Moving Church

I have been in Bridgeton St Francis-in-the-east Church since I was six years old. In the course of the last 30 years I have been involved with so many activities it is hard to remember them all, but they have included:

• Congregational Board member
  
• Sunday School teacher
• Welcome Team
  
• Church Pianist
  
• Choir Leader
• Church Magazine Editor
• Fabric Committee Member
• Worship Planner
• Leading Bible studies
  
• Leading Worship and Preaching
• Outreach Work
• Elder

So it was only after a lot of thought and prayer and time for reflection that my wife and I have decided to move to a different church.

The main reason was simply the distance involved in travelling from where we live now to Bridgeton.

After spending a bit of time looking for a new fellowship that would suit us both, we've now settled in Sandyford Henderson Memorial Church in the West End of Glasgow. It's been a really welcoming church with excellent biblical teaching from the minister, Peter White, and the elders, and a real commitment to corporate prayer, local outreach and warm fellowship.

I'm hoping to get involved in the life of my new congregation in as many ways as I can once my membership is formally transferred over probably in the next month or so.

Although sad to be leaving so many old friends, it is good that the move was not as a result of any reason within my old church except the distance it is away, and so there is no ill-will involved. Indeed, I am hoping to continue supporting the church in Bridgeton in any ways I can, while making my focus on my new church family in Sandyford.

Our Covenant God

The following was the sermon at the evening service at Bridgeton on 10 January 2010. It has been lightly edited for internet use. The Bible reading was 1 Kings 8:22-30.

Did you hear about the latest Bible to be released in the shops? It only costs £1.00 and it’s called the New Year’s Resolution Bible. It only has the first three chapters of Genesis in it.

New Year resolutions are promises we make to ourselves, aren’t they? But like the joke suggests, they aren’t promises we tend to stick to all that well. I’m going to suggest a new year’s resolution for you that I hope you will be able to keep, and that’s to grow as a Christian this year. That’s not just a good idea; as Christians, it’s what’s expected of us. 1 Peter 2:2-3 says:

Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.

One of the best ways we can grow as Christians is just to spend time getting to know God better through reading a portion of his word regularly. The Bible is full of passages that help us understand better what God is like. And as we get to know him better and love him more, so this shapes our lives, not only in what we believe, but in how we live. This is what Paul teaches in 2 Timothy 3:16-17:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Our passage tonight is not particularly well-known. But it’s a passage that tells us many important things about God. So let’s look at this passage we have in front of us and see what God has to teach us about himself tonight because if we really grasped and lived in the knowledge of these truths, I think all of us would grow as Christians this year.

To begin with, just a brief word of background to the passage. One of King David’s unfulfilled dreams was to build a temple for the Lord to honour him and so that David's God didn’t have to 'live in a tent.' When David died, his son, Solomon, was his successor. And at the beginning of Solomon’s reign, there was a period of peace and prosperity in Israel. And Solomon decided that this was the right time to finally build a temple to the Lord in Jerusalem. The temple took seven years to build, although we learn something about Solomon’s attitude from the fact it took 13 years to build his palace in Jerusalem and the palace was nearly double the size of the temple! But that’s an aside. When it was finished, Solomon ordered that the Ark of the Covenant be brought from the Tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting, and be placed in the inner chamber of the new temple, the holy of holies. And as the priests left the Ark there, 1 Kings 8:10-11 says:

‘When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of the LORD. And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled his temple.’

Imagine the scene. The new temple has been built – seven years in the making – and now God himself gives the work his seal of approval as it were by actually taking up residence and dwelling in the temple itself, symbolised by the shekinah glory cloud.

At which point, Solomon first addresses the assembled Israelites and tells them that he has built this temple in accordance with his father’s wishes and in accordance with God’s promise to David. He then stood before the altar in the temple and began to pray. And the passage we’re looking at is the first couple of paragraphs really of what is a long and mighty prayer that Solomon spoke that day.

We’re going to have a look at five things this prayer of Solomon’s teaches us about God:

• God is faithful
• God is loving
• God speaks to us
• God listens to us
• God is mighty and can answer prayer.

So, let’s have a look at the first of these five things this passage appeared to me to be teaching us. And it’s that the LORD is a faithful God. The very name of God speaks of his faithfulness. As you’ll know, when the Bible has the word LORD in capital letters, this is the personal, covenant name of God, that the Jews thought was so holy they wouldn’t write it all out, but just the consonants YHWH. This is God’s personal name, Yahweh, the name he revealed to Moses at the burning bush, the name that means I AM THAT I AM. And this was the name that God revealed only to his own people, Israel. It is a name that speaks of God’s commitment and love for his own people – and that includes you and me – everyone Christian is part of God’s special covenant people through Jesus Christ.

But it’s not just in his name that the passage speaks of God’s faithfulness to his people. The passage is full of the idea. Verse 23 is the key verse in the passage:

O Yahweh, God of Israel, there is no God like you, in heaven above or in earth beneath, keeping covenant and showing steadfast love to your servants…

The covenant relationship that God has with people speaks of faithfulness. A covenant is a solemn promise, a total commitment between two parties. A covenant resembles a marriage, which is a specific kind of covenant. God’s covenant with his people is little different. It’s not a bond between two equals entering into a commitment to love each other and share their lives; it’s a bond between the sovereign king of the universe and unworthy sinners, and so it is often called a covenant of grace. But like a marriage, it is nevertheless a bond of love between God and his people. The covenant of grace is also a sign of his faithfulness and commitment to his people.

Verse 24 also speaks of commitment and faithfulness. Solomon points out that God kept his promises to Solomon’s father, King David. ‘You spoke with your mouth, and with your hand have fulfilled it this day.’

Now when you stop and think about it, God’s faithfulness to his people is actually an amazing thing. It truly is amazing grace. Even a cursory reading of the Old Testament shows that the Israelites were anything but faithful to their God. Scarcely were they delivered from Egypt before they turned their backs on the invisible God to build themselves a golden calf. During their 40 years in the wilderness they continually grumbled and complained and turned away from God. During the time of the judges, the Bible says that ‘everyone did what was right in his own eyes’ and sin was rampant. Later they chose for themselves a human king to be like the other nations, even though God told them that he was their king. And so it went on and on through the time of the prophets and eventual exile in Babylon. God’s covenant people were anything but faithful to God. And the same is just as true of us. Rarely in Christian history has the church lived up to its calling and mission. If it were a matter of merit, how could God be faithful to people like us? People who sin in thought, word and deed every single day?

But thanks be to God that he is faithful, not because of anything in us, but because of his own grace and mercy. And this means God can be trusted and relied on by us all the time. He never plays us false. He never changes. He never gets fed up with us. And that’s really foundational for our relationship with him, isn’t it? All around us might fail and fall away, but God will stand by us, no matter what. He is faithful forever.

The second thing this passage teaches is that Yahweh is a loving God. Indeed, it is from God’s love that his faithfulness and grace to his people flows. He abides with us, because he loves us. Again, verse 23 brings this out:

O LORD, God of Israel, there is no God like you…keeping covenant and showing steadfast love…

The Hebrew word translated ‘steadfast love’ is ‘chesed’ and it’s a very rich word that occurs some 275 times in 27 out of the 39 books of the Old Testament. It is the word used to describe God’s covenant love. It means all of the following: a great, steadfast, unfailing, constant love, mercy, grace and lovingkindness. It the love that God has for his own people, his children and so it is a deep and special love, a love that is sure and steadfast, a love that sought us and saves us.

That’s the kind of God we know and worship, a God of love. In the New Testament, we even find the apostle John teaching that ‘God is love.’ Love is at the very centre of God’s being and personality. Love is the very reason God created the universe, the reason God is working to save the human race, and the reason why he will one day renew the whole universe at the end of the age.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life’ (John 3:16).

The challenge for us to somehow catch a glimpse of the greatness of God’s love. It is so great that to glimpse it, to recognise it, is like staring into a blinding light. It is dazzling and awesome and inspiring and life-changing.

The love of God is like a comforting presence with us all the time. No matter what we go through, we have this knowledge with us: God loves us and wants the best for us. And he’s in control of our lives, even when we’re not, even when bad things are happening to us. As Romans 8:28 says:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

That’s why we could sing earlier that he or she ‘who trusts in God unchanging love / builds on the rock that none can move.’

The third thing the passage tells us about God is that he is a speaking God. He is a God who communicates with us, a God who reveals himself to human beings. This truth is sprinkled throughout the passage in different verses.

Verse 24, ‘Who have kept with your servant David my father what you declared to him. You spoke with your mouth, and with your hand have fulfilled it this day.’

Verse 25, ‘Keep for your servant David my father what you have promised him, saying…’

Verse 26, ‘Now therefore, O God of Israel, let your word be confirmed, which you have spoken…’

As Christians we’re so used to this concept that we can almost take it for granted that God speaks to us. But consider all the pagan gods in the world, all the gods of wood, stone and metal that men worship. They are dumb idols. They do not speak. They do not communicate. Consider all the imaginary gods of other religions. People might think they are hearing from their god, but they aren’t because they are not real. There is only one god – Yahweh, the God of Israel.

So how does God speak to us? Well, I think we have to say that there are several different ways. God can speak to us in any way he chooses. Sometimes, he speaks to us by putting thoughts into our heads. Sometimes, he speaks to us through what other people say to us. Sometimes, he speaks to us through events, through things that happen in our lives. Sometimes, he even speaks to people in visions or dreams. But the most important and authoritative way God reveals himself is through his Word, through his written Word the Bible, and through the eternal Word, Jesus Christ himself. As Hebrews 1 says:

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.

The fact that God speaks to us, flows from the fact that he loves us, and leads on to the fact that he is faithful. Do you see what I mean? Because he cares about us, he wants to talk to us. He wants to tell us about himself. He wants to tell us the truth about himself, and about us and about life. He wants to warn us so we won’t make mistakes and do wrong things. He wants to promise us good things to come in order to encourage us. His words to us flow from his loving character. But they also form the basis of his faithfulness. God makes promises. He tells us how things are going to be. And God keeps his word. A promise from God is more certain than seeing something with our own eyes.

The fourth thing to note from the passage is that God is a listening God. It’s one thing to consider that the sovereign Lord of the universe might communicate with tiny little specks of humanity like us. After all, the 'great' sometimes communicate with ordinary people. Kings issue proclamations. Prime Ministers make speeches. Parliaments pass laws. Judges hand down judgements. These days, every famous person seems to write a blog or have a website to reach their fans. So it’s one thing to consider that God might speak to us.

But it’s simply astonishing that the creator of the universe might actually want to listen to us as well! Yet the passage tells us that it’s true. God listens to us. He hears our prayers and answers them. Solomon speaks to God in this passage and petitions him with requests in the belief that the Lord will hear and answer him. The very fact that he prays at all testifies to this, never mind praying in public before all the people.

Verse 28: ‘Have regard,’ he says (pay attention, listen to), ‘the prayer of your servant and to his plea, O LORD my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before you this day, that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house…Listen in heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.’

Does it sometimes feel as if we’re only talking to ourselves or to each other when we pray? Well it isn’t like that you know. God is listening and watching everything that happens in the world of course. There’s nothing he doesn’t know about. All our conversations are known to God. But our prayers are not heard in that way, like divine omniscient CCTV. Our prayers are heard in a special way because they are addressed to him.

Prayer is such a huge subject, I can’t go into it in much detail tonight, but taken together with the other things we know from this passage about God: that he loves us, that he speaks to us, and that he’s faithful to us and to what he’s promised, this should encourage us to pray. When we pray, we are not addressing some cold, remote deity. We are speaking to our heavenly Father, who loves us. God tells us in his Word that he wants us to pray to him and he wants to give us what we ask for in His name. So our prayers are neither falling on deaf ears, nor is he reluctant to give us what we ask for. There’s nothing he likes better. The only time God won’t give us what we ask is when it isn’t the best thing for us. And when we ask for something that isn’t the best for us, we are not really asking for it in his name, because his name is Yahweh, and that means that is the covenant God who always and only does good to his people.

Our fifth and final point is that the LORD is a mighty God. As a modern worship song puts it:

Our God is an awesome God,
He reigns from heaven above
with wisdom, power and love,
Our God is an awesome God.

Obviously that’s linked to the fact that God listens to us and wants us to pray. After all, what’s the point of asking God if he can do things in this world if lacks the power or ability to carry it out?

It’s not that the passage says that God is mighty in so many words in this passage, but it’s implicit in the whole passage that God is mighty and awesome. For one thing, Solomon speaks to God in the knowledge that he can carry out what is asked of him. After all, who but an almighty God can organise history so that promises to one king are kept years later after his death? Who but an almighty God can ensure that one of King David’s successors would rule on his throne forever? Solomon was a rich and powerful man, but he recognises that God is ‘way out of his league’. Even the great temple that they had constructed in Jerusalem was like a joke compared to God’s majesty and power. Solomon can scarcely believe that God would dwell in a building at all. ‘But will God indeed dwell on earth?’ he asks. ‘Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!’

God is so big that the vast expanse of space cannot hold him.

I was recently at the planetarium at Glasgow Science Centre. There you see how the night sky would look on a clear night in the dark, away from the city lights. There are hundreds of visible stars, and millions of stars in our own galaxy, the Milky Way. And the Milky Way is only one of millions of such galaxies in the universe. Millions of galaxies. Billions of stars. Possibly trillions of planets. And yet all that unimaginable expanse of outer space is not big enough to hold God. In fact He created it by his Word.

That means that God is powerful and mighty enough to deal with anything that happens in the whole of space. All the events on earth, all our lives, are just one infinitesimal part of the universe and God is more than able to answer our prayers to change things on earth.

The passage is all good news for us with five aspects of God to comfort us and lead us through this year: his faithfulness, his love, his Word, his listening ear and his might. There’s only one thing for us to do in response and that’s to have faith in this God. To believe in him and follow him in obedience. That’s what that little phrase at the end of verse 23 means where it talks about ‘your servants who walk before you with all their heart.’

God’s servants are people who have faith in him, and our calling is to walk with him with all our heart. In other words to be committed to him wholeheartedly is God wants from us.

So at the start of 2010, let’s re-dedicate ourselves to our God, because there’s no-one else like him. There’s no-one else who deserves our total commitment, because our covenant God is totally committed to us.

Christmas

Merry Christmas to all my readers. It's been a lovely white Christmas in Glasgow this year. And I've had a great day celebrating with my family. Winding down now and relaxing before another day of family visits tomorrow.

Austerity Christmas

Christmas might still only come ‘but once a year’ but it seems to last longer and longer as shops and other businesses start putting up decorations and Christmas trees around October, some even as early as September! I hear some people put up their Christmas trees so early nowadays that they have to dust them a couple of times before Christmas actually arrives!

The mood seems to be – if my limited perception of the retail market is anything to go by – that people are spending less this year. In the middle of a recession, that’s not surprising. It’s also probably no bad thing. The last thing we need as a society is to plunge ourselves into more unmanageable debt.

I recently heard the phrase ‘austerity gospel’ as a kind of biblical counterpart to the false ‘prosperity gospel’ that goes around. (The prosperity gospel is ‘believe in Jesus and God will bless you with money, possessions, good fortune of every kind’). That got me thinking about the differences between the glitzy Christmas the world pushes more and more each year and the true Christmas – the austerity Christmas of Bethlehem 2000 years ago.

As Christians, we celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christmas of course with joy and merriment. But that first Christmas was no fairy lights and roast turkey dinner affair. It was as austere as you can get. Strip away the images off the Christmas cards, the idyllic scene of a strangely sanitised warm and welcoming stable, and you are left with raw life.

An unmarried mother forced to make a hazardous journey because of an unpopular poll tax. The birth in a dirty room where animals were housed, with the smell of manure in the air. None of Mary’s female family and friends around to help her. The only people to come and celebrate the birth were shepherds – social outcasts in their society. The wise men (astrologers most likely) come from far distant lands much later to see the child and would have been viewed with deep suspicion by religious Jews. Then the family are forced to become asylum seekers in Egypt, fleeing from the ruthless troops of King Herod. As John wrote in his gospel, ‘He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.’ (John 1:10-11). Those verses are about as austere as anything in the Bible.

The true ‘magic’ of Christmas is that it’s precisely in that way, to that reception, with a mission to save the world that had no time for him, that God’s Son came to earth. And out of those events, Jesus Christ fulfilled his role as God's anointed King and Saviour, all the way to Calvary – to the final rejection and through the mysteries of God's will – to his destiny of victory and triumph, for our good and his Father's glory.

As Paul wrote: ‘For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.’ (2 Corinthians 8:9)

Such is the grace and love of God: he made his own Son nothing that we might have everything.

The King of God's Kingdom

The King of God's Kingdom
by David Seccombe
Paternoster Press

David Seccombe's The King of God's Kingdom is a massive tome of over 600 pages, but it was so easy and enjoyable to read that it seemed shorter.

The book's subtitle is "A Solution to the Puzzle of Jesus". Seccombe identifies the "puzzle" in a series of questions at the beginning of the book. Essentially it is what is the relationship between the Jesus of the gospels and his teaching and the Christianity of his followers, the Christ of the letters, and the apostles' teaching. Or to put it another way, how does Jesus' gospel of the Kingdom of God with its historical, social and political implications fit in (if it does) with the apostles' gospel of new birth, salvation by faith, justification and so forth.

Seccombe's solution is not a radical one, but an evangelical one. His conclusion is that Jesus established the Kingdom of God by defeating the powers of this world including sin, death and Satan, but left it to his followers to extend the Kingdom to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). He writes (pp. 601-02):

As surely as the backbone of Satan's power was destroyed, God's kingdom was established in the world and the way was clear for men and women of all nations to be drawn to the fellowship of the crucified but victorious King-Messiah. The task of gathering the new age community Jesus gave to his followers. Having defeated the central rebellious power, he sent them out into lands which were still very much in the power of evil - much as a victorious general might divide his forces, sending them into the far reaches of a newly conquered land to declare his victory, offer amnesty, and a place in the new order to all who would lay down their arms and surrender their allegiance to the king.

The book reads in part like a harmony of the gospels, but it is much more than this. It's main concern is to show how what Jesus did during his life is connected with his life's work (including his death and resurrection) of establishing God's Kingdom on earth.

My only real criticism is that because the author has one foot in the camp of the academy and one foot in the camp of the community of faith, he sometimes overstresses the fact that many scholars do not take the gospel accounts of miracles and even Jesus' teachings at face value. Time after time, he announces that many do not accept this or that before then giving for the most part fairly standard conservative reasons why we should, in the end, accept what the gospels say. This was a weakness. Perhaps he could have dealt with this issue in a preliminary chapter or an appendix.

Despite this, I really enjoyed reading this book and would warmly recommend it.

God's Pattern for Creation

God's Pattern for Creation
by W Robert Godfrey
P & R Publishing

This is a short but interesting book on creation as taught in Genesis One written by the president of Westminster Seminary California. It is obvious in every line that Professor Godfrey has a deep love for God and for his Word.

The book is subtitled, "A Covenantal Reading of Genesis 1" and this is very apt. Godfrey does not interpret Genesis One in a literal, 24-hour day manner, and points out that Genesis was not written to answer questions of interest to modern science, but to teach God's covenant people that it was their God who made the universe. That's not to say Genesis has nothing to do with scientific truth, but it is certainly not the prime focus of the text. Genesis One teaches the truth, but its emphasis is on theological truth. Godfrey maintains that unless we see that Genesis One was written for God's covenant people, we will miss out on much of the impact and emphasis that is in the Genesis text.

The main points that Godfrey then focuses on - in the belief they are the main focuses of the text itself - are (1) that human beings are God's image bearers and have been given a unique role within God's creation, (2) Genesis 1 presents God's days of creation as a pattern for our week of work and rest and (3) the Sabbath day of rest is a creation ordinance instituted by God for all human beings.

Godfrey's view of the days of creation is similar to the framework hypothesis of Meredith Kline and others, but is not identical. Godfrey does not necessarily accept the two-triad view of the days of Genesis 1 - in fact he criticises it. He does, however, share the framework view's non-literal interpretation of the days. Godfrey puts forward an alternative "framework" view. He points out that in Genesis 1:2 there are three events or problems that God finds solutions for through his creation. These are: the darkness, the disorder and the emptiness. God's work on each of the following days sorts these "problems" out. He creates light, he orders things and he fills the universe with life. Each of these tasks takes longer to complete - one day for light, two days for order, three days for filling the emptiness of the universe, concluding with the creation of human beings.

I thought this was an interesting way of looking at the text and I will probably have to re-read this short book to consider this interpretation further.

In summary, this is a simple text designed, like Genesis itself, to be read by everyone in the Church. It gives a good overview of a non-24-hour day interpretation consistent with an old earth.

I thoroughly recommend it.

The Way of Holiness

This is the text of a sermon preached at the evening service on 29 November 2009 on Isaiah 35:1-10.

I have a confession to make. I’m what’s affectionately known as a ‘Trekkie’ – I love Star Trek. I’m a moderate Trekkie though – I don’t actually dress up as Captain Kirk or Mister Spock, though when I was younger, I did own a set of Spock ears. But I do love Star Trek. In the second Star Trek film, The Wrath of Khan, there’s this thing called the Genesis Device. It’s like a torpedo that is fired from space onto a barren and lifeless planet or moon. And as soon as it hits, the surface of that planet is transformed: seas appear, an atmosphere and clouds, dry land, plants and trees. The place is transformed in a few minutes from a lifeless desert into a paradise capable of supporting all kinds of life.

That’s the kind of picture that came to my mind as I was reflecting on this passage in Isaiah 35.

There’s a very close relationship between the land of Israel and the people of Israel in the Old Testament. It persists to this day in the minds of the Jewish people. That’s one reason there’s so much political turmoil in Palestine, because of disputes about who owns the land.

In the chapter preceding this one, Isaiah has spoken of the LORD bringing desolation to the land of Edom, destroying the whole earth in judgment actually. He talks about the sky being rolled up like a scroll and the sun and moon turning to dust. He talks about God’s sword coming down from heaven and slaying so many people that the sword is covered with fat and blood. He talks about the land becoming barren. Isaiah 34:9-10 – ‘The rivers of Edom will turn into tar, and the soil will turn into sulphur. The whole country will burn like tar. It will burn day and night, and smoke will rise from it forever. The land will lie waste age after age, and no one will ever travel through it again.’

It’s against that dark background that the scenes pictured in Isaiah 35 are shown up in all their brilliant colours. There are three things I’d like us to look at tonight:

• The physical changes that take place in the land
• The changes that happen to the people
• The road of holiness

And then to finish, we’ll have a think about what these things mean for us here today, especially as we enter advent and look forward to Christmas.

So, let’s look at these three things in turn.

The first thing for us to notice is the physical change that takes place in the land. Verse 1: ‘The desert will rejoice, and flowers will bloom in the wilderness.’ Or more literally, in the NIV: ‘The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom, Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom.’

Isaiah has left his readers picturing a world of smoke and tar and destruction. Now, there’s a change. The empty and lifeless land comes back to life. Plants grow again. The desert becomes as fertile and green as the fields of Carmel and Sharon (verse 2). Carmel and Sharon were well-known as two of the most fertile areas of Israel, where many valuable crops could be grown.

The same images are carried forward into verse 7 – ‘The burning sand will become a lake, and dry land will be filled with springs. Where jackals used to live, marsh grass and reeds will grow.’

We live in a wet climate, so we tend to moan about rain and look forward to dry sunny weather. But in hot arid countries like Israel, it’s the opposite. There rain, rivers, lakes are prized as blessings from God. That’s the key to understanding these verses. The change in the land from desert to garden symbolises God’s blessing the land, and God blessing the land is a sign for God blessing his people who live in the land.

Isaiah 35 harks back I think to Genesis 2, before sin entered the world, where human beings and God lived in peaceful harmony and happiness (reading from Genesis 2):

When the LORD God made the universe, there were no plants on the earth and no seeds had sprouted, because he had not sent any rain, and there was no one to cultivate the land; but water would come up from beneath the surface and water the ground...Then the LORD planted a garden in Eden, in the East, and there he put the man he had formed. He made all kinds of beautiful trees grow there and produce good fruit...A stream flowed in Eden and watered the garden.

These verses are a picture of a renewed and restored earth. They look forward to the new heavens and earth that the Bible promises will come at the end of time.
Human influence on the earth results in fertile land being turned into desert. It takes the work of God to make a desert become a fertile paradise.

The whole thing is a picture of a new age dawning, when the earth will be radically different from it is now. It is a time when the curse that came upon the earth as a result of Adam’s sin is reversed, and the previous paradise garden of Eden is restored – indeed, a greater paradise than Eden is created. For then it was but a garden in one place on earth; in the future, the whole earth will be a garden paradise where God and his people live together.

But, it’s not just the land being changed that is described in this passage. The second thing to notice is the change that is effected among the people.

Look at the end of verse 2: ‘Everyone will see the Lord’s splendour, see his greatness and power.’

Today, in fact all through human history, it’s only been a minority of people who have recognised God’s glory, his greatness and his power. Many don’t see him at all. Some don’t think he even exists. But at the time Isaiah foresees, everyone will see God’s glory or splendour. Everyone.

Next, Isaiah recognises that in this life, we can get tired; we can feel a bit down, we can feel worn out. But at the time when the world will be transformed and everyone will come to see the glory of the Lord, people will be changed. Verses 5 and 6 portray this in terms of miraculous healings: the blind will see, the deaf hear and the lame will leap and dance. People’s bodies will be restored to full health.

Isaiah calls on his readers to look forward to that time that will come and in thinking about how things will one day be, draw strength and encouragement for the here and now.

The third thing to notice in the passage is what the Good News Bible calls ‘The Road of Holiness’ in verse 8. Most other translations call this, ‘the Way of Holiness.’ This road is called a highway. And the picture is literally of a high-way. A raised road across the land, something like a railway embankment, with a road running along the top of it.

And notice what is said about that road: Sinners are not allowed to walk on it, but those who the Lord has rescued, or more accurately, the redeemed of the Lord, are allowed to walk on it. And note also in verse 9 that although there are dangerous animals in the land, like lions, they cannot harm those who walk on the highway because it is raised high and they can’t get up on it. The third thing to notice is where this highway goes. Verse 10 – it is a road to Jerusalem, or more literally, it is the road to Zion. In other words, this road leads the holy city where the covenant God dwells in his temple and meets his people.

So what is being said here? What does all this mean? And what does all this mean for us?

Well, the key to the incredible changes to the world and to people described here is in verse 4. Verse 4 explains what it is that leads to all this happening. In the Good News Bible it says: ‘God is coming to your rescue, coming to punish your enemies.’ In the NIV it reads, ‘Your God will come, he will come with vengeance, with divine retribution he will come to save you.’

The commentaries on Isaiah tell us that the Hebrew in this verse conveys the meaning that not only that God will come to save you, but that God himself will come to save you. And that’s emphasised strongly here.

Notice the two-fold promise of this verse. God will come to save his people and to punish their enemies. The message is one of comfort – you will be okay, God is telling his people. I will look after you, he tells them. But the message is also one of hope – that justice will come and will prevail. Those who have despised and persecuted God’s people will face God’s own vengeance. As Paul wrote in Romans 12: ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’

But although judgement, in the sense of justice being done, is part of this great visitation of God upon the earth, the emphasis is not on judgment here, but on God’s blessings poured out on his people and on the whole earth.

As the years passed, God’s people began to see in this passage that God was promising to come to earth himself to save his people. And they also began to recognise that the road or way that Isaiah spoke about was a symbol referring to God’s Saviour-King, the Messiah.

I think this view is confirmed by Jesus’ own words in John’s Gospel. ‘I am the Way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,’ Jesus said. ‘I am the Way.’ The Greek word is hodos. Literally, Jesus is saying ‘I am the road.’ And it is interesting that the Greek word hodos used in John 14:6 is the same word used in the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, here in Isaiah 35 for the road of holiness.

As we enter the season of advent, and look forward to celebrating the birth of Jesus at Christmas, let us remember that he is indeed the way of holiness. He himself is the road we are to follow. And that road leads to Zion – to God’s own city, and to God’s presence in heavenly city – the New Jerusalem.

But there’s a problem here, isn’t there? After all, if Isaiah 35:8-10 is looking forward to Christ. If Christ is ‘way of holiness’ talked about here – if he is the way that protects us from wild animals and lions (remember the devil is pictured as a lion in the Bible), then how come the other parts of Isaiah 35 haven’t happened? How come there are still deserts? How come there are still droughts? How come there are still people who are blind, deaf and disabled?

Well, the first thing to say is that there is no doubt in my mind that Christ himself is the way mentioned here in Isaiah 35. We have not only Christ’s own ‘I am the way’ words in John 14, but we also have the book of Hebrews that quite obviously draws on this image in Isaiah 35 of a safe road for God’s redeemed people to travel on to Zion. In Hebrews 10:19-20 it says: ‘We have, then, my brothers and sisters, complete freedom to go into the Most Holy Place,’ (that is the place where God dwells in the temple in the city of Zion), ‘by means of the death of Jesus. He opened for us a new way, a living way, through the curtain – that is, through his own body.’

No, for me there’s no doubt that the road mentioned in Isaiah 35 is looking forward to the Messiah and represents the Messiah.

So, if that’s true, what about the restored land, and the end of human suffering? Why hasn’t that part of the prophecy happened too?

The answer lies in a very important principle that will help us to understand the prophecies of the Old Testament, and it’s this: many prophecies have a three-fold fulfilment at different times of human history.

The first fulfilment refers to events at the time when the prophecy was first written. At that point, the imagery of a desert coming into bloom was interpreted symbolically. The desert was a moral desert where Israel was disobeying God. The blossom in abundance a symbol of a people restored to God and living for him.

The second level of fulfilment takes place when the Messiah comes and refers to the life and work of Jesus Christ.

The third and final level of fulfilment takes place, because of the second, at the end of time when the Messiah will come again to end this world and begin a new heaven and earth.

In effect, the road to Zion that is Christ has come, and God’s redeemed people, sinners saved by grace, travel on it, into God’s holy city. The paradise that is described has started to arrive, but has not come fully yet. This again is an important key to understanding the Bible. There is a tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’ for many of the Bible’s ideas and promises. Christ the living way of holiness has come already. God’s promised King has come. We celebrate his birth two thousand years ago each Christmas. Christ the King has come and his Kingdom has begun also. Christ did make the blind see, the deaf hear, and the lame walk. Indeed, he mentioned those things as evidence that he was the Messiah when John the Baptist asked him if he was the One. All that has happened already, but there is also a ‘not yet’ part of Christ’s kingdom. Still to come is the renewal of the universe, the final removal of evil and suffering from the universe, and the beginning of a new eternity of blessedness with God’s people living directly in God’s own presence, perfect and glorious, forever and ever.

The new age, the age of Christ’s Kingdom has already started to grow, but has not yet reached its zenith. Isn’t that the point of Christ’s parables, such as the parable of the mustard seed. The Kingdom grows from a tiny beginning until it fills the whole universe.

So, to finish off, we need to ask ourselves, what does this passage mean for us, who live in this in-between ‘already come but not yet complete’ period of history, this gospel age? And what does this prophecy mean for us? What can we learn from it?

The first thing is that we should be encouraged. Many of us are like the people mentioned in this passage. We are tired. Our knees tremble with weakness sometimes. It would be quite accurate to translate verse 3 as ‘Give strength to hands that are tired and to people with wobbly legs.’ We get scared and discouraged. To us, God says: ‘Be strong, and don’t be afraid!’ He doesn’t call us to find strength from within ourselves, but to draw strength from God himself.

Secondly, we should also be filled with hope. This new world that Isaiah and the whole Bible look forward to is not some vague dream of a few religious nutcases. It is a sure and certain hope. We know this because Christ has been raised from death. The resurrection proves that the new world is coming, and Christ is the first of us to have entered it. But he won’t be the only one. The Bible says he is merely the ‘firstborn of many brothers and sisters.’

Lastly, we should live our lives here with an awareness that we are part of God’s great plan to re-create the universe and dwell on earth with a new humanity of his own making. We are that new humanity, that new people, whom God has chosen to inhabit the new age to come. And Christmas was the beginning of the last stage of putting that plan into action.

Isaiah promised that God himself would come. The New Testament confirms that Jesus Christ is Immanuel, God with us, and he is the way, the road we travel on by faith.

The great Baptist preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, wrote:

Engineering has done much to tunnel mountains, and bridge abysses; but the greatest triumph of engineering is that which made a way from sin to holiness, from death to life, from condemnation to perfection. Who could make a road over the mountains of our iniquities but Almighty God? None but the Lord of love would have wished it; none but the God of wisdom could have devised it; none but the God of power could have carried it out.

This is our God. This is our great Saviour King, Jesus. His kingdom stands and grows forever and in his gospel he calls us all to turn from other paths to take his narrow way, the road of holiness that takes us safely through life and into God’s presence in Zion, where we will, truly, live long and prosper.

The Challenge of Change

The following appeared as the editorial in our parish magazine for September.

There’s an old hymn that starts with the words, “Through all the changing scenes of life…”. It’s a good hymn, and those words sum up for me something of the essence of life – change. Everything changes, moment by moment, day by day, year by year. And it happens whether we like it or not. Like the change from summer to autumn, it’s just the way things are. We get older, people we know change, or move on; we change jobs, we retire, we have children or our children grow up and leave home. Change is all around us and it is constant. And yet, how many of us expect the church to stand still and never change? How many times is the remark ‘but we’ve always done it that way’ used as if it’s the last word, the one argument that cannot be countered?

Of course, the church is in a strange and unique position. In a sense the church shouldn’t change. It shouldn’t change in what it stands for, what it believes. It shouldn’t change because God does not change and Christ does not change. He is, as Hebrews puts it, the same, yesterday, today and forever. The church stands for eternal, unchanging principles like truth, faith, love and peace. It cannot and must not blow with the wind, defining right and wrong by whatever happens to be fashionable in the media this year. There is a difference between right and wrong, between truth and falsehood, between good and evil.

But the fact the church is supposed to stand firm for God’s truth does not mean it can afford to stand still and never change how it does things, in how it communicates those truths in relevant ways. Sometimes we do need to change how we do things.

Now, a lot of people hate change. It makes them feel uncomfortable. It makes something that was easy into something that feels different and scary. I know what that’s like, because my first reaction to change is exactly like that. I know a new shirt doesn’t feel comfortable at first, and I’d rather keep using the old one. Yet at some point, the old one is just not up to the job and has to go in the bin. If we are committed to serving God, then sometimes that means doing things that make us uncomfortable at first. We’ll get used to them in time, and even forget they once were new.

Imagine how different the Bible’s story would have run had Abraham simply refused to give up the familiar, easy life he had in Ur, when God told the then 80-year old Abram to get up and leave everything he knew and go into the unknown like a travelling Bedouin. Imagine if Moses refused to go back to Egypt when God told him to do that. Imagine if Jesus had turned his back on the ministry the Father called him to, because he preferred the quiet life as a carpenter in Nazareth!

Sometimes, we have to do difficult things. Things we’d just rather not. Sometimes that’s the only way God’s will can be accomplished. I feel very much that we are at a crossroads as a church. Perhaps we are every year when things start up after the summer break. Are we going to carry on just as we have for the past five, ten or twenty years? Or is God calling us to something new? I don’t know what that might be for you. I wonder what it might be for me. Let’s listen for God’s voice, and do what he tells us. It might just surprise us, like it must have shocked Abraham and Moses in their day, just how much God can then accomplish through us.

The Persistent Widow and the Unjust Judge

The following sermon was recently preached at our morning service in a series on the Parables of Jesus.

Imagine a scene. You’ve got to phone up a big company to make a complaint. It could be about your electric, or your gas, or your phone bill. Or it could be about some bank charges that you just can’t make head nor tail out of. So you get out the bill or the letter, and you phone the number on it. You get yourself all geared up don’t you? You think over what you want to say. You get your story ready. And your call gets answered, and an automated voice says if you want this, press 1, if you want that press 2, and if you want something else press 3, and you try to work out where your call fits into their scheme and then you press 3 and another automated voice tells you you’re in a queue, and then finally, at long last, you get to speak to a person, and 9 times out of 10 they’re in India and they can’t understand you, and you’re getting nowhere, and you can feel your temper rising, and finally you just hang up (or as happened to me once – they hang up on you!) and you decide either to just pay the bill to get some peace, or accept the substandard service you’ve received. Anything for a quiet life. It’s just not worth all the hassle.

Does any of that strike a chord with you? Have you ever tried to get something you want and felt you were getting nowhere? Have you ever felt that there’s a wall of bureaucracy that it is impossible to get past?

Well if you have, you’ll understand the parable of the widow and the judge that we’re looking at today.

You’ll identify with the poor widow in the story, and you’ll sympathise with her overriding sense of frustration that she can’t get her complaint dealt with – she can’t get justice from the system.

Picture if you will the court room scene Jesus paints for us in this story. This is a civil case. A poor widow comes to the court to ask for justice against her adversary. Someone has wronged her. We don’t know if someone’s committed a crime against her, or cheated her out of money, or ignored her rights. But something’s been done against her, and she seeks justice from the court to get it sorted out. And she comes up against the wrong kind of judge, an unjust and corrupt Judge.

The position of a judge in Bible times was in many ways similar to that of judges today. Judges were people who were supposed to command respect. Then, like now, they wielded enormous power over other people’s lives, and of course then, like now, people would look to judges to give them justice and punish evildoers. The judge was supposed to be person of wisdom and righteousness, someone to look up to.

But the judge is this parable is anything but a shining example of justice and righteousness. In fact he is a disgrace. Jesus sums up his character. “He neither feared God, nor respected man.” In other words, he wasn’t interested in doing what God’s law said. He wasn’t interested in doing the right thing. And he wasn’t interested in helping people, or sorting out their problems either. He was in it for himself. Jesus says he was a “corrupt” or “unjust” judge. I don’t think it’s going to far to say “corrupt” probably means this judge could be bought, and he was a man for whom justice had a price-tag. If you could come up with a bribe, a backhander, he would see you all right in court.

That’s the judge in the story. The other character is a poor widow.

When Jesus first told this story, everyone would have realised the signifance of the fact that the woman is a widow. In Bible times, there was no social security, and most jobs were not open to women. So a widow whose husband did not leave enough for her to live on, or who did not have other family to take care of her would be in dire straits financially. Widows were among the most vulnerable of people in Jewish society. That’s why time and time again in the Old Testament special provisions are made, and God’s people, especially the rich, are commanded to look after the needs of widows and orphans, the poor and the fatherless.

But although this was what God demanded, the fact was that a poor widow would not rate much attention from the rich and powerful people who ran her world. A poor widow was a drain on society and didn’t carry much clout.

We don’t know for sure, but I think it’s suggested in the parable that this widow was poor and destitute not so much because her husband didn’t provide for her, but because someone has robbed or swindled her out of property or money. And so she goes to the lawcourt to ask for justice and possibly to recover what she has lost.

But this judge has no time for her. You see, for a corrupt judge, a poor widow really was useless because he knew she wouldn’t have enough money to bribe him into deciding the case in her favour.

The only weapon she has at her disposal is persistence. She keeps on asking him, she harps on at him, she nags him, and pesters him, until finally he gets fed up and gives her what she asks for, not because it’s justice, or because he feels compassion for her, but simply to get rid of her. She’s become a pain in the neck, and his attitude is finally “Oh anything for a quiet life...”

It rings true doesn’t it? We know that keeping on at officials, ‘making their life hell’ to get what we want, isn’t that how we sometimes put it – the constant letters or phone calls in the end usually achieve results. In the end it did for the widow in the story.

It’s a pretty straightforward story. The question is, why did Jesus tell it? What point was he trying to make from it?

We might have expected Jesus at the end of the story to praise the widow for her persistence and condemn the judge as the lesson of the parable, but Jesus was a master story teller. And like all good story tellers, he delivers a twist in the story. Rather than focusing on the widow’s actions, which we might have expected, he actually focuses his attention on the judge, not to condemn him so much as to use him to tell us what God is like.

Now wait a minute, you might be thinking. How can a corrupt, dishonest, sinful judge teach us about God? It is an audacious story. Perhaps no-one but God the Son would dare make the comparison, but Jesus does exactly that. Jesus uses the bad things done by a bad man – in this case an unjust and corrupt judge – to show up the goodness of a good and righteous God.

Many of Jesus’ parables were stories designed to show what God is like. The most famous might be the picture Jesus gives us of a loving Father seeking his lost son in the parable of the Prodigal Son. But this story is different. Here Jesus does the opposite. He contrasts what God is like with what this corrupt judge was like. It’s similar in tone to what Jesus says in Luke 11:

Would any of you who are fathers give your son a snake when he asks for fish? Or would you give him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? As bad as you are, you know how to give good things to your children. How much more, then, will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!

You see? In both cases a comparison is being made. In a nutshell, Jesus is saying here, if even a corrupt judge could be talked into doing the right thing by a widow’s persistence, how much more can you be sure your heavenly Father, who loves you and delights in you as his children, will hear and readily answer your prayers to him. God doesn’t have to be nagged into blessing us. He longs to bless us. He is ready, willing and able to hear the prayers, the cries of his chosen ones, his own dear children. That is the lesson Jesus wants us to grasp in this passage. He’s not saying God is like this judge, he’s saying if even this disgrace of a judge will do what someone asks him, how much more will God, the gracious judge and provider, give us what we ask of him.

So the key to this parable is this contrast between the judge and God.

The Puritan, Matthew Henry, used this passage to contrast the many differences between the widow and the judge on the one hand, and God’s people and God on the other hand. He wrote:

She was a stranger to the judge, where we are known completely by our heavenly Father.

She was alone, where we are many – God’s own family.

She was kept at a distance by the judge, where we are welcomed into the very presence of God.

She came to an unjust judge, where we come to a righteous Father.

She had no-one to speak for her, where we have Christ Jesus himself pleading our cause before God.

She got no encouragement from the judge, where we have God’s own promises that he will hear our prayers and give us whatever we ask for in his name.

She could only go to the judge at certain times, where we can cry out to God anytime, day or night.

She had to rely on nagging the judge into giving her justice, where we know it is God’s delight to hear our prayers.

How much more then should be willing to persevere in prayer, to “pray without ceasing” as the apostle Paul puts it?

So, all this leads us to ask a natural question. What’s all this got to do with us today? Well, we’re fortunate because Jesus explains the purpose for this parable himself. So we know what he meant to teach with this story. As verse 1 puts it, it was to teach his hearers and us Luke’s readers, that we should “always pray and never become discouraged”.

All summer, I’ve been fighting an ongoing battle of wills with a spider who has taken up residence in the casing of the wing mirror on my car. Each time I get into the car, there’s a spiders web constructed between the mirror and the door or the window. Each time I get a cloth and clean the cobweb away. (There’s never any sign of the spider by the way). The next day, a new web is built in its place. Never fails. I suppose a bit like Robert the Bruce and his encounter with a spider, when I think of that spider, I the word that comes to mind is perseverence. It never gives up in its task.

That’s what we’re called to be like in our prayer lives. People who never give up. Who keep on coming back to God in prayer, every day, no matter what we go through. Sometimes the spider’s web is large and elaborate. Sometimes, it’s smaller and tighter. That’s what our prayers will be like sometimes. Some days longer, more complicated, other days, short and sweet, sometimes not in words at all, just inner thoughts too happy or sad for words. But present and persistent nevertheless.

Just before this parable, Jesus was asked when the kingdom of God would come. And Jesus gave a startling answer. The Kingdom of God is here he said, it is among you. That’s because the Kingdom of God exists wherever people like you and me believe in Christ and follow his teachings. In other words, Jesus said that the Kingdom of God was not some far future event that they would have to wait for. The Kingdom of God was already there in the hearts and lives of ordinary people who followed Jesus. The Kingdom of God is here and now!

It has already started, and yes it will grow and grow until it reaches its eternal fulness and glory, but it has been growing ever since the very beginning of history when God promised Adam and Eve that one of her offspring would crush Satan’s head and destroy him. The kingdom entered a new, decisive and final phase when God himself came to earth to rescue humanity from itself through his Son, Jesus Christ. And the kingdom will come fully and culminate when Jesus Christ comes again to earth in glory and triumph to bring about a new heaven and a new earth. That’s the future, but the change in the world has already began. It happens every time someone becomes a Christian. And yet, he is real with them. His followers will still have problems during this life until he comes again to complete the Kingdom project and make all things new, all things joyous, all things loving, all things perfect, forever. In fact, it’s in the knowledge of what is to come in the future, and what Christ has already achieved for us in the past – in the cross and the resurrection – that he encourages us to face the present. Life here and now. To live as his people, remaining faithful and never giving up, resolutely going forward with him as people of prayer.

I think that helps us understand what might otherwise seem like a curious last line to the story. In verse 8, Jesus ends the story with a cryptic question, “But will the Son of Man find faith when he comes?”

It’s really Jesus answer to the Pharisees question in chapter before this one: “when will the Kingdom of God come?” they asked him. Jesus’ answer is, don’t get caught up in when it will be. Instead, make your focus on whether or not you are prepared for it, are living for it and are praying for it. If he were to come now, would he find you or me faithful? That’s the question we all have to consider, and each must give our own answer to him.

For Jesus there is an inseparable connection between faith and prayer. By faith we enter into the Kingdom of God, by prayer we ask God to make that Kingdom grow. Isn’t that what we pray each week here? “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven”?

Jesus calls us to be people who pray. Who pray expecting God to answer. Who pray expecting our prayers to change the world. And we should be persistent in our prayers, just like the widow in the story. Not because we think that we can talk God into doing what we want, but because persistent prayer is simply one of the ways, maybe even the most important way, that God uses to change things. Because persistence in prayer is evidence of a living faith in our hearts. For Jesus faith results in prayer, and prayer shows faith.

But will Christ find us faithful? Will Christ find us praying? Are we ready to put prayer at the top of our priorities? Or is prayer something we pay lip service to in church and then let others get on with. Is prayer important to you? After all it’s simply talking with God. Is talking with God something that matters to you?

Enthroned in heaven Jesus hears our prayers and knows he has a faithful people still here on earth. When he returns, where he hears prayer, there he will find faith on the earth.

Essential Truths of the Christian Faith

Essential Truths of the Christian Faith
by R. C. Sproul
Tyndale House Publishers

This is an excellent introduction to the Christian Faith written from a strong evangelical, Reformed perspective.

In around 300 pages, R. C. Sproul covers all the major doctrines of the Christian Faith. The book is divided into 10 sections covering:

• Revelation
• The Nature and Attributes of God
• The Works and Decrees of God
• Jesus Christ
  
• The Holy Spirit
• Human Beings and the Fall
  
• Salvation
• The Church and the Sacraments
• Spirituality and Living in this Age
• End Times

Needless to say such a scope of subject matter - just over 100 doctrines are covered in total - necessitates that each subject is only dealt with in a rudimentary way. Each chapter is only two to four pages long.

This book was a whirlwind refresher for me and contained little titbits here and there that were new, but for a new Christian or teenager wanting to seriously increase his or her knowledge of Christian theology, this book - or something very like it - could be very useful.

I liked Sproul's view that the idea that hell is "separation from God" was totally wrong and misleading (to give just one titbit that has stayed with me). For the unbeliever, the idea of separation from God is no punishment. It is how he or she has lived their life; it is how they hope the universe is (no God). Sproul points out that on the contrary hell is very much in the presence of God, but it is God's very present justice and wrath that the wicked will experience eternally. I hadn't heard it put quite that way before.

I disagree with Sproul on a few things, and would have preferred different explanations of some of the doctrines. A better "further reading" list would also be useful in a volume such as this. But these are minor quibbles. All-in-all this book is really good. But don't take my word for it. You can read it online here for free!