Hired Shepherd

Guy does this thing with lists

2007-05-26T19:46:00.000Z

I have enough of a job getting sermons into more than three parts but the exiled preacher has started a bit of a fashion for lists of ten things.

SNAP! 12

2007-05-25T08:03:00.000Z

Psalm 24

From river-borne silt and from sea's wave-tossed sand
God fashions the earth and lays down the land.
He lays it all out for his people to have:
the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.

So who shall ascend upon God's holy hill
with clean hands and hearts, obeying his will;
who will not, no, cannot deceitfully swear
but stand without falsehood to worship him there?

While seeking the face of Israel's God
and blessing receiving from salvation's Lord
our justification through faith we will claim;
the new generation that calls on his name.

Lift your heads up, you gates,
open up, ancient doors
that the King may come in
who's the greatest of lords.
Strong and mighty is he
bearing victory rewards.
Lift your heads up, you gates,
open up, ancient doors.

tune: Light up the Fire

SNAP! 11

2007-05-24T16:08:00.000Z

Psalm 21

Lord, in your strength how the King rejoices,
you grant requests made with kingly voices.
In your salvation his heart is leaping;
his exultation safe in your keeping.

In this encounter rich blessings giving,
he asks for life and you grant the living.
Of crowning mercies you are the giver,
of length of days and of life forever.

Great is his glory through your salvation;
majestic splendour in celebration,
for you make him the most blessed forever,
glad in the union that none can sever.

All buried hatred your hand exhuming,
its burning wrath in your fire consuming
and from your arrows its children flying;
its plans frustrated, its mischief dying.

The Lord is faithful, the King believing;
God's love is steadfast, his King unmoving.
In heaven exalted with praises ringing;
on earth, your strength, Lord, your people singing.

Tune: An t-Eilean Muileach (The Isle of Mull)

SNAP! 10

2007-05-22T09:37:00.000Z

An Echo for Psalm 20
for Callum Hall

I called in the day of my trouble,
I called on his Holy Name,
got answering help from his temple
for God-my-deliverer came.
The torchlight I held was engulfed by
the Spirit who answers with fire,
my wrong way gave way to the high road,
he gave me my heart's own desire.

With banners and shouts of 'Salvation,'
rejoicing in answers to prayer —
God's saving might reaches from heaven,
he saves his Anointed from there —
we trust in the triumph of Jesus,
before him all kingdoms shall fall,
we'll rise and stand upright to bless him
'Salvation' shall echo our call.

Tune: Crugybar

Selah 8

2007-05-21T15:34:00.000Z

Psalm 9:20
Put them in fear, O LORD!
Let the nations know that they are but men!
Selah.

"With our firstborn sons our honour
and our strength set in our horses
it was double our disaster then
to find ourselves with none;
sons slain of a night's fever
and the cavalry all gone
to perdition in the space of just one hour
and our king reduced to merely-human curses."

"Who'd have thought that when we'd won
the battle that we'd live to rue it?
Their 'god-box' toppled Dagon
when we took it to his house,
then (a toss-up for the worse thing)
plagues of haemorrhoid and mouse.
Now the new cart's trip is done,
they've got it back and welcome to it."

"The instruction was, as always, pretty clear,
'Make sure he's really dead!' — I tell it from the blood,
it's the living ones are bleeders
for it don't flow when they're dead —
This one looked dead already
so I had them spear his side
and I saw the sun go dark and I heard the curtain tear
and I knew this dead man was the son of God."

Selah 50

2007-05-21T14:34:00.000Z

Psalm 76:9
when God arose to establish judgment,
to save all the humble of the earth.
Selah.

We made a night-raid of it.
When dawn broke we were on our way
back, with victory in the bag,
the hostages in tow and all the booty.
The plunderers slept as we robbed them of their prey;
we're long gone and they're still feeling for their hands.

It was the arrogance of it;
secure in their lair, no sentry
stood. They, supine as a log,
for all their early start failed in their duty,
sunk in death's sleep as we freed our families.
Oppression ends as we reunify our band.

They made a meal out of it.
Light swallowed. Darkness in the day
time joined them. Hidden in the fog,
the tables overturned, the Victor, muted,
binds the strong man in his house with his own keys.
Resurgent, Just Deliverer occupies the stand.

Selah 49

2007-05-21T14:11:00.000Z

Psalm 76:3
There he broke the flashing arrows,
the shield, the sword, and the weapons of war.
Selah.

Melchizedek brought bread and wine
and stopped the triumph in its track;
'Shalom' (for now) extends to Sodom's plain;
divinely blessed, Abram refuses gain;
the garland hangs on Mamre's Oak;
sons are not cursed near Eshcol's Vine.

When David's pride was overcome
and God's wrath halted on the height,
an altar built upon the threshing floor
— Moriah's Mound the testing place once more;
the oxen paid for, as was right —
sufficed to cancel out the sum.

When God's Anointed left his throne
and incognito came to Zion
at him were shot the arrows of the bow,
he, bleeding, broke them, broken, overthrew,
— Lamb's silence of a roaring lion —
for thus in Judah God is known.

Twelve Great Reasons for Accepting the Cessation.

2007-05-03T10:32:00.000Z

Dr. Sam Storms has published a post entitled The Case for Continuationism in two parts. I've used the first part (12 Bad Reasons for Being a Cessationist) as a template for my rather opposite thoughts on the matter. So about the Cessation?

1 It is Scriptural: 1 Corinthians 13:8-12 teaches quite clearly that three things 'prophecy', 'tongues' and 'knowledge' would cease. Clearly these three words are used with restricted meaning (nobody thinks that the cessation of tongues means an end to all use of language, for instance) and each would cease when its 'perfection' was given. The cessation indicates a threefold perfection given to the church now.

2 It is God-honouring: Since belief in the cessation entails acceptance of the perfection of those things that have displaced 'prophecy', 'tongues' and 'knowledge' in the life of the church, God who gave those perfections is honoured by acceptance of the cessation. Furthermore, since the root of belief in the cessation is in exegesis of the text, God is honoured by the removal of the temptation to say that he cannot do such things, is bound to do such and such things or even that he has bound himself not to act in such and such a particular way depending on how else we derive our cessationism / continuationism other than by exegesis.

3 It is logical: For example, when the perfection of the New Testament was complete, the collaboration and correction of the prophets was handed over to the pastors and teachers of New Testament truth and grace. This handover parallels the succession from apostles (the generation who knew Christ 'after the flesh') to the evangelists. Honour ought not be given to the church as having given us Scripture but the prophets within the churches were those who gave us the authentication that Scripture was Scripture

Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. [1 Corinthians 14:29]

so no prophets today means that the church cannot meddle with what is Scripture.

4 It is Christocentric: The destruction of the temple in AD 70 marked the end of the transfer of the focus of gospel witness from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth [Acts 1:8.] At first it must have seemed as though the temple could have been rebuildable but as hopes faded away with the obliteration of all records of the priesthood so 'tongues' as a sign of judgement on Jerusalem faded away also. The completion of the transference to the worship of the Father in spirit and in truth through Christ in every place is sealed with the putting away of 'tongues.'

5 It is accessible: If one accepts the cessation, the apostolic doctrine is no longer subject to getting lost in the meanderings and wilderness-swallowed rivers of the so-called apostolic succession. The eyewitness knowledge of the apostles (not just of the twelve but of 'all the apostles' [1 Corinthians 15:7]) has given way, not to the perfection of 'the eternal state ushered in at the second coming of Jesus Christ' but to the interim perfection of being

… absent from the body, … present with the Lord. [2 Corinthians 5:8]

and of knowing even as having been known.

6 It is certain: Although we no longer have the witness of the apostles, i.e. the ability to 'receive the testimony of men,' still:

… the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son. And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. [1 John 5:9-11]

We have also the written Word of God [1 John 5:12f.] and the answer to prayer [1 John 5:14f.] and having these three makes our faith even more certain than the apostolic experience was itself [1 Peter 1:18f.]

7 It is foundational: Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone holds the eyewitness knowledge of the apostles and the confirmatory and ever-present witness of the prophets together and the cessation sets them all apart as a foundation for us to build on [Ephesians 2:19-22.] We can have no other foundation than Jesus Christ [1 Corinthians 3:10f.]

8 It is egalitarian: Just as we all have access to God

For through [Christ] we … have access in one Spirit to the Father. [Ephesians 2:18]

so we can call preachers to bring the gospel to us, pay double-honour to those who labour in the word and doctrine, dismiss those who do not adhere to the faith once delivered to the saints and never need feel that miracles are in the hands of 'special' people.

9 It is crucicentric: Just as the beginning of the epoch of Christ's first advent was marked by the appearance of an angel to Zechariah in the temple so the end of the epoch was marked by the cessation. The medium does not become the message and acceptance of the cessation helps focus on the cross as the centre of this significant cluster of divine activity among men.

10 It is historical: One cannot put a date on the cessation just as one cannot put exact dates on the completion of the canon, the destruction of the temple or the death of the last apostle but taking samples downstream from the source one finds neither churches functioning like the church at Corinth nor visitors to churches like Corinth with apostolic eyewitness knowledge of the life and resurrection of Christ. There was a cessation.

11 It is liberating: While one is free to listen to continuationist preachers, read continuationist writers and worship with continuationist congregations and profit one need never feel the pressure to submit to abuse, to suffer in silence or to stay beyond reason just because the abusers, the vocal and the loyalty demanders illegitimately exert these pressures (which were never the intention of prophecy, tongues and knowledge in the first place anyway) doing so on the putative grounds of distinctions within the people of God that have ceased.

12 It is enabling: Acceptance of the Cessation helps to use the means of grace without fear of bringing false fire. One can raise ones hands in praise without feeling like the thin end of a wedge, one can dismiss the most melodious noise (as being not-knowing-the-words rather than as a vital message which agonisingly can't be understood) to concentrate on five words with understanding and one can counter 'The Lord has told me that you have to let me do this' with 'Strange that the Lord hasn't told me the same thing.'

As it is Now and Ever Shall Be, (But for the Grace of God Now.)

2007-04-22T09:04:00.000Z

Jude 14-16

14 • It was also about these that Enoch,
the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying,
"Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones,
15 to execute judgement on all
and to convict all the ungodly
of all their deeds of ungodliness
that they have committed in such an ungodly way,
and of all the harsh things
that ungodly sinners have spoken against him."

16 • These are grumblers, malcontents,
following their own sinful desires;

• they are loud-mouthed boasters,
showing favouritism to gain advantage.

The thing is that in a lost eternity all this ungodliness will be answered with as much a distance from God as could ever have been desired with no satisfaction in the result since the driving force is not the desire to be unlike God but rather the desire that there should be no God.

With all reason in hell to be malcontent grumblers, the lack of contentment and teeth gnashing will be in proportion to the discontented hedonism indulged in here.

In a place where the lost really will be able to say, 'I did it my way' the fearful scramble to toady any slight advantage whatsoever will be eternally frustrated to disappointment.

The Gloom of Utter Darkness Forever

2007-04-22T08:17:00.000Z

Jude 12-13

12 • These are blemishes on your love feasts,
as they feast with you without fear,
looking after themselves;

• waterless clouds,
swept along by winds;

• fruitless trees in late autumn,
twice dead, uprooted;
13 wild waves of the sea,
casting up the foam of their own shame;
wandering stars,
for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved
forever.

Hell will doubly be a second death for those who make use of all the trappings of faith and the visible privileges of sonship in order to cavort heedlessly under the cover of a pretend faith.

The worst features of a fallen nature, as far from garden of Eden fruitfulness and order as chaos can swallow will be incorporated into hell as eternity swallows up wasted time itself along with all hypocrisy.

Standing Between the Dead and the Living

2007-04-22T07:26:00.000Z

Jude 9-11

9 • But when the archangel Michael,
contending with the devil,
was disputing about the body of Moses,
he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment,
but said, "The Lord rebuke you."

10 • But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand,
and they are destroyed by all
that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.

11 • Woe to them!
For they walked in the way of Cain
and abandoned themselves
for the sake of gain to Balaam's error
and perished in Korah's rebellion.

Moses had witnessed contention against him get to the pitch that after Korah's rebellion, which you can read all about in Numbers 16, Aaron had to run through the camp of Israel with a censer full of fire from the altar to 'head off' God's anger and prevent it from resulting in the deaths of all Israel. Now this happened the day after the ground had opened up and swallowed whole the followers of Korah with their families, their contention going down with them to the world of the dead, to Sheol. You would have thought that we would learn the lesson not to contend with God in this way but if, the very day after rebellion was swallowed up by the ground, the people could be complaining that the rebellion was the fault of Moses (and therefore of God) how can we expect that mankind will ever cease to shake his fist in God's face.

Certainly, Moses could see a history of such behaviour going right back to the beginning of time. At the time of Korah's rebellion they had yet to face the effects of the non-Israelite prophet Balaam's attempt to get round his inability to curse Israel by introducing an anti-God fertility cult to the heart of the Israelite camp in order to destroy them all — You can read about that and how Phinehas, Aaron's grandson stopped it in Numbers 25 — but Moses could have pointed back to Cain's murder of Abel and how the rebellion and the words spoken in it were expressions of nothing less than unbelief in the very face of God's provision of life and reconciliation.

Lest we should think that the message from the story told by Jude about Michael the archangel contending for the body of Moses is given to show that angels know better we had better note who it is that Michael was contending with. The rebellion of unbelief that shakes its fist in the face of God's grace and is swallowed up whole into hell itself has been Satan's from the very beginning. Michael's care in not giving as bad as he got is because Lucifer's fall could have been his.

Let us be exceedingly careful as we handle things that we don't understand because there is a principle in mankind while still at enmity to God that has us blaspheming God simply because we will not seek understanding nor put our trust in him while at the same time those leads which we instinctively follow lead us, as it were, to be still contending with God as the ground opens up and swallows us.

While the Judge to be is Still our Advocate.

2007-04-19T08:22:00.000Z

Revelation 20:11-15

Last Judgement — Final Transition.

In British courts of law the route to becoming a judge is to serve first as an advocate (quaintly called a barrister in England) and we find the same progression in heavenly courts leading up to the Last Judgement itself:

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. [1 John 2:1]

Now is the time to make use of his advocacy and the access we have through him to the Father.

Last Judgement — Final Transition.

2007-04-15T08:32:00.000Z

Revelation 20:11-15

The Great White Throne
Judgement by the Book
The Bottom Line

Seated as Judge at the Last Judgement will be God's appointee, Jesus Christ the Righteous, on whose proceeding to the judgement, an irresistible summons to attend will be sent out to all those who are to be judged.

Every person who ever lived will be in the assembly for the trial and the assembly will be separated immediately into two groups to hear first the deeds of each individual laid bare and then the pronouncement of liberty to all those whose names are written in the book of life.

Those thus summoned to an eternal reward will join with the Judge in judgement of the world before the sentence of damnation is pronounced and consignment to the lake of fire, which is the second death, takes place.

The Bottom Line

2007-04-15T08:15:00.000Z

Revelation 20:14-15:

14 • Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.

• This is the second death, the lake of fire.

15 • And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life,
he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Since we are incapable of seeing beneath the surface of a lake of fire so we can only get any idea of the horrors of its depths by comparison with known or imaginable things. For example the sea's flooding has a deadly tenacity but the flood will have been so much less tenacious than the fire will prove to be.

The lake of fire is called the second death because, since Death and Hades are thrown into it, there is to be no retreat back to the intermediate state of merely being dead. Hades is thrown in (and so too its space, so to speak, as well as its torments) to be assimilated into the lake of fire. If the first death is temporal (and indeed 'mortal' is in some ways synonymous with 'temporal') then when Death is thrown into the lake of fire its characteristic passage of time is also thrown into eternity and we may consider the second death to be a dying that never dies.

Those whose names are written in the book of life will not even taste the second death. Even now, for those who are 'asleep in Jesus', the torments of Hades are unknown because they and the pleasures they enjoy are separated from Hades by a great chasm that is fixed.

Although we can't look into the depths of the lake of fire the horrors of the road that leads inexorably there ought to be enough for us to determine not to go that route. We have much the same circumstance in reverse with wanting to be counted with those whose names are written in the book of life for we can't trace out those deeds done in the body with any certainty but certainty does come from getting to the bottom line so we simply ask, 'Is my name written in the book of life?'

Judgement by the Book

2007-04-15T08:04:00.000Z

Revelation 20:12c-13:

• And the dead were judged by what was written in the books,
according to what they had done.

13 • And the sea gave up the dead who were in it,
Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them,

• and they were judged,
each one of them, according to what they had done

The sea's grip on 'her dead' is proverbially tenacious. We are neither to think of Death and Hades as two separate places nor that the souls of the sea's dead are held in some other place apart from Hades, the world of the dead. The cumulative effect of the repetitions is to insist that all the dead will be at the great white throne and will be judged. Neither previous judgement, such as the flood that destroyed the world that was, nor death itself will prevent an appearance there.

The judgement is emphatically to be 'according to what they had done.' That is the case for each one of us and what we have done and are doing is being recorded right now. By contrast with the book of life we could call these books the books of the knowledge of good and evil, noting that another reason for the earth and the sky fleeing away is the whole world's inability to contain such books but also that, perhaps with this, the making of books is finally at an end.

The Great White Throne

2007-04-15T07:43:00.000Z

Revelation 20:11-12b:

11 • Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it.
From his presence earth and sky fled away,
and no place was found for them.

12 • And I saw the dead, great and small,
standing before the throne,
and books were opened.

• Then another book was opened,
which is the book of life.

No place was found for earth and sky at the great white throne in John's vision because nothing can compete with the the majesty of the one seated on the throne. A man (Jesus Christ) will sit there because, first of all, the dead of humanity are those who are to be judged. Judgement is to be made outwith time and space on the things done in space (on the earth) and in time (governed by celestial movements) so, in the vision, no place was found for earth and sky at the great white throne.

The book of life is given a special mention to draw attention to its name and to distinguish it from the other books without dismissing them altogether. The focus is placed on what it is that we really need to be asking: 'Is my name written in the book of life?'

There will be a judgement beyond death, time and space, that will be made according to what is being written down now. The one who presides at that judgement will have authority over death, time and space so that all the human dead from all time and from everywhere will be summoned there, will be there and will be judged there, when the books are opened.

The Business of the Day

2007-04-10T09:12:00.000Z

Matthew 25:31-40

The Eternal State

The Parable of the Pounds presents the evocative picture of a nobleman going away to a far country to receive a kingdom and then return.

Calling ten of his servants, he gave them ten minas, and said to them, 'Engage in business until I come.' [Luke 19:13]

So, since we are the servants waiting for the King to return, what is the business that we ought to be engaged in in preparation for the eternal state?

• While in the world we ought to be not of the world; we cannot be separate from the world but as long as we keep close to the cross of Christ we will live separated/separable holy lives.

• Since Christ the King will return in glory we should glorify him now by making a study of how he conducted business in his Father's house here in his time on earth and especially how he finished the work that the Father gave him to accomplish on the cross.

• Since the inheritance that we will come into when the King returns is God himself we ought to share the blessing as much as we can in anticipation. There is a supply for every need so we cannot begrudge freely giving what we have freely received. This is an opportunity for investment in the future that God has planned for us but it is beyond our imagination to describe what that future will be like because we can't extrapolate from the price paid in Jesus' blood on Calvary's cross to all the blessings that flow from it. Those things that make a small difference here on earth echo the huge difference Christ made on Calvary so the returning echo to our 'cup of cold water' is a whole river of righteousness and we can't anticipate what shall be obtained then by merely doing what is fitting here and now.

Hastening the Coming of the Day

2007-04-10T08:53:00.000Z

Matthew 25:31-40

The Eternal State

… what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, … [2 Peter 3:11-12]

If we're talking about the new creation in the eternal state then surely we're done talking about the Law of God and the Ten Commandments? Not so, because we find ourselves always talking about what happens then in relation to what happens now. If we are to live lives of holiness and godliness — in other words, if we are to hasten the coming of that day that we are waiting for — then we must love the Lord our God with all of our heart and we must love our neighbour as ourselves. Both tables of the Law make demands on us as we seek to glorify God here on earth but how are we to reconcile the conflicting demands of God and my neighbour?

Here's how. Who is both God and my neighbour? Simple answer is Jesus Christ but the more complex answer, waiting for the return in glory of the King of the Ages, is

'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.'

We get ready for the separation of the sheep and the goats on that day by this day reconciling the tables of the law in our behaviour by loving God who is my neighbour.

Listen to the Shepherd

2007-04-10T08:27:00.000Z

Matthew 25:31-40

The Eternal State

We might well be bothered about our inability to distinguish the Shepherd's voice when he comes but any fears we might have about listening for the Shepherd ought to be allayed by the practice of listening to the Shepherd.

And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. [John 10:16]

We have the opportunity to hear the voice of the Shepherd:
• as we receive answers to our prayers
• as we learn to keep in tune with the Spirit of God
• as we read the Word and meditate on it.

The Eternal State

2007-04-07T20:22:00.000Z

Matthew 25:31-40

To Make Up His Treasured Possession
The SheepfromGoats Protocol
As Close as we Come to as Good as it Gets.

Although the details of what we shall be in the eternal state are not yet known to us, nor can we (with the use of whatever kind of science) hope to grasp what hasn't even entered into the fringes of the imagination of the heart of mankind, we can anticipate its glory somewhat from such data as our own bodily experience here in the world of now, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit as the guarantee of our inheritance and the promise that, when we see him, we shall be like him, whom to know is already life eternal.

As Close as we Come to as Good as it Gets.

2007-04-07T19:28:00.000Z

Matthew 25:34-40

34 • Then the King will say to those on his right,
'Come, you who are blessed by my Father,
inherit the kingdom prepared for you
from the foundation of the world.

35 • For I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
36 I was naked and you clothed me,
I was sick and you visited me,
I was in prison and you came to me.'

37 • Then the righteous will answer him,
saying,
'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you,
or thirsty and give you drink?
38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you,
or naked and clothe you?'
39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?'
40 And the King will answer them,
'Truly, I say to you,
as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers,
you did it to me.'

The eternal state is as good as it gets and this invitation is as close as we come in the here and now to getting a glimpse of what that will be like. Such will be the satisfaction of seeing the King —

Your eyes will behold the king in his beauty; they will see a land that stretches afar. [Isaiah 33:17]

— that all questions about what we shall be will be answered when and as we see him [1 John 3:2.] The questions will be about when we might have fed, watered, welcomed, clothed, visited or succoured such a glorious being, for surely we'd have remembered someone so bright. (You know, glowing/glorious, not someone like Richard Dawkins.) And what's more when would someone so glorious have needed sustenance, care or emancipation from the likes of us?

The question will be 'When?'
• Not, 'How?' Because the connections of how are obvious; when someone is hungry what else will you do but feed them?
• Not, 'Why?' For why else would you give a drink than if someone were thirsty?
• Not, 'Who?' Because it's not at issue that Christ has received these things. The question is, 'When?'

It will turn out that 'when' was 'whenever' — whenever the righteous have done to one another as they would have done to themselves. The King calls the recipients, brothers, because they are fellow heirs who have received the adoption.

Just as there is a fitness between the need felt and the help supplied and between doing it to the least and it being accepted as if having been done to the greatest, just so there is a fitness about believers inheriting the kingdom.
The kingdom will be inherited
• as it has been prepared from the foundation of the world
• by those who receive the familial blessing of the King of kings
• along with the King of Glory whose own entrance into the glory prepared for him is to be marked and made complete by his bringing many sons to glory [Hebrews 2:10.]

The SheepfromGoats Protocol

2007-04-07T11:53:00.000Z

Matthew 25:32-33

32 • Before him will be gathered all the nations,

• and he will separate people one from another
as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

33 • And he will place the sheep on his right,
but the goats on the left.

Well, how do you go about separating sheep from goats? We're not talking about classifying representative pictures of sheep and goats into order or arranging stuffed animals in a display, for although such a differentiation can be done quite 'scientifically' that task would be merely childsplay in spite of the obvious similarities between them.

If we try to separate sheep from goats on religious grounds we are in trouble for the opposite reason since both are kosher, parting the hoof and chewing the cud, and may be eaten by observant Jews accordingly, and when it came to sacrifice, a sheep and a goat were of roughly equivalent value, much as pigeons and turtledoves were.

The two main occasions where one kind was specified rather than another were when lambs were specified for Passover and goats for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Here we are getting closer to the idea of separation because on the original night of Passover, the lamb's blood was placed on the doorposts of the houses where the Passover was to be eaten to separate those inside from those outside the protection of the blood. On Yom Kippur the two goats were separated by lot (a good method to separate two goats but not sheep from goats) the one goat was for sacrifice to the LORD, the other (the proverbial 'scapegoat') was 'for Azazel,' and whatever happened to that goat when it was led into the wilderness, its blood was not shed.

The clue about how the sheep and the goats are to be separated lies in the text itself. We need to ask how does a shepherd separate sheep from goats? And the answer is given elsewhere by the 'Good Shepherd' himself:

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. [John 10:27-29]

So, for such is human nature, there will be many from all nations who will be wondering, since they can't be sure of being among the sheep simply by belonging to the right nation, what is it that marks them out as a sheep rather than as a goat? Both goats and sheep are headstrong and will go their own way but those who know the Shepherd's voice will hear his clear instruction, 'Go to the right.' and they will never perish.

To Make Up His Treasured Possession

2007-04-07T11:13:00.000Z

Matthew 25:31

31 • "When the Son of Man comes in his glory,

• and all the angels with him,

• then he will sit on his glorious throne."

The gloriously eternal God created both humans and angels for his own glory. Some of the angels and all of mankind fell short of God's glory because of the entrance of sin. In accordance with God's counsel, the Son of God, also eternally glorious (… not count[ing] equality with God a thing to be grasped,[Philippians 2:6]) left heaven's glory in order to restore fallen humanity through his death on the cross. On his being raised from the dead he returned to heaven with the promise that he would return in glory.

Here we have the tripartite glory of the returning Christ displayed. Two parts of that glory will be complete on his return (his own glory as the Son of Man, the judge and the glory of his glorious throne, the seat of judgement.) The third part of his glory will be to be completed, not that the angels are not glorious in themselves, but that this glory of his will be made complete when to the number of the angels will be added those (both male and female) adopted from among mankind to be God's heirs who, with Christ and the angels will make up the number of the sons of God at last.

The company of the holy, elect angels, saved from ever falling into sin will be joined by the complete company of holy, elect people redeemed from sin by the glorious death on the cross of him, who knowing no sin was made sin for us.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. [2 Corinthians 5:21]

Saving Faith in the Completed Work of Christ

2007-04-07T08:45:00.000Z

Luke 23:45-52

The Word of Perfection

• It's no use just protesting Christ's innocence because even the centurion at the cross knew that.
• It's no use beating ourselves up emotionally over how terrible a thing it is that he had to die for even the crowd that crucified felt that.
• It's of no use just going through the motions of gathering round the cross with Jesus himself not present, though admittedly it was for Jesus' sake that the disciples did gather.

Here is God's perfect sacrifice, dead for you to believe in while you live. Confess with your mouth that he is Lord, just as Jesus himself heralded his victory over sin vocally, indeed, in a loud voice. Just as Jesus committed himself into God's hands in sure and certain hope of the resurrection so, if you believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, your faith will be of ultimate use to you. You shall be saved.

Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?

2007-04-07T08:07:00.000Z

Luke 23:45-52

The Word of Perfection

We might be tempted to take comfort
• in only following orders
• in having just been temporarily caught up in what everybody else was doing
• in regrouping after having been scattered
thinking that our restored mercifulness, human feeling or solidarity is our default mode and that what we did at the cross of Jesus was somehow an aberration.

But what if that flit, looking out for oneself, that show of cruelty or that mob violence were to prove to be the default? What if it isn't about what the centurion said ("Certainly this man was innocent!") but about what the centurion did? Conversely, what if it isn't about what the crowd did (beating their breasts) but about what they said? Deep-in-the-heart darkness was on display at Calvary; that depravity of which the totality is never seen. What if it is the default for disciples not to gather but to run away?

If we would truly put to death the sin that remains and at the same time bring immortality to light, we must come back, continually, to the cross of Christ and, daily and always, repent of the sin for which Christ, once and forever, was the perfect sacrifice.

Unexpected Things Required for the Coming of the Kingdom

2007-04-07T07:55:00.000Z

Luke 23:45-52

The Word of Perfection

Just as the colt, upon which no person had ever ridden, was surrendered to the disciples because Jesus needed it, so Joseph surrendered up to Jesus his new tomb, in which no human remains had yet lain. What unexpected thing might the coming of the kingdom require of me?

The Word of Perfection

2007-04-06T15:49:00.000Z

Luke 23:45-52

Surrender of the Spirit
Tumult of the Soul.
Habeas Corpus: Having the Body

Christ's sacrifice of himself was perfect in every way; When the time came he was to be found, 'about his Father's business', so to speak, deprived of all help, he remained himself entirely and truly and when the work of sacrifice was over, he was prepared to rest his weight on it himself, surrendering his broken body to human hands and his triumphant spirit to God in submissive prayer to the Father.

Habeas Corpus: Having the Body

2007-04-06T08:36:00.000Z

Luke 23:50-52

50 • Now there was a man named Joseph,
from the Jewish town of Arimathea.

• He was a member of the council,
a good and righteous man,
51 who had not consented to their decision and action;
and he was looking for the kingdom of God.

52 • This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.

Just while the desire to have the killing of Jesus drawn out was ebbing out of the crowd and the centurion (too late) was protesting his innocence, a new determination entered into an erstwhile 'secret' disciple of Jesus to ask Pilate for his body to be released to him.

The Romans left nothing to chance on such occasions so as surely as they would have provided the right number of crosses, nails and soldiers to execute the three men they had led out to die, they certainly had three graves ready dug at the site, with the bags of quicklime ready to speed up the dissolution of the bodies. No doubt the bodies of the two thieves were thrown into their permanent graves but the body of Jesus was taken to rest in his temporary tomb.

It was not in God's plan for the body of Jesus to be reduced to dust and ashes so, although Joseph appears here somewhat like a suddenly convenient but not previously mentioned crucial character in a cheap detective novel, Luke wasn't concocting fiction; this man or his memory was to be found in the village of Arimathea. It was a matter of record that this Joseph had integrity as a person, that as a council member he had not consented to the death of Jesus and, crucially, that he had been looking for the kingdom of God before he went to Pilate.

Further evidence that this character was not conjured up by God at the last minute as a contingency to save the body from dissolution is to be found in the prophecy of Isaiah. The Roman preparations for disposing of the body of Jesus are found predicted in Isaiah 53:9

And they made his grave with the wicked

but so is the intervention of Joseph

and with a rich man in his death …

Jesus committing his spirit into God's keeping was justified when we see the preparations made from eternity for the keeping of his body.

Tumult of the Soul.

2007-04-05T22:50:00.000Z

Luke 23:47-49

47 • Now when the centurion saw what had taken place,
he praised God,
saying, "Certainly this man was innocent!"

48 • And all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle,
when they saw what had taken place,
returned home beating their breasts.

49 • And all his acquaintances
and the women who had followed him from Galilee
stood at a distance watching these things.

It is much more likely that it was the sun's darkening that provoked the confession of Christ's innocence from the watching centurion than either that this centurion was the 'say-but-the-word' centurion whose servant Jesus had healed without even coming to his house (the Hollywood version) or that he had been able from where he stood to see the temple curtain tear (the new-site-for-Golgotha on the Mount of Olives version.)

Even a normal eclipse of the sun has extraordinary effects on people who witness it, so, given the heightened emotions that this crowd were displaying earlier, their powerful reaction and display of more than normal grief is not entirely unexplainable. This had, though, been more than just a rent-a-mob gathering so we must see more significance in their breast beating than mere recreational grief.

It was surely an extraordinary turnaround for the man in charge of an execution to declare the innocence of the victim as soon as that victim was dead. No less amazing was the action of the crowd, beating themselves up over a man they'd just been taunting as he died. It was as though the cruel skills of the soldiers and the antagonism of the people had just been necessary tools to get the job done so that as soon as Christ had made atonement on the cross the anger disappeared and the very coalition that crucified him were at a loss as to why they had done it.

It is consistent with these changed attitudes being down to the restoration of normality that the sheep, which had been scattered at the beginning of Christ's trial, were gathered together as one flock, admittedly standing at a distance, by the time his suffering was ended.

Surrender of the Spirit

2007-04-05T21:13:00.000Z

Luke 23:45-46

45 • while the sun's light failed.

• And the curtain of the temple was torn in two.

46 • Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said,
"Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!"
And having said this he breathed his last.

Of the three things that happened virtually at the same time that Friday afternoon, the least spectacular was the prayer uttered by the crucified man on the centre tree. If the three events are taken to have significance (and they are mentioned together because Luke considered them to be significant) then the prayer might still be thought to be the least of the three but when it comes to understanding all three it is the prayer that puts a seal on the things that happened and explains them.

It is the prayer of committal that explains the sun's darkening and the rending of the temple curtain. Come another day and the sun shone again. No doubt, when the temple custodians got over the shock of the curtain being torn and it was possible to do so, the curtain was sewn up again. But never again would Christ be on the cross so, as he gave his life into the Father's hands, we can see the sun's eclipse as mirroring the departure of the Light of the world from the world and also that access through the temple curtain opened up into the Most Holy Place just as the Great High Priest was entering into heaven itself.

This prayer puts a seal to the sequence of words from the cross which began with a prayer also. ( The Word of Pardon )

There is a Fountain

2007-04-04T17:39:00.000Z

John 19:28-33

The Word of Perseverance

None of the wounds of Jesus were mortal wounds. Flogging could kill a man but care was taken to not prevent the people's choice (crucifixion or release) that was to follow. Similarly, the mockery of the crowning with thorns was intended to be more painful than the thorns themselves. The nails that pierced him had their utilitarian purpose to hold him to the tree and even the spear thrust that would have killed him if truly administered as a coup de grâce was applied after he was dead just to 'mak siccar.'

The idea of blood 'speaking' is a trope found in Scripture starting from the record of the first human death, that of Abel:

And the LORD said, "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground." [Genesis 4:10]

we ought to make sure that we are listening. The spear thrust produced a copious flow of blood and water that might well have caused the soldier to curse but, as a sign that the curse was over and dealt with, that fountain opened cries out with the force of an echo of the dying words of Jesus, 'It is finished!'

We had better believe it!

Deo Volente

2007-04-04T16:27:00.000Z

John 19:28-33

The Word of Perseverance

If the will of God is done in spite of the best administrative efforts to contradict his Word

It shall be eaten in one house; you shall not take any of the flesh outside the house, and you shall not break any of its bones. [Exodus 12:46]

or the best professional care to extenuate his dying in spite of Christ's intimate knowledge of what was (consequently upon God's determining to save) absolutely necessary, then we ought to qualify all our planning with a, most likely silently added, but heart-felt, 'Deo Volente!'

A Declaration to be Believed.

2007-04-04T15:36:00.000Z

John 19:28-33

The Word of Perseverance

The declaration from the cross itself that salvation has been achieved by the dying of Christ on the cross is a declaration that is to be believed.

• It is to be believed that God planned it so, so that the dead body of Christ would lie in the tomb for part of the Friday, all of the Sabbath Saturday and until the early hours of the first Lord's day Sunday morning; technically three days.

• It is to be believed that Christ himself 'gave up the ghost' so that the spirit departed at his will and the body left behind was massively disrupted internally, as he breathed his last, to produce the evidence of death when the soldier's spear pierced his side.

• It is to be believed that Christ knew that the work of salvation was finished and that his cry from the cross is the Word of God to us, 'It is finished!'

The Word of Perseverance

2007-03-28T13:48:00.000Z

John 19:28-33

Declaring the End of Dying.
Administrating the End of Dying
Authenticating the End of Dying

In saving us from sin through his dying on the cross, Jesus persevered right to the end so, despite the administrative efficiency of officials keen to get everything tidied away by the beginning of the Sabbath and the professional skill of the soldiers, the work of salvation was finished when Jesus knew it was and said it was.

Authenticating the End of Dying

2007-03-25T15:52:00.000Z

John 19:32-33

32 • So the soldiers came and broke the legs
of the first, and of the other who had been crucified with him.

33 • But when they came to Jesus
and saw that he was already dead,
they did not break his legs.

34 • But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear,
and at once there came out blood and water.

If the Jewish authorities had had as it were to fill in a form to get the crucifixions brought to an abrupt end, it was the soldiers who had to sign the death certificate. The preparations to bring about the end of the executions were made to protect the Sabbath day but the authentication of death was made with the view to the preservation of life. If one of these prisoners lived, then the soldiers' own lives would be forfeit so we can imagine how meticulous they were to make sure that this crucifixion really was finished.

Elsewhere in the Empire, crucifixions would last for days as the deterrent value of a long slow lingering death was brought home to all who witnessed it but here the most important thing was to get the chief prisoner dead and buried so everything would be neatly and tidily cleared up and by the next day there would be no evidence that any of these men had ever lived. The neat and tidy finish was ruled out by the inconvenient fact that one of the prisoners was already dead.

The purpose of breaking the legs was to induce swift asphyxiation as the arms would very quickly fail to pull the body up by themselves. To take the man on the centre cross down was to risk his reviving but there was no point in breaking the legs of one already dead. It must be proved that he was dead in spite of their previous precautions to keep the prisoners dying for as long as possible.

Very few doctors see traumatic death as frequently as soldiers in the Roman army did. These soldiers knew very well that dead bodies don't bleed so a spear was thrust into the side of Jesus with no expectation of any sign of life. An unnecessary coup de grâce, it might seem, but the continued life of the soldier was dependant on Jesus being dead. The stream of 'blood and water' that issued out of the wound showed that major disruption of the internal organs had taken place and that fluids had already pooled and separated within the cavities. This body was that of a man who had been dead for some time.

Administrating the End of Dying

2007-03-25T14:55:00.000Z

John 19:30b-31

• and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

31 • Since it was the day of Preparation,
and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross
on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day),
the Jews asked Pilate
that their legs might be broken

• and that they might be taken away.

Lest anyone should accuse the Jewish Authorities of euthanasia, they had a good religious excuse for bringing the crucifixion to an end in the onset of the Sabbath and a particularly cruel way of shortening the agony by breaking a prisoner's legs. Neither the crucifixion nor the leg-breaking were Jewish inventions of course and responsibility for the execution of Jesus ought always be seen as shared between all parties.

Cooperation between the Jewish council and the Roman procurator wasn't guaranteed of course so all the boxes on the form had to be ticked and the form rubber-stamped. It would have been no good just getting the execution over by leg-breaking to cause asphyxiation if the dead bodies had then been left to hang on their crosses until the Sabbath was over.

Asking for the crucifixion to be brought to an end and seeing it carried through was a perfectly normal use of a Friday, when they would always suspend some of their normal activities to prepare for the Sabbath. The Sabbath during the feast of Unleavened Bread required few if any extra preparations but just as a vigorous search would have taken place to make sure their houses had no yeast, no sight of this death should be allowed to leaven their Sabbath day.

This scheme to bring the dying of Christ to an untimely end was thwarted by his having died already. There would not be a tincture of doubt among the believers that men had brought his sacrifice of himself to an premature end. By giving up his spirit Jesus showed that the work was completed.

Truly, it is finished!

Declaring the End of Dying.

2007-03-24T09:48:00.000Z

John 19:28-30a

28 • After this, Jesus,
knowing that all was now finished,
said (to fulfill the Scripture), "I thirst."

29 • A jar full of sour wine stood there,
so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch
and held it to his mouth.

30 • When Jesus had received the sour wine,
he said, "It is finished,"

Two sayings of Jesus from the cross stand very close together here and John, the only gospel to mention either, gives us the details of the one within the recounting of the other. It makes perfect sense if the 'I thirst.' saying is excluded:

Jesus,knowing that all was now finished,… said, "It is finished,"

so we ought to pick up on the 'I thirst' episode as having something to do with being finished.

The sour wine wasn't intended as a punishment and we're not told about it so that we might feel additional pangs of sorrow on Christ's behalf. Just because the wine was sour meant that its acidity was immediately detectable even to the most preoccupied palate. There is a clear contrast between Jesus just tasting and refusing to drink before and his taking time to drink after it was finished.

What was it that was finished? Strangely enough, since this is before his actual death, it was nevertheless the dying that was finished with. None of this sequence of events makes sense unless we take it at face value that Jesus was dying on the cross in order to put right what was wrong and it follows that what was finished was the work of putting right.

Looking to Christ for Sanctification

2007-03-24T00:12:00.000Z

John 19:28 (Luke 22:14-20)

The Word of Sanctification

We must look to Christ for Sanctification since this is a saving benefit he has won for us by the sacrifice of himself. His holiness in his separation is shared with us in the kingdom of God.

The Toast is, 'Till he come!'

2007-03-23T23:59:00.000Z

John 19:28 (Luke 22:14-20)

The Word of Sanctification

Feast after feast comes and passes by but each by each they point towards the consummating feast that is 'the Marriage Supper of the Lamb':

Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure"-- for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, "Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb." And he said to me, "These are the true words of God." [Revelation 19:7-9]

Our desire surely ought to be for when all our work is ended too. The toast of this hour is:

'… till he come.' [1 Corinthians 11:26]

The Word of Sanctification

2007-03-23T23:47:00.000Z

John 19:28 (Luke 22:14-20)

Christ on the cross saying, 'I thirst.' signals the end of his vow of separation, the coming of the kingdom of God and the sanctification of all those who share his cup of rejoicing in the finished work of Calvary.

New Covenant

2007-03-23T18:51:00.000Z

Luke 22:19b-20

• and gave it to them,
saying, "This is my body, which is given for you.
Do this in remembrance of me."

20 • And likewise the cup after they had eaten,

• saying, "This cup that is poured out for you
is the new covenant in my blood.

On the night in which he was betrayed Jesus took two elements of the Passover seder and made of them a new feast of commemoration. Luke's account of what happened at the Last Supper has to specify which cup from the Passover seder was the one that was taken up to be perpetuated in the Lord's Supper celebration because Luke, uniquely of the gospels, talks about the vow of separation that Jesus took during the feast in terms of the cup that he shared among the disciples before the breaking of bread. The cup that was used to inaugurate the feast of the Lord's Supper was specifically, 'the cup after they had eaten.'

At the original Passover, when God was visiting the tenth plague upon the Egyptians, those who were gathered together to eat the Passover were sheltering within houses where the blood of the Passover lamb had been placed on the lintel and the doorposts as a sign that those inside were to be separated from the plague because God had made a covenant with them. Now as this feast and it's meaning was renewed, the cup of wine became the symbol of the blood that would be shed to secure the renewed covenantal relationship for all time.

In taking this cup generations of believers share the fellowship of Christ in the kingdom of God, made holy in their sharing because of the holiness of the 'Lamb of God' who was separated out to be our Passover, to fulfil his vows and to complete the work that God had given him to do.

Kingdom Come

2007-03-21T22:27:00.000Z

Luke 22:17-19a

17 • And he took a cup,
and when he had given thanks
he said, "Take this, and divide it among yourselves.

18 • For I tell you that
from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine
until the kingdom of God comes."

19 • And he took bread,
and when he had given thanks, he broke it

Before the taking of the bread that is 'his body', before the taking of the cup that is 'the new covenant in Christ's blood,' that is, during the Passover seder but before Jesus took up those elements of the seder that he instituted as the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, he took a cup of wine and told the disciples to share it among themselves. Why'd he do that?

What he was saying about the coming of the kingdom of God is entirely consistent with what he had been saying about the Passover being fulfilled in the kingdom of God. The big question that the disciples must have had was when the kingdom of God could be said to have come but now they had an answer. The kingdom of God would have come when Jesus once again drank wine.

What Jesus was doing is significant. Up till this moment he had been with the disciples but the moment was coming when he was to be separated from them. This sharing out of the cup and the declaration of not drinking wine again until the coming of the kingdom of God is a vow of separation. There was a set way of making such a vow laid down in the Torah and the disciples could not have missed the connection. The two seals of this vow were not getting one's hair cut during the time the vow was in operation and not drinking wine during that time. The instructions about the wine are very thorough:

he shall separate himself from wine and strong drink. He shall drink no vinegar made from wine or strong drink and shall not drink any juice of grapes or eat grapes, fresh or dried. All the days of his separation he shall eat nothing that is produced by the grapevine, not even the seeds or the skins. [Numbers 6:3-4]

so when the hour of the crucifixion had come, the vow was still in place and:

they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. [Matthew 27:34]

However, after the hours of darkness were passed

… Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), "I thirst." A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. [John 19:28-29]

so that anyone who knew that he had taken the vow could see that the time of his separation was ended and the kingdom of God was come.

The Fulfilled Passover

2007-03-21T14:00:00.000Z

Luke 24:14-16

14 • And when the hour came,
he reclined at table,
and the apostles with him.

15 • And he said to them,
"I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover
with you before I suffer.

16 • For I tell you I will not eat it
until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God."

There might seem such a contrast between the 'relaxed' posture at the table and the intensity of the suffering that was to follow but we ought to understand that even as they reclined they ate hastily with their newly-washed feet reshod, their staffs in their hands and their belts tightened. [Exodus 12:11] The eagerness to be gone from Egypt of the first Passover is replicated in the earnest desire that Jesus had to eat this Passover, with his disciples, knowing that he was about to suffer for them too.

From the inauguration of the feast no Passover had been as important as this one was to be and this one was no mere commemoration of the first. From that night on it is not so much the first Passover that is commemorated as the one fulfilled in the kingdom of God. The old Passover is not forgotten but now it is to be perceived as pointing forward to salvation from the greater far bondage of sin and death.

The lamb that was sacrificed and eaten at Passover was to be, like all sacrificial animals, unblemished in any way to symbolise its holiness. It was as the Holy Lamb of God that Jesus was preparing to be the sacrifice for sin. We take the bread and the cup in the feast of the Lord's Supper, having examined ourselves to see that we do so in a worthy manner because our rightful taking of it is dependant on Christ's righteousness and the acceptance of him as a sacrifice to cover my unrighteousness.

Look and See

2007-03-17T12:00:00.000Z

Matthew 27:39-46

The Word of Regeneration

Whether it takes the form of a drive-thru sampling of what the church has to offer or of drive-past sniping at the target which is Christianity, a merely dilettante acquaintance with the cross of Christ will prove to be unsatisfactory.

Nor is merely academic interest to be much preferred. Knowing the texts is of little use if there is no interest in the big picture as it presents itself in redemptive history.

We need to linger here and really look at that centre cross to really see what it is that is happening there. As we hear that deep sorrow expressed as inflicted in the fierce anger of God upon his servant we are drawn to two intimately related conclusions; that Christ (God having determined to save the 'others') must suffer and that you (God having been gracious to bring you to the cross) must be born again.

The Stemming of our Revolutionary Unbelief.

2007-03-17T11:41:00.000Z

Matthew 27:39-46

The Word of Regeneration

To stem Revolutionary unbelief we will need more than slogans and opponent's thoughts brought captive. Into every circumstance we need to import our full assurance of understanding that God knows what he's doing and that his Word is his Word indeed; to be trusted in and acted on.

We need to reverse the order as a matter of urgency; starting and staying with appropriate Scripture in it's context we can proceed to bring thoughts captive and sloganize to our hearts' content.

Maybe we could call the 'thought capture:' 'theology' and the 'sloganizing:' 'preaching.'

Face up to the Taunts and to the Forsakenness.

2007-03-17T11:23:00.000Z

Matthew 27:39-46

The Word of Regeneration

Hear the words and meditate on their meanings. What does it mean that he should be forsaken, that he could not save himself, that he would not come down from the cross?

Current Discussion of the Creation Days

2007-03-16T19:51:00.000Z

Thanks due to the PCA Creation Study Committee
MK has a summary and supplied the link.

The Word of Regeneration

2007-03-16T19:26:00.000Z

Matthew 27:39-46

Passing By the Crossroads of all the Ages.

Three Easy Steps to Taunting God in his Face.

Borrowed Words Incoherently Spoken

With the light extinguished, the temple deserted and the curse placed firmly on the crucified one, the almost incoherently spoken words are borrowed from the despairing part of the Psalm and left hanging without resolution as the Word of God himself (of whom it must be said that he is with God and that he is God) speaks to God (who stands silent) out of his own darkness, desolation and accursedness. His cry of agony in death is blended with the incoherent cry of the new birth.

Borrowed Words Incoherently Spoken

2007-03-16T08:43:00.000Z

Matthew 27:44-46

44 • And the robbers who were crucified with him
also reviled him in the same way.
45 • Now from the sixth hour
there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour.
46 • And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice,
saying, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?"
that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

What has been spoken from the cross up till this point?
• The 'only one who knows what's going on' prays for everyone else.
• The man without a shirt on his back settles his family's affairs.
• The 'king for a day' makes a promise about tomorrow.

Thus far a line could have been traced through the words spoken by Jesus on the cross which would make some sense even to the casual onlooker who thought him to be deluded. If this were a show of defiance then it's magnificent and even if only mere delusion there is true grandeur and real pathos to be seen. But that sort of reasoning comes to a halt right here with the fourth word spoken from the cross.

Not just the mob and the authorities are against him, he is, to everybody's certain knowledge, at odds with reality even although there is a certain internal logic, up to this point, that can be traced. 'What would Jesus do?' we ask but if they ask, 'What will Jesus say next?' the answer will surprise them beyond measure. What the crowd is shouting is also following a line and it is very clear that the two lines are not parallel: sooner or later they must meet.

It is at this shocking juncture that the two lines do meet. The acting out of Psalm 22:7 and the taunt-song lifted up from Psalm 22:8 lead us to think that just perhaps a further text from Psalm 22 is suitable for a further flight of fancy from the centre tree? Maybe Psalm 22:26 will fit:

The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD! May your hearts live forever! [Psalm 22:26]

but instead the words that are borrowed from Psalm 22 come from the other end of the Psalm, from the Psalmist at his most disconsolate, from:

To the choirmaster: according to The Doe of the Dawn. A Psalm of David. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? [Psalm 22:1]

we hear words that, up until that 'Preparation Friday' no one had been prepared to hear from a Messianic pretender.

But putting aside all pretence that we are not reading this with the hindsight of knowing that he was the Messiah — the Resurrection rather spoils any other posture — we ought still to be shocked by the words. All we can do is to recognise that these words were placed in the experience of David the king (great ancestor of his greater son) so long before in anticipation of when the agony of Calvary would be so great as to necessitate recourse to a script of words to say what was at the heart of so great a death as he had to die.

Three Easy Steps to Taunting God in his Face.

2007-03-15T18:01:00.000Z

Matthew 27:41-43

41 • So also the chief priests,
with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying,
42 "He saved others; he cannot save himself.

• He is the King of Israel;
let him come down now from the cross,
and we will believe in him.

43 • He trusts in God;
let God deliver him now, if he desires him.
For he said, 'I am the Son of God.'"

It all started with a simple slogan about him having 'saved others …,' which none of them believed but it was worth it for the dramatic effect of the taunt it led up to, 'He cannot save himself.' Simple and effective it might have been but you could only repeat it once or twice and then there was a need for some other witty comment to call out.

Before the taunting started some of these men went to Pilate in high dudgeon, complaining that the sign over the head of Jesus said, 'This is Jesus the king of the Jews' but that was hours ago. The need for a claim to ridicule overcame the political objections as satire often does, and the 'King of Israel' was taunted to come down from the cross. The form was the same as the 'He saved others' slogan but the content was bolder with the challenge to authority in revolution mood around the cross.

Revolution is closely allied with unbelief so it ought to be no surprise that before the darkness was over these masters of wit and repartee were plundering Scripture for their ammunition. Perhaps it was the wagging head of some passer-by that 'inspired' them to take up Psalm 22 at precisely the point where the wagging heads lay off:

"He trusts in the LORD; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!" [Psalm 22:8]

perhaps they had no recollection at all of where the words came from.

How can those men be restrained who in a few hours go from coining their own phrases to quoting Scripture itself in a challenge to Almighty God?

They were quoting Scripture (and Scripture that spoke prophetically and appropriately to the unfolding event at that) in derision of the one who was being punished because he dared to see himself prophesied in Scripture.

Passing By the Crossroads of all the Ages.

2007-03-15T16:53:00.000Z

Matthew 27:39-40

39 • And those who passed by derided him,

• wagging their heads
40 and saying,
"You who would destroy the temple
and rebuild it in three days,
save yourself!

• If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross."

For those who passed by — and Jerusalem was thronged with pilgrims for Pesach / Passover — it seemed little more than an excuse for headshaking. The claims of a destroyed temple being rebuilt in three days seemed an idle boast to those who didn't get the personal reference (and would they have been any more receptive to a man who called his body, 'this temple' and prophesied that he would rise the third day after death?)

For such passers-by the words, 'the Son of God hanging on a cross' seemed to be made up of two ideas utterly incompatible with each other and therefore signifying nothing.

Pilgrims they might have been but the passers-by don't seem to have recognised that they were acting out a couple of significant Scriptures as they went. The reading of the book of Lamentations takes place at Tisha B'Av, the commemoration of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and not at Pesach but the references in Lamentations to passers-by are quite prophetic of these headshakers:

"Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the LORD inflicted on the day of his fierce anger." [Lamentations 1:12]
All who pass along the way clap their hands at you; they hiss and wag their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem; "Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?" [Lamentations 2:15]

but, as remains to be seen as this story unfolds, the most significant verse prophesying these words and that behaviour is Psalm 22:7

All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads;

the full magnitude of what they were seeing opens up to us when we see the significance in what they were doing, just passing by.

THE EXTRAORDINARY CASE OF THE THIEF ON THE CROSS NO ARGUMENT FOR DELAYING REPENTANCE.

2007-03-15T14:17:00.000Z

(An Outline of two sermons preached by Thomas Boston at Ettrick in June 1717 Complete Works VI 486ff.)

Text Luke xxiii. 42, — And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.

1. As a vicious stomach corrupts the best of meat; so impenitent sinners abuse the best things to their own ruin:
2 There is a particular disposition in the hearts of impenitent sinners to abuse and wrest the Scriptures.
3. Abused Scripture is one of the chief pieces of Satan's armour,
4. Reigning love to sin makes people very dexterous to find out shifts to preserve their lusts;

I. There is ground of hope for trembling sinners.
1. They may go long on, and far on in the way to hell, whom yet God may bring home to himself.
2. Grace sometimes catches them that in appearance, and to the eyes of the world, are farthest from it.
3. Grace makes a vast difference betwixt those betwixt whom it finds none.
4. Lastly, While there is life there is hope.

the use that is to be made of this, is,
1. Let those that seek God early be encouraged from this, that they shall find him:
2. Let not those whose day is almost gone, before they have begun their work, despair.
3. Lastly, Let us sow beside all waters, in the morning and in the evening.

II. But there is no ground here for the crafty delaying sinner to put off repentance,
1. It is a most rare example.
1st, What less could there have been to have cleared a possibility of acceptance with God,
2dly, As one swallow makes not spring, so neither can this one event make a general rule
3dly, Are there not eminent instances to the contrary,
4thly, The most that this so rare an example can amount to, is a possibility.

2. Though there were two thieves on the cross at that time, yet it was but one of them that got grace to repent.
1st, Is it not possible that thou mayst die blaspheming, if thou do not repent now in time?
2dly, It is at least an equal venture, that thou mayst die impenitent, as that thou mayst die a penitent.
3dly, It is inconsistent with common sense, to leave that thing to a venture,
4thly, Nay but the venture is very unequal;
And what casts the balance here in case of likelihood, is,
(1.) Common observation, that tells us, that most people even die as they live.
(2.) It is certain that few are saved, in comparison of them that are left:
(3.) The sad threatenings denounced against sinners going on in their sin,
(4.) Corrupt nature sticks fast in thee;
(5.) Repentance is not to be wrought by the sinner's being brought to an extremity,
(6.) The most powerful and likely means of grace will not prevail, unless accompanied with a special operation of the Spirit.
(7.) They that delay repentance till a dying hour, readily find they have another thing to do then, than to repent;

3. There is no evidence that this thief had before such means of grace as you have.
1st, It is unreasonable to think, that it should fare at the last with those who have had means of grace all their days, and despised them, as it may do with those who never have such means till they come to die.
2dly, This conversion of the thief doubtless was a perfect surprise to him,

4. This thief was converted, when by the hand of public justice he was to die.
lst, It is evident, that wicked men who are running on in such courses as will bring them to an untimely death, by the laws of the land, such as thieves, robbers, murderers, &c. have a fairer ground from this to delay repentance till they come to the scaffold, than you have,
2dly, If we compare the case of this thief put to death for his crimes, and of other malefactors so dying, with the case of men that have lived impenitently dying in their beds; though grace is alike free to both, yet, humanly speaking, there is more hope of the repentance of the former than of the latter.
(1.) It is more easy to convince a malefactor upon the scaffold,
(2.) The view that the thief had of eternity upon the cross, and that other malefactors have in such a case, is more certain than what impenitent sinners generally have on a death-bed.
(3.) If we except the time wherein both are actually grappling with death, the one with a violent death, the other with a natural one; the former have less hinderances from the body to prepare for death than the latter;

5. The conversion of the thief on the cross was an extraordinary manifestation of our Lord's power,
1st, It was done in such a juncture of time,
2dly, It was a wonder wrought in a time allotted
(1.) The sun was under a dreadful eclipse, for the space of not a few minutes, but three hours,
(2.) The vail of the temple was, without hands, rent from the top to the bottom,
(3.) The earth quaked at the dreadful fact of crucifying the Lord of glory,
(4.) The hard rocks rent,
(5.) The graves were opened, and many of the dead saints arose,
(6.) The spectators of those strange things smote their breasts,
(7.) Lastly, The centurion and his soldiers were convinced,

[1.] Is it reasonable, because the thief was converted at the last hour, in a time that the like never was, nor will be, for thee to expect that it shall fare so with thee?
Thou mayst as well throw thyself into a burning fiery furnace, and hope to come forth safe, because Daniel and his fellows were once so delivered.
[2.] Is it any wise strange, that amongst all these wonders of justice, power, and faithfulness, there was one wonder of mercy upon the thief on the cross?
But how canst thou think, that the time of thy departure will be a time of such wonders?
[3.] Was it not very becoming the divine wisdom, that when the divine glory of the Son of God was veiled upon the cross, a ray of it should break forth in the conversion of one of two that were hanging there with him?
but what is that to thee in a day wherein it is long since Christ was set down at his Father's right hand, and his glory published through the world by the gospel?
[4.] Is it any thing strange, that when our Lord was triumphing over principalities and powers, he set up one trophy, one sign of his victory, in the field of battle?
But what encouragement can that be to thee to delay to the last, when that nick of time is over long ago?

6. Lastly, The penitent thief on the cross was not only sincere, but he glorified Christ more in his late repentance, than thou art capable to do by thine, nay more than if thou hadst lived a penitent all thy days.
1st, When our Lord was in his lowest step of humiliation, he professed his faith of his divine nature, and his being King of the other world:
2dly, When others had crucified him as a malefactor, and were mocking him, and railing on him, as one that deserved not common compassion, he was praying to him,
Lastly, All this he did, and more, publicly before a multitude of spectators,

To conclude this matter:
1. If it be got, death-bed repentance is the most unuseful repentance for God, and the most uncomfortable for one's self.
2. Death-bed-repentance is seldom sincere.
3. Lastly, Many trust to deathbed repentance that never see it.

A Bible for the Intermediate State?

2007-03-15T12:06:00.000Z

2 Corinthians 5:5-10

The Intermediate State

If we are to be judged at the judgment seat of Christ for what we have done in the body, how come older (wiser) believers seem to spend so much of their time reading their Bibles? Is the intermediate state going to be a sort of heavenly Sunday School where there will be sweets on offer for answering Bible knowledge questions?

Right, before you start rhapsodising about what literally heavenly sweets might taste like, let me remind you that we won't have bodies in the intermediate state (so what good would sweets do you?) and let me confess that I don't tend to think of reading as something done either, but it is.
• We think wrong if we think that time spend Bible reading could be better spend doing something 'useful.'
• We ought not to think of time spent in prayer as time taken away from doing something useful.
• Do we think that Mary (as in Mary-and-Martha) will have lost her reward in heaven because she chose the better part of sitting, listening to Jesus?

Prayer, Bible reading and meditation are all works that will stand in the judgment as good and for pursuing them there will be the reward for the faithful servant but the wise pursuit of these things is not entered into merely to lay up treasure in heaven. These things are 'means of grace' whereby we practice the presence of Christ now in the hope of being in his presence ere long.

And it isn't as though the Word of God isn't going to be in heaven!
• There will be no temple in the New Jerusalem because 'its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb' [Revelation 21:22.]
• There is no need of either Sun or Moon because there is no night; 'the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb' [Revelation 21:23.]
• And we won't need our Bibles there because the Lamb is the Word of God.

But Revelation doesn't talk about there being no Bibles there. Instead it says, 'No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him' [Rev 22:3.] Because of the one who was once accursed there will be no longer anything accursed. Be encouraged in the faith to do well, not for merit but for Jesus, who, needing no merit for himself, did all and bore all for us.

Prayer is a Pre-Trial Hearing

2007-03-15T10:26:00.000Z

2 Corinthians 5:5-10

The Intermediate State

Since we are twice-over encouraged to live life here in the Spirit and to face dying and being with Christ without fear, surely we ought to be encouraged to face the judgment seat of Christ without fear also.

These things do not just hang together loosely. It is the Spirit of God who gives us access to God in prayer as we cry 'Abba Father':-
• Jesus addressed God as 'Abba Father' in prayer while facing impending death [Mark 14:36.]
• The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of adoption enables us to pray, 'Abba Father' [Romans 8:15.]
• The Holy Spirit himself, as the Spirit of the Son, cries 'Abba Father' within our hearts [Galatians 4:6.]

Similarly, to be absent from the body will be to be at home with the Lord and what is it that Jesus is doing right now? Believers ought to be encouraged to face the judgment seat, which is after all the judgment seat of Christ, because he has both passed through judgement and condemnation in our place and is now in heavenly session interceding for us [1 John 2:1; Romans 8:34.]

None of us need fear the trial since it is God himself who prepares us for it and he is available to us any time we approach. One of his purposes in adopting us is so that we might have access into his presence as a privilege of sonship so we ought to use the privilege.

Anticipation of Heaven the 3rd Dimension of Life in the Spirit.

2007-03-15T09:04:00.000Z

2 Corinthians 5:5-10

The Intermediate State

The two aspects of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the believer that get most of our attention are the anointing on our present lives [2 Corinthians 1:21f.] and our expectation of having God himself as our inheritance [Ephesians 1:13f.] Alongside these two we ought to cultivate the anticipation of heaven.

It ought not be lost among our other reasons for gathering together that we do so with the object of sharing anticipation of heaven. It isn't that we know a great deal about what it will be like to be there, but our fears of being bodiless for a season are removed by the experience of life in the Spirit here and now. Praising God in the middle of the assembly of his people ought to be a foretaste of heaven to those anticipating going there.

Heaven isn't filled with dread about what it will be like to get new bodies either since it isn't a case of spirits good / bodies bad, despite there always having been some people who have thought that way. There are none such in heaven and in fact patience about things being put right and the resurrection of the body is needed by and given to those in heaven who have been martyred [Revelation 6:9-11.] While we are in the body we ought to look with joy both for the upward call and for the return of Christ. Whichever shall come first, the return of Christ for all who believe is certain so that provides a central plank of our spiritual comfort and anticipation of heaven in the meantime ought to comfort us also.

Dawkins

2007-03-14T22:43:00.000Z

Thanks to David Anderson.

The Intermediate State

2007-03-14T17:33:00.000Z

2 Corinthians 5:5-10

A Trinitarian Impression of Heaven
Heaven is a Christ-Centred State of Mind
The Due Anticipation of Judgment

The great separation of the eternal state is anticipated by the great gulf fixed in the intermediate state between those who have done good and gone to their reward and those who have done evil. The intermediate state lasts from the the surrendering up of the spirit at death until the reception of new bodies at the general resurrection of the dead. Preparation for the intermediate state begins now as the Father adopts us, the indwelling Spirit encourages us and the Son prepares a place for us so that all our desire is to be sure of our place there, to lay up treasure for there and to be there.

The Due Anticipation of Judgment

2007-03-14T16:08:00.000Z

2 Corinthians 5:5-10

10 • For we must all appear
before the judgment seat of Christ,

• so that each one may receive what is due

• for what he has done in the body,
whether good or evil.

Because heaven is the place where rewards are to be received and loss suffered [1 Corinthians 3:15] we ought to live in the light of going there in the here and now, storing up the proverbial treasure in heaven. Jesus said:

[Matthew 6:19-21] "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, (20) but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. (21) For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

and the consideration of what reward will be received out of the body ought to govern our service for him while still in the body.

The flip side of all this is of course that those who put no trust in Christ, who have no hope in God, who do not know God's Spirit, are neither ready for heaven nor can hold out any real hope of going there. The contemplation of how awful their judgement in the intermediate state will be ought to spur them to seek mercy while it may be found to avoid the 'second death' of their resurrected body, which is too awful to contemplate.

Heaven is a Christ-Centred State of Mind

2007-03-14T15:45:00.000Z

2 Corinthians 5:7-9

7 • for we walk by faith, not by sight.
8 Yes, we are of good courage,

• and we would rather be away from the body
and at home with the Lord.

9 • So whether we are at home or away,
we make it our aim to please him.

We are encouraged to look forward to heaven through faith in Christ and are confirmed in our courage as we do so. We have a longing to be gone from here for no other reason than that we might be with him, where he is.

That being said, whether we are here or there is neither here nor there when it comes to fulfilling the desire we also have to please him rather than ourselves [Philippians 1:23f.]

A Trinitarian Impression of Heaven

2007-03-14T11:13:00.000Z

2 Corinthians 5:5-6

5 • He who has prepared us for this very thing is God,

• who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
6 So we are always of good courage.

• We know that while we are at home in the body
we are away from the Lord,

To explain the 'this very thing' of verse 5 we ought to expand it with words from verse 4 to: 'He who has prepared us for [what is mortal being swallowed up by life] is God.' It is God the Father who has prepared us for the mortal being swallowed up by life — or in less expressive language — he has prepared us for the life of heaven after we die.

The Father prepares us for heaven in three ways:
• He adopts us into his family so that we have a title to go there.
• He gives us his Holy Spirit now, not only as a guarantee — 'guarantee' doesn't convey the whole meaning — but as an earnest to encourage us. An earnest is more than a guarantee because a guarantee can simply be a token whereas an earnest is a down payment of what is guaranteed. When the Spirit is given as an earnest of our inheritance [Ephesians 1:14] it is because God is our full inheritance so the Spirit given now as an earnest of the life we will live in heaven enables us to anticipate without anxiety life without the body in the intermediate state.
• He retains his Son in heaven preparing a place for us [John 14:2] so that we no longer feel fully at home in the body and look to be at home where Jesus is and to go home to there.

Here it is with Jam on it.

2007-03-12T21:21:00.000Z

Luke 23:39-44

The Word of Justification

Salvation is a time changing and universe changing event. It is a word spoken from the edge of darkness to usher in a brand new dawning. Today is when you should make your own very big ask of the man whose central cross presents the very biggest of answers. Lewis Carrol's complaint might well be right for lots of applications, 'The rule is,' he said, 'jam tomorrow and jam yesterday - but never jam today.' but with Jesus Christ there is no such deadly denial masquerading as delay. Here the law is neither yesterday nor tomorrow, but 'Paradise, Today!'

Recognising Christ's Righteousness

2007-03-12T21:13:00.000Z

Luke 23:39-44

The Word of Justification

At the heart of our justification is a recognition of Christ's righteousness and, while justification is a once for all act, such a recognition ought to be a constant part of our praise. The recognition of Christ's righteousness is a major element of our remembrance of him in the breaking of bread.

Self-Condemnation is not Enough!

2007-03-12T16:58:00.000Z

Luke 23:39-44

The Word of Justification.

When we get to self-condemnation we don't stay there — as though the thief on the cross had realized his condition years ago and saved up until this moment to repent. As if — If we truly understand the condemnation in which we stand we won't want to linger in it for a second, so self-condemnation passes quickly on to repentance and faith in Jesus. The thief on the cross was justified by faith and so must we be justified also; by faith in the crucified Jesus.

The Word of Justification

2007-03-12T15:21:00.000Z

Luke 23:39-44

Atypical Change of Direction
Patently he has done Nothing Wrong
Our Times are in Whose Hands?

In this life absolutely anyone — at any time, in whatever condition of life — can get right with God by confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord and believing in their heart that God has raised him from the dead. [Romans 10:9.]

Dying the Death Deserved by us.

2007-03-12T13:33:00.000Z

Job 30:16-23

The Pointer to the Point of No Return

The question of who was responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was answered by Peter on the day of Pentecost. Pulling no punches he makes no excuses for the way the crucifixion was carried out, saying, 'this Jesus, … you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.' Nevertheless Peter's full intention in mentioning the lawless men who laid hands on Jesus is to show how the sinless God sinlessly used their sinful actions to put an end to sin for Jesus was '… delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God' [Act 2:23.]

Subjected to the cruel persecution of being reduced to 'dust and ashes', bearing our sins in his body and having his cries unanswered by a God who only looks on his agony without response, Jesus knew everything there was to know about Job's complaint and then some. To see him die the death deserved by us is to see salvation from the penalty and the inevitability of death. Gazing on Christ drawing the sting of death provokes us to join in the rejoicing of him, '… who … endured the cross, despising the shame,' because he 'is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.' It was by this very endurance of separation from God on Calvary's cross that Jesus became both 'founder and perfecter of our faith' [Hebrews 12:2.]

The death of Christ comprises of his lying in the borrowed tomb for the prophesied three days, his giving up the ghost at the end of his trial and, most especially, of his dying during those hours on the cross. By the time he committed his spirit to God and breathed his last, the work of salvation was accomplished so now we must deal with death during our dying. Now is 'the favourable time' [2 Corinthians 6:2.] Even now death has its grip on your throat so why would you hesitate any longer? His death in the midst of his years took place so that we might find life in the midst of our dying. Choose life!

Preparation for Death

2007-03-12T11:20:00.000Z

Job 30:16-23

The Pointer to the Point of No Return

It isn't morbid to take out a life assurance policy so that loved ones don't have a financial burden to bear when we die. It might be a bit strange that we call it 'life assurance' when the assurance we are talking about is that we shall assuredly die but we are not wrong to take comfort from the knowledge that all the finances are covered, perhaps even all the arrangements.

Nor is it morbid to think about what is to happen after death. Life is a voyage and while as a small boy I would have wanted to search all over the ship and in manhood take the opportunity to meet interesting people at dinner, near the end of the journey I expect to be more and more interested in the voyage being ended. Here is a thing though, since we don't know when our particular voyage is going to end, sparing a thought for what comes after the journey at any point during the journey is the sensible thing to do.

Living with Death

2007-03-12T09:33:00.000Z

Job 30:16-23

The Pointer to the Point of No Return

Whether we are tempted to catalogue all our petty ailments or to be in denial about serious illness, we need to face up to the challenge of death in the midst of life. The early onset of evidence that life is extremely time-limited ought to be a spur to us not only to show wisdom by discerning our latter end in the midst of life [Deuteronomy 32:29] but to live life thankfully and joyfully in the midst of death [1 Corinthians 1:10.]

The Pointer to the Point of No Return

2007-03-12T09:13:00.000Z

Job 30:16-23

The Valley of the Shadow of Death
Death by Instalments
Death by Appointment

Just as the great transition from the original creation to the present evil age involved both the fall of mankind and the expulsion from the garden so the transition of each individual from this world to the next involves both dying and death.

Death by Appointment.

2007-03-11T09:54:00.000Z

Job 30:22-23

22 • You lift me up on the wind;

• you make me ride on it,
and you toss me about in the roar of the storm.

23 • For I know that you will bring me to death
and to the house appointed for all living.

Even though the wind goes where it wants to, and a journey on the wind would be full of disorientating turbulence and contrary motions, in the end the one lifted up in the wind would return to earth with a bump. So it is that life seems so disordered and life in crisis even more so yet the inevitable end is death for 'it is appointed for man to die once …' [Hebrews 9:27]

Death by instalments.

2007-03-11T09:16:00.000Z

Job 30:19-21

19 • God has cast me into the mire,
and I have become like dust and ashes.

20 • I cry to you for help and you do not answer me;
I stand, and you only look at me.

21 • You have turned cruel to me;
with the might of your hand you persecute me.

Job's friends argued that he'd brought his troubles on himself, he must have done by their reckoning because such trouble wouldn't be visited on anyone without a reason, would it? We know better, knowing that the devil was very active in Job's troubles because we've been given an insight into how Satan was operating in this case in the first couple of chapters. But our insight isn't enough because Job, with all his lack of objectivity about the case, knew best. God is active in visiting death upon all mankind. The threat that at the death of every individual we shall return to our constituent dust is lived out in the lives of those who suffer, whose lives are cast onto the waste-heap when they would have thought of themselves as being in the midst of their years.

The worst thing about death is the feeling that God has forsaken the one who is dying. If there is, as there genuinely often is for the believer in Jesus Christ, an assurance of his accompanying them through the valley of the shadow of death then it is not death to die. But such assurance is not always vouchsafed to those who are wrestling with pain. Sometimes it seems that it is God who is wrestling with us and sometimes he seems just to stand there and watch. 'How long O Lord?'

It is small comfort to know that if God did not stay his hand we would be utterly overwhelmed but it is a comfort. Whose hands would you rather be in? The capricious hands of man, knowing your own clumsiness, the hands of the evil one who is always racking his brains to find new ways to torture his victims or the hands of God? Job like David would have chosen to have his life in God's hands even if that meant death. (Job 13:15 Though he slay me, I will hope in him; yet I will argue my ways to his face.) If we get who God is then we will wish for the same.

The Valley of the Shadow of Death

2007-03-11T08:11:00.000Z

Job 30:16-18

16 • "And now my soul is poured out within me;
days of affliction have taken hold of me.

17 • The night racks my bones,
and the pain that gnaws me takes no rest.

18 • With great force my garment is disfigured;
it binds me about like the collar of my tunic."

We get ourselves involved with our ailments in various ways. Some of us like to catalogue them while others are in denial. Some are polite to the point of absurdity: 'How are you?' / 'Oh! I'm fine!' in every possible combination of accident or illness. Others are ready with the details of the most minor inconveniences. We might either find the longest Latinest name to comfort ourselves that we at least know what the illness is or we might shroud everything in Anglo-Saxon mystery: 'I've got the Lurgy.' / 'Well, there's a lot of it about.'

As they say and so we say dividing up our day ailments and our night ailments. Waiting for the morning to come so that we can get up and longing for night so we can switch out the lights and escape to sleep. What is this thing that has got us by the throat and is slowly choking us? In spite of all the cataloguing and all the mystery, our problem is Death, with whom we have an appointment, but who will not wait for his time before he sends messages of his impending grip upon us. If we were to answer the questions thus honestly we would be done with the 'How are you?' / 'Let's talk about the weather instead.'

Except that that's worse nowadays with all this talk of global warming, what we ought to do about it and the stark warning that in the last analysis there's nothing you can do about it. Death sends its shadow over us all and there is no comfort in it's prospect if we don't see beyond that fact.

Our Times are in Whose Hands?

2007-03-09T07:59:00.000Z

Luke 23:43-44

43 • And he said to him,
"Truly, I say to you,
today you will be with me in Paradise."

44 • It was now about the sixth hour,

• and there was darkness over the whole land
until the ninth hour,

To ask a man to remember you, for whom you have done some service, who is about to be restored back to honour and influence, as Joseph did of Pharaoh's butler, that is one thing. To ask a man dying of crucifixion to remember you is quite another.

When the midday sun was at its height there was a darkness over all the land that persisted for three hours.When Jesus was asked by the thief to remember him when he would come into his kingdom, the times were put completely out of joint and all of creation had the appearance of having gone into reverse.

Well might the sun in darkness hide,
and shut its glories in,
when the incarnate maker died
for man his creature's sin.

I don't know how sincere the criminal was when he began to ask to be remembered, I really don't and I don't think it matters, either. As he spoke he said two things. He confessed Jesus as Lord and spoke about his resurrection in terms of coming into his kingdom. It may well be that we would like to think that however the man began he must have come to believe what he was saying even while he was saying it but our doubts and our likings have nothing to do with it.

The words of Jesus as he replied to the repentant thief are full of justifying grace. Out of joint with all of society this thief might have been but for only a look at Jesus lifted up, his confession of Lordship and the belief engendered in his heart that God would most certainly raise him from the dead — for that and even then and there the man whose life had been all wrong was made for ever right with God.

Patently he has done Nothing Wrong

2007-03-08T14:50:00.000Z

Luke 23:41-42

41 • "And we indeed justly,
for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds;

• but this man has done nothing wrong."

42 • And he said,
"Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

Condemnation deserved and recognized gives no hope for justification so deathbed repentance is rare. (Try and get hold of Thomas Boston 'The Extraordinary Case of the Thief on the Cross' Complete Works vol. VI p. 468) However, the central realization here is the recognition that Jesus was not worthy of condemnation: 'This man has done nothing wrong', patently. Repentance for sins committed as a result of the recognition of Christ's righteousness leads to a very big ask of one who is about to die: 'Remember me.'

Atypical Change of Direction

2007-03-08T08:46:00.000Z

Luke 23:39-40

39 • One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him,
saying, "Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!"

40 • But the other rebuked him,

• saying, "Do you not fear God,
since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?"

Since the action of one of the hanged-with-Jesus criminals was absolutely typical, justifying himself by joining in with the general condemnation of the Über-criminal in the centre, the reaction of the other was even more surprising. Not only did the the one rebuke the other, abandoning his own abuse of Jesus as he did so, he rebuked him with amazing insight into the plight that he and his erstwhile companion were in.

What insight was needed to see that they were in a dreadful plight? None at all to see that their condition was hopeless as far as man was concerned. As far as Jesus being a man, being a king, even being a 'messiah' was concerned, there was nothing that he could do to repay any insult that should be added to the clamour and the pain. As far as judgement was concerned what could any one do to increase the railing criminal's punishment? Why, the guard detail and the noterati in the crowd were mocking the one on the centre cross, perhaps if he joined his voice with theirs his suffering would even be reduced. He called to Christ to save him but without the least vestige of trust that he could do so.

Then came a voice rebuking him from the further side of the cross. Two criminals were crucified with Christ in order to provide the spectacle with the right degree of theatricality but now there is a realization born in one of the two that brings the drama of the cross up to crisis and to the central dialogue of the soul's existence. The realization that they two were least able of all there to take the judge's place, them being so far under condemnation as to actually be in God's hands, now, and he is to be feared, even when man has done his worst already.

When the Graft is Pierced by Nails

2007-03-08T05:08:00.000Z

John 15:5-11

Grace in us Revealed to us

For the hour in which we have no vision save a dying Jesus grafted to a dead tree and no answer to the 'Why forsaken?' other than the silence of dark-in-the-daytime heavens — for that hour we have the spoken assurance of both the Vine's branches' grafting and the saint's prayers' answer and our joy is full enough (and overflowing) for us to call that Friday, 'Good.'

The Big Ask and the Even Bigger Answer

2007-03-07T20:52:00.000Z

John 15:5-11

Grace in us Revealed to us

Look for God to be glorified in the answer to prayer. We just can't ask to be prosperous and to be like Jesus in the same breath, we can't, but it's in the fruitfulness of the branches that God is glorified so ask to be fruitful. 'Man's chief end is to glorify God [John 15:8] and to enjoy him forever [John 15:11]' (WSC ans. 1) Maybe our main reason for not asking is that we don't get it that the 'greater works' are to be done in conjunction with 'asking anything in the name of Jesus' for the glory of God [John 14:13-14.]

Be Fruitful in Season

2007-03-07T20:40:00.000Z

John 15:5-11

Grace in us Revealed to us

Against the fruit of the Spirit there is no law.[Galatians 5:22-23] and the fruit of the Spirit is:-
love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Grace in us Revealed to us

2007-03-07T20:21:00.000Z

John 15:5-11

Why to Burn Withered Branches
The Central Reason for Christian Fruitfulness
The Sum of all the Commandments

Grace in us is revealed to us in the the life of the Spirit, the answer to prayer and the Word of God.

The Sum of all the Commandments

2007-03-04T09:42:00.000Z

John 15:9b-11

• Abide in my love.

10 • If you keep my commandments,,
you will abide in my love,
just as I have kept my Father's commandments
and abide in his love.

11 • These things I have spoken to you,
that my joy may be in you,
and that your joy may be full.

Just as the commandments can be summarized in terms of love for God and for one's neighbour (Matthew 22:37-40 And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. (38) This is the great and first commandment. (39) And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. (40) On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.") even so Jesus summarizes his commandments in terms of love. The commandment is, 'Abide in my love.' and the reward for keeping the commandment is, 'You will abide in my love.' It is recursive and connected as all organically growing things are and we can get lost in meditating on what it means.
But before we do get lost in it, we find that we are rushing on to the ultimate demonstration of it, the crucifixion, where those disciples who remained grafted into the vine felt anything but connected to Christ and their prayers seemed anything but answered. This is why Jesus interrupts the flow of what he is saying about connectedness to tell them that he is telling them these things so that their joy might be full. Alongside the truth of the life of the Spirit flowing to us from Christ and the answer to prayer that indicates the reality of the connection objectively, we have the Word of God, spoken here by Christ for the disciples and subsequently written down by John so that we might be sustained through our particular cross-sufferings to continue to look to be grafted into the vine.

The Central Reason for Christian Fruitfulness

2007-03-04T09:08:00.000Z

John 15:7-9a

7 • If you abide in me,
and my words abide in you,
ask whatever you wish,
and it will be done for you.

8 • By this my Father is glorified,
that you bear much fruit
and so prove to be my disciples.

9 • As the Father has loved me,
so have I loved you.

Imagine that a branch might develop doubts about whether or not it is grafted into the vine, 'I feel like I'm grafted into the vine but how do I know that it isn't something that I'm imagining.? Does the vine know that I'm grafted into it? Does the farmer know that the graft has taken?' Now branches don't think (I was going to write, 'don't think like that.') but the grafted-into-Christ Christian does sometimes think like that as some of you well know, 'Are my feelings about being a Christian really dependable? Does Christ believe in me? What if God doesn't recognize me to be a believer?'
Well we quickly get reassurance from what it is we believe in. If we believe then God knows it and if we believe then Christ's life is in us and the question is reduced back to, 'But am I really a believer?' It matters because it is the believer that is grafted into Christ. The love of God for Christ is the same love with which Christ loves the believer but the corollary of that is that the untrue believer is a branch that is fit for nothing but burning.
The living out of the grace of God in the life of the believer is not left alone to testify that the believer is grafted into Christ. Others are more likely to see the fruit of the Spirit bursting out in our lives than we are ourselves but we have a measure of how spiritually alive we are that is more accessible to us than that God is glorified in the fruitfulness of believers and that measure — not to be hijacked away from its place beside the joint witnesses of the Spirit of God and the Word of God — is the answer to prayer.

Why to Burn Withered Branches.

2007-03-04T08:35:00.000Z

John 15:5-6

5 • I am the vine; you are the branches.

• Whoever abides in me and I in him,
he it is that bears much fruit,

• for apart from me you can do nothing.
6 If anyone does not abide in me
he is thrown away like a branch and withers;
and the branches are gathered,
thrown into the fire,
and burned.

If a vine branch is grafted into a vine successfully then it bears grapes as its harvest. The vine acts as a source of life for the branch and, although it is the branch that bears the grapes, without the vine, the branch could produce nothing. Using the metaphor of the vine and its branches to describe the Christian life is fairly straightforward because we have a ready understanding of how God's grace flows to us from Jesus Christ and how our fruitfulness in all these graces such as love, joy, peace, etc. [Galatians 5:22] are found in us because we're found in him.
What might not be so straightforward is why ungrafted branches are to be mentioned at all but the model needs the added explanation to reinforce its point that believers ought to be 'in Christ.' It isn't looking like a branch that makes the branch useful but it's being grafted into the vine and a branch that isn't grafted into the vine is worse than useless. It isn't for fruitlessness that the withered branches are gathered up and burned, nor is it for the tidiness of the vineyard alone. Some genius might come up with a use for vine branches that wasn't applicable 2000 years ago but the picture then was of the primary uselessness of the vine except for growing grapes and its secondary worse-than-uselessness of piles of withered branches harbouring disease.

On Spelling out the Ramifications of a Defeater Belief

2007-03-03T17:21:00.000Z

Ephesians 1:22-2-5

The Great Transition

Even those most convinced of their alienation from God are not able to present their condition in the way Paul does at the beginning of Ephesians 2. We ought to work on reflecting back people's defeater beliefs with a clarity that they can seldom if ever match. The truth in any argument or mode of argument cannot ultimately lead to a denial of the truth. It is not against truth that man in sin should be convinced that he is dead to God and it is helpful to those who know that they are alive to God to remember that once they were dead.

Presenting What 'Can't Possibly be True'

2007-02-28T09:53:00.000Z

Ephesians 1:22-2:5

The Great Transition

DECONSTRUCTING DEFEATER BELIEFS: Leading the Secular to Christ

I understand Tim Keller on 'defeater beliefs' much better, I think, after looking at how Paul makes his presentation of 'But God …' in Ephesians 1:22-2:5. He spends much more time presenting man's natural state as being totally alienated from Christ's supremacy than he does presenting the supremacy of Christ itself but the presentation of supremacy is the first thing he does. Paul's initial presentation of Jesus Christ as one totally united with us who is both the utterly victorious conqueror and the ultimate perfect provider [Ephesians 1:22-23] is designed to appeal both to the one who feels his bondage and those who are tempted to fear that they are still alienated from God. If only it were possible that these things were true!

This is how we ought to live as well as how we ought to preach to postmodern humanity. We are presenting what man by nature will think to be too good to be true so we should do so succinctly, seductively and initially. There is more to come.

The Great Transition

2007-02-27T16:34:00.000Z

Ephesians 1:22-2:5

By Nature Children of Wrath
— By Grace you have been Saved —
Life Abundant in Jesus Christ

Despite the way the presently regnant world system seems to deny the supremacy of Jesus Christ, God is always affirming that supremacy directly by graciously taking those who are bound by 'the vicious cycle of sin and death' and setting them free from it.

Exiled Preacher: Blogging in the name of the Lord: The Box Set

2007-02-27T09:19:00.000Z

Exiled Preacher: Blogging in the name of the Lord: The Box Set

Shameless

2007-02-27T08:20:00.000Z

Guy did a series of interviews and he thought that both of you would like see a link to it because I'm penultimately in it.

Life Abundant in Jesus Christ

2007-02-25T10:08:00.000Z

Ephesians 1:22-23

22 • And he put all things under his feet

• and gave him as head over all things

• to the church,
23 which is his body,
the fullness of him who fills all in all.

These are three superlative statements of the superiority which God the Father has given to Jesus Christ. Separate them and there is the possibility of defect but put them together and there is no room for imperfection. We can imagine a conqueror who is unable to supply what is needed after his victory. We can imagine a remote provider who is not one of us and we can imagine a community that is united in defeat and disorder, and a world where we are, in effect, no more than dead men walking.
Put these three together though, as three aspects of the same supremacy and we can hardly separate the one from the other. Here is a conqueror who conquers by making perfect provision, a provider who is universally and most emphatically with those provided for and a whole race contained in one man dying the death deserved by everyone else so that all else, believing in him might live.

— By Grace you have been Saved —

2007-02-25T09:46:00.000Z

Ephesians 2:4-5

4 • But God,
being rich in mercy,

• because of the great love
with which he loved us,
5 even when we were dead in our trespasses,

• made us alive together with Christ
— by grace you have been saved —

There is no hope within the system, but God — extraordinary intervention — from whom this world system, our individual selfish lives within it and the devilish hierarchy that claims sovereignty over it, can claim nothing but wrath — God intervenes with the only antidote to death, which is life! So, the greatness of salvation and of the grace of God that saves us is seen in its true colours when held up against that so-great-a-death in which we by nature 'lived' and to which we were condemned to suffer for our sins.
Here is not just mercy, but mercy of the richest quality, unstinted. Here is not just love, but love with which we were loved even when we were dead in our sins. Here is not just life, but life which is shared with Christ. There is no more appropriate summary of such great salvation than to say, 'By grace you have been saved.'

… and no 'buts'.

By Nature Children of Wrath

2007-02-25T08:56:00.001Z

Ephesians 2:1-3

2:1 • And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
2 in which you once walked,

• following the course of this world,
following the prince of the power of the air,
the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience —

3 • among whom we all once lived
in the passions of our flesh,
carrying out the desires of the body and the mind,
and were by nature children of wrath,
like the rest of mankind.

Here is a world of dead men walking, as the vivid expression from the condemned cell block has it. Where there is life there is hope, but these are without hope and without God in the world because unlike their death row analogues, these are really dead. Not dead in the flesh as is anticipated in the sentence of death which has been passed but spiritually dead to God and thus condemned to walk in the trespasses and sins which mark such a death until the sentence is carried out.
In the condemned cell block of the prison there is a sharp difference between the uniforms worn by the warders and the uniforms worn by the prisoners. Not only so, every attempt is made to make sure that the prisoners never think themselves to be free rather than condemned men but in the world of dead men walking who is to warn the condemned and who is to help? The authority in this world is himself condemned to stir up disobedience among his charges and there are by nature none at all who are not caught up in the same condemnation.
There is no hope within this cycle of sin and death; none whatsoever

… But God.

'Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity ... for ... his inheritance?'

2007-02-17T20:09:00.000Z

Luke 23:32-38

The Word of Pardon

When we know who Jesus is and what it is that we have done — rather, when we know what it is that he has done — we must sue for that pardon for us that was granted through his plea and won for us by his death on the cross.

Honour to the King

2007-02-17T19:56:00.000Z

Luke 23:32-38

The Word of Pardon

Since Christ is indeed the King who would not come down from the cross ought we not, in our notices of him, in our speech about him and to him and in our communion with him, to give him as much real honour as parody of honour was given him on the cross?

Christ and the Criminals, and us

2007-02-17T17:39:00.000Z

Luke 23:32-38

The Word of Pardon

If Christ was seen in life and in death with criminals and sinners then we ought to conclude that he is, in life and in death, for the sinners and the criminals and so should we be, as he was.

The Word of Pardon

2007-02-17T17:10:00.000Z

Luke 23:32-38

The Roman Way With Criminals
What Would Jesus Do?
Truth Writ Large in Ironic Jest

There is a pardon for sin because, although they who took Jesus with cruel hands to crucify him didn't know what they were doing (and hardly would they have crucified the Lord of Glory if they had known [1 Corinthians 2:8].) God knew what he was doing so that Christ the King was delivered up to be crucified by God's own definite plan and foreknowledge [Acts 2:23].

Truth Writ Large in Ironic Jest

2007-02-17T14:48:00.000Z

Luke 23:36-38

36 • The soldiers also mocked him,
coming up and offering him sour wine

37 • and saying, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!"

38 • There was also an inscription over him,
"This is the King of the Jews."

The soldiers took their clue as to how they should behave from the ruling classes gathered at the execution site. Back in the barracks they had already had their fun with their platted crown of thorns and their borrowed purple robe but they were ready to dish out more of the same. They didn't know how to taunt a false messiah but, whether or not they could read the sign above his head, they knew how to mock a pretend king. But they didn't know what they were doing.

What Would Jesus Do?

2007-02-17T12:41:00.000Z

Luke 23:34-35

34 • And Jesus said,
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

• And they cast lots to divide his garments.
35 And the people stood by, watching,

• but the rulers scoffed at him, saying,
"He saved others;
let him save himself,
if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!"

The executioners pressed on with their old familiar routine of dividing up the possessions of those about to die but this man had not read the script. Surely he was supposed to beg for mercy but for himself and from them rather than for them from a Father God. The rulers knew what to do — but he was praying, '... for they know not what they do.'

The Roman Way With Criminals

2007-02-17T11:55:00.000Z

Luke 23:32-33

32 • Two others, who were criminals,
were led away to be put to death with him.

33 • And when they came to the place that is called The Skull,
there they crucified him,

• and the criminals,
one on his right and one on his left.

The Romans were ultimate crowd manipulators and they knew exactly what to do to make an execution an unforgettable public occasion. We don't exactly know whether the place was chosen for a name it already had or whether the name was coined to add a Gothic allusion to the use to which it was being put but staging crucifixions at a place called 'Skull Hill' was by manipulative design. By the same meticulous attention to detail, the event was garnished with the execution of real criminals, two of those being brought out to take the places of 'honour' on either side of the centre cross where Jesus was crucified.

Dying the death deserved by us

2007-02-16T19:26:00.000Z

Genesis 6:1-8

The Natural State of Mankind in sin

Resistance of the devil and acknowledgement that our times are in God's hands are not enough. By grace, Noah was spared from the death deserved by all so that his descendant, Jesus Christ, might not be spared the death deserved by us.

On refusal to be a grasshopper

2007-02-16T19:14:00.000Z

Genesis 6:1-8

The Natural State of Mankind in sin

We must refuse to consider ourselves as grasshoppers even in the face of overwhelming odds, unimpeachable reputations or the obliteration of every ancient landmark in our generation.

The devil at his worst

2007-02-16T18:46:00.000Z

Genesis 6:1-8

The Natural State of Mankind in sin

The devil is at his worst when he appears closest to being human. We bring out the worst in him and we need grace to deal with him.

The Natural State of Mankind in sin

2007-02-16T18:00:00.000Z

Genesis 6:1-8