On earth as it is in heaven

Can anyone explain the vesture here?

This morning I went to the University Sermon, where the Rt Rev Dr N. T. Wright was preaching, and he was absolutely superb. He is a gripping preacher and I could listen to him for hours.

He began by mentioning that he seems to come down to Oxford or London only to lament the lack of interest in ministry in the North. His staff in Durham are having a meeting tomorrow about how the needs for the ministry of word and sacrament, and evangelism are going to be met in the diocese. When posts become available, few apply for them. This is in considerable contrast to the situation in Dorset and other such places. Part of the problem is that the church centrally is trying to reduce the number of stipendiary clergy. Rich dioceses can afford to ignore this and pay for however many clergy they want. Poor dioceses, like Durham, have to abide by the rules, otherwise they will go bankrupt. To approach this problem, one has to consider it against the bigger picture of God’s kingdom.

At this point, he identified two kinds of Christians, gospel Christians and epistle Christians. Gospel Christians tend to read the gospels, and see all that Jesus is doing and make that paradigmatic for what the coming of the kingdom should look like. The epistles get neglected. It’s the position of modern liberalism. Wright recounted the story of the time when he was chaplain of Worcester College and the Provost asked him what his DPhil was about. When he replied, “St. Paul,” the Provost answered, “He was a wicked man.” Epistle Christians on the other hand focus on Paul’s letters and treat the gospels as merely illustrative material. Conservative evangelicals tend to occupy that position. They are wary of the gospel Christians because it has the potential to undermine justification by faith. They emphasise those parts of Scripture that supports their system of saving sinners from the world and use the gospels to illustrate those truths. Despite claiming a high view of Scripture, this doesn’t do justice to the Scriptures at all. Evangelicals have had more in common with Bultmann than they realise. With regard to the NT reading, Luke 8.4-15, they would point out that it is the word that is being spread; we have to preach the message about how people can be saved. The gospel Christians would say that Luke 8.4-15 is abot the word of the kingdom, so we need to get on with transforming society. The gospel Christian position is itself inadequate, no better than social work with a pious face. Wright acknowledged that he was generalising and caricaturing here.

It is about time the gospels and the epistles were brought together. To do that, we need to consider the great biblical themes of new creation and covenant. Genesis 1 is programmatic. This fallen world is being redeemed: Luke 8, like Genesis 1-2 are about seed being sown and bearing fruit. The renewal of the covenant is described in creation terms. The Old Testament reading we had - Ruth 2 - points to this - abundance and fruitfulness. Paul’s letters are full of new creation allusions, according to Wright, but to unpack that would take a whole series of lectures. As Wright said, “Another time.” As in the Lord’s Prayer, this reality is to be increasingly known now, on earth as it is in heaven. But it will not come through our own attempts to make the world just a little bit better than it is now. It is new creation, and it comes as people are redeemed and transformed through the gospel message. The doctrine of new creation is like Nelson looking out and keeping the hordes who advocate a two-tier universe (being saved from the earth for heaven) at bay.

The heart of the new creation is the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Evangelicals have tended to have the wrong emphasis on the resurrection - proof that there is life beyond death, or a purely individulised affect on personal outlook and behaviour. Yes, it is about those things, but it is about new creation. Liberals on the other hand, in seeking to demythologise the resurrection, have removed the theological, ontological and epistomological foundation of their own movement.

This has massive implications. It has implications for the poor, for example, those communities with third-generation male unemployment, those scarred by the closure of the pits. The seed must be sown there. As Ruth 2 indicates, the poor and the foreigner find abundance in God’s new creation. Those who hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and patient heart, and bear fruit and serve the Lord do not have to live sixty miles from London! Wright also pointed out implications for third-world debt and climate change. The former I am not certain of the details and the second I am unconvinced about, but the principle that these things matter to God is, I think sound. He left the rest of the application to us. When we sow the word of the kingdom, it will be plucked from some, others will receive it joyfully at first and then fall away, others will be choked by the cares of the world, but in yet others it will bear fruit, and it is through this that the world is renewed.

Overall, I think it was entirely fair. Evangelicals and liberals rightly got beaten up by Wright in his sermon. A couple of things to be concerned about have been highlighted by a learned minister of the word. Wright has a tendency to identify two errors and then present his view as the solution to them. Also, while error is error, the consequences of the liberals’ error, rejecting the gospel of salvation from sin, are different to the consequence of the evangelicals’ error, while they were presented as equivalent. I think that’s a fair representation of what he said. If anyone was there and wants to add or correct something, please do. I’m hoping there’ll be a transcript to which I can link in the near future.

I was very impressed by the good bishop. Now I need to read properly some things he has written on justification so I can get my head around that. But on the new creation and resurrection, he is excellent.

Faults in English Evangelical Preaching

I stumbled across THIS article on preaching fortuitously this afternoon. It resonates with some frustrations with the general conservative evangelical culture a number of friends and I have been discussing recently and I think it is spot on in its analysis. It highlights failures in contemporary English conservative evangelical preaching, and points to reasons for these weaknesses. It has also made me want to go and repent of my past preaching in sackcloth and ashes.

The author has a weblog at http://grace-city.blogspot.com/ and I understand he is training for ministry in Cambridge.

Here are some highlights from the article (emphasis mine). I make no apology whatsoever for the fact that this post mainly consists of lots of quotations and a few comments.

This paragraph describes the problem well:

The anecdotal evidence that was the germ seed of this article was simply the large numbers of people from within evangelical circles who express dissatisfaction with preaching. From Ireland, England, America and Australia, I have heard a large number of faithful, enthusiastic and Biblically literate Christians complain that they find the preaching they listen to regularly, to be of a poor standard and not very helpful to them in their relationship with God. After hearing a number of people talk about this I began to notice common threads in the complaints. Again and again people complained of a ‘dryness’ and a ‘patronising tone.’ There are many who feel frustrated that every week they hear a simple issue preached about ‘as if it is a complex issue’. Numerous people are exasperated that they are constantly told the preaching in their church is of a high quality- but no matter how attentively it is listened to, God still appears to be distant and cold. Others are told by a friend that the sermon was ‘excellent’- but when they are asked what was so good about it, no meaningful answer can be given One person put it well, “The preacher tells me life is about a personal relationship with God, but then he seems to just give me impersonal facts.”

He goes on to point to some reasons:

There may be two problems that have developed as a result of the drive for clarity. Firstly, there can be the unspoken assumption that making things clear is the principle [sic] task of a preacher. The preacher can then spend a lot of time trying to explain issues in the passage - such a focus tends to produce a patronising tone. People are quick to notice this!

Secondly, our desire for simplicity has lead to many definitions and phrases becoming accepted jargon in preaching. The phrases have developed as simple explanations of key ideas in Christianity; such a thing is desirable. However many of these are simple to the point of ignoring rich and deep insights of previous generations of Bible teachers. This problem is all the more serious as the areas of theology that have been summarised by these catchphrases are naturally the ones most central to explaining the gospel.

While the author rejoices that the church has advanced in its welcome of outsiders, he notes that this has also led to its own problems:

Making things welcoming to outsiders is a matter of being warm and friendly- not assuming that they are not clever enough to understand our supposedly intellectual teaching. Outsiders notice when evangelicals feel awkward about issues such as The Lord’s Supper, financial giving, hell or teaching topics that clash with modern secularism. There is no need to feel awkward about these issues- unbelievers know they are coming to the church as opposed to some other gathering such as the cinema.

While the author affirms that Scripture must have an effect on the lives of the hearers, certain forms of application can be harmful:

This advance may have led to an unexpected problem- there is an overwhelming tendency to focus on external activities in application. The application turns out to be an invitation to come to a prayer meeting, Bible study or encouragement to do evangelism. This focus on the external is harmful as it ignores the deeper and prior internal aspect. We ought to recognise that the internal desires and attitudes are the foundational aspect of a person, and it is to these the arrows of application need to be shot. Aiming for the external only results in a superficial change, not the deep heart change the Spirit brings about.

Focusing on the external application of a passage also tends to produce a heavy handed shepherding approach, where the preacher gives the impression that he knows what is best for other people’s lives, when in actual fact the situation may be more complex. Listeners begin to feel squeezed and pressurised into doing the applications. Once they give in and do the activities suggested they are given a false assurance that they are experiencing genuine relationship with God. In actual fact they may merely be ticking external check lists, while the deeper internal reality of a relationship with God starves and shrivels up.

The author affirms the centrality of preaching (the undermining of which by Bible study groups must not be permitted) in glowing terms:

Only in preaching is the church family gathered to grow together. As the most authoritative method of proclamation, preaching displays the glorious authority of the gospel to command all to repent and cast their hopes on Jesus Christ. The gospel is not up for debate, it is not an idea to be played with- it is God declaring that He is God and in Christ has conquered sin, wrath and death. The power and majesty of the gospel is exhibited by pulpit preaching in a way that it cannot be by other methods. People can be exhorted, moved, threatened and affected by preaching in a way very conducive to awakening genuine faith and love in Jesus.

There is much to be said for the affective element in preaching, which has been neglected, perhaps as an overreaction to other Christian circles:

The affectionate teaching of Jonathan Edwards is little more than an explanation of what it really means to have a relationship with God. He argued that facts were necessary for a relationship, but the foundational and crucial thing in a relationship is more to do with feeling the passion of love, the joy of thankfulness, the sadness of sin, the eager hunger for heaven and the zeal to win people to Christ. Talking about the activities that may accompany such passions is no substitute for stirring up the passions.

We step back from that tradition for many reasons - culture, other groups’ excesses and our own culpable sinfulness. Sermons end up becoming explanations of facts within a passage because fundamentally we feel more comfortable with such cold lifeless things than we do with the immensity of a God of passion and power. People complain that sermons do not seem to be an experience of hearing God speak - because we have shifted the agenda to such an extent that hearing God speak is no longer the aim of a sermon. We are too scared to hear God speak, so we preach our non relational framework instead. This should not surprise us - for it is exactly the kind of thing our sinful nature tends to cause. It is the essence of sin that it creates a desire within us to avoid genuine relationship with God. Unless we actively guard against the influence of sin in this area it will bear fruit.

He goes on to say:

Our sermons are weak because we have forgotten that love requires more than facts, and the passion of love for Christ is set alight only by preaching that is not scared of relational engagement with the text, God and people.

He points to Calvin’s example:

Calvin was not satisfied with an accurate explanation of the facts of the gospel- he realised that the whole point of preaching was to stir up a ’sense of’ God’s wonder, to make men ‘feel’ the reality of their dependence on God - in short to place their entire ‘happiness’ in God. Piety was the word Calvin used to denote this warm, experiential, heart felt depth of personal relationship which is the fruit of the gospel.

He has a stinging conclusion:

Dealing with the matters of the heart should be our default position - it should naturally arise from our sermons, not be found despite them. To the extent that our preaching has lost the affectionate relational aspect of the gospel, our lives let the vitality of true piety seep out, leaving behind a cold mechanistic life style. To put it bluntly - a sermon that does not stir up a deeper love for Jesus is not a Christian sermon. It may have many excellent features and could possibly be a good lecture, but it is nonetheless a failure as a sermon.

“The bridegroom was delayed”

We had a very helpful sermon on Matthew 24.36-25.13 last night. I’m still convinced ch. 24.1-35 is about AD 70 (more to follow in the fullness of time), but, following some of David Field’s comments on Matthew 24 I think a transition to the second coming in v. 36ff can be sustained. The disciples ask two questions - one about the destruction of the temple and the one about his coming and the close of the age - and it is quite reasonable to see that Jesus answers them in turn. There is a transition from references to “those days” to “that day” in v. 36. Moreover, the language of being cut in pieces and being put with the hypocrites in the place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, and of the bridegroom coming to the marriage feast is suggestive that Christ’s second coming is in view here.

One thing that was highlighted last night was that the point of being ready and keeping watch in light of Christ’s unknown return is to make sure we are serving God faithfully and relating to the Lord Jesus. The emphasis in the parables is on the bridegroom’s delay.

I merely want to add to that the further point that none of this requires the Christian to believe that Jesus could return at any moment. For example, Peter is told in John 21.19 that he would die before Jesus returns. He certainly wasn’t expecting Jesus to return in his lifetime. Yet that didn’t negate the need for him to be faithful and prepared in the present. Indeed, there’s a thought going round at the back of my mind that maybe the fact that the virgins in the second parable, having prepared (or not) beforehand fall asleep and are woken by the cry that the bridegroom has arrived suggests that Jesus’ hearers were even meant to expect that they would die and then be raised up to meet their Lord when he finally returned. A long delay is to be expected. Murray in The Puritan Hope also makes the point that the expectation that Jesus could return in the lifetime of each generation of Christians, from the first generation onwards, would mean that we have been misled for the past 2000 years.

Given that we have the promise, for example, that “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you” (Psalm 22.27), and since we don’t quite see that yet, on the basis of God’s word, we don’t have to live expecting that Jesus could return at any moment. Yet the master’s delay isn’t a license for unfaithfulness and unreadiness. We need to serve faithfully in the light of his eventual return, and make sure that we are obeying the gospel, and repenting of our sins and trusting in Christ.

Dr. Piper’s Eschatology

I currently have the pleasure of reading John Piper’s The Pleasures of God with a friend. The more I read, the more I grow in respect and admiration for this man. He clearly has a big brain (well, he does have a doctorate in theology), and he uses words like ‘ineluctable’ that I have to look up in a dictionary.

In the second chapter (’The pleasure of God in all he does’) he recounts a letter he wrote to someone who was preaching at a conference who taught that God is our model risk-taker. The impression I’m getting is that Piper is very much a gospel optimist and may well have postmillennialist leanings, and I’d love to know where I might go to find out more about his eschatology. He references The Puritan Hope mentioned in a previous post a few times and recommends it as further reading for those who were inspired by the pleasure of God in all he does to spend themselves in world mission. In answer to a point about God taking a risk by entrusting the Great Commission into our hands, he writes:

The Great Commission is not in question. “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14 - although I’m not sure that’s what this verse is about). “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. For dominion belongs to the LORD and he rules over the nations” (Psalm 22:27-28). The full number of the Gentiles shall come in (Romans 11:25). “The earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD” (Numbers 14:21). All of Scripture affirms the victory of God in world missions. It is not in question. God has promised. God is sovereign! Because he rules over the hearts of men and is the Lord of his church, his purpose cannot fail! - p. 57

“In view of the present distress”

I was thinking about 1 Corinthians 7 as one does, and further to a comment on a post on singleness last year, I’m warming to the idea that when Paul is saying that singleness is better (1 Corinthians 7.38), he is addressing a particular redemptive-historical context. Could “the present distress” (v. 26), the “appointed time” which has “grown very short” (v. 29), the fact that “the present form of this world is passing away” (v. 31), and the requirement for some slightly odd behavior more in keeping with a temporary situation than normal life (v. 30), be referring not to the whole of the last days, but a particular crisis, maybe even AD 70? Jesus advice for AD 70 (see e.g. Matthew 24.17-19) bears some resemblance to vv. 29 and 30. That then forms the context for the anxiety and divided interests the married man faces which Paul wants to avoid (vv. 33 and 34).

The implication of Paul’s teaching for us in the chapter as a whole is therefore first to be content with our current situation, second realise that there may be particular situations of crisis which makes singleness a better state to be in (not morally, but practically), and since Paul’s aim is to promote good order and secure undivided devotion to the Lord, it seems fair to say that those in some kind of courtship or marriage should be to make sure that they are charactised by good order and undivided devotion to the Lord.

Puritan Eschatology

Thanks to Liam Beadle for drawing my attention to the existence of The Puritan Hope by Iain Murray. It’s a stimulating book, showing that the Puritans, as well as Reformers such as Calvin and evangelical leaders of the eighteenth century held to an optimistic view of the future, in which prior to the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, the church would enjoy a blessed state on earth, the nations would be converted to Christ, and the earth would be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. In the main, the belief appears to have been held that abundant gospel blessing for the world would come as a result of the Jews as a race being converted to Christ. They appeal to texts in Romans 11, and I am unconvinced by their arguments. Such an advance of Christ’s kingdom among the nations of the world would come as a result of the work of the Holy Spirit by the preaching of the gospel. Murray believes that this will take the form of a series of revivals; whether the Puritans actually believed that is unclear from his quotations: there may be a degree of imposition of revivalism on the gospel optimism of the Puritans. While we do pray for revival and we believe that God has worked and can work through general revivals, we don’t want bursts of conversions followed by stagnant periods. While we long for revival, we want the fruit of any such activity to include the instruction of the next generation, that they might tell their children, and so that they would set their hope in God (cf. Psalm 78.5-7), and we want such dynastic work to begin now. Murray demonstrates that the fruit of the Puritan optimism that the nations of the world would bow before Jesus Christ as their Saviour and Lord was world mission. Their view that this was a way off in the future in no way diverted their focus from the ultimate hope of Christ’s return and their resurrection from the dead. They did not feel it necessary to believe that Christ could come at any moment.

Murray then introduces us to the premillennialists (among whose ranks even J. C. Ryle could be found, and who could work out what Spurgeon thought?), who believed that things would get worse and worse until Christ returned (and that could happen any day), raised the dead believers and reigned with them on the earth for a thousand years, before the judgment. The fruit of this was a lack of long-term gospel investment. What mattered was saving souls now, not building missionary schools that would be their in two hundred years’ time. No longer was the work valued like the explorations of David Livingstone, in preparation for future missions. Murray doesn’t deal with the amillennialist position for whatever reason, although it should be clear that the general pessimistic outlook and the belief in the potential for Christ’s imminent return are common to both and they do have similar fruit, with the lack of planning for the long term and a tendency to a lack of appreciation of anything that isn’t directed to the immediate salvation of souls. “What’s the point of X? It’ll burn anyway.” But what about building an inheritance for our children and our children’s children? We have departed from the hope of the Puritans, a hope which had such a wide and deep impact.

All things in subjection under his feet

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. - 1 Corinthians 15.24-26

Christ has been raised from the dead, ascended into heaven, and is now reigning at the right hand of the Father. When he returns, he will hand the kingdom to the Father. But he will only hand the kingdom over after everything has been put in subjection to him, death included. This subjection of all things, the last of which is death is a process that takes place while Christ reigns before he returns and hand the kingdom back to the Father. I take it therefore, in this time after the ascension of Christ, that we can assume that to an increasing extent, Christ’s enemies will be conquered, so that by the time he returns, all his enemies will have been conquered (then the last enemy, death, is destroyed and the kingdom is handed over to the Father).

I warmly recommend Doug Wilson’s sermon on the Ascension, which I think is a great exposition of Philippians 3.20-21. Because of the ascension, earth has a new capital city, heaven. ‘Our citizenship is in heaven’ doesn’t mean that we’re just passing through this world and then we’ll go to heaven for all eternity. It means that the church is a colony of heaven, that is, ruled by heaven and intended to spread the rule and influence of heaven around it (just as Philippi was a Roman colony, and that didn’t mean that everyone would retire from Philippi to Rome). Bishop Tom Wright makes the same point in his in many ways excellent book Surprised by Hope. We do not live in a gnostic two-storey universe in which we’re waiting to be saved from this terrible world to go to heaven where everything will be nice. When we go to heaven, it will be appropriate to ask, “How long before we get to go home?”. When we die, we visit the capital city temporarily, before Christ returns and renews the earth. In the meantime, we look forward to his coming, when all things will be subject to him. We can expect that before his coming, most things (death excepted) will be subject to him. This will be achieved by the preaching of the gospel. The fact that the earth will be transformed rather than thrown away means that our labours in the Lord now are not in vain, even if the labours of the world’s empires are (where is Assyria now? Babylon? The Medes? The Persians?). We should start Christian businesses and schools with the hope that they will pass from one generation to another and still be there in a few hundred years’ time. God behaves inappropriately towards us. He shows us grace and mercy in redeeming us, sending his Son to die for our sins, which we don’t deserve.

Uzziah and Adam

I went to the 10.00am service at church this morning (as the 11.30am service I normally attend was cancelled for the Love Oxford event, which as in previous years I did not attend since I am not comfortable with an event that seeks to proclaim unity in Christ between evangelicals and Romanists, and also those who proclaim a prosperity gospel). We had an excellent sermon on Uzziah from 2 Chronicles 26, where we saw how he prospered when he sought the Lord, but that there were two problems - the first was that he only seemed to seek the Lord in the days of one Zechariah, who instructed him and the second was the more obvious one of pride. There were three lessons for us, first the danger of spiritual isolation, with no-one to ask us the hard questions, secondly, the danger of the good times (it was when he became strong that he grew proud, and ceased to locate his strength in God), and thirdly, the danger of pride, thinking that we’re beyond God’s rules.

During the sermon, I noticed the following pattern: Uzziah had dominion over Israel and some of the Gentile nations, he guarded the land with fortifications and by equipping his army, and he worked the land, cutting out cisterns and employing farmers and vine-dressers “for he loved the soil”. But then his pride led him to unfaithful behaviour, which consisted in going where he shouldn’t and doing what he shouldn’t there - offering incense which only the priests were authorised to do. The consequence was physical disability - a skin disease - and then expulsion from the sanctuary and the house of the Lord.

The parallel with Adam is striking. Adam was to have dominion over the earth, keep the garden and work it, but then sinned by disobeying God’s command, taking the fruit from the tree that had been forbidden, and received God’s judgment, including the proclamation of physical death (’dust you are and to dust you shall return’) and followed by exclusion from the garden.

Uzziah, too, repeats Adam’s sin.

The Thunderer

I was introduced to this by my American brethren this weekend. If only church history were always this fun.

God’s angry man, His crotchety scholar
Was Saint Jerome,
The great name-caller
Who cared not a dime
For the laws of Libel
And in his spare time
Translated the Bible.
Quick to disparage
All joys but learning
Jerome thought marriage
Better than burning;
But didn’t like woman’s
Painted cheeks;
Didn’t like Romans,
Didn’t like Greeks,
Hated Pagans
For their Pagan ways,
Yet doted on Cicero all of his days.

A born reformer, cross and gifted,
He scolded mankind
Sterner than Swift did;
Worked to save
The world from the heathen;
Fled to a cave
For peace to breathe in,
Promptly wherewith
For miles around
He filled the air with
Fury and sound.
In a mighty prose
For Almighty ends,
He thrust at his foes,
Quarreled with his friends,
And served his Master,
Though with complaint.
He wasn’t a plaster sort of a saint.

But he swelled men’s minds
With a Christian leaven.
It takes all kinds
To make a heaven.

Puritans on Marriage and Family

It has been a while since I put up some notes from Packer’s series of lectures on the Puritans which can be accessed from the RTS iTunes interweb page. Here are some on the Puritans, marriage and the family.

The Puritan view of marriage and the family is a subset of Puritan casuistry, that is, cases of conscience in which Biblical principles were applied to a vast array of situations in which a believer might find him or herself. The Puritans followed the Reformers, contra the vast majority of the Church Fathers and the mediaevals. Aquinas taught that marriage was no sin, it was necessary for the procreation of children and avoidance of sin, but that a man’s most suitable helpmeet would be another man. The Puritans said that marriage was not spiritually or morally inferior to singleness. Problems encountered during marriage were not a problem with the institution of marriage, but with the fact that marriage takes place between two sinful people. Their responsibility is to help each other fight sin and grow in sanctification. For the Puritans, marriage was the highest state of life; the vast majority of Christians would get married and indeed Christian men should seek a wife and women should pray for a husband. There may be those exceptional individuals who are called to celibacy. While my view is certainly not that of the mediaevals, I think I would have to take the rare step of holding back from going as far as the Puritans on this. While Scripture does present a very high view of marriage, it doesn’t appear to present one state of life as higher than the other, nor does it say that the majority of people should seek marriage, even if the majority of Christians do, ultimately marry. So Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 7, “To the unmarried and the widows, I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am,” (v. 8), “In whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God,” (v. 24) and, “Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife” (v. 27). Singleness isn’t something for which one has to have a specific calling.

On the subject of whom to marry, a man is not to ask a man if he may court his daughter (for that is how it is done) if she is someone with whom their parents would not be content, and parents are not to choose wives for their sons with whom their sons could not be content (a common practice in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries). There should be affection. The criterion for choosing a wife is the inner beauty of a godly character (see 1 Peter 3, Ephesians 5 and Proverbs 31) and the question one should be asking is not, “Do I love X?” but “Can I love X?”, remembering that marriage is a commitment for the rest of life. A man’s responsibility is to love and cherish his wife, not lord it over her or crush her under foot. A man is not to marry a woman if he is not able to provide for her; that is part of what it means to cherish her, keeping her free as much as he can from financial concerns. Marriage presupposes the equality of status before God of the man and the woman. Marriage is for procreation, avoidance of sin, and also (and even primarily) for “the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other” as the Prayer Book puts it. In response to the question, “Why do feminists trace male chauvinism to the Puritans?” Packer replies, “Because they’re ignorant.” Once the laughter subsides, Packer replies, “Even Packer can give a short answer to a question when the question deserves it.”

Marriage itself is a contract between a man and a woman before God and should be carried out in the presence of the saints, who witness the marriage and pray for those entering into it. There would be a period of three weeks between fixing the date of the marriage (engagement) and the wedding itself, during which time the banns would be read out in the church as the public place where the people of the local area gather, in order to safeguard against bigamy. In the ceremony, there would be a sermon, which was in the majority of cases a weighty exposition of the duties of the husband and the wife. The wife is primarily a home-maker with the responsibility for the upbringing of the younger children. The husband is the head of the household, with the responsibility for instructing the older children, and making sure his family worships God. The family is a little church and a little commonwealth.

Saul: Another Adam

I noticed this in my daily reading last week in 1 Samuel 15

Saul is a king, ruling in God’s land (v. 1). He takes the forbidden fruit, what should have been devoted to destruction (v. 9) and when Samuel challenges him, he blames his wife, that is, the people (vv. 15, 21) - for the relationship between king and his people as that of a husband and his wife, see 2 Samuel 5.1 cf Genesis 2.23. As a result, he is rejected from being king (v. 26).

Saul, instead of being a new Adam and constituting a new humanity in Israel, he is just like the first Adam, who was supposed to have dominion over the world, who took from the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil, who blamed Eve when he was found out, and who was expelled from the garden. This leaves us longing for another, one who is king in God’s world and who is faithful, in whom a new humanity is truly established, that is, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Richard Sibbes on Lydia’s Conversion

The effect of God’s grace in the life of an individual is to enable them to attend to God’s word, by which he brings about faith.

God opening the heart of any Christian, it is to carry the attention to the word. God by grace carries the heart to the word. ‘She attended to wat Paul spake.’ Where true grace is wrought, it carries not to speculation, or to practise this or that idle dream; but where the heart is open grace carries to attend to the word, especially to the good word, the gospel of Christ. As grace is wrought by the word, so it carries the soul to the word. - Works vi p. 525

Richard Sibbes on Baptism

The Anglican Puritan Richard Sibbes had a high view of what baptism achieves and the benefits it conveys, namely entry into the covenant and union with God and all the blessings thereof:

“Every infant that is baptised is the child of Christ.”

“Think of thy baptism when thou goest to God, especially when he seems angry. It is the seal of the covenant. Bring the promise: Lord, it is the seal of thy covenant; thou hast prevented me by thy grace; thou broughtest me into the covenant before I knew my right hand from my left.”

“I am in the covenant. Christ is mine; the Holy Ghost is mine; and God is mine.”

“By baptism I have union with the death of Christ; he died to take away sin, and my end must be his.”

Sibbes also writes of “the covenant made in baptism”.

That is not to say that simply having the sign is enough; it must be accompanied by faith:

“If we look no further, as profane spirits do not, than the water and the elements, we can have no comfort by these things; but we should consider God’s blessed institution and ordinance to strengthen our faith. And to our children when they come to years, baptism is an obligation to believe; because they have received the seal beforehand, and it is a means to believe.”

“Those that live to years to years of discretion, their baptism is an engagement and obligation to them to believe, because they have undertaken, by those that answered for them, to believe when they come to years; and, if, when they come to years, they answer not the covenant of grace and the answer of a good conscience, if they do not believe, and renounce Satan, all is frustrate. Their baptism doth them no good, if they make not good their covenant by believing and renouncing.”

Thinking upon our baptism will help us when we are tempted to sin:

“When we go to church to offer our service to God, think, by baptism we were consecrated and dedicated to God. Therefore it is sacrilege for persons baptized to yield to temptations to sin. We are dedicated to God in baptism…Shall I yield to that that in baptism I have sworn against?”

Looking back to the promises of God in baptism will also give us assurance when we are tempted to despair beause of our sin:

“If we be tempted to despair for sin, let us call to mind the promises of grace and forgiveness of sins, and the seal of forgiveness of sins, which is baptism. For as water in baptism washeth the body, so the blood of Christ washeth the soul. Let us make that use of our baptism, in temptations, not to despair for sin.”

For those who are illiterate, baptism is a means of instruction which will aid Christians in their walk with God. Now Sibbes was writing in an age when illiteracy was much more widespread than it is now (although one wonders sometimes) but his point might well apply to those with learning difficulties, for whom much of what goes on in evangelical Christianity, with its reading culture, is inaccessible:

“There are many that are not book-learned, that cannot read, at least they have no leisure to read. I would that they would read their book in their baptism; and if they would consider what it ministers to them upon all occasions, they would be far better Christians than they are.”

“Those that cannot read, if they have no other, let them look on these two books, the book of their baptism and the book of consciene. They would be sufficient to instruct them. Some people pretend ignorance. Consider what thou art baptised to the grounds of religion; consider there what thou hast renounced… Those that cannot read, and are not learned, let them make use of the learning of their baptism. There is a world of instruction and comfort, a treasury of it in baptism. I dare be bold to say, if any Christian, when he is tempted to sin, to despair or discouragement, if he consider what a solemn promise he hath made to God in baptism, it would be a means to strengthen his faith, and to arm him against all temptations.”

Richard Sibbes, Works vol. vi pp. 530-1 and vol. vii p. 487

Richard Sibbes on the Lord’s Supper

“In the Lord’s Supper, there is outward receiving of bread and wine, and inward making of a covenant with God.“

Works vii, p. 480

Law and Gospel?

Hear Dr J. I. Packer on the relationship between the Old and New Covenants, and the Mosaic law and the gospel. There is still a widespread view in evangelicalism that in the Old Testament, God’s people are saved by keeping the law and then in the New Testament, they are saved by faith in Christ. Rather, law and gospel are redemptive-historical categories, typifying and realising respectively the one covenant of grace.

We must not be misled by the fact that he [the writer to the Hebrews] speaks of two “covenants”, the first and the second, the old and the new: this is simply a reflection of Old Testament usage, in which the word “covenant” acquired an institutional significance and became “the formula designating the entire structure and content of the religion of Israel”. The two “covenants” are two successive systems, the first typifying the second, for the realisation of the selfsame covenant privilege - present fellowship between God’s people and himself. So far from throwing doubt on the unity and continuity of the covenant promise, the contrast thus presupposes and confirms it.

Packer continues in a footnote:

Limitations of space preclude any treatment of the passages in which Paul opposes the Mosaic law to the gospel, describing it as a covenant of works which brings bondage and death (cf. Gal iv.21 ff., 2 Cor. iii, etc.). It must suffice to say that these passages are arguments ad hominem, in which he accepts pro tempore the evaluation of the Law as a self-sufficient covenant of life which Judaism by its rejection of Christ had given it, and devotes himself simply to proving that those who treat it as such will find that it leads to death, for they will in fact break it and thus incur its curse. The ease with which he slips into this line of thought reflects his years of controversy in Jewish synagogues. We have already see that in his own view the Law was not given to be a covenant of life at all.

‘Baptism: A Sacrament of the Covenant of Grace’, Churchman 1955 volume 9 issue 2, pp. 79-80.

Isaiah 6 and the remnant

“And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again,
like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is felled.”
The holy seed is its stump. - Isaiah 6.13

Isaiah is commissioned to preach a message which will harden the hearts of the people of Judah, who will be judged. (Isaiah 6.8-12). Nevertheless, there will be a faithful remnant, the “holy seed”. Jesus takes these words and applies them to his own ministry (Mark 4.10-12 and parallels), as does Paul (Acts 28.23-31). Now in applying these verses to ourselves, we have to be careful to pay attention to the context. One objection to postmillennialism I have encounted is the emphasis the Scriptures place on a remnant being saved, i.e. a small number, rather than the vast majority of the world. In these cases here, the audience of the preaching which hardens is the Jews. The consequence is judgment, in Isaiah’s day that would at the hands of the Babylonians in 596/587 BC, and in Jesus’ and Paul’s day, that would be at the hands of the Romans in AD 70. Nevertheless, a remnant is saved. In the text from Isaiah, the remnant is the faithful people of God, from which the Messiah would come. In the New Testament appropriations of that text, the remnant consists of the Messiah, who emerges from the remnant promised in Isaiah, and those Jews who are joined to him. But this has no bearing on the final proportion of the saved. Through Christ and his people, salvation then goes out to the whole world, as the gospel goes out and people respond in faith. And that is consistent with the hope of a vastly saved world. Now it remains to be said that we can apply texts like Isaiah 6, Mark 4 and Acts 28 typologically: like those situations, our preaching can have the effect of hardening people, for God is sovereign in salvation and it belongs to him alone to open ears and eyes and grant repentance. The judgments of Israel in 596/587 BC and AD 70 are anticipations of the future judgment of those whose ears and eyes in God’s sovereignty are not opened by the preaching of the gospel.

Ruth: Some Thoughts

We had a good sermon at church this Sabbath on Ruth 1. I think it’s a tough book to expound. We looked at the three main characters in chapter 1 in turn. Elimelech compromised, going to Moab, allowing his sons to marry outside the faith, and it ended in disaster (v. 5). Naomi suffered affliction, yet she expressed faith in the LORD, albeit confused faith: God’s hand does not go out against his people, which is clearly shown to us in the Lord Jesus. It’s all right to be honest about our feelings before God. Ruth showed kindness, reflecting the kindness of the God she has taken to be her God. Would that our congregation be characterised by the kind of kindness shown here. Being known for being welcoming and ’sound’ is not enough.

My Bible reading plan (the BCP lectionary) took me through Ruth at the beginning of this week, so I offer some thoughts.

First, we see the sorrows of covenant people. God’s people aren’t spared the problems of the culture around them (’in the days when the judges ruled’), nor are they spared want (’there was a famine in the land’) or bereavement (’the woman was left without her two sons and her husband’). It may feel as though God’s hand is against us.

Secondly, in the story of Ruth, we see the shape of God’s salvation in miniature. In Ruth 1.6, we read, “The LORD had visited his people.” The language of visitation is the same language used of the Exodus, and of Christ. ‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel. He has visited and redeemed his people,’ sings Zechariah in Luke 1, speaking of the deliverance of God’s people from the shadow of death by the forgiveness of their sins. There is a barley harvest (1.22): God delivers his people from famine and death. “He has filled the hungry with good things,” sings Mary, also in Luke 1, after she has received the promise of being the mother of the Christ, and Ruth certainly experiences that, e.g. Ruth 2.14. Ruth is the Gentile woman (her ancestry is repeatedly mentioned) who takes refuge in YHWH, who takes him to be her God, and his people to be her people (echoing the covenant refrain, ‘I will be your God and you shall be my people) and consequently, there is fellowship at the table of God’s people; she may eat bread and drink wine  with Boaz and his men. Similarly, the mystery in Paul’s letters is the inclusion of Gentiles in the promise of the gospel. (Ephesians 3.6). This is why Peter’s behaviour at Antioch is so scandalous (he was eating with Gentiles and then  separates from them) and leads Paul to rebuke him (Galatians 2.12). Jew and Gentile in Christ are welcome at the Lord’s Table, where they may eat bread and drink wine together and of course, they will feast in the New Creation together (Revelation 19). Naomi is concerned that her daughters-in-law find rest, protection, certainty and security for the future, which Ruth ultimately finds in being married to Boaz, (Ruth 3.1), and of course, Jesus, the descendant of Boaz, invites the weary to come to him and find rest (Matthew 11.28), the lifting of their burden of sin so that they may enjoy the security of life in the new creation, the Sabbath rest that yet remains for the people of God. God’s actions in the individual lives of these people are for the sake of Christ. We see that Obed, who is born to Ruth is David’s ancestor (Ruth 4.22), and thus God’s saving work in the life of Ruth is vital for Christ’s coming into the world. Living on the other side of Christ’s first coming, it is those who are in Christ who experience God’s salvation, for the sake of his work in the world.

Finally, we see some implications. Ruth is a model of faith, taking God to be our God and his people to be our God, which shows itself in commitment to God’s people. This story prepares us for the harsh realities of life often faced by God’s people, but it also offers hope for those whose faith is the same as that of Ruth, of ultimate salvation, of life in a world where we will neither hunger nor thirst anymore (Revelation 7.16). God’s work in the book of Ruth entails inclusion of the outsider, for all who take refuge in the Triune God are welcome at the table of his people. We must reflect the kind of welcome, the level of kindness, the liberal generosity, demonstrated for us here. Finally, Ruth offers us the chance to marvel afresh at God’s strange sovereignty in work in the way that he has to fulfil his purposes for the salvation of the world.

More un-Reformed heresy from the Federal Vision

From Blog and Mablog:

Now the covenant is actually made with all worthy receivers—and worth is defined in terms of faith, not in terms of any kind of self-righteous works. Stated short-hand the covenant is efficaciously made, for blessing, with the elect.

But it does not follow from this that the covenant is invisible, just like the entire body of the elect is invisible. No, the covenant, the terms of it, and the signs and seals of it, are all visible—they are all right here. The word we preach, the gospel we preach, is declared in real time. The water that we baptize with is real water. The wine and bread we consecrate is earthly bread, baked in an oven, and the wine is earthly wine, fashioned by human artifice from the juice of grapes. These are not similitudes for the covenant of grace; they are rather manifestations of the covenant of grace.

Those who have true faith respond to these signs and seals, and are therefore brought to the reality behind them. They are not the ones who bypass the means, on their own going straight to the reality behind them. There are no shortcuts here.

You must travel the road that God has built for you. You will only do so if you believe in Him, trusting Him to keep His promises. But trusting Him to keep the promises He made through Word, Water, and Wine is not the same thing as claiming that He has made no promises in and through such things at all. You must walk, by faith alone, in the way He established. As you do, you will see more and more clearly.

The covenant of grace is made with all the elect, and the extent of that body does not yet appear. There is a good bit of history yet to go, and the ranks of our numbers have a good deal of filling up to do. But those ranks will fill up here, in this world, by the means that God has established. It makes sense to say that the number of the decretally elect belongs to the secret things. But it is unbelief to say that the covenant of grace is secret. Do not say in your heart, who will go up to heaven to get it for us, or who will cross the sea for it. No, the word, the gospel, the covenant, is in your mouth and in your heart. Here, today, and forever.

Sounds good to me.

Jonah 1

I’ve started having Hebrew tutorials with a brother from church, and this week we looked at Jonah 1. There are a couple of things to notice. There’s a chiasm in Jonah 1.3 which is actually translated very well by the ESV:

A Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD
B He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went on board,
A’ to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD

In contrast with vv. 1 and 2, where the LORD speaks to Jonah and commands him to go to Nineveh, this little chiasm emphasises the rebelliousness of Jonah’s actions, going to Tarshish, going from the presence of the LORD.

The second thing worth noting is that there is a downward progression throughout the chapter. The ESV picks it up pretty well.

In verse 2 we read, ‘He went down to Joppa.’ Having found a ship, we are told that he ‘went on board’, literally, ‘He went down into it.’ Jonah goes down into the inner part of the ship, where he lays down and is fast asleep (literally, ‘he lay down fast asleep’) (v. 5). Later on, we find Jonah going down even further, into the sea and then into the great fish.

In Jonah, we see the pattern of death, later followed by resurrection when he is vomited up. The belly of the great fish is the belly of Sheol for him. The sinner who dies because he rebels against the Lord and refuses to carry out his commission to preach to the unbelieving nation is raised up from the grave. And this of course foreshadows the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, who died, not for his own sin (for he had none) but for ours, and who was then raised up from the dead. “Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” - Matthew 12.40.

Gideon and the Gospel

I’m reading through Judges at the moment, and the other day I came across the familiar story of Gideon. I was struck afresh by this story, particularly the striking ways in which it typifies the gospel.

In Judges 6.1-10, we learn that the people did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, so he gave them into the hand of Midian, an oppressive enemy, and the people are left in fear and want, for the Midianites and their friends devoured the produce of the land. Their particular crime we learn, when they cry out and he sends a prophet, was to fear the gods of the Amorites. Then the LORD comes to Gideon, whom he sends to deliver Israel from the hand of Midian, Gideon who is the least of his father’s house in the weakest clan (vv. 11-18). The LORD confirms his calling upon Gideon with a sign (vv. 19-24), and his mission from the LORD is to pull down the altars to Baal and Asherah and to construct an altar to the LORD. The LORD, through his servant, overthrows the false gods (vv. 25-27). When this is discovered, the people want to put him to death (vv. 28-32). The Midianites and their allies gather together against Israel, but Gideon is clothed with the Spirit and calls an army together (vv. 33-35). The LORD confirms to Gideon that he will save Israel with another sign, the sign of the fleece. “Putting out a fleece” often tends to be used in evangelical circles in the context of discerning God’s will. “If you want me to do X, then let Y happen”. But we’re not told whether or not to imitate this. If anything, putting out a fleece is a sign of Gideon’s lack of faith, having already received God’s word of promise and seen him perform a sign. But he’s not explicitly condemned. The point is that the LORD is confirming his servant with another sign (vv. 36-40). Gideon then leads out his army, but the LORD says there are too many and reduces the number to 300 “lest Israel boast saying, ‘My own hand has saved me’”. The LORD gives Midian in to the hands of Gideon and his men.

The situation Israel (whose calling was to be a new humanity, once again rightly related to God in his world) is in at the beginning of the chapter is the same as the situation of humanity after the Fall. The land is under a curse (Genesis 3.17-19) and because all humanity, not just Israel, ‘exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator’, God has handed us over to judgment, our dishonourable passions and impurity and all manner of unrighteousness, covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife and deceit (Romans 1.18ff). Our world, like the Israel of Judges 6, is a world of fear and oppression and want, under the judgment of God. Yet Christ, the carpenter’s son from Nazareth is God’s appointed servant for the salvation of Israel and the world. He is attested to by God with many signs and wonders. He casts out demons, overthrowing the devil’s power. His actions cause people to want to kill him (e.g. Luke 4.28-29). By his death and resurrection, he saves us, dealing with the underlying problem that no one else could, bearing the punishment for sin, so that we can be forgiven and all who are opposed to God and his people are defeated, as they are robbed of all grounds of accusation and means of oppression: ‘”Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ’ - 1 Corinthians 15.54-57. Christ’s ministry is the fulfilment of the pattern seen with Gideon: ‘God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God’ - 1 Corinthians 1.28-29.