Christmas

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

Austerity Christmas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The King of God's Kingdom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God's Pattern for Creation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I thoroughly recommend it.

The Way of Holiness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The great Baptist preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, wrote:

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

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

The Challenge of Change

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Persistent Widow and the Unjust Judge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Essential Truths of the Christian Faith

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Frame on Church Denominations

As I continue to grapple with the decisions made at May's General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, I was challenged by John Frame's Evangelical Reunion which I found online here.

Which evangelical in the Church of Scotland would not be heartened and challenged by some of what Frame has to say?

For example, in chapter three, "Towards a Post-denominational Ecclesiology," Frame draws sharp distinctions between the biblical concept of the Church and the man-made concept of the Denomination in four ways mentioned in the Nicene Creed.

1. The Church is one; denominations are many.
2. The Church is holy; denominations per se are not "set apart" by God as his people.
3. The Church is catholic or universal; denominations - even Rome - are restricted.
4. The Church is apostolic; denominations are only so in so far as they are built on the apostolic foundation.

He also maintains that only Christ's church and the officers he has called have authority over the people of God. Denominations only ever have some kind of derived authority in so far as they are congruent with the Church; they have no authority over God's people, nor are God's people called to be loyal to denominations, except where they act as God's Church - in obedience to God's word.

Similarly Frame doubts that modern denominations can claim the New Testament promises of all the gifts that are granted to the Church. This is evidenced by the fact that not all denominations are fully equipped in the gifts of the Holy Spirit: some have better teachers than others, some have better leadership than others, some have better evangelists than others. The Church on the other hand, has all the Spirit's gifts granted to it (Ephesians 4:12; Romans 12; 1 Corinthians 12).

Frame then goes on to say a series of remarkable statements that made me raise my eyebrows, especially when read in light of recent events (I quote them in full):

We owe to our fellow Christians a special love ("love of the brethren," I Pet. 1:22; cf. I John 2:10, 3:10ff, 4:20f), a special care, which takes precedence over our duty to help unbelievers (Gal. 6:10). Is there a special love that we owe only to members of our own denominations and not to other Christians? To ask such a question is virtually to answer it negatively. But we often act as if it were true. Yes, there are legitimate obligations which we incur to our denominations in our membership vows. And we tend to form our closest friendships within our denominations, and friendships make legitimate claims on our affections. But the Christian Philadelphia, brotherly love, is for the church, not for one denomination above another.

These comparisons should indicate to us that there are great differences between the church and the denominations: differences in oneness, holiness, universality, apostolicity, power, foundation, authority, gifts, love. Yet it seems that in the ecclesiological literature and in our usual thinking and speaking we tend to equate the church with the denominations. When Jesus says that the gates of Hell shall never prevail against the church, preachers routinely apply that text to the Free-Will Baptist Church or whatever denomination they may belong to. That is bad exegesis and bad preaching.

We need an ecclesiology that makes some careful distinctions between the attributes, powers and gifts of the church, on the one hand, and those of particular denominations, on the other. We should not any longer develop doctrines of the church which are written as if the schisms had never taken place, or as if we were all still living before 451.

When someone seeks to stir up in us passions of denominational loyalty, then, by pointing to Scripture's very high view of the church, we must raise questions. The church is a wonderful thing, deserving our deepest loyalty. It is that for which Jesus shed his own blood. But denominations are another thing altogether. I am not saying that we owe no loyalty to our denominations. I am saying that our loyalty to our denominations must be tempered by the understanding that these organizations are the result of sin, inadequate human substitutes for the God-given order of the one, true church. Somewhere in each of our hearts ought to be the conviction that denominations should work, not to their own glorification, but to their own extinction.

He concludes the chapter with these words, equally applicable in Scotland today as in the United States where Frame is writing from:

"We are in a post-denominational age, and we must apply the scriptures to the times in which we are living, not to a time that is long past. It is not easy to find the precise continuities and discontinuities between the church and the denominations. But we must be willing to take up that task."

The question for us in Scotland - not just in the Church of Scotland but in all the Churches in Scotland - is are we willing to see the Body of Christ is more, much more than our denomination, and see it not just in theory but in daily practice too?

Keep in Step with the Spirit

Keep in Step with the Spirit
by James I. Packer
Inter-Varsity Press

Having just finished reading this book, I found out that there is a second edition that was published in 2005; however, this review is based on the original book written in 1984.

I have to say I think Keep in Step with the Spirit is one of the best books on the Holy Spirit and particularly the gifts of the Holy Spirit that I've read and I think it deserves to be as well-known as Packer's classic Knowing God.

Essentially, the book is an assessment of the charismatic movement from a Reformed perspective. But, unlike many treatments which are resolutely cessationist and scathing of charismatics, Packer is very fair about the movement's strengths as well as its weaknesses. Overall, I get the impression Packer thinks that charismatics are much more a force for good than ill in the churches and I certainly agree with this assessment, particularly as regards the more mainstream charismatic churches.

Packer mentions no less than 12 aspects of the charismatic movement for which the rest of the church should be grateful and should seek to learn. These include the charismatics' commitment to radical, all-person ministry, excitement and spontaneity in worship, their sense of joy, etc.

Packer also then mentions 10 aspects of the charismatic movement that might give us cause for concern including the tendency to focus on the Spirit's work sometimes to the extent that Christ and his work is overshadowed, the two-stage Christian life (conversion followed by subsequent baptism by the Holy Spirit), spiritual elitism, theological naivity, and approaches to the spiritual gifts that do not always tie in very well with what the New Testament actually says.

I found Packer's assessment of the charismatic gifts, both in the similarity and also it must be admitted in the important differences between what they are like now compared to what they were in New Testament times, to be very convincing while remaining balanced and most of all charitable, even to those who would disagree with him. So, to take one example, although Packer insists speaking in tongues as found in the New Testament is very different both in content and purpose to speaking in tongues as it is experienced today, he does not denounce those who speak in tongues today. He recognises the value of the gift in the spiritual life of many Christians and considers it as one way God can use to bring people into a very close fellowship of worship in love and joy. Of course it is not seen by Packer either as the only way or the best way, but he is much more open to the practice than many cessationists.

I would recommend Keeping in Step with the Spirit to all Christians, charismatic or non-charismatic alike. It may serve to curb some of the excesses of the former and cure some of the suspicion of the latter.

Last Things First

Last Things First
by John V. Fesko
Mentor Books

John V. Fesko appears to be a new, young(ish) up-and-coming Reformed theologian and although I have seen his name before through a few articles found on the internet, this is the first book by him that I have read.

The book takes an interesting look at interpreting the three foundational opening chapters of the Book of Genesis using not only Christ as the key to understanding them, but in particular the Christ of eschatology. When viewed through these lenses, I was struck by just how many of the great themes of the Old and New Testaments are present there - often in embryonic form - in the first three chapters of Genesis.

Some of what Fesko argues in this book was new to me and refreshing to read. I thought it was fascinating the way he draws the parallels between the First Adam and the Second Adam (Jesus) in the Bible. I had also not really thought of Adam's role being prophet, priest and king rather than farmer when created, nor had I thought much about the Garden of Eden being a temple. The idea that our God-given work being essentially spiritual and religious rather than agricultural in subduing and dominating the world was so interesting and at once quite convincing. How much sense does it make of the rest of the Bible if Adam's task wasn't to be a gardener, but to extend the Garden of Eden - where God's presence was found in a special way on earth - to cover the whole earth and every person on the earth (Adam's descendants). This ties in beautifully with Christ's work and the consummation of all things under him when once again God will dwell with his people in a new heaven and earth, dominated by a holy city where God and people live in the closest bond of love forever!

Although the author is not explicit here regarding what view he takes of Genesis One, I got the impression he has sympathy for the framework interpretation. Having said that, nothing in the book is in any way contra the literal 24-hour view (or indeed any of the major views of Genesis One).

If the author's goal was to make us read Genesis 1-3 afresh and glean far more from it than how it relates to science and the length of the days, and if his goal is to help us to see "Christ in all the scriptures" then for this reviewer, he certainly succeeded.

Who will Fill the Leadership Vacuum?

I thought this piece by Louis Kinsey was timely and true. If anyone thinks the crisis in the Church of Scotland is just going to blow over, they are wrong!

http://coffeewithlouis.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/who-will-fill-the-leadership-vacuum/

I would like to also suggest a national day of prayer and fasting that God would deliver us from this awful mess.

Total Church

Total Church
by Tim Chester & Steve Timmis
Inter-Varsity Press

I have been reading a number of books about "doing church" recently and have enjoyed each one, but Total Church is probably the best of them. I think if more of our churches looked like the portrait of church this book describes, our city and our nation would be transformed by the gospel. That's a big statement to make, but I really do believe that.

The key concept in Total Church is that our churches have to live by two key principles: gospel and community. For Chester and Timmis - and I would suggest for the New Testament writers - these two concepts go hand-in-hand and the church is weakened if either is downplayed. The writers suggest that many of the so-called "emerging churches" are good at community, but bad at gospel content. On the other hand they point out the weakness of many evangelical churches which are good at the gospel but poor at doing community. I would say there is truth in both sets of statements.

The proposed solution is to do gospel and community together. This approach certainly chimed with Mark Driscoll's book Radical Reformission, which I've also read recently, which calls for us to live reformissional lives rather than doing evangelism now and again.

So how are these two principles (gospel and community) fleshed out in the book?

First, the gospel. Total Church insists that the church must be gospel-centred and mission-centred. Church has to be focused on the word of God where we find the content of the gospel, and it has to be focused on communicating the gospel in mission.

Second, community. Total Church argues that we are to share our entire lives with each other as Christians, as a true family of God. It also argues that this community should be a place of welcome and belonging for unbelievers so that they can see Christianity in action and so be attracted to find out more, come to the Saviour and take their part in the gospel community.

The writers then take these two principles and apply them to a number of areas of church life including: worship, evangelism, leadership, discipleship, world mission and church planting.

It seems to me that this approach seeks to take the best of our "standard" evangelical churches and combine it with the best bits of "house churches" or "emergent churches" to give a potent blend that better mirrors the church as it was in the New Testament. It is a transforming message that church is not something we do among other activites, whether we are Sunday-only people or involved in midweek events too, but rather church is our lifestyle, something we simply are 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

This is radical stuff, but it is biblical radicalism that our lukewarm, pale churches need. I believe it is a message we need to hear, ponder and act upon if our churches are not to continue to decline.

From Creation to New Creation

From Creation to New Creation
by Tim Chester
Paternoster Press

This is a superb overview of the story of the Bible from God's creation of the universe in the past through to God's new creation of heaven and earth for eternity in the future. The book's subtitle is "Understanding the Bible Story" and that about sums up this book's intent and method. It sees the Bible not as a collection of proof texts but as a grand narrative, as a series of stories. He also makes it very clear, in line with the Emmaus Road appearance of the risen Christ, that Jesus Christ is the central figure and focal point of the whole Bible, both Old and New Testaments.

At times the scope of the story that Tim Chester helps us to understand simply staggers the mind. We see the story of God creating the world and human beings and the story of Adam and Eve choosing to disobey God. Chester's explanation of the danger of men and women "knowing good and evil" was not one I've noticed before, but it struck me as obviously correct. He argues that it was not being aware of good and evil that was the problem (this is often the way the verse is interpreted), but human beings deciding for themselves what constituted good and evil. This ties in much better with the Bible's picture of fallen humanity and our rebellious, sinful nature.

The story continues with God's choice of Abraham to be the one through whom he would create a nation, through whom the Messiah would come and ultimately through whom "all the nations" of the earth would be blessed.

Chester then charts the development of the nation of Israel through Isaac, Jacob and the Twelve Tribes, to the formation of a nation that was freed from slavery in Egypt, becoming a powerful nation with its own monarchy. He also traces the decline of the nation from David's day through to the exile in Babylon in the time of the prophets.

The narrative reaches a crescendo with the coming of Jesus as God's Messiah in the New Testament. Again some of what Chester writes here was new and fascinating to me. He talks about the decline and decline of Israel until there was only one faithful Israelite left - the faithful remnant was reduced to just one man, Jesus Christ. So, as Elijah had thought he was the only one left who trusted in God, so later that would be the case for Christ. Christ carried out the task of blessing the nations that national Israel failed to do, through his life, death and resurrection.

The rest of the New Testament explains the creation of Christ's new people - the new Israel - who fan out from their covenant head just as national Israel grew out of Abraham. But as Christ is also the second Adam, this new Israel includes people from every nation on earth.

The story culminates in more than the restoration of Eden, but a new creation and a new heaven and earth where God and his people will live in peace and blessedness forever.

It's quite a story when you see it all laid out before you in broad vistas. Chester does an excellent job in this short 160-page book in which he unfolds the basic theme of the Bible, God's promise of salvation in four key elements:

• The Promise of a People who know God
• The Promise of a Place of Blessing
• The Promise of a King and a Kingdom
• The Promise of a Blessing to the Nations
  

It really made me want to re-read the biblical narrative for myself again. I think that by keeping the big picture in mind, it helps us understand the details of the narrative along the way.

I would recommend this without reservation. There are few Christians who would not benefit from reading this either as a guide before embarking on a journey through the Old Testament or as a refresher for the more experienced traveller.

I must go down to the seas again

The following is the editorial from the parish magazine for June 2009.


The one-time Poet Laureate, John Masefield, was fascinated by the sea. His first collection of poems was called Salt-Water Ballads and one of his most famous poems is entitled "Sea-Fever". It begins like this:

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by...

For a city dweller like me - Glasgow born and bred - the sea has always held a strong fascination. Being close to the sea was only one of many great things about my recent holiday down the Clyde coast at Gourock.

Being close to the sea for a couple of days brought me closer to the natural world in all its wonderful variety: the different kinds of seaweed, jellyfish, crabs, the sunlight on the water, wave patterns, sand and rocks, seabirds. And being closer to the natural world seemed somehow to make me feel closer to God.

As I watched the sunset over the Cowal peninsula and saw the sea turn purple and the sky a rich copper orange, I felt like a little child amazed at what his father could do. I wanted to point to the sunset and say to people in the street: ‘See that? My father made that.’

The writer of the Psalms shared my fascination with the sea and understood the sense of wonder that I feel looking out to sea.

‘The seas have lifted up, O LORD, the seas have lifted up their voice; the seas have lifted up their pounding waves. Mightier than the thunder of the great waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea – the LORD on high is mighty.’ (Psalm 93:3-4)

‘There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number – living things both large and small. There the ships go to and fro, and the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there.’ (Psalm 104:24-25)

As well as marvelling at the beauty of creation, I must admit I also marvelled at the many yachts, boats and ships I saw sailing up and down the Clyde estuary. I even managed to get on board one of the ferries for a trip to Dunoon. The sea was flat as a pond and there was a refreshing breeze out at sea.

I remembered how much the sea and boats are mentioned in the Gospels and I thought how often Jesus and the fishermen-apostles sailed on the Sea of Galilee as it was one of the quickest and safest ways of travelling in those times. It was a hard life working as a fisherman then - indeed it still is today - it was dangerous at times on rough seas, it was frustrating when no fish were caught, it required a lot of skill and knowledge to run a fishing boat and to know how put your nets down in the right place, not to mention the money to buy and run a boat and pay a crew.

I can’t help thinking that part of Jesus' meaning when he said to Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John that they would be made ‘fishers of men’ was that although their life in his service was going to be very different from their old lives, in some ways, it was actually going to be same! Being a ‘fisher of men’ isn't an easy life any more than being a ‘fisher of fish’. It can be dangerous, it can be frustrating and seem like a thankless task, it requires skill and knowledge to do it with any success, and it needs investment of time, effort and money to reach out to those who need to hear the gospel in meaningful, practical and realistic ways.

I hope that over the summer, wherever you are spending it, you too will catch a glimpse of the glory of God in his creation - on foreign beach or local park it doesn't matter for his glory is revealed everywhere. I hope that you'll feel drawn to worship him anew, refreshed and ready for life back in city where we have an ongoing call and duty to be God's people on the ground, learning more about Jesus, living out our faith, reaching out to the lost, and worshipping our Creator and Saviour God. We need rest in order to carry out the work Jesus is calling all of us to do: to catch more fish in our local ponds, streams and rivers.

In Christ Alone

In Christ Alone
by Sinclair B. Ferguson
Reformation Trust Publishing

I am biased of course. I've read many books by Sinclair Ferguson before and have both enjoyed and profited from each one. And I have heard him preach in St George's Tron on quite a few occasions and on mp3 too.

For me, Sinclair Ferguson represents all that is best and warmly heart-felt in classic Reformed, Scottish Presbyterian theology and spirituality.

So, it will come as no surprise that I think this collection of short, pithy theological articles is great. Covering material mostly from Romans and Hebrews, Sinclair Ferguson takes us through the real nitty-gritty of the Christian life. Very practical, with that warm pastor's heart and keen sense of humour everyone who has heard Sinclair preaching will recognise. This book would make excellent 'devotional' reading at quiet times, but make no mistake, it is underpinned by rock-solid Reformed theology and Puritan spirituality.

Thoroughly recommended.

Covenant Theology

Covenant Theology
by Peter Golding
Mentor (Christian Focus Publications)

Most entries in the Mentor series of books from CFP have proven to be worthwhile and beneficial acquisitions. This book by Peter Golding is no exception.

It seeks to serve as an introductory text to covenant theology, though to be honest I don't think it wholly achieves this purpose. The book concentrates much more on the history of covenant theology than it does on the nuts and bolts exegesis or hermeneutics through which we arrive at a consistent covenant theology.

Because of its strength - in dealing with the historical development of the doctrine of the covenant from the Reformers through the Puritans and on to 19th and 20th century theologians who further developed covenant theology, I do not think the book would be of much benefit to those who are not serious students of Reformed theology. Indeed, I expect the average Christian would give up perplexed before they reached halfway through the book.

On the other hand, the book is useful as a summary of covenant theology history and worthwhile for that reason.

For a more exegetical book, I would recommend Palmer Robertson's Christ of the Covenants and David McKay's The Bond of Love in the same Mentor imprint. The classic pamphlet by John Murray on The Covenant of Grace is also required reading in my opinion.

Luke for Everyone

Luke for Everyone
by Tom Wright
SPCK

Reading this exposition/commentary on the Gospel of Luke was my first taste of Tom Wright's series of popular-level commentaries on the books of the New Testament and I enjoyed the light meal Bishop Tom served up here.

Leaving aside Wright's distinctive and controversial teaching on justification (as part of the New Perspective on Paul), Wright was an interesting and stimulating companion as I read through Luke's Gospel once again. Although Wright's New Perspective on Paul teaching comes through a few times, thankfully, it did not spoil the book for me. Time and again in reading this I enjoyed fresh insights and soul-uplifting material. And many's the preacher who would benefit from Bishop Tom's gift for hooking the reader before going on to explain the passage.

No-one should be under any illusion - these are slight, lightweight expositions for the most part. This is not a detailed commentary or exposition. The nearest comparison I can think of were also written by an evangelical Anglican bishop - Bishop J. C. Ryle's Expository Thoughts on the Gospels - which are very similar in style though the theology is a bit different. Ryle was very Old Perspective on Paul!

All in all, very good devotional reading. I actually read this on by daily commute to work on the bus. It was helpful and refreshing having Wright's own translation of Luke within the book.

Christian Struggles

This is the text of a sermon preached at the evening service on 26 April 2009 on 1 John 3:4-10.

I’m going to start by reading you a number of statements. After each one, I want you to put up your hand if you agree with what I say. Okay? Hands up if you agree.

1. Becoming a Christian means you don’t have any fun in life.
2. All Christians are ‘loving people’ all the time.
3. Bad things don’t happen to truly godly people.
4. Christian churches are places where you can trust everyone you meet.
5. Christians never have any struggles and always feel close to God.

Well done, folks. Each one of these statements is wrong for different reasons. Of course Christians can have fun – as Christians we are people with a deep joy inside us and it should show in how we celebrate the fact that Jesus is alive and our living King and Saviour. Christians are not always ‘loving people’ – sometimes we get it wrong and act towards others in ways we shouldn’t. There’s little much clearer in the Bible than its teaching that bad things will happen to good, godly people. Just look at Jesus. He truly was godly – in fact he was God – but they crucified him. Look also at Job, Joseph, David, Daniel, Peter, Paul – there’s hardly a believer in the Old or New Testaments about whom we don’t read undergoing periods of pain and suffering. Christian churches are not always places where you can trust everyone you meet. They should be – but I’m sorry to say they aren’t. For example, there are churches where false and damaging teaching is taught. It would be wrong to trust those teachers, even if they stand up and the front and claim they are preaching God’s word.

But it’s the last statement we’re going to concentrate on tonight. It is simply not the case that Christians do not struggle in their faith and always feel close to God. Life is a struggle for the Christian as much as for anyone else!

As I said, we’re going to concentrate on verses 4-10 of the passage tonight. Last week we say how the passage teaches that God is our Father who loves us and adopts us as his children. We also saw how we will one day ‘grow up’ to be something so amazing that John can’t really tell us what it will be because it will be so wonderful and so much more than we could ever appreciate in this life. We also saw that though the future is sparklingly bright for the Christian, the present is also good because we are God’s children, and since we are we need to live as God’s children and keep ourselves pure. We also saw that the way John envisages us doing that is not by our own efforts but by looking to Christ, by confessing our sins to him, by trusting in him and believing that ‘the blood of Jesus purifies us from every sin’ (as chapter 1, verse 7 says).

Tonight’s verses follow on from this statement that God’s children purify themselves and I think verses 4-10 tell us about three distinct – though linked – struggles that we all go through in our Christian lives. They are our struggle against sin, our struggle with the devil, and our struggle to be people of love, to do good and be righteous in how we live our lives. And as I said, these three struggles though distinct are nevertheless closely linked.

The first struggle the passage talks about is the struggle with sin.

John begins, in verse 4, almost with a definition of what sin is. ‘Everyone who sins breaks the law ... sin is lawlessness.’

Most of you will know that when I left school I studied law. One of the hardest subjects you study as part of the degree is called jurisprudence which basically means the philosophy of law – or in simple terms, what is the purpose of the law. What’s it for? As you might imagine, there are many different theories about this but almost every one agrees on one thing – the purpose of the law is to help groups of people live together in peace and harmony. The law is a series of rules designed to make life better for every one, and help people to get on with other. You might even say that the purpose of the law is to produce right conduct and where there is no right conduct to both punish the wrongdoer and give justice to those who have suffered from wrong conduct.

That might help us understand what John means here in verse 4. Sin is lawlessness. The particular Greek construction used here means the terms are interchangeable: sin is lawlessness, and lawlessness is sin. Sin is breaking the rules, flouting the law. Sin is anything that goes against the law including wrong thoughts, words and wrong behaviour. But at its heart, sin is anything that goes against right conduct designed to help people live in harmony with each other and with God.

The law John is speaking about here is not Roman law – the law of the state though – it’s God’s law he means, God’s rules of right and wrong. Not so much the particularly Jewish laws about kosher food, or Sabbath observance, but the moral principles shared by every society in the world – God’s law condemning dishonesty, pride, hypocrisy, anger, violence and so on.

And it’s in breaking this law and committing sins that is the first of the Christian struggles identified in the passage.

John isn’t mealy mouthed about it – he ‘shoots from the hip’ as the saying goes. He gives his readers it straight.

You are God’s children, he’s just told them. Jesus Christ is your big brother and as you’re all in the one family, you’ll keep yourself pure just as he is pure. That’s what John expects of Christians. We’ve to be pure. He is also very realistic and knows that we fail to do that – and we looked at that last week – the importance of coming to Christ for forgiveness and restoration to purity through his blood.

I hope you can follow John’s train of thought here in verses 5 and 6 and again in verse 9. You know, he says to the readers, you know that when Christ appeared he took away your sins. This is reminiscent of John the Baptist’s words about Jesus quoted in John’s Gospel – ‘Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’ He took away your sins, and there was no sin in him, so no one who is in union with him, who lives in him, who abides in him, and has his Spirit living inside him or her, keeps on sinning. And he even goes as far as to say in verse 6 that any who does ‘keep on sinning’ has not really met Jesus or trusted in him.

These are strong words that John says. And I don’t want to minimise the forcefulness of what he says. Christians – you and I – should have nothing to do with sin. If we are in union with Christ, joined to Christ by faith, then sinning should never happen. There’s never a good excuse for sinning. It’s never ‘okay’. It’s always serious, it’s always wrong, and it always hurts our relationship with God. But at the same time there is always forgiveness, pardon and restoration available to a sinner who truly comes again in repentance and faith to Jesus for the first time or the millionth time.

However, at the same time I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression. Notice that John does not say that a true Christian never sins. John knows very well that Christians sin. As we’ve seen before, he actually says in chapter 1 of this same letter that if we say we don’t sin we make God out to be a liar and the truth is not in us! What John says – and it’s well brought out in the TNIV we’re looking at – is that real Christians don’t keep on sinning. Other translations say things like ‘No one who lives in him makes a practise of sin’. In other words, Christians don’t go on and on sinning continuously. Yes, there are sins we might struggle with for years – maybe even our whole life – that’s not what John means. He means that if a person goes on and on sinning and it doesn’t bother him or her – if you can sin and not feel guilty about it, then you might ask yourself how real your relationship with Jesus Christ really is.

The point is reiterated in verse 9. ‘Those who are born of God will not continue to sin because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.’ In other words, we are God’s children, so we will act in a different way - we will act like God is our Father and his ‘seed’ is in us. This is a metaphor which means God’s life changing, life growing power is inside us - and we know this probably refers to the Holy Spirit who lives in us. John’s point is basically that when Christians sin they are acting ‘out of character’, which is the opposite to the situation for the people of the world. They are sinners by nature; when they sin, it’s no more than them acting in character. But for Christians to sin is unnatural because they have a new nature and a new life as God’s children.

Nevertheless, although the Christian has a new nature whose inclination is not to sin, we have not totally got rid of our old selves. And so, our struggle with sin remains very real. It exists and we shouldn’t minimise it, and though it should be fought against, it shouldn’t consume our lives with guilt either. We need to cling to verses like Romans 8:1: ‘There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus’ and remember they were written to sinners, not to perfect stained-glass saints.

Also remember that the best way of combating it is not by trying to live a stricter and stricter moral life, keeping yourself out of harms way, out of the way of temptation. That’s almost the worst thing you could do. I know – I’ve been there. When I was younger I was like a young Pharisee. I would avoid sins by avoiding certain places, by avoiding certain activities, by avoiding certain people, by cutting myself off more and more from the world around me. The trouble is that the more and more effort you put into overcoming sin through your own moral efforts, the less and less you look to Jesus and the less and less you are living under the gospel. You are actually going backwards and living under the law. The way to tackle sin is yes to break bad habits of actually committing sins (the Bible says we are to put sin to death – we are to murder sin in our lives) but alongside that we need to keep the cross of Christ and the forgiveness we find there firmly in view. Whether it’s a law of nature for all of us or not, I don’t know. But I do know that I find it much much easier to do something because I want to than if I have to. By that I mean, paradoxically, it’s actually easier not to sin once you realise you are living to please God because you want to and not because you have to.

If I can use a sporting analogy – have you noticed how well the Scottish football team or Rugby team play when there’s nothing at stake? You know how it is, they’ll get beaten by Peru and draw with Iran and then when they’re out of the World Cup, they’ll beat Brazil or Holland. It’s because the pressures off, isn’t it? There’s no weight of expectation. The team can go out and just play for fun, and guess what – suddenly they are playing like world beaters and it is fun!

That’s a bit like the struggle against sin. If we live fearing God won’t accept us because we’ve sinned again and again, if we live guilt-ridden lives that focus only inward on how bad we are, if we are always disappointed with ourselves, then we end up failing more and the pressure becomes too great. But once we know we’ve already ‘qualified for the next round’ (because unlike the Scotland team, we are ‘more than conquerors’ and our name is already on the trophy so to speak), we can play for fun and actually sin less.

So that’s the first struggle – the struggle against sin.

The second struggle is our struggle against the devil.

The Bible is very clear that the devil exists. I know that nowadays there are many people who scoff at such things. Some of them are even in the churches. But as we are Christians who take the Bible seriously, we’re faced with clear teaching in passage after passage – from Genesis to Revelation in fact – that the devil is very real. The Bible is sketchy about his origins. It seems he was one of God’s angels who rebelled against God and was thrown out of heaven. He is known as ‘the Prince of the air’ or ‘the Prince of this world’ which could mean that he was originally meant to help God rule on earth, but decided instead to take over and rule himself without reference to God. What we do know is that he is the implacable enemy of God, he is opposed to Christ and he is the enemy of Christ’s people.

This passage teaches us a couple of things about the devil. In verse 8 it says that the devil has been sinning from the beginning. He is in fact the worst sinner of all because he is the first sinner, he is totally evil and he is never going to change. He is going to be sent to hell one day forever.

The devil is not just a mere personification of evil, he is an evil being – a fallen and depraved angel – who is determined to wreck as much of God’s creation and as many lives as he can before his time runs out.

Our struggle as Christians against the devil is two-fold I think. First, it is clear that the devil will try to get us to commit sins. He will tempt us. The very first time we encounter this figure in the Old Testament is in the Garden of Eden when he appears in the guise of a snake, tempting Eve to disobey God. We also know that the devil tempted Jesus in the wilderness at the beginning of his public ministry. He comes to tempt us too. In fact several times in the New Testament, he is called ‘the Tempter.’

Each one of us will be tempted in different ways, but all of us will be tempted in some way. I know that’s the case for me anyway. The devil always seems to come to me in areas where he knows he can get at me. And it will be the same for each one here. I suppose it’s in the nature of ‘temptation’ that it is only felt in areas of our life where we are actually susceptible to temptation.

The other struggle we have as Christians against the devil is in his primary role of being the Accuser. In fact that’s what the devil means. In Hebrew his title is satan, in Greek diabolos from where we get ‘devil’ and both mean ‘the accuser’. It could mean that, as one commentator puts it, he was indeed God’s appointed Accuser – the chief prosecutor in heaven – and he got so caught up in wanting to find things to report to God that he ended up encouraging heavenly beings to disobey God so he could accuse them.

Whereas the devil’s role as tempter is uppermost when he’s trying to get us to sin, his primary function as accuser comes to the fore when we have sinned. That’s when the devil comes and really goes to work on us.

You probably know how it is when you realise you have committed a sin? You get that feeling inside - the feeling of guilt. Now, let’s be clear, there’s nothing wrong with that feeling. Guilt is supposed to be there when we do things wrong. God put it there in that part of our mind or our spirit that we call conscience. Feeling guilty when we sin is not the devil’s work. No, he moves in after that. Maybe we’ve realised we’ve sinned, we come to God and confess our sin and ask him to forgive us, or we go to the person we’ve sinned against and say sorry. Then the devil goes to work on you.

Because according to God’s Word, when we confess our sins, God forgives us. We start off again with a clean slate and are to move forward with God again. But the devil comes along and whispers in your ear: ‘You’re not really forgiven. There’s no way God is going to forgive you this time. You’d be as well giving up now. You’ve had it.’ Or he comes and says: ‘Call yourself a Christian? How could you do what you’ve done if that’s the case? You’re a sham. You’re no more a Christian than all those other hypocrites.’ Make no mistake those accusations from the devil are very real and they are very powerful. They get to us deep inside, don’t they?

The devil’s accusations can be like having a monkey on your back. They stop you in your tracks - they make you change your focus from looking outward to Christ to looking inward into yourself. They can make you feel so much false guilt that you become totally paralysed and ineffective as a Christian.

Both of these works of the devil are a real struggle for every Christian at times I think, maybe even a lot of the time!

I have to say verse 8b is one my favourite verses in the whole Bible. It’s a verse it’s worth memorising and coming back to again and again when the devil is tempting or accusing you. ‘The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.’ There’s a whole sermon in those words. All I will say tonight is that we need to remember that Christ has already destroyed the devil’s work and defeated the devil through his death on the cross.

So, when the devil comes to us as tempter, we can say to him - Christ has defeated you and so sin has no power over me. I have died with Christ through trusting in his work on the cross. As Paul wrote in Romans 6:11: ‘Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.’ If we’re dead as far as sin is concerned, we are free from sin. We don’t have to give into temptation, not through looking towards our own efforts, but in looking at the cross.

Similarly, when the devil comes as accuser, we need to remind ourselves that we are saved through Christ’s work and that work is complete. We do not need to fear. ‘It is finished, it is accomplished’ was Christ’s shout of victory on the cross. The devil can have no hold over any child of God any more. The penalty for my sins has already been paid in full by Jesus Christ; God cannot punish me for sins for which Christ has already been punished.

As an old hymn by Augustus Toplady puts it:

‘If Thou hast my discharge procured,And freely in my room enduredThe whole of wrath divine:Payment God cannot twice demand,First at my wounded Surety's hand,And then again at mine.’

As it was in the Garden of Eden, Satan can only have a hold over us if we let him, not as of right. So when we struggle with the devil’s words in our ear we need to remember that Jesus has already destroyed his works, and put the apostle James’s advice in practice: ‘Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.’ (James 4:7-8).

Very briefly I want to look at the third struggle Christians face - the struggle to love, to do good and be righteous.

There are a couple of verses in the passage that touch on this struggle. In verse 7, ‘Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.’ And again in verse 10, ‘Those who do not do what is right are not God’s children; nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.’

The first two struggles we’ve looked at have been against one thing and another - the struggle against sin and against the devil. The third kind of struggle is very different. It’s a positive struggle if I can put it that way: the struggle to do the right things, to love other people.

Maybe you’ve heard the scientific principle that ‘nature abhors a vacuum’? Basically it means that in the world around us, the scientific laws mean that any empty space gets filled in very quickly. A vacuum is a space where there’s no air. As soon as that space is opened, air rushes in to fill the gap. A similar principle means that if you clear a piece of ground, before long weeds will grow there. If you dig a hole in a field, it will soon fill up with mud or water. A clean shelf soon gathers dust.

The same thing is true of our lives. We cannot live empty lives. We will fill our time with something. The only question is what things will we spend our time doing. If we’re going to try to do better in our struggles against sin and against the devil, we need to spend time doing positively good things. No-action neutrality is not an option.

The positive things we are to do are good things. We are to love others and show it in our words and actions. We are to do what is right - in other words act in ways that the Bible calls righteous. We are to be kind and generous, we are to do good. In Galatians 5:22, the apostle Paul says that we are to have the ‘fruit of the Spirit’ in our lives, which are: ‘Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.’ He also gives a picture of the kinds of things we are to fill our lives with in Philippians 4:8: ‘Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.’

If only it was as simple as just getting on with doing that. But the fact is that we often find it a struggle to do those positive good, loving things we want to do. All the struggles we have looked at are related to each other. We find it hard to live righteous lives because we find it all too easy to sin (to live unrighteous lives). Finding it hard to do good is the flip side of struggling with sin.

That means that both struggles are intimately connected. They’re like a see-saw that goes up and down. When doing good increases, sin decreases; when sin increases, doing good decreases. It also means that one of the important ways to combat sin is to do good.

Fortunately, Christianity isn’t about following a set of rigid rules that constitute ‘doing good’ or that equal ‘love’. So I can’t stand here and tell you what to do different tomorrow, or next week, or from now on. Because each one of us is different. Christianity is about relationships - with God and with other people. Christianity is about great principles that stand immoveable. But how you put the principles into practice can be done in hundreds of different ways.

The thing to grasp, the thing to actually act on is to consciously try to love more and do good more often. If you are a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit living inside you. He will tell you what putting it into practice means for you. Listen to that still small voice that is prompting you to speak to that person you ignore every day on the way to work, or send a cheque to that charity, or write that letter, or visit that friend you haven’t seen in ages, or pray more, or whatever it is.

The main thing is to live as righteous children of God. Not in a legalistic way because we are not under law but under grace. Not for fear of hell, because there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Not even just because it’s the right thing to do, though God delights in our obedience. But if we centre our lives on love - love for God and love for our brothers and sisters and our neighbours, then may, just maybe, we will live as God’s children should and show the devil and the world who our Father really is and live lives that are offerings of thanks to him for all he’s done for us.