A little humility, and a whole slice of satisfaction

On Sunday night we looked at Psalm 131. Charles Spurgeon said that it is ‘one of the shortest psalms to read, but one of the longest to learn.’ It’s a picture of maturity from a man who was happy to be like a child, and a picture of wisdom from a man who didn’t care about looking foolish. It’s also a picture of a man who turned his back in the world to find something far more satisfying in the love of God.

‘I have stilled and quietened my soul’, David can say (v. 2). This is a picture of peace, but surely, peace after struggle. Very rarely will our growth in grace come without a struggle, as we search our hearts, confess sin, and struggle with God’s help to be holy. That’s authentic Christianity. Do you remember Paul’s struggle with the thorn in his flesh (2 Cor. 12.7-10)? We can’t be sure about what Paul was going through, only that he saw it as Satan’s torment. But through this experience God weaned Paul off his self-reliance. He was humbled, and caused to trust more deeply in his Saviour. So Paul teaches us that the Christian life is a fight (2 Tim. 4.7), and urges us to use the spiritual weapons of the Word and prayer (Eph. 6.17-18). It’s through fighting sin that we're weaned off it. That weaning process will never be complete in this life – there are always new depths of pride and greed to be discovered and rooted out of our hearts - but we will make progress, God will see to that. Paul discovered great contentment in Christ (Phil. 4.11), just as David testifies to for himself, here. And that can be our discovery, too.

Being weaned off sin means being captivated by the Cross. The theologian Carl Henry was asked a few years ago how, in the light of all of his great achievements and fame, he kept himself from being arrogant. His answer was simple: ‘how can anyone be arrogant when he stands beside the cross?’ (2) How can we? The cross defies all of our attempts to be proud. What have we to be proud in? What reason have we to be self-satisfied? Aren’t any of our best achievements dwarfed by the massive achievement of Jesus for us? Shouldn’t we be far more captivated by what He has done than by anything which we can do? And anyway, wasn’t it human pride, a delighting in ourselves apart from God, which took Jesus to the cross? Pity us, if we try to be proud and arrogant when we’ve been saved by the cross.

And how can you be satisfied when you stand anywhere else but beside the cross? You don’t need Solomon’s wealth or even wisdom to realise that this world is full of emptiness and frustration. People cover it up or joke their way through life, but this world gives nothing which lasts forever, and nothing which fills our deepest needs. When you come close to the cross you find love, a love which fills and satisfies. At the cross of Jesus we find God’s undeserved kindness to us. His love to us through the cross is guaranteed. Through the death of His own Son in our place we can be certain of our acceptance into God’s favour as we daily trust in Christ. Jesus says ‘I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls’ (Mt. 11.29).

Bang into Order

Our website is now up to date with Hope Church sermons. if you have a commute, or spend time ironing, cooking, in the gym or in the garden, then that can be a great time to listen to God's Word preached. It's great if you can listen to recorded sermons with undivided attention, but if you can't, then it's better to multitask than never to have tasked at all!

Hope Church life has moved on apace over the last few months, so a lot of fresh material will be written and put up on the site in the next week or two.

You couldn't make this stuff up!

That troubler of all things orderly rides high again. All who care about Scotland's church should read this.

Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to Jesus' neck (Psalm 69.1)

On Sunday morning at Hope we saw the majestic Lord Jesus Christ as the Lord of the storm in Mark 4.35-41. Then, in the evening, we sat under Psalm 29, where again we saw again the works of the Storm God.

It’s so good for our hearts to be confronted by the Sovereign power of Almighty God, as we are in these parts of Scripture. We need to be focused again and again on the God Who Is, and have our pretty – and petty – views of God sink away.

We are by nature the God-shrinkers; so often we want to a God Who, we hope, will heed our advice and follow our plans. We seek after a God Who will be silent before the storms of our own lusts and tempers. We want a God Who will give us comfort, not trial, and Who’ll give us a pat on the back and a smooth passage through life.

Instead, in Jesus we get God as He really is, Holy, Sovereign, and infinite in His power. A God, in short, our hearts can truly worship! He has the power to calm the storms we find ourselves in. He alone gives us the courage to believe that He is the Lord Who even brings and directs those storms for our good, and to His Glory.

In Jesus we get the God Who not only rules the storms, but Who has endured the most violent storm of all. When Jesus went to the Cross, He knew the storm of God’s wrath breaking over Him. Our sins were to Him the depths which He was plunged into, and God’s wrath against our sin was the engulfing flood which He endured. Psalm 69 traces David’s terrifying experience of suffering. One of the images is of facing a storm with its floodwaters. The New Testament cites or refers to this Psalm over a dozen times, always linking it with the life of Jesus Christ, especially in His sufferings. It is His Psalm. Above all, the sufferings He experienced, which the Psalm prefigures, are the sufferings of our sins and their punishment, as Jesus endures them. They were poured out on Him. He took the storm, and took it for us.

And the hope for us? We are safe! Even with life’s currents and deluges, we are absolutely sure of our safe arrival in heaven. Jesus has endured God’s wrath, and taken it in our place. We receive our forgiveness through faith alone, and God’s Spirit assures us that, come what may, we are united to Christ for all of life and eternity. We are safe. Whatever we face in this life, as we sang on Sunday, ‘the wind and waves still now His voice.’

‘Let us learn, while God spares us, to meditate on this truth, and to take the help which it is designed to give us under suffering, that even in the deepest depths of adversity, faith may hold us up, and what is more, may lift us up to God. There is, as Paul testifies (Romans 8.39), no height nor depth which can separate us from the infinite love of Him Who swallows up all depths, yes, even Hell itself.’

John Calvin, Comment on Psalm 69.3

Just for Starters

It's easy being a church plant. We are a lean, fast ship. We're free of the creaks, warps and barnacles of the venerable hulks around us. We have a crew of new and eager shipmates, and we're all keen to start out, to launch and travel together. There's much we want to achieve. We have a vast mission field to be involved in, we are excited about what's ahead of us.

As we start out, though, we want to go carefully, and wisely.

This morning I read these sage words from William Still. Mr Still, as he's known to all, then and now, was an Aberdonian Church of Scotland Minister who cut a purposeful path of expositional preaching for over 50 years. After 15 years into that ministry he spoke these challenging words at a fraternal of Scottish Baptists. They deserve taking to heart, especially for us as beginners at Hope Church. If we want to be a church of impact, then we need to be an impacted church, feeling the weighty authority of the Word of God, and its power to change and to grow us together in godliness. Only then are we fit to sail.

'The Church's first task, it seems to be is to keep being herself in a changing world, and thus to build herself up and fortify herself against the growing onslaughts of evil, as prophesied in history and in each successive generation. This she can only do so by being, not evangelically minded, devotionally or convention minded, socially minded, ecumenically minded, or politically minded; but by taking the whole Word of God as her diet, and feeding and building herself up on that. Thus she preserves her strength for every heroic task, including all these, and makes impact, often painful impact, upon all the life of her day. To this end I think we all, without respect of denomination, need to dismantle our churches, congregation by congregation, right down to the stocks. Then we must build them up again upon a more severe pattern, and strictly on the one unchangeable foundation of Jesus Christ, in order to meet the challenge of our day.'

The Letters of William Still, pp. 75-6

He's Back - and Hairier than ever!

It was a couple of years ago (or was it three?) that we invited David Robertson down to West London, to debate on atheism on a Saturday night, and then to preach the following morning at Gunnersbury. For a few weeks before I teased my children about the visit of ‘the Hairy Highlander.’ They really weren’t sure what to expect, but probably thought that they were getting a more hirsute version of our good friend David Meredith. I guess they weren’t a million miles out!

Anyways, David’s visit was a huge blessing. He made great friends with the children (especially succumbing to the charms of Jemimah), criticised my ‘cheap’ whisky, and made aspersions about the integrity of my Reformed Baptist convictions, given my love for many long-deceased Presbyterians. Best of all, he prosecuted the empty beliefs of atheism, and preached the Gospel with passion and conviction.

Now he’s back, or at least he was. On Saturday night at Gunnersbury David debated Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, on the motion of ‘Is a Secular Society a more Tolerant Society?’ I’ve not listened to the debate yet, but it’s here. The reports I’ve heard from Gunnersbury friends about it are excellent, and I can only suppose that it was a pretty hairy time for Mr Sanderson.

Happy Birthday!

What a night! On Wednesday we crammed into a friend's house, prayed, talked, read and signed our covenant of membership together. Nineteen people signed, with maybe two more joining this weekend. We appointed three Elders, and I was recognised as the Pastor. We then shared Birthday Cake.

So it's official, we are alive and kicking. I've been present at five births, and all of them involved, to different degrees, pain, mess, hard work, and great, great joy. The gestation of Hope Church Huddersfield, from the Allens' arrival, has been 9 months, almost to the day. Some have been longing for and praying for the church for thirty years, as we were reminded on Wednesday. There has,obviously, been a lot of work and effort by many to bring us to this day. But we're all sure of one thing, that the church is a miracle child; none of us expected her to be born, and we certainly didn't have the strength to achieve it. Here she is, the Lord has done great things, and we are filled with joy.

Now it remains for us to celebrate the birth publicly. This Sunday is our launch service, at 10. 30am, at Highfields Community Centre, on Cemetery Road HD1 5NF. David Gregson, Pastor of Reeth Evangelical Congregational Church, and a good friend to a number of us at Hope, will be giving us the charges, as Members, Elders and People. Garry Williams of the John Owen Centre, a close friend of mine from school days, will preach. After the service we'll have lunch together.

In the evening we meet for worship at 6.30pm, at The Christian Bookshop, Byram Street, HD1 1DR. All are very welcome. Come and share our Birthday joy!

Born Today

On the 10th September 2010 I climbed a little stiffly off my motorbike after riding up from London, and stood outside our new house here in Huddersfield. I think that was the last time my feet touched the ground!

Today I'm leading a meeting, half a mile up the road, where I expect a little over twenty of us will gather. We are the adults of Hope Church Huddersfield. We're covenanting together as Members, and we will recognise (at least, I anticipate we will) three Elders, including myself as the Pastor.

In every sense, we are born today. God has called us together, and we've been worshiping on Sundays and getting to know each other since November of last year. This is the day, though, that we recognise that we're in this for real. We worship a Covenant-keeping God, who saves us in Christ and Who indwells us by His Holy Spirit. We want to say together tonight that we trust with with our souls and our lives, and want to honour Him by committing to each other as a church serving His Gospel.

And then, boy, will we celebrate! Please pray, and rejoice with us.

...and throw away the key...

Eddie nails it