Looking Back, Looking Forward

This article was the editorial in our parish magaazine for December 2008.

It’s now been ten years since I became the editor of the magazine in 1998 and during that time there's been so many different things that have happened to us as a congregation, so many hopes and fears that have come and gone, so many subjects that I've tried to tackle in these little editorials. Always my aim has been to challenge our readers to think and to try to build them up in the Christian faith.

I look back on these ten years with a lot of affection and satisfaction if I'm honest. I am also aware that I am far from being the only person who could say this of their work in our congregation. There are many people who could do the same: who could look back over ten, twenty, thirty, in some cases fifty or sixty years of service in Bridgeton St Francis-in-the-East. And they could also look back with affection and a lot of satisfaction. Sometimes, it’s no bad thing to do that.

We always have to strike a balance between taking enough satisfaction in our work that we are encouraged to go on with it and keep on labouring for Christ, in what can sometimes be a difficult and unappreciative world; and on the other hand, we have to make sure we are not getting so proud of ourselves that we take our eyes off Jesus and pride in ourselves.

This year has been the most significant year in my time as magazine editor. Not only in my personal life, but also in the church's life, I feel 2008 has been a significant year. We are beginning, as a congregation, to look at how we need to do things differently in the future, how we might need to change, in order to have a future as a congregation at all.

I know that by nature I am not particularly comfortable with change, with doing things in new ways. That takes me out of my comfort zone. So when someone like me realises that we need to change, I am convinced that is the Holy Spirit at work - because embracing change does not come naturally to me at all.

You know what the Bible says about God sometimes really makes us have to think hard. On the one hand, the Bible teaches that God does not change. In James 1:17 it says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” He can be relied on, because he never changes - he is always truthful, faithful, loving and so forth. But on the other hand, the Bible also teaches that God does "new things". In Isaiah 43:19 – “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”

As we come up to Christmas, aren't we glad that the unchangeable God does do new things? Though promised for centuries to his people Israel, it wasn't until that first Christmas, that God did a new thing and sent his Son, his chosen Redeemer King, the Messiah to come to earth to save us. The true meaning of Christmas is that has come to us – has become a human being in Jesus, and has come to save us.

In 2009, I pray that we will rely on God who does not change and also look to him to do new and exciting things with us and through us. I know that 2009 is going to see big changes for me personally as I get married in January. But I also pray that it will be a year in which we as a congregation embrace and celebrate change and welcome the opportunity to do things differently and to grow in maturity, spirituality and in numbers.

I also pray that if you do not know him already, that this Christmas will be a time of God doing new things in your life and that you will come to accept that the baby born in Bethlehem is indeed “your Saviour…Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10).

Jesus is Lord

The following was a series of Bible readings and reflections at the evening service on 7 September 2008.

First Reading: Luke 2:8-16

We probably read this passage every year at Christmas, but probably don’t think much about Jesus’ birth at other times of year. That’s a pity really, because the fact that Jesus came to earth, born as a human being, is something we should celebrate all year round. The verse I want us to focus on tonight is verse 11: “This very day in David's town your Saviour was born—Christ the Lord!”

He was Christ the Lord from his birth. Even as a baby lying in that manger, he was King of kings and Lord of lords. The wise men knew that Jesus’ birth was the birth of a king. After all when they travelled from the east and arrived in Palestine they went to Herod’s palace in Jerusalem and asked “Where is the baby born to be the king of the Jews? We saw his star when it came up in the east, and we have come to worship him.” (Matthew 2:2)

They may have originally been seeking the birth of a "just another" royal baby. But the message of the angels to the shepherds recorded by Luke means more than this. By telling them that the birth is of “your Saviour, Christ the Lord” this means not only that the people’s Saviour has come and he is God’s long promised anointed King, the Messiah, but he is the Lord. I believe that by calling him “Christ the Lord” the angels were saying that this baby is God, the LORD, of the Old Testament, now come to earth in flesh and blood.

You probably know that wherever the covenant name of God, Yahweh, appeared in the Old Testament, the Jews would not pronounce it, but substituted the word “Adonai” which means “Lord” each time the name “Yahweh” appears. When the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek, the Septuagint used the Greek word “Kurios” which also means “Lord”. And this is also what you find in most English translations of the Old Testament. So we usually have “The LORD is my shepherd” rather than “Yahweh is my shepherd”. Anyway, the point is that when Luke wrote his gospel in Greek, he was well aware of the Greek Old Testament, and when he wrote: “Your Saviour is born, Christ the Kurios” – Christ the Lord – I believe he was saying that “the LORD” – Yahweh, the God of Israel – was born in Bethlehem.

That is what the apostles taught about this child when he grew up. That is what they believed and confessed before men. That this king – who lived as a humble carpenter’s son and became an itinerant rabbi – was no less than God, the Creator and ruler of the universe.

But they also taught that he was born as a servant – one who came to help and look after the needs of others. That is part of the glory and strangeness of the Christian gospel.

Jesus is Lord – Yahweh born on earth as a human baby, but born as a Servant to help people.

Second Reading: Matthew 27:11-14, 27-31

The King grew up, lived the life God called him to live as a teacher, a healer, a prophet, a royal Son obedient to his Father. But then it all seems to go wrong, doesn’t it? His words and actions challenge the religious leaders of Israel. His message of truth and love, salvation by grace through faith, and living a peaceful life of love and caring for others is radical and challenging to the hypocrisy and legalism of the religious leaders. So, the king is rejected by the people who should be loyal to him. He is put on trial by officials of an earthly empire with blasphemous emperors as its head who claimed to be gods. And he is put to death for crimes he did not commit. The crucifixion of Christ is no less than regicide – the murder of a king. The notice that the Roman soldiers put above his head was true though they didn’t know it: “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews”.

The wonderful thing is that it is through his death, through the King laying down his life because he loves his people so much, that the salvation he proclaimed and the destruction of evil that he stood for are actually accomplished. The Lord sacrifices himself, he becomes the suffering servant portrayed in Isaiah 53 (reading from verses 3 to 10):

“We despised him and rejected him; he endured suffering and pain. No one would even look at him – we ignored him as if he were nothing. But he endured the suffering that should have been ours, the pain that we should have borne. All the while we thought that his suffering was punishment sent by God. But because of our sins he was wounded, beaten because of the evil we did. We are healed by the punishment he suffered, made whole by the blows he received. All of us were like sheep that were lost, each of us going his own way. But the LORD made the punishment fall on him, the punishment all of us deserved. He was treated harshly, but endured it humbly; he never said a word. Like a lamb about to be slaughtered, like a sheep about to be sheared, he never said a word. He was arrested and sentenced and led off to die, and no one cared about his fate. He was put to death for the sins of our people. He was placed in a grave with those who are evil, he was buried with the rich, even though he had never committed a crime or ever told a lie. The LORD says, ‘It was my will that he should suffer; his death was a sacrifice to bring forgiveness. And so he will see his descendants; he will live a long life, and through him my purpose will succeed’."

Jesus is Lord – the Lord who became a sacrificial lamb to take away the sins of the world and saves his people through his death on the cross.

Third Reading: John 20:24-29

Sometimes I think that we glory so much in the cross of Christ that we are in danger of downplaying the importance of the resurrection. But the truth is that without the resurrection, the cross doesn’t have any good news in it. It is once Christ is risen that we can really know that his sacrifice was accepted by God the Father and our sins have been taken away.

And I think it is in the resurrection that Christ reveals more clearly than anywhere else that the claims that he is indeed the Son of God are true. Who else but God can rise from the dead? The disciples seem to have grasped this very quickly. Once they encounter the risen Christ, they are changed men. Before the crucifixion they ran away in fear and hid themselves. After the resurrection, they know absolutely in their hearts that Jesus is the Lord and so they preach him fearlessly and in public, facing persecution, imprisonment and martyrdom with courage. The risen Jesus changes people.

This is particularly true of the apostle Thomas in this passage we read. Thomas is a fascinating character. From what we read of him in the gospels he seems to be a bit of an enigma, he was a pessimistic man and a skeptic, but he was also one of the most loyal followers of Christ. When Christ decided to go to Jerusalem for the last time, Thomas showed both sides of his character in his remark to the other disciples: “Let us go along with the Teacher, so that we may die with him.”

But he is changed when he meets the risen Christ face-to-face. He changes from doubting the resurrection to confessing Christ as his Lord and his God.

Jesus is Lord – our King has conquered death and lives forever, able to change our lives and help us grow in faith, hope and love.

Fourth Reading: Philippians 2:5-11

Today, Christians all over the world proclaim that Jesus is Lord. But we’re the only ones who do – even though there are millions of us. But most people deny Jesus is Lord. Paul tells us in this passage that it will not always be so. One day, everyone will have to confess that Jesus is Lord, even those who have to acknowledge it only when he comes again to judge them.

The fact is that Jesus is Lord, whether we know it or not, whether we accept it or not, whether we like it or not. Jesus is Lord, and for two thousand years the world has hated, mocked and derided that proclamation. Christ is King, higher than any earthly monarch, higher than any spiritual teacher or religion, higher than Satan and the powers of evil.

This was the message that shook imperial Rome to its foundations. This is the message that godless dictators down through the years have tried to stamp out. Jesus is Lord and so no man or woman is Lord. No one else has the same authority. He is higher than anyone else.

He is Lord of all and that means as his followers, he is Lord of our lives. Lord of our time and money, Lord of our friendships and relationships, Lord of our work and leisure, Lord of our pleasures and dislikes. If we are to be faithful to our King, we must obey our King. And I know how hard that can be. I find it hard in my own life certainly. But I know in my heart that Jesus is Lord and deep down I want him to be in charge. I fail him, but I don’t reject him. I think that’s what living as a Christian is like.

Jesus is Lord – one day everyone will acknowledge him. Until then it is our duty and delight as Christians to follow him in faith and obedience.

Fifth Reading: Revelation 19:11-21

I have to admit that I find the Book of Revelation both to be one of the most difficult books of the Bible to understand and one of the most encouraging in the bits I do understand. And I think this passage in Revelation 19 falls into the latter category. It is a glorious picture of Christ as a warrior king, mighty in battle, defeating his enemies and securing victory for his kingdom and the children of his kingdom. He leads a mighty army of heaven’s angels in this vision, riding on a white horse. Everything about this vision says majesty, glory, power and victory for Christ, who is given various titles here that tell us about him.

He is called “Faithful and True” because he has always been faithful both to his Father and to his people. Never disappointing us, never leaving us or failing to do what we need him to do for us. And he is true because he only speaks the truth. He never lies or deceives. He is the greatest prophet who communicates God’s will to us in his teaching.

His eyes are like fire because he sees everything and knows everything. He wears many crowns because he is Lord of all things, all peoples and all times. His robe is covered in blood to show he is the sacrificial lamb, the Saviour of the world.

He is the Word of God. He is the divine Word through which God creates and sustains the universe.

And he is King of kings and Lord of lords. He is the overlord of every other earthly or heavenly or spiritual power. He is the supreme lord and master of all of creation.

And he is the victorious leader of the forces of righteousness which do battle with Satan and his forces and destroy them.

Jesus is Lord – he is Lord of all things, the King to whom everyone and everything else must bow down in worship and one day render total obedience. The amazing thing is that he is also our brother and our friend, the humble carpenter from Nazareth is no less than King of kings and Lord of lords forever.

Team Spirit

This was the magazine editorial in the parish magazine for September 2008.

Did you watch any of the Beijing Olympics? While I was watching some of it on the television I thought about how people from all the nations gather together in one place for the games. And I thought about how many different types of people you see among the competitors. Athletes are as different from each other as people can get. You have the height of the basketball players, the bulk and strength of the weightlifters, the speed of the sprinters, the endurance of the long distance runners and cyclists, the grace of the gymnasts, the skill of the archers and shooters. All very different and yet all coming together in one place for a specific purpose – in the name of sport.

I couldn’t help but think about the parallels between the Olympics and the Church. The Church is also made up of people from every nation and it includes all kinds of different people, different talents, different personalities, but different people who all come together with a common purpose: to proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord and to love and live for him in this world.

That’s both a comforting and a challenging thought isn’t it? The comfort is that no matter who you are or what you are like, Jesus is calling you to come and follow him as one of his disciples. No matter who you are, you can have a place in Christ’s royal family through faith in him. He said himself: “Whoever comes to me I will never drive away.” (John 6:37)

But there’s a huge challenge for us to consider too. The challenge is that Christ wants every member of his church to use their gifts and talents to play their part. There are no passengers on the ship of faith, only crew members. Problems start when some members don’t play the part Christ wants them to play and think the church is a cruise ship where they only need to be entertained as spectators. Actually the church is more like a warship in enemy waters and everyone should be at battle stations. Where some members don’t play their part in the life and witness of the church, this leads to other members doing more than they should or things that should be happening not getting done. That isn’t right and it isn’t healthy.

Paul describes the church as being like a body sometimes. In Romans 12:4-6 he says:

“Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given
us.”

If parts of your body stop doing the job they should, you will either not be able to do all the things you could do if they were working, or you will get sick, or in the case of vital organs stopping working, you will die.

I honestly believe that the same dangers are facing our church now. I think we are all deeply concerned by the need for our church to grow. How many of us have looked forward ten years and wondered if things keep going as they are now, will there still be enough members to keep the church going? Today we have 96 members, most of whom are over 60 years of age and many of whom are over 70 years of age. Even if all are spared, how many will not be physically able to do the work that needs to be done over the next decade?

If we want to see our church grow we need to have a healthy body. We need everyone to play their part. And we need to do more to encourage more young adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s to come to church.

That is a huge and magnificent challenge. If we meet it, we all deserve gold medals. But that’s what God wants to give us:

“To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.” (1 Corinthians 9:22-25).

Creation Controversy: The Rival Interpretations of Genesis One

For the past 150 years, Genesis One has been one of the most hotly debated and controversial chapters in the Bible. Until the 19th century, the Bible’s account of creation was pretty much taken as a straightforward description of historical events (though there were always a few theologians who did not read Genesis in this way). But since the development of the modern sciences of geology, biology and astronomy, Genesis One has been at the centre of what is still an ongoing controversy. Unfortunately discussion of what Genesis One means can leave Christians embroiled in arguments and can even cause divisions between Christians. But it needn’t be like that. It should be possible for Christians to show maturity and recognise that sometimes people will come to different conclusions on a subject and that it is okay to disagree sometimes without things turning nasty.

In this paper we will review four main ways in which Bible-believing Christians have interpreted Genesis One, and say a little bit about the strengths and weaknesses of each interpretation. Then in the final section we will look at a few things every Christian can agree on (whichever view of Genesis One we take) regarding the difference that believing God created this world makes to us and about how we live our lives in the 21st century.

Well, maybe the first thing to point out is that there are good reasons people take different views of Genesis One, not only because the text itself is capable of being taken in different ways, but also – and some might say more importantly – because some interpretations seem to take better account of interpreted information gathered from the natural world. In other words, some interpretations fit more comfortably than others with what natural science tells us about the age of the earth, the size and age of outer space, and the way natural processes and natural laws operate.

Some interpretations, if true, demand that we re-look at what science tells us and change how we interpret the scientific evidence. Those interpretations do not fit well with what science tells us. Some people think the most likely interpretation is the one that is the simplest and most straightforward when we look only at Bible; others are convinced that as the same God who gave us the Bible also created the world we see and so we should expect what the Bible tells us and what our observations of the world around us tell us to be in harmony. They would say that all truth is God’s truth whether we find it in the Bible or in a mathematical formula. If that is so then the most obvious interpretation of the creation account might not be the best one.

I should also say that I am not going to deal specifically with the subject of evolution. A lot of what I say might touch on this question, but I am not specifically addressing this subject. In particular, it should be noted that it is possible to deny that evolution is true and yet not accept Genesis One is a literal account of creation, and it is also possible - though I would argue inconsistent - to accept evolution is true and accept that Genesis One is true.

The Literal Interpretation

Okay so the first interpretation we’re going to look at is usually known as the Literal interpretation. This view is in many ways the most straightforward interpretation of the biblical text but it is the hardest to reconcile modern science – in fact it cannot really be reconciled with what modern science tells us about the age of the earth and the processes that led from the first moment of the Big Bang through to life on earth as we know it. The literal interpretation says that the account of creation we find in Genesis 1 is to be taken exactly as we find it – as a historical description of what actually happened during the first week of time. It states that God created the entire universe, the earth, the sun and moon, all the plants and animals and human beings in the space of six ordinary days of exactly or approximately 24 hours duration.

This view has several strengths and should not be dismissed as unthinking fundamentalist ranting. The literal interpretation is, I think, the most straightforward reading of Genesis 1. It takes the passage at face value – which is actually a good rule of interpretation. Unless we have good reason to think otherwise, the plain meaning of a passage in the Bible is probably correct. The chapter mentions “days” and those days have mornings and evenings. And they go together to form what appears to be an ordinary week of seven days as we know it. Would anyone, would the original recipients of the Book of Genesis, interpret this account in any way other than that they are ordinary days and it is an ordinary week that it took God to create everything?

Furthermore, later on in Exodus 20 when Moses received the Ten Commandments, this view is backed up by what we find there (Exodus 20:8-11):

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God…For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

As I said this interpretation should not be dismissed lightly. It is the predominant interpretation of Genesis One for over 1800 years of church history, from the early church through till the 19th century. That itself should make us pause for thought before we cast this interpretation aside.

That said, there are problems with the “literal 24 hour day” view. One of the main ones is that though it is very straightforward in its interpretation of the Bible, it is far from straightforward in its interpretation of science (or more generally, of how we perceive the universe around us). There are many different, independent scientific tests and observations that all tell us the universe is something of the order of 12 billion years old. The literal view of Genesis 1, even making generous allowances, struggles to come up with a figure of more than 20,000 years for the age of the universe. Obviously this is a huge difference. The literalists answer this in one of two ways. Either scientific measurement is way out in its estimation of the age of the universe or the universe was made with the appearance of age and maturity so that what we observe appears to be older than it really is. For example if a scientist met Adam a minute after he was created, since Adam was created as a fully mature adult male, the scientist might conclude that Adam was 20 or 30 years old and so the apparently “observable” facts might not be in accordance with true age. Similar arguments apply to the fossils, the age of the stars and so on, to explain away what scientific investigation seems to tell us. But, it must be pointed out that though these are ingenious explanations, they require quite a degree of speculation that goes well beyond what the Bible explicitly says! So maybe the literal view is not really much more literal overall than other views. It is just literal in terms of the length of the days in Genesis One.

That leads on to a second problem with the literal view. The problem is that the Genesis account – though supposed to be straightforward history – obviously contains a number of figurative elements within it, on any reading of the text – and so is simply not straightforward history. For example, the account talks about God “resting” on the seventh day when he had finished his work. Clearly this is figurative, because elsewhere Scripture teaches that God is an all powerful being who never grows weary.

Isaiah 40:28: “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.”

Psalm 121:2-4: “My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip— he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.”

So not everything in Genesis One and Two can be taken absolutely literally. This raises the question of what other parts of the narrative may be figurative or semi-poetic rather than literal.

A third problem with the literal view is what it implies about the character of God. If God created a universe with the apparent age of 12 billion years – I mean one in which every measurement we can make indicates it is a very old universe – yet he created it no more than 20,000 years ago (which is what the literal view demands we accept), then why did God do that? Does the Bible indicate that God sets out to deceive people? Or does it indicate he is open and transparent in his character and honest in his actions? Proponents of the literal view would counter that it is possible for us to be wrong in our interpretation of scientific data. However, if science is wrong, then it is very, very wrong. Science says the universe is about 60,000 times older than the young earth, literal creationist view. Many people find that hard to accept and point out that young earth creationism has its own set of presuppositions that are themselves not derived purely from the Bible.

So that’s the literal view – which we could sum up as the simplest interpretation, but the most difficult to reconcile with science.

The Gap Theory

The second interpretation is known as the Gap Theory. There are very few people who still accept this interpretation, though it was fairly popular in the 19th century. In fact it was first put forward by the famous Scottish minister, Thomas Chalmers. Basically the Gap theory teaches that there is a gap in time – a huge gap of millions of years – between the first and second verses of Genesis 1. So, the original creation, millions and millions of years ago is described in verse 1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Within that verse, the Gap theory puts the Big Bang, the origin of life on earth, the dinosaurs and so on. It then assumes there was a cataclysmic event that destroyed the world. Some say it was a spiritual event such as the fall of Satan and the evil spirits from heaven. Others say it was the meteor that destroyed almost all life on earth including the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. Others say a combination of the spiritual and the physical. But the earth was destroyed. According to the Gap theory, the six days of creation in Genesis One are really six days of “re-creation” or reconstruction during which geology settled down, the heavenly bodies became visible again and the plant and animal kingdoms were restored.

The Gap theory says verse two should be translated as: “And the earth became formless and desolate” rather than “And the earth was formless and desolate.” It also refers to verse 28, which in the King James Bible is translated: “God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth.” Replenish can mean to re-fill or re-stock something that was full and is now empty. The Gap theory seized on this word to imply that the creation account is a refilling of the earth with life, which implies that life previously had filled the world.

The Gap theory has serious problems too and is not very widely supported today. Most Old Testament scholars say that verse 2 cannot properly be translated “And the earth became formless and void.” Which itself deals a severe blow to the theory. And then secondly, the Hebrew word translated “replenish” simply means “to fill” not necessarily to “refill”. More significantly, there is absolutely nothing in Genesis or anywhere else in the Bible to suggest that Satan’s fall had such a catastrophic effect on earth as the Gap theory requires. There is also not an inkling from the text itself that there is meant to be a gap between verses 1 and 2 of Genesis One.

I think that the Gap theory is ingenious, very very clever indeed, but I leave it to you to decide whether it is really something we learn from the Bible or something we need to read into the Bible in order to find it there.

The Day-Age Interpretation

The third interpretation is usually called the Day-Age theory. This also has its origin in a 19th century Scottish theologian, called Hugh Miller. The Day-Age theory remains fairly popular to this day as a way of reconciling Genesis One to the claims of modern science.

The Day-Age theory points out that the Hebrew word “Yom” (Day) can be used to mean a long, unspecified period of time, and not necessarily a period of 24 hours. Just like the English word “day” does not always refer to a period of 24 hours. For example in the expressions “This would never have happened in my day” or “In this day and age, you would think that people could do such and such…” There are clearly places in the Old Testament where Yom is obviously not referring to a 24-hour day. In this sense, the Day-Age theory is technically a possible interpretation of Genesis One.

However, again there are problems with this view. The fact that the seven days are presented to us as a week of days and the fact that each day has a morning and an evening strongly suggests that ordinary days are in view here and not long unspecified periods of time. It has also been pointed out that had Moses intended to be clear that he meant the six creation periods were long epochs of millions of years each, then there is another Hebrew word that he could have used for this. In addition, the day-age theory is itself contrary to science and so in that sense does not solve the problem. Because it would mean that there were millions of years (day three) when plants existed before the sun was created on day four!

Defenders of the day-age theory have answers to some of these criticisms but they are not very convincing. For example, some day-agers maintain that the sun was created on day one and only appeared visible in the sky when clouds cleared on day four.

The Framework Hypothesis

The fourth theory is usually known as the framework hypothesis or the framework interpretation. The framework view says that Genesis One is a literary construction – a narrative device – a semi-poetic hymn – designed to present God’s creative acts as a week of ordinary days, but that this creation week should not be taken as a literal week. The framework hypothesis says in effect that Genesis One is like an art gallery showing a series of pictures, each portraying a creative act of God, and together forming a comparison between God’s work of creation and our weekly pattern of work and rest.

It should be noted that the pictures are of real, historical events, but they remain distinct from the events themselves. Just as a passport photograph of a person is a true depiction of the person, but the picture is not the person, and is neither the same size nor shape as the person, so the days of Genesis One, the framework view says, are depictions of creation on the scale of a week of days, rather than descriptions of actual days.

Another important aspect of the framework view is that it sees the arrangement of the six days in topical order rather than in chronological order. It places the six days of creation in two groups of three days each, and it claims this is how Moses intended the week to be read. Days One to Three depict the creation of what have been called three “creation kingdoms” – the sky, the air and sea, and the land. Days Four to Six depict the creation of what have been called three “creation kings” to rule the kingdoms – the sun and moon to rule the sky, the fish to rule the sea and the birds to rule the air, and animals to rule the land. Day Six also features the creation of God’s overlords, human beings, to oversee and rule all the rest of creation for God.

According to this view, the fact that light and darkness are created on day one, but the sun and moon on day four does not matter. Because the days may be describing things that took place at the same time from two different perspectives.

The framework view claims to be an interpretation of Genesis that is derived from the text itself, in fact that is demanded by the text itself. But since this view also realises that Genesis One is a pre-scientific text and one that was written with theological concerns in mind and not scientific concerns, it leaves us free to accept Genesis One as true in what it actually states and also accept what science tells us is true. At least, it means there is more room for agreement between theology and science than the literal view would allow. According to the framework theory, Genesis One answers why questions; science is free to answer how and when questions.

The main criticism of this view is that it does not regard Genesis One as being a straightforward, linear, historical account of a series of successive acts by God. But the fact is that every theory is faced with issues of when to be literal and when to be figurative. No one interprets Genesis One and Two completely literally throughout, because that would mean that Genesis One and Two contradict each other, and we know that all Scripture is inspired by God and that the Holy Spirit cannot have inspired two contradictory creation accounts. What I mean by here is that in Genesis One, the animals are created before man, and man and woman are created at the same time; but in Genesis Two, if we take it all literally, the man is created first, then the animals, and finally woman. So some of these narratives must be interpreted figuratively. It seems to me, the framework hypothesis makes a good case for saying that the week of days is a way of presenting creation history to us in a way that every reader of the Bible, of all cultures and all ages and all levels of intelligence can read and understand.

The Meaning of Creation

With what has just been said very much in mind, I want to move on from the different theories and interpretations that people take on Genesis One to discuss that all interpretations agree on and that challenge how we live our lives.

There are four things:

1. The universe was created on purpose by a personal, loving God.
2. Creation is not a god to be worshipped.
3. God has given creation to human beings to act as stewards who care for it, look after it and use it to do good.
4. Human beings, male and female, were created in the image of God and therefore we all have an inherent dignity and worth that should be respected and nourished by others in this life.

Okay, I’ll just go over these very briefly.

The universe was deliberately and carefully created by a personal, loving God. The universe is not the accidental result of a series of random events: it has all been fearfully and wonderfully made.

Whatever view we take of how and how quickly and when God accomplished his creation, we must make an absolute stand before the world that our God – the God that the Bible says loves and cares for all of us, and who is deeply concerned with each one of us and our lives – he is the one who is the Maker of heaven and earth. He made it. It did not just happen by accident. And as such, it means that life is not meaningless. The world, life, everything has a purpose and a reason because ultimately God, the God of love, is behind it all working to accomplish his plans and purposes. And central to what God does is his own Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Perhaps we find the most all-encompassing vision of what that ultimate plan and purpose is in Paul’s words in Colossians 1:15-20:

Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God. He is the first-born Son, superior to all created things. For through him God created everything in heaven and on earth…God created the whole universe through him and for him…Through the Son…God decided to bring the whole universe back to himself. God made peace through his Son’s sacrificial death on the cross and so brought back to himself all things, both on earth and in heaven.

So creation has a purpose. And creation – indeed the whole of history – is heading towards a goal that God had in mind from the very beginning. And that purpose is to bring all things in heaven and on earth – in other words all created things – under Christ’s rule and headship.

Second, in our time, we need to remember that creation is not a god. This was in many ways the point that Moses wanted to Israelites to grasp when they first read Genesis One. Many of other nations around Israel worshipped gods of nature, gods of fertility, gods of the sun and moon and so forth. But Genesis One proclaims against all kinds of paganism that Yahweh, the God of Israel is the maker of the land and sea, the maker of the sun and moon, and so all these things are not things to be worshipped. Many pagan cultures worshipped the stars. Modern day astrology is a remnant of these ancient religions. By stark contrast, Genesis One is almost dismissive of such ideas with it’s short pithy sentence: “He also made the stars” as if the creation of outer space were nothing for our God – and of course the whole work of creation is but a trifle for the Almighty God we serve.

We need to stand against pagan ideas of worshipping nature, or getting involved in astrology, new age religion, white magic, witchcraft, and so on. Creation is not god, it is but the work of the one true God’s hands to achieve his purposes and plans. We are to worship him and look after creation for him, not worship it.

Thirdly, God has given creation to human beings to act as stewards who care for it,
look after it and use it to do good. You see, just as worshipping creation is wrong, so is abusing creation. Too often in history Christians have lined up with those who want to make a fast profit by exploiting natural resources, polluting the planet, and ruining the environment. And that was wrong – that was bad stewardship – and Christians need to be open and honest about the mistakes the Church made in the past.

Our duty is to look after the planet for God. This means, in my view, that green issues (for want of a better phrase) should matter to Christians. You might have heard of the three R’s in this area: reduce, re-use and recycle. We should try to reduce the amount of materials we use, re-use things when we can rather than buying into the “throw away” culture all around us, and recycle things like glass, paper and plastics. The more we can do the better in this area. In our generation, loving our neighbour means we are called, I believe, helping to make sure that pollution and global warming are kept under control and natural resources are used carefully and for the benefit of everyone and not just a few.

Fourthly, human beings, male and female, were created in the image of God and therefore we all have an inherent dignity and worth that should be respected and nourished by others in this life.

In a world where bureaucracy can make us feel like we’re just a number in a computer, just an entry in a database; in a world where sometimes human life seems cheap and people slaughter each other in never ending, senseless wars; in a world where human beings seem to come second to abstract concepts like “the economy”, where we are daily de-sensitised to human suffering and the evil that men do, and in a world where many people tell us that we are all just animals controlled by our genes, living meaningless lives before a death that has nothing beyond it – in this world, the Bible thunders forth its message that cuts through all the nonsense, all the rubbish and states that we do matter.

We are important after all. We are not just resources or statistics. We are people, people who share the personhood of God. We are special. We are human beings. We are created in the image of God. We have the worth and dignity that comes from being God-ordained Lords of creation and spiritual beings capable of a loving relationship with each other and with our Creator.

It means that human life is not cheap. It is valuable. It is priceless. And it should be cared for, protected, nourished and cherished everywhere.

Tomorrow, I want you to try to think about just for a split second about each person you come into contact with. And I want you to say to yourself, “This person is a human being created in the image of God.” And at the end of the day, look back and see if you felt differently about them, if it changes your perception of other people. I think that’s how Jesus always reacted to people – even those whom respectable society had no time for (like tax collectors and prostitutes) and even those with whom he disagreed totally like the Pharisees. He always treated them as real people, and not just potential converts, or de-personalised “sinners”.

There’s an old hymn that sums up so many truths about creation and I want to end by reading it. It goes like this:

This is my Father’s world,
and to my listening ears all nature sings,
and round me rings
the music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world:
I rest me in the thought of rocks and trees,
of skies and seas;
his hand the wonders wrought.

This is my Father’s world,
the birds their carols raise,
the morning light, the lily white,
declare their maker’s praise.
This is my Father’s world:
he shines in all that’s fair;
in the rustling grass I hear him pass;
he speaks to me everywhere.

This is my Father’s world.
O let me ne’er forget
that though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world:
why should my heart be sad?
The Lord is King; let the heavens ring!
God reigns; let the earth be glad!

This is our Father’s world. He made it and he made us. Let us rejoice in that fact. Let our view of creation affect us and how we live. Let it change us and everyone around us. And let it be a foretaste of the new creation that one day Christ will rule over forever.

An Engaging Aside

Normally, I deal only with biblical and theological matters on this blog, but I think a few personal entries are okay. And I can think of no better excuse for getting personal than to announce to anyone reading this that I got engaged to my girlfriend, Laura, on 6th August.

I really feel blessed by God to have had such a beautiful, loving, intelligent and funny Christian woman come into my life and I thank him for her on a daily basis.

I think deep down I've known I want to spend the rest of my life with her practically since we first met in February this year. The last six months has been such a wonderful time - even though there was deep sadness in it too when Laura's father died in May.

After preparing my proposal plan over the past couple of weeks, I summoned up my courage and asked her on Tuesday and I was both relieved and delighted when she was kind enough to accept my proposal.

The next few months look like being a busy and exciting time for both of us as we begin to make wedding plans.

The Messiah's Rescue Mission

The following is a sermon preached on 27 July 2008. It has been lightly edited for publication. The Bible passages read during the service were Isaiah 61:1-3 and Mark 2:13-17.

The story we read from Mark chapter 2 is in a simple form we frequently find throughout the gospels. Like every story, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning is the set-up – the situation which forms the backdrop to the spiritual points being made in the story. Here it is Jesus calling Levi to be one of his disciples, and the subsequent celebratory dinner held at Levi's house to mark his becoming one of Christ's people and to which Jesus and his other disciples go along to, joining in the celebration. The middle is the conflict when the Pharisees object to what Jesus is doing and make an accusation that Jesus is somehow not acting as a good and faithful Jewish rabbi should be acting. The ending is the resolution, when Jesus shows up his opponents by an authoritative statement, a word of wisdom, that resolves the issues and destroys his opponents’ arguments against him.Such is the story - the true story - that we're going to look at tonight. As I read this passage in preparation for tonight, I was struck by the very different attitudes we find in the different characters. Much of the interest and value in the story comes from seeing how those different attitudes play out and either work together or come into conflict with each other.There are actually three different attitudes that the various participants in the story display.

1. The attitude of the Pharisees.
2. The attitude of Jesus towards the Pharisees and towards Levi and his friends.
3. The attitude of Levi towards Jesus.

At the end of our time, we'll spend a few minutes drawing the various threads together and hopefully gaining some kind of insight into our own attitudes - to see where those attitudes need to be nurtured, encouraged and strengthened and perhaps where they also might need to be looked at, challenged and changed. Okay, so let's begin by looking at the attitude of the Pharisees to Jesus.

One of the key themes running through Mark’s Gospel is the conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders of his time. The disagreements time and time again boiled down to two things: the true nature of God and the truth about God’s acceptance and forgiveness of sinners through faith in Jesus.

This is the first time the Pharisees are actually mentioned in Mark’s Gospel. I think it will help us to understand their attitudes if we understand a bit about what the Pharisees believed and why they acted as they did.

The Pharisees were a strict, zealous, highly religious group within the Judaism of Jesus’ time. They took obeying God’s laws very seriously. So seriously in fact that they added on extra, even more strict rules on top of God’s laws to make sure that in their behaviour they never even got close to breaking one of God’s own commandments. Jewish scholars determined that there were in fact 613 commandments in the Old Testament (248 positive ones – the “thou shalts” so to speak – and 365 negative ones – the "thou shalt nots"). The Pharisees added other rules on to top of these 613 commandments as extra “hedges” designed from stopping them falling into sin.

One example of the Pharisees’ adding onto God’s laws to give “extra protection against sin” so-to-speak, was that Pharisees would only eat with other Pharisees. Because otherwise, so their thinking went, how could you be sure that the person you were eating with had obeyed God and tithed a tenth of the produce to God? How could you be sure you weren’t being tainted by this other person’s sins?

Not only would Pharisees not eat with anyone who wasn’t a Pharisee, they regarded anyone who wasn’t a Pharisee as morally suspect. They would freely call everyone who didn’t agree with them “sinners”. That’s exactly what we find in our passage. When the Pharisees learn that Jesus is in a house eating with sinners they question it.

“Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” they ask.

The questioning of the disciples probably happened when the meal or party was breaking up and everyone was leaving the house to go home. Do you see the mentality of the Pharisees here? If you are a religious person, you don’t mix with non-religious men; and if you do mix with non-religious people, then by definition you are not a religious person. They knew that Jesus was a rabbi – a religious teacher – so why was he eating with “these people”?

After all to sit down to a meal with someone in that culture was a sign of acceptance and camaraderie. It’s not that different now is it? If someone asks you out to a meal, you would probably be reluctant to go unless you accepted that person as a friend or at least a trustworthy acquaintance, someone you were happy to spend time with. Even the special meal we share as Christians, the Lord ’s Supper, is a visible sign of our unity and mutual friendship in Christ, isn’t it?

So, the Pharisees ask, how could Jesus have a meal with tax collectors and sinners? In their eyes, these people were sinners without God, and this Jesus claimed to have come from God and yet he eats with them. They couldn’t understand it. To them it looked wishy-washy. It looked like a compromise with evil. And the Pharisees hated compromise. Really, they are accusing Jesus of not being as holy as them. To be pure and holy in their eyes means staying away from sinners.

Now of course, Jesus challenges this attitude of the Pharisees in what he says. His criticism of the Pharisees isn’t because they want to take God’s law seriously. There is nothing wrong with being zealous and wanting to obey God. That’s not their problem. After all, we know that Jesus himself obeyed God’s law perfectly in his life – he never sinned.

No the problem with the Pharisees was their attitude. They might have scored high marks for their moral behaviour, but according to the great teacher in Israel, Jesus, their report card showed they had a bad attitude. To quote an old song: It ain’t what they do, it’s the way that they do it.

What Jesus objects to in the Pharisees’ attitude, it seems to me, is two things. One of them is what I mentioned before. The Pharisees added things on to God’s law. They tried to out-do the strictness even of God’s perfect law! They added extra things on based on their own traditions and particular interpretations and then they labelled and condemned people as sinners who couldn’t or wouldn’t accept those extra bits and pieces.

The other problem I think Jesus’ finds in the Pharisees attitude is that they get all hot and bothered about minor wee points and forgot about the most important things that God commanded. They use the excuse of wanting to avoid being tainted by sin so that they don’t need to actually get on with loving their neighbours and seeking their good always.

In other words, Jesus is saying to the Pharisees, “Guys, let’s get things in perspective here. Sure the little things are not meaningless, but you have to get the big things right first or obeying God in little things is totally pointless and hypocritical. Later in his ministry, in Matthew 23:23-29, Jesus is scathing in his criticism of the Pharisees on this same point:

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence…Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”

In Jesus’ eyes, the Pharisees had a terrible attitude. His own attitude is so different. Jesus not only has a completely different attitude towards the sinners than the Pharisees did, but he also has a completely different attitude regarding what it means to be righteous and holy. Unlike the Pharisees, Jesus teaches that sinners need love, grace, mercy and forgiveness most of all, not condemnation and rejection.

Jesus’ attitude is so clearly shown in the answer he gives to the Pharisees’ question. They ask him, “What is he doing eating with sinners?”

He answers: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

As the commentator, Donald English says:

“Put bluntly, Jesus is saying that you would expect to find a saviour among those who need to be saved. You would not look for a doctor among the well but among the ill.”

For the Pharisees, to be holy means avoiding contact with sinners. Jesus turns this attitude on its head. It’s important to realise what Jesus is saying and what he isn’t saying if we’re going to get his point here. Jesus is not saying that holiness isn’t important. He isn’t playing down the need to be pure and avoid sin as Christians. No, he says that it is precisely because he is the Holy One, God’s Messiah, that he can get close to sinners, to socialise with them, to show them his love and care and to save them. Jesus’ exemplifies what Craig Blomberg calls “contagious holiness”. In other words, true holiness isn’t about steering clear of sinners, but in getting so close to sinners that our holiness, our Christian beliefs and lifestyle rub off on sinners, so they are changed and saved too.

Picture a surgeon. He gets scrubbed up before an operation. He makes sure that all the medical instruments are sterilised and disinfected. But this is not an end in itself for him. He has everything spotlessly clean so he can use the instruments to make people better. In the same way, Jesus gets close to sinners not because he wants to take part in their sins, as the Pharisees allege, but because he wants them to catch his holiness. He wants them to catch the cure for sin – his gospel of repentance and faith.

What Jesus is doing here is fulfilling his mission as God’s Messiah. At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus read out in the synagogue the passage from Isaiah that we read tonight and applied it to himself. He told his listeners that the passage was being fulfilled in their presence as he spoke the words.

"The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD's favour and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendour."

Jesus’ work as the Messiah is to preach good news to the poor, not ignore the poor. It is to bind up the brokenhearted not condemn them for their weakness. It is to proclaim freedom not condemnation for people who are captive. It is to release prisoners, not lock them up in a prison of man made religious rules. It is to proclaim God’s grace and favour, not judgment and damnation. And that’s what he’s doing in that party at Levi’s house.

The lesson that Jesus gives the Pharisees is that to be holy is not to cut yourself off from sinners. To be truly holy is to get alongside sinners and help them. That is Christ’s attitude always.

The third character whose attitude we need to look at tonight is Levi.

The tax collector is named Levi in this passage in Mark’s Gospel. In Matthew’s Gospel, the same incident is recorded but there the tax collector is called Matthew – the same Matthew who wrote that gospel and who was one of the Twelve Apostles. We need not get too worried about this apparent discrepancy. It could either be that the same man had two names. Or another possibility (this is what I think is more likely), was that the man’s own name was Levi but when Jesus called him, he acquired or was given a nickname that stuck, just as Simon was named Peter by Christ. You see “Matthew” means “the gift of God”.

The fact that Jesus called a tax collector to be one of his closest followers is highly significant. Who Jesus called tells us a lot about Jesus and his attitudes. He calls someone who worked in a toll booth collecting taxes or toll charges on behalf of the hated Roman occupiers of Palestine. Sitting beside the Sea of Galilee, he was probably taxing trade passing along the trade route between Syria in the north and Egypt in the south.

The problem with tax collectors in those times was not just that people didn’t like paying taxes. The tax man now is still not a popular figure, but this is nothing to how they were viewed by their fellow Jews in Jesus’ time. As a tax collector, Levi was technically in the service of the puppet king, Herod Antipas, but in reality a tax collector would be viewed very much as a collaborator with Herod’s political masters in Rome. And tax collectors weren’t aversed to taking a bit more tax than they should have. They had about the same reputation as dodgy loan sharks have in poor neighbourhoods now. They weren’t allowed to vote and they weren’t allowed to be witnesses in courts. They were viewed both as traitors and as thieves by everyone in their society. As one commentator puts it:

“[Levi] sat near the lake at a table. Around him were piles of money, and account books, and fish, but few friends.” (Hargreaves).

But it’s precisely this outcast, despised man that Christ comes to seek and to save.

Although it might appear from Mark’s account that this happened to Levi out of the blue, it might have been that Levi knew of Jesus already and this decision to abandon his career to follow Jesus was merely the culmination of an interest in Christ that had been gradually building up. We don’t know for sure either way.

What we do know is that Christ chose him, Christ called him – all the initiative in the relationship was with Christ. And Christ chose someone the world despised. From this we can be assured that no one is “not the right kind of person” to become a Christian. God’s grace and the Christ’s gospel are for every conceivable kind of person. Levi was almost certainly a cheat and thief and seen as a traitor to his own people. But Christ chose him to be one of his own.

So what was Levi’s attitude? Well, reading between the lines of Mark’s account, I don’t think it is unreasonable to conclude that after being called to follow Christ, and after realising that Christ had good news of salvation even for a sinner like he knew he was, Levi was so filled with joy and thankfulness, that he wanted to celebrate the event by having a party with all his friends, and with his fellow believers, at which Jesus and his disciples were guests of honour.

Tom Wright makes an interesting point:

“Levi had been working for Herod who thought of himself as King of the Jews. Now he is going to work for someone else who has royal aspirations…[for] Jesus is the Messiah, the [true] King of the Jews.”

Levi wasn’t just going through the motions. Christ really had changed his life. And so he wanted to honour the Saviour in his home. He wanted to spend as much time with his new friend and master as possible. He wanted to share his joy with others. He wanted to just have a brilliant time because he couldn’t contain himself he was so happy.

That’s the attitude of someone who knows they are a sinner, the attitude of one who knows they don’t deserve God’s blessings and so one who responds with joy to the grace and peace they have received from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. Levi’s attitude is that of someone overwhelmed by the experience of salvation and Christ’s love.

We’ve seen three lots of attitudes. All very different. I suppose the last question we need to explore is what does it have to do with us here tonight.

Well the first question is what is your attitude to Jesus? Do you know him as your Saviour and Lord? If the answer to that is no, then there is hope for you in this passage tonight. Christ’s calling Levi says that God’s grace can reach you, no matter who you are, no matter what you have done. The grace of God is boundless, choosing, redeeming, pardoning and saving any sinner who hears his call to follow Jesus Christ. Everyone who comes to Christ will share Levi’s experience of sharing a meal with the Saviour. Christ says in Revelation 3:20:

“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”

If you are a Christian, then Levi’s attitude is perhaps one we should take note of as our example. Do we try to spend as much time as we can with the Saviour in prayer and reading the Bible? Are we eager to have him as a royal guest in our homes and in our lives? Do we celebrate and enjoy ourselves when we worship God? Is going to church for us like going to a party? If we truly know the good news, let’s celebrate it.

But the real conflict in the story is between Christ’s attitude towards the sinners and the Pharisees’ attitude. I think we all need to look at our own hearts and our own attitudes on this. You see Christ and the Pharisees actually typify two very different approaches to life.

The Pharisees wanted to stay away from sinners to protect their holiness and they got caught up in petty details while forgetting the most important things in life, like loving our neighbours and having an attitude of mercy and care towards those in need. In their zeal to obey God, they also added things on top of God’s laws and insisted everyone obey those traditions too. Jesus says they were wrong, dead wrong.

What about us? Do we keep ourselves to ourselves and away from people whom God is calling us to get alongside, to seek and bring to Christ? Do we think that we can use the excuse of not wanting to be tainted by socialising with “sinners” to avoid obeying Christ’s call to go out into the world to make disciples? This passage indicates that such an attitude is not true holiness, but a distortion of holiness.

Do we add things on to the gospel that make it more difficult for people to believe than it should be? Do we have extra requirements that people must meet before we will accept that they are a Christian? Are people suspect in our eyes if they don’t go to church as much as we’d like or as often as we do? Or if they spend their leisure time in ways we don’t think is right for Christians? It could be a hundred different things. For every one of us it might be different things. But I think it is something each of us needs to be on the look out for and guard against. “Beware the attitude of the Pharisees” I think Christ says to us all.

Christ says his yoke is easy and his burden is light. Are we adding extra burdens on to people’s backs? It might be by insisting that only certain kinds of worship are allowed, or certain kinds of hymns should be sung, that other people find hard to understand. It might be that certain “good works” or acts of service as we define them must be done that other Christians don’t think are that important. What traditions do we cherish and making tests of fellowship? Which ones do we need to let go of in order to open up the door to Christ’s Kingdom to sinners?

The kind of attitude we need is the attitude of Christ. We need to be willing to “get our holiness dirty” if I can phrase it that way. We need to be willing to get close enough to sinners, to touch them in their lives, that our contagious holiness is passed on.

The situation is not so much that we are to go out and find parties to go to where we can enter evangelism mode and launch into a gospel presentation to anyone we can corner. Some well-meaning Christians do things like that, and tend only to be resented and ridiculed by other guests. And I honestly don’t think doing that kind of cringe-worthy gospel presentation in social situations is what Christ is calling us to do here. No, Christ’s call is both far more challenging and far more effective than that. Remember the party Christ is attending is a celebration thrown by Levi after he has become a Christian. Christ was celebrating with his people at that meal, and getting close to sinners as a doctor gets close to patients. He never engaged in cheesy evangelistic techniques. He was always real with people and drew them to himself by his absolute sincerity and genuine compassion.

To be his disciples, to pass on his contagious holiness, we need the spirit of Christ in us. We need to imitate our King and Saviour in every kind of social contact we have with people in our daily lives.

A Vision for a Parish Church

This was the magazine editorial in our parish magazine for June 2008.

I have been thinking a lot recently about the church. Not so much the church worldwide or nationally, but our local church. I’ve been thinking about and asking myself a lot of questions about us. Hard questions, like why don’t more people want to come and worship with us, or even better, join us and become part of the church family. We give thanks for those who do come with all our hearts. But why don’t more people come?

After all, I think we are a welcoming and friendly congregation and I know how eager we are to see more people coming along to our services and other events. We are a strong and committed congregation – strong in our faith and committed to doing God’s work in our part of the city. And I believe we are a loving and caring church too.

In many ways we are doing well as a congregation. But there’s a hard fact that we have to face. Year by year we are shrinking as a congregation and we have been for years. Now, I know full well that if God wills it, he can send a revival and save a thousand souls. He can fill our church with new life and new Christians by the hundreds if he wants to. And we pray that he will!

But, what if God is waiting until we show our willingness to change and go further as a congregation to bring people to Christ? God has always also worked through the work and witness of his people. Sometimes he waits until we give our lives to his service and to mission. He might be waiting to act until we decide what our priority is as a church, until we decide we are willing to change ourselves and the way we do things, so that he can then do a new thing through us. Look at what he said through the prophet Isaiah:

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.“ (Isaiah 43:18-19, NIV)

The question we all have to face is whether we are ready and willing to change, to give up certain things, to have “dead wood” cut away from the stump of the tree so that new growth can flourish?

What things do I have in mind? Well I don’t have all the answers. I think this is a discussion we need to have with each other within our congregation. We all need to be willing to give and take, learn from each other, and take up different ideas. Here are just a few ideas to get the discussion started.

Faith. Unless we have a real, living faith in Jesus Christ ourselves, unless we know Christ as our Saviour and Lord, brother and friend, how can we really tell other people about him? Unless we understand the gospel, believe it and live it out in our lives, how can we really tell anyone outside the church that we have good news for them?

Worship. We need to worship God in accordance with God’s word. But are there parts of our worship that people from outside the church would find hard to understand, or difficult to engage with? Do we have things that are merely traditions rather than God’s commands? Could we do worship differently at some of our services if this would be more interesting or easy to understand for people who are not used to going to church?

Communication. Those of us who have been going to church for years are comfortable with church language that we use all the time. Do we need to take time to consider that not everyone knows what our church language means? Can we find ways of communicating the truth of God’s word in ways that are more meaningful to people who are not used to reading the Bible or going to church?

Prayer. Are we a congregation that takes prayer seriously enough? We need to become a praying congregation if we are going to become a growing congregation. The apostles were constantly telling Christians in New Testament times to pray for one another. Do we need a new system to enable us to pray for each other and for what we need as a congregation? Or how about coming to join the midweek prayer meeting? It’s a great opportunity to have fellowship with one another and support each other in prayer.

Fellowship. If the churches in the New Testament were anything they were communities. We are God’s family and we need to be as close to each other as any blood family. Are we ready to share our lives with each other, allowing each other to see and to share in our joys and sorrows? Or are we too proud to let our guard down? Too scared of what people will think of us, to be really honest with each other when we have problems, doubts, sadness, or pain? If we don’t live as a family, as God’s community, really loving each other and showing it, how can we convince anyone outside the church that we really love them?

Service. One of the most effective ways of touching the lives of those outside the church is by helping and caring for them in practical ways. In this Jesus is our prime example. As well as teaching people, Christ helped people in very practical ways. He cured the sick, he fed the hungry, he comforted the broken. How can we find ways of doing that for people that we want to reach and bring into God’s kingdom?

I hope this editorial will prompt discussion and, in the longer term, action. Christ calls us to “stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel” (Philippians 1:27).

Our congregation’s history shows that we have always been willing to “rise up and build” when God calls us to work for him. I have no doubt that same dedication to hard work combined with forward thinking and a deep trust in God can see us grow as a congregation in the years to come.

Dig Deeper!

Dig Deeper!: Tools to Unearth the Bible's Treasure
by Nigel Benyon & Andrew Sach
Inter-Varsity Press 2005

This little book is a basic introduction to reading and interpreting the Bible. It is designed for anyone interested in getting more out of their time reading the Scriptures - almost no prior knowledge is assumed - though it is very much a beginners text. Don't expect a comprehensive book on hermeneutics or anything approaching it. Although I don't agree with everything they say, I think Fee and Stuart's How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth is a much better book than this while still being accessible to a similar readership.

Dig Deeper would probably be most useful to maybe teenagers looking to get to grips with reading and understanding the Bible. In fact, it is written in the kind of style that leads me to think this is precisely the intended readership that Benyon and Sach were trying to reach.

I quite liked the way the book describes each interpretative technique as a "tool" and the collection of techniques as a "toolbox" for students of the Word of God. Each tool is described simply and concisely in about six pages which include a worked example for each tool. The subjects covered are all vital for Bible readers who want to understand God's Word properly and desire to come to sensible conclusions about what they believe and what God's Word might be challenging them to live out in their lives.

Rethinking Communion

There is sometimes a danger in Reformed theology that we just assume that at an arbitrary point in time - let's say for example 1646 when the Westminster Confession of Faith was first written - the Church finally and totally sorted out its theology for ever and whatever was laid down then is the truth and any opinion at odds with it is false.

However, such a view is itself highly questionable from a Reformed standpoint. The Reformers and Puritans themselves viewed the task of reforming the church as an ongoing task that never ceases. One of the mottos of the Reformation was Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda which means "The church reformed and always being reformed". In other words, the church must always be willing to search the Scriptures and be led by the Holy Spirit to new and more accurate insights into divine truth.

This means that the work of the reformed theologian is never done. Each generation of Christians has a duty to return afresh to the Holy Scriptures and check and re-check our theology, our doctrines and our practices, to see if they are indeed in line with the inerrant Word of God, or whether we might have made a mistake in how we previously interpreted the Bible.

It seems to me that a case in point concerns the restriction in many Protestant churches that only ordained ministers can properly administer the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper. Although much of the following discussion would apply equally to administering baptism, we shall focus solely on the Lord's Supper in our discussion.

The Westminster Confession of Faith is, as always, nothing if not clear on the point at issue:

"There are only two sacraments ordained by Christ our Lord in the Gospel; that is to say, Baptism, and the Supper of the Lord: neither of which may be dispensed by any, but by a minister of the Word lawfully ordained."

The texts that are put forward in support of this proposition are:

1 Corinthians 4:1 "So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God." (NIV)

Hebrews 5:4 "No one takes this honour upon himself; he must be called by God, just as Aaron was." (NIV)

It seems to me that these texts cannot bear the weight of doctrine that the Confession seeks to put upon them here.

In the Corinthians verse, it seems clear that the "servants of God" Paul is referring to are the apostles and the "secrets" or "mysteries" are not the sacraments of the Church, but apostolic doctrine revealed to them by the Holy Spirit for the teaching and instruction of the churches under their care. Since few Presbyterians would regard gospel ministers as being the same office as the apostles, nor do we tend to believe that our ministers are given divine revelations (at least not on a par with the truths revealed to the apostles by the Holy Spirit), it seems reasonable to say that this text does not actually prove that only ministers can administer baptism or holy communion.

The Hebrews text plainly deals with the calling to office of Jewish High Priests. The only high priest - or any priest - that the Presbyterian acknowledges is the Lord Jesus Christ. The teaching eldership or gospel ministry is not an order of priesthood, and the sacraments administered are not in any sense propitiatory or expiatory sacrifices. It does seem more like mere "proof texting" than proper hermeneutics to use (or rather misuse) this text, out of context, to prove that only ministers may administer the sacraments.

Having examined the Confession's proof texts and found them insufficient to establish the proposition in question, we must also consider some passages in Scripture that would seem to indicate that there was no such restriction in the New Testament churches. At the very least, it seems very difficult to sustain the argument biblically that the sacraments cannot be administered by all ordained elders in the congregation.

I realise that alongside this immediate question lies another, perhaps more controversial one: are there two distinct categories of elder or presbyter mentioned in the New Testament or only one? In other words, what is the nature of the distinction between a full-time minister ("teaching elder") and a lay elder ("ruling elder")? Is the main difference that the former is paid by the church to labour full-time and is more skilled as a teacher whereas the latter is not paid and works part-time, or are the differences even more substantial than this - with one group having rights, privileges and powers as elders that the others do not possess? This is certainly the case in practice, but can it be justified biblically?

This article is not the place to explore the nature of offices in the church fully but some remarks on this might be useful at this stage. The standard Presbyterian answer to this second question is that the difference lies not merely in remuneration and time but in formal function also. Ministers, though technically called "teaching elders", are not the same as ordinary elders according to what might be called "classic" Presbyterian teaching. They have a different role - they have the main or sole responsibility for teaching in the congregation and they have sole responsibility for administering the sacraments. And in practice, if not in theory, they tend to be seen as the focus of leadership in each local congregation.

However, this distinction between "minister of Word and sacrament" and other elders is certainly questionable when the biblical evidence is reviewed. When we examine the New Testament passages that deal with offices in Christ's church, particularly the office of elder or "overseer-elder," there is no indication from those passages that a minister and an elder are to be understood as separate offices with only the former having authority to teach and to administer the sacraments.

First of all, the Bible is clear that an overseer or "bishop" is not a separate office from an elder. In Acts 20:17 & 28 Paul sends for "the elders of the church" (v.17) and then in his speech to them he designates those same people as the flock's "overseers" (v.28) .

So when Paul speaks of the qualifications for an "Overseer" in 1 Timothy 3:1-7, he is describing the qualifications for the eldership also. And among those qualifications is listed the ability to teach (v.2) and to pastor the church: "take care of God's church" (v.5). This is not the qualification for a select band of elders designated a holy order of ministers, but for all elders. All elders are to be teachers and pastoral carers to some extent at least.

Similar qualifications and instructions are given in Titus 1:5-9 where again "elder" and "overseer" are used interchangeably by the apostle Paul. There he says that elders are to "hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that [they] can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it." Again this indicates a teaching and instructing role and that all elders are to share in this task and that each church is to have a plurality or team of elders to carry out the work (v.5 - "appoint elders in every town, as I directed you.")

In 1 Peter 5:1-4 the same, consistent apostolic teaching on church offices is to be found. Here the apostle addresses "the elders among you" (appealing as a "fellow-elder" even though Peter was also an apostle) and encourages them to "be shepherds of God's flock that is under your care, serving as overseers" (v.2).

Sometimes appeal is made to Ephesians 4:11 to show that the office of pastor or minister is distinct from that of elder: "It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists and some to be pastors and teachers." But once we realise that the word usually translated "pastor" in Ephesians 4:11 is the very same word translated as "shepherd" in 1 Peter 5:2 & 4 - and those "shepherds" were none other than "the elders" then such a view is difficult to sustain.

Reading all the passages together in context, it is clear that according to the New Testament, those designated pastor-teachers (or shepherds), overseers and elders are all different ways of describing the one body of church leaders envisaged by the apostles to hold office in the Church of Jesus Christ. It should be noted that this view of the biblical eldership does not mean we fail to recognise that some elders will have greater gifts for teaching or preaching while others may be more gifted in pastoral care and different elders may concentrate their efforts more towards where their greater gifts lie. In 1 Timothy 4:17 it is recognised that some elders will specialise in preaching and teaching and the verses following contain the basis for paying such elders for their teaching labours, presumably because they need time to learn and prepare lessons and sermons and so cannot work in day-to-day jobs as much as other elders. But nothing here suggests that these full-time or specialist teaching elders are anything other than elders, equal with all other elders in a church.

Turning back to our main question, not only is the proposition that only ministers can properly administer the sacraments not really sustained by the texts put forward in support of it, nor by the New Testament's picture of a single church office of elder-pastor-overseer, but more importantly there are actually strong arguments, which seem to me to be biblically compelling, for instead arguing that the sacraments can at least be administered by any elder and perhaps by any Christian when done with the approval and permission of the elders in a congregation.

The first thing worth pointing out is that the passages in the Gospels (Matthew 26:17-30, Mark 14:12-26, Luke 22:7-23) and in 1 Corinthians 11:17-34, which describe the institution of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper in the Church, do not deal with the issue of who may administer the sacrament. It would be easy to overlook this. Admittedly this is an argument from silence, but nevertheless it is striking that in these passages, particularly the Corinthians passage written to a Church, no mention is made of how or by whom the supper is to be administered. One would have thought that with all the problems that were occurring around the issue of communion in Corinth, Paul would have mentioned the minister's duty to make sure communion was conducted properly had he been the only one in the congregation administering it.

If anything, the Corinthians passage seems rather to indicate the opposite was indeed the case, and in the Church, we should expect the sacrament is to be administered by a wider circle of Christians than ordained ministers. Certainly the whole passage is addressed to the church at large and not to the minister(s) of the Corinthian church. In the passage everyone is criticised and everyone is instructed.

The indication seems to be that the Lord's supper would be taken often by Christians. "For whenever you eat this break and drink this cup..." (verse 26) might at least hint that the churches of the New Testament took communion very regularly, perhaps daily. If this is so, then it is highly unlikely that the ordained minister would always be in attendance to consecrate the elements and lead the others in communion.

It is also clear that the Lord's supper was celebrated as part of an ordinary meal shared by the members of the church. How very different is this from the very formal, symbolic "meal" that communion has become in the vast majority of churches, where it is celebrated as part of a formal service of worship after preaching of the Word of God and not usually as part of a normal, proper meal?

The picture we get of communion in the early church is further backed up from Acts 2:42-47: "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer...All the believers were together...Every day...they broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts."

We have good reason to suppose that this "breaking of bread" mentioned here is more than simply a way of saying that the believers ate together. I believe this is saying that they shared in the Lord's supper together. And according to this passage, all the believers did it, and they did it every day in their own homes not just when the whole church gathered together for worship. Once again, there is absolutely no indication that only certain Christians were permitted to break the bread when these meals took place.

Perhaps it is time for those Presbyterian and Reformed churches which do not allow anyone except ordained ministers to administer the sacraments to apply the Reformed principle of semper reformanda to this issue, time for them to stop complaining about their ordained ministers being overburdened and burnt out from stress and fatigue, time for them to abandon the misguided notion that "the minister" is a separate and special creature compared with the "rank-and-file elders". Allowing other elders and other trusted Christians to administer the sacraments would allow more fellowship meals and informal communions to be held within the life of a congregation, doubtless improving the spiritual life of a congregation while freeing up the full-time minister from having to try to fulfil every teaching, worship-leading and pastoral task that comes up in the life of their congregation.

Furthermore, it would send a clear signal to every church member and every person who has contact with the church from outside that every church has not one minister who has to be the one to attend to them but a whole team of ministers who all do God's work in teaching, caring for and guiding the congregation. In return, perhaps more "ordinary" elders would live out their calling better and really see themselves as ordained ministers or servants to God's people and not merely the spiritual management committee of the local congregation?

The Church That Christ Builds

The following is the text of a sermon preached at the Evening Service on 18 May 2008. It has been lightly-edited for publication. The chapter on this verse in J C Ryle's classic work on the Christian life Holiness provided a lot of the material for this sermon.

We gather here tonight one week after Pentecost, that wonderful miraculous day when the Holy Spirit was poured out on Christ’s church, and we gather as part of Christ’s church. We also gather knowing that the highest court of our own denomination, the General Assembly is meeting in Edinburgh this week, and that our own minister, Howard, is going to play his part in making the decisions that will affect the church this year and perhaps for many years to come.

And so on a night like this, we look not at this or that Christian writer’s latest book on “How to do Church” nor do we look at reports of this or that General Assembly committee, but we turn instead to some words about the Church that come from higher authority than even the General Assembly. We turn to again at part of what our Lord Jesus Christ, the King and Head of the Church, himself taught about the Church in Matthew 16:18 where we find the words we are going to concentrate on this evening:

“And on this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

There are five things for us to have a look at in these words of Christ tonight.

There is a building: “My Church.”
There is a builder: Jesus Christ says “I will build my Church.”
There is a foundation: “On this rock I will build”
There is opposition and danger: “The gates of hell”
And there is the promise of safety and security: “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

So first, there is a building: “My Church.” Before any of the rest of this verse can be properly understood, it is crucial that we understand what this building, the Church is. It is a very special kind of building you see. It is a building not made of bricks or stone or marble or wood. It is a temple, but not one built by human hands, not one we can see standing on the earth. There is no cathedral, no temple, no chapel, no church building that you can see anywhere in the world and point to it or photograph it on holiday and say of it: “You see that place? That is the Church Christ is talking about in this verse.

No, the building being talked about by Jesus here, the building that he calls “my Church” is a great company of men, women and children. It is a spiritual building consisting of everyone who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The word usually translated “Church” in English bibles here is the Greek word Ekklesia. And that’s a very interesting word. Literally it means “A Calling out” in the sense of people being called out to form “a gathering” or “an Assembly”. The Church is a group of people.

When William Tyndale first translated the New Testament he translated this verse as: “And
upon this rock I will build my congregation: and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

The New Jerusalem Bible translates it: "And on this rock I will build my community. And the gates of the underworld can never overpower it."

So this Church that Christ talks about is a congregation or community of people, not a collection of buildings or any human institution calling itself a church. It is not any particular denomination or branch of the church. It is not the Church of Scotland, or the Free Church of Scotland, or the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, or the Episcopal Church, or the Methodist Church, the Baptist Church or any Charismatic Church. And it is certainly not the Russian or Greek Orthodox Churches or the Roman Catholic Church. None of these bodies are the “My Church” that Christ referred to, though any and probably all of have members who are part of the church Christ refers to here.

The Church in this verse consists of all true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. It consists of all of God’s elect. It is the body of Christ, the flock of Good Shepherd, the Bride of the Lamb. It is the “one holy, Catholic and Apostolic church” that the Nicene Creed talks about.

It includes everyone who has repented of sin, and turned to Christ in faith. This membership of this Church is made up of all who have been washed in Christ’s blood, all who have been clothed in Christ’s righteousness, all who have been born again and sanctified by Christ’s Spirit.

J C Ryle says of it: “The Church of our text is one that makes far less show than any visible church in the eyes of men, but it is of far more importance in the eyes of God.” (Holiness, p.211).

All the denominations, groups and fellowships we find in the world are visible churches. They are all human institutions to some extent, and they are all imperfect manifestations of Christ’s own church to some extent. But the Church of this verse is invisible, and it is not a human institution. It is an assembly or gathering of people from all over the world and throughout all of human history who form the covenant people of God, the people he chose, the people he saves, the people who have faith in him and follow him as their Lord.

J C Ryle gives an illustration of the difference between the various visible churches in the world and the one true, but invisible church made up of God’s chosen people who live by faith in Christ. He says that the visible churches of this world, be they Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Independent, Baptist, Charismatic, Reformed or Methodist are “the scaffolding behind which the great building is carried on.” The denominations are the scaffolding around the true Church of Christ, which is being built in the background.

Think of a mighty cathedral shrouded in scaffolding and plastic sheeting. The scaffolding is what is visible, but it is not itself the building being built. It is merely what can be seen, while within and behind the scaffolding, the real building work is going on. I think that’s a brilliant illustration. All this that we see around us, is merely scaffolding, while the real building work of saving souls and rescuing lives, of drawing men and women into a living covenant relationship with God and with fellow Christians is slowly, silently, relentlessly going on in the background.

The great congregation of the redeemed is the Church Christ talks about in this verse. Outside of this church, the body of Jesus Christ, the faithful congregation of all believers, there is no salvation.

Second, there is a builder: Jesus Christ. “I will build my Church…” says Christ. No one else can or will build it for him. He must build it with his own hands.

The prophet Zechariah said of the coming Messiah in Zechariah 6:12-13:

“Thus says the LORD of hosts, "Behold, the man whose name is the Branch: for he shall branch out from his place, and he shall build the temple of the LORD. It is he who shall build the temple of the LORD and shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule on his throne. And there shall be a priest on his throne, and the counsel of peace shall be between them both."

The Messiah will build the temple of the LORD. Not one part of the Church can be built without his work and his blessing.

It is Christ who calls the members of the Church to leave the world’s way and follow him. It is Christ who breathes spiritual life into sinners who were by nature dead in trespasses and sins. It is Christ who washes away their sins. It is Christ who gives them peace. It is Christ who gives them eternal life. It is Christ who grants them the gifts of repentance and faith. It is Christ who enables them to become God’s children.

He is the Alpha and Omega, the Author and Perfecter of faith. He is the life. He is the King and Head. From Him every part of the mystical body of Christians is supplied with all they need. Through Him they are strengthened for duty. By Him they are kept from falling. He preserves them to the end, and presents them faultless before the Father’s throne with exceeding great joy. He is all in all to all believers.

It is true that he does often carry on his work through subordinates, through human beings. He works through the preaching of his word, through the circulation and reading of the Scriptures, through Christian literature, through providential circumstances, through prayer, through church discipline, through fellowship and human friendships, through evangelism and mission. He works through all these things, but it is always Christ who is at work to build his Church.

Preachers preach, theologians write and discuss, but only the Lord Jesus Christ can build his Church. Not TV evangelists, not Popes, not even General Assemblies. Christ alone builds it.

Christ is the builder because of who he is and what he has done for his people. And that leads us to the next part of this verse.

Third, there is a foundation that Christ builds his Church on. “And on this rock I will build my Church.”

This is the most controversial part of this verse. There have been many different views put forward for what this foundation is that Christ will build on. The Roman Catholic Church of course say that the Church is built on the foundation of St Peter, the first pope, and on all the popes who have succeeded him to the office of Bishop of Rome. I don’t think it is too strong to say that such a view is totally without biblical warrant. Even if you interpret the verse to mean that Christ will build his church on the witness and work of the apostles and on Peter as the leading apostle, there is no way this verse can be used to justify the papacy. There’s no way these verses can be wrested to mean that. But actually, I don’t think that Christ was saying he would build his church on Peter at all.

Jesus says, “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church.” Notice that Christ did not say, “You are Peter and on you I will build my church.” And the rest of the New Testament does not give any real support for this either. Although we have two letters written by Peter in the New Testament, much more of the New Testament was written by John and especially by the apostle Paul for example. And far from being the infallible leader that the Church could be built on, though Peter was transformed by Christ and was one of the first leaders of the church, he was not perfect. He got things wrong. In Galatians 2:11, Paul says:

“But when Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him in public, because he was clearly wrong.”

Now of course “Peter” means rock and so that’s why the Catholic Church have used this verse to justify the doctrine of papal supremacy and papal succession. In effect they say that the verse says: “You are rock and on this rock I will build my Church.” But it’s very interesting when you look at the actual Greek words of our verse because two different words are used for “rock” in the sentence. Christ calls Peter “Petros” which is a masculine word referring to a stone or small rock, but when he says that he will build his church on “this rock” he uses the different word “Petra” which is a feminine word, referring to a large mass of rock, like a cliff or a mountain.

Also, it seems to me that Peter cannot be the foundation upon which the Church is built, because of what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:11:

“For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”

I believe Christ’s meaning is properly conveyed if we translated the verse as “You are a stone, and on this rock I will build my church.” I believe what he meant was really “You are Peter – a little rock – but on the immovable rock of the truth that you have confessed – I will build my Church.” In other words, I think this verse teaches that Christ builds his Church on the truth of Peter’s confession, on the doctrine that Jesus is God’s Messiah and the Son of the Living God. These two truths lie at the heart of the Christian message, the gospel.

I agree with J C Ryle: “It was not Peter, the erring, unstable man, but the mighty truth which the Father had revealed to Peter. It was the truth concerning Jesus Christ Himself which was the rock. It was Christ’s mediatorship, and Christ’s Messiahship. It was the blessed truth that Jesus was the promised Saviour, the true Surety, the real Intercessor between God and man. This was the rock, and this the foundation, upon which the Church of Christ was to be built.”

When read in this light, we see that the rock solid foundation upon which the Church is built is not any person, not even the apostles personally, but on the truths concerning Jesus Christ that the apostles taught. This ties in much better with the rest of the New Testament and with other parts of Christ’s own teaching. For example in Matthew 7:24:

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”

The gospel message that Christ is God’s chosen King and the Redeemer of his people is, I believe, the rock, upon which Christ builds his church.

Fourth, there is opposition and danger. Christ says that “the gates of hell” will try to oppose the Church that Christ builds.

In Bible times, cities were surrounded by walls. The gates by which they were entered were the principal places for holding courts, transacting business, and deliberating on public matters. The gates were where people made their plans, drew up their designs, negotiated deals and so on. The “gates of hell” it seems to me, refers to the plans and designs of Satan and his hellish minions against God and his purposes. The “gates of hell” are Satan’s evil plans against the Church.

It seems to me that the expression “the gates of hell” is a way of describing the spiritual forces in the heavenly realms that Paul mentions in Ephesians 6:12:

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

The Puritan commentator Matthew Henry wrote:

“The gates of hell are the powers and policies of the devil's kingdom, the dragon's head and horns, by which he makes war with the Lamb; all that comes out of hell-gates, as being hatched and contrived there. These fight against the church by opposing gospel truths, corrupting gospel ordinances, persecuting good ministers and good Christians; drawing or driving, persuading by craft or forcing by cruelty, to that which is inconsistent with the purity of religion; this is the design of the gates of hell, to root out the name of Christianity.”

History shows that Christ was correct in his view that the gates of hell – the powers of darkness – will always keep on trying to destroy his people. Such has been the case throughout history – both Old and New Testaments, and throughout this present gospel age. And the opposition and Satanic persecution of Christ’s people will go on until the end of the age.

The history of the Church, in all periods of history, is a story of conflict and war. This war between good and evil, between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of this world, has been going on since the beginning when Satan rebelled against God. It is one of the central and recurring threads that runs through the entire Bible. As far back as Genesis 3:15 we get the first glimpse of the war between Christ and Satan and between God’s people and Satan’s followers:

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."

That was true then and it is true now. The Church is always under attack by Satan. He hates Christ’s Church more than anything, except maybe the Holy Trinity. He hates us with an undying and virulent hatred. He is always stirring up opposition and trouble for Christians. The Church is the pillar of the truth and the guardian of the holy gospel that is able to make men wise unto salvation, and so Satan never tires of seeking to prevent the Church from spreading the gospel message and witnessing to Son of the living God to the world.

As J C Ryle says:

“Warfare with the powers of hell has been the experience of the whole body of Christ for six thousand years.”

There is no peace treaty between heaven and hell. The Church is always at war, never at peace with the world or the Prince of this world. It is always at war, always militant, always fighting. Its battle never ends. As Martin Luther said:

“Cain will go on murdering Abel as long as the Church is on the earth.”

Satanic opposition can come in hundreds of different ways. There can be direct assaults of course. There can be false teachers, heretics, who are thrown into the church lives wolves among sheep, to confound and confuse God’s saints with false doctrine and wrong teaching on how we should live.

But sometimes Satan’s opposition can be far more subtle. In fact I would say usually Satan’s opposition is far more subtle.

Do you ever get the feeling that when you try to get close to God or decide you’re going to do something for God, that you suddenly start to have problems you never had before? I know I do. It’s no accident that when I’m getting ready to take a service that’s precisely the time I seem to get a cold, or get toothache, or have something happen that distracts me from my purpose. It’s no accident that when a church decides it’s really going to concentrate on mission and outreach that it suddenly finds it’s members under attack from illnesses, bereavements, family problems, trouble in the workplace, falling out with friends. Satan doesn’t fight clean and fair. He fights dirty. And when Christians decide they are really going to live committed lives to their Lord and Saviour, Satan will do anything he can to stop that from happening.

That’s the gates of hell trying to rise up and stop us from being effective, obedient, loyal Christians.

But far from being surprised or scared when such things happen to us, actually we should expect it and rejoice when such opposition or persecution comes our way, for it means we are on the right track in our Christian lives. A church which faces no opposition or Satanic attack should be the one that is scared, not a church which does face the gates of hell rising against it.

Remember Christ’s words when such opposition comes and take heart. This is Matthew 5:10-12, part of the Beatitudes:

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

And then also think about these words in 1 Peter 4:12-14:

“Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.”

Things happen to us in life. Not everything is plain sailing. We go through hard times of suffering and loss and pain. Or we go through times of being mistrusted, disliked, mocked, and even hated because we have faith in Jesus Christ. The gates of hell are real and I don’t think there’s any Christian who is immune from such attack. It happens to us all.

Fifth, there is Christ’s promise of security and safety for his Church. “I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”

Take heart, Christians! Because as well as Christ’s warning about the gates of hell, there is also a promise that Christ makes to us in this verse, a promise all of us need to cling to and remember. Yes, the gates of hell will try to rise up and destroy us, but they cannot and will not succeed. The forces of evil will do battle with the Church, but they will never prevail against it. They will fight, but they cannot win. That is Christ’s promise to each and every Christian believer.

Have you ever thought about the emblem that came to symbolise the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches throughout Europe? It’s still the symbol used on the badge of the Church of Scotland to this day. It’s the burning bush. The first impression might be that this is a very strange symbol to choose. But actually it’s highly appropriate, not only because it symbolises God’s presence with this covenant people, but because that bush is always in the flames, always under fiery attack, but not consumed, never destroyed. “I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”

Only Christ’s church receives this promise from its King and Head. Other empires and earthly kingdoms rise and fall in human history. Think of the once mighty empires of the Persians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Vikings. Think of, in more recent times, the great empires of France and Britain. None of these earthly powers has stood the test of time. But Christ’s church stands and grows for ever. “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ” as the Book of Revelation says.

The promise does not apply to all visible churches in this world however. In New Testament times there were churches all over the Middle East and what is now modern day Turkey. Today, few of those churches remain in existence. In Bridgeton there used to be six or more churches in the area now covered by this one parish church. Individual churches can disappear and close. This is especially true of churches that depart from Christ’s teaching, from the faith that was once delivered to the saints. Christ warned the seven churches to whom letters were sent at the start of the Book of Revelation that if they did not pay heed to what the Spirit was saying to the churches, Christ would remove their lampstand from its place – in other words remove his presence and the light of his glory from them – so they would cease to be churches at all. So, although the promise does not apply to every individual church, especially churches that are not faithful to Christ in their teaching and service, the promise does apply to Christ’s own church, to the great congregation of true believers in him. Against them, the gates of hell cannot prevail.

Even if Satan stirs up persecution so that Christians lose their lives, the gates of hell shall not prevail against this Church, because for Christian martyrs, death is only a doorway into Christ’s presence and eternal blessedness in heaven.

No matter what the enemies of the church do, whether they be worldly rulers, enemies within the church, or the cosmic forces of evil that work behind our human enemies, God’s people, God’s church shall never be overthrown. We have Christ’s own promise for that.

As the apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:8-10:

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.”

We can go through the mill in our sufferings. God sometimes puts us right into furnace with its blistering heat and searing pain. God puts us through it, but never without a good reason, there is always a purpose behind it, even if we cannot begin to imagine what it could be.

Romans 8:28: “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”

In the 19th century, French troops liberated the prison of the Holy Inquisition in Rome. In one of the cells, a prisoner – probably a Protestant who had been excommunicated from the Church of Rome – had scratched some words on the walls. They read: “Blessed Jesus, they cannot cast me out of Thy true Church.” Not one single believer can be snatched out of Christ’s hand by the Devil and all his minions however hard they try.

The question each of us must consider tonight is whether we are truly members of Christ’s Church. Not members of the Church of Scotland – for that membership can save no man or woman. But members of the body of Christ, part of Christ’s great congregation who trust and follow him and for whom he died to redeem and save. For membership in that Church guarantees salvation.

“And on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”