my life and my doctrine

I’m preparing a sermon this week on Job 38-41, the two speeches of God to Job. It’s been great to dip back into JI Packer’s Knowing God, DB Knox’s The Everlasting God and DA Carson’s How Long, O Lord. Packer’s challenge when this was published in 1973 is still relevant today:

A well-known book is called Your God is Too Small; it is a timely title. We are poles apart from our evangelical forefathers at this point, even when we confess our faith in their words. When you start reading Luther, or Edwards, or Whitefield, though your doctrine may be theirs, you soon find yourself wondering whether you have any acquaintance at all the mighty God whom they knew so intimately.

In my sermon last night, I was reflecting on the increasing prevalence of the word ‘community’ when it comes to describing church. I’m still thinking this through, and would appreciate your thoughts.

I worry that we too easily complain when others aren’t friendly toward us. We wish there were deeper relationships at church. We long for a sense of … well,  community. I worry that community as a concept/idea is too insular and self focussed. I worry that I, and maybe you also, expect others to meet our needs, to suit our personalities, to be friends for us.

I’m not sure that the Bible uses terms that mean community. Instead, it speaks of church as a body, or as a family. What’s the difference?

Church as a body has a head, Jesus Christ (Eph 5:35; Col 1:18).
Church as a family has a father, our heavenly Father (by virtue of being children of God – 1 John 3; co-heirs with Christ Rom 8:17).

The biggest difference is that the images of a body or a family, more explicitly suggest the authority of the godhead.

Community can be really useful term to describe  the network and the nature of relationships  that exist in church. I hope and pray that any and every church continues to be a place  of great relationships, of good friendships for each and every one of us.

Yet, for the church to be a light in this dark world, we need to be different. And what will  mark us out as different is relationships under the headship of Jesus Christ.

Last night at St Matthias I was preaching on John 10.1-21 – Jesus the Good Shepherd. It reminds about how great a shepherd Jesus is, because he lay down his life for us. He did this when we were facing the threat of death. He did this for our sake, not his own, because he cares for his sheep. He did this willingly, not under compulsion or coercion.

Though the passage is primarily about the shepherd, the sheep aren’t totally passive. Sheep don’t follow thieves or robbers. Sheep follow their shepherd. And sheep know and hear the shepherd’s voice.

So, I mentioned that as sheep, the best way to hear our shepherd’s voice is to read his word. I publicly shared my new year’s resolution to read through the Bible in one year, and asked if others are keen to join me. (It’s only the 3rd, you can catch up!)

A few people have mentioned reading through the Bible in chronological order. I’m going to use the Blue Letter Bible reading plan that takes us through the Bible in the order the events historically took place ‘according to recent historical research’. I’ve also been pointed to this progress chart, which I’ll keep in my Bible to ‘check off’ chapters as they are read.

I also said in my sermon that I’m not likely to be a systematic few chapters every day kind of person. I expect I’ll do this in fits and starts. It’ll be fun and exciting to begin with. It’ll be a challenge at times. It’ll be easy to let it slide. However, I hope that this will be something I share with you about here, and maybe even you will come on this journey with me. Please let me know if you do, not so that I can check up on you, but that we may encourage each other to keep hearing the shepherd’s voice, in order to better follow this good shepherd.

Next in this series about using a smartphone, is how I’m hoping to manage my todo lists.

After trying a number of different apps to manage tasks, to do lists etc, I’ve settled on three. ‘Three?’ I hear you ask. Why?

My goal was to find one for ministry that would basically be something that managed a nested list. I’ve gone with ColorNote, which can categorise notes by colour. I don’t use the text notes, only the checklist. Using the touchpad is easy to shuffle the order of items on a checklist and then tapping each will marked them done. I’ve got yellow for administration and staff meeting items, blue for longer term strategy, another colour for people to contact etc etc.

Since I’m keen to be able to ‘switch off’ when it’s my day off or on holidays, I figure that seeing my todo list wouldn’t help. The simplest way was to use a different app for home related stuff. And, there are better apps suited to that. I found To Do List, which has five built in categories – my tasks, @ work, I want it!, grocery and jotter. I’m only going to use ‘my tasks’ for jobs to do around the house and ‘grocery’ for a shopping list. A task is stored as a name, note and priority. A grocery item is stored as a name, price, quantity and priority. It can also simply add basic/regular grocery items.

Lastly, and this is the most exciting of my finds is EveryDay ToDo, which is more geared to regular reminders. I’m using this as my prayer diary. I can add items that occur daily, weekly or on a particular day a month. So, every day it will remind me to pray for Jo and the kids. Mondays is Bible study leaders from Evening Church, Tuesdays – Matthias staff and families, Wednesday – three mates from college, Thursday – particular CMS friends, Fridays – my extended family, Saturdays – Jo’s extended family. Then, I can also put in particular people that I want to pray for once a month.

I start the app on any given day and I’m reminded what to pray for based on the day of the week and the date in the month.

In preparing for Reformation Sunday this week at church, I’ve been looking in detail at the Second English Prayer Book from 1552. There is an exhortation prior to confession and the Lord’s Supper. It’s quite full on. It’s a reminder of the need to acknowledge that we are sinners, that only God in his mercy can forgive us and this only through the death of his Son Jesus Christ.

I’ve edited it so that it not sound quite as quaint.

Dearly beloved in the Lord: you that mind to come to the Holy Communion of the body and blood of our Saviour Christ, must consider what St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, how he exhorts all people diligently to try and examine themselves, before they presume to eat of that bread, and drink of that cup: for as the benefit is great, if with a truly penitent heart and lively faith, we receive that holy sacrament (for then we spiritually eat the flesh of Christ, and drink his blood, then we dwell in Christ and Christ in us, we be one with Christ, and Christ with us;) so is the danger great, if we receive the same unworthily. For then we be guilty of the body and blood of Christ our saviour. We eat and drink our own damnation, not considering the Lord’s body. We kindle God’s wrath against us, we provoke him to plague us with diverse diseases, and various kinds of death.

Therefore, if any of you be a blasphemer of God, a hinderer or slanderer of his word, an adulterer, or be in malice or envy, or in any other grievous crime, lament your sins, and come not to this holy table; so that after taking of the holy Sacrament, the Devil enter into you, as he entered in to Judas, and fill you full of all iniquities, and bring you to destruction, both of body and soul. Judge therefore yourselves that you not be judged by the Lord. Repent you truly for your sins past, have a strong and steadfast faith in Christ our Saviour. Amend your lives, and be in perfect charity with all men, so shall you be proper sharers of these holy mysteries.

And above all things you must give most humble and hearty thanks to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, for the redemption of the world by the death and passion of our Saviour Christ, both God and man, who did humble himself, even to the death upon the cross, for us miserable sinners, which lay in darkness and shadow of death, that he might make us the children of God, and exalt us to everlasting life.

And to the end that we should alway remember the exceeding great love of our Master, and only Saviour Jesus Christ, thus dying for us, and the innumerable benefits, (which by his precious blood-shedding) he has obtained to us, he has instituted and ordained holy mysteries, as pledges of his love, and continual remembrance of his death, to our great and endless comfort. To him therefore, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, let us give continual thanks: submitting ourselves wholly to his holy will and pleasure, and studying to serve him in true holiness and righteousness, all the days of our life. Amen.

I’ve recently been following many, generally painful and non-constructive, discussions on the SRE on trial page of Facebook. I don’t want to rehash the arguments here, but question an assumption of those who promote the ethics course. My bugbear is when people claim secular ethics as worldview-neutral and therefore isn’t a challenge to organised, for want of a better term, religion. If that were the case, how can it be considered for the SRE time slot? (However, I would like to add that this is more constructive than discussions about the appropriateness of SRE in schools at all. From what I understand, that’s not up for debate.)

This struck me as I heard about the recent French vote, in the lower house, to ban the burka.

Justice minister Michele Alliot-Marie says the approval was a success for French republican values of liberty, equality, fraternity and secularism.

I am yet to work out how it is a win for liberty. How a ban on public religious practise equals freedom. It seems to me, from a possibly ill-informed outsider looking in, that the desire for secularism is greater than the right to personal self-expression. In the end, it gives me the impression that secularism sits in judgment over religion and wants to push what it thinks is good or bad for an individual. Equality becomes less about equality, but uniformity. No longer the right the choose, but the assumption that all will choose the same.

Why did this particularly strike me this week?

I’ve been preparing sermons on 1 Timothy for later this year and have been dwelling on this very bold, very absolute, very modernist statement:

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and humanity, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all (1 Tim 2:5-6)

Paul doesn’t have any sense of diplomacy or tact as he states the truth. Regardless of what the prevailing view might have been in the cosmopolitan Ephesus, regardless of the culture of the day, there is one God. And there is only one God. And the only mediation between God and humanity. Jesus Christ who died, that we might know this one God.

I was preaching last night on Ecclesiastes 4 and looking at various aspects of relationships ‘under the sun’.

• Oppression (v1-3)
• Envy (v4-6)
• Loneliness (v7-12)
• Bad leadership (v13-16)

I made a passing comment when looking at loneliness that I didn’t think the three fold cord of verse 12 was about marriage, nor the trinity. I’ve since realised I should have substantiated that comment.

Verses 7 and 8 are about the futility, the vanity of not having an heir to all the rewards of your toil. Verse 9 starts a different train of thought with the proverbial statement:

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. (Eccl 4.9)

Like a lot of Ecclesiastes, the writer (who I  refer to as Qohelet – a story for another day), makes a bold statement up front. He presents his conclusion and then goes on to justify it. It’s like a teacher who tells us the main point of the lesson at the beginning and then fleshes out what they mean by it.

What follows in v10-12 are three illustrations to support the main point of v9.

Three times Qohelet demonstrates that two are better than one. Maybe they are all illustrations of a road trip. As they travel and one falls, as they try to keep warm at night, or as they are set upon by another, it is better for there to be two rather than one. Maybe they are relating to the journey of life.

What does this have to do with a three fold cord?

Qohelet is talking about friendship, companionship or mateship. I don’t think this is referring in particular to a marriage situation. So I don’t think a three fold cord is two people plus God. There seems to be nothing in the context of the statement to suggest the particular relationship of marriage all of a sudden.

This is also why I don’t think it is about the trinity. There is no indication that the discussion has shifted to consider the relationships between the three persons of the trinity.

So, what does the statement ‘a threefold cord is not quickly broken’ relate to?

It seems like another proverb. Hence I think it most closely relates to the opening proverb of two being better than one. It builds on the argument that one on its own isn’t as good. Two are better, he says, and, as you know, cords of three aren’t quickly broken. ie a cord is strengthened when there are three. Now, I know nothing about cords and whether or not it is possible to do with four or more. I suspect maybe a mathematician or sailor could argue that any increasing odd number would be better than one. I certainly have never seen a cord of two. I don’t think you can plait two cords, so it wouldn’t make sense to refer to a two fold cord.

In some ways it’s another illustration from what we know of life, that the weight of numbers brings benefit.

I guess I don’t want to read into it, or any part of the Bible, things that aren’t there. Nor do I want to divorce a phrase or sentence from its surrounding context. If I think it makes sense where it belongs, then that’s more often than not, going to be my understanding.

There were two big questions raised after the sermon on Sunday night (Isaiah 6.1-7).

Firstly, I mentioned something about whether anxiety was a sin if we’re commanded in Philippians not to be anxious.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. (Philippians 4:6)

This was abbreviating a book review of Jerry Bridges’ Respectable Sins which was recently reviewed in the Briefing. The book review made me think it is definitely worth reading, to be reminded again of how easily our Christianity takes on aspects of our worldview that God is against. Other areas mentioned are impatience, selfishness, favouritism …

I’m sorry if what I said was insensitive to those thinking of friends and family with medically diagnosed anxiety issues.

What I was and am keen to challenge us on is the little things we may worry about that are out of our control.

John Bartik’s reflections on Bobby McFerrin’s Don’t Worry, Be Happy are worth a read.

Secondly, I ended with the reminder that we needn’t feel guilt about sin if we’re forgiven.

6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar.  7 And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” (Isaiah 6:6-7)

I think there’s a difference between feeling guilty and feeling remorseful about sin. I understand remorse as something which also implies regret and repentance. ie a desire to not keep sinning.

I think feeling guilty about sin can lead to two problems.

1. You feel more and more guilt in which case you don’t trust God’s grace to forgive.
2. The guilt makes you want to try harder and be more godly so you don’t trust God’s grace to forgive.

The right response to recognising the sin in our lives is to repent, to say sorry to God and to ask him to forgive us. I think the danger is that all too often we want to say sorry and I won’t do it again, as though we can make ourselves more godly.

What do you think? Have I overstated my case?

I thought I’d reflect on our seven week series on Psalms. In particular the challenges and thoughts I’ve had preaching on some Psalms.

1. What I thought would be the biggest challenge at the beginning was working on preaching an Old Testament passage. How do I do this and recognise we live after Jesus? Is it okay to preach a sermon a Jewish Rabbi would agree with? I’ll admit now that I don’t think I had great success with this. One week the Psalm was almost overshadowed by reflections on a New Testament passage. Other times the realisation of our time felt forced and inappropriate.  However, I think it got better as I kept two things in mind. Firstly, the goal must always be to preach the passage, not my biblical theology. Secondly, I think some Psalms have quite a direct relevance to us today, without some ‘forced’ NT interpretation being added, which leads me to my second challenge.
2. How do I preach the Psalms as a genre? It’s wasn’t often that the preceding and/or following Psalms shed a great deal of light on the context of the Psalm in question. Only Ps 137, of the ones I looked at, had significant clues to determine historical context. And yet, the further I got through the series, the more I realised that the genre of Psalm doesn’t necessitate looking for a specific historical context before being able to understand it. As I mentioned in my reflections on preaching Ps 137, I’d underplayed the importance of the emotional response a Psalm is trying to elicit. Now, I could be wrong on this, so challenge me to think harder about this.
3. So, how important is it to attempt to recreate the same affective response? At the moment, I think it’s vital, for without it we can miss out on the Psalmist’s purpose in writing/composing. I’m not suggesting that the Psalms aren’t to challenge our thinking. Rather that our thinking needs to be so changed and challenged that our affections are affected too.

So, as we move on to the next series there’s a challenge from lessons learnt. All preaching ought to be based on the passage expounded and have an affectional response. If you come to evening church at St Matthias, let me know how you think this next series goes.

Last Sunday, after the sermon on Psalm 139, we had the longest question times I’ve been a part of at evening church. It gave me a greater appreciation for how good they are.

I must admit that I was initially quite scared of the concept. It was something I inherited from the previous minister. It would mean I’d have to know what I’m talking about when I preach. It would require having answers to questions I may not have thought about during my preparation.

Yet I also realise that it is a good thing. It gave the opportunity the answer some questions I didn’t address in the sermon. Surely this would be a more beneficial thing, as people would keep learning as they ask their questions of the Bible passage. Also, there would be things in my preparation which ended up on the cutting room floor and yet could still be of use. Lastly, it could be used to clarify what I’d said in case it wasn’t clear enough.

What was most encouraging about Sunday night was that the questions were of the clarifying kind. Further it also became an ongoing discussion, rather than a couple of unrelated questions. They kept building on the previous ones.

I’m now a big fan. Still scared of the curly question I may not be able to answer. But most of all, glad to be involved in a process that enable us to study God’s word and learn together.

If you go to church, what are your experiences of having questions about a sermon? What do you think of the idea of question time? Lastly, if you ever preach, would you do it?