Exodus 24.1-11: A Sermon on Covenant Renewal

It will help to know that the service will be Holy Communion: Order 2 (Contemporary Language).

“And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank.” – Exodus 24.11

At 11.30am on 29th May 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers known to have reached the summit of Mount Everest, the highest point on earth. They received international acclaim; Hillary was knighted and Tenzing received the George Medal. Hillary described the top as a “symmetrical, beautiful snow cone summit”, but the view from the top was reported to be unspectacular: they were too high for good landscape and all below them looked flat and monotonous. Here we are, gathered in an old building to sing some songs written hundreds of years ago with a handful of instruments and a pipe organ, to listen to readings from a book which was completed nearly two thousand years ago, someone climbs up into a wooden box and preaches, then we go up to a table and eat a piece of bread and drink some wine. It all seems so small, insignificant, and irrelevant, just another private interest that some people indulge on a Sunday, like other people do sport or DIY. My hope and prayer is that we will see that our gathering for worship, and the gathering of Christians up and down the country and all over the world on Sunday, the Lord’s Day, to worship the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is the most significant thing that is happening today, indeed each week, it really does matter, it matters for the world and it is even more of a privilege and honour than to climb Mount Everest. The view from the top of the mountain we ascend, if only we have eyes to see it, is not at all flat or monotonous, but even more beautiful.

1. The purpose of worship is covenant renewal

At beginning of Exodus, God rescues the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt and leads them out through the wilderness to Mount Sinai, where they assemble. In chapter 19, God enters into a covenant with them. He tells them that has brought them to himself, summons them to be faithful to him and promises that they will be his treasured possession. In return, the people say, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do”. The best way to think of the covenant relationship between God and his people is as a marriage. In the marriage service, the bridegroom says, “I take thee to my wedded wife, to have and to hold” and he promises to “love and to cherish”. The bride in reply says, “I take thee to my wedded husband, to have and to hold” and she promises to “love, cherish and to obey”. The reason God enters into covenant with the people of Israel is to make them a kingdom of priests that all the peoples of world might come to know him and enjoy his blessing. In Exodus 24, God renews this covenant. It is not that it needs renewing because it has run out or ended, like one might need to renew a tax disc or the insurance or the TV licence. It is renewed in the sense of being confirmed and strengthened.

God invites Moses and his brother Aaron, and two of Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of elders of Israel as representatives of the people to come up the mountain in order to worship him. However, before they go up, the people are gathered at the foot of the mountain, where God addresses his people through Moses. There are two parts here. “Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words that the LORD has spoken we will do”" (v. 3). Moses is talking about the Ten Commandments at beginning of chapter 20 and the instruction for life in the land that God had promised to them which comes afterwards. Moses writes the words of the Lord down and after building an altar to the Lord and pillars to represent people of Israel and offering some animal sacrifices, he then reads from Book of the Covenant. Again, in response, the people promise to obey God’s word: “Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do”" (v. 7). God made the covenant with his people so that they would be his priests to bring his blessing to the whole world; as he renews this covenant, he speaks to them in order that they might know how to live. And as they enjoy life in the land God has promised to them in this covenant relationship with him, having committed themselves to live in obedience to commands, the surrounding nations which look on will be attracted as they see how good and wise God’s ways are, and how near God is to his people. Moses takes the rest of the blood from the sacrifices and throws it over the people, and says that it is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with them. They have sinned, they have rebelled against God, they deserve his judgement, they are impure, they cannot coexist with a God of blazing purity. But as God sees the blood that has been sprinkled upon the people, he sees that the animals have been sacrificed, they have died in their place so their sins are forgiven, they are purified, and covenant relationship is possible between God and his people. The purpose of worship is covenant renewal.

In the New Testament, the Christian church is described in the same terms as the people of Israel and has the same covenant relationship and task. They are called ‘a people for his own possession’ and ‘a royal priesthood’. What happens in Christian worship is what happens in the worship described in Exodus 24. At the beginning of the service, we, like people of Israel, assembled at the foot of a mountain, a heavenly mountain, of which Mount Sinai was a picture or a shadow:

“You have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could not ensure the order that was given, “If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned”. Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.” [This is all talking about Mount Sinai]. But you have come to Mount Zion.” – Hebrews 12.18-22

God’s commandments were read out earlier and we affirmed our commitment to them and our desire to keep them with one voice. We said, “Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law,” and, “Lord, have mercy upon us, and write all these your laws in our hearts.”  We heard the words of the Lord which have been written down as the Bible – our book of the covenant, God’s revelation which now complete – was read in our hearing. In the sermon, that book is expounded. The Bible is the word that instructs us as a royal priesthood. It gives us instruction on how we are to bring every area of life under the rule of Jesus Christ. It teaches us of all that God has done to save us, supremely in sending his Son to die on a cross. As the church lives this out and holds out this message, the nations of the world will see and believe and hope in Christ as their saviour and come under his rule as their king and be transformed by him. Later, we will confess our sins to God and ask him to forgive us because Jesus shed his blood for us when he died on the cross. He is the fulfilment of the animal sacrifices in the Old Testament: they point forward to him and are a picture of his death for us on the cross, where suffered God’s wrath – his right settled anger against sin – in the place of sinful human beings, taking the punishment we deserve. When we have confessed our sins, we will hear the declaration of God’s forgiveness and receive comfort as we are assured of what Jesus has done for us. Just as Moses said of the blood of the sacrifices sprinkled on the people for their cleansing and forgiveness, “This is the blood of the covenant”, Jesus at the Last Supper took a cup of wine which symbolised the blood he would shed when he died the following day and said, “This is my blood of the new covenant.” The purpose of worship is covenant renewal.

This is why what we do when we meet together on a Sunday morning is such a privilege and matters so much for the world. It means we need to pay attention when the Bible is read and preached. It is not something we can just sit through; we need to listen hard and savour the Scripture readings and value robust preaching. We need to do that in order that we might obey God’s word fully and in all the details of life, and that we might be prepared to give an answer to any one who asks us for a reason for the hope that is in us, that we might be able to share with them the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because it is as we do this that the transformation of the individuals we meet, our town, even our nation, will come about. We must do that: the whole point of doing what we do on a Sunday is that it might spill over into Monday and the rest of the week. The purpose of worship is covenant renewal – that’s the first reason what we do on a Sunday morning is such a privilege and is so significant for the whole world. As look at how this ceremony of covenant renewal ends, see:

2. The climax of worship is feasting in heaven

Finally, Moses and Aaron and Nadab and Abihu and the seventy elders ascend the mountain and it is as if they have ascended into heaven In Ezekiel 1, the prophet has a vision and he sees four extraordinary creatures and above them an expanse, like the sky, and above that the likeness of a throne in appearance like sapphire, and upon that throne, a likeness with a human appearance. He describes this as “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord”. So when in Exodus 24 they see under God’s feet a pavement of sapphire stone like the heaven for clearness, it is as if have ascended into heaven to the throne of God and they see him. We are not told in what way they see God but they see him. They were not struck down dead which is what should happen to them as sinful people entering the presence of a holy God. Purified and cleansed, they can eat and drink in his presence. The renewal of the covenant between God and his people ends in celebration. To pick up the wedding imagery, a man and woman exchange their vows, committing themselves to one another, and after ceremony, there is a reception, a feast to celebrate the marriage. The climax of worship is feasting in heaven.

In this episode, we read at beginning that the people as a whole could not come up the mountain, only Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and the people’s representatives, the seventy elders. Only Moses could come near; the others couldn’t – they had to worship from afar. Because of Jesus’ death on the cross, the way into God’s presence is open and we are all invited to draw near:

“Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” – Hebrews 10.19-23

When does that happen? The writer goes on to say, in v. 25, “Let us not give up meeting together.” This implies that it is when we meet together that this happens. God invites all baptised people to gather together – this is what the writer is referring to when he speaks of our bodies being washed with pure water – in order to ascend into heaven and draw near to God. We do so not physically, but in faith, having confessed and repented of our sins, trusting in Jesus’ death on the cross. We read earlier from Hebrews 12.18.22. Verse 22 continues:

“You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in [what?] festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.” – Hebrews 12.22-24

We go up God’s mountain and we ascend into heaven into the presence of God himself, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, with the angels and the souls of Christians who have died, and this gathering, this assembly is a feast. In the service, we are invited with these words: “You then who truly and earnestly repent of your sins… [who] intend to lead a new life following the commandments of God… draw near with faith and take this holy sacrament to your comfort.” After we have confessed our sins and forgiveness has been declared, we are bidden, “Lift up your hearts,” to which we reply, “We lift them to the Lord”. Then, “with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we proclaim [his] great and glorious name, for ever praising [him].” After that, we come humbly to God’s table and eat bread and drink wine. What a feast it is! When Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper, he took bread and said, “This is my body which is given for you” and he took a cup of wine and said, “This is my blood which is shed for you”, and he meant it. St Paul said, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” When we receive the bread and wine, we receive Jesus Christ and all that he has to give us, pardon, cleansing, and spiritual life. That is what we pray for as we come to the Lord’s Table: “Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.” There’s no magic here: the bread and the wine remain bread and wine all the way down; it is not that they just retain the appearance of bread and wine but underneath are transformed. We receive Christ by faith; we look beyond the bread and wine and see what they symbolise, what they stand for, so that as we eat and drink, we feed on Christ in our hearts. If the reading of the commandments and Scripture and our responses were like marriage vows, then think of this as the giving and receiving of rings. There is no magical property of the metal which joins two people together in marriage. As bridegroom puts the ring on the bride’s finger, he is binding himself to her and giving himself and all that he is and has to her: “With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.” And as bride allows him to put the ring on her finger, she receives him. This is what is going on at the Lord’s Supper: as we are given bread and wine, Christ is giving himself to us, and as we eat the bread and drink the wine, we receive him and all that he is and has for us. The climax of worship is feasting in heaven.

This is a further reason why what we do on a Sunday morning is such a privilege and is so significant; the view from the top of the mountain we ascend in worship is beautiful indeed. That means we must make coming to church each Sunday a priority. It is very easy to become individualistic about our faith: we pray and read our Bible at home in our room on our own and we think that’s really all that matters. There is nothing wrong with those things, but our Christian life mustn’t consist only in them. If want to meet with God, draw near to him, and know him, then we need to go where he may be found, where he has told us we may meet him. The great Reformer Martin Luther had a delightful way of putting it: he said, “God meets us at trysting places.” Where we may meet with God is where his people gather. If you have drifted from the Christian faith or if you would not call yourself a Christian, do you see what you’re missing out on? Not to mention being part of the assembly enrolled in heaven, of the spirits of the righteous made perfect, when you die, and being raised from the dead to live in God’s renewed world when Christ returns? God wants you to confess your sins and repent of them – say sorry to God for the way you have put yourself at the centre of your life which is at the heart of sin, and turn away from living that way – and trust in Jesus Christ for your forgiveness and cleansing because of his death on the cross. If you do, you will know all this for yourself. We must also prepare ourselves before we come to church. If you were going to go to a wedding, you would get ready, especially if it is your own. Similarly before we come to church, we need to prepare. We need to take time to think about what it is that we are about to do, to pray about it, to put aside any distractions, to prepare our hearts. This also has implications for what we do corporately as a church. We really are missing out if we do not celebrate the Lord’s Supper in our main Sunday service each week. We will have gathered at the foot of the mountain and have readied ourselves for the climb, only to go home again. That decision is not mine to make, but I put it out there for you. Certainly you are missing out if there is a celebration of the Lord’s Supper and you have confessed your sins and are trusting in Christ, but you don’t come up; you are precisely who God invites to draw near to him and feast with him. You can do so confidently and joyfully because of what Christ has done. I will close with one final implication for us as a church. Services like this need to be preserved. There is great pressure to change in order to be relevant and attractive, to perhaps be more informal and spontaneous, but as we have seen what happens in the worship of Exodus 24 is what should be happening in Christian worship – covenant renewal. Exodus 24 provides a pattern for covenant renewal, a pattern which our liturgy follows.

Of all the things that people are doing this morning, what we are doing here is the most significant, it really does matter for the world, and it is even more of a privilege and honour than climbing Mount Everest. The purpose of worship is covenant renewal. The climax of worship is feasting in heaven.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

What Federal Vision?

There is an increasing amount of interest in England at the moment about the “Federal Vision”. I understand Don Carson spoke at considerable length during question time at the EMA this year. I am of the opinion that in England at least it really doesn’t make sense to talk of “The Federal Vision” as an entity that really exists.

The labels “Federal Vision” and “Federal Visionist” referring to the theology and its proponents respectively (though definitely not respectfully), following a pastors’ conference in 2002 entitled “The Federal Vision: An Examination of Reformed Covenantalism”, seem initially to have been applied by those who have denounced the theology as a denial of the gospel and those who taught it as false teachers. It makes sense at this present time to talk about the “Federal Vision”, now that “Federal Visionists” have come together to make a joint profession about what they believe, although before that, I don’t think it was justified, and even now, it is hardly an homogeneous position. This statement can be found HERE and articulates a commitment to historic reformed teaching, and to Scripture, along with an optimistic eschatology, an emphasis on thinking in terms of the visible, historical church, and an articulation of the real privileges that its members have and the objectivity of the sacraments and the blessings they convey. I am very impressed with John Piper for sticking his neck out and inviting Doug Wilson to speak at his Desiring God conference this year (I believe Doug was actually invited first, so that the other speakers knew who they would be sharing a platform with). Piper has recently recorded a video clip endorsing Doug and explaining why he wanted him to speak and this can be found, along with Doug giving his testimony, HERE. It appears Piper has, perhaps not unexpectedly, come in for some criticism for his decision.

As I hope the extracts which I posted previously from Calvin’s Institutes and Bradshaw’s The Olive Branch show, this view of the church and sacraments is nothing other than what Calvin himself believed and taught, and is also the classical reformed evangelical Anglican view. As my bishop remarked to me, a high reformed ecclesiology is a mainstream Anglican position which goes right back to the Reformation and indeed beyond that back to Augustine, or rather, Scripture as seen through the eyes of Augustine. Moreover, most of the Puritans were postmillenarian. Evangelicals, particularly Anglican evangelicals with their doctrinal and liturgical heritage in the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer, should have nothing to fear from the insights of those who come under the Federal Vision umbrella. It doesn’t make sense to talk about “The Federal Vision” in England as a distinct doctrinal position or movement. What goes by the name “Federal Vision” already has a name here: classical reformed Anglican evangelicalism.

Reclaiming Worship

I am perhaps stating the obvious here, but it seems to be the case that in conservative evangelical circles, worship is something that we are to do with the whole of our lives, but is not what we go to church for: we go to church to encourage one other and to hear the Bible read and explained. This seems largely to be an Anglican phenomenon. My reformed non-conformist friends have no problem with referring to Sunday “meetings” as “worship services”. Indeed, even the more traditional conservative evangelical Anglican churches are quite happy to refer to services as “worship”. The last time I looked, the board outside St. James’s, Poole, advertised Morning Worship at 11.00am and Evening Worship at 6.30pm. This was a position I most eagerly adopted as an undergraduate, but I think my zeal, as with a number of things I became eager about as an undergraduate (but not including infant baptism), was zeal without knowledge. The view that says we don’t go to church to worship is, I think, an overreaction to the charismatic movement. Of course we want to say that worship is more than singing. I do become irritated when I hear people say, “We’re now going to go into a time of worship,” which is distinct from the Scripture readings, the sermon and prayer. But it is to go too far, I think, to say that the service considered as a whole is not a time of worship. Worship is what is going on during the singing, when the Bible is being read, when we pray, when we go to the Lord’s Table. Worship is what a man does when he enters the pulpit to preach, and worship is what the congregation does when it listens.

I think I have the Bible on my side here. The New Testament explicitly uses a word we translate as “worship” when it describes what the church is doing when it meets together (and I certainly think the application is wider than simply to ordinations).

“Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.” – Acts 13.1-3

In heaven, “worship” is the label given to the ritual action of the twenty-four elders when they are gathered around God’s throne and bow down and say words together. This should of course be the pattern for what we do when we gather together. We pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It is this assembly with which we have communion when we gather together (Hebrews 12.22-24).

“And whenever the living creatures give glory and honour and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives for ever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying,

“Worthy are you, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honour and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they existed and were created.”" – Revelation 4.9-11

Hebrews 12 seems to bear this out. After describing what it is that Christians have come to when they draw near through the blood of Jesus as they assemble together (Hebrews 10.19-25), we are urged, “Let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12.28-29).

This is also supported by what Jesus himself taught. In John 4, he is talking to the woman of Samaria at the well. She says, “Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” (John 4.20). This establishes that “worship” in this context means the corporate ritual action that is going on in Jerusalem. Moreover, this indicates that the conversation is about where worship occurs, not the fact that “worship” refers to what goes on when God’s people meet together. So Jesus replies to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father”. Rather, the “place” where worship will occur from now on is in “spirit and truth”: there is no one fixed location where we go to worship God but rather, we worship God wherever the church, upon which the risen and ascended Christ has poured the Holy Spirit, gathers around God’s word. “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4.23-24).

This is the basis upon which we as Christians are described as an holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2.5), which includes proclaiming “the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light” (1 Peter 2.9), offering up “a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name” (Hebrews 13.15). This is of course not to say that we are not to worship God with the whole of our lives. Hebrews 13 continues, “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God” (Hebrews 13.16). “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12.1). We are even to regard the words which we speak as an offering to the Lord: “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (Colossians 4.6 cf. Leviticus 2.13).

We go to church to worship. We worship God with our whole lives.

Covenant Renewal in the Book of Common Prayer

Back in October, I showed how the Common Worship Order 1 text for Holy Communion could be used for a covenant renewal service following the pattern of guilt offering (confession), ascension offering (consecration through word and prayer), and peace offering with fellowship meal (communion). I was looking last night through Exodus 24, and I had what might be described as a Michael Ward moment. I don’t know whether Cranmer was aware of this, but the order for Holy Communion in the Book of Common Prayer follows the narrative of the renewal of the covenant in Exodus 24.1-12:

1. God calls his people up to his mountain to worship him (vv. 1-2)
2. Moses tells the people the words of the LORD (i.e. the Ten Commandments from Exodus 20) and they respond with one voice saying, “All the words that the LORD has spoken we will do” (v. 3). In the Communion service, the minister rehearses the Ten Commandments, after each of which the people reply, “Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law” and, “Lord, have mercy upon us, and write all these laws in our hearts, we beseech thee.”
3. Moses reads the Book of the Covenant in the hearing of the people and they respond by saying, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient (v. 7). In the Communion Service, after a Collect for the Queen, the Epistle (or portion of Scripture appointed for the Epistle) and Gospel are read, the people sing or say the Nicene Creed in response to the readings, and after the notices, there is a sermon.
4. Moses takes the blood of the oxen which have previously been sacrificed as burnt offerings and peace offerings to the Lord, half of which has already been thrown against the altar, and he throws it on the people, describing it as “the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you”. In the Communion Service, after the offering and prayer for the church militant, an exhortation is given to come to communion, and the people confess their sins, the absolution is pronounced and comfort is given as the people are assured of the propitiation for their sins that has been made by Jesus.
5. Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel go up the mountain (v. 9). In the Communion Service, the minister says, “Lift up your hearts,” to which the people reply, “We lift them up unto the Lord,” and they praise him along with angels, archangels and all the company of heaven.
6. They see the God of Israel but he does not lay his hand on them, and they eat and drink with him (vv. 10-11). In the Communion Service, the Prayer of Humble Access is said, as the people acknowledge their unworthiness and God’s mercy, the Prayer of Consecration is said, and the people receive bread and wine, after which they pray, thank God, praise him, and receive his blessing.

The Communion service in the Prayer Book, and therefore Order 2 in Common Worship (of which there is a contemporary language version which may be more appropriate for general use in the church) is a covenant renewal liturgy which follows a pattern laid down in Scripture. This is all of grace. It is God who gathers his people, and the Ten Commandments which are read at the beginning of this service begin with, “I am the Lord thy God’: the commandments which represent our obligations in the covenant are a response to God’s prior approach to his people, in which he freely and graciously promises himself to them, and are to be fulfilled in the context of the relationship which he himself has already established with them. It just remains to be said that as New Testament people, the privileges we have are even greater than those enjoyed by Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and the elders. Because of the shed blood of Jesus, which he described as “my blood of the new covenant”, we can all draw near to God (Hebrews 10.19-22), and we ascend not Mount Sinai but into heaven itself, where we enter the presence of innumerable angels in festal gathering, the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, God the Father, and Jesus (Hebrews 12.18-24).

Home Education in the United Kingdom

My thanks to Marc Lloyd, whose weblog post alerted me to various things in the news about home education recently.

The government has accepted a report, written by Mr. Badman (I kid you not), which recommends that all people who home educate should register with their local council, with officials being granted access to the homes of home educators to inspect the education that children are receiving and to interview them (one article suggests that this might even be done without a parent present), and requiring home educators to submit a plan outlining what children will be taught in the ensuing twelve months. Government ministers have tried to justify this increased regulation of home education to the public by suggesting that home education as it currently stands could be used to conceal child abuse. These are just alarmist tactics designed to strong-arm people into allowing even greater government intrusion: I am aware of no cases of children who are educated at home being subject to abuse. In all the cases reported in the press of school-aged children being abused, those children were in schools run by the state and in many cases, state agencies such as the social services were heavily involved. Parents are more likely to pull children out of schools because their children are being harmed there through bullying or inadequate education. The Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, the Rt Hon Ed Balls MP, has explained that the government needs to increase regulation of home education in order to bring us into line with many European and other developed countries. He of course fails to explain why that itself is a good thing. Moreover, home education is not the same as education in a school; given that one can think in the long term about what one’s children should have learned and achieved by the end of their time of education, and there should be room for flexibility depending on a child’s developing interests and emerging abilities, and a family’s changing circumstances, rather than specifying what should be covered in any given twelve-month period.

Thinking about this in a more explicit Scriptural way, we see that God has given primarily to parents the task of educating children so that they live well in every area of life in his world (at St. Ebbe’s we have been reminded recently of this in a superb series of sermons from the Rev. Vaughan Roberts):

“Hear, my son, your father’s instruction,
and forsake not your mother’s teaching.” – Proverbs 1.8

“Hear, O sons, a father’s instruction,
and be attentive, that you may gain insight,
for I give you good precepts;
do not forsake my teaching.
When I was a son with my father,
tender, the only one in the sight of my mother,
he taught me and said to me,
“Let your heart hold fast my words;
keep my commandments, and live.
Get wisdom; get insight;
do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth.” – Proverbs 4.1-5

Moreover, God’s people are to ensure that through the education they receive, their children are taught to put their trust in the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to love him and to fear him, and to walk in his ways. No part of the day nor any aspect of life is to be divorced from this instruction:

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” – Deuteronomy 6.4-7

“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” – Ephesians 5.4

Parents have freedom in the Lord to choose how to provide this education for their children, but wisdom is required. I know a number of people who have decided that the wisest thing to do in our country at this time is to educate their children at home. If the Lord grants  children to Brooke and me when we are married, and a classical Christian school has not been established close to where we live by then, then we will do the same.

I will probably get my name put on a list somewhere for saying this, but in making clear its agenda to increase the regulations surrounding home education, the Labour government is still managing in its death throes to extend its tyranny into yet more areas of people’s lives over which God has not given them authority. It is rather like those scenes you sometimes watch in films when one of the characters has a heart attack in a restaurant, collapses, and as he falls to the floor, clutches at a tablecloth and pulls it and everything on it, on to the floor with him in the process, making a horrible mess and smashing all the crockery. Still, we have only received the government we deserve. As a country we have refused to take responsibility ourselves and have continued to give power over more and more areas of life to the state; as a church we have colluded with this, transferring our duties to the state so that it can fulfil them for us, rather than standing up prophetically against its tyranny and saying, “This far, and no further.” We are reaping what we have sown.

Until such time as the governing authorities command us to do something that God forbids, we are to be subject to them and not resist them. At some point, those Christians who choose to educate their children at home may have to open their doors to officers from the council so that they can inspect the education the children are receiving and interview them, and then they will have the opportunity to demonstrate how happy, fulfilled, balanced, well-educated and well-mannered these children are. In the meantime, new legislation will need to be passed, so this is not yet a fait accompli. We can and should use the instruments that have been given to us to oppose this, including writing to Members of Parliament, and above all we need to confess our sin, the sin of the church, and the sin of the country, repent, and pray.

For some recent articles and commentary in the news see HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Evangelical Anglicanism and Covenantal Objectivity

I read The Olive Branch by the Rev’d Dr Timothy Bradshaw last year but I seem not to have posted on what I have found helpful in his exposition of the doctrine of the sacraments in the reformed Anglican tradition. Having posted a fair amount of Calvin, here are some extracts from this marvellous book.

Bradshaw discusses what he regards as a distinctive feature of reformed Anglican ecclesiology from the earliest days of the Reformation, namely, the distinction between the church visible and invisible, or spiritual. However, he is very clear to guard against any notion of there being two churches. He rejects a dichotomy or dualism between visible/physical and invisible/spiritual. The one church can be said to be invisible with regard to her relationship with her Lord who is invisible; only God knows the hearts of men and women and their relationship to him and that cannot be seen. This spiritual or invisible church is the church as it is known by God. This same church has a visible body which makes its presence felt in the world in history.

“The church on earth is always a visible body, but it has a spiritual ‘heart’, her relationship to the invisible Lord.

“God always has been the invisible God, universal and known in faith by the Hebrew people. The church continues to know this God and in basically the same kind of way, but in a still more privileged way because of the indwelling Spirit. When evangelical theology speaks of the invisible church it means to say that Jesus is the Lord of the church and that communion with him establishes the church and adds new members ot the body. This has regularly been discussed in terms of the inner heart of the church, and also fo the inner spiritual life… Christ’s spiritual presence is invisible, the church never was. The fact that Christ is invisible now, that the church lives between the times of the first coming and the second, does not mean that the faith is purely or mainly ‘inward’…

“The concept of the invisible church means that the church knows her Lord spiritually.But spirituality for the Christian faith is hard to pin down: it does not simply mean an invisible plane higher than the earthly. On the other hand, Christian spirituality cannot be separated from involvement in the physical world of the cheque book and the ballot paper… The picture seems desperately hard to understand for the Western ‘enlightened’ mind trying to think in terms of invisible spirit or idea, over against visible physical matter: for such a mind either something is spiritual or it is physical. Spirit stands opposite matter. The doctrine of the church has to involve talk of the spiritual and the visible, but along the lines of Paul rather than of a spirit-matter dualism gained from Greek and enlightenment culture. The spiritual church is the church, united with the Lord and, leaving aside the unseen ‘cloud of witnesses’ who are with God on the other side of death, this spiritual church is the physical, tangible and audible family of God. The church’s spirituality cannot be regarded as the reverse of her physical historical being. When evangelicalism forgets this and identifies spiritual with invisible, then it lapses into a form of pietism, of which it has all to often been guilty…

“Evangelical ecclesiology agrees with Hooker that the distinction between the spiritual and the visible aspects of the church cannot be avoided for Christian thought, and that it prevents confusion. The church spiritual is the church as known by God, who alone knows the hearts of men and women… This distinction claims the authority of Paul, for whom membership of the community alone is not sufficient, the need is for a living communion with Christ.” pp. 141-143

This forms the basis of the evangelical Anglican position regarding the sacraments. Bradshaw quotes one author who explains the nature of sacraments as signs and seals of God’s grace and the coincidence, taught in Calvin, of the sacrament and reality. Sacraments are not merely visual aids. Sacraments are objective signs and seals of God’s grace. Faith looks to God’s grace in the sacraments and receives it.

“The seeing of the covenant sign of the rainbow by the people of God is no mere visual aid of God sustaining seed time and harvest, but the very process of this faithfulness to creation is seen in the rainbow itself. The promise and the promised reality coincide. The gift of mercy and divine faithfulness presences itself in that majestic sight, only to the eye of faith, to the effect that God is keeping his promise of mercy and will continue to do so. The gift is real, the sign seals and guarantees this gift. So it is with baptism and the holy communion.

“Dimock insists strongly on this point. It stresses the objectivity of the sacraments: ‘it is to be observed,’ he teaches, ‘that this relationship of the sign to the thing signified – in the teaching of our reformers – is not affected by the faith or want of faith of the receiver. The reception of the thing signified depends on the faith of the receiver, for without faith it cannot be received. But the sacrament is the seal of donation nevertheless… Man’s faith does not make the grace of God. Man’s faith does not make the sacrament to be the seal of God’s grace. It is the office of faith… not to make but to receive, and to receive by believing – by believing the gift conveyed by the Seal, by believing that which is in itself truly objective and independent of faith.’ Here is shown the classical reformed Anglican stress on objective grace, grace needing only to be accepted trustfully, just as the bride needs only to let the groom put the ring on her finger.” pp. 182-3

Bradshaw has already used the image of the giving of the ring in the wedding service to illustrate what is going on when we receive the sacraments. The giving of the ring is the giving of the other person; through the giving of the symbol, the other person gives himself or herself. “With this ring I thee wed &c.” This strong sacramental teaching regarding their objectivity, which Bradshaw declares is the classical evangelical view, does not undermine the need for faith. Sacraments objectively signify and seal God’s grace whether the recipient has faith or not. Those without faith have nevertheless received the sacrament, but their unbelieving response brings judgement. Bradshaw goes on to say:

“The classical evangelical view then is a high sacramental one, the gospel and the sacrament being identified, both accepted thankfully by trustful people of God. This continues in the dealings of God with his people down the centuries of faith in the promises of the living and active God. The privilege of circumcision was that it sealed the promises of God on Israel, and it required faith in the promises thereby signed and sealed. Romans and Galatians speak of the need for faith in order to be true Israelites. The seal without faith gains nothing, except judgement, according to the Old and New Testaments. Paul in 1 Corinthians 10 tells the story of the covenant people, called out of slavery, and as it were baptised and partaking in the eucharist, going under the cloud and eating the heavenly food, yet meeting judgement for their lack of faith and obedience. The outward seals proved meaningless without that trustful attitude to them. In the same epistle Paul berates those who eat and drink at the eucharist ‘not discerning the body’, selfishly indulging in hearty excess, for this also attracts the judgement of the Lord. The gift signed, sealed and pledged, can be gratefully taken or not. It is the sacramental giving of the gospel.” pp. 183-184

Bradshaw proceeds to apply this to baptism more specifically, and he laments the way contemporary evangelical Anglicans have departed from the classical reformed understanding of baptism:

“There seems to be a cleavage between the classical reformed doctrine of baptism and much current feeling on the subject among evangelical Anglicans. Certainly one detects a failure of nerve among many in the evangelical Anglican position… The classical evangelical view is covenantal and objectively gospel focused.” p. 184, emphasis mine

He goes on to quote N. T. Wright, who diagnoses the problem as individualism and pietism, an excessive concentration on the internal, personal experience of the individual at the expense of the people of God in history, the visible church, if you wish.

“‘Modern evangelicalism is not in a position to be smug about the weakness of others, as though we had kept on the high road while our Catholic and radical brethren wandered about in the fog. We have tended to stand closer to Bultmann that we like to realize, with his emphasis on faith as experience unconnected with history, his existentialist call for a decision, his view of justification as the establishment of a personal relationship with God, his wedge between justification and the historical people of God.’ The evangelical today has tended to lose touch with the historical covenant theology of the people of God, with its important stress on the outward and visible seals of the objective gospel of Christ.” p. 184, Bradshaw quoting Wright and then commenting

Bradshaw moves on to talk about what baptism actually does, how it functions as an instrument. It admits people into the historical, visible church. It does not work ex opere operato in conveying the union with Christ and the washing away of sins which it signifies and seals; faith is required.

“Sacramentally water baptism is entry into the messianic people of God. It is ‘as an instrument’ in the sense of the legal, perhaps royal, instruments or warrants crowning with outward authority the gift bestowef. As Motyer clearly points out, the instrumentality involved is not mechanical, as if by a ‘blunt instrument’ an effect was instantaneously caused! Rather the instrumentality is of the outward, formal kind, always assuming the moral and spiritual counterpart of saving gract known in faith.” p. 187

Bradshaw explains how baptism is to be applied to adults who profess faith in Christ, and the children of the people of God. It has the same meaning for both, namely, “the objective grace of God in Christ crucified”, and it is not primarily an opportunity to declare one’s faith. He goes on to explain how covenant children should be brought up prayerfully to gradually grow in trusting in Christ for themselves from their childhood, rather than be expected to have a conversion moment when they grow up (at a summer camp, perhaps?). We mustn’t turn faith into a particular height of knowledge to which a child must attain, a barrier over which they must jump, for that makes faith into a work. Bradshaw also makes the point that infant baptism contributes to making the church truly catholic:

“They should be brought up within the covenant, learning to pray with parents and the church, appropriating the promises of God sealed on them at baptism, growing into the Christian faith. Their unbelief can make the warrant, the seal of no account. But that is not the expectation of the prayerful family of the church. There is such a thing as an infant Christian, the church is not catholic without all age groups, and there must be no confusion between knowledge on the one hand, and faith of a childlike kind on the other…

Baptism of infants of the Christian family is regarded with positive expectation by the classical Anglican evangelical ecclesiology, not with a nervousness centring on the existential decision of the child in early teens.” pp. 190-191

At the end of the day, this is a position which, while affirming the need to receive God’s grace in Christ through faith for final salvation, doesn’t dismiss the sacraments including baptism as being of no real value. Instead, it esteems baptism, and teaches that a person who has received it has been given something of great worth, regardless of the response just like the Old Testament Israelite who was circumcised on the eighth day. Indeed, it is this intrinsic, objective value of baptism, which summons its recipient to faith in God.

“The external rite, however divinely ordained, is itself not meant to replace grace appropriated in faith: it is an outward expression of grace offered to faith. Paul does not conclude by becoming an anti-sacramentalist, or an existentialist! ‘Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way’ (Romans 3:1); the Jew has the external seals and the testimony of the living God, constantly calling forth faith, constantly calling for belief in the circumcision, for ‘considering yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus’, as the messianic community.” p. 187

“Surrounded by prayer, the scriptures, and the testimony of the good God, the child of the covenant, like the Israelite of Romans 3, has the advantage of the oracles of God, the promises, and faith which is to be nurtured and incarnated.” p. 191

Christians and Mental Health

The reflexions in this post are largely prompted by my current (and last ever!) two-week placement, in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Mental health is another area in which there is sometimes a degree of craziness amongst Christians. The way mental illness is thought of here in England among medical professionals, and the framework in which it is treated, is largely correct, I think. We are taught to think of the causes of mental illness in terms of biological, psychological and social factors. Treatment follows the same lines. I would simply add one further category: spiritual factors. We must avoid the danger of becoming reductionists in our approach to mental illness, by saying on the one hand that it is all the result of sin in someone’s life, or on the other that it is entirely a problem with the levels of chemicals in the brain and so someone just needs to go on medication.

Sin can lead to madness (Jonah 1) and at the end of the day, some people’s mental illness is a result of sin in their life which they need to take responsibility for, confess and repent of, for which they will need the help of the Holy Spirit. It is striking in consultations when the advice given by the doctor would, in the setting of minister’s study, be translated repentance, with a strong encouragement to put into practice Proverbs 13.20: “Whoever walks with the wise, becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.” It is also striking when patients acknowledge they they are trapped in addictive patterns of behaviour, know the danger, but don’t just have the ability to change. What they really need is the gospel. I would just add, in mental small print and several layers of parentheses that, while the crucified, risen and ascended Christ has triumphed over all spiritual powers in the universe by the blood of his cross (Ephesians 1.20-21, Colossians 2.15, Revelation 12.10), there is nevertheless some degree of ongoing demonic activity in the world (Acts 16.16, 19.12-16) and, though in the largely rationalistic West the devil has devised other strategies to war against God’s people, there may nevertheless be those who suffer mental illness because of their dabbling in the occult (a small group in the West, but more likely a larger population in some of the more tribal areas of Africa and South America, I would think), for whom the ministry of deliverance, such as that described HERE may be appropriate.

It must be remembered by Christians, however, that the brain is, at the end of the day, matter, and, following the Fall and the curse, things made of matter may not work properly. There may be no unconfessed, unrepented of sin in someone’s life, they may be surrounded by a wonderful family and have an enjoyable job and a lovely home, but still they may develop mental illness, for example depression. Mental illness can be organic in cause, with structural problems or problems with the levels of different chemicals in the brain. There may be some contribution from someone’s genetic make-up. Just because we are dealing with the brain, that doesn’t mean we have to  dismiss the physical in favour of the ethereal. People who are in that position must not be made to feel guilty about their mental illness, just as a child shouldn’t be made to feel guilty if they develop leukaemia. The biological aspects must not be forgotten in the treatment of mental illness, either. In cases where people develop mental illness for no apparent reason, as well as in those where there are a whole host of social, psychological and spiritual problems (broken family, unemployment, poor housing, bereavement, low self-esteem, drug or alcohol addiction &c.), there is a role for medication, if only to get people to a position from which they can begin to deal with all the other problems, for example, repenting of their sin if that is what is needed, solving the problem of getting a new job, developing more healthy patterns of thinking. Depression, for example, is a perfectly valid clinical diagnosis and it is entirely reasonable for some people to be given medication in the form of anti-depressants to help overcome it. A similar point could be made about bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. Incidentally, I do just want to make the point that Psalms 42 and 43 are not about someone suffering from clinical depression, they’re really not, and it strikes me as a most unhelpful thing to say to a Christian with clinical depression, on the basis of these Psalms, “Why are you depressed? Put your trust in God and you’ll feel better.” If you get a response at all, it may well be, “If I knew that, I would be doing something about it. As it happens, I am trusting in God, and while you may be right in saying that I will feel better one day, how exactly is it helpful to be told that right now in the depths of my present misery.”

Returning to the theme of spiritual factors leading to mental illness (although it overlaps with what those operating in a purely scientific framework would call social factors), at the heart of what is necessary for good mental health is upbringing in a godly family. The foundation needs to be a strong marriage, in which the husband loves his wife as Christ loved the church, giving himself sacrificially, cherishing and protecting her, in which the wife respects her husband and lovingly submits to his headship, a relationship in which there is quick repentance and forgiveness. This will be protective for both the husband and the wife. Children need to be raised in this context, being shown affection by their parents, being taught to honour and obey their parents, and having boundaries laid down which are maintained by loving, consistent discipline. This is reflected in the fact that children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are helped when their parents attend parenting skills training; parents need to know when to say, “No,”, the children need to be taught to obey their parents simply because they are their parents, there needs to be discipline, and the children still need to learn self-control. Medication, when given appropriately, does help with this, but it is not the be-all and end-all. Godly family life and faithful child-rearing is, of course, not an absolute guarantee against psychiatric illness, given the biological factors which contribute to it, any more than a healthy diet and regular exercise is a fail-safe against other illnesses, but it is very important, and highly significant in reducing its occurrence.

Christians and Health

It seems to me that some Christians, dear brothers and sisters, have developed some pretty nutty health views which I suspect they have largely imbibed uncritically from the world around. One of these takes the health approach that “natural” things and methods are automatically better, leading to a general suspicion of the medical profession and medical interventions.  This obsession with the natural manifests itself in a number of ways, including faith in homeopathic diagnoses and remedies for which there is no evidence base at all apart from the fact the assertion that they are “natural” and therefore better for you, to an insistence on giving birth at home.

The problem with this approach is that it forgets that the Fall happened. All of creation is under a curse. That includes “nature” and our bodies. “Natural” is therefore not always synonymous with “better”. If we don’t forget the Fall, there is still the danger of an over-realised eschatology: just because we have been redeemed through Christ, it is not the case if we go down the “natural” route that no harm will befall us. One aspect of God’s common grace to his fallen world is to grant us advances in medical knowledge and capability. So, for example, the a risk of stillbirth or other morbidity more than doubles if a pregnancy gets to 42 weeks, so induction is offered from 41 weeks. Yes, induction doesn’t always work, labour may take longer and you may need a Caesarean section and have to say in bed because of your epidural, but at the end of the day, medical interventions are not sinful, and you are likely to have a healthy baby which might not have been the case if you had waited.

Some conspiracy-theorists might respond, “Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?” Yes, I would.

“Enhancing the democratic legitimacy of the Union”

THIS article in the Telegraph highlights the hypocrisy of the European Union, which is supposedly so committed to democracy. I simply regard democracy as the system we have in place at the moment and desire to exercise wise stewardship of what God has given us. I hesitate to call democracy a right and question the wisdom of hundreds of sinners governing instead of a few or one. I merely wish to highlight the European Union’s hypocrisy here.

David Cameron has pulled the Conservatives out of the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) and formed a new, more Eurosceptic bloc called European Conservatives and Reformists. It has to be said that David Cameron is not all that much of an Eurosceptic. He has pledged to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty (a European Constitution in all but name, further establishing the European Union as a distinct legal and political entity in its own right and increasing its powers over individual nations) only if it remains unratified by the Irish (who voted ‘No’ the first time this was put to a referendum, but apparently this answer is not allowed) by the time of a British general election. Even this is not acceptable, however, and there appears to be an intention to railroad the Lisbon Treaty through regardless of the wishes of the subjects or citizens of the individual countries. It has even been intimated that there is pressure to delay a General Election in Britain until after the second Irish referendum so that a referendum won’t be held here which could jeopardise the ratification of the Treaty. This is all about getting the treaty through and increasing the powers of the EU, and not about respecting the nations which comprise it. Here are some extracts:

“”Even though the Conservatives have left, we will work to make sure the Lisbon Treaty comes into force at the end of the year. We regret all demagoguery and populism. We will do this even if David Cameron threatens a referendum,” he [Joseph Daul, chairman of the EPP] said.”

“It could be rather awkward if we had a snap election in Britain with a referendum as one of the issues,” he said. “The political situation in the UK is therefore extremely important. We want to see political stability or we have the danger of opening up a debate that could jeopardise the Lisbon Treaty.” (Wilfred Martens, EPP president)

“No one wants an election in Britain, not because of any special affection for Gordon Brown but because an early election would threaten the Lisbon Treaty. That cannot happen,” said a European diplomat.”

What this does is highlight the tyranny of the European Union. Britain, or more precisely, the countries which are now part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island, have been conquered by other powers in the past. The only difference is the way in which we are being conquered, not by large armies with weapons, but by manipulative politics. Christians have been subjects of tyrants before and we have to submit to tyrants when God places them in power over us. But at the moment, that hasn’t quite happened and it may still be possible to stave this off. The shift to Euroscepticism in last week’s European Parliament elections was telling. Let us continue to use the legimate instruments which God has graciously given us at this time to make our voices heard in the government of our country, and let us pray, for the hearts of rulers are in the Lord’s hands. We have already got the government we deserve, and we could be given even more of what we deserve on an international scale.

Being part of the EU is bad for us. It costs us a fortune. It stifles our fishing industry. It stifles our agriculture by subsidising unproductive farmers in other countries, and then penalising those who are over-productive. The laws it passes are interfering at an ever-increasing level in our lives, with no noticeable benefit, and with some detriment to businesses. And at the end of the day, our Reformation heritage is at stake; written at a time when there was a different over-reaching, tyrannising power, namely the Church of Rome, the Thirty-Nine Articles assert the sovereignty of the Queen as the embodiment of the government of this country which is not to be surrendered to foreign powers:

“The Queen’s Majesty hath the chief power in this realm of England and other her dominions, unto whom the chief government of all estates of this realm, whether they be ecclesiastical or civil, in all causes doth appertain, and is not nor ought to be subject to any foreign jurisdiction… The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm of England.” – Article XXXVII.  Of the Civil Magistrate

Yes, Jesus has been raised from the dead and seated far above all earthly (and spiritual) rule and power. Yes, the story of Scripture is ultimately a comedy, ending in a marriage and a feast. That means we can be people of hope, not despair. But until we reach the final chapter of that story, when we look at how individual characters fare, there may well be crises. Britain has already fallen a long way. The question is, how much more of a death will there be before there is a resurrection?

The Lord is my shepherd

I just noticed this on Steve Jeffery’s weblog and I simply had to point it out over here. I have never seen this before and it makes so much sense of this passage.

In Mark 6.30-56, we see many parallels with Psalm 23. Jesus is the Lord who is our shepherd as he has compassion on the crowd because they they were like sheep without a shepherd (v. 34), he makes people lie down in green pastures as he bids the crowds to sit down in groups on the green grass (v. 39) (so that’s why Mark tells us the grass is green!), he leads people beside still waters as he walks on the sea, gets into the boat and the wind ceases (vv. 48-51) and he restores people’s souls as the sick touch his garment and they are made well (v. 56). Perhaps more obviously, he prepares a table as he feeds the people with the five loaves and two fish and they are certainly not in want – they eat and are satisfied (vv. 41-42).

The government we deserve

In a recent article commenting on the expenses scandal rocking Parliament, Melanie Phillips, although not a Christian herself I believe, makes an astoundingly insightful point about the culpability of the church in all this in its compromise with the values of society (hat tip: Anglican Mainstream):

“Personal accountability, in the form of paying a price for one’s misdeeds, is essential to a moral sense.

“It is the breakdown of such accountability at all levels in our society that has caused the values free-for-all of which our MPs have shown themselves to be such spectacular exemplars.

“For years, however, the Church has spinelessly gone along with this wider nonjudgmental culture of self-gratification which has turned morality on its head and undermined the cultural foundations of this nation…

“This society has accordingly got the Parliament it deserves. And we won’t put Parliament right until and unless we arrest the slide in our wider culture.”

If there is to be any real change in the way this country is governed at a local or national level, if there is to be any change in how Europe as a whole is governed, then, like Nehemiah and Daniel, we need to confess our sins and the sins of our people, the sins of the church, our lethargy and passivity, our failure to fulfill our prophetic office of calling our rulers and the country as a whole back to Biblical faith and behaviour, and our lack of love for the Lord our God and our neighbour that this reveals. The votes we cast today will mean nothing, if the church in England does not repent.

God’s servant for your good

“[The one who is in authority] is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” – Romans 13.4

Tomorrow is Polling Day, which has set me thinking a little about what the Bible has to say about human authorities, their purpose. how we are to relate to them, and, given the opportunity to make some contribution to their election, some principles for voting.

1. The authority is God’s servant

St. Paul makes it clear that God is the only authority and the authorities which exist have been instituted by him (Romans 12.1). St. Paul says this, writing to the church in Rome. St. Peter is equally clear: “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God” (1 Peter 2.13-14). God has instituted every human authority and that includes the bad ones, who may do things which are sinful and for which they are culpable, but nevertheless serve God’s ultimate purposes (see, for example 2 Kings 17).

2. The authority is God’s servant for justice

St. Paul explains that rulers are to uphold and approve good conduct, and to punish wrong (Romans 12.3-4). St. Peter, in this passage I quoted above, says the same thing. Now we have been given the opportunity to cast our vote for those who represent us in the councils and parliament of this country, and the parliament of Europe. This is not a right, but it is a gift from God, a gift of which we must be good stewards. “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required” (Luke 12.48). Those who make good use of the talents which their master has given him are praised; those who bury them in the ground are criticised (Matthew 25.14-30). I think, therefore, not bothering to vote is inexcusable. I repent of failing to vote in my recent city council elections, although less will be required of me for that: I would hardly use the adjective “much” to describe the impact that had. Voting in General or European elections, however is very different. The importance of voting in the European elections is to be emphasised, given that it is the eve of Polling Day, and given the massive influence Europe has on our legislation and economy, and given the influence it wants to have. This principle also means that our voting has to be thoughtful and considered. Of course it may be that the outcome of that commitment to thoughtful, considered voting is to put a line through all the options and write, “The Queen,” as I have heard some people do.

What we should take into consideration when we are voting is whether the individual for whom we are voting (or, in the case of the European elections, which party we are voting for, because we can’t vote for individuals – what a great system this is!) upholds the distinction between good and evil and rewards the good and punishes the evil. The Bible has to furnish us with these categories. Are those who work hard for a living allowed to reap the harvest of their labours, or is money taken from those who work hard and given to reward those who don’t? Am I paying for what I use, or am I also paying for what other people use? Are the lives of the vulnerable (which must include the unborn and the elderly) protected? Are criminals punished justly? Is the institution of marriage and the family protected and allowed to flourish, or is it being penalised in favour of other relational arrangements? Are those who truly have no-one to help them and who cannot help themselves provided for in terms of health care, basic food and clothing, and education? (As the church grows and is transformed by the renewal of its mind through the gospel, this is a function which I would expect it to naturally take over from the state, either as an entity, or through the benefaction of its individual members.)

Moreover, is the person or party for whom we are voting heading on a trajectory which keeps the governing authorities within the remit God has given or are they overstepping the mark more and more? The authority is God’s servant for justice, the reward of good and the punishment of evil. Apart from this, it seems to me that the Bible doesn’t give much else of a role for governing authorities. Areas where it could be argued governments are overstepping the mark is running healthcare and education, and getting our grandchilden into debt in order to shore up private businesses.

Although not especially relevant for tomorrow’s elections, I do feel that a word on the relationship between church and state is appropriate here. The Bible knows no separation of church and state. It is legitimate for governing authorities to use their power in the service of the church for its protection and growth, both numerically and in maturity: “Kings shall be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers” (Isaiah 49.23). “Foreigners shall build up your walls and their kings shall minister to you” (Isaiah 60.10). However, these governing authorities are themselves to bow before the Lord Jesus Christ as their king, which means they are to be subject to the word of God and disciplined by it: “Thus says the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation, the servant of rulers: “Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves” (Isaiah 49.7).

Calvin on the Sacraments

With his high view of the church comes Calvin’s strong view of the sacraments, which again has given rise to a noble high reformed heritage in churches such as the Church of England, and is not something to be regarded with suspicion. If we were to regard the sacraments in the way that Calvin did, baptism and the Lord’s Supper would be neglected far less and believers would benefit more from them.

Following Augustine, Calvin defines a sacrament as an outward, visible sign of an lnvisible grace, or a visible word. It consists of God’s external word of promise and the external sign. Calvin compares sacraments to the seals affixed to diplomas and public deeds, which, while having no effect on its own without the word on the parchment, nevertheless, when added to the parchment, have the effect of sealing and confirming them. He points to Paul’s description of circumcision as a seal in Romans 4.11. As visible words, sacraments are signs of the covenant, representing God’s promises graphically and physically. They are manifestations of God’s grace to us. Calvin deals with the objection that they could not possibly be manifestations of God’s grace because they are held forth to unbelievers as well. We lay hold of what God promises us in his sacraments by faith.

It is irrational to contend that sacraments are not manifestations of divine grace to us, because they are held forth to the ungodly also, who, however, so far from experiencing God to be more propitious to them, only incur greater condemnation. By the same reasoning, the gospel will be no manifestation of the grace of God, because it is spurned by many who hear it; nor will Christ himself be a manifestation of grace, because of the many by whom he was seen and known, very few received him. Something similar may be seen in public enactments. A great part of the body of the peope deride and evade the authenticating seal, though they know it was employed by their sovereign to confirm his will; others tample it under foot, as a matter by no means appertaining to them; while others even execrate it… It is certain, therefore, that the Lord offers us his mercy, and a pledge of his grace, both in his sacred word and in the sacraments; but it is not apprehended save by those who receive the word and sacraments with firm faith: in like manner as Christ, though offered and held forth for salvation to all, is not, however, acknowledged and received by all. Augustine, when intending to intimate this, said that the efficacy of the word is produced in the sacrament, not because it is spoken, but because it is believed. Hence Paul, addressing believers, includes communion with Christ, in the sacraments, as when he says, “As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal iii.27). Again, “For by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body” (1 Cor. xii.13). But when he speaks of a preposterious use of the sacraments, he attributes nothign more to them than to frigid, empty figures; thereby intimating, that however, the ungodly and hypocrites may, by their perverseness, either suppress, or obscure, or impede the effect of divine grace in the sacraments, that does not prevent them, wherever and whenever God is so pleased, from giving a true evidence of communion with Christ, or prevent them from exhibiting, and the Spirit of God from performing, the very thing which they promise. We conclude, therefore, that the sacraments are truly termed evidences of divine grace, and, as it were, seals of the good-will which he entertains toward us. They, by sealing it to us, sustain, nourish, confirm, and increase our faith.” (Institutes IV.xiv.7)

Calvin acknowledges that sacraments do not have intrinsic magic properties: there is no ’secret efficacy perpetually inherent in them, by which they can of themselves promote or strengthen faith’. Rather, the power comes from the Holy Spirit: the sacraments have been instituted by God as the means or instruments by which this grace is ministered to us. With Augustine, Calvin teaches that the sacrament and the matter of the sacrament, the sign and the thing signified must be distinguished. It is possible to receive the sign – baptism or the Lord’s Supper – and nevertheless perish. This in no way impinges on the nature and the power of the sacrament itself. Quoting Augustine, Calvin writes: “If you receive carnally, it ceases not to be spiritual, but it is not spiritual to you.” He warns us on the one hand not to regard the sacraments as so empty that we do not thing we receive anything by them, and on the other, not to fail to look beyond the sacrament to Christ who by the Holy Spirit bestows what the sacraments signify.

Calvin is quite comfortable in attributing a lot to the sacraments. Of baptism in particular, he writes of being brought into the church, ingrafted into Christ and made God’s children.

Baptism is the initiatory sign by which we are admitted to the fellowship of the Church, that being ingrafted into Christ we may be accounted children of God.” (Institutes IV.xv.1)

“Those whom the Lord has once admitted into favour, and ingrafted into communion with Christ, and received into the fellowship of the Church by baptism, are freed from guilt and condemnation while they persevere in the faith of Christ, though they may be beset by sin and thus bear sin about with them.” (Institutes IV.xv.12)

We can look to baptism for assurance:

“The first object, therefore, for which it is appointed by the Lord, is to be a sign and evidence of our purification, or (better to explain my meaning) it is a kind of sealed instrument by which he assures us that all our sins are so deleted, covered, and effaced, that they will neer come into his sight, never be mentioned, never imputed.” (Institutes IV.xv.1)

“Believers become assured by baptism, that this condemnation is entirely withdrawn from them, since (as has been said) the Lord by this sign promises that a full and entire remission has been made, both of the guilt which was imputed to us, and the penalty incurred by the guilt.” (Institutes IV.xv.10)

Calvin points us to Ephesians 5.25-26, Titus 3.5, and 1 Peter 3.21 as passages treating the effects of baptism. The sacrament doesn’t have any power in and of itself to save: the salvation which Scripture attributes to baptism comes from Christ.

“In this sense is to be understood the statement of Paul, that “Christ loved the Church, and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word” (Eph. v. 25, 26); and again, “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost (Titus iii. v.). Peter also says that “baptism also doth now save us” (1 Peter iii. 21). For he did not mean to intimate that our ablution and salvation are perfected by water, or that water possesses in itself the virtue of purifying, regenerating and renewing; nor does he mean that it is the cause of salvation, but only that the knowledge and certainty of gifts are perceived in this sacrament. This the words themselves evidently show. For Paul connects together the word of life and baptism of water, as if he had said, by the gospel the message of our ablution and sanctification is announced; by baptism this message is sealed. And Peter immediately subjoins, that that baptism is “not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, which is of faith.” Nay, the only purification which baptism promises is by means of the sprinkling of the blood of Christ, who is figured by water from the resemblance to cleansing and washing.” (Institutes IV.xv.2)

In all this, baptism is an aid to our faith, and this effect of baptism continues with the fact that through baptism we are united with Christ in his death and resurrection, which is the basis of the Scriptural exhortation to holy living.

“Christ by baptism has made us partakers of his death, ingrafting us into it. And as the twig derives substance and nourishment from the root to which it is attached, so those who receive baptism with true faith truly feel the efficacy of Christ’s death in the mortification of their flesh, and the efficacy of his resurrection in the quickening of the Spirit. On this he founds his exhortation, that if we are Christians we should be dead unto sin, and alive unto righteousness. He elsewhere uses the same argument – viz. that we are circumcised, and put off the old man, after we are buried in Christ by baptism (Col ii.12). And in this sense, in the passage which we formerly quoted, he calls it “the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost” (Tit. iii. 5).”" (Institutes IV.xv.5)

By faith, we are to see that the Lord who is the one acting in the sacrament. Again, it is not that there is any efficacy, but the Lord chooses to use sacraments like baptism as instruments:

“For inasmuch as it is appointed to elevate, nourish and confirm our faith, we are to receive it as from the hand of its author, being firmly persuaded that it is he himself who speaks to us by means of the sign; that it is himself who washes and purifies us, and effaces the remembrance of our faults; that it is himself who makes us the partakers of his death, destroys the kingdom of Satan, subdues the power of concupiscence, nay, makes us one with himself, that being clothed with him we may be accounted the children of God. These things, I say, we ought to feel as truly and certainly in our mind as we see our body washed, immersed and surrounded with water. For this analogy or similitude furnishes the surest rule in the sacraments – viz. that in corporeal things we are to see spiritual, just as if they were actually exhibited to our eye, since the Lord has been pleased to represent them by such figures; not that such graces are included and bound in the sacrament, so as to be conferred by its efficacy, but only that by this badge the Lord declares to us that he is pleased to bestow all these things upon us. Nor does he merely feed our eyes with bare show; he leads us to the actual object, and effectually performs what he figures.” (Institutes IV.xv.14)

For whom is this baptism? Children and their believers. Calvin argues this on the basis of God’s covenant with Abraham to be God to him and to his seed, and the similarity between circumcision as a sign of that covenant, and baptism, in what they signify. Moreover, to exclude children would be to reduce the grace of the Father to Christians than to Jews, which he justly calls blasphemy. It is a repeated point in Calvin’s thought that many of the grounds for rejecting baptism would be a rejection of circumcision, too, which would be to reject a divine institution. Calvin also appeals to Jesus’ reception of children at the stage of being infants at their mother’s breast, declaring “of such is the kingdom of heaven”. Through baptism, Calvin says, children enter into what is theirs by right:

“If the kingdom of heaven is theirs, why should they be denied the sign by which access, as it were, is opened to the Church, that being admitted into it, they may be enrolled among the heirs of the heavenly kingdom?” (Institutes IV.xvi.1)

Calvin discusses the blessings of that baptism of infants brings, both to the believers who bring their children, and the children themselves. He recognises how far into the distant future God’s promised grace reaches. In baptism, God takes the children of believers to be his own children.

“The divine symbol communicated to the child, as with the impress of a seal, confirms the promise given to the godly parent, and declares that the Lord will be a God not to him only, but to his seed; not merely visiting him with grace and goodness, but his posterity also to the thousandth generation… Let those, then, who embrace the promise of mercy to their children, consider it as their duty to offer them to the Church, to be sealed with symbol of mercy, and animate themselves to surer confidence, on seeing with the bodily eye the covenant of the Lord engraven on the bodies of their children. On the other hand, children derive some benefit from their baptism, when, being ingrafted into the body of the Church, they are made an object of greater interest to the other members. Then when they have grown up, they are thereby strongly urged to an earnest desire of serving God, who has received them as sons by the formal symbol of adption, before, from nonage, they were able to recognise him as their Father.” (Institutes IV.xvi.9)

Calvin dismisses the argument that baptism shouldn’t be applied to infants because, as a consequence of their young age, they cannot display what baptism signifies, namely repentance and faith. While these things may not be the same in infants as they are in older children and adults, and not as fully formed, nevertheless, by the Spirit, they are present as it were in an embryonic form:

“Children are baptised for future repentance and faith. Though these are not yet formed in them, yet the seed of both lies hid in them by the secret operation of the Spirit.” (Institutes IV.xvi.20)

Calvin on the Church, our mother

Calvin has a very high view of the church, even the visible church. What he says should remind us that a high reformed ecclesiology is a well-respected mainstream tradition which goes back to the Reformers, or rather Augustine, or rather Scripture through the eyes of Augustine and the Reformers, and is not something to be afraid of or some new heresy. Calvin’s doctrine of the church is also something that has a bearing on how we Anglicans of a more conservative persuasion should think and behave in the current theological climate.

Speaking of God, Calvin says:

“To those to whom he is a Father, the Church must also be a mother.” (Institutes IV.I.1)

To justify this, he points us to Galatians 4.26, where we are described as being children of a new Jerusalem. Of the visible church in particular he writes:

“But as it is now our purpose to discourse of the visible Church, let us learn, from her single title of Mother, how useful, nay, now necessary the knowledge of her is, since there is no other means of entering into life unless she conceive us in the womb and give us birth, unless she nourish us at her breasts, and, in short, keep us under her charge and government… Moreover, beyond the pale of the Church no forgiveness of sins, no salvation, can be hoped for.” (Institutes IV.I.4)

It is through the education of the church, Calvin says, that is, through the ministry of preaching committed to pastors, who are part of the ascended Christ’s gift ot his church, that God’s people are brought to perfect manhood. Calvin goes on to say that:

“All who reject the spiritual food of the soul divinely offered to them by the hands of the Church, deserve to perish of hunger and famine.” (Institutes IV.I.5)

He reminds us that while faith is the gift of God, nevertheless, he grants faith to us by the instrument of the gospel preached. Calvin points us to Romans 10.17: “Faith comes through hearing”. We are to recognise God’s presence in his institution. We are to seek his face in the sanctuary (Psalm 105.4). He warns us of the dangers of a merely private faith. Moreover, Paul says that it is in his preaching the glory of God shone in the face of Jesus Christ. God has made it so that preaching has efficacy, although it is to him alone that the power belongs. Calvin distinguishes between the invisible church, i.e. the church as it really is before God, the saints on earth and all the elect from the beginning of the world, and the visible church, that is, the body of mankind scattered throughout the world who profess Christian faith, have been initiated into that faith by baptism, and who partake of the Lord’s Supper and submit to the church’s ministry. Calvin acknowledges that this church is a mixed body containing hypocrites (either because their guilt and impenitence cannot be established, or because discipline is lax) but we are to have regard for the church under this aspect as well. Separation from this church is a grave offence:

“For such is the value which the Lord sets on the communion of his Church, that all who contumaciously alienate themselves from any Christian society, in which the true ministry of his word and sacraments is maintained, he regards as deserters of religion. So highly does he recommend her authority, that when it is violated he considers his own authority is impaired… Moreover, no mean praise is conferred on the Church when she is said to have been chosen and set apart by Christ as his spouse, “not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing” (Eph v.27), as “his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all” (Eph i.23). Whence it follows that revolt from the church is denial of God and Christ. Wherefore there is the more necessity to beware of a dissent so iniquitous; for seeing by it we aim as far as in us lies at the destruction of God’s truth, we deserve to be crushed by the full thunder of his anger. No crime can be imagined more atrocious than that of sacriligiously and perfidiously violating the sacred marriage which the only begotten Son of God has condescended to contract with us.” (Institutes IV.I.10)

Calvin anticipates that trouble could be caused over the word “true” in the phrase “true ministry of his word and sacraments”: people might not recognise a church if they deem there to be faults in either of these. He advises great caution and says that defects may even creep in with the administration of word and sacraments which ought not to alienate us from its communion. Not all truths are of equal importance. That God is one and that Christ is God, and the Son of God, and that our salvation depends on the mercy of God are essential; whether the soul goes to heaven on dying or whether it somehow lives with the Lord without specifying its location are not.”We are not on every minute difference to abandon a church, proided it retain sound and unimpaired that doctrine in which the safety of piety consists, and keep the use of the sacraments instituted by the Lord.” Furthermore, we should be even more tolerant of imperfection of conduct with regard to the issue of separating frmo a church or not. Calvin reminds us of some of the parables of Christ, including the parable comparing the church to a net in which all kinds of fish are taken but not separated until they are brought ashore, or a field in which the good seed is mingled with tares and is not separated until the harvest is brought into the barn. Calvin points us to the Corinthian church, in which there was a multitude of sins of an heinous nature, with corruption in doctrine and practice. Paul did not separate from them or eject them from the kingdom, but calls them a church of Christ and a society of saints. He also points us to the Galatians, in whom Paul recognised the church, even though they had all but abandoned the gospel:

“If the Church remains among the Corinthians, where envyings, divisions and contentions rage; where quarrels, lawsuits, and avarice prevail; where a crime, which even the Gentiles would execrate, is openly approved; where the name of Paul, whom they ought to have honoured as a father, is petulantly assailed; where some hold the resurrection of the dead in derision, though with it the whole gospel must fall; where the gifts of God are made subservient to ambition, not to charity; where many things are done neither decently nor in order: If there the Church still remains, simply because ministration of the word and sacrament is not rejected, who will presume to deny the title of church to those to whom a tenth part of those crimes cannot be imputed?” (Institutes IV.I.14)

Moreover, the decision to separate from sinful Christians, particularly at the Lord’s Supper, does not rest with the individual. That unrepentant sinners should be admitted to the Lord’s Supper Calvin acknowledges is a disgrace, and lays the blame for that at the feet of pastors who are not as diligent in church discipline as they ought to be, but nevertheless, he argues that individuals ought not to take the decision to separate upon themselves.

“But although the Church fail in her duty, it does not therefore follow that every private individual is to decide the question of separation for himself. I deny not that it is the duty of a pious man to withdraw from all private intercourse with the wicked, and not entangle himself with them by any voluntary tie; but it is one thing to shun the society of the wicked, and another to renounce the communion of the Church through hatred of them. Those who think it sacrilege to partake the Lord’s bread with the wicked, are in this more rigid than Paul. For when he exhorts us to pure and holy communion, he does not require that we should examine others, or that every one should examine the whole church, but that each should examine himself (1 Cor. xi. 28, 29)… The right of admitting or excluding ought not to be left to the decision of individuals. Cognisance of this point, which cannot be exercised without due order, as shall afterwards be more fully shown, belongs to the whole church. It would therefore be unjust to hold any private individual as polluted by the unworthiness of another, whom he neither can nor ought to keep back from communion.” (Institutes IV.I.15)

In all this, Calvin is essentially following Augustine, and he echoes Augustine’s teaching that the godly should correct what they can and bear patiently with what they cannot, lamenting and mourning in love until reformation comes from God, or he brings the final judgement. Calvin reminds us that in a body which seems full of error, there will be those whom they do not notice who are pursuing righteousness. Judgement belongs to the Lord, and not to the individual Christian. Calvin points us to the example of Old Testament Israel, where the prophets did not form new churches for themselves or erect new altars for separate sacrifices, but went where their countrymen went, recognising that the Lord had institutes the ceremonies by which he was worshipped and had deposited his word there, so worshipped him there, even amidst ungodly people. In summary, Calvin says this:

“Let both points, therefore, be regarded as fixed; first, that there is no excuse for him who spontaneously abandons the external communion of a church in which the word of God is preached and the sacraments are administered; secondly, that notwithstanding the faults of a few or of many, there is nothing to prevent us from there duly professing our faith in the ordinances instituted by God, because a pious conscience is not injured by the unworthiness of another, whether he be a pastor or a private individual; and sacred rites are not less pure and salutary to a man who is holy and upright, from being at the same time handled by the impure. (Institutes IV.I.19)

Calvin returns expounding his high view of the church and the blessings that are enjoyed in it, and the power and authority its ordained ministers have from Christ in conveying these blessings to us. Belonging to the church is required for the forgiveness of sins, and the ordained ministers of the church as its representatives declare to the people the forgiveness of sins (the ministry which has been entrusted to the church) both corporately and to individuals (which, I take it includes personal confession of sins to a minister to receive the benefit of absolution, if required).

“In the Creed forgiveness of sins is appropriately subjoined to belief as to the Church, because none obtain forgiveness but those who are citizens, and of the household of the Church, as we read in the Prophet (Is. xxxiii. 24). The first place, therefore, should be given to the building of the heavenly Jerusalem, in which God afterwards is pleased to wipe away the iniquity of all who betake themselves to it. I say, however, that the Church must first be built; not that there can be any church without forgiveness of sins, but because the Lord has not promised his mercy save in the communion of saints.” (Institutes IV.1.20)

“When Christ gave the command to the apostles, and conferred the power of forgiving sins, he not merely intended that they should loose the sins of those who should be converted from impiety to the faith of Christ; but moreover, that they should perpetually perform this office among believers. This Paul teaches, when he says that the embassy of reconciliation has been committed to the ministers of the Church, that they may ever and anon in the name of Christ exhort the people to be reconciled to God (2 Cor. v. 20). Therefore, in the communion of saints, our sins are constantly forgiven by the ministry of the Church, when presbyters or bishops, to whom the office has been committed, confirm pious consciences, in the hope of pardon and forgiveness, by the promises of the gospel, and that as well in public as in private, as the case requires. For there are many who, from their infirmity, stand in need of special pacification, and Paul declares that he testified of the grace of Christ not only in the public assembly, but from house to house, reminding each individually of the doctrine of salvation (Acts xx. 20, 21)… Let each of us consider it to be his duty to seek forgiveness of sins only where the Lord has placed it.” (Institutes IV.1.22)

I believe

Following a discussion on the Trinity and evangelism a little while ago, it was suggested that someone should write an evangelistic book based on the doctrine of the Trinity. This is not quite that, but it is a series of seven possible titles for evangelistic Bible studies based on clauses from the Apostles’ Creed with a brief outline of what might be covered (based on the rationale that this is the baptismal creed of the church, with the hope being that at the end of the course, those who were interested in finding out more about the Christian faith will be baptised into this faith, or affirm for themselves the faith into which they were baptised as an infant but from which they may have since drifted). It starts with the Trinity, because it is simply not the case that we all have a basically correct idea of what “God” means which we can fill in later with the historically revealed details of the Trinity: God is Trinity, and we have to start from there to make sure that we are talking about the correct God. This framework could also be used for instruction of new Christians, or for equipping Christians for evangelism. One or more pertinent passages of Scripture could form the basis of a Bible study for each heading, and expositions of these passages could be worked into a book.

1. God

… God, the Father almighty…
… Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord…
… the Holy Spirit.

God as Trinity, and how it makes sense of the world.

2. Creator of heaven and earth

… God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.

Doctrine of creation, God’s purpose for the world, sin

3. Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord (Part 1)

… Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died and was buried;
he descended to the dead.

… the forgiveness of sins.

Christ’s full deity and humanity so he can be our saviour, the atonement, its consequences

4. Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord (Part 2)

On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come  to judge the living and the dead.

… the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.

Assurance that sin and death have been defeated, Christ’s kingship, the coming judgement, the future hope of resurrection and life in the new creation

5. The Holy Spirit

… the Holy Spirit.

Work of the Spirit in the life of the believer, making us how God intended us to be, renewing us, equipping us to serve him, what it means to live as a Christian

6. The holy catholic Church

… the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints.

Brought into a family that is set apart from the world, transcends all social, cultural and racial boundaries, public worship

7. I believe

I believe… Amen.

The need for personal response of trust in the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit; baptism for those who want to do this who have not already been baptised; the need to re-affirm this for oneself if already baptised but have drifted

The Ascension and Psalm-singing

“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.” – Colossians 3.1

What St. Paul says in this verse depends on what he has said before in the previous chapter. He tells us that in our baptism we have died and have been buried with Christ and raised with him:

“In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.” – Colossians 2.11-12

Because of this, he points us to where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God, and where we ourselves are with him and tells us to seek, to set our minds on, to pursue and to practise the things that are above, that belong to heaven. This is not because our ultimate future is away from this world in heaven, but because one day Christ will return from there in glory (Colossians 3.4). Jesus is the king and heaven is the capital city, which he has entered having conquered sin and death by his death on the cross in our place, taking the punishment that we deserve for our rebellion against him. We in Oxford in our local churches are colonies of heaven, and the customs, practices, culture and lifestyle of heaven our capital city are to be replicated here in the light of his future return. Christ has returned in triumph to his capital city, and the influence of his victory is to spread throughout his whole empire – the whole world, and that includes us. My family used to holiday in Malta when I was a child. Because Malta was part of the British Empire and only became independent in the 1960s, life in Malta reflects something of British culture - for instance, the cars drive on the left. Paul says that is what it must be like with us: we have been raised with Christ in our baptism, we belong to heaven, and our life here on earth now has to look like life in heaven, and not like the un-Christian world around us. That world, Paul says, in vv. 5-9, is characterised by sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness (which is idolatry), anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk and lying to one another. Because we have put off our old self with its practices in baptism, as Paul said back in chapter 2,  we are to put to death all those things. What our life is to be marked by instead, what we are to clothe ourselves with, is compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing with one another, forgiveness, love, peace and thankfulness (Colossians 3.12-15). This new self which we are to put on, Paul says, is being renewed after the image of its creator (v. 10), who is Christ. “By him all things were created” – Colossians 1.16. Paul goes on to tell us how this takes place:

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom…” – Colossians 3.16

The phrase ‘the word of Christ’ does not just refer to origin of word that is to dwell in us richly, i.e. the word that comes from Christ, but also the subject of that word: it is the message about Christ. Throughout Colossians, we encounter the theme of continuing in the faith, of not shifting from the word of truth which is the gospel, of walking in Christ just as we received him. To be renewed after the image of Christ, we are to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly, the truth of Christ’s person and work, who he is and what he has done. Paul describes one way for that to happen:

“…singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”

When Paul talks about singing psalms, I take it he does mean the collection of songs and prayers in the Old Testament which we know as the Psalms. Our Lord referred to the Psalms as a distinct section of the Scriptures shortly before he was carried up into heaven:

“Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” ” – Luke 24.44

It needs to be said at that point that by encouraging us to sing psalms, I am not advocating exclusive psalm-singing. Paul in Colossians 3.16 mentions psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Mary was not told off for composing the Magnificat. If you read the words of the songs sung in heaven in Revelation, they are not just singing psalms, so I take it, given that Paul is encouraging us to seek the things that are above and practise them here, we are not only to sing psalms. But we are to sing psalms, and that is one way of letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly, teaching and admonishing one another, with thankfulness to God. To start with, many of the Psalms directly express thanks and praise to God. Psalms communicate in poetry and song the truth about Christ – who he is and what he has done. Those words from Luke 24 again:

“Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” – Luke 24.44-47

Psalm 22 for example, speaks of Christ’s suffering on the cross so that our sins can be forgiven. Psalm 24 is traditionally appointed for Ascension Day, speaking of the one who shall ascend the hill of the Lord and stand in his holy place, the one who is pure in heart, who does not worship false things, which points to the perfect man, our Lord Jesus Christ, who ascends not the earthly hill of the Lord, Mount Zion, but enters the heavenly Jerusalem. Psalm 24 calls on the ancient doors to lift their heads that the King of glory, the Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle, might come in. This finds its fulfilment in Christ’s ascension which proclaims him as the King of glory as he takes his seat at the right hand of the Father. He is the Lord, strong and mighty in his battle with sin and death. As we sing psalms, we are letting this word of Christ dwell in us richly. Notice the direction of the singing. Yes, we are singing psalms with thankfulness in our hearts to God, but we are also teaching and admonishing one another. When we are singing psalms (as well as hymns and spiritual songs) we should be aiming to look around and address one another, as well as looking at the words and the music, in order to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly Finally, we see from the end of Colossians 3 that Paul is addressing each and every category of person: wives, husbands, children, fathers, slaves, masters. He is saying, “Wives, you have been baptised, husbands, you have been baptised, children, you have been baptised, fathers, you have been baptised, slaves, you have been baptised, masters, you have been baptised, whoever you are, you have been baptised. Your old self has died and you have been raised with Christ. So put to death the things that belong to this sinful world and seek the things that are above, set your minds on things that are above. That means: put away sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk and lying to one another. Get rid of them. Instead, show compassion, be kind, be humble, be meek, be patient, bear with one another, forgive one another, love one another, be at peace with one another, be thankful. All this is part of being renewed after the image of Christ, so you need to let the word of Christ take hold of you at the deepest level of your being. To do that, sing psalms.”

Grant, we pray, almighty God, that as we believe your only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens, so we in heart and mind may also ascend and with him continually dwell; who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Two sermons preached at St. James’s, Poole

Click below for a slightly belatedly uploaded sermon preached on March 29th, the Fifth Sunday of Lent, and the beginning of Passiontide.

Isaiah 58 (21:35, 8.7MB)

Click below for the startlingly brief sermon I preached on May 10th, the Fifth Sunday of Easter.

Job 19.23-27 (18:55, 7.6MB)

Job 19.23-27: A sermon for Eastertide

“For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has thus been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God.” – Job 19.25-26

Introduction

It is important that justice is upheld in public; when it isn’t, we’re outraged. I read an article in the newspaper about a fireman who attacked his girlfriend, who was pregnant with twins, on three separate occasions. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 100 hours of community service, ordered to attend a domestic abuse progamme, and fined £500 costs. He was given a suspended sentence of 12 months imprisonment; the judge spared him immediate imprisonment because of his work with the fire brigade. The decision not to gaol him was criticsed by a domestic violence charity. A spokesman said: “Suffering violence at the hands of your partner is a deeply damaging experience. This experience is not lessened by the occupation of your abuser. It is my opinion that a man’s high social standing should be seen as an aggravating factor in a case, not a mitigating factor. Violence against women is an epidemic in our society.” It is important that justice is upheld in public; when it isn’t, we’re outraged. If that’s the case with human courts and judges, how much more important is it when we consider the courtroom of God, the one who made the heavens and the earth, Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Is justice upheld by him? Is evil dealt with and is good allowed to prosper and flourish? Is this a well-governed cosmos? Today is the fifth Sunday of Easter; we continue our celebration of the resurrection from the dead of our Lord Jesus Christ. Resurrection is about God upholding justice in the universe. That is what the writer of Job wants us to learn from the words of Job.

1. The longing for God’s justice (vv. 23-24)

The beginning of the book makes it very clear that Job is the model believer. He is “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil”. He even used to offer sacrifices for his sons and daughters after their feasts in case they had sinned. Not that he was perfect – “no one is righteous, no not one” – but his sin (rebellion against God) had been dealt with and so his status before God was “not guilty”, “in the right”. We might say he was someone who repents of his sins, trusts in the Lord, and lives a life of public integrity that back it up. No one could make any charge stick to Job. He had a wonderful family and was rich. He is described as “the greatest of all the people of the east”.

But Job loses everything: in one day, raiders come and capture his oxen, donkeys and camels and kill the servants attending them, the sheep and the servants looking after them are destroyed by fire, then finally a great wind causes the house where all his children were eating and drinking and kills them all. Then Job himself becomes ill with a terrible disease that leaves him covered in sores from the top of his head to the sole of his foot.

Although the readers are told at the beginning why all this is happening, Job remains in the dark about the meaning of what is happening to him. Throughout the book, Job pleads his innocent, that he doesn’t deserve this: “I am in the right, I am blameless, I am not guilty,” he says. He doesn’t only look at his own situation; he looks at the world around him and sees that it is not right: the wicked and those who don’t trust and serve the one true and living God nevertheless prosper and get away with it. “The tents of robbers are at peace, and those who provoke God are secure, who bring their god in their hand” (Job 12.6). Job wants to bring his case before God. He wants his words written down and a permanent record made so that they won’t be forgotten when he is gone. He longs for God to hear the case, act justly, and put things right. From what is going on in his own life and what he sees going on in the world around him, it doesn’t look as though justice is being upheld publicly; it doesn’t look as though the universe is being governed well. Job wants God to do something about it.

I would be very surprised if that isn’t a longing which many, if not all, of us share. Perhaps it is your financial situation: you were comfortably off, but because of the recession, it’s a struggle to pay the bills, buy the groceries, pay off the mortgage. Maybe you have even lost your job, and you ask, “Why me?” Perhaps the issue is bereavement: you have lost someone very close to you – your husband, wife, brother, sister or even your son or daughter – maybe in an accident or due to illness. You keep asking, “What have I done to deserve this?” Or it could be you have just received a bad diagnosis from your doctor. Like Job, you have been left in the dark about the reason these terrible things have happened. We often simply cannot say why a particular tragedy has happened to a particular person at a particular time. For some here, that will be a barrier to faith in God, or will have caused you to walk away from the faith you once had. Many of us will have friends or relatives for whom that is true.

Job goes on to explain why he wants a record to be made of his words and for his case to appear before God, why he thinks that would be worthwhile, why it would not be a waste of his time. His words take us to the heart of justice being upheld publicly in the universe, of what God is doing.

2. The promise of God’s justice (vv. 25-27)

The philosopher Nietzsche famously said, “God is dead”. The militant atheists of our generation aren’t quite so certain about what they don’t believe in: the best they can come up with is “There’s probably no God”. Job says confidently that there is a God, he is alive, and one day, at the end of time, he will come and judge the world, put things right and uphold justice publicly. That’s not just true in a general sense: Job will see justice done for him, personally; every wrong will be righted. It will be seen that he is “in the right”, “not guilty” when it come to his standing in God’s courtroom. It has been said before, but it needs saying again, this is not because Job has done anything to deserve it, but because of his relationship with God. For him, God is his Redeemer. In the OT law,  a redeemer is a close relative who could buy you back if you became poor and sold yourself into slavery, or who could buy back your land if you became poor and sold some of your property. God is frequently called “Redeemer” in the Bible because of the way he brought his ancient people out of slavery in Egypt into freedom in the Promised Land, and because of his promise to bring his people back to the Promised Land from where they were in exile in the surrounding nations which was his judgement upon them for continuing to turn away from him, to disobey him, to serve false gods. Job has faith in God as his Redeemer. He has placed his hope and trust in God as the one who will rescue him from death and judgement, and bring him into the inheritance he has prepared for him. It is because of this faith that he is “in the right”, “not guilty”, in God’s courtroom, “justified” to use the Bible word. This is why he can say not only that his Redeemer – God – lives and in the end will stand upon the earth, but after he is dead and buried and his body decays, he will nevertheless in his own body see God with his own eyes. Despite all that Job goes through – the death of his children, the loss of his property, ultimately his own death – he will be raised from the dead on the last day, and so his standing before God of being in the right, not guilty, will be seen by all. His resurrection shows that justice is being upheld publicly in the universe by God, after all.

We’re not in the same position as Job was, or as the first readers of this book were. What they looked forward to or knew only in a shadowy way we now know more fully. We come to these verses as those who once again are in the midst of a 40-day celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He is our living Redeemer, God the Son who was born as a man, who rescues people from slavery to sin and God’s just, settled anger against it by paying that penalty for sin himself when he died on the cross, and who rose again because he had thereby defeated sin and therefore the death which sin brings. On the last day he will return to this world as its judge. Moreover, Jesus Christ was the supreme example of an innocent man who suffered: he was despised, rejected, abandoned, beaten and subjected to the cruellest of deaths – death on a cross – which he didn’t deserve. God the Father raised him from the dead, vindicating him, declaring him to be “in the right”. What Job looked forward to taking place at the last day – the resurrection of the body – has already begun with Jesus Christ. “Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15.20). In Jesus Christ, we see with even more certainty than Job that God is publicly upholding justice in the universe.

Friends, if we are to share in Job’s hope of resurrection, if, when Christ returns, we are to be raised from the dead as Christ has been raised, we must be those who have faith in Christ as our Redeemer, who depend on him as the way to be justified, declared in the right with God, because he bore the penalty for sins when he died on the cross. It is only from this position of faith that our longing for justice makes any sense. If there is no God to judge, and if there is no judgement, and if there is no resurrection from the dead as a demonstration of being in the right, then to long for justice is meaningless because there is no such thing: bad, wicked, evil things just happen – deal with it. “Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try, no hell below us, above us only sky”? I can imagine nothing worse. One person has said that you either have God and the problem of evil, or no God and evil, no problem. It is because God is alive and he will judge and the dead will be raised that Job cries out for a permanent record of his case to be made, because he knows that justice will be done. And so, if we have faith in Jesus Christ, we can look back on the events of Easter which we’re celebrating now, and take great comfort from them, whatever we’re going through – financial hardship, unemployment, bereavement, or illness. Christ has been raised, we will be raised, justice will be done. The very thought of it takes Job’s breath away (v. 27). This is the exhilaration, the joy we see in the Psalms at the thought of God’s coming judgement (Psalm 96.10-13; Psalm 98.7-9). Finally, Easter means that a new way of living is open to us. If our sufferings are sufferings at the hands of other people, as Job’s in part were, we don’t have to take matters of justice into our own hands. In one place, humanity without Christ is described in these terms: “foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another” (Titus 3.3). Isn’t that an accurate description of our town, our workplace, our country? Many have no place for God’s justice, and so avenge themselves when someone does something to hurt or offend them. Because Christ has been raised from the dead, we know that justice will be done and so, as St. Paul says, we are to repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honourable in the sight of all, to leave peaceably with all insofar as it depends on us, to never avenge ourselves, but leave it to God. This sets us free not to retaliate, not to reply with unkind words if someone says something unpleasant about us, not to harbour resentment and bitterness if someone has wronged us, not to plot how we can hurt people back for the way that have hurt us, but instead to speak kindly, to continue to be friendly, to look for ways to help them, and do them good and put them before ourselves.

Conclusion

It is important that justice is upheld in public; when it isn’t, we’re outraged. That is especially important when we consider God’s justice. Is justice in the universe upheld publicly by him? The answer from this section of Job’s words is, “Yes”. The longing for God’s justice is met by the promise of God’s justice, seen in the resurrection of the dead, which has broken into our world with the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

“For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has thus been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God.” – Job 19.25-26

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Hand-washing

“So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves. And all the people answered, “His blood be on us and our own children!” – Matthew 27.24-25

Pilate washes his hands, symbolising his self-proclaimed innocence in the matter of Jesus’ death, for he could find no guilt in him yet the crowd was baying for his blood. However, could there be more going on here than this? This episode has strong echoes of Deuteronomy 21, where we read the following instructions to be followed when someone is found murdered in the open country:

“And all the elders of that city nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley, and they shall testify, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it shed. Accept atonement, O LORD, for your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and do not set the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of your people Israel, so that their bloodguilt may be atoned for.’ So you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from your midst, when you do what is right in the sight of the LORD.” – Deuteronomy 21.6-9

I think two things are going on here:

1. Jesus is the antitype of the heifer who is being sacrificed to make atonement for God’s people and to purge the guilt from them.

2. Perversely, Pilate stands the place of the elders as the one who washes his hands and proclaims his innocence with regard to Jesus’ death, while, rather than praying for God not to set the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of his people Israel, the Jews explicitly call down this guilt upon themselves. Is Matthew perhaps narrating the explicit rejection of Yahweh and his law by the Jews, leading to their resultant guilt and subsequent judgment, and the bringing in of Gentiles to the place of standing in God’s community, where guilt is atoned for, where they are ‘in the right’ in the sight of Yahweh?

Glory

This is a train of thought I had a little while ago, which was again set in motion last night when I read:

‘You guide me with your counsel, and afterwards you will receive me to glory.’ – Psalm 73.24

When we hear ‘glory’ used as a destination for human beings, I think we tend to automatically substitute ‘heaven’ or possibly, if we’re sharp, ‘new creation’. However, in the Psalter, ‘glory’ in connexion with human beings is not the intermediate state, or the general resurrection, but human beings in their position as God’s vice-gerents, wise rulers of the world he has made:

‘What is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honour.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.’ – Psalm 8.4-8

In the New Testament, we find that ‘glory’, this restoration of God’s original purposes for humanity in his creation, has come about through Jesus’ death. In Hebrews 2, this Psalm, which equates ‘glory’ with God=given authority over creation, is quoted, and we learn that, while we do not yet see everything in subjection to man, we see Jesus, as the second Adam, the true man, crowned with glory and honour because of his death. The writer then goes on to say:

‘For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.’ – Hebrews 2.10

When we sing, ‘As wounds which mar the Chosen One bring many sons to glory’, echoing those words from Hebrews 2, we are not singing, ‘Because of Jesus’ suffering and death, we can go to heaven when we die’ or even, ‘we can go to the new creation’ (although all of this is true); we are singing, ‘Because of Jesus’ suffering and death as the God-man, God’s programme for his creation has not failed, and fallen human beings have been restored to their position of authority over the created order as its wise rulers.’