Sing we merrily

Daniel Foucachon, a member of the congregation at Christ Church, Moscow, has uploaded (I believe the term is) some vidéo recordings from a recent psalm sing. They’re well worth a perusal. This is what a rural congregation – which isn’t abnormally musically gifted – is capable of over time, if they are willing to work at it. Some psalms and hymns are in parts, some are in canon, some are in unison.

Psalm 19
Psalm 98
Psalm 117
Psalm 119.169-176
Psalm 122
Psalm 134
Psalm 149
O Love, How Deep, How Broad, How High!
The Son of God Goes Forth To War

A Useless Controversy

In Matthew 22, Jesus tells a parable in which he compares the kingdom of heaven to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son (v. 2). The hall is filled with guests (v. 10) but the king comes in to look at the guests and sees that there was a man who had no wedding garment (v. 12), so he orders his attendants to bind him and throw him into the outer darkness.

Calvin comments:

“As to the wedding garment, is it faith, or is it a holy life? This is a useless controversy; for faith cannot be separated from good works, nor do good works proceed from any other source than from faith.”

Psalm 84: Exhortation

Below is the exhortation which I will give prior to the confession of sins on Sunday morning, followed by the charge I will give after the Lord’s Supper, prior to the benediction.

***

Our opening prayer was based on Psalm 84 which speaks of the loveliness of God’s dwelling place, his courts. Even the sparrow, the Psalm says, finds a home and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young, at the altars of the Lord of hosts. Didn’t our Lord Jesus Christ say that we are of more value than many sparrows? As we come to church each Lord’s Day, as we appear before God in Zion, to use the language of the Psalm, we and our young are to feel at home here. God has invited us into his house to bless us. No good thing does he withhold, say the Psalm. God has brought us here to speak kindly to us and so that we can sit at his table and eat with him. When we bring our children to the waters of baptism, when we keep them with us during the worship service, when they are fed from the Lord’s table, we are saying to them, “You are welcome, you have a place here, too.” Now where is it that the sparrow finds a home and the swallow a nest for herself and her young? At the altars of the Lord of hosts. It is because sacrifice for sin has been made that we and our children are welcome here. Our altar is the cross, where Jesus Christ shed his blood and offered up himself as a sacrifice once for all for sin, suffering and dying in our place, bearing the punishment we deserve. This is not an altar, this is a table, where we remember Jesus’ death in bread and wine. On the basis of his one sacrifice, once for all on the cross, the apostle John writes to Christians, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” When we come into the house for dinner, it is good manners to wipe our feet and wash our hands. This reminds us, at the beginning of our worship service, of the need to confess our sins.

***

We began with Psalm 84 and it speaks of those in whose hearts are the highways to Zion, who long and faint for the courts of the Lord; verses 6 and 7:

“As they go through the Valley of Baca they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools.
They go from strength to strength;
each one appears before God in Zion.”

We are being sent from here on a journey through the wilderness for another week before we return to the sanctuary. But as we travel through the wilderness, heading towards the place where we have seen God’s power, glory and steadfast love, and where we know we will see it again, praising God, singing for joy and trusting in him, the wilderness will stop looking like a wilderness before long. Go, and bring water to the desert, be like rain on the parched land, and make the wasteland fruitful.

Psalm 63: Sermon Notes

Below are the notes for a sermon on Psalm 63 which I will be preaching, Lord willing, at Christ Church, Missoula, on Sunday morning.

Introduction

Our worship together on Sunday – what we do here, now – is deeply important for our lives throughout the rest of the week. There is much disagreement in the church over what form corporate worship should take – the content of the songs we sing, how formal or casual our services should be, how simple or developed they should be, to what extent the style of our music should reflect what is popular in the wider world. There are many different opinions about this, and yet it really matters. The theologian Stanley Hauerwas said this:

One reason why we Christians argue so much about which hymn to sing, which liturgy to follow, which way to worship is that the commandments teach us to believe that bad liturgy eventually leads to bad ethics. You begin by singing some sappy, sentimental hymn, then you pray some pointless prayer, and the next thing you know you have murdered your best friend.

Sadly, sappy, sentimental and pointless to a greater or letter extent describes what goes on in many churches today and we mustn’t think that it will have no effect. Now Psalm 63 – this inspired worship song from Israel’s hymnbook – is full of emotion directed to God: thirsting, longing for him (v. 1), being satisfied in him and praising him (v. 5), remembering him in the night (v. 6), rejoicing under the shadow of his wings (v. 7), clinging to him (v. 8), rejoicing again (v. 11). But it is not sappy or sentimental or pointless. It is a song that David sings (see the heading) as the king of Israel (v. 11). As we learn to sing this song, we’ll get a true picture of what balanced, undistorted worship looks like and what effect that will have on life throughout the rest of the week.

1. God’s king trusts amidst his trials (vv. 1-8)

As we have just seen, the heading of this Psalm tells us that David wrote this when he was in the wilderness of Judah. He is in the wilderness because, v. 9, there are those who seek to destroy his life and, v. 11, those who are liars, lying presumably about him. This Psalm looks back to a particular episode in David’s life. In 2 Samuel 15, Absalom, one of David’s sons, sets himself up at the gate of Jerusalem and spreads lies about David (vv. 1-6). Word reaches David (v. 13) and he flees because he is in danger of being killed as Absalom has amassed an army and is marching on Jerusalem (v. 14). He leaves the ark of God and its dwelling place behind (v. 25). He flees towards the wilderness  (v. 23, v. 28, end of 16.2). That is where he sets up camp (17.16) and where people bring him and his people the provisions they need (17.27-29). Those are the trials which are the context for David’s response to God in vv. 1-8.
Within this section, verses 1 to 4 and verses 5 to 8 follow the same pattern:

1.The soul looking to God as one without which it cannot survive, like the body can’t survive without the basic necessities of life
2.Recalling past experiences of God
3.Praising God because of what he has done
4.Trusting in God

David’s thirsting and fainting in wilderness isn’t so much for water as it is for God. Just as parched soil desperately needs rain, so David longs for God (v. 1). This is a demonstration of David’s trust in God. When David says, “You are my God”, this is covenant language. Do you remember the great covenant refrain that runs through the Bible? “I will be your God and you shall be my people.” David is saying, “I believe that, and I trust in you. I see that you are the one who can give me life and sustain me and I depend on you.” Flowing from his faith, David in the wilderness looks back to a time when he took part in the organised, corporate worship of Israel, as the place where he met with God, where God made himself known in a special way (v. 2). The sanctuary refers to the holy place where God symbolically dwelt amongst his people, the place where God had his throne between the cherubim above the ark of the covenant; it was the place where sacrifices were offered for sins. It was originally the interior of the tabernacle, the tent of meeting. In David’s reign, the elements of the sanctuary were divided between two separate sites (1 Chronicles 16). David brought the ark of the covenant into a tent which he had pitched for it in Jerusalem and this was the place where, from David’s reign onwards, God was called upon, thanked and praised with singing and musical instruments. Sacrifices were made at that tent when the ark was brought to Jerusalem, and continued to be regularly offered by the priests at the original tent which was pitched in the town of Gibeon. When David uses the word ’sanctuary’, it is loaded with all this meaning. Of course, God is everywhere and David did not have to go to the sanctuary to pray to God and be heard by him: he composed this Psalm in the wilderness. But he looks back to the worship at the sanctuary as the particular place where God showed his power and glory. That produces a twofold response in him:

(i) He praises God because of his steadfast love, which is better than life (v. 3). ‘Steadfast love’ could be translated ‘lovingkindness’, ‘mercy’ or ‘grace’. Notice how he draws conclusions about God’s steadfast love from seeing God’s power and glory in the sanctuary. God’s power and his glory are seen in his steadfast love, in his grace. Do you remember when Israel was encamped at Sinai and Moses asked God to show him his glory? Exodus 34.6-7:

‘The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin”’

God’s glory is his steadfast love, seen in his mercy and grace and slowness to anger and his forgiveness of sin. How does David see that in the sanctuary? Because it is the place where sin, rebellion against God, is dealt with. How can a God of blazing purity dwell in the midst of a sinful people without consuming them? When the priests offer animal sacrifices at the sanctuary, it is as if the sin of the people is transferred to the animal and the animal dies and is consumed in their place. So God’s right anger against sin is turned away, he forgives the sins of his people, and looks with favour on them and shows them mercy, sparing them what they deserve, and grace, giving them what they don’t deserve – enjoying his ongoing presence amongst them. This the power and glory David sees in the wilderness as he looks back with his mind’s eye at the sanctuary where he once worshipped. It is God’s steadfast love, which David says is better than life. Better than being alive and enjoying all that this life has to offer is to know that God has set his unfailing love upon you, in his grace forgiving your sins and in his mercy turning aside his anger; it’s a love that extends beyond this life into eternity. So David praises God (vv. 3-4a); that’s his first response.

(ii) David’s second response to what he has seen of God is to trust in him (v. 4b). The lifting up of hands in God’s name refers to David calling out to God to preserve him in and rescue him from his trials; he is demonstrating his faith in God, his trust in him. Psalm 28.2:

“Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy, when I cry to you for help, when I lift up my hands towards your most holy sanctuary.”

David looks back to worship in the sanctuary and what he saw of God’s power and glory there – that he is merciful and gracious, abounding in steadfast love – and so not only does he praise him, he resolves to continue trusting in him, depending on him, while he is away from the sanctuary in the wilderness. God’s king trusts amidst his trials

If we didn’t get the point the first time, David takes us round a second time to make sure this is fixed in our minds and in our hearts; he follows the same pattern. “Let every charge be established by two or three witnesses.” Again, David is hungry in the wilderness but it is not so much for food as it is for God (v. 5). This time, rather than thirsting for God, David’s soul hungers for him. This time David adds something. His soul does not just look to God as the one who enables him to survive, like dry land needing water. His soul looks to God as the one who will lavish upon him good things. God is not just the one who gives him a morsel of bread and a glass of water to keep his body alive. It is as if he spreads a great feast for David – the best cuts of meat, cooked by the best chefs, which he can eat until he is full. David trusts God that his soul will not want for anything; he is content. Where does this faith come from? “I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night” (v. 6). This, too, builds on what he has already said. Again David looks back to the past where God made himself known to him and we learn this time when David does this: when he is in his bed, lying awake as the hours go past. Again David responds in the same two ways as he responded to what he had seen of God in the sanctuary.

(i) He sings for joy (end of v. 7), there is praise again (end of v. 5). The thing he remembers about God, what he chews over in his mind, and which moves him to praise, is again, how God has shown his love, his grace, his mercy. He has helped him (beginning of v. 7), he has brought him near, and shielded him from harm.

(ii) David’s second response to his memory of what God has done for him is a renewed, strengthened trust in him (v. 8). He sees how God has helped him, has protected and sheltered him, and so he continues to holds on to him for dear life.

David really wants to make this clear. He depends on God as the one who alone can give him life and sustain him, and more than that, as the one who alone can satisfy him. So he looks back to a time when he was not in the wilderness, when he took part in the worship of God’s people, where God made himself known, where he revealed his power and glory in showing mercy and love, and so responds with praise and continuing trust. Corporate worship is deeply important for what happens away from the place of worship. God’s king trusts amidst his trials.

What we see here is that David is a new Israel. Do you remember how, when Israel was in the wilderness, they sinned? They did not trust the Lord to give them bread and water and grumbled that they were going to die. They were not satisfied with the Lord, they didn’t trust him to satisfy them and they looked back to what they had without him. Listen to Moses’ explanation of what God was doing. Deuteronomy 8.2-3:

“And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

That is what Israel failed to understand, but what David did know. It was also known by another, perhaps a thousand years later. In Matthew 4 (and Luke 4) we read how Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, and after fasting forty days and forty nights he was hungry. The tempter came and said, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread,” to which Jesus replied, “It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Jesus Christ, great David’s greater Son, is, of course, God’s anointed king and the new Israel, faithful where Israel was not. God’s king trusts amidst his trials.

This is where Psalm 63 has implications for our worship. Jesus Christ, the new Israel, as anticipated and foreshadowed here in David, is to be our model as God’s people, as members of the Israel of God, for robust worship that has purpose and direction and worth, worship that is emotionally healthy and balanced, worship that makes a difference in our lives

When we are gathered here, like we are now, on the Lord’s Day to worship God together, we are in the sanctuary, God’s holy place, not because there’s anything special about the building or the ground on which we’re standing but because by faith, in the Spirit, we have ascended into heaven. Do you remember how the service began? “Lift up your hearts: we lift them up to the Lord!” Hebrews 12.22-24:

“You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in 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.”

It is here that God shows his power and glory in his steadfast love. What David saw in the sanctuary in shadow form, we see in glorious technicolour. What all those animal sacrifices pointed forward to and stood for has now come. How is God’s love supremely seen? 1 John 4.10:

“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins”

And that love which is God’s power and glory is seen here. At the beginning of the service we confessed our sins and we heard of God’s mercy and his grace as we were assured that our sins were forgiven through Christ, because of what he did, dying in our place on the cross, bearing the punishment that we deserve for our sins. At this table, Christ has instituted a memorial of his death on the cross in which God’s love and mercy and grace are most clearly seen, as bread, representing Christ’s body is broken, and as wine, representing his blood, is poured out. As we proclaim the Lord’s death for us in this meal, we are proclaiming that he has been our help. As we eat the bread and drink the wine, our souls are being satisfied with fat and rich food and our thirst for God is being quenched, as he feeds us by faith with the body and blood of his dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. And what we do here matters.

As we are sent out from here away from the sanctuary, into our communities, into our workplaces, it is a kind of being sent into the wilderness, where we are in the midst of trials and surrounded by enemies, as David was, as Christ was. And this Psalm is a wilderness psalm; we are learning to sing here in the sanctuary, as it were, so that we will be able to sing it out there in the wilderness. You know the particular trials and enemies that are waiting for you; want, sickness, particular temptations, opposition because of your faith. In those situations, we must not behave like the old Israel and grumble against God. We must not look longingly back to the time before we became Christians, if we can ever recall such a time, and remember what we enjoyed then and wish that God had never saved us. Neither must we envy the pleasures of who aren’t Christians and long to have what they have. We shouldn’t be discontent and dissatisfied and doubt God’s goodness and faithfulness, doubt that he will provide for us and preserve us. Rather, we are be like the new Israel, like David is here, we are to be like Christ, and seek God, thirst and faint for him, hunger for him, depend on him to sustain us and satisfy us. As we do that, we should look back at what has taken place here and remember how God has fed with fat and rich food and satisfied our thirst here, at this table. If we lie awake at night because of fear, or worry or sadness, we should call to mind and dwell on how God has made known to us his power and glory here, this morning, how he has loved us and helped us in forgiving our sins through Christ, as we were assured when we confessed our sins, how he has loved us and helped us by his sending Son to die on the cross in our place to rescue us from death and hell, as we will have proclaimed at this table in the breaking of bread and in drinking this cup. That will make a difference. It will bring us joy and will move us to praise God. It will strengthen our faith in God; it will cause us to cling to him who holds us more tightly. What is more, this Psalm shows us that the difference worship now in the sanctuary will make then in the wilderness is not something that should be kept hidden in our hearts; it should be visible and audible, both in here and out there. God has given us bodies, and he expects our joy and trust to be evident in our bodies – in the noise that comes out of our mouths, in our posture. We sing for joy on Monday because we have praised God with joyful lips on the Lord’s Day. We lift up our hands to God for help and mercy on Thursday evening, because we have lifted them up to him in worship on Sunday morning.

So first, then, God’s king trusts amidst his trials. We have seen what that looks like, the nature of worship and its place in fuelling faith, as well as something of the effect it has. As Psalm concludes, we see more of the fruit of that trust.

2. God’s king triumphs over his foes (vv. 9-11)

God upholds David (v. 8b), but what happens to his enemies? God will judge them, they will die and their souls will go down to Sheol – Greek word is Hades – the place of the dead (v. 9). Before the coming of Christ, the souls of all who died would descend to Sheol. There were two parts to Sheol, separated by a great chasm that none could cross, the place where wicked faced torment and the place where the faithful were comforted. Jesus spoke of it when told the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16. When David says that those who seek to destroy his life shall go down into the depths of the earth, he is referring to their death and their souls’ descent to Sheol where they would be in torment. What about the manner of their death? It’s not for the squeamish. They shall be killed and their bodies left as carrion to be devoured by wild animals (v. 10). And the result? David – who trusts in God, seeks for him, thirsts for him, faints for him, lifts up his hands in his name, is satisfied in him, clings to him – will rejoice in God who overthrow his enemies, and not just David, but all who trust in God shall feel triumphant because of the judgement that falls upon David’s enemies (v. 11). That is what swearing by God means; it is contrasted in the Bible with going after other gods to serve them; it’s an indication of who your faith is in. David’s victory brings joy to David and the rest of the faithful because the mischief of David’s enemies will come to an end – the lies they told to turn people’s hearts away from David, the plots they made to get rid of him. God’s king triumphs over his foes.

This is what will happen to the enemies of Christ. In his day, there were those who sought to destroy his life – the chief priests and elders of the people, assisted by Judas. Christ rose from the dead and ascended into heaven and obviously the opportunity to kill him isn’t there today but there are plenty in the world who would like to see an end to Christianity. You may be aware of the recent release of Collision, a documentary following the debates between Brooke’s uncle, Doug Wilson, and leading atheist and public intellectual Christopher Hitchens. In the film, Hitchens says something to the effect of, “Christianity is a dangerous cult and it’s high time it was stopped.” There are plenty who, like Absalom with David, spread lies about Christ or the Christian faith to turn people’s hearts away from Christ who is the rightful king of this world. Do you recall what Absalom said to those who came to the king for judgement? He intercepted them and flattered them by saying that their claims were good and right but there was no man designated by the king to hear them, but that if he, Absalom were judge, everyone with a dispute or a cause would come to him and he would give them justice. That’s how he stole the hearts of the men of Israel. “David – God’s rightful king – won’t give you justice, but I will.” Lies against Christ are no different today. “Don’t look to Christ as the one who will solve the problems of the world and uphold justice; he won’t do anything – look to this policy, look to this statesman.” “You should be able to live that way, that’s right for you, but Christ’s won’t let you; if you leave Christ behind you will have the freedom to adopt that lifestyle.” But there will come a day when those who oppose Christ will be stopped, when those lies will be spread no more. Christ was faithful, obedient to death, even death on a cross, and so God has raised him from the dead and highly exalted him. Those who persist in their opposition of him will be overthrown and judged. God’s king triumphs over his foes

We who have trusted in God shall share in the joy of that victory. That’s the implication of these verses for us. We rejoice because the enemies of Christ are defeated and their schemes are brought to a final end. It is about the time of year that the Handel’s Messiah record comes out. I’m sure we’re all familiar with the Hallelujah! Chorus. “Hallelujah! For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. ” It’s from Revelation 19.6, and the context of that glorious chorus is the response of heaven in the first century to the overthrow of Babylon, which was Jerusalem, the city which crucified its Lord and shed the blood of the prophets and the saints. From the verses which immediately precede it, Revelation 19.1-5, we see that true justice is done; right judgement is passed; and all that is left of corrupt and immoral Babylon are smouldering ruins. With that at the forefront of our mind, we hear the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder crying out, “Hallelujah!”

As it was in the first century, so it will be ultimately with all those who persist in their opposition to Christ. “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet” – 1 Corinthians 15.25. Sharing in the joy of Christ’s victory the privilege of those whose trust, like David, like Christ, is in God. God’s king triumphs over his foes.

Conclusion

Psalm 63 shows us why worship together is deeply important for life away from the place of worship. It is where God reveals his power and glory in his steadfast love and in his help. As a result, God’s king trusts amidst his trials. It is what will cause us to do the same. This Psalm is a model of worship that is authentically emotional, not sappy or sentimental, prayer that is robust, not pointless, worship which engages our whole bodies. The fruit of the faith of God’s king, which the worship in this Psalm embodies, is that God’s king triumphs over his foes. We whose worship is shaped by this Psalm and who therefore share the faith of God’s king will join in with the rejoicing.

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

Not for any merit

Brooke and I have just embarked on reading The Lord of the Rings aloud and I am having fun noticing things that I didn’t notice last time round. This is from chapter 2, ‘The Shadow of the Past’ when Gandalf is recounting the history of the One Ring to Frodo.

‘There is only one way: to find the Cracks of Doom in the depths of Orodruin, the Fire-mountain, and cast the Ring in there, if you really wish to destroy it, to put it beyond the grasp of the Enemy for ever.’
‘I do really wish to destroy it!’ cried Frodo. ‘Or, well, to have it destroyed. I am not made for perilous quests. I wish I had never seen the Ring! Why did it come to me? Why was I chosen?’
‘Such questions cannot be answered,’ said Gandalf. ‘You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess: not for power or wisdom at any rate. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.’

The apostle Paul writes:

‘For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in his presence.’ – 1 Corinthians i.26-29

What age was Frodo when he took possession of the Ring (and therefore what age did he continue to look because of the Ring’s power)? Thirty-three.

Evangelistic Talk on Matthew ii.1-12

Please bear with the prematurity of this post. On Friday 11th December, we’re having an evangelistic carol service in Moscow in the University of Idaho Auditorium. This is the talk I am hoping to give. Suggestions for improvement are welcome (but the talk can’t get much longer!).

You may have heard of the four stages of a man’s life:

1. You believe in Santa Claus
2. You don’t believe in Santa Claus
3. You become Santa Claus
4. You start to look like Santa Claus

For many, the story of Jesus Christ is in the same category as Santa Claus: we have known the Christmas story since childhood and we may have believed it then but now we’re adults, we’ve grown out of it, we don’t believe it any more. After all it’s only make-believe, isn’t it? Just something for the children? Listen again to the first sentence of Matthew 2: “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king…” The Christmas story is no fairy tale: it really happened, in a particular place at a particular time in history. And as we’ll see, it’s clear that it’s not just for children. It is something of which political leaders and scholars have to take notice and it’s for people from every nation. The story takes us on a journey to two towns and as we follow the journey, we’ll see who Jesus is, and the two ways that we can respond to him.

Our first stop is Jerusalem. Wise men from the east arrive and ask, “Where is he who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him.” God had somehow made known to the wise men the meaning of this new object – whatever it was – they had seen in the sky. As soon as the news reaches King Herod, there is no doubt in his mind about what has happened. To answer the question of the wise men he gathers together all the religious experts and asks them where the Christ was to be born. We tend of think of Christ as a surname, like Smith or Jones, but it’s a title, like Doctor or Professor. It means ‘the anointed one’, the king appointed by God. In our readings and carols, we have heard and sung about this king whom God promised would come. He would be a descendant of Israel’s great King David and also God himself. He would rescue people from the death that overshadows them. He would bring about a reign of peace and justice which would be never-ending and ever-increasing until it extends over whole earth. He would put right all that is wrong with the world.

Christmas is supposed to be the season of joy, peace and goodwill. Sadly it is so often the time of year when we are acutely aware that there is something deeply wrong with the world. Two years ago, the UK mental health charity Mind conducted a poll over the Christmas period which found that 40% of people experienced increased levels of stress or anxiety and 25% had increased feelings of depression. We find it hard to get on with those we love the most, we lose our temper with our relatives – our children, our parents, our siblings. Sadness and loneliness hits us as we remember our loved ones who have died and are no longer with us. Genesis 3 tells of the cause of all this. The first human beings wanted to be gods themselves, in charge of their own lives, so they disobeyed God by eating the fruit he had forbidden them, and we have all followed in our parents’ footsteps. But God cares about right and wrong and he has passed sentence on us: he has given us what we want. The consequences are broken relationships with one another, with the world in which we work, and most importantly with God, the source of our life and all that is good. Being cut off from him, we each face death, and after that separation from all that is good forever.

But God in his great love for the world he made hasn’t just left us in that mess. He promised that a king would come – the Christ – who would rescue us and put everything right. One of the promises God made about this king was where he would be born. So when Herod asks the religious experts where the Christ was born, they answer, in Bethlehem of Judaea, and they quote a passage from the book of Micah in the OT which says that from Bethlehem in the land of Judah shall come a governor who will rule the people of Israel. Of course, as Matthew tells us at the beginning of this episode, Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea. He is the Christ, the king of David’s line who is also God, who came to rescue us and put the world right. We need to remember that Micah was writing over seven hundred years before Jesus was born, and yet he pinpoints the place of the king’s birth. Jesus could not have arranged for this to happen. The fact that it happened just as God revealed it would, many centuries before it happened is one reason why many, many people are persuaded that the Christmas story is true, that Jesus is who Christians claim he is. The question then is how to respond to Jesus, the king. This is the question that faced Herod and the wise men, and their responses illustrate the only two possibilities that are open to us.

Herod in Jerusalem understands who Jesus is but rejects him. Herod is the king, he wants to stay king and the birth of Jesus as the King of the Jews, Christ, God’s anointed king is a threat to him. That’s clear from the way Matthew tells the story. In just a few verses, he switches back and forth between between “Herod the king”, “He that is born King of the Jews”, “Herod the King”. Do you remember how Herod responded to the news of Jesus’ birth? He was troubled. When he finds out that the Christ was to be born in Bethlehem of Judaea, do you remember what Herod did? He privily called the wise men – he summoned them in secret – and inquired of them what time the star had appeared, and thus when the child was born. When he asks them to bring him word that he may go and worship the child as well, it just doesn’t fit; he is up to no good. This is confirmed at end of the reading, where we are told that God warned the wise men in a dream that they should not return to Herod. Shortly after this Herod orders the slaughter of all the male children in Bethlehem and the surrounding region who were two years old and younger, on the basis of the time the wise men had told him the star had appeared. This is another way the rebellion we heard about in Genesis 3 shows itself. Herod, like our first parents, like each of us by nature, wants to keep the crown on his own head rather than acknowledge that it belongs to Jesus. He wants to be the ruler, rather than live under the rule of the king whom God has appointed. That is the scene in Jerusalem. Now we leave Jerusalem behind and follow the wise men to their second destination, Bethlehem, where we see their response to Jesus.

The wise men are sent on their way by Herod and the star they saw in the east now goes before them until it stops over the place where the child, Jesus, was. How different is their response to Herod’s! They have made it clear from the beginning that they want to come to the new-born king to worship him. Unlike Herod, who was troubled when the heard the news, the wise men rejoiced with great joy when they saw the star. They go into the house where the child was – the family has moved out of the stable now – and when they see the child, they fall down before him and worship him. They know what the reign of this king of the Jews will be like. The equipment of war will be thrown on the bonfire. Mortal enemies shall be friends again. There will be no more miscarriages of justice. No more will death be ever looming over them. And the wise men understand that this isn’t just for the people of Israel. His government will extend to the four corners of the earth. They recognise that this is good news and that the only sensible thing to do is to come from their faraway land and present themselves to him as his subjects. Historically, one of the ways you would show your loyalty and commitment to a ruler is by making some payment to him, bringing a tribute. That’s what the wise men do – they open their treasures and present gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. It’s the last one to which I’d like us to pay particular attention.

We read in one of the other accounts of Jesus’ life that it was the burial custom of the Jews to wrap the body of a dead person in linen cloths with spices. In his early thirties, Jesus was crucified – put to death on a cross by the Romans – and when his body was being prepared for burial, myrrh was used. In the gifts of the wise men, we are being given a clue about how Jesus was going to do all that God had promised he would. Unlike the rest of us, Jesus lived a perfect life, he never disobeyed his heavenly Father. He was the only man who ever lived who did not deserve to be cut off from God and face death and separation from all that is good forever. But on the cross, he willingly stood in for people like you and me who have disobeyed God and who do deserve that punishment, so that we needn’t face it ourselves. He paid the penalty in full, and that was seen when he rose from the dead on the third day; death could not hold him. Just before Christmas 2005, a new film adaptation of C. S. Lewis’s book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was released. Towards the end the White Witch demands that Edmund be given to her; according to the the “deep magic” of Narnia, all traitors belong to her and she must kill them at the stone table. The great lion, Aslan, the true king of Narnia offers himself in Edmund’s place, so Edmund goes free and Aslan and is sacrificed by the White Witch on the stone table himself. But there’s a deeper magic that the witch doesn’t know about. When one who is blameless willingly dies on behalf of the guilty, he may return to life; so Aslan comes back to life. The Bible says that we’re all traitors to the God who made us and we face the death penalty. But Christ died in the place of traitors so that they may go free and then he rose again. He ascended into heaven, and now reigns over the whole world.

So, this Christmas, as we hear again the story of the birth of Jesus, whose response will be yours? Will you be like King Herod in Jerusalem, troubled, because if Jesus is the King, you are not? Will you – like him – pull the crown more tightly over your own head, and refuse to give it to the one to whom it rightly belongs? We’ve heard what will happen to those who continue behave like that, as if they were the rulers of their lives. Or will you be like the wise men in Bethlehem and rejoice, because Jesus is this world’s true king who can save us from death and ruin, and will put the world right? As we survey the world around us, we don’t see right judgements and fair decisions everywhere, or all the relics of war being thrown onto the fire, or universal peace. Then again, all the wise men had in front of them was a child in its mother’s arms. Yet they knew who that child was and what he would do, and so they bow before him and give their allegiance to him. Will you do the same? Will you take the crown off your own head, and stop trying to govern your life your own way? Jesus freely offers to pardon you completely for the way you have lived as if you were in charge of your life. He offers free and total forgiveness, because of his death on the cross. Will you accept that he is the king, receive the pardon he is holding out to you, and accept his rule over your life? Those who do needn’t fear the future but can instead look forward to the wonderful, glorious, sure, and certain hope of being with Christ in heaven after death, and later of being raised up to live forever in his perfect future kingdom of life, peace, uprightness and justice.

May you all enjoy a merry Christmas, and a happy New Year.

The Eschatology of Psalm 8

Psalm 8 is a psalm of praise to the Lord whose name is majestic in all the earth who has set his glory above the heavens (v. 1). Verse 2 reads:

“Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.”

Jesus quotes this in Matthew 21.16 in relation to the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” and he says, in response to the indignation of the chief priests and scribes:

“And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?”

The might with which God defeats his enemies is the praise of Jesus by infants and nursing babies. The place of infants in God’s covenant people is not restricted to the Old Testament. Even with the coming of Christ, God regards children as an integral part of his believing, worshipping covenant people.

David considers the night sky, the moon and the stars which God has made and he stands in awe that God should care for and remember mere human beings and, more than that, set them a little lower than the heavenly beings, crown them with glory and honour, and give him power to rule over everything that God has made (vv. 3-8). These verses are quoted and expounded in Hebrews 2.5-9:

“For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak. But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands: Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.”

Hebrews 1 contrasts the angels with Christ, so it seems that the contrast in Hebrews 2.5-9 is also between angels and Christ, i.e. Christ is the man, the son of man, referred to in verse 6. God has not subjected the world to come to angels; now, in the present, God has crowned his Son with glory and honour and has put everything under his feet (‘For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him’), though as we look around at the world, we don’t yet see that. Because everything has been placed in subjection under Christ’s feet now, in the future we will see the world to come subject to Jesus, and not angels. Christ is reigning now. Everything is under his control now.

Verse 6 of Psalm 8 is also quoted in 1 Corinthians 15, in which the ’son of man’ is again identified as Jesus.

“For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming. Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.” – 1 Corinthians 15.22-28

Christ has been raised from the dead, and when he returns to judge the world, those who belong to him will be raised from the dead as well. Then Christ will deliver the kingdom up to God the Father. Before that, Christ will have destroyed all his enemies. The last enemy that will be destroyed before the end comes is death. So before death is destroyed, all Christ’s other enemies  – all other rule and authority and power – will be subdued, will be placed under his feet. Christ is reigning now. God has put all things in subjection under his feet. Before Christ returns, we can expect to see all opposition to Christ cease, as all things, which already belong to Christ, are actually brought under his rule.

“O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!”

Red Shift, Hubble’s Law and the Age and Origin of the Universe

The Doppler Effect is the change in frequency observed when a source of a wave and an observer move towards or away from one another. An example of this would be the drop in pitch of the sound of a car horn or the siren on a police car or an ambulance as it passes someone on the pavement. When source is moving towards the observer the frequency is higher, and the pitch goes up; when the source moving away the frequency lower. The same thing happens with light. Atoms of particular elements emit light at characteristic frequencies. The frequencies of light emitted by atoms of an element in a galaxy that is moving away from the Earth have a lower frequency and longer wavelength than those of light emitted by atoms of that same element on earth. This is red shift, so called because the light is shifted towards the red (lower frequency, longer wavelength) end of the visible spectrum. The reverse is true for galaxies approaching the earth: light is shifted towards the blue (shorter wavelength, higher frequency) end of the visible spectrum. Observations have shown that red shift is observed more than blue shift. This is evidence that the universe is expanding.

However, it is also claimed that the predominance of red shift, because it provides some evidence for an expanding universe, consequently provides evidence for the Big Bang theory of the universe – the idea that the universe rapidly expanded from a single point and then cooled and coalesced. This is not necessarily the case. It is quite possible to envisage a situation in which, for example, God created the stars on the fourth day to occupy a particular (rather large) volume, and then caused the universe to expand, perhaps to counteract the effect of gravity bringing everything together. This would also fit the evidence that the universe is expanding. The data don’t tell you what caused the expansion. That explanation depends on your pre-existing beliefs about the origins of the universe.

It is possible to calculate the speed at which a galaxy is moving away from our solar system if the change in the frequency is known. Edwin Hubble observed that further an object was from the Earth, the faster it was travelling. Hubble’s law can be expressed as v = H d where v is the velocity in kilometres per second, H is the Hubble constant, the accepted value of which is 65 kilometres per second per megaparsec, and d is the distance in megaparsecs, a megaparsec being a unit used in astronomy because of the vast distances involved. Nothing can go faster than the speed of light, so the distance when the velocity is the speed of light must be the edge of the universe. The edge of the universe is about 4,600 megaparsecs away. People have used this value to calculate the age of the universe. Light must have travelled the distance of 4,600 megaparsecs since the Big Bang, and using the simple equation distance = speed x time, the time taken for light travel that distance to the edge of the universe can be calculated, which gives the age of the universe. The answer comes out at about fifteen billion years, although this is adjusted downwards because of gravitational attraction acting as the brakes on the expansion. This is far greater than the six thousand years or so you get if you calculate the age of the universe using the genealogies in the early chapters of Genesis. But this old age for the universe is based on the presupposition that the Big Bang theory is true. If the volume of the universe, which God filled with starts on the fourth day, was already large, and it expanded from there, the time taken for the universe to reach its current dimensions would be much shorter and the universe would actually be much younger. The age you calculate for the universe depends on your prior assumptions about how it got there in the first place.

Physics, Music and the Church

“And his brother’s name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ.” – Genesis 4.21

One has to do something with verses like this in Scripture. Given that it comes in the context of a litany of who bare whom, who was born unto whom and who begat whom, I think it is meant to be taken as a description of what it looks like for man to be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the earth (Genesis 1.28). Part of ruling the earth involves using its resources to make stringed and wind instruments. This is what we are to do as Christians, for Christ is the New Adam, the one through whom everything is placed in subjection under man’s feet (Hebrews 2.6-9). What are these stringed and wind instruments to be used for? Among other things, the praise of our Triune God:

Praise ye the LORD.
Praise God in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his power.
Praise him for his mighty acts: praise him according to his excellent greatness.
Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp.
Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs.
Praise him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon the high sounding cymbals.
Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD.
Praise ye the LORD

- Psalm 150

We are to praise God because of his mighty acts, which in Scripture so often refer to his great deeds of salvation. Because God sent his son to die on the cross in the place of his people, his people are saved from the guilt and power of their sin, and so we are to praise him, and we are to praise him musically, using brass, stringed, wind and percussion instruments.

Now, we could just learn to play musical instruments mechanically – place your fingers here, blow there, pluck that string, and this sound comes out. But people who know how things work are always better at using them than people who just follow instructions out of a book. For example, those who learn a language well – syntax, verb forms, noun endings, vocabulary – are able to communicate much more effectively than those who have learnt a few phrases in from a guidebook, the riches of that language’s heritage are opened up, and proficient linguists are able to teach others. This is why the church needs people who understand how musical instruments work. And that means the church needs people who are trained in physics, people who understand stationary waves on stretched strings and in air in tubes with closed and open ends and how the length of these strings and tubes, speed, wavelength and frequency are connected. The church needs people who know how frequencies and octaves relate, what happens to the sound when you press a string at a particular place against a fretboard, or change the length of a column of vibrating air by so much, and why. The church needs people who are familiar with modes of vibration, fundamentals and harmonics and what that has to do with timbre. This is necessary for redeemed humanity to grow in maturity in exercising dominion over the earth and in praising God for his greatness and his mighty acts.

Five hundred

The number of years since the birth of John Calvin.

The number of years since Brasenose College was founded.

The number of posts on this weblog.

Reformation Day and the Eve of the Feast of All Saints

As Reformation Day draws to a close, at least on this side of the Atlantic, I thought I’d simply share with you the hymn below, written – as it happens – by Brasenose alumnus, the Rt. Rev. Reginald Heber, which we sang after Sabbath dinner this evening.

Today is also the Eve of the Feast of All Saints, and so this hymn seems highly apposite. It speaks first of Christ, whose banner as he seeks to gain his kingly crown is the red of his blood, shed on the cross, in his whose train follow Stephen, the first Christian martyr, the Apostles who faced death by cross, flame, sword, lion, and the noble army of men, boys, matrons and maids who also entered heaven through peril, toil and pain (Acts 14.22). This noble army includes the great Reformers, men like Tyndale who was strangled at the stake and then burned in 1536, Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley who were burned at the stake in a ditch outside Balliol College in Oxford in 1555 and 1556, and Luther and Calvin, who although never martyred, had to flee from one town to another, as Christ commanded his disciples to do (Matthew 10.23). This hymn calls us to follow in their train as they followed in Christ’s, and is a prayer that God would give us the grace without which we cannot do it.

The Son of God goes forth to war,
A kingly crown to gain;
His blood-red banner streams afar:
Who follows in his train?

Who best can drink his cup of woe,
Triumphant over pain;
Who patient bears his cross below,
He follows in his train.

The martyr first, whose eagle eye
Could pierce beyond the grave;
Who saw his Master in the sky,
And called on him to save.

Like him, with pardon on his tongue,
In midst of mortal pain,
He prayed for them that did the wrong:
Who follows in his train?

A glorious band, the chosen few,
On whom the Spirit came:
Twelve valiant saints, their hope they knew,
And mocked the cross and flame.

They met the tyrant’s brandished steel,
The lion’s gory mane;
They bowed their necks the death to feel:
Who follows in their train?

A noble army, men and boys,
The matron and the maid,
Around the Saviour’s throne rejoice,
In robes of light arrayed.

They climbed the steep ascent of heaven
Through peril, toil, and pain:
O God, to us may grace be given
To follow in their train.

St. Crispin’s Day

October 25th is the commemoration of Ss Crispin and Crispinian, and is also the day of the victory of the English over the French at Agincourt in 1415. Our Lord’s Day feast tomorrow will be a little celebration of St. Crispin’s Day. My wife has baked a cake iced with Henry V’s coat of arms and “Agincourt 1415, Non nobis, Domine”. We will sing “O Love, How Deep, How Broad, How High” [tune: Deo Gracias (Agincourt Hymn), an English melody of the 15th century] and watch Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V.

This is the prayer I will say as part of our liturgy for the Lord’s Day, following our customary verses and responses from Psalm 67, and some verses from “O Day of Rest and Gladness”:

Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give the glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and faithfulness. Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?” You are in the heavens, you do all that you please, and we trust in you for you are our help and our shield. You have remembered us by sending your Son to die on the cross in our place to save us from our sins and bring us into our promised rest. We praise you for this Sabbath feast, this food, this fellowship, this celebration and we pray that you would give us increase, us and our children. We will bless you from this time forth and for evermore, O Lord, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Below is a little exhortation I will give:

“God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.” – I Corinthians i.27

Saints Crispin and Crispinian were twin brothers born to a noble Roman family in the third century AD. They fled persecution for their faith, and ended up in northern France where they preached the gospel to the Gauls and made shoes by night. The governor of Belgic Gaul, Rictus Varus had them tortured and beheaded in around 286 BC. What could be more weak in the eyes of the world than being tortured and killed? To the world, that is not a demonstration of power. What is a more ultimate demonstration of the world’s strength than its ability to take away someone’s life? Christ humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross and therefore God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. Those who by faith die with Christ will be raised with him. In that great chapter of faith, Hebrews 11, v. 35 says: “Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection.” And so the strong in the eyes of the world are put to shame. “God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.”

This pattern runs throughout Bible history. In 1 Samuel 14, when Jonathan and his armour bearer are planning to take a Philistine garrison, Jonathan says, v. 6: “Come, and let us go over unto the garrison of these uncircumcised: it may be that the LORD will work for us: for there is no restraint to the LORD to save by many or by few.” These two men are the picture of weakness against the strength of the Philistine garrison. But God gives the Philistines into the hand of Jonathan and his armour bearer; there’s a panic, the Philistines turn on one another, they flee. “God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.”

We see God working in this way throughout history. The Battle of Agincourt in 1415 is one example. The strength of the French was vastly superior to the English under Henry V. Shakespeare tells us that French troops numbered 60 000 compared to 12 000 English. The English were outnumbered five to one. But God gave the English a great victory. Shakespeare also tells us that ten thousand French were slain and there were only five and twenty English dead. King Henry says:

“O God, thy arm was here;
And not to us, but to thy arm alone,
Ascribe we all! When without strategem,
But in plain shock and even play of battle,
Was ever known so great and little loss
On one part and on the other? Take it, God,
For it is none but thine!”

“God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.”

God works in this way so that no human being can boast before him. The mighty are put to shame, brought to nothing in their defeat. Those who are given the victory have no reason to glory because it was not through their strength that they were saved. It was in their weakness that God put to shame the strong. So as we remember this day, may we imitate the faith of Ss Crispin and Crispinian. May we deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Christ, and lose our lives for his sake and the gospel’s that we might save it, so that it might please God through our weakness to confound the might of the world. And in everything – our salvation, all the victories, all the exaltations we experience –  as those who are weak, may we remain humble, and never boast, but always give God the glory.

Idiotic do-gooders

I have recently started following Ed West’s weblog on the Telegraph website and I am enjoying what I read there. He comments on the enforced closure of schools (even those with few pupils from religious minorities) in the East End of London for Eid, Diwali and Guru Nanak’s birthday. He identifies that multiculturalism is driven not so much by ethnic minorities pressing for their rights (they largely respect that this is still – just – a Christian state) but by white liberals (who don’t). Indeed, he highlights the irony that, while the drive for multiculturalism is a divide-and-conquer strategy of secular atheists, the agents who are actually promoting multiculturalism are often Christians who believe and endorse anything to do with “faith”, who have little interest in the beliefs and concerns of their own flocks.

Although there have undoubtedly been problems with children being taken out of school for religious days, I wonder how much this latest plan is the idea of actual religious minorities and how much it is the idea of stupid white liberals who want to up their number of ethnic minority Facebook friends. Most Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs are happy to respect the identity of the Christian state; it’s a shame the people who run it have no such respect…

It’s an unworkable system, but the whole point is it’s supposed to be unworkable. The irony is that while the “do-gooders” enforcing multiculturalism on the ground are often idiotic Anglicans, Catholics and Methodists who believe in “faith”, whatever the hell that means, and would prefer to go to an inter-faith conference then meet their own parishioners, the cultural drive is largely created by secular atheists whose main wish is to undermine Christianity.

The surreal frenzy of the warmists

I enjoyed reading THIS piece by Christopher Booker in Saturday’s Telegraph. He highlights the trend for abnormally cold winters over the past few years and the net increase in the size and depth of polar ice-caps as a result of reduced melting. Climate change propagandists, helped by the government, are the most noticeable source of heat, as they desperately try to stir up mass panic and hysteria about global warming, heatwaves and floods.

Not many people in Britain were aware, I suspect, that 20 per cent of the entire United States was last week covered in snow, the greatest October snow cover the country had known for years (for details see the Watts Up With That website). Similarly unseasonable snowfalls blanketed central Europe and the Alps. Freak October snows caused traffic chaos in New Zealand. Hundreds of Tibetan herdsmen had to be rescued when blizzards swept their summer pastures weeks early.

This is now the third year running when there have been signs of an abnormally cold winter across large parts of the world. Last year’s October snowfalls in the US broke records which in some cases had stood for over a century, prefacing one of America’s coldest winters for decades. This summer’s Arctic ice-melt stopped nearly 1 million square kilometres short of its record low in 2007. Around Antarctica this year’s sea ice-melt was the lowest recorded since satellite data began in 1979, leaving the ice 30 per cent above its 30-year average…

Equally surreal [to the government's £6 million campaign] was the Gadarene rush last week by warmist groupies in the media, led as usual by the BBC, to revive interest in the fiasco of Pen Hadow’s Catlin expedition in the spring to measure the thickness of Arctic ice with an old tape measure. Sponsored by a City firm with a commercial interest in promoting “insurance against climate change”, Mr Hadow’s forlorn bid to walk across the ice to the North Pole (from which he had to be airlifted less than halfway to his goal because it was so cold) lived up in every way to Watts Up With That’s description of it as “the worst scientific joke of 2009″.

Despite Hadow’s claims that the ice was “thinner than expected”, the scientific value of this publicity stunt was zero. A team of Canadian and German scientists flying across the ice at the same time, measuring its thickness with the latest electromagnetic equipment, found exactly the opposite, that the ice was “thicker than expected”, as was confirmed when the summer melt stopped 970,000 sq km short of its 2007 low. But this didn’t deter the Today programme and much of the press from trying, with the aid of a tame Cambridge professor, to pretend that Hadow’s tape measure had proved that Arctic ice will soon disappear.

Keep Families Free

I have mentioned elsewhere on my weblog the review by Mr. Badman into home education, proposing increasing government regulation.

One proposal is that a representative from the government could have the right to come into the home of a family in which the children are being educated at home and question the child about what he or she is being taught, without the parents being present. That’s right, a state official and a child in your living room, alone. I can think of a whole number of things being wrong with this. For a start, think of the intimidation and trauma it would cause you if you were such a child: a stranger comes into your home and he makes your parents leave the room while he asks you questions. The emotional or psychological mistreatment is part of the definition of child abuse. Parents have a responsibility to protect their child from harm, and the state should punish those who cause children harm, not cause that harm themselves.

There are also wider issues: the Bible says that education of a child is the responsibility of the child’s parents (Deuteronomy 6.4-7, Proverbs 4.1-5, Ephesians 5.4 &c.). Government guidelines, reflecting English law, which still retains some memory of our heritage as a Christian nation, acknowledge this:

“The responsibility for a child’s education rests with their parents.” (Elective Home Education: Guidelines for Local Authorities, Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2007, page 4)

Education is compulsory but school is not. Parents must cause their children of compulsory school age to receive efficient, full-time education suitable to their age, ability and aptitude, and any special education needs, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise (Section 7 of the Education Act 1996). Efficient simply means that the education “achieves that which it sets out to achieve”, and “suitable” means one that “primarily equips a child for life within the community of which he is a member, rather than the way of life in the country as a whole. Currently, local authorities can intervene if and only if they suspect a child is not receiving a suitable education at home. This is right – the one who is in authority is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Parents are responsible for ensure their child receives a good education, and they may delegate that education to a school, whether it be a state school or an independent school (although I would counsel against Christian families delegating the education of their children to non-Christian schools), or whether they educate them at home. But what this change in the law communicates is that it is the state’s responsibility to educate children and the state has deigned to delegate the education of children to some parents.

This is being imposed on us as a supposed safeguard against abuse, but there is no evidence that home education is being used as a cover for abuse. Rather, it is sadly often those who are in state schools, and who are even known to the social services, who end up being tragically abused.

The kingdom of God does not advance through the world, the yeast does not permeate the loaf, through the law or through politics. But Christ is the Lord of all of our lives, and that includes how we behave as citizens in the nation in which he has placed us. He has given us gifts and he will judge us on how we have used them. That means we have to engage with the political process in England and make the use of the freedoms which God has so graciously granted to us. May I exhort you therefore, if you educate your children at home, or if you plan to educate your children at home in the future (as Brooke and I intend to, if the Lord grants us children), or even if you don’t or wouldn’t educate your children at home, for the sake of those who do or would, to do the following:

1. Visit The Christian Institute for more information, and for a chilling video, about the government’s proposals.
2. Sign the petition at No. 10, asking the government to reject the recommendations of this review.
3. E-mail or write to the Department for Schools and Families (Consultation Unit, Area GB, Castle View House, East Lane, Runcorn, Cheshire WA7 2GJ) while the period of consultation is still open.

The consultation closes on Monday 19th October, so act now.

The following is attributed to German pastor Martin Niemöller:

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

I am most certainly not accusing our present government of being National Socialists. But I am saying that if we don’t speak up about the erosion of our liberties now, one day, before we know where we are, it will be too late.

“Ye are the salt of the earth”: A sermon on Matthew v.13

A sermon for the Chinese Church in Pullman, Washington, to be preached, with translation, on Sunday 11th October 2009.

“Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.” – Matthew 5.13

Introduction

In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Bennet remarks: “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?” Today, our text is Matthew 5.13, “Ye are the salt of the earth.” In November Lord willing, I hope to preach on vv. 14-16, “Ye are the light of the world.” The theme of these two metaphors is, “For what do we live?” What is our purpose as Christians? What is the church for? Jesus is addressing his disciples in chapters 5-7 (Matthew 5.1). As we look at Matthew 5.13, we will see first what it means for people who profess faith in Jesus Christ to be the salt of the earth, why they are there. We will see secondly Jesus’ warning to those who bear his name but have become salt without savour, who fail to do that for which God has placed them in the world.

Salt of the earth

In the metaphor after this, ‘ye are the light of the world’, Jesus explains what it means for them to be light, what it is that people see: their good works (v. 16). But in this metaphor, ‘ye are the salt of the earth’, Jesus doesn’t. We have to look at how salt is used in the OT to give us the background we need to understand what Jesus is saying here.

Salt, first of all, is an agent of death; it brings about death. At the end of Deuteronomy 29, God describes a situation in which one of his people thinks that all that matters for him is to be part of God’s covenant people in name and his heart turns away from the Lord, Yahweh, the one true God, and serves the gods of the nations. Unchecked, his influence is like a cancer that is left untreated and spreads throughout the body. God will be angry, and he describes what the future will look like. Deuteronomy 29.22-23: “They [the next generation and people from faraway lands] see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the LORD hath laid upon it; and that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein.” A land sowed with salt is dead – nothing can grow and bear fruit. Salt is an agent of death. This is part of Jesus wants us to think when he says that his disciples are the salt of the earth. Just as with the English word ‘earth’, the word in the Greek can have a double meaning. It can mean the world, the planet. But it can also mean land, or ground or soil, where you sow seed, and if the conditions are right, things grow. It is legitimate to pick up on this double-meaning of the word for ‘earth’. Jesus used this word for a reason; when Jesus says that his disciples are the light of the world in v. 14, he uses a different word. He want us to understand the word for ‘earth’ in these two senses. In Deuteronomy 29, salt on land makes the land become dead. In Matthew 5, ’salt of the earth’ means something that in some sense (and we see in what sense in a little while), brings about the death of the earth.

Salt is an agent of death, but it is also an agent of life from death, of resurrection. In 2 Kings 2, Elisha succeeds Elijah and we are told about one of the miracles he performs; vv. 19-22: “And the men of the city said unto Elisha, Behold, I pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord seeth: but the water is naught, and the ground barren. And he said, Bring me a new cruse [that is, a bowl], and put salt therein. And they brought it to him. And he went forth unto the spring of the waters, and cast the salt in there, and said, Thus saith the LORD, I have healed these waters; there shall not be from thence any more death or barren land. So the waters were healed unto this day, according to the saying of Elisha which he spake.” The land is dead – it’s unfruitful, nothing is growing on it because the water is bad. People are dying because the water is bad. Elisha throwing salt into the spring is the Lord’s means of healing the water so that the land is no longer dead, so that things grow on it, so that people no longer die. Salt here is an agent of life from death. We mustn’t forget the everyday use of salt which would have been in Jesus’ mind and the mind of his disciples. It makes that which is tasteless and fit only to be thrown out able to be eaten. Salt is important for this reason in the Bible as well. Job 6.6: “Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt?” When my wife and I were in England the church we attended used to have a meeting in the late afternoon in someone’s home. We went to it for a number of months. After the meeting, we would would all eat together. I remember asking her if she was enjoying her dinner and she replied with a polite silence. Brooke really didn’t enjoy the food. Then she discovered where the salt was kept. After that, everything was much better. There’s a kind of bringing of life out of death here as well. That which is fit only to be thrown out and destroyed is raised up as it is given a new taste and made fit for eating.

A further Biblical use of salt unites these ideas of death and resurrection. In Leviticus 2, the offering of flour mixed with oil and frankincense, called a ‘meat offering’ in the Authorized Version [ 'meat' in the general sense of 'food'] is described; v. 13: “And every oblation of thy meat offering shalt thou season with salt; neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat offering: with all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt.” Salt is associated with death here, as the offering mixed with salt is burnt up, destroyed. There is also life here – the offering is a pleasing aroma to the Lord; God is pleased when the sacrifice is offered. His people deserve destruction for their sin, their rebellion against him, but the offering is destroyed in their place and as the offering is destroyed, God is pleased with his people and they receive life rather than death.

So, salt in the OT is a means of bringing about both death and life out of death, a means of bringing about death and resurrection as it makes that which is unacceptable to him acceptable. When Jesus says to his disciples, in Matthew 5.13, “Ye are the salt of the earth,” he is saying that they have been scattered, sown throughout the earth, to be in some sense agents of death and resurrection to the world, as they make the world which is currently unacceptable to God acceptable to him. Like the salt in the land in Deuteronomy 29, they are God’s means of bringing death in some sense to the world. Like the salt Elisha poured into the spring, they are also God’s means of bringing life from the dead, of resurrection. Like salt on tasteless food, they are the means of making the world which is unacceptable to him, acceptable. Like salt on the sacrifices, associated with the death and resurrection of the world, as old world dies, God is pleased with the world and it experiences new life. That is the job he has given them, that is their office; that is what they are for.

What does this actually mean? Since the first human beings, the whole world has been in rebellion against God. This is what the Bible calls sin. This rightly angers God and the whole world deserves his judgement, deserves death, both death of the body and also his punishment forever. The world is unacceptable to him. Christians are salt, the means by which this world which is unacceptable to God because of sin is made acceptable to him, as it undergoes a death and a resurrection. The death is a death to sin, and the resurrection means walking in newness of life, living for God. How are Christians to bring about this death to sin and resurrection to new spiritual life? In his great love for the world he made, God the Father sent his Son into the world to save it. God the Son willingly came to this world, was born as a man, the Lord Jesus Christ, in order to save it. Christ saved the world by dying on the cross, bearing the punishment that is due to sin himself, and then rising again. Christians are agents of the death and resurrection of the world as ministers of the church, who represent them, baptise the nations and proclaim this message of Christ, which is Christ’s commission (Matthew 28.19-20). Baptism means death to sin and resurrection to newness of life. Romans 6.3-4: “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” Christians generally, not just ministers, also bring about the death and resurrection of the world as they themselves share the gospel to those around them, their friends, their neighbours, their colleagues at work and summon them to turn from their sin and trust in Jesus Christ for their forgiveness. The gospel is the word that makes people acceptable to God, makes him pleased with them, and brings resurrection, life out of death. 1 Peter 1.23: “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God.” This can be seen from the context. Notice how this comes straight after the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes conclude by saying, Matthew 5.11-12: “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.” Those disciples are salt that has savour. They are not afraid to bear the name of Christ, to be known publicly as a Christian. Like the prophets, they are not afraid to speak God’s word. They don’t care what people think about them or say about them or do to them; that won’t stop them. They love God and love people, and so will share the gospel with them, no matter what the cost. A couple of examples from the early church illustrate this. In Acts 8, persecution arises against the church in Jerusalem and they are all scattered. What does the whole church which has been scattered do? Acts 8.4: “Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word.” In Philippians 1, Paul is talking about his imprisonment and says how this has made the believers confident so that they are sharing the gospel boldly. Philippians 1.14: “And many of the brethren in the Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.”

Notice the extent of the effect Christians are to have. ‘Ye are the salt of the earth.’ God wants the whole earth to die to its sin and walk in newness of life to his praise and honour. The whole earth is unacceptable to him in its sin and he wants to make it acceptable for him as it undergoes a death and resurrection. This includes, but is not limited to the individuals who live on the earth. This also means schools, universities, hospitals, shops, businesses, governments, nations. God wants each of those to die to its sin and be raised to exist for his praise and honour. Our gospel, the message we proclaim must be as wide as that. God does not just want the conversion of our invisible souls. Of course he does want that. But he wants more than that. He wants the whole person to be converted. We have many, many different relationships with others. We are parents to our children, children to our parents. We are employees at work, employers of others. We are students at school or university, or teachers in schools. We are citizens in the country, friends, neighbours of different people. God wants the conversion of people in each of those different relationships. He wants parents to be Christian in their parenting, children to be Christian children. He wants employees to be Christian in their work, employers to be Christian employers. He wants students to be Christian in their studies, teachers to be Christian in their teaching. He wants citizens to be Christian citizens, friends to be Christian in their friendships, neighbours to be Christian neighbours. As individuals die to sin and rise to newness of life again in each of those relationships, those areas of life – families, places of work, schools, neighbourhoods, nation – will undergo a death and resurrection as made acceptable to God. This is not imposed from the top down – we don’t achieve this through the law or through politics. It is a bottom-up process, as individuals, families come to faith in Christ and that has a knock-on effect in all their different spheres of life. God wants the whole world. His people are the salt of the earth. This is what it means for those who profess faith in Jesus Christ to be the salt of the earth. That is our purpose. This is the job description for the position ‘Salt of the Earth’ to which he has appointed all who bear the name ‘Christian’. Having told his disciples this, Jesus warns them what will happen if they become salt without savour, so that they won’t be like it.

Salt without savour

“If the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.”

When salt loses its savour or its taste, it has stopped doing what it was intended for. It has stopped having any effect on what it has been poured out on. So when Christians as the salt of the earth lose their savour, they have stopped influencing the world in the way God wants them to influence it. They have stopped doing what God has called them to do in the earth. They have either forgotten or are resisting God’s purpose to save the world, to make the world which is unacceptable to him acceptable, to bring life to a dead world. They aren’t interested in other people become Christians. This might be through fear or through selfishness. Unlike the disciples described in vv. 11-12, salt that has lost its savour therefore includes Christians who always keep quiet about the fact that they are Christian. They wouldn’t dream of sharing the gospel with others because of what people might think about them, or say about them to others, what might happen to their reputation, what people might do to them. To use Jesus’ phrase later in the gospel, they ‘deny him before men’. Salt that has lost its savour would also include those Christians whose love for God and for people has grown cold. These Christians don’t care about God’s desire that the world be saved. They don’t care that people who aren’t Christians will face God’s wrath, and they they need to die to their sin and be raised to new life through faith in Christ. Their Christianity is just a weekend hobby, they are happy to come to church on a Sunday, but it’s just to have a good sing and to meet their friends. That is what it looks like for salt to have lost its savour. I don’t want you to mishear me. This is not talking about those who have missed one or two opportunities to say something about Christ that they could have taken. This is also not talking about those who perhaps have children and their time is mostly taken up with looking after them. You have to be faithful in the situation God has put you. If you have children, you have been placed as salt amongst them first and foremost. This is talking about a persistent, unrepentant, hardened shame of being known as a Christian, or a persistent, unrepentant, hardened disregard of God’s will and lack of love for others. This is salt that has completely lost its savour.

Salt without taste is useless, it’s good for nothing, and all that you can do with it is throw it out, where it will be trampled under people’s feet as they walk by. So Jesus wants to warn us against turning into this kind of hardened, unrepentant Christian, who has completely lost sight of God’s purpose for them through fear and shame or through being completely self-centred. When he comes to judge, they will be judged, will be shut out of the new creation. These are professing Christians, people who would call themselves Christian, baptised people. Jesus calls them salt, and not some other kind of white crystals that made it into the salt; they are salt, but that have lost their savour, their taste, and so they are thrown out. Later in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 7.21-23, Jesus says: “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” The people that Jesus is talking about are very sound in what they say about the gospel. They acknowledge him as the Lord. They do impressive public things in Christ’s name. They are, as far as they are concerned and as far as everyone else is concerned, Christians. Yet they are shut of the kingdom of heaven, out of the new creation. Do you see that, if I can put it like this, Jesus says there is a type of Christian who is going to hell? This is the nominal Christian, one who is a Christian in name, but whose overall life is one of disobedience to God’s will and sin. Again, don’t misunderstand me. Jesus is not saying that we earn our salvation. By no means. The way we live, our obedience to God’s will, is evidence of a converted heart, a heart that has repented and believed the gospel. It is the good fruit that shows that the tree is healthy, to use Jesus; illustration from earlier in the chapter. Going back to Matthew 5.13 and ‘ye are the salt of the earth’, one of those fruits is having that desire to see the earth which is dead in its sins converted and receive new life, and acting on that desire by share the good news of Christ. In contrast, never sharing the good news with anyone through shame and fear or through being completely unconcerned with God’s will that the earth be saved is one indication that someone is a nominal Christian, that he isn’t converted, and will be judged. Jesus said, “Whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 10.33). It is bad fruit, which indicates the tree is diseased, and diseased trees bearing bad fruit are cut down and burned.

Jesus warns of what will happen if we turn out to be this kind of Christian so that we won’t be like that. It may be that this is an area in which some of us need to repent. We may need to own up to the fact that we have been drifting away from what God wants us to do. We may need to own up to the fact that we are more concerned with other people’s opinion of us, what they might say, or that we have become too inward-focused, or are becoming lazy. While we have not completely lost our taste, we are starting to lose it, we do not have as much taste as we once had. We may need to own up to that, to say sorry to God for it, to ask his forgiveness, and ask for help to change. Part of repentance is turning away from what we have been doing and starting to do what we should be doing. We have seen from the Bible what it means for Christians to be the salt of the earth, what God has called us to, what we are for. We are to bring about the death and resurrection of the earth, as the world is made acceptable to him and he becomes pleased with it. This is a death to sin and a resurrection to newness of life. We do so as our ministers baptise, and as we all share the good news of Christ with our friends, and families, and neighbours and colleagues and call them to repent and trust in Christ. In the strength which God supplies, we need to go out and do it. “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.”

“Thank God, first, for all his gifts”: A talk on humility from 1 Corinthians iv.7

A talk I gave for ‘Chapel’ at Montrose Christian Academy in Moscow, Idaho.

Michael Faraday was an English Natural Philosopher (a chemist and a physicist). He came from a Christian family and was a Christian himself. He became famous for a number of his discoveries. He made the forerunner of the electric motor. He discovered the principle that underlies the transformer which we need to convert electricity which is generated and transmitted at high voltages to lower voltages to be safe for use in our homes. Faraday also found that if he passed a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current was produced in the wire and Faraday used this to construct the ancestor of modern power generators. As a marker of the fame he had achieved he had lunch with Queen Victoria. Members of royalty attended the lectures he gave. So influential was Michael Faraday that a generation later Albert Einstein kept a photograph of Faraday on his study wall alongside a picture of Isaac Newton. You would think that all his achievements would have made him proud, boastful and big-headed. Yet when Faraday retired from the Royal Institution after almost 30 years, he said, “Thank God, first, for all his gifts.” Our theme this morning is humility.

1 Corinthians iv.7:

“For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?”

One of the issues that led Paul to write the First Letter to the Corinthians was division and the cause of division was boasting. One person said, “I follow Paul.” Another person said, “I follow Apollos.” (Apollos another man who was a good speaker and who knew the Scriptures well, and who went to Corinth). Another person said, “I follow Cephas,” (another name for the Apostle Peter). Each person thought that they were better, had a higher status, than the others because of the person they said they followed. You can imagine it:
“I must be better because I follow Paul and he was the one who came here first and spent the longest time with us.”
“I must be better because I follow Apollos because he is better at speaking in public.”
“I must be better because I follow Cephas, and he was an apostle when Paul was still attacking the church.”
Then someone else comes along and says, “I follow Christ.” Well, what can you say to that? That was the situation in Corinth

Paul says, in effect, “I thank God that I didn’t baptise any of you! You would have started saying, ‘I was baptised by Paul and that means I’m a proper Christian and you’re not,’ and you would have been divided even more.” Paul had to write, 1 Corinthians iii.5-7, “Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.”

Paul is saying, “Don’t say, ‘I follow Paul,’ or, ‘I follow Apollos,’ because you think that we are anything special. We’re not. Don’t think that it matters whether you heard the gospel from me or Apollos because one of us is better than another. We’re not. We’re just workers in God’s field doing different jobs at different times. God is the one who causes the plants to grow. And so you are not better than someone else because you belong to the “Paul” group, or the “Apollos” group or the “Cephas” group. You are not better, or more special, because you believed the gospel when Paul preached it to you, or when Apollos preached it to you. God assigned that to you.” Even who you hear the gospel from and when is a gift of God. So don’t boast, don’t be proud, don’t “puff yourself up”. “For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?”

That is the shape of the Christian life: everything that we have is a gift from God, so that we have no ground for boasting, we can’t take any credit for ourselves. This is what we mean by the word grace. This is how we begin as Christians and how we go on as Christians. It is all of grace. Our salvation is a gift from God; it is something we have received. We have contributed nothing towards it except the sin, the rebellion against God from which we need to be saved. Paul writes in Ephesians ii.8-9: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”

God the Father is the one who, two thousand years ago, sent his Son to die on the cross in our place to bear the punishment we deserve for our sins. God the Son is the one who, two thousand years ago, willingly came to die on the cross for us. God the Holy Spirit is the one who comes to work in our lives to cause us to believe this and so be forgiven our sins, and saved from the wrath, God’s right anger, to come. It is as if God has taken us by the hand, opened our hand up, and placed his gift on to our open palm. Our salvation is God’s gift to us; I hope that’s a gift that everyone here has received. And because our salvation is a gift from God, we mustn’t think we’re better than anyone else because we’re Christians, we mustn’t look down on them, because we didn’t do anything to deserve it, we have done nothing to be proud of; we must have humility. “For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?”

This is how we begin as Christians and how we go on as Christians. This will make a difference to how to think of yourself and how you behave in school. You will do better in some subjects than others in your class. You will just find it easy to understand them, breeze through the work that is set and achieve high grades while your classmates may find it harder to get their heads around it, struggle through the work and not do very well in quizzes. That does not make you any better, any more important, any more significant, any more special than your classmates. You would not have that ability in that subject, you would not find it easy, you would not get high grades, if God had not given those things to you. That applies to many things, particular subjects in school, your ability to sing or play a musical instrument, or several musical instruments, how good you are at a particular sport. We speak of people being “gifted”, and rightly so. But because these things are a gift from God, you must not glory in them, you must not boast about them, you must not take all the honour and attention for yourself. If you do that, you are ignoring God. In reality your achievements are all the gift of God and rather than drawing attention to yourself, saying “Look at me,” you should be saying, “Look at him – look at what he has given me.” You should be thankful. You mustn’t look down on those who are not as good as you are at particular things, whether that’s a subject like science or maths, or playing a musical instrument or playing on the sports field. You mustn’t mock them, or laugh at them, or look down on them. You would be in exactly the same position as they are if God hadn’t given you success. If you boast about your success in that way, you show that you have forgotten that fact. You must have humility. This is not saying that you shouldn’t be pleased and happy when you do well at something, get good grades, or win a game, or perform well. Of course you should. I am not saying you shouldn’t strive for excellence. Of course you should. But you should do so without having too high an opinion of yourself, without having an over-inflated idea of your own importance, without wanting everyone to recognise how wonderful you are and getting upset when they don’t. In your success, in your achievements, you should be humble, and your joy in them should lead you to give the glory and thanks and praise to God because it only by his gift that you enjoy them. “For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?”

Aspirational awards

THIS piece in the Telegraph, the day after President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for not having done anything yet, amused me this morning:

After Mr Obama got his gold – albeit one week late – we nominate other people for what they would like to achieve:

In a break with tradition, the Wimbledon committee awards the 2010 men’s singles title to Andy Murray on the grounds that he has great potential, is trying very, very hard and, generally speaking, people think he will deserve it one day.

A stall owner at a small fairground in Lowestoft has shut down, and handed out all his large furry animals to “children who look like the sort of kids you’d want to see carrying a giant teddy bear”.

The 2010 Nobel Prize for physics goes to Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for aspiring to build a really big bomb in record time.

Tottenham awarded league title in August because they look like they might win the premiership.

Sarah Palin – lifetime achievement award for extraordinary services to moose and bear hunting. Forget what Levi Johnston says – she might learn how to shoot one day. And she sure does look tough with a gun!

What have the British done for us?

I was delighted to hear some good sense from Brasenose alumnus and Honorary Fellow, Michael Palin, on the subject of the British Empire in an interview he gave as the new President of the Royal Geographical Society which is related in an article in the Telegraph. There is also a good weblog post by Telegraph weblogger Ed West.

This is what Palin says:

“If we say that all of our past involvement with the world was bad and wicked and wrong, I think we’re doing ourselves a great disservice.

“It has set up lines of communication between people that are still very strong. We still have links with other countries – culturally, politically and socially – that, perhaps, we shouldn’t forget.”

Sadly people have forgotten. The history of the Empire is just not being taught any more. I remember playing “The Race for Africa” in History in Year 9, but I don’t recall being taught all that much about the Empire, apart from the usual story about colouring maps of the world red.

The Telegraph article describes the joy of historians at Palin’s comments:

Palin’s view was welcomed by British historians, who warned that the hand-wringing risked masking the Empire’s achievements, from the building of the Indian railways to spreading of the English judicial system.

Andrew Roberts, the author of Masters and Commanders, said: “Allelulia! Mr Palin is quite right to acknowledge that the British Empire has been taught in a particularly abject way in recent years.

“The multifarious benefits of the Empire are something of which Britain should be proud.”

Ed West in his weblog post has more to add:

I’d go a lot further and mention the abolition of the slave trade, the introduction of parliamentary democracy, an independent judiciary, civil service, post office, railways, women’s rights (especially in places like Egypt and India) and the treatment of previously incurable diseases…

I would also add that the British Empire was a great instrument for the worldwide spread of the gospel, largely through the Church of England, but also through other ecclesial bodies using the lines of transport and communication that the growth of the Empire opened up.

Salt

“Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.” – Matthew 5.13

I am down to preach in October and November at the Chinese church in Moscow. I am thinking of preaching one sermon on ‘Ye are the salt of the earth’ from Matthew 5.13 and one sermon ‘Ye are the light of the world’ from Matthew 5.14-16. These two metaphors are united by their purpose to answer the question, “What are Christians for? What is their purpose?”

Jesus doesn’t actually say what the first metaphor means, i.e. in what sense his disciples are salt, although he warns about the consequences of failing to savour, of failing in the task of being salt. It is very easy to read into the word ’salt’ our own ideas about it. The Message paraphrases this verse: “Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors (sic) of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You’ve lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage.” I am not sure this makes it any clearer (what does it mean to ‘bring out the God-flavors (ugh) of this earth’?) but Eugene Peterson here believes salt means seasoning, and refers to one’s godliness as that seasoning. Preservative is another interpretation of what it means to be salt. Salt after all, has been used for millennia as a preservative for meats. But we have to ask what connotations salt has in the Bible.

Salt, as it happens, has both positive and negative connotations. Sowing a land with salt is carried out in addition to burning as part of a process of destruction (Judges 9.45). It stops things growing on the land and is part of God’s curse for apostasy (Deuteronomy 29.23). However, given that Matthew 5.13 is followed by ‘Ye are the light of the world…’ and light is something that brings blessing in vv. 14-16, I think it unlikely that these negative connotations of salt are in view. What are the positive Biblical connotations of salt? Salt is what seasons offerings to the Lord. It is the salt of the covenant (Leviticus 2.13, Ezekiel 43.24). Salt makes fit for consumption that which unsalted is unsavoury (Job 6.6). In 2 Kings 2, the water of Jericho is bad and the land is unfruitful, so Elisha commands that a new bowl be brought to him with salt in it, he throws the salt into the spring of water and as a result, the Lord declares that he has healed the water and it would no longer bring death or barrenness (2 Kings 2.19-22). Finally, rubbing with salt is part of what would be done out of love for a newborn baby in addition to cutting the cord, washing with water, and wrapping in swaddling cloths, which is what no one did for Jerusalem (representing God’s people) until God set his love upon her (Ezekiel 16.4-5).

So, at the risk of going a bit James Jordan, when Jesus says to his disciples, ‘Ye are the salt of the earth’, he is saying that they are God’s priests for making a sinful world an acceptable offering to God, making fit for him what is unsavoury to him because of its sin, they are God’s instruments in bringing resurrection, life out of death, to the earth. Through Christians, God is taking the earth to be his beloved people, his daughter. Notice the extent: the earth. This is what the church, Christians, are for. Those who lose their saltiness, who profess faith in Christ but aren’t on board with this programme, are no longer good for anything and will be thrown out. How do Christians fulfil this priestly calling? By proclaiming the gospel to the world. This is the word that brings resurrection, life out of death, and makes us acceptable offerings to God (James 1.18, 1 Peter 1.23). But Christians aren’t just called to proclaim the gospel: they are to live it. They are not merely meant to proclaim a new life: they are to show it. In the lives of Christians is to be seen the renewal that God is seeking for the whole world so that it is acceptable to him and fit for him.