Author: Dave Faulkner

I'm a British Methodist minister, married with two adult children. I blog from a moderate evangelical-missional-charismatic perspective. My interests include digital photography (currently using a Nikon Z8), contemporary music, and watching football (Tottenham Hotspur) and cricket. For my photography, please visit www.flickr.com/photos/davefaulkner

The UK Citizenship Test

An American friend pointed me to The Official Practice Citizenship Test. Try taking it: it’s barking. Tell me if the most important tests of potential citizens are to know the percentage of Muslims in the UK to one decimal place, or the number of minors in the country to the nearest million? Exactly how does such knowledge make a candidate a better or more loyal citizen? Or do we just want a nation of civil service statisticians?

But then look at the kind of questions we ask of foreign nationals in other circumstances. A minister friend of mine used to represent Christian converts from Muslim states who had fled here and sought asylum on the very reasonable grounds that they feared persecution, even death, if they returned to their homelands. Understandably, the authorities wanted some kind of evidence that they had truly become Christians and were not using this as an excuse to live here.

So what questions would you ask someone in order to discern whether they were a Christian? Try this one: what is the traditional dinner Christians eat on Christmas Day?

And on their answer to that and similar questions, the Home Office decided the life and death fate of many people.

1

Sermon: God’s Heart For The World

Regular posting is still difficult, I’m afraid. My diary is choc-full and I can’t do much about it. Meantime, here is tomorrow’s sermon in the series on Jonah.

Jonah 3

One of the most popular British Christian websites is called ‘Ship Of Fools’. Its strapline is, ‘The magazine of Christian unrest’, because it once used to be … a magazine. And I was a subscriber during its short publishing life in the 1980s.

The articles were often humorous, but always making a serious point about the life of faith. One of my favourites was ‘The Ship Of Fools Dictionary Of Sanctified Jargon’. It poked fun at some of the words and phrases regularly used in church circles. Under ‘Suffer the little children’ it said, ‘See next entry.’ The next entry was ‘Sunday School’, which was wickedly defined as ‘In most cases can be an effective means for inoculating children against the effects of Christianity for life.’

But I want to talk about another of the definitions: ‘Laid on my heart’. The definition read, ‘Roughly translated, this phrase means that God has caused an individual to be concerned about a particular need or situation. Avoid using I’ve had leprosy laid on my heart, etc.’

‘Laid on my heart.’ Yes, it’s a Christian cliché. As is much of our talk about ‘God’s heart for’ someone or something. But sometimes we can’t do better than this language. And I think our passage today is a case in point. It may not specifically talk about God’s heart for Jonah or Nineveh, but in religious shorthand, that’s what it’s about.

So we begin with God’s heart for Jonah. If you remember last week, Jonah, who had preferred the idolatry of comfort to his calling, was preserved by God in the severe mercy of the big fish for a purpose, and Jonah promised to lay down his idols. In the opening verse of chapter three, we get a further flavour of God’s gracious purposes for his rebellious servant:

Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time.

A second time. Here is confirmation of God’s intention to use Jonah, even Jonah, who had not simply missed an opportunity but had energetically tried to get as far away from the call of God as possible. God does not take the view, “Well, Jonah, you fouled up and walked away from my call. I’m going to look for someone else to fulfil my purposes with regard to Nineveh.” No: God says, “Here’s a second chance, Jonah.”

A friend in the circuit where I grew up once had some advice for the teenage Christians about seeking God’s guidance when we are not sure. She said, “When I think God might be saying something to me but I’m not sure, I say ‘No’, because I know that if it’s really him, he’ll ask me again.”

I’ve told that story to some people who find it quite dangerous. Clearly, if you get yourself too easily into a habit of saying ‘no’ to God, you will harden your heart and close down the possibilities of ever hearing from him. But if you do it on the basis that God doesn’t just give us one shot at knowing his will but is prepared to speak to us again and again, then there is a real chance that my friend’s advice has some wisdom.

Remember, after all, the young Samuel who struggled to recognise that it was God who was calling him. It took three times before he realised it was God, and that was with the help of the highly fallible priest Eli.

Of course, Jonah is different from Samuel. Jonah knew what God had said first time, and deliberately chose to disobey. Samuel just needed to get tuned into the voice of God.

But take some good news from God speaking a second time to Jonah. What are your regrets in the life of faith? Do you believe God can speak to you again? Because he can. What opportunities have you missed for him? Do you realise that he hasn’t thrown you off the team for those mistakes? He is working at creating new openings where you can serve him.

But more than that: are you aware that there are areas of your life where you have significantly let down God, because you deliberately chose the path of disobedience and sin? Have you felt since then that the best you can do hope for is to hang around on the fringes of the church, but never have a hope of doing anything worthwhile for him again? The story of Jonah encourages you to see that God’s heart for you is very different.

What, then, will be Jonah’s heart for God? We read very quickly in verse 3a:

Jonah obeyed the word of the LORD and went to Nineveh.

When you realise just how full of grace God is for you in Jesus Christ, the only option that makes sense is to respond in obedience. God’s grace is not only about his forgiveness of our sins: his mercy extends further than that, to the granting of second chances. If you are hearing God give you a second opportunity after an earlier failure, then let that grace stimulate your heart to grab the new chance with both hands.

Jonah did. Simon Peter did after having denied Jesus three times. You are no less cherished by your heavenly Father than these ancient servants of his. Perhaps even today you are hearing the God of the second chance speak to you. If you are, then right now you have a golden opportunity to say to the Lord, “Today, I say ‘yes’ to you. Today, I will begin to obey you out of gratitude for the second chance you have given me.”

God has a heart of grace – of second chance grace – for you. Do you have a heart of gratitude for him and for his purposes?

We also need to consider God’s heart for Nineveh. You may think at a glance that God’s heart for Nineveh is purely that he desires its destruction. Jonah’s message is summed up as,

“Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” (Verse 4)

But listen. There is more to it than that. God describes Nineveh as ‘the great city’ (verse 2), and the TNIV’s rendering of verse 3 as ‘a very large city’ omits a possible additional reading of, ‘even by God’s standards’. God sees this huge ancient city and is full of compassion for its inhabitants, lost in sin. For Jonah’s message again is “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”

Forty more days. If God simply wanted to destroy these wicked sinners, then why the forty days? The patience of God is evident here. Through Jonah, he gives them time to hear the message and respond. Again, it’s not simply a case that if you don’t grab the message at the first opportunity that’s your lot, you’re fried. It is always good to respond to the voice of God when you hear it. But such is the heart of compassion that God has for sinful human beings that his grace extends beyond the immediate, the instant, the now.

If you listen to the stories of how many people come to faith, a common pattern is that a whole series of events and conversations happened over a period of time to draw them to Christ. And in a time when people know the basics of Christian faith far less than in earlier generations, we can more and more expect the journey to faith often to be a long, and even a slow one. But this is God’s heart: it is one of patient, loving persistent for those who are lost from his love.

So again, we ask the question: do we share God’s heart? The call to mission is a call to be involved with people for the long term. I am not criticising special missions and mission events, because they have their place. But what we cannot do is use occasional short campaigns and think we have then discharged our responsibility to share the love of God with the community, run back over the Christian drawbridge, pull it up and huddle together until the next occasion in a few years’ time. If we share God’s heart for those who do not know him, we shall commit to long term engagement with such people. ‘Hit and run’ won’t do: God engages for the long term with people. Will we?

For look what happens when we examine Nineveh’s heart for God. When they receive the message of the holy God who is nevertheless patient with them and full of compassion, they respond just as Israel, the people of God did in repentance – with sackcloth and fasting (verse 5). When it comes down to it, they’re just human beings – human beings loved by God – not enemies to be stereotyped. If they can respond like this, don’t we owe it to them to treat them with dignity and love?

In fact, there is a totality of response to God. Even the animals are involved (verse 7). The Persian custom was that animals shared in mourning ceremonies. Here, then, it indicates just how thorough the response to God’s message through Jonah is.

It’s something underlined when the king appears in the story (verse 6). He calls the people to do more than indulge in the ritual of sackcloth and fasting (verses 7b-8a), but to match the ritual acts with changed behaviour. He calls people to ‘give up their evil ways and their violence’ (verse 8b).

Now that’s interesting. Not just their general ‘evil ways’ but specifically their ‘violence’. Calls to repentance are specific. The Holy Spirit does not simply leave people with a general feeling of condemnation, just telling them they are useless and worthless. That voice comes from the enemy, who wishes to reduce us to utter despair.

Instead, the Holy Spirit puts a finger on something specific and says, ‘This is what you need to leave behind.’ Violence is a pretty good specific sin for Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, which was known for its aggressive behaviour. They know what they have done wrong, and they turn from it. Zaccheus knew he had to turn away from his greed and exploitation. Those with a heart to turn to God will know that it is God’s kindness that leads us to repentance, and therefore any turning will be specific.

It also means that when we are involved in mission, our prayer is that the Holy Spirit will show people the specific actions they need to take in order to be right with God. Sometimes the Spirit uses our voices to tell them (although we have to be careful not to sound harsh or judgmental), and sometimes the Spirit does it by a direct whisper into their hearts. But whatever means God chooses, this will be one inevitable consequence of meeting Christ at the Cross.

What we also know about the Ninevites’ response is that just because they discover a gracious and compassionate God, they don’t simply treat God as a celestial chum, as if he is no more than a spiritual mate. Listen to the caution in the king’s voice:

Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish. (Verse 9)

As Christians we want to respond with more than a ‘Who knows?’ We want to say more than that ‘God may relent’, but without sounding presumptuous. It is our privilege as bearers of the Gospel to promise the Good News of a God who will relent from judgment when repentant people turn to him through Jesus Christ.

That’s what we read he does here in the final verse of the chapter. As the sailors in chapter 1 received mercy in the storm and as Jonah received mercy from drowning via the big fish in chapter 2, so here the citizens of Nineveh receive mercy from what their sins of violence deserve. The book of Jonah keeps before us the vision of the God who is extravagant in mercy and outrageous in grace.

A good friend of mine is an Anglican vicar. However, some years ago he left parish ministry to work with an evangelistic organisation. Not only is he involved in special weeks of missions with churches and areas of the country, he is also involved with the community in the village where he and his family live in the Fens. He regularly emails me his prayer letter. He doesn’t see as many conversions to Christ as I am sure he would like to, but when he does, you can feel the joy as he writes about them. He has a heart for the God who has a heart for him and for the world.

I mean, you wouldn’t resent other people coming to share in the same privileges of the Gospel as you know, would you? It would be absurd.

Wouldn’t it?

4

Knaphill Methodist Church And The Web

The bigger of my two new churches, Knaphill Methodist Church, has for some time had its own website. You can often find audio of recent sermons there. So if you go to the link above and click on ‘Latest Sermon or Talk‘, you will find my sermon from yesterday, and can hear how the text I posted here came out in real life. If you can stand the thought of hearing my voice, that is!

And as of today, the church also has its own Facebook page. Do pop over if you are on Facebook and ‘like’ us. We are likeable!

0

Sermon: A Covenant For Worship And Mission

Still finding it difficult to get back to regular blogging – the diary has been frantic for the first couple of weeks in the new appointment. I hope to resume soon. Meanwhile, here is tomorrow’s (no, this morning’s) initial sermon for Knaphill. It’s Covenant Service, and I’ve introduced a sermon series on Jonah to highlight the theme of mission. A Local Preacher did Jonah chapter 1 last week. I join in at chapter 2.

Jonah 2

Last Sunday morning, while I was innocently engaged in taking my first service at Addlestone, something dastardly happened here at Knaphill. I understand that Graham Pearcey brought the rest of my family up to the front where they were asked to share information about me.

I understand you were told that I cannot sing. Well … that is entirely correct. You will want to shower the AV team with chocolates and expensive unMethodist liquids for them fading down my microphone during the hymns and songs.

But while I am poor at singing, I nevertheless love music. Not without cause did I mention in a piece I wrote for Flight Path, the circuit magazine, that one of my favourite gadgets is my iPod. One band I particularly enjoyed during early adulthood was Talking Heads. Their most famous song was called ‘Once in a lifetime’. The lyrics to the first verse go like this (don’t worry, I won’t be singing them):

You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
You may find yourself living in another part of the world
You  may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
You may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife
You may ask yourself, well how did I get here?

And that – it seems to me – is a good place to begin looking at Jonah chapter 2 in this series on Jonah, the reluctant missionary. How did I get here? There are three questions I want us to ask about Jonah from this chapter, and they take us a little further along the road of his journey into the mission of God. So the first question is this: how did Jonah get here?

And I think my short answer is that Jonah has a warped view of the life of faith, and this leads him away from God’s call to mission. When the call first comes to go to Nineveh, he heads for Tarshish (1:3). Tarshish was a luxury destination: King Solomon’s fleet had returned from there with gold, silver, ivory, monkeys and peacocks (1 Kings 10:22). In the ancient imagination, it was like Paradise. It was Shangri-La.[1] Jonah preferred comfort to calling. That’s something we might well chew on as we renew our Covenant with God later in this service. Are we opting for comfort or calling?

One of the circuit Local Preachers clearly thought we had come to the land of milk and honey in moving from Essex (oh dear) to Surrey – as if it were some contemporary Tarshish. Maybe not so much land of milk and honey, but land of Waitrose. Many others have informed us that the manse is in the most desirable road in the village. So have we come to Tarshish?  Let me make one simple observation: by coming here, our insurance premiums have increased!

A recent report suggested that one reason many children of church families don’t continue in the Christian faith is that what they witness from their parents and their church family is not radical, risk-taking faith in Jesus Christ, but comfortable, respectable living. It has no attraction. It is Tarshish faith, and you end up living in a fish.

Jonah has another warped attitude to faith. Let me introduce it this way. Suppose I ask you what the main purpose of Christian faith is. In my experience, the answer most Christians give is, ‘to worship God’. Wrong answer.

Are you shocked by my saying that? Consider this: it was Jonah’s answer. He told the pagan sailors in 1:9, ‘I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land’. His life was about worship. But just focussing on worship didn’t stop his disobedience and his destiny in the alimentary canal of a large fish.

A better answer about our purpose is not that we are here to worship God, but that we are here to glorify God. The Westminster Catechism, so beloved of Calvinist Christians, more correctly says that our ‘chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him for ever’. We glorify God both in the church and in the world, in worship and in mission. A church that simply concentrates on worship and on internal matters is one that will find herself sooner or later in a predicament.

In this respect, Jonah stands in the book as a representative of ancient Israel, who was called by God to be ‘a light to the nations’, but who was reluctant to fulfil that destiny. The historical Jonah described in 2 Kings 14:25 is one who is more concerned with nationalism than with the blessing of the nations[2].

If we want to end up – metaphorically speaking – inside a fish, spending our time swimming in half-digested food and toxins, then we could do no better than to concentrate on worship and internal matters, and give no thought to engaging in the mission of God. That – and his preference for comfort – is how Jonah ended up in the fish. Are there warped faith priorities that have put us in a similar place?

The second question is this: why is Jonah in the fish? You may say I’ve just answered that question. But I want to take it further. Why has God put him in a fish? There is a surprising answer.

We may think that his hotel reservation in the belly of the fish was God’s punishment for his disobedience. However, Jonah was booked for drowning, when the pagan sailors threw him overboard. God sent the fish, not to punish him, but to rescue him. The fish is like some underwater lifeboat, come to save him from going to what the Jews called Sheol, the place of the dead[3]. In his prayer, Jonah sees it as deliverance (vv 1-7).

This location of filth and acid is actually God’s salvation for Jonah. The disgusting stench of the fish’s belly is … grace. By this drastic course of action, God preserves Jonah for his purposes of mission.

Grace isn’t always prettified and beautiful. After all, it depends on nails hammered through the flesh of Jesus onto a cross of wood. We affirm that ‘God works for good in all things for those that love him’ (Romans 8:28), and that means he acts in grace as much through the nasty episodes of life as the joyful ones. One author called it ‘A severe mercy’. You may identify with this from your own life. How many of you look back on certain painful or traumatic seasons of your life and realise – at least in retrospect – that God was working for good through that experience? Maybe he did something in your life that could not have happened unless you had endured something unpleasant.

I believe we can apply this to the life of the church as well as to our individual lives. Think of it like this. Jonah is rescued from death by God’s provision of the big fish. Consider the number of churches that have died. Look at their buildings now turned into carpet warehouses or places of worship for other religions. Now reflect on the fact that this church is still alive. Say what you like about things having been better in days gone by – although I believe that nostalgia isn’t what it used to be and that the golden days were probably only nickel-plated. Whatever your fond memories of what you believe to have been better times, and whatever you might not like about church life as you know it today, the fact is that God has preserved this church.

So the question is why he has preserved us in grace. Surely it must also be that we might glorify him. Surely we are here not only to worship him but to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the world, through our deeds and words.

Which means you now know why I picked Jonah as the opening sermon series for my time here. I wanted to make it clear from the outset that I do not believe I came here ‘to run the church’ or ‘to keep everybody happy’. I came with a vision for a church that both gathers for worship and disperses for mission. I believe God has preserved this church in his grace and mercy for such purposes. At this Covenant Service, will you join with me as we renew our commitment to Christ in walking this way?

And that begs the third and final question: what will Jonah do? We read his response in verses 8 and 9:

“Those who cling to worthless idols
forfeit God’s love for them.

But I, with shouts of grateful praise,
will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the LORD.’ “

He rejects idols and promises to sacrifice and keep his vows. Idols are those things or people we set our hearts upon, and to which we will sacrifice. They can be good things to which we wrongly assign absolute status. I am sure you can think of many examples without much problem, especially within our society.

However, since we are considering our own lives right now, let me offer some suggestions about the sort of idols that can afflict religious people[4]. We can be guilty of racial or denominational pride. We can be guilty of moral or doctrinal superiority. But let me offer one particular idolatry that afflicts us all too much: church work itself. This can manifest itself in various ways. Here are a couple of examples.

At one stage in a previous circuit, I had to look after an additional church temporarily for eighteen months. During that time, one of the faithful elderly ladies died, and I was asked to conduct her funeral. I met with her relatives, who told me that the church had been her whole life, not just in terms of worship and fellowship, but it had formed her entire social life, too. Clearly, they thought I would be pleased to learn of this.

However, it saddened me greatly. Why, when we are called to glorify God in both worship and mission, would we spend all our time in the church? Could it have assumed a level of importance far beyond what the New Testament calls it to have?

The other story goes like this. Some of you may remember the controversy in the mid-1990s over the dramatic charismatic-Pentecostal experiences of the Holy Spirit that were labelled as the ‘Toronto Blessing’. At the height of that time, I flew to Toronto and spent a week at the church which was at the epicentre of the movement. As well as their regular Sunday morning services, they were running seminars for pastors morning and afternoon every weekday, and they were holding renewal meetings six nights a week. Without exaggeration, thousands of visitors from around the world came to the church every week.

You will not be surprised to know that in such a spiritually intense time and with the church attracting so much attention, enthusiastic members of that church were volunteering left, right and centre to help at the renewal meetings. Some wanted to come and be on duty every night.

But the church leadership said, ‘no’. Much as they needed the help to run all the meetings, they limited church members only to helping with one evening renewal meeting per week. On other nights, they wanted them to attend a home group, do something for Christ in the community and spend time with their families. I think that by doing that they not only encouraged balanced Christian living, they helped their members avoid church idolatry.

So, no, I don’t consider it a badge of spirituality to be down the church every night of the week. Renewing your covenant with Christ today might mean lessening what you do at church in order to give more time to family and community.

And we ought to take this seriously, because in these words of his I quoted a couple of minutes ago, Jonah uses language that is pertinent to the theme of covenant. ‘Those who cling to idols forfeit God’s love for them,’ reads verse 8 in the TNIV. But God’s love here is a weak English translation of a word that stands for God’s faithful covenant love. Dealing with the idols in our lives is about maintaining the faithful covenant relationship with God. Idolatry is something we should examine at a covenant service. It gets in the way of our calling to glorify God in the church and the world, however worthy it appears to be.

When we deal with it, then – like Jonah – we can offer our sacrifices and keep our vows – the vows we make at something like a covenant service.

So – in summary, God is calling us to renew our commitment to glorify him in worship and mission. To that end, as we make our covenant with him afresh today, will we stop making our personal comfort and other things – even church work – our personal idols? Will we reject those things that lead us to treat internal church life as a priority that has excluded our involvement in Christian mission? Will we recognise that the difficulties and uncongenial aspects of our lives individually or together may even be tools God has used to preserve us for this twin calling to worship and mission?

Could it be that God has brought us to this point – like Queen Esther – ‘for such a time as this’?

[1] Eugene Peterson, Under The Unpredictable Plant, p 15f.

[2] Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods, p 134.

[3] Leslie C Allen, The Books of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah and Micah, p 213.

[4] As suggested in Tim Keller’s book above.

3

Sermon: Faith Under Fire

It’s back to the sermons here on the blog, and here’s the first one I shall preach in the new appointment tomorrow morning. I am finishing off a sermon series they have recently had on 2 Peter.

2 Peter 3

Have you ever forgotten something you know you should have remembered and then said, “Silly me, I was having a ‘senior moment’”?

Sometimes we can laugh at ourselves when we fail to remember. But at other times, not remembering is painful. I think of Hubert, in the early stages of dementia, not always remembering that Vera is his wife. Some of you have been through experiences like that with a loved one.

And in 2 Peter 3, we hear how important remembering is for our spiritual health. We too face scoffers who mock our faith, and we too need to hear how the writer says,

I am trying to arouse your sincere intention by reminding you that you should remember the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets, and the commandment of the Lord and Saviour spoken through your apostles (verses 1b-2).

The early Christians faced scoffers, and we do, too. In our day, it ranges from friends and acquaintances who think we can’t possibly be serious about believing what we believe to sophisticated and organised atheist scoffers. Only in the last week the National Secular Society, an organisation of less than 10,000 members, have called for RE to be banned in schools. Richard Dawkins is always claiming you have to choose between evolution and a Creator God.

So it is worth us today hearing what Scripture says to us about how to stand firm when others mock our faith. To this end, 2 Peter 3 calls us to remember – to remember some things we already know, because they will fortify our faith. What are they, and what should we do about them?

Firstly, we remember what God has done – because what God has done in the past gives a sign of what he will do again. When you know what someone has done previously, it gives you hope for the future. God is not silent. He has not resigned. He is still up to the job. When we remember what he has done, we stand with hope in the face of mockers.

In particular, 2 Peter points to two things God has done in the past, and their counterpoints in what he will one day do again. Those two events are the Creation and the Flood. Just as God once judged the world in a flood of water (verse 6), so one day he will judge it with a flood of fire (verses 7, 10-11). And just as God made the heavens and the earth (verse 5), so in the future he will not simply destroy creation with the flood of fire, he will remake the new heavens and the new earth (verse 13).

How specifically does remembering these twin themes of Creation and Flood help us in the face of mockery? Let us take creation first. The fact that God has acted in creation (whatever means he chose to accomplish it) points to the new creation he will usher in at the end of all things as we know them now. Our Christian hope is not simply of ‘going to heaven when we die’; the biblical hope is that we shall receive resurrection bodies and live in a renewed creation. This is our destiny. The God who created, and who goes on upholding even this broken creation, will one day make all things new – including the heavens and the earth. And that renewed creation will be our home for ever. Remembering God’s work in creation firms up our faith in where we are going.

One thing Debbie and I did in preparation for moving here was that we bought sat-navs for our cars. They have been a great help in our first fortnight here. We know we only have to punch in the postcode and perhaps the door number of where we are doing, and – provided we follow the instructions – we will arrive at our destination.

Occasionally, of course, they go wrong. I had to educate mine to recognise that the postcode for this church did not put it in an unnamed road, but in Station Road!  And occasionally, too, we go wrong. I did on Friday night, when we drove back from the circuit welcome service. We arrived at a roundabout in Chobham, I think, where I was instructed to go straight on. Only problem was, you had to go left or right. I knew I had been on a roundabout like that a few days ago, where the same thing happened, and the correct solution was to go right. In the dark, I thought I was at that roundabout.

Well … I wasn’t. Turning right led us ultimately down a narrow country lane, where further progress was blocked by a ford. Debbie is better at reversing in tight circumstances than I am, so she took the wheel and eventually the sat-nav recalculated a route home for us and we made it back.

The life of faith can be rather like that. We can end up on detours caused by our own foolishness or the actions of others, but when we live by faith in Christ, arrival at the ultimate destination is still certain. God’s creation and the promise of his new creation tell us that. And knowing that gives us a reason to stand firm when others mock us. We have reason to believe in a hope-filled future.

But you’ll remember it wasn’t just the Creation to which 2 Peter pointed, it was the Flood as well. As God once judged people’s sin in a flood of water, so this chapter tells us he will also one day judge with a flood of fire.

Is this just a case of saying that those who disagree with us have got it coming to them? No, it’s more than that. This chapter tells us that the reason some people don’t merely disagree with our convictions but specifically scoff at us is because they ‘come, scoffing and indulging their own lusts’ (verse 3). In other words, some people who vehemently mock Christianity do so because to accept Christian faith would be to invite judgment on their morally dubious lives. The Christian speaker, author and activist Tony Campolo tells a story of how a student who had previously been well disposed towards Christianity came up to him one day and said that he’d been having doubts about God for about six months.

“Is that when you started sleeping with your girlfriend?” Campolo replied.

And he was right. The student’s intellectual objections were a cover for his rejection of Christian sexual ethics.

It isn’t that every objection to faith stems from that motive – of course not! But 2 Peter 3 reminds us that some of our opponents have hidden, unworthy motives for attacking our faith. The more mocking they are, the more likely it is. And they won’t get away with it in the long run. God sees their lives and their hearts. This is not anything for us to gloat about – in fact, we should be stirred to pray for such people. But it is a reassurance that we serve a God whose ultimate purposes are justice.

So the first step in coping with mockery of our faith is to remember what God has done and recognise what he will do. We gain confidence in God’s good future for us, and in his justice.

Secondly, we remember God’s character. The original readers of this letter were being mocked for their belief that Jesus would return and that God would judge creation. “Where is the promise of his coming?” (verse 4), they taunted. So 2 Peter 3 reminds them of Psalm 90,

that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day (verse 8 )

and from that draws the conclusion that God has delayed his final purposes in his divine patience, because he does not want any to perish, but to come to repentance (verse 9). He does not want to have to judge the mockers – he would rather they found new life in Christ. Nor does he want Christians to fall away – he desires that we resist that temptation and stay faithful, even when it would feel more comfortable to disown our Lord and Saviour.

What, then, do we need to remember about God’s character? One word: grace. We would not know God in Christ were it not for his grace, his unmerited favour extended in love to us through Jesus and the Cross. God wants to demonstrate that same love even to those who ridicule his Son and our faith in him.

Every now and again, I read discussions on the Internet about the existence of God. Some of the comments from atheists are arrogant and hateful. My instinctive feelings towards such people are not good. But I need to remember that these are people for whom Christ died, and had God not been gracious to me I would never have known him. It is when we forget truths like this that we may be most likely to slide away from true faith into a parody of true religion that is full of self-righteousness rather than God’s extravagant love to the world through Jesus Christ.

Sometimes we need to remember just how much God has forgiven us, and let that fact inform the way we relate to difficult or hostile people. God wants them to know him. He may well want to use us in reaching them. That will have implications for our words, our actions and our attitudes.

The third and final thing we need to do is to remember God’s call. If we have a future in the new creation, and if God is both just and gracious, what kind of people does he call us to be? Let me just draw together a couple of fragments.

In verse 13, where we read about the new heavens and the new earth, we learn that the new creation is a place ‘where righteousness is at home’. If we want to be at home, we need to lead a consistent life, a righteous one. And to that end, the final plea of the letter in verse 18 is that its readers might

grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

What does this amount to? If we believe in God’s coming new creation, then we need to live in harmony with it. That means righteousness (and justice – the Greek word covers both). And if we believe that God is gracious enough to want even his enemies to find his love and put their faith in him, then we need to grow in grace – to become more like him, especially in becoming more full of grace to others ourselves.

All that amounts to a tough call. In the face of opposition and mockery, God calls us not to give up or mingle with the crowd, but to live righteous and just lives that are full of grace for the most undeserving of sinners. But how else are we going to live a convincing witness to Jesus Christ in the world? We are deluded if we think all we have to do is provide the right answers to people’s questions – although that is important. Jesus calls us to a difficult assignment, but an important one: to live the life of faith, even and especially when we are under fire.

But he’s simply asking us to do what he did when the heat was on, and the good news is that he gives us the Holy Spirit in order to do his will. When I read the claims of atheists on the Internet, I realise they not only need to hear reasonable answers from Christians, they need to see Christians show by their lifestyles that a different way is real and possible.

And that’s a good place for me to end my first sermon here, with that challenge. Our calling is to live different, Jesus-shaped lives in the midst of the world and not just in our religious ghettoes.

Who is up for the challenge?

0

Bollywood And Jesus

Sorry for the lack of posts recently – all due to the move of appointment, which I begin today. Here’s a short piece to get back into the swing.

Bollywood is making a film about the life of Christ. It will have a cast of children, but will star a Bollywood heart-throb. Even Jesus has to be good-looking. It will cover from the birth to the crucifixion, the Guardian says. (Not the Resurrection? I wonder why.)

Also,

The film would include seven devotional songs, [the director] added, but would not feature the rumbustious music and dancing characteristic of Bollywood.

I suppose that is for reasons of reverence, but doesn’t that miss the Jesus who was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard?

Still, the motives are worthy: director Singeetham Srinivasa Rao says,

“Wherever there is conflict, pain, war, we would like to take the message of peace and love.”

2

Clergy Burnout

I’m grateful to my friend Pam Garrud to pointing on her Facebook profile to this piece in the New York Times about clergy burnout. As someone who needs medication to control hypertension and whose girth has increased, some of it hit home.

I’m not one of those ministers who fails to take their annual leave in the way the first page of the article describes. I do try to take some exercise. Usually after the school run, I get out the iPod and go for a brisk walk. However, that doesn’t stop me wondering what some less charitable members of a congregation might think if they saw me out walking. I was told at college that ministers should be at their desks at 9 am. I, however, might well be walking. Of course, most church members are fine about it. It just takes the vociferous minority. Not that they ever say it to your face. You hear on the grapevine.

The importance of stillness and sabbath is critical. I have seen ministers wreck themselves with workaholism. In the middle of the day, I was able to smell the alcohol on the breath of one (now deceased) Superintendent.  To say nothing of how he spoke publicly about his wife.

But the NY Times piece rightly goes further than just ministers not taking care of themselves. On the second of the two pages, it talks about the pressures of declining and aging congregations. It talks about how clergy push themselves further, due to these factors. What it doesn’t say is that those same factors lead some churches to place extra strains of expectation upon their ordained staff. ‘Miracle worker’ might just as well be put in the job description.

To that end, when I was formally welcomed here, I quoted Monty Python:

He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.

The trouble is, many of us in the ministry don’t believe in the grace we preach. And nor do our congregations. We are paying a price.

15

Married To The Ministry

Some people make ministers out to be plaster saints. Or expect them to be. Occasionally, we are stupid enough to entertain these pathetic fantasies.

But there is one group of people who know we are not. Rather than plaster, they know we are fashioned out of clay. Especially our feet. That group is our family.

With that in mind, let me commend Debbie Bryan’s blog Married To Ministers to you. Debbie is in Texas, and her blog is aimed mainly at wives of male ministers rather than husbands of female ministers. But whatever the cultural differences from this side of the pond, what shines through for me is the grace she displays in the face of the ridiculous antics ministry families encounter. Her most recent story involves the theft of church doughnuts and parishioners invading the parsonage for coffee before the family is dressed.

Sounds familiar? I hope you enjoy her writing.

0

Countering Idolatry: Some Thoughts On Tim Keller’s ‘Counterfeit Gods’

This week I have mostly been reading two books. One of them awaits a future blog post, but the other is Tim Keller‘s Counterfeit Gods, subtitled, ‘When the empty promises of love, money and power let you down’. It manages to be both pastoral and evangelistic, in that Keller diagnoses the affliction of idolatry as infecting both Christian and non-Christian alike.

An idol is for Keller anything – and usually a good thing – that we inflate to absolute good in place of the true God. While covering the usual contemporary suspects such as money, sex, relationships, power and success, he briefly analyses some less common ones. He is well read in contemporary culture and in the analysis of idolatry.

He also distinguishes between ‘surface idols’ and ‘deep idols’. The former are easy to identify, but the latter, the driving forces behind our idolatry, are harder to detect. However, in what may be the strongest section of the book (with the possible exception of the biblical exegesis) he provides a series of ways in which we can diagnose whether something has become an idol. What obsesses our imagination and daydreaming? Are there things on which we spend too much money? For the Christian, do we react with undue anger or despair to unanswered prayer for a particular request? Do our uncontrollable emotions, such as fear, anger or guilt, tell us we are raising something to the level of a necessity in life when it is not? This section falls in the book’s Epilogue, and is priceless.

My one disappointment was with what followed that section. Keller says that it isn’t enough to renounce idols, they need to be replaced by a devotion to Christ and all he has done for us, because in that we will find true satisfaction in life. He tells us this is best developed by the use of spiritual disciplines, but unfortunately then bails out by saying that describing them is beyond the remit of the book. That seemed to be a shame to me, since to describe that would be to outline a major element of the cure. Instead, he simply footnotes books by Kenneth Boa and Edmund Clowney. I am sure Keller is capable of writing lucidly on this subject. It is as if he had run aground against a publisher’s word limit. Perhaps he will offer his own thoughts on this important subject one day.

Despite that one hesitation, this is a book I heartily recommend. It is significant on so many levels. If you are a prophet, its diagnosis of sin in western culture is important: as Keller says, you cannot understand a culture without discerning its idols. If you are an evangelist, it will give deep insight into what holds people captive. The pastor will also appreciate the understanding of the human condition and the tools for discerning idolatry. It is well worth your time and money.

Unless books are your idol, I suppose.

0

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑