. G.K. Chesterton observed that we do not need to escape into the realm of magic and fantasy to stir and amaze our minds for all reality around us is “magical” and full of enchantment. “Mere life is interesting enough.” If only we had the sense and appreciation (daily newness of mind) we would recognize that we are living in a wonderland where extraordinary things exist and occur if only we paused to ponder as to why things are the way they are. A glass of water (Adam’s ale) would be as delicious as a glass of wine, for the waters of the earth need not flow. God sends the rain as a refreshing gift. The Fall has affected all our faculties and our vision of creation, our reverence for it, and astonishment at it, and the increasing artificiality of our lives has diminished our sense of oneness both with our environment and our companions of the animal kingdom who share our world with us.
Close inspection of natural phenomena yields so many discoveries of intricacy, design, beauty, and utility that leave us awestruck. The microscope, for example, has given us a window into the realm of the miniscule and this revelation of detail, pattern, and symmetry leaves us aghast. The physical world observed with the naked eye, or explored through the lens of science, provides us with much to ponder concerning the glory of God as Creator. The observation of snow crystals, water droplets, and grains of sand; the examination of gems, plants, and insects; the watching of night skies and exploration of space, are intriguing investigations into divine ingenuity and power. His inventiveness and artistry are magnificent and evoke our praise. We observe all these things spellbound at the mystery of all that surrounds us. It is a charmed world, for all of the disasters, injury, and pain experienced within it as nature writhes and groans for the day of redemption (Romans 8:22).
Now, the intense study of animals and their behaviour in natural surroundings or conditions of experiment, opens up a serious understanding of the divine wisdom and diverse capacities implanted within our fellow creatures for their survival and satisfaction - and for God’s delight, a delight in which we may increasingly share as his deputies and custodians of his created order.
Human beings have either tended to ill-use and exploit animals, ignoring their theological significance and underestimating their worth, or sentimentalize them through the inclination to attribute human qualities and feelings to them (anthropomorphism) as if they were just like us. Older evolutionary theory appeared to portray animal life as somewhat mechanical, non-dynamic, and determined purely by inherited instinct, as if the various species merely behaved like “clockwork toys” without entitlement to respect and humane treatment. Now a keener awareness of the emotional life of animals and recognition of their amazing abilities has tended to facilitate a more sympathetic attitude to the birds and beasts that inhabit our planet. They stem from the same fount of life, as it were - the hand and energy of God - and we discern myriad likenesses and fascinating differences.
We are to care for them, whether at close quarters through domestication and companionship, or more distantly through wild life preservation and protection of their preferred habitats. As God has made them and provides for them, so we are to respect and keenly notice them, for they exist not only for our interest, but also for our instruction. Each kind manifests the divine glory in their own way, and whatever we may speculate about the quality of their conscious life and what may be comprehended or conceptualized by them, God has placed them with us (Genesis 7:13-16-the ark) for our contemplation and for reference to him as their source and sustainer. The way they appear to us in their characteristic habits and actions exhibits the gifts and guidance of God in the lives of the various species according to their environment and needs, and the study of animals (Solomon’s wisdom, 1 Kings 4:29-34) is meant to encourage our appreciation of the way in which he fashions his creatures as examples of dependence upon him and adherence to his laws (e,g. Job chs 39 & 40, Ps 104: 21, 27-28). The animals teach us lessons concerning instinctive reliance upon the provision and protection of God that are correctives to our pride, self-sufficiency, and deviation from his will. We are created, not self-made; we are to be trusting of our Creator, and to be unquestioningly under his authority. Animals seem to, and may in some sense, know this. Who knows what they could, or may even attempt, to communicate in various ways and through various signs? We often wonder what they might say to us if they had the gift of articulate speech. The German philosopher Wittgenstein opined that if they could talk (he specifically cited the lion) we could never understand them because their language would be constructed from a different mental life and experience of the world. Nonetheless, for the purpose of our contemplation, Job, as a “putdown” of his proud counsellors, and as a recommendation for their reflection, advises a consideration of the animals, and the laws of nature, as providing insight into the wisdom and revealed rules of God. Animals exhibit the “nature of things” and demonstrate appropriate conformity to the ordinances of God – which man, principally in a moral sense, has chosen to defy. Animals display “the rules of life” determined by their Maker, and issue a rebuke to man for his “unnatural’ and insane behaviour (Isaiah 1:3). It is not hard to imagine the various beasts composing a panel of indictment against us because of our folly before God and our rapacity toward creation.
Rather than simply being programmed for the processes of life or response to certain stimuli, animals appear to exhibit thoughtful intelligence and deliberation in the preparation and provision for their offspring, the precautions they employ for their protection, and their methods of educating the young for adult life and its exigencies. Various behaviours seem to be acquired and taught and not simply encoded and hardwired in some robotic fashion. Patterns of migration seem to evince the exercise of sense and judgment and not simply automatic response to inbuilt drives. The ways and wiles of animals deserve our admiration, and individual and endearing traits of personality are remarkable, as any pet lover or practitioner of animal husbandry can testify. Animals can symbolize strength, agility, skill, and beauty that are marks of divine purpose and design (intent, not necessarily special intervention at certain stages). Animals can exhibit oddity and folly to demonstrate a certain humour in the constitution of creation, and their playfulness (laughter according to Job) is evidence of sheer delight and enjoyment in the gift of life, the exuberance of being, that points to the gladness of God, the richness of his grace, and the generosity that flows from him towards all that he has made. The warm heart of God causes nature to skip and sing, and offer a chorus of thankfulness and praise. We humans are being taught that God’s concerns embrace far more than our self-centred preoccupations and anxieties. He has a cosmos to command and he does so with impeccable competence. The beasts that are friendly to us remind us of our creation mandate to rule them kindly and well. The beasts that rage at us, or flee from us, remind us of our rebellion against our Master and that all the disruption of nature and the ferocity of man and beast is a consequence of our rebellion against God. We have sown the discord that ravages creation. Nature has the right to accuse us. Animals can serve to illustrate the fact of our rift with God, our loss of appreciation for all that he has wrought in them and the value he places upon them as testimony to his creative skill and providential care.
To enable us to see the boundless wisdom and power of God, and the limitations and folly of man, Job bids us request commentary from the creation around us: Ask the animals!

RJS

August 23, 2009

“God will eventually sort it all out”, is understandable, perhaps, in a pragmatic sense, but it should not be at the expense of confessional integrity and the sacrifice of truths that must be declared with conviction and clarity now, and not until some ideal future consensus is achieved. The blending of “streams”, and the mutual “courtesies” required, could so easily soften necessary emphases and it may be better to take separate ways in the spirit of charitable mutual recognition and respect than to dilute the truth of God and mix it with the inventions and opinions of men however eminent, and admirable these folk of influence may be. Authentic Anglicanism must be confident in its heritage and the witness of our forbears who shaped it. We are not to be trapped in a time warp, to be sure, but we may not trivialize all that has gone before and cheaply dispense with it for the sake of contemporary fashion or favour. The historical perspective is necessary for current ventures and future hopes. New paths will stem from old paths and take us further in the same direction. We must assess from where we came, and how we have arrived where we are, even as we press on, and carefully ensure that we are not deviating from truth and safety. Past enthusiasms and enterprises that have faded issue warnings that we must heed. Our parent churches (English and American) were once well intentioned, tolerant, and became comprehensive, decades ago, and how rapidly confessional deregulation led to the sad decay and serious defection that disastrously affect the churches today.
To be sound in witness and spiritual wellbeing, and to be safe in the future, Anglicanism must resist the siren songs of the sweet singers who advocate the following tendencies that spell danger for the church that would uphold the faith and message of Holy Scripture: Mysticism – Primary deference to spiritual instinct or the motions of one’s spirit rather than the Word of God, defined by B.B. Warfield in the following way. “ It would fain believe that what it appeals to within the human breast is not the unaided spirit of man, but the Holy Ghost in the heart, the Logos, the strong voice of God. . . . Thus all ‘external authority’ is gradually evaporated, and men are left to the sole authority each of his own spirit, whether under the name of reason or under the name of the Holy Spirit in the heart.” Sacramentalism – The elevation of the sacraments to such a high level of importance that their administration (through an authorized priesthood – sacerdotalism) is absolutely essential to salvation. The ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper possess efficacy as pointers to the cross of Christ and symbolize the interior work of the Holy Spirit who creates and confirms faith in the Saviour, who alone is to be trusted and adored, rather than the means that strengthen saving faith. There is a sense in which the sacraments can actually become substitutes for Christ and his saving power (cf the necessary destruction of the brass snake as an object of superstition - 2 Kings 18:4). Arminianism – The notion conceived in the natural mind of man that human decision (free will) permits the effectiveness of grace in regeneration, whereas efficacious grace, born of electing love, subdues the native enmity of the fallen heart, creates a new interior inclination, donates repentance and faith, and successfully secures a saving relationship in union with Christ. From Archbishops (of Canterbury) Cranmer (appointed 1533) to Abbot (succeeded in office 1633) the leadership of the Church of England for a century was strictly and staunchly Augustinian, maintaining strong opposition to “free-willers” of semi-Pelagian or Arminian hue. Our great leaders from various eras, including John Bradford, Reformer and martyr, Archbishop James Ussher, Primate of Ireland, Augustus Toplady, theologian and hymn writer, have strenuously warned against the corrosive influence of Arminianism in the Anglican testimony to salvation by grace alone. We Anglicans may think of the example of Jonathan Edwards who strove so strenuously to counter the subtle rise and danger of Arminianism in the New England evangelicalism of his time. Article XV11 can only be interpreted in an Augustinian sense.
If any of these tendencies come to pervade, or predominate within, the current reformation and revival of Anglicanism the result will be a sell-out of authentic Anglicanism and the formation of a similar species to add to the already existing list of dubious variants.
RJS

STANDING FIRM? BE CAREFUL! (1 Corinthians 10:12) 08-16-09

Every spiritual condition has its dangers. Dejection of spirits can lead to unbelief and murmuring; spiritual elation can engender self-absorption and over-confidence. The human heart is always faced with hazards and the apostolic injunction to walk constantly in circumspection and cautious dependence upon God is most wise. Feelings are not necessarily an accurate gauge of spiritual wellbeing and a sense of exuberance following times of blessing can fail to detect the traps that lie in our path. Like Simon Peter we can over-estimate our strength and resolve and find ourselves craven under pressure (Mark 14: 66-72), or as with David, periods of calm may precede the onslaught of temptation and the storms of passion (2 Samuel 11:2ff). Weakness is the mark of our creature-hood, and frailty is the feature of our new life in Christ. There are forces within us that God subdues, and foes without that God restrains. These dynamics are often operative beyond our awareness and we may never congratulate or rely on ourselves whenever we are enabled to stand firm. A firm stance in our faith is entirely a gift of God. Perseverance is through his grace alone. Our many falls along the way are designed to teach us these things, to prevent pride, and cultivate compassion. Each of us is a sinner with our particular predispositions and susceptibilities, and however familiar these may be to us in the daily struggle, we may discover, also, surprising tendencies we never suspected until the opportunity for temptation arose. God secretly delivers us from so many obnoxious propensities and occasions of disgrace.
The plague of sin afflicts every heart with various inward stirrings and external manifestations. The sins of the spirit are not as discernable as the sins of the flesh, but they are so subtly and deeply dangerous because they are camouflaged as elements in our natural constitution, the way we are and instinctively think and behave, and are not immediately recognized as evil. The sins of the flesh are also deadly, but being more obvious in conduct and consequence they are more likely, through the shame and pain they cause, to drive the guilty to the physician of souls, hence the Saviour’s observation that the first shall be last and the last first (Matthew 21:31-32, Luke 13:30). We can never trust our own self-assessment as to how we stand before God. Sins of the spirit may be concealed, unknown to us, and even covered by the veil of self-righteousness. But when we know the reality of the Fall and its disastrous effects upon each individual ever born we are less likely to condemn our fellow felons from a self-righteous point of view even though we are never to condone the presence or performance of anything unholy in others and especially in ourselves. We recognize our common plight, shared weakness, and the universal inability to deal with our predicament, and our only option is to cast ourselves upon the mercy of God and plead earnestly for others. Sin is always and invariably abhorrent but we are all diagnosed in the same way – as incurably evil – and whilst the fact alarms us it should never make any of us adopt a sense of superiority or exemption from culpability and the just displeasure of God.
The seriousness of sin, the dimensions and dominion of evil in human life, are not normally fully comprehended, hence the glibness with which it is regarded and spoken of, and the legalism with which it is treated. Lightness of approach, or moralistic attitudes fail to recognize the extent of our collective depravity and the fact of our deadness in sin. Only supernatural intervention can deliver any of us. Our condition is not superficial or intermittent. Our lostness is complete and helplessness total, and to think anything less of the matter, or minimize its seriousness, is to diminish the scope of the plan of salvation that God has instituted in Christ for our rescue. We think little of him because we think little of sin, or dismiss it casually by a premature and presumptuous “acceptance of Christ” without realizing the gravity of our situation, the reality of guilt, and the greatness of grace. Grace becomes cheap and our talk of it cliched. We do not see the power in salvation or identify it clearly as utterly undeserved and un-obligated compassion. Hence when we see sin we condemn without admitting our own equally deserved condemnation for equally contemptible reasons, and we deny the kindness that we would expect as our entitlement should any fault occur in us.
The way to a true appreciation of the gravity and “gi-normousness” of sin is to consider the magnitude of the remedial measures God has taken to expiate and eradicate it – the death of his Son, his only Son, the Prince of heaven, as the only way to cleanse the offences of this earth and clear its inhabitants of guilt. The cross both convicts and cures the heart of sin. It provides the only safe way in which we can consider our problem, and grasp its scale. Otherwise we would either trivialize sin, or plunge into despair. How much mercy and wisdom there is in the presentation of the crucified victim to our view. Our sin is measured by the action God had to take, and simultaneously we see mercy solving the insoluble: How can I give you up . . . . All my compassion is aroused. I will not carry out my fierce anger” (Hosea 11:.8-9).
In the light of the universality of sin, and the prevalence and power of temptation in every heart, the gentle prayer of C.J. Vaughan is very apt: Make us tender and compassionate towards those who are overtaken by temptation, considering ourselves, how we have fallen in times past and may fall yet again. Make us watchful and sober-minded, looking ever unto thee for grace to stand upright and to persevere unto the end; through thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. An alleged episode in the author’s life made him both contrite and compassionate in the exercise of his ministry. “A bruised reed he will not break” (Isaiah 42:3). “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted” (Galatians 6:1).
For the believer the sin he perceives in himself becomes more and more horrid. He is safest when he sees and feels his unworthiness: “Walk humbly with God. Acts of self-condemnation are, next to acts of faith in Christ, the most profitable of devotional exercises. I have grown best and done best when most frequent in them” (Thomas Collins). “I have always judged it better to loathe myself the more, in proportion as I was assured that God was pacified towards me (Ezekiel 16:63) . . . . There are but two objects that I have ever desired for these forty years to behold; the one, is my own vileness; and the other is, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ: and I have always thought that they should be viewed together” (Charles Simeon). If the convinced sinner received his due deserts – pure justice – he would be demolished, but his plea is identical to those of David and Jeremiah combined in the penitential introductory sentence to Morning Prayer in the BCP 1662: O Lord correct me, but with judgment; not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing (Jeremiah 10:24. Psalm 6:1.). The drift of Holy Scripture is that the regenerate are more likely to examine and judge themselves than others: “First take the plank out of your own eye” (Matthew 7:1-5). The caution issued in the Word of God is not to feel secure in oneself: “So if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12). The expectation in the Bible is that, “We know that anyone born of God does not continue in sin (1 John 5:18a). The reassurance the believer has, in the consciousness of his frailty, is, “The One who was born of God [Jesus Christ] keeps him safe, and the evil one cannot harm him” (1 John 5: 18b).
RJS

WHAT ABRAHAM MEANS (Look to Abraham Your Father: Isaiah 51:2) 8-09-09

Abraham looms large as the key figure in salvation history to whom we look for an understanding as to how salvation is grasped. Our doctrine or theology of deliverance in its keenest form is derived from God’s dealings with Abraham and the discoveries (Romans 4:1) the great Patriarch of Israel made under divine inspiration and guidance. Abraham’s experience and insight are paradigmatic and prescriptive (necessary) for all who would seek the Lord and enjoy his favour. Abraham is the great demonstration of the one way of salvation, the model of the method of grace. The facts about Abraham are preserved for us for the sake of clarity. Because of Abraham the way to salvation is not wrapped up in abstractions and mysteries that the mind has to unravel. This is the man who found friendship with the Lord (Isaiah 41:8) and he stands before us as the sign to all men as to how our acceptance with God may be found. Abraham is the guideline, the standard, for correct thinking about salvation. When human thought and speculation complicate the matter of our being right with God the person of Abraham towers over all the theories and deliberations of men as the sole and safe way of knowing God and sealing the welfare of the soul.
We look to Abraham as the foundation of our faith in its content, and the exemplar of faith in its practice [Paul and James together, in their principal emphases, cover the New Testament witness to faith as attitude (Romans 4:5), and faith as action (James 2:21-24), and between them there is no contradiction, for faith puts us right before God and works prove the genuineness of faith]. Before all the new perspectives on Judaism and Paul were possible, Abraham, the Father of nations, is the signpost pointing everyman, irrespective of conditions and qualifications, to the grace of God revealed in the covenant established with him. The covenant centres upon the Promise that finds its fulfilment in the lives of all who believe. Abraham is the prototype and proof of saving faith (Romans 4:3). Having been promised union with God through the covenant and its provisions, he foresaw that that fellowship would be won through the arrival and action of a predicted seed, a certain descendent in the line of his special son Isaac. Standing at the commencement of the Messianic lineage Abraham’s confidence was placed in the successful outcome of God’s purpose and the blessings it would bring, and so he was the father, not only of the race through whom the Saviour would be brought into the world, but of all who would believe the promise and receive its blessings throughout the world. Abraham was the father of the nation that would serve the whole of mankind through the birth of a Redeemer from among its people, and he was the father of many nations in terms of the multitudes from all nations who would come to saving faith. The first sense in which he was father referred to a race of folk not all of whom would come to faith (Romans 9:6-8). The second sense in which he is regarded as father is primary. It is not ethnic descent that is of ultimate importance, but spiritual kinship of faith. The true children of Abraham are those who share his confidence in the Promise and who trust the Promised One. These are his heirs because they participate in the salvation he gained through grace, and they come to the possession of salvation in exactly the way that he did – as a divine gift received through faith alone.
All believers, all inheritors of the original promise, make the same discovery as Abraham. Man is not put right with God (justified) by works – actions (moral or ritualistic) or qualifications (possessed or potential), – but by faith alone. The Promise saves, and believers rest in it and rely upon it because the Saviour has fulfilled it on our behalf. Divine approval has been accomplished for us. We are justified before God – pardoned and accepted – entirely through what Christ has done in our stead and in our interests. Abraham made the discovery and rejoiced in it on the basis of the information he received from God. We make the discovery and rejoice in it on the basis of the apostolic gospel. Paul, in his letters, is the great expositor of the promise now come to fulfilment. He describes the faith of Abraham for our benefit and as protection against the kind of misinformation that constantly misleads the people of God with the reintroduction of “works” as the condition for divine approbation. He defines the offspring of Abraham for our mutual identification and unity. He expounds the legacy of Abraham for the constitution of the people of God under the covenant.
Abraham’s history illustrates the pattern of individual salvation and the commencement of the process is the divine call, or initiative, that singles out the recipient of divine favour, progressively separating them from the environment and influences that shaped their “first” nature and outlook. The patriarch’s change of name from Abram to Abraham signifies both his change of nature and God’s choice of vocation for him. He was granted the blessing of salvation in all its fullness, regeneration and justification, and he was appointed the human medium of salvation to others. The channel of peace (covenant as a declared arrangement) between God and man began with Abraham. The promise to Abraham was the first section, as it were, in the long historic line of generational links that constituted the conduit of grace until the advent of the Messiah.
As a result of the divine call Abraham was both born again and right with God. Our experience as believers runs parallel to his. We are called on the basis of election, renewed through regeneration, justified through atonement, and increasingly sanctified throughout the duration of our earthly pilgrimage. As was Abraham, we are resident aliens on earth pressing on to the city of God and the life of perfection (Election*Romans 8:29-30, Spirit –born* 8:9, Reconciled*5:9-11, Galatians 2:6, Pressing on to the goal of perfection* Philippians 3:12, 2 Corinthians 3:18 cf Hebrews 11:8-10).
For Abraham all the blessings of salvation from election (called from pagan Ur) to glorification (the promised land of Canaan) were summed up and sealed in the ordinance of circumcision, which, in essence, symbolized purification (fitness for God and his fellowship through the donation of a new heart (Ezekiel 36:25-27 cf Colossians 2:11-12, Galatians 6:15, Romans 2:28-29). With prospective hope, and at the command of God, Abraham administered the covenant seal to the infant males in his household, which foreshadowed the church, inclusive of the children of believers (Acts 2:39, 1 Corinthians 1:16).
And so Abraham is the man of faith. Believers are his children. And the church is the continuation of his household, the people of the covenant, defined by Word and Sacrament, heirs of the Promise through proclamation, and possessors when each heir, adult and child, believes the promise in their hearts and truly trusts Messiah.
RJS

WHAT ABRAHAM SAW
(John 8:56)
The ancient patriarchs and prophets of Israel received a Promise from God and each relayed it to the people of God successively in his own generation, and so Israel became a forward-looking nation awaiting fulfilment of the pledge that God had made. The Promise was comprehensive of so many blessings and announced with a variety of emphases and features but essentially it created the expectation of a Deliverer, a chosen One who would save mankind from sin and restore them to fellowship with God. Messianic prophecies and predictions abound throughout the Old Testament Scriptures with varying degrees of clarity and detail, but the Lord Jesus bundled them all together and declared that they all spoke of him (Luke 24:25-27, 44-45). The message of Jesus Christ spans the two Testaments. In the former his coming is forecast. In the latter his coming and the completion of his assignment is described. Both Testaments testify to Jesus. They are not separately sealed compartments without connection to each other. There is continuity and a common theme and these are found in the person of the Saviour who is foretold in the Old and held forth in the New. Specialists and theologians deal with all kinds of issues and technicalities in discussing the relationship between the Old and New Testaments, and all of their research is right and proper, and often the results are helpful. But for the ordinary and devout reader, the New Testament itself provides the necessary clues as to how the Testaments in tandem are to be understood. They present a common focus on Jesus, the OT outlining what he will do, and the NT announcing what he has done. The two Testaments lock together in a convincing portrayal of the Redeemer with the intent of eliciting our trust, allegiance and adoration. The faithful word of the prophets is confirmed in the apostolic message of fulfilment. Citations from the Old Testament are the foundation of the witness of the New Testament. The teaching of the apostolic authors enables us to interpret the oracles and insights of the seers of Israel. Whatever it may have been that the Old Testament writers actually saw and understood, personally, from what they spoke by divine impulsion, the writers of the New Testament inform us as to what it is that we should see in the message of the prophets. With hindsight and greater light afforded by the New Testament we discern more, perhaps, than they were enabled to see, but so often, so clear are the divine intimations to them, we cannot preclude the possibility, on their part, of amazingly clear deductions concerning the gospel. Who can quantify the effects of inspiration and revelation upon an individual? Minimally, they certainly knew that God had made a promise with many provisions and features, and they whole-heartedly accepted the veracity of the promise and confided in the salvation yet to come. But was anything more a complete blank to their minds? Could they not find clues and draw conclusions from the facts revealed to them in both circumstance as it affected them, and their close communion with God? Could not their comprehension be much greater than is often alleged? When Jesus averred that, “Abraham saw my day and rejoiced in it” (John 8:56) was he simply apprised of the bare fact that at a certain time in the future a certain figure (his seed) would come and somehow remedy the plight of sinful man, or did Abraham discern something of what was necessary in such a remedy and how it might be wrought? Did he come to appreciate something of God’s method of human salvation and rejoice in the wisdom, power, and love of God’s rescue mission on behalf of men? It is hard not to conclude from the narrative of Abraham’s testing of faith in Genesis 22: 1-18, that Abraham did not capture an understanding of what God would do and provide for the salvation of those who depended upon his mercy. He knew what sin, pardon, and acceptance with God meant, and it must be obvious through the command to sacrifice Isaac, and then the subsequent command not to harm his son, that salvation is wrought for us in a particular way – sacrifice and substitution, that punishment and death are our due, and that by the gracious intervention of God our desert and God’s wrath are averted. Abraham must have known that way ahead in God’s purpose there was more than “a day” in which a deliverer would act. He must have had clear notions as to what the deliverer’s actions and undertaking would consist of on “that day”. His experience in the region of Moriah, as a teachable moment, was far too graphic for him to have missed its point.
Abraham had been given an extensive and thorough education in the principles and prospects of the covenant that God had established with him. The crucial issue of his childlessness (ch 15), his manipulation of the promise through Hagar and Ishmael (ch 16), the extraordinary promise of a son through his barren wife Sarah (ch 17), the exclusion of Ishmael from the covenant arrangement, and the miraculous birth of Isaac (ch 21), all taught him that the survival and eventual fatherhood of Isaac were indispensable to the success of the plan of salvation. When God commanded the death of the covenant child, Abraham, not without perturbation, knew that God would have to intervene to resume the covenant programme and maintain his sworn pledge. He anticipated the resurrection of Isaac (Genesis 22:5): what he saw was the provision of a substitute victim; not Isaac as the inevitable helpless lamb (v8), but a ram caught up in the “thicket” of divinely ordained occurrence (Genesis 22:13, Acts 2:23, Revelation 13:8). With great relief at the deliverance of, “His son, his only son” (v2), by covenant choice, Abraham exuberantly extolled the provision of the Lord (v14), and he must have concluded that in the just and merciful dealings of the Lord the promised “seed” or Messiah was meant to represent us, take our place, and prevent us from lying in that place to the point of our deserved death (Abraham concurred with the practice of sacrifice, even if it meant the loss of Isaac, because he knew that all men deserved death as the wages of sin. It became rudimentary in orthodox Israelite thought that salvation was a matter of being spared through the death of a substitute, e.g the Passover, Exodus 12:12-13).
Jesus, as the seed of Abraham, the Messiah, the Lamb of God, must have meant a great deal, not the bare minimum, when he declared that Abraham saw his day. Attached to that expectation there must have been a significant amount of detail present in the patriarch’s mind. His was not a “lean” hope; he saw it fleshed out before his eyes in the passivity of his son’s body, lying on the wooden altar, and the provision of a ram, captive to the slaughter. The will of God willed a way of escape for the guilty and Abraham must have seen that. But if, as some allege, that is too much to read into the comprehension of the father of the faithful, we certainly see, in the narrative of his severe and agonizing testing, the foreshadowing and explanation of the suffering and death of Isaac’s ultimate descendent. God’s Son, His only Son, died in the stead of his people (literally in the region of Moriah), so that we might return to the Father. Jesus walked the distance to the place of death so that we might draw near to God as those alive from the dead.
RJS

THE BOOK OF SALVATION – PART TWO (The Personal Approach to Scripture) 7-26-09

Holy Scripture is the product of personal interaction between the divine mind and the minds of men specially chosen to convey the word of God to the world. It is the result of the most intimate, ingenious, and intricate collaboration of persons imaginable. Our Maker, who knows the constitution of each individual exhaustively, and reads the complexities of their personality with absolute accuracy, calls the authors of the Bible, each in their own uniqueness and experience, into special communion with himself, grants them special insight and understanding, and deftly ensures that, through their speech and writing, they relate exactly what he wants us to know. It is the marvel of God’s Word through the words of men that we experience in reading the Bible. The first translation ever, Biblically speaking, was the transference of divine thought into human speech by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The unspeakable, eternal truths of heaven have been scaled down and laid before us for human comprehension. The Bible is God’s Book containing myriad truths focused upon a central theme – our salvation in Christ - the principal thing we all need to discover above everything else earthly or heavenly.
The intent of Scripture is to reveal Christ, our only way of salvation. The best interpreter is Christ, who by his Spirit illuminates the text and engraves its truth upon the humble, seeking, teachable heart. As it is with no other book, the reading and contemplation of the Bible is, again, the most direct form of divine and human interaction. When we open the Bible in sincerity and prayerfulness we have access to the primary Author and may ask for his explanation at any time. We are not looking for mystical experience or depending upon private, whimsical, eccentric, interpretation, but being led to fit into accord with the consensus of God’s people on essential matters for human salvation. The Spirit’s role is to convert the teaching of the Bible into the reality of personal conviction and genuine profession. The Spirit’s work is the guidance of the rational mind in its thinking, and the purified heart in its leaning. He makes us receptive to the message and capable of grasping the meaning. So, in reading the Bible, just as in the writing of the Bible, the divine mind and the human mind are coming together for fellowship in divine truth. A living encounter takes place in which God discloses himself, searches us, and binds us to himself in holy and happy relationship. The Bible pulsates with vitality. It is vibrant with transformative, life-giving, information and wisdom because the God who caused it accompanies the Word and brings it home to the heart of the reader with impressive force and conviction. God saves us the effort of “proving” the Bible. It authenticates itself just as sweetness is detected by the palate or heat and cold felt by the body. God makes his Word effective, not the influence or eloquence of the men who speak it. They simply enunciate it. He directs it and drives it to its intended target: “The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up, and let none of his words fall to the ground” (1 Samuel 3:19). The Word of God is electrifying because the current of thought contained in the text flows from his mind to ours as something live and rousing, if not sometimes shocking and startling, both pleasantly and disturbingly. We are to handle the Word with both confidence and caution.
The personal approach to Scripture begins with the reverent acknowledgement of its inspiration. “And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:19-21. The dark place is found in us and our darkness is dispelled by the light of the Word, the bright Morning Star himself, our Lord Jesus: cf Revelation 22:16). The ideas of Scripture are not born in the human brain or invented by the imagination. Chosen men are borne along in their train of thought and flow of speech by the Spirit of God. They are swept along by a power beyond themselves, yet internal, initiating and guiding their mental and creative processes, so that prophets conceive and communicate the Word that is theirs and God’s concurrently (cf the analogy of the virgin birth and the meaning of the creed concerning our Lord Jesus Christ who “was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man”). The Lord Jesus is both human and divine, as is Holy Scripture. He exercises divine authority, and, likewise, Scripture is of divine origin and possesses divine authority. When Jesus spoke, God spoke. What Scripture says, God says.
When God speaks there is a purpose. His words are never idle or unnecessary like so much human speech. We are meant to listen to God for our learning. Scripture teaches the way through life and to life. That is its primary intent – not just to make us knowledgeable but sound and safe spiritually. “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4). There is personal interest and incentive in reading Scripture.
Therefore, the Bible excites investigation and imparts intimation of timeless, soul-saving truth necessary for our knowledge of God and gaining of heaven. “Concerning this salvation, the prophets who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even the angels long to look into these things (1 Peter 1:10-12).
The same Spirit who commences revelation (OT) and completes revelation (NT) gives saving insight to believers under the dispensation of both covenants, including remarkable comprehension of the person and work of Christ. “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56). Indeed, it is through reliance upon the Lord Jesus and his instruction that we come to any reliable understanding of the truth concerning him. “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (Luke 24:27).
That illuminating and saving instruction must have the character of interiority. We must receive it inwardly and effectually. Only God himself can instruct in this way, by opening, cleansing, illuminating, and informing the heart, thereby uniting us to God in responsive and genuine faith. “It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me” (John 6:46). What a blessed certainty there is in this statement! Conversely, it is human ill will that obstructs and rejects the indisputably convincing truth of God (John 8:47), that stubborn, suicidal, attitude which Paul calls “suppression” of the truth in Romans 1:18. How much is the factor of “suppression” actually operative within the lives of professed believers, and to which we might attribute the flagrant worldliness of the contemporary church?
God’s authoring of the Bible, the human action involved in its production, and our acceptance or rejection of its truth, are all highly personal matters. There is divine and human involvement in the Bible from its point of origin until the place it finds in our hearts and lives. God and human beings interact all along the line. The Bible is a supernatural gift to us. It is divine and human witness that facilitates conversion performed by God, and communion and conversation with him. Through the Bible we meet and know him in a profoundly personal and permanent way if our response is the response of faith. If, by grace, we hear his voice in Holy Scripture through the witness of the Holy Spirit, and come to honest, heartfelt trust in the Saviour to whom the Book of God testifies, then we each shall surely come to that joyful conviction – I live! “But these are written (records) that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).
RJS

THE BOOK OF SALVATION (Enjoying a Full Bible) 7-19-09

Our reading of the Bible is to be done in a reverent, reflective, and responsible fashion. It is not simply a book about God; the Bible is God’s Book. The Scriptures are not merely a collection of pious ideas and thoughts about God of purely human origin and invention. The Bible is divine revelation disclosed in a variety of literary forms. The human authors produced the documents that comprise the canon of Scripture but they were supernaturally selected and guided so that the ultimate author was the Spirit of God. Each individual wrote in full accordance with his personality, background and understanding, but he was impelled by the Spirit, elevated in his mental discernment, and enabled to convey the message intended by God. The human mind was moved and informed by divine influence and inspiration. The chosen contributors to the Book of God were able to “see”, “hear”, and comprehend and accurately record what they had observed, each in a distinctive style, but in compliance with a fundamental, unifying theme ensured by the operation of God. The Bible is the description of the human need of salvation and the delineation of the way of salvation. It probes and discloses the predicament of the human heart. It points to and portrays the Saviour of men. Inevitably, the Bible teaches many things about the nature of God, the nature of man, and truth about reality in general terms, but its principle emphasis is to divulge the Way of Life, and without the grasp of salvation, the broader range of theological truths, though they inform the mind conceptually, are of no benefit to the soul experientially. The content of Scripture is meant to save, not merely supply facts and details that we ought to know about our Creator and creation. The Scripture is designed to enable us to know him and therefore it is his own word of revelation and reconciliation to a world that has departed from him.
The text of the Bible is to be understood to the best of our ability with all the resources, aids, and skills available to us. But as it is God’s word it is upon him that we principally rely to make our investigations and efforts fruitful, and as we are meant to see and comprehend with the eye of the heart it is to him that we appeal to bring our wayward hearts into alignment with him and to make our vision clear. We need to develop a compatibility and affinity with the Author in order to enter empathetically into his word, as well as to survey it intellectually. The right mood or disposition must accompany the mental processes. A love letter is not read with the cool objectivity of the academic. It engages the affections and stirs the emotions. A message form the Friend of sinful man, which expresses heartfelt concern about his condition and destiny, cannot be read in some detached and distant manner. The Bible beckons us to become involved in the way of personal assent and trust and to read it in an attitude of faith, which is the term descriptive of a spiritual connection with the One who communicates through it. God speaks through the Bible to those whom the Spirit has enabled to tune in. More than a written word it is a living word, vibrant with the presence and power of God. It is through and over the word that God and his people truly meet. It is the Gethsamene where the Saviour trysts with his loved ones, speaks to, and instructs them in the intimacy of heart to heart communion and felt fellowship. In the end, with the message of salvation at its core, Scripture is the volume of Jesus Christ, our way of knowing him, and meeting habitually with him. The Father has sent him, the Spirit represents and reveals him, and our attention is drawn to the central fact (from the perspective of our most urgent need) of the great accomplishment performed by him on our behalf, the atonement and every facet of his life and work that contributed to, and validated it. From all the truth that is found in the Scriptures we are meant to find, above all else, Jesus Christ as our Saviour. He is the subject and sum of Scripture in the primary sense of knowing God, the Three in One, savingly, happily and forever. That intent achieved, every other truth revealed now and in the future becomes beneficial and a topic of wonder spurring adoration, delight, and worship.
Christ is in all the Scriptures. His Spirit inspires them. Our need of him is stamped across them. The promise and expectation of him fills the pages of the former Testament. His advent and saving action are the central message of the New Testament. Everything culminates in the atonement and the Church is to proclaim, and the people everywhere know, Christ crucified as the principal fact disclosed to a lost race (1 Corinthians 1:23).
With Jesus Christ at the heart of Scripture how can our hearts not be warmed by him and how can we not arrive at a sincere and affectionate faith in him? In some way every word, and every piece of information imparted, prepares us for the acknowledgement and acceptance of him, and therefore every word, expression, intimation, and notion conveyed is to be examined and studied with the utmost care to bring us closer to him. That is the purpose of Scripture. It is rich and replete with information about Jesus, our tragic plight without him in the descriptions of the evil and follies of the human heart, our perplexities and afflictions in a painful and puzzling world, our happiness and hope in clinging to him as the rescuer of our souls and restorer of our prospects. Jesus pervades and permeates Scripture and that generates our love for the Book, precious beyond any other. The portrait and appropriateness of the Lord Jesus is the most evident mark of the Bible’s divine origin and wisdom. When the salvific purpose of Scriptural truth is grasped we begin to enjoy a full Bible because the Saviour is its fullness. The Bible is not simply an account of ancient peoples, their religious ideas, practices, and hopes. It is not simply a manual of devotional sentiments and ethical demands and aspirations. It is not a compilation of myths, legends, and symbols, pointing to a theory of salvation derived from the yearnings, folklore, and beliefs of certain communities and successive cultures. It is a word from God and as we read it we feel his pulse and hear his breath like that of a friend holding us to himself and whispering in our ear. The Bible is full of God’s truth and our souls are full and satisfied as we read it. Our hearts are full of love and joy as we meditate upon it and eagerly follow each line of exciting discovery. How tragic that many modern minds and methods of investigation in seminaries and commentaries profess a paucity of truth about Jesus and his redemptive love in Scripture. How lean and longing their academic reaping leaves the famished souls of men. How reluctant and hesitant they are to heed the words of Jesus himself and pick up the clues and detect the truth about him in his own self-descriptive witness throughout the entire canon communicated through historian, prophet, and apostle. How emaciated and effete the church of God has become because of their tentative and tenuous teaching. We hear our own Lord’s verdict upon their fruitless, futile learning and lecturing: “You diligently study the Scriptures . . . yet you refuse to come to me to have life (John 5:39). The person who is going to expound Scripture to others in an effectual way must first have come to Jesus and then continue to participate in his life through faith, obedience, and prayer.
The believer does not have to be wildly inventive or fanciful to make Scripture full, interesting, and fascinating. He does not have to elaborate or embellish from his own imagination to make the Bible “work”. The message - it’s real meaning - derived from the information on the page and the influence of the Spirit in the mind, actually links us with mind of God, thus equipping us to identify all the prophetic connections, hints (OT) and intimations of fulfilment (NT) in the text that point to and explain Jesus caused by the Author behind the authors. As a result we discern the unifying feature and overarching fact of the saving purpose of God in Christ that brings us to a knowledge of something much more than a programme, but rather introduces us to a Person who appeals to us from every statement, arrests our attention in so many vivid ways, and prepares us for saving assent to the gospel that presents him. If the combined witness of Old and New Testaments points and leads us to Christ we may expect to find more of him in the former writings than did the folk of the times when the Promise was first and progressively announced, for the spotlight of the apostolic writings brings more detail about the Redeemer to the surface. Layers of meaning are exposed through hindsight and the Old Testament comes into its own through the insights of the New. The essential Being of God (Triune) and the essential truth about Jesus (redemptive) become more prevalent in the Hebrew Scriptures than at first might be supposed. The shadows and mists of the long period of expectation are at last dispelled, the message of hope is realized, and the Book for times past becomes a Book for the present, fully interpreted by its more recent and explanatory sequel. Thus the Christian, believing Jew or Gentile, as an heir of God’s pledge to Abraham, may enjoy a full Bible and rejoice over every page of the Book of Salvation.
RJS

[Mini Chain Reference: The personal approach to Scripture (divine and human interaction). Inspiration - 1 Peter 2:19-21, intent - Romans 15:4, investigation and intimation - 1 Peter 1:10-12, insight - John 8:56, instruction -Luke 24:27, interiority - John 6:45 (ill will - John 8:47), John 20:31 – I live!]

NO PROFIT UNDER THE SUN (Ecclesiastes 2:11) 07-12-09

Recently the New York Times published a collection of obituaries. Great lives were summed up in the span of a single page each and almost anyone browsing through the contents of the book would find information on subjects of immense fascination and interest. The coverage included persons from practically every field of human endeavour – politics, arts, science, industry, sports, and more. Each week the BBC broadcasts a programme entitled Last Word which is compelling listening comprising contributions and tributes from people who knew the recently deceased celebrities and notables well. When a life comes to its close an appreciation of the person and a survey of their achievements is fitting. The limited duration of life gives us a sense of purpose and a desire to attain goals that make our temporal existence worthwhile. An obituary is a condensed version of an individual’s history, an assessment of the value of a life and its aims that has reached completion. The retrospective narration and evaluation of a successful life often imparts the sense of a steadily onward advance towards accomplishments that yielded much satisfaction and then culminated in a period of contented reflection, after which all activity was relinquished in a state of welcome and blissful rest. There is a neatness in the composition of obituaries that seems unavoidably artificial. The biographies are packaged in such an orderly fashion that even when they are honest about struggles, sadnesses, and disappointments that have occurred they suggest a final validity to the life and a subsequent state of wellbeing, as if posthumous accolades are actually enjoyed by the dead. We conclude our perusal with the “happy” feeling that the person of interest is now contentedly at rest. For the sake of brevity the full impact of the chaos, confusion, and uncertainties that mark human experience are largely edited out. The story is simplistic and only an instalment, the account of life prior to the embarkation upon the journey through eternity. It is only in the light of eternity and the judgment of God that each life lived finds its true significance and ultimate destiny.
Often, as you contemplate an obituary or read a biography, the big questions flash across the mind – “What was the point of all this, and what is the outcome?”. An obituary focuses on things temporal and transient, and Holy Scripture alerts us to the fact that there is another dimension infinitely more important which is eternal, and its conditions, though progressive in intensity, are permanent and irreversible. Our generation has largely lost this perspective in any genuine sense. Eternity rarely impinges upon our minds, and then, in this sceptical age, only in the sense of an endless nothingness – centuries of sleep, as someone has commented. A life lived without thought of God or contact with him, for all of its seemingly satisfying and admirable features, soon looms before our gaze as ultimately pointless. It may count for something in its effects throughout the duration of time, but the value and continuance of these effects is unpredictable and can be quickly obliterated. Nothing attained by man is lasting or sure of future appreciation. Our little lives, our cherished values and vaunted accomplishments can fade so quickly. The pall of nihilism that overhangs modern life is no surprise and the clouds will only darken as man increasingly expels God from his thoughts and plans. The instinct to make sense of life, to prove to ourselves that it matters in the science of history, the exercise of cultural criticism, and the habit of collating all our observations systematically is ingrained in our natures by God who created us as co-partners in his cosmic purposes, but devoid of him all these activities and their results vanish in a puff. The writer of Ecclesiastes is not a cynic or a sad man but an observer who places himself in the position of the godless and feels the hopelessness of their perspective. Walking for a while in their shoes he is overwhelmed by a sense of the vanity of all things pursued without reference to God. The joy of our creation and all causes and courses in life can only be derived, not from the creaturely, but fellowship with our Creator. He gives sense and satisfaction to life. Everything finds its significance and end in him. No event, attainment, or pleasure has substance or satisfaction unless it is consciously received from him personally through his sovereign and universal governance, and enjoyed through him and with him in the relationship of faith. “For in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). The thoughts of pleasure and purpose rapidly turn to pain in the absence of God and recognition of our natural alienation from him. Material acquisitions and benefits are merely external objects that cannot placate or pacify the anguish of the soul or provide nourishment to it in its gnawing emptiness. Mental contemplation of the ideals of desire and the realities of experience become vexatious. Our abandonment of God, deliberate or by neglect, engulfs us in a sense of barrenness and futility that we try to repress or repel by preoccupation with trifles and trinkets, follies and superficialities, distractions and diversions. Our current culture is drowning us in a sense of delusion and deep discontent as we pant for a substitute for our intended friendship with God. We reach out only to find the objects of our quest to be a mirage or chimera. Hollow entertainments and amusements have been elevated to the summit of our attention and aspirations. Plasma television has become the Delphic oracle of our neo-pagan age. The ever -chattering “experts” on twenty-four hour news channels are our contemporary soothsayers. Anti-heroes constitute the pantheon of deities we worship. Lies swirl everywhere around us. And the church has cravenly caved in to the ways of the world, angled to consumerism, endorsing evil, and peddling a sentimental religiosity and a vast array of puerilities instead of preaching the solid verities of the gospel, inconvenient to our fallen nature but indispensable to our everlasting welfare.
Our Old Testament sage has sampled every option open to man in his experiment to discover what is satisfying to man in every dimension of his nature. He had the millionaire’s means, the aesthete’s good taste, the ruler’s authority, the sceptic’s flights of speculation, and all the pleasures available to the most ardent Epicurian in the most sensual sense of the term. He could have been the inventor of the somewhat cynical motto: Been there; done that! He entertained every aspiration. He exerted himself towards every conceivable goal. “There is nothing new under the sun (1:9). Our appetites and ambitions are a repeat of his. Our media provide a daily record of the yearnings and strivings of our hungry natures that remain famished without feeding on the Word of God. The man who preceded us, and wrote for our profit, pronounced all his effort, anxiety, and avarice, his greed for gain, gratification, and grandeur as utterly worthless without an eye to the divine glory. “Everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun” (1:11). He has summed up the affliction, the malady that ever lurks within our hearts. We are killing ourselves without God. Our Saviour says it all: “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?” (Matthew 16:26). Our minds and lives are crammed with the earthly, yet we teeter on the verge of eternity with scarcely a care. Contemporary religion is almost exclusively geared, in its thought, practice, and the mentality of its devotees, for the things of this age. May we earnestly offer this prayer before we each of us cross over the threshold into endless aeons:
Lord God, the protector of all who trust in you, and without whom nothing is strong or holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy, that with you as our ruler and guide, we may pass through the things of this age, that finally we do not lose the things of the age to come: Grant this, heavenly Father, for our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen. (The Collect for the Fourth Sunday after Trinity).
RJS

CORDS OF A MAN (OF HUMAN KINDNESS – HOSEA 11:4) 7-05-09

The Old Testament is replete with the tenderest expressions of love – human and divine. Among the most affective of these statements is Hosea’s appeal to Israel to recall the constant affection and compassion of God towards his chosen people. The imagery that the prophet employs is that of the unfailing care and kindness of an ever-attentive father to the wellbeing of a toddler child. It is a picture to focus upon and cherish – paternal provision and protection, and not from mere duty but, to use that precious covenant term, pure and heartfelt loving-kindness. The word of God is rich with every kind of figurative language, parental, family, friendly, romantic, to impress upon us the reality, extent, and permanence of the divine fondness for the Lord’s believing folk. It should be the least doubted of revealed truths, but Satan’s suggestions and our own suspicions do so much to negate it.
Hosea is so eager to reinforce our conviction concerning God’s kindly disposition towards us as to portray it in a way that cannot fail to reach our comprehension and our emotions. His target is twofold – head and heart. Sin has cruelly distorted the understanding and experience of fatherhood for innumerable people but who could not be touched by the ideal description given by Hosea as we link our imagination to his and picture a stumbling child being rescued from its fall and lifted by a pair of strong arms to a father’s breast for comfort and reassurance. Outreaching and enfolding love is the message Hosea would convey with regard to the attitude of God towards his elect, a term of endearment not of exclusion from the invitation to be his.
God was never an abstract thought for the Hebrew race. He was known in personal encounter and observed action, and these facets of his self-disclosure were explained by his inspired spokesmen, but as John Calvin observes, the Lord lisps to his children in the manner of a nurse who stoops to their level of understanding. It is magnificently generous of God to humanize his divine communications to us. Karl Barth’s phrase, “The humanity of God”, is a good one. Our humanness is meant to be a reflection of the moral perfection of God (his image), and the Redeemer was assigned to restore that perfection. The process begins with God’s revelation through human speech and culminates in the incarnation of his Son. He descends to our level to raise us to his fellowship, and he speaks via allusions to what we may receive, or possibly conceive, of human compassion as it ought to be, but, lamentably, fails to be. The human goodness that we might expect or desire to experience, mentioned in the Bible, is ultimately fulfilled in the genuine humanity of the Lord Jesus who ministers to all our wounds inflicted upon us by the Fall. The mercy that we ought to share and extend to each other, which is so often cruelly conditional, limited, or withheld, is fully expressed through the God-man, who unites divine and human compassion in his person, both as the source and conduit of love. Hosea’s “kindness of a man” points obliquely to the kindness of “the Man” who supplies our natural God-given craving for love, and meets the deficiencies of the imperfect love that we do share, however feebly. Love needs to be shown and it is fully displayed in Christ, and completely so in his cross, it is grasped by faith, felt as a bonus of the Holy Spirit’s inward presence and influence, and passed on through practical well-doing initiated by him. Human love is intended to be the reflection of divine love which is donated to and distributed among his people as the outpouring of the Holy Spirit’s goodness (Romans 5:5). Man, in his very nature, is meant to be the medium and channel of the communicable attributes of God – qualities the Lord possesses that can be reproduced in our lives to be lavished and exercised upon our fellows and the creation towards which we are stewards. The ideal is before us. The vocation has been assigned us. The perception dimly remains within us. The virtue is exercised imperfectly by us. We are truly and fully human when we are God-like. It is our purpose and privilege to resemble God and replicate his holiness in justice (fairness) and mercy, not to the condonation of sin, but principally to the consolation of sinners through the gospel conveyed through word and action. We are the guilty going out in concern towards our lost and helpless partners in crime, counting on their rescue through the compassionate power of the God who sends us. We are extending and stretching the cords of the love that drew us to salvation.
The likening of divine love to human love has its effectiveness. We can to some degree relate to the analogy. Somewhere, somehow, someone has been kind to us and brightened our lives with the vision of love’s perfection. But human sin and selfishness imposes limitations upon the illustration drawn from human nature and experience. Only the Lord Jesus is true to the ideal. He is the Man of kindness who embodies the kindness of God. When human goodness fails and disappoints we look to him for the experience and example of compassion.
Sin has reversed the proper tendencies of the human heart. The love that we should show and give is turned inward and corrupted by “self-love” and self-interest. Contained within, it ferments into acquisitiveness (resources and reputation), rivalry, and vengefulness. When David was convicted of his pride in yielding to the temptation to measure his success he was given the option of choosing his mode of correction – human judgment or divine. He selected God’s retribution as being more merciful (2 Samuel 24:10-17).
God’s mercy is akin to the kindness of man when it is genuinely expressed but it also far excels and exceeds it. The milk of human kindness sometimes sours. The compassion of God is fresh, enduring, and free. His love surpasses that of the best of earthly fathers. It outlasts the care of any human mother (Isaiah 49:50). It is infinitely deeper and far more tender, yearning, and faithful than the bonds of desire and affection between the lovers of the Song traditionally attributed to Solomon, It is firmer and fuller than the love that binds marriages together (Ephesians 5:22-end). We only have glimpses of the everlasting love that grasps us to the bosom of our Father. We frequently lose our consciousness of it and often question it. It is such a comfort that he extends the ties of his love to us and winds them around us so closely as to make God and his people inseparable (Romans 8:35).
Love is perhaps the theme most celebrated in poetry and song. The sentiments may be cheap, mawkish, or noble. Love is a multi-nuanced term, and a word that is much abused. But in its purest form it is displayed and enjoyed in Christ:
Jesus, thou art all compassion*, pure, unbounded love thou art; visit us with thy salvation, enter every trembling heart (Charles Wesley).
RJS

*Jesus is not only compassion, just as God is not only love, but all the compassion available to sinners is found in him.

STREAMING TO THE GOODNESS OF THE LORD (Jeremiah 31:12 NKJV) 06-28-09

The universal effects of the gospel intimated in the Old Testament are absolutely thrilling. In their context such promises gleam with hope and presage the triumph of the Lord Jesus Christ in every land. Read in our time, and in the midst of the current conflicts and threats that characterize the international scene, they point to a supernatural resolution of our hostilities, rivalries, and suspicions in the eventual coming of the kingdom of God. The timing and the scale of these longed for developments are not clear, but they indicate the emergence of one people, one humanity, the true and complete Israel of God inclusive of all those who come to faith in Jesus Christ and obedience to him from every nation and all types of people. The references may not be of a temporal or literal geographical nature, but simply spiritual forecasts of the unity of races and classes in Christ in his eternal kingdom. The blessings of the gospel and the fruits of Christ’s accomplishment will benefit representatives of all peoples. It is an exciting and certain prospect. Age-old enemies will be reconciled in him (Ephesians 2:14). Opposites will be reconciled and feuds will cease.
The stunning announcement of God’s ultimate purpose with mankind is found in the prophecy of Isaiah. “In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians will serve with the Assyrians. In that day Israel will be one of three with Egypt and Assyria - a blessing in the midst of the land, whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, ‘Blessed is Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.’ ”
All of this harmony in relationships, and unity in the worship of God, is totally contrary to the behaviour of human nature and the historical record of relations between these nations. Egypt and Assyria were competitive and mutually hostile powers and cruelly oppressive of the nations they conquered and overran. Israel, wedged in between them, was the puny and unfortunate victim of their imperial ambitions. Yet in this alliance of the redeemed all three peoples will be of equal rank. The shared blessings will be mediated through Israel the people of the covenant from whom the peace-giving Messiah will come. The slave driving Egyptians and Assyrians will be transformed to servant-hood in their worship and work for God. The trio of nations will be united perfectly in the experience of grace – Egypt as the demonstration of divine adoption, Assyria as the new creation of God, and Israel itself the people (inheritance) who will receive and exhibit the covenant loving-kindness of God pledged through the ancient Abrahamic promise which was meant to encompass all peoples. Each nation will reflect a facet of the divine mercy – adoption, regeneration, and election. It is a blissfully happy vision of things to come and the reality is attained through the proclamation of the word of God by his servants everywhere.
This what is meant by the dispersal (diaspora) of the Lord’s folk throughout the ancient world. The returning remnant, having carried the truth of God to faraway aliens, now bring their clinging converts back home with them as well. The prospective re-formation and ingathering of scattered Israel includes believers from other nations. The punishment of exile was actually a secondment to international mission, the sowing of the gospel seed, as is evident in the story of Daniel and the eventual journey of the Magi. The great prophecies of the Bible describe a confluence of people (partially fulfilled at Pentecost) to Jerusalem, the symbol of the Presence of God and place of fellowship with him.
This is the beauty of the oracle of Jeremiah. He envisions a flow of people to God, Jew and Gentile together in a union that erases all distinctions between them in the composition of a new and complete Israel composed of all the believers effectually called in time – those circumcised in their hearts through the purification effected by Christ in his atoning death. Jeremiah foresees the reversal of the scattering in a wonderful streaming of Abraham’s race and accompanying aliens to “the goodness of God”.
Jeremiah traces this wonderful migration to glory not to natural desire or any human decision to relocate, but to the electing love of God and the powerful attraction of his manifold grace. “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you” (31:3).
The language of liberation from captivity in exile is illustrative of the Lord’s self-assigned project of salvation, which he initiates and brings to conclusion by wooing his chosen ones, as their irresistible Lover, to willing compliance. The people will come because God will be the cause of their coming. “This divine grace of regeneration does not act in people as if they were blocks and stones; nor does it abolish the will and its properties or coerce a reluctant will by force, but spiritually revives, heals, reforms, and – in a manner at once pleasing and powerful – bends it back” (The Canons of Dort, Article 16). It is his action that sets them upon their homeward path and which ensures their journey’s completion. Their “coming” is not in doubt for he will “bring”, and he will “gather”, and their responsive “shalls” emerge in answer to his preceding “wills”. God’s gracious pledge is irreversible and cannot be frustrated.
Salvation is wrought in our hearts and lives by the force of a love that cannot be defeated: “Why was I made to hear his voice/And enter while there’s room/When thousands make a wretched choice/And rather starve than come? ‘Twas the same love that spread the feast/That sweetly forced me in/Else I had still refused to taste/And perish’d in my sin” (John Newton). Norman Snaith, the eminent Methodist scholar of the Old Testament, speaks of the “over-plus” of God’s love towards his people. God’s love is distinctive. He chooses to do special things for his people, and “more than is required”. Without this “more”, this “much more”, of efficient grace we would be disinclined to heed the invitation to embark upon our return from exile and estrangement from God. We are drawn with the strength and urgency with which Jeremiah himself was pulled out of the cistern by Ebed-Melech and his helpers (38:13). Jeremiah knew what it took, and what it was like, to be dragged out of sin and danger, and a greater than Jeremiah described our coming to the Lord as being dragged (John 6:44 cf Acts 16:19 & James 2:6. In all references the word used is equivalent to “compel”). Salvation is rescue. We are dragged to safety. Our condition is not imminent difficulty but an actual emergency. We need to be wrested and hauled away abruptly from our present peril. “Turn me and I will turn” (Jeremiah 31:18). Our restoration is not within our volition or capacity. The Redeemer must do it all. That Redeemer reveals his love and power in the oratory of Jeremiah and in the recall of the clans of Israel who typify the tribes and nations of the earth conquered through the worldwide spread of the gospel.
“Watch, I shall bring them back from the land of the north and gather them in from the far ends of the earth . . . . A mighty throng will return here! They will come shouting for joy on the heights of Zion, thronging towards Yahweh’s lavish gifts” (Jeremiah 31:8, 12:The New Jerusalem Bible).
RJS

THE OPEN DOOR – JOHN’S VISION OF HEAVEN (Revelation Chapter 4) 6-14-09

John, the persecuted one for the cause of the gospel, prisoner on Patmos, and inspired correspondent to the seven churches of Asia Minor (chs 2&3) – the observer of their woes or wellbeing – is permitted a perception of heaven and thereby ushered into invisible realities that can only be described in pictorial language and vivid imagery. The vision he relates is not the product of human insight, imagination, or invention. He sees what he sees by sovereign permission and divine invitation. The divine control and kindness, which beckon him, are manifested in a threefold way:
The Open Door (v1) – The view of heaven afforded to him is possible because, “There before me was a door standing open”. John did not open the door himself. Sight or entry into heaven is granted according to divine prerogative, not human entitlement. Heaven is beyond human reach and the key to the kingdom is not available to any earthly individual. Access can only be granted from the inside. The open door is a friendly summons to advance forward and take an enquiring look.
The Gracious Invitation (v1) – “Come up here”, are words spoken by the Lord Jesus (1:10-12). They express a kindly and enabling bidding to the cautious apostle who is elevated to the level or vantage point from which he is able see what the Saviour is desirous of showing him – an outline of the divine purpose i.e “What must take place”. John receives intimation as to what the will of God has foreordained. Divine condescension takes him into confidence.
The Assistance of the Spirit (v2) – “At once I was in the Spirit”, avers John. The door of divine disclosure is open but the chosen witness needs to be adapted to the realm of revelation which is alien to his natural capacities. The Spirit (of illumination) achieves the intensification and inspiration of his faculties and John is supernaturally endued with keen sightedness, clarity of perception, penetrating insight, comprehension, and the ability to give testimony to all that is presented to him. His description of the ineffable can only be impressionistic and he has to use the language of symbolism to impart some sense of the features of the amazing vision he receives – the vision of the Throne and the Three.
The Throne in Heaven (v2) – How often this is mentioned. John is keen to emphasize the significance of the throne as the symbol of absolute and universal authority. God is seated above all creation freely exercising Lordship and total dominion over all that he has made. The throne directs all events and decides all destinies. One day every human individual will stand before that throne to receive God’s pronouncement upon their life and where their eternity will be spent. As John takes notice of the throne his attention turns to the omnipotent occupant.
The Appearance of the “Seated Someone” (v3) – Human concepts cannot contain God and human speech cannot “package” him for the comprehension of others. Exactitude and exhaustiveness of definition is impossible. John can only suggest his likeness through succinct and vivid hints drawn from earthly analogies that suggest the divine worth and loveliness and so he alludes to the attractiveness of precious stones to convey the truth that God is gloriously, majestically, radiantly, alluringly beautiful (the sight of him is the source and force of irresistible grace for those whom he calls). Overarching the sovereignty and splendour is a rainbow that announces the most endearing trait of the divine character as far as sinners are concerned, for from the sublime majesty there emerges sweet mercy. The semi-circle of green light symbolizes the covenant faithfulness, steadfast compassion, and enduring love of the God of grace. Perhaps the hue of emerald green denotes the fact of the sheer goodness of God spanning, restoring, and refreshing all nature as creation is renewed. God is correcting the awful destruction and distortion wrought upon creation by sin and the revolt of men and angels. Such unsurpassable excellence must be exposed to spectators, and present around the great throne are the beneficiaries of the divine mercy.
The Company of the Redeemed (v4) – Twenty-four elders gaze admiringly towards the throne. They represent the ultimate Israel of God, the twelve tribes of the former covenant and the converts of the twelve apostles who receive the gospel message throughout the age of the new covenant. Israel is complete in heaven, all its members called home from earthly exile, and rebellious sinners are given exalted rank and closeness to the king through the extravagant generosity of the exceedingly kind and forgiving king. They enjoy such favour through spiritual and moral cleansing signified by the wearing of white robes – natures and consciences laundered by the blood of the Lamb. Grace admits the people of God to glory and those once debased by sin are elevated and adorned with crowns. Yet the unabated joy of the chosen ones is tempered by reverence. The throne of grandeur and infinite dignity emits flashes of lightning, the rumblings and peals of thunder. God in his mercy remains awesome and incomprehensible, the One who is revealed and yet mysteriously veiled. The redeemed are family but prevented from over familiarity. Holy fear is twinned with heartfelt affection. The elders and members of the people of God know that they dwell in heaven by virtue of the shed blood of the Son and the constant companionship and enabling of the Spirit.
The Sevenfold Spirit of God (v9) – Only the grace, gifts, and goading of the Holy Spirit gets the saints of the Lord through their pilgrimage on earth to their goal in heaven. His enabling and encouragements see them through the afflictions and conflicts of life, and after their testing through severe tribulation and their admission to heaven the “overcomers”, through faith, experience smooth passage to the presence of God. The glassy sea before the throne typifies the chaos, hazards, and harmfulness of evil now tamed and contained in frozen form, all turbulence quietened and quelled, all evil excluded and shut out, trodden underfoot forever (Beat down Satan under our feet: The Litany). Now the figure on the throne may be surrounded by a safe and secure throng of worshippers.
The Lord Adored by All Creation (vv6a-11) – The magnificence of God is recognized by the most noble representatives of creation: lion (beasts of the wild), ox (domesticated animals), eagle (monarch of the skies), and man (cultivated and in command). These creatures acknowledge and laud the excellence of God in his glorious essence – Purity, Plurality, and Eternalness. As the worship mounts and voices ascend in praise the redeemed fall down, prostrate themselves, and cast their crowns before him in grateful tribute. The crowns are returned in acknowledgement of his supremacy, celebrating the Lord as the source of all being and blessing. In the vision granted to him John perceives the sovereignty of God – eternal, unlimited, unchallenged, unimpeded, unimpeachable. John surveys the offices and operations of: a) the Son as Revealer (the One who bids him come) and Redeemer (who makes him fit to come). b) the Spirit as enabler, inspirer, life-giver, grace provider. By his indwelling presence and powerful preservation heaven is gained. c) the Father enthroned as Originator and Ruler. John participates in and records the tribute rendered to God and appreciates the reality of another dimension greater than the reality of earth, governing the experience and destiny of men.
We are not to judge with earthbound eyes, but lift our gaze to heaven, call upon and trust in the all-powerful, all-wise One upon the throne. RJS

ANOTHER COUNSELLOR (The Saviour Sends the Spirit: John 14:15-31) 06-07-09

Preparatory thoughts and a pause before opening the Bible are important. We are proceeding to read a book, but as we come to realize that we hold in our hand God’s Book our approach to reading becomes different. The process is not simply that of eye and intellect focusing upon a text but also one of a prayerful heart crying out to God for guidance and understanding. The word is inspired and precious and through the dependence of prayer we have direct access to the mind and meaning of the Author. The writings are human and divine. The dual provenance enriches our searching of Holy Scripture. We love to know the penmen, their personalities and circumstances where possible, and the human and historical diversity within the Bible captures and stirs the mind. The Bible vibrates with vitality and its veracity shines through; its message rings true. The unifying and authenticating factor is the divine causation of the canon. God has spoken through the prophets and apostles. We hear thevinces of men and we hear the voice of God. Each oracle and utterance comes over in its own way in accord with the character and circumstance of the spokesman, and the background flavours the testimony we receive and digest. John’s passage on the promise of the Holy Spirit is especially delightful, as well as informative, because it is the recorded, remembered, and reflected upon, teaching of the Lord Jesus himself. This point adds poignancy to what the apostle passes on to us.
The instruction he imparts is the teaching of Jesus himself on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. John has not been simply prompted and guided to write about the Holy Spirit, which would have been sufficient warrant to receive his testimony in itself (cf Revelation 4:2), he is moved to report on what Jesus said to his disciples in personal discourse. The essential truth about the Spirit is relayed through relationship. Jesus introduces and commends the One who takes over from him his role as physical companion of the disciples. The God-man who stood by them, led them, and informed them throughout his earthly assignment describes the One who has been in eternal fellowship with the Son and now comes to be the invisible friend of the disciples. Jesus speaks of whom he knows — intimately. His testimony is true. His witness is unique. All this adds special power to his words.
It is not only that the teaching of the Lord Jesus on the Holy Spirit is authoritative, the circumstances in which he taught add to the value of what he said, and increase our appreciation. His passion was immanent and his suffering weighed upon his mind. The circumstances were solemn and his words were the expression of both his divine and dying love. They were the expression of his compassion and concern for his disciples and all who would believe them. The promise of the Holy Spirit was couched in love, the only apt way to present he who would be the source of love in believers.
The intimately personal teaching of Jesus conveyed the personhood of the Spirit. The Spirit is not merely a force or power, and certainly never to be thought of in terms of being an “it”. His being and role are personal and his influences relational. He works within individuals convicting, renewing, instructing, inspiring, and energizing. His activities are “person to person”. The Giver of life is alive himself as person. We know him, feel him, rely on him, and call upon him.
A beautiful disclosure in the teaching of Jesus about the Spirit is that he is the personal gift of the Saviour to those whom he loves. The Spirit comes to us at Jesus’ request and by virtue of his obedience. Jesus “hands him over” to us as associate counsellor. More dramatically, as at Pentecost, he pours the Spirit upon us in fulfilment of the Baptist’s prophecy that he would baptize us with the Spirit. The Spirit is the joint donation of the Father and the Son, and Jesus
particularly sends him to co-operate with and complete the work he has begun, and so the Spirit expands our comprehension of the accomplishment wrought by Jesus and forges, forms, and confirms our personal union with Christ. He applies what Jesus has achieved by enabling us to appropriate what Jesus has provided. Jesus ministered for us and the Spirit ministers Jesus to us, though there is no hard and fast distinction between the work of the ascended Saviour and the operations of the Spirit who is present with us. The Holy Spirit delights to be known as the Spirit of Jesus, for he is self-effacing and his mission is to make Jesus known, mediate him to us, and magnify his glory.
Our comprehension of the character of the Spirit comes from the description that Jesus has given and this fact immediately inspires our confidence. The terms Jesus uses in his portrayal of the Spirit are to be understood in an ethical and moral sense. He is the Spirit of truth. He is holy, pure, and reliable in character. From this foundation of faithfulness of nature and fidelity to the perfection of God his teaching, testimony, and instruction as Informer supreme is dependable. Nothing he tells us is defective or deceiving. Therefore we may count upon him as our Counsellor. He is always and unfailingly at our side to guide, strengthen, and help. He reveals the beauty, wisdom, and benefit of the divine will, the commands of God, commending them as good and, having convinced us of this, enables us to keep them - as somebody has observed - through the reasonings of our minds and the integrating of the commands into the courses of our lives. His presence within us is not confined to a “mystical thrill” (Floyd Filson), and, as Alan Richardson observes, “The Holy Spirit does not work by our emotions, but by our convictions “.
The Collect for Pentecost endorses this view: Almighty God, you who taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit: Grant that by the same Spirit we may judge all things rightly and always rejoice in his holy strengthening and protection.
The Spirit’s work within us, and stamp upon us, are ethical. He makes us like Jesus. By the Spirit we gradually come to resemble the perfect man. His perfect humanity is restored in us.
As Jesus imparted his teaching on the Spirit he was conscious of the dark and malevolent approach of the Prince of this world. His instruction was given in the context of combat and the hostility of the evil one. Our progress and effort in sanctification and service are to be thought of not only in terms of spiritual development, but in being armed for fierce conflict with the devil. The Spirit accompanies and empowers us in our daily warfare.
This is an ally who is with us and within us. One who is always at our side, but also inside as one who resides at the centre of our being. How lovely that the desire of God the Three in One is to make his (their) home in us. As companion, adviser, equipper the Holy Spirit is the personally appointed representative of Jesus keeping him in our mind by the continual replenishing and refreshing of our memories. He keeps us close to Jesus. He is mainly evident in our lives through formation of character not spectacular phenomena. In a world estranged from God and opposed to the Lord Jesus, the Spirit keeps our union with Christ intact, our obedience constant, and our courage alive. He is our near companion, wise counsellor, available consultant, faithful encourager.
RJS

HEAVEN - OUR TRUE COUNTRY 5-31-09

There is a certain diffidence and embarrassment among Christians when it comes to speaking of heaven. So much sentimentality is attached to the subject, so much seeming naivete and trite imagery, that believers have become wary of the ridicule of a sceptical world. The accusation of wishful thinking and escapism is often levelled at those who talk of an after life and place their hopes in a new world and existence in it beyond the grave. The idea of heaven is deemed to be a foolish myth, a fanciful invention, consolation for the disappointed, and compensation for those folk who happen to be failures in this life, and who lack the courage and competence to cope with reality. When placed among the doubters and deniers of an eternal hope and the gift of human immortality believers can be made to feel quite helpless and downright silly whilst facing the barrage of insult and laughter levelled against them. The accusation of guffibility and stupidity is hard to bear. Heaven is alleged to be an infantile dream designed to soothe the weak and vulnerable in their troubles, fears and afflictions.
Yet heaven is the great and fortifying reality ahead for those who truly place their confidence in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is not an avoidance of the hard facts of life, a shying away from its difficulties, but the source of firm resolve and endurance. The hope of the resurrection gives value and purpose to this life, a sense of responsibility and duty, recognizing our personal history and all its endeavours as a divinely ordained and guided process of development with a definite goal in prospect, and an ultimate evaluation of all that has been experienced and attempted. Life on earth has meaning and our choices and behaviour in the course of time have eternal implications. We are not here by chance simply to make the most of a few fleeting years in aimless self- gratification and aggrandizement only to be cast into endless oblivion at the conclusion of a pointless existence. The Biblical facts of heaven and hell brace us for that final moment of accountability before God and assignment to our eternal destiny and it takes concentration and courage to live in the light of these eventualities — the approval or disapprobation of our Creator and Governor at the end of this brief episode on planet earth.
For the Christian, heaven, the home of the saved ones, is a sure reality on the basis of divine revelation, the promises of God in his Word, and the massive and stupendous occurrence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. These are the sources of truth that impel the believer throughout his temporal life, and which invigorate him for all he must encounter. His policy is not that of escape or
- evasion, but earnestness and endurance. To shrug off our obligation before God and refuse to face it is irresponsibility, cowardice, and flippancy. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’ “(Psalm 14:1).
There are certain signs of our accountability in this life, and of our being created for something beyond it, that are imprinted upon our nature and instinctive to us in moments of seriousness, wondering, and reflection. The image of God is marred but remnants of this image remain within us, and an interior apprehension of this often speaks to us, in spite of years of studied denial, defiance, and deafness. Insinuations of ultimate realities often intrude upon our minds or send their shockwaves through our consciousness. The notion of God is engraved upon our constitution. The sense that we were made to know him and find our rest in him expresses itself in a twofold way — our acute sense of loss and a restless sense of longing.
Our breach with God has made us wanderers. We are unsettled and fundamentally lonely. Life here is depicted in religious terms as exile and a pilgrimage. For the non-religious mind there is still a sense of displacement and dissatisfaction resulting in an ongoing quest that is never fulfilled. We are traversing a wasteland. No success, attainment, or acquisition actually makes
the soul content. It always thirsts for something more because it was fashioned for something more than this transient world and the serving of self. The indulgence of every appetite fails to fill our emptiness. And without the knowledge of God all that we strive to become and gain through ceaseless effort is eventually annihilated. We know deep within ourselves that this state of affairs is abnormal and there is an accompanying feeling of futility.
Our sense of loss and dismay is portrayed by Georges Simenon in his detective novel, The Toy Village. The character of Inspector Jules Maigret is resourceful, unruffled, and reassuring. He knows human nature and is virtually unshockable at the wickedness and cruelty of which it is capable. Investigating a murder, unlikely in a picturesque village just outside Paris, he becomes pensive and nostalgic for the days of his childhood when his world seemed pure and free of such brutal behaviour. The attractiveness of the village and the ugliness of the evil act committed there suggest an incongruity to his mind and he broods for a while over man’s lost innocence and the misery to which he is exposed. The notion of a “fall” of some kind is not strange to the mind of man who in so many ways rues, through dreams, stories and legend, the fact of “Paradise lost”. The imperfections of life and iniquities of our race require explanation.
Coupled with the grief of our loss of something ideal and idyllic is the yearning for the regaining of that original state. There is within the heart of man a hunger for “heaven”, not until regeneration a holy desire, but the longing for deliverance from all the ills and uncertainties of life, the resolution of all that distracts and torments us. We pine for Utopia. It is a craving that points to our insecurity and discontent until we are reunited to God. Since our expulsion from Eden we know that we are not at home and we are chronically disoriented.
The aim and intent of the gospel is to gather us home to God, to restore us to his companionship, to enable us to make our dwelling in him. He himself is our heaven, our country, our eternal environment. In his presence our perplexities are solved and our longings satiated. Heaven is necessary for our completeness. Eternity is essential for the settlement and correction of all the unfinished issues of time and the explanation of all its mysteries. Righteousness will be vindicated and lawlessness punished and purged away. The mercy and justice of God will be fully manifest. His wisdom and sovereignty will be exhibited. Heaven will be where we shall finally worship him worthily and with clarity of vision and intimacy of communion. Nothing will hinder or distract us in our adoration and enjoyment of God. There we shall know perfect delight, absolute security, the reward of successful enterprise, and the blessing of perpetual peace. The total experience will be one of unmixed, unending joy, the privilege of being able to gaze upon the divine majesty and be ravished by his beauty. The response of all the redeemed will be to everlastingly extol his glory. At last we shall fulfil the purpose of our being: to glorify God and enjoy him forever. The scriptural visions of the kingdom, such as Isaiah 65:17-25 and Revelation 21, afford us hints of the new order to come. In the meantime we anticipate the bliss, exaltation, and exultation of the heavenly realms through faith (Ephesians 2:6), and look forward to pleasures indescribable:
“No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those
who love him” 2 Corinthians 2:9
RJS

NEWS ALERT! – THE ADAMIC PANDEMIC 5-10-09

Who can believe those colossal statistics concerning the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic – forty million victims from that fatal infection? And this immediately after the tragedy of the First World War with its huge toll of casualties! And now fears are rife again, and if H1N1 does not develop into a pandemic the medical and health experts tell us that such an occurrence is inevitable in the near future. Our rapid international travel is bound to give rise to some form of universal infection.
But the 1914-18 war (and all the successive conflicts since) and all the strains of influenza are symptomatic of an earlier and far more serious infection that has mankind in its grip. The diagnosis and only antidote are described in Holy Scripture. The deadly infection is sin and we have all caught it from the head and representative of our race – the First Man, Adam. The disease passed on from him is Original Sin, described in our precious Thirty-Nine Articles in this way:
(9) Original sin does not consist in imitating the sin of Adam (as the Pelagians wrongly teach), but is the fault and corruption of the nature with which all the descendants of Adam are born. It is due to original sin that we have departed very far from the original righteousness in which we were created, and are naturally inclined to evil, with the result that there is a constant war between the flesh and the spirit. Accordingly in every person born into this world, original sin is deserving of God’s wrath and condemnation. This infection of our nature remains even in those who are reborn in and by Christ. Because of original sin the desire of the flesh is not submissive to the law of God. True though it is that there is no condemnation awaiting those who believe and are baptized, yet the Apostle asserts that all ungodly desires are in themselves sinful (Romans 6:12;7:7).
The only potent medicine for this universal spiritual malady is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The hospital from whence the cure is administered is the Church of Christ which both attends to the patients who know their need to come for treatment and reaches out to those victims who yet have no sense of being infected and are ignorant their perilous condition.
Ministering to the Adamic Pandemic is the primary the role of the Church of God; to announce the reality of the infection of sin and its immediate and ultimate consequences; to administer the remedy provided by Jesus Christ the Saviour of the world; to nurse, strengthen, and support all those who, in their various stages of recovery, have been rescued and healed by the Great Physician. The Christian Church is the healing centre for those who are self-confessedly sick (Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance – Luke 5:31-32). The unconvicted and unconverted are simply parading their self-righteousness, a serious spiritual condition, before God.
There are numerous victims carrying the Adamic infection who are hardly aware of it, do not recognize its effects – though blatantly obvious – and who deny its seriousness and grave results. They complain from time to time of its discomforts and the debilitation they feel, but it is not considered life threatening, and when an outbreak happens to occur it is written off rather philosophically as “just one of those things” that are to be expected in life – unfortunate but normal, and to be avoided if possible. The church has to encounter this apathy and ignorance with every appeal possible to the evidence for the reality of evil around us and within us, our guilty participation in it, and the havoc it causes, which havoc and suffering are not to be viewed as normal, but part of the penalty for our defection from God. We are living in a radically abnormal world which we simply try to adapt to and accept as best we can, practically and philosophically. Our moral, mental, and emotional problems are the result of our breach with God. Our broken relationship with him leads to our broken lives.
But the major and most acute difficulty lies within the professing church of God. We fail to have an accurate and honest assessment of the nature and extent of our infection and accordingly we do not treat it as effectually as we ought. We have little comprehension of the blight of sin and the all-prevailing force it is within us. We hold to a superficial view of sin, treat the human condition “slightly” (They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace’ they say, when there is no peace. Jeremiah 6:14 & 8:11), administer ineffective cures and liberally dole out palatable placebos. It seems, as the church of God, broadly speaking, we have little conception of the gravity of sin, its tenacity and endurance within our nature, its radical effects upon our personality, and dire consequences for human life in all its dimensions. We entertain an unjustified optimism concerning human nature and its capacities, and instead of addressing consciences we are principally ministering to feelings – the displacement of bad ones with good ones, and pandering to selfish desires under the guise of a bogus religiosity and sham spirituality, such as we see in the preponderance of Israel’s history countered and corrected by the classic prophets of that nation. The infection creates an insouciance about its condition. Our fevered, euphoric minds feel fine about ourselves, in the same way that some victims of fatal illnesses feel absolutely well just prior to detection and sudden demise.
The hospital that should be of help to sinners, the Church, fails to diagnose the malady and prescribes the wrong medication. It is apparent in much of church life, the “worship” we offer, the “teaching” we render, the expectations we entertain, the shocks we register at the manifestation of evil, adversity, and testing, our reactions to divine discipline, our denial of spiritual warfare and reluctance to engage continually on a daily self-denying basis, the priorities we embrace, and the projects we enterprise. Original sin is self-centredness and when this tendency is not curtailed by grace it is the central, often unidentified, feature of our lives.
The fact of original sin is not faced squarely or acknowledged whole-heartedly, and we are, even in the so-called Evangelical constituency, reluctant to frankly admit its presence in our children (the egotism and selfishness which manifests itself from the cradle – esteemed authorities in the church have much to say about this, Augustine, Whitefield, Richardson, etc). In all things theological our doctrinal intake has reverted from meat to milk (1 Corinthians 3: 1-2). Could you imagine many of our celebrated preachers of today on the same platform as Charles Spurgeon, Alexander Whyte, John Charles Ryle, let alone the Puritans and Reformers of past ages? We are an effete, soft generation, and our spiritual nourishment must be served up soggy and sweet.
In our ignorance or denial of original sin our religion has become a mere “pick me up”, or ornamental prettification of our “world-centred” lives. It will not suffice for the seriously despairing or depraved souls that yearn for an effective salvation that will deliver them from sin and damnation and deliver them safely to heaven. Our cultural use and abuse of the Bible has muted its warning of danger and therefore its message of true hope in the mercy of Jesus for those truly on the edge, facing crises within and without. Until we are lost we cannot be saved, until we are condemned we see nothing in the relief afforded by the cross, until we write ourselves off, we cannot appreciate the enormous privilege of our being written in the Book of Life. Though we may ask God for mercy we actually approach him with a sense of entitlement and presumption of blessing.
The plague that infects us is “heirborn(e)” (cf John Newton: The air of the world is infectious). We inherit it, as heirs of both the condition and its consequences, down through the generations from sinful Adam, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death though sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned [in Adam]” (Romans 5:12). Until the Church candidly faces the fact of original sin and all its dire effects we will never preach to man’s true need nor offer the true gospel of totally free grace as the only antidote and remedy. Our gospel will be man centred, man pleasing, man-flattering. We will never accept the fact of our own utter helplessness and the good news of a “do nothing, but believe in all that God has done for us” gospel, and repose upon sheer mercy alone. A strong message of grace arises from a strong sense of sin. Repentance is the missing word in our evangelistic vocabulary, and without repentance there is no truth faith, no sure hope, no entrance to heaven. But grace has provided the life-giving cure for the Adamic Pandemic in the sending of a new Adam, “For just as through the disobedience of the one man many became sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man many will be made righteous (Romans 5:19). RJS

THE WEAK THINGS OF THE WORLD (1 Corinthians 1:27) 5-03-09

“The world is too much with us”, opines the poet William Wordsworth, lamenting man’s preoccupation with, “getting and spending” at the expense of his enjoyment of Nature. We are so tied to the business of life that we fail to appreciate the beauty of creation and the deeper purpose of our existence. “It moves us not!” is his exclamation. Such a lament could be addressed to the Church in a spiritual vein, for in many of its attitudes, expectations, and much of its activity it may be rightly observed that, “the world is too much with us”. We function according to its dictates and pander to its tastes.
The great temptation confronting the Church of God is to view itself in the light of worldly standards, and to perform according to worldly models and methods of success. We confuse the undoubted greatness of God and the magnitude of his deeds with ourselves as an entity, a society, and what we achieve that is visible and measurable. But God so often works incognito, through folk, and enigmatically, in ways, the world would not recognize as impressive or effective. God has called the Church into being to contradict the world and convert the world, not to confirm to it in its values, purposes, and pursuits. The Church is not to be compared to the world competitively for its approval, or conformed to it for its acceptance and admiration, but to show the power and wisdom of God in achieving his aims through human weakness and insignificance. In that way it is not human competence and ingenuity that are celebrated, but the accomplishments of the Lord by his grace, through his lowly servants and unlikely means.
Holy Scripture runs counter to all human pride, self-display, and selfish ambition. And yet in so many ways the Church instinctively seeks to glorify itself aesthetically, intellectually, politically, and numerically. We sometimes seem to hunger more for human recognition, acclaim, and a sense of kudos than the restitution and reclamation of mankind to God through the gospel that humbles both orator and audience. Power, prosperity, and applause are the rewards we seek rather than the approval of God. We parade before men rather than seek the praise of God, the glory that should be his.
Paul’s letter to the Corinthians reveals “the stuff” the Church is made of: “Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards: not many were influential: not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world, and the despised things – and the things that are not -- to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him” (1 Corinthians 1 : 26-29).
We assume that something has to be big to be important; to be noticeable to matter to God; that little things do not count, and in our reckoning we are actually acting before human eyes, and not acting as if before God and for his sake. Ministry to one soul of infinite value is as vital as ministry to many. Why should ministry on a small scale be downgraded? Why should the effort involved be reduced? It is God’s secret work, the sovereign action of the Holy Spirit, that is effective, and his power may be exerted more tellingly in the smaller sphere than in the larger. Who is man to judge? The real life of the Church is hidden in Christ (Col 3:3), concealed from human view and beyond statistical calculation (what figures on a form measure spiritual struggle, spiritual warfare, and spiritual growth?), and the glory and gains of the people of God will only be manifest in the final outcome which is way beyond the range of worldly estimation in the here and now.
If a worldly consultancy or agency were advising or branding the Church (God forbid!) would it ever recommend a tribe of worn-out slaves to exalt God’s name and serve his purpose in the ancient world, which was far more sophisticated than we moderns are apt to recognize? Would it ever select a clumsy stammerer like Moses to proclaim God’s message; a mere gatherer of figs (beautiful tasting bug capsules) like Amos to address the greatest and most august institution in the land (Amos 7:13); a shepherd youth to rule the nation; an unknown Jewish lass to be the mother of his incarnate Son; a band of fisherman to launch his gospel; an unattractive man and poor public speaker such as Paul to spread his word through Gentile society which regarded oratory as the superior skill? Surely, when compared with our glamorous publicity and celebrity oriented media outreach, the Lord got it all wrong with the choices he made. These observations are suggested by the words of one of the Church of England’s most distinguished thinkers and teachers of the 20th century, Alan Richardson, Late Dean of York, who concludes, “The answer is, of course, that God did not need to use worldly methods, simply because he is God and worldly prestige would not have added to the greatness of his divine revelation of love. Hence if we are tempted to think the that the church round the corner is not a very impressive affair, that it is rather dull and composed of not very progressive people, we have not begun to understand the way God works or the purpose of his church. Small congregations and falling resources are not things that should worry Christians who know what the church really is; its significance and future do not depend upon our efforts - especially our efforts to bolster up the churches with worldly prestige or box-office glamour” (Science, History, and Faith: Oxford University Press, Geoffrey Cumberlege, Publisher to the University, London, 1950 – a masterly work that deserves republication and frequent re-reading).
Of course, we all rejoice in the great things God has done throughout history. We are grateful for the eminent leaders and thinkers he has given to his Church. We revel in the times of great reform and revival and pray for their repetition in our time and in the future. God is great and we love to see his amazing greatness revealed. We put no limit on the capacities of God and the possibilities he can create. But when he chooses to act in momentous ways we ourselves remain modest and attribute every stupendous occurrence solely to him. But as much as we pray for large blessings, at his bidding, we do not despise the “day of small things”, or discount his normal way of working. It keeps us humble and tames our hubris, which certainly stirs whenever he bestows his favours in significant fashion. Our smugness creeps into everything and we do crave the excitement of the spectacular and sensational. But this is an appetite God will not indulge. There is the distinct danger of lapsing into worldly demands upon God and almost hysterical arm-twisting and manipulation. Christians can become Canaanite in the pressures they impose upon God through emotion, exuberance, and agitated behaviour – a recurrent phenomenon in the life of the Church. In his sovereignty he could accomplish his purpose in one colossal “flash”, but he operates progressively and patiently, permitting many seeming setbacks along the way that are frustrating to simplistic understandings of the faith.
When the British philosopher C. E. M. Joad returned to faith he confessed that it was not so much through weighty intellectual arguments, and for impressive reasons, but simply because of the faithful ministry of countless “ordinary” parish clergy, week by week throughout the nation. A similar basis for return to faith, whatever its content happens to be, was cited by the former sceptic, A.N. Wilson. God’s modest modes of working keep us earthed and dependent, patient and prayerful, and they test our resolve and search our motives. When God works in secret, man cannot take the credit. “Keep the proud “chit” (child) down” was the constant motto of William Grimshaw in his powerful preaching. Believers are at their most blessed, and behave their best, when chastened and checked by God. High spirits tend to become high-minded (arrogant) in attitude and high-handed in action. We cannot be trusted with conspicuous success. Vanity attends “our victories” – but when they are seen to be the Lord’s in unusual ways, we acknowledge him, as Paul confessed to those rascally Corinthians, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (2 Corinthians 12: 9).
RJS