Hope Church, Huddersfield

An update on life, ministry and blogging in town: http://fromheretohuddersfield.wordpress.com/

Jonah's God and Yours

Our second sermon on Jonah 1 at Hope Church yesterday, and needless to say, God's Spirit searched out our hearts as we heard the Word. What an astonishing book Jonah is! So full of penetrating insights into the human condition, and such a presentation of the Lord Almighty, in His wisdom, power, purposes and compassion.

Hugh Martin has been a favourite of mine since I first happened upon him ten or so years ago. I needed little incentive to open his commentary when I began to work on Jonah. Enjoy the following - but reckon with the Jonah-hunting God he shows us:

‘God has many an agent whom He may commission in pursuit. He may therefore make no haste in putting any of them under commission: and you may have enormously the start of your pursuer. But the fire, or the tempest, of the water, or the pestilence, when once under the command of the Most High, calmly and surely hunt down the fugitive, and bring Him resistlessly to the bar. There is no art that can elude or baffle the messengers of Him who is the Judge of the quick and the dead. There is no blinding them; there is no bribing them. There is no loophole of escape. ‘Be sure your sin will find you out.’’

Hugh Martin, Jonah, p.68

Mission Nineveh

'That mission was a solitary, unparalleled, an isolated and unique transaction. In all the history of the prophetic Spirit and Word in the Church, there had been nothing like unto it before, and there was nothing like unto it afterwards….Suddenly, without note or warning, without preface, without explanation, assuming sovereign state as God Most High over all the earth, Jehovah, re-manifesting, if not reassuming His universal supremacy, conducts, on the scale of most amazing miracle, a movement of His ceaseless government as it extends over all nations; and, that it may not fail to compel the attention of succeeding ages, He adorns that movement with the most marvellous and romantic incident, with one of the most striking, if not perplexing, developments of human character, especially as occurring in a man of God, and with the symbolic and death and resurrection of the agent under whose hand that movement is conducted: a death and resurrection on the very type of Messiah’s: ‘For Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, even as the Son of Man was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.’ (Matthew 12.40)’

Hugh Martin, Jonah, pp.12-13

Moby-Dick on Preaching

One of my very favourite novels is Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (yup, with a hyphen). It's the enthralling story of one man's obsession to kill a whale, as seen through the often astonished eyes of one of the shipmen. It's also far more than that, and ranges for chapters on end through whaling in all of its aspects, martime customs, ship design, marine biology, and so much more. It is truly an epic novel, and brilliantly well-written. I've read its 700 pages twice, and plan to read them again.

At Hope Church I'm preaching through Jonah on Sunday mornings. Even 8 sermons barely begins to get into the riches of the lessons which the book has for us, but we had an excellent time starting in chapter one last Sunday. And it's been a great excuse to get back into Moby-Dick. On the night before the Pequod sails on its journey, the main character ('call me Ishmael', of course) attends worship at the sailors' chapel. The revered Father Mapple ascends the pulpit, which, to the narrator's astonishment, is shaped to resemble the prow of a ship, from where Mapple thunders out a sermon on Jonah and God's sovereign power and mercy in the Prophet's life.

Well, you must read the book yourself. But listen to what Melville says at the close of the chapter when he's given us Mapple's sermon. Speaking of the prow-like pulpit, Melville says:

"What could be more full of meaning? For the pulpit is ever this earth's
foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From
thence it is the storm of God's quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must
bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is
first invoked for favorable winds. Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out,
and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow."

Signing in

OK, so it's been quiet around here. I can report, though, that Huddersfield has not chewed us up and spat us out. The last four plus months have certainly been busy, full of tough times and a lot of adjustment for the seven Allens; but we are encouraged and making headway as a family, as is the church plant, Hope Church, Huddersfield. I give occasional updates on my movements and the church's development at fromheretohuddersfield. We're certainly knowing the Lord's encouragement, and we're enjoying continual answers to prayer as we take shape. As we've got into a little series of following the Heidelberg Catechism on Sunday mornings, I'll give some updates on each week's catechism questions on that blog.

Meanwhile, I'll put some choice thoughts from the great John Flavel in over the next weeks. Flavel has an exceptional evangelistic and pastoral ministry by pen and by pulpit, and I want to show some of his brilliance. Stay tuned!