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.

What is A-nought (or N-nought)?

As we learn in the New Testament, Jesus Christ is the New Adam to whom all things are to be made subject (e.g. Hebrews 2.6-9) and in him, Christians are the new humanity who are to fulfil the cultural mandate of Genesis 1.26-28 to have dominion over all the earth. This means that everything is to be brought under the lordship of Christ, and that includes physics. When physicists draw conclusions, therefore, that contradict the revealed history in Scripture, we must question the assumptions that are made that lead to those conclusions, as part of what it means to bring physics under the dominion of Christ. Indulge me as I become a little more technical for a moment. I did after all, read for a science degree when I was at the University (although it has to be said medicine is as much art as it is science). And what I’m about to discuss isn’t even degree-level science.

In A-level Physics (see, I said it wasn’t even degree-level), we learnt the following equations for radioactive decay, where λ is the decay constant/probability (the probability of a nucleus decaying per second), t is time, A is activity at time t, Ao is initial activity, N is number of nuclei left at time t and No is the initial number of nuclei present.

These equations can be used in carbon-dating, to date the age of something, usually an archaeological find, on the basis of its radioactivity due to carbon-14. Carbon-14 is produced in the atmosphere by cosmic rays, radiation from space. Carbon dating is based on the principle that living things such as trees have the same ratio of carbon-14 to non-radioactive carbon 12 as the atmosphere as there is exchange of carbon with the atmosphere in photosynthesis. When living things die, there is no longer exchange of carbon with the atmosphere, so the carbon-14 decays into carbon-12 and the activity and number of carbon-14 nuclei reduces over time, according to the relationship described in the equations above. When using these equations in carbon dating, A and N represent the activity and number of carbon-14 nuclei in the present, Ao and No represent the activity and number of carbon-14 nuclei when the living thing died, λ is the decay probability of carbon-14. These equations are solved to find t, the time between the present and the time the living thing died, i.e. how hold the object is.

However, carbon dating often comes up with an age for objects that is older than the universe has been around, according to Biblical chronology. What the equations above show is that present activity (or number of nuclei) is dependent on initial activity (or number of nuclei). The key question is, “What is Ao (or No)?” In performing these calculations, initial activity (or number of nuclei) is determined by the assumption that the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 in the atmosphere and therefore in living things in the past is the same as it is in the atmosphere and therefore in living things in the present, i.e. that the composition of the atmosphere hasn’t changed or that intensity of cosmic rays has remained constant. The problem is, we simply don’t know that this is the case. It is simply assumed. And if the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere were less in the past than it is now, then the true age of archaeological finds would be less than that calculated. If you start with a lower initial carbon-14 activity or number of carbon-14 nuclei then it will actually take much less time to decay to the level measured in the present. The age of objects determined by carbon dating, which often exceeds the age of universe according to a strict Biblical chronology, is based on an unfounded assumption that physicists bring to their calculations, namely that conditions in the past were exactly the same as they are now.

The morality of the cross and Christian parenting

In Evangelical Eloquence, R. L. Dabney reminds those who are training for the pastoral ministry that the law is to be used not only to convict and drive people to Christ, but as a Christian’s evangelical duty, that is, not simply as a moral observance, but as obedience in response to, and motivated by, Christ’s love shown at the cross. Dabney applies this to Christian parenting and makes some striking observations about the place of covenant children in God’s sight, and the importance of faithful Christian parenting as the instrument by which he saves such children:

“He [the Christian pastor] should trace every precept of the law to its connection with the redeeming love of Christ, and draw thence his incitements to obey. Would he urge, for instance, Christian fidelity on parents? He will not content himself with appealing to the law of nature expressed in the instinctive parental love, with arguing from the feebleness, dependence or loveliness of our offspring, or with promising the comforts which dutiful children confer upon our old age. These will be the least of his grounds, and most briefly despatched. He will proceed to crown his argument, by directing the hearts of parents chiefly to that Redeemer who claims our children as of his kingdom, to the divine blood with which he has purchased their immortal souls, and to the future of glory and bliss which he offers, chiefly through the means of parental fidelity, to confer on them. Thus, every labour of the father for his child is connected with the Christian’s constraining principle – the love of Christ.” - Evangelical Eloquence, p. 60

Dabney makes the same point, only negatively, as he illustrates for his audience of young pastors the need to be definite and specific as they delineate evangelical duty and seek to convict of sin. General preaching about sin and guilt is not enough.

“Tell your unrenewed hearer that he is a parent, that he owes duty to his child, and he will readily admit it. Charge shortcoming on him in this duty: he will admit this also, and after the admission he will be as callous as before. But now let us suppose the parental duties defined, and enforced from their high evangelical obligations, and the cruelty of that parental neglect, which usually destroys the soul of the child, justly painted in the lights of the eternal world. May we not hope that the delinquent parent will acquire some definite conviction of sin, and especially that his eyes will begin to open to the enormity and malignity of that state of heart charged upon him by the Scriptures, and hitherto so firmly disbelieved by him?” – Ibid., p. 61