Only Fools and Preachers?

On Sunday morning I was preaching just round the corner from the external set used in the filming of 'Only Fools and Horses' in South Acton. The people at Berrymede Evangelical Church are always so warm in their personal encouragements, and in their eagerness for the Word. It was a really refreshing experience to be with these folks. Remember Berrymede’s people and work in your prayers, they are precious in the Lord’s sight.

Make sure you have a Prosperity Gospel

The Old Covenant had its promises of material blessings for obedient Israelites, Why not for Christians today, too? We are heirs of God’s gracious covenant; so are we heirs of material prosperity, too. Aren’t we? Calvin speaks into this:

“The point of our quarrel with men of this sort is this: they teach that the Israelites deemed the possession of the land of Canaan their ultimate and highest blessedness, and that after the revelation of Christ it typified for us the heavenly inheritance. We contend, on the contrary, that, in the earthly possession they enjoyed, they looked, as in a mirror, upon the future inheritance they believed to have been prepared for them in heaven.” (Institutes II, XI, 1, 449, quoted in Lillback, p.151)

Recently I had a passionate conversation (that is not code for an argument, by the way!) with a Christian man who was sure that God’s blessings for him are essentially material. Yes, he trusts in Christ for salvation; but now he’s looking for the material wealth which he thinks his faith will bring. After all, they were promised prosperity at the borders of Canaan in the Old Testament, so why shouldn’t he expect them same as a New Testament Christian?

The New Testament has a two-fold emphasis: firstly, in Jesus we have every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1.3). Yes, Christians know that verse, but we don’t allow its truth to sink in. We really do already have the riches of God’s grace. To be made a new person in Jesus Christ, filled with His Spirit, forgiven of all of our sins, right with God, claimed for His purposes, absolutely certain of a Heaven won for us by Christ’s death and resurrection – these are astonishing blessings. We are the richest of people. No wealth, no earthly success or status, can ever compare with what has been given to us.
The second New Testament emphasis is that the best is yet to come. We live in a world of tears, and this world is not our true home. We’re going there, to the Father’s house where all will be well, forever. There we will really know Eden restored, true riches which those promised in Canaan are only a foreshadowing of.

Until then, God continues His purposes of making us more like His Son, Jesus Christ. He wants to change us, weaning us off life’s fleeting pleasures, and strengthening our hearts to long for God, and to give our lives in service to others, as Christ did. Only a life where God is at work with those purposes is truly alive, and truly worth living.

So think of my friend, and of yourself. God, in His love, might just want to make us poorer, rather than richer. That might be in health, wealth, reputations, comforts or anything else. If He sovereignly chooses to do that it is in order that we lay hold of lasting riches with more confidence and commitment, the riches of knowing Christ.

ThM update

Wonderful, privileged days studying Covenant Theology this week at the John Owen Centre with Peter Lillback. We’ve talked our way through many of the influences on Reformed Covenant Theology, and have given some attention so far to some of the different strands within it. Today we’ve been exploring Calvin’s formulations in more detail and looking at later developments. Rigorous and exhilarating stuff!

My Assistant Pastor Paul’s at the EMA this week. I’m delighted to see that the Assembly’s focusing this year on prayer in the light of mission, and am looking forward to learning more about it.

Yesterday in our course devotions we looked at Judges 17. What a book Judges is! The good are there (just a few of them), but most of them are very bad and very ugly. Human nature is there in all of its greed, unbelief and turmoil. The thread which connects all of these sad and apparently disparate stories is the theme of idolatry: people don’t want the Living God, and worship instead their desires. At times their idolatry is explicitly religious. Although ch. 17 has none of the gore or obvious moral outrage, the chapter shows how low God’s people can sink.

Micah is a spoiled rich kid. He steals from his mum and gets a pat on the head for his dishonesty. She’s no less a cheat than he is. Then Micah gets religion, at least, he goes for a bit of showy religious idolatry. He sets up idols, and then he gets a priest to be his own personal pastor, baptising the whole ghastly show.

Material comfort, greed-fueled religion, and spineless clergy. It could be a church near you. God give us the grace and courage to worship Him as He’s revealed Himself to be in Christ in His Word, and in these dark days the conviction to follow Him with pure hearts and clean hands.

Lasting

Last week I was sitting in the Dove pub by Hammersmith Bridge, enjoying a meal and good conversation with a friend. It’s a beautiful place. On Sunday morning flames devoured it, destroying the 17th Century timbers and gutting the building.
The lesson for me? Life is fragile and uncertain and noone will escape judgment. Only the Kingdom of God will last. The Kingdom is solid and real. Recessions, ill-health, bereavements and fires will come, the fire of God’s judgment especially. It’s a wonderful thing to belong to the King, to be safe because Jesus took the fire for those who turn to Him.

Promised Land, or Scorched Earth?

“When the Lord your God has brought you into the land you are entering to possess, you are to proclaim on Mount Gerizim the blessings, and on Mount Ebal the curses.” (Deuteronomy 11.29)

Secularism is a bankrupt ideology. Our secular century has been brutal and bloody, and our secular British society is increasingly intolerant of all who don’t sign up to its creed. A culture which turns its back on God will soon wither and die, as ours is. That’s what we’re discovering in our country. But the sad truth is that we should not be surprised. Afterall, we were warned about the choice we face 3,500 years ago, in Deuteronomy.

In Deuteronomy Moses stands on the banks of the Jordan with the Israelites. They were looking at God’s new land and His new life for them. God was serious with them, as love always is, and called them to be serious with Him. Moses then promises them two massive visual illustrations of God’s covenant promises. The two mountains he names here are in contrasting territory, Gerizim was in rich, well-watered land, Ebal was in harsh, barren surroundings. Moses is telling them that they need to go to these mountains once they are in the land, and there to use their eyes and ears if they are going to live in God’s blessing. As they heard God’s promises of blessings they were to look at the Eden-like land of Gerizim, and count their blessings. As they came to Ebal they were forced to listen to God’s warnings against covenant disobedience look upon the barrenness of unbelieving rejection of God. Unbelief leads to a very real scorched earth.

Jesus spoke a lot about Heaven and Hell. He stood implacably against both greedy have-it-all now materialism and against hand-wringing and apologising religious waffle, which misleads souls. He called people – and calls them now - to take God’s love and His justice seriously. He calls us to taste and see God’s goodness as we turn from our selfishness and to embrace God’s saving grace through faith alone. That life lived in Christ is a world of blessings, here and, aboveall, in the promised world to come.

Doing Theology with Peter - and John

Monday sees me at the John Owen Centre for a week's intensive study on Covenant Theology as part of my ThM in Historical Theology. Peter Lillback of Westminster Seminary will be taking the course, and his excellent The Binding of God will certainly shape the week's study. I will then be writing something on seventeenth century Federal Theology, and plan to write on one of my great heroes John Flavel (the good-looking chap above), a man who combined penetrating theology with an exceptional pulpit and personal ministry.

Last week was quite a week, preaching and preparing sermons, a funeral, leadership work and meetings, study, planning, spending time with many people in and outside the church. All wonderful, wonderful activity, but the thrill of next week's study is the conviction that the deeper we go in our theological studies, the more we have to offer others as we point them to God's infinite riches in Christ.

Until then, just a matter of preaching two sermons tomorrow, on Deut. 11 and Matt. 9.34ff.
If you pray, remember me next week, please, and tomorrow, too. Thanks!

The Battle of the Beards, the Battle for Truth

Last weekend was a fantastic one for all at Gunnersbury, not just for those in the church but for many in Chiswick and beyond. I had been teasing my children on Saturday about the arrival of the ‘hairy Highlander’ (apologies for rampant national stereotyping, David), who would be staying for Saturday night and Sunday. I think that in David Robertson of Dundee they got more than they bargained for, but then David didn’t expect my six year old daughter to be planting kisses so regularly on his cheeks, either.

On Saturday night we hosted a debate between Peter Cave, secularist philosopher, and David Robertson, Pastor and author of ‘the Dawkins Letters’, titled "Life, better with - or without - God?" Our London City Mission evangelist, Laurence Truett, did have some personal email correspondence with Richard Dawkins some weeks ago, but after a little humming and hawing, made it clear that no, he didn’t want to debate with David, though David’s all too well-known to him! So after a huge amount of local publicity and a lot of prayer, the scene was set for the debate.

And it went really well. The debate was carefully structured and allowed time for the debaters to present their positions, engage with each other and take questions from the floor. Because of the number of questions from the 170 in attendance, the speakers had to give answers to some of them in their summing-up speeches. Peter, David and the questioners were animated, engaging, and there was a general sense that we weren’t just batting around interesting questions, but were dealing with a subject of crucial importance. Is God really there, and if so, what difference does He bring to life?

I was really surprised by how thin Peter’s arguments were. Actually, I wasn’t so much surprised, as I had anticipated the way in which he would argue his case, but I guess that hearing him debate as he did brought home again the poverty of the secularist position. Peter insisted that he isn’t a relativist – there really are such things as right and wrong. They are, he said ‘self-evident’, and at one time likened the existence of right and wrong to the evident existence of the building we were in – they’re just there. The point is, of course, that morality isn’t ‘just there’. We may feel as we look at the horrors of the Gas Chambers that it is wrong on every level to butcher life, but, ultimately, who says? The morality of the Nazis said ‘fine’. I know that their morality was and remains abhorrent and wrong, and I know why – God says that it’s wrong. Why does Peter Cave say that the Nazis were wrong? ‘Because they were’. Sorry, Peter, that does not get you out of the slough of relativism – you say they’re wrong, but they say they’re right. And you have no ultimate foundations for asserting your rightness, certainly not with your worldview which will not admit a God. The Christian position alone speaks of a God passionately committed to what is right, because He existence alone gives validity to objective right and wrong. What’s more, the Bible shows that this God is a God Who is actively working through the Gospel of Jesus Christ to bring hope and renewal to a world of suffering, outrages and injustice. David showed well the coherence of the Christian position, and skilfully presented how faith in Jesus Christ brings life in its fullness, as Jesus Himself promises (John 10.10).

On Sunday night David spoke on ‘Deconstructing Darwin and Dawkins’, and took many questions during the Q and A time, as well as from individuals afterwards. This was a full-on weekend, but a wonderful opportunity of inviting many people in to think through the Christian Gospel. A Sikh man, the local Russian Orthodox priest, convinced atheists (some wearing Darwin and Heathen T-shirts) and others all came along and many stayed on both evenings to talk on. One person took the step of personal faith in Christ, and others bought books and are carrying on the conversations begun. We know that this debate will be the first of many, and it was a joy to see together ‘Christ, in Whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2.3).

Look out on the church's website in the coming days for the audio and then the video of the event.

New here

‘Vanity of vanities’, cried the Preacher Ecclesiastes, ‘all is vanity and a chasing after the wind.’ And this Hebrew intellectual hadn't even encountered the blogosphere.

With some trepidation, then, I'm nosing my way into the world of the often vain, wordy and windy which makes up much of the blogging superhighway. I’ll be praying that what I post here will be interesting and helpful, and that through this blog people might see more of God's astonishing goodness in Christ, where life is real and true.

My life was taken hold of by Jesus Christ as a proud and stubborn 19 year old in 1991. I was claimed by His grace, and my life is one of being daily reclaimed by His kindness and purposes. Hence the blog title. I love to share what I've received in Christ, and will pass on what I can here at 'reclaimed.' Hope it helps you.