3:17

Switching to wordpress in an effort to breathe life into an old corpse!

2009-01-31T19:14:00.002Z

You should now be able to find me here - although whether there will be anything worth finding is a different matter

Evangelism - a duty or delight?

2008-08-06T10:06:00.002+01:00

I came across this the other day from JI Packer:

Harry S. Boer wrote telling of the naturalness of evangelism in Pentecost and Missions (1961). There he shows that the view of evangelism as first and foremost a Christian duty required by the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19-20 is no older than the last century, prior to which the mainspring of evangelism among lay Christians was the naturalness of sharing Christ with one's neighbour out of sheer inner excitement over the new life of hope one had found.

Packer continues:

...But during the past century Christians have become unbiblically and indeed pathetically earthbound, concentrating their hopes of happiness on the here rather than the hereafter. And as the glow of the hope of glory has faded, credibility has diminished, and zeal for sharing Christ has waned.

Meantime, evangelism has been institutionalised in various forms and programs of organised mission activity, thus becoming a duty rather than a delight.

Celebrating the Saving Work of God, p208

On being judgmental

2008-08-05T11:47:00.000+01:00

I caught the tail-end of Highland Radio’s interview with Pastor Trevor Russell and Gareth Hayes of Letterkenny Christian Fellowship about their beliefs. I thought they did a good job of explaining and defending their faith, and supporting their answers from the Bible.

Having touched on a number of hot potatoes, the interviewer kept coming back to the claim that their Christianity made them judgmental.

It’s a claim often thrown at Christians—and sometimes justly. Christians can be guilty of looking down their noses at others—which is often what is meant by ‘judgmental’—and that is indefensibly wrong.

But that is different from what these guys were doing in expressing their standards of right and wrong. We all have standards of what we think is right and wrong—in that sense we are all judgmental.

However there is difference between having standards, and looking down your nose at those who don’t hold to the same standard. One does not necessarily follow the other. And in some cases a person feels ‘judged’ simply because another holds or expresses a different standard. We need to stop being such moral crybabies and have the courage of convictions, and enter into robust discussion as to the basis of our convictions.

The issue is not “Is Christianity judgmental”—for we all are—but “On what basis do we make our value judgments?”

This was clear in the interview. The interviewer clearly disapproved strongly of Christian beliefs which led to strong opinions about right and wrong. Let me say that again: He had a strong opinion/judgment about those who had strong opinions/judgments.

Do you see the irony? His own belief system made him equally judgmental to those who didn’t agree with him.

Christians hold to a defined standard of right and wrong set down by God. It is not arbitrary; it is fixed and universal because God is unchanging and universal. As creator he has the right to rule. But if you don’t have God, where do you get your standard of right and wrong from? It’s simply left to the prevailing climate of opinion which changes from place to place. Without a fixed standard it becomes an arbitrary matter of opinion, and why should one opinion be better than another?

The genuine Christian has a reason for what he believes and how he lives. He is seeking to be consistent with what he believes.

He knows that he is a sinner who can’t earn acceptance with God—so he has no reason to be proud of how he lives or to look down on others. He lives the way he lives because someone has paid for his sin, and because he takes sin seriously he wants to avoid it out of love for the one who paid for his sin. He knows the mess sin makes for others and the judgment that awaits them and so he wants to lovingly warn them that standards are not a matter of opinion, but that there is a God who judges.

And therein perhaps lies the crux of the issue—we don’t like the idea of a God who judges. And we don’t like being reminded of his fixed standards. Yet our only hope lies in a God who judges. If he turns a blind eye to sin then Heaven will be Hell. But instead he offers to judge Jesus in our place. Our only hope is to come to terms with the God who judges, and to ask that Jesus be judged and not us.

The Angel-maker

2008-05-15T12:03:00.000+01:00

There was a discussion about angels on Highland Radio on Monday. Unfortunately I was standing in a shop that had it on in the background and didn’t get a chance to call in. It was really intriguing. Various callers talked about their belief in angels: about having a personal angel who turned up at just the right time, about what their angel was called, and how they talked to their angel.

It sounded great – to have this great being take such a personal interest in your life, to listen to your requests and to help you, to be there and never to leave you or forsake you.

Then it struck me – what do you need an angel for when you can have the angel-maker?

Almighty God spoke the angels into existence. They are creatures and he is the Creator. They are finite and he is infinite. He is all-knowing and they are not. He is all-powerful and they are not. He is all-present and they are not.

He offers to have a close personal relationship with us.
He then promises to hear and answer our prayers for our best.
He promises that he will never leave us nor forsake us.

So why bother with angels when you could go straight to the top and have the angel-maker?

Of course my question could be asked in the other direction – What do you need the angel-maker for, when you could have an angel? If they are already offering all that, maybe we don’t really need him?

But there is one thing an angel can never do for you.

No angel will die for you. No angel will suffer God’s wrath in your place. No angel will answer for you on the day of Judgment.

And that is precisely what the angel-maker, the Lord Jesus Christ, offers to all who will come to him.

No angel can stand in your shoes on that day, because no angel went to the cross. In Jesus, God came as a human, so that he could take the punishment that humans deserved, so that he could stand in your shoes. And so the angel-maker outranks, out-saves, and out-performs the angels.

Why trust in angels, when only the angel-maker can offer what is ultimately necessary?

‘For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son”… And again, when God brings his firstborn into the world, he says, “Let all God's angels worship him.”’ (Hebrews 1:5,6)

Listen online at www.newlifefellowship.ie

Recent reading & listening

2008-04-29T12:13:00.003+01:00

Books I have read recently that are worth reading (and also worth me reviewing at some stage!):

The Reason for God - Tim Keller
Belter apologetics - winsome, gentle, well-read, humble - the way to go

Promoting the Gospel - John Dickson
Non-guilt inducing book on evangelism - very encouraging and a balanced insight into how evangelism can have its place in everyday life.

The Christian in Complete Armour - William Gurnall
As part of my own version of the Puritan Paperback Challenge I substituted the 3 volumes on the Armour of God for others I had already read - great stuff.

Audio worth listening to:

CJ Mahaney interviews Sinclair Ferguson - great stuff. Worth it just to hear CJ weep at Ferguson describing Christ in Gethsemane. Does Christ work on your behalf move you to tears?

Ask Pastor John - 5 minute Q&A with John Piper - check the archives - some great questions dealt with.

Don Carson preaching on the Pastor as Father and Son - refering to his own father. Personal and insightful.

Dale Ralph Davis on Psalm 124 - first class

CJ Mahaney ministered to my soul with this message from Together for the Gospel - "Sustaining a Pastor's soul" - you have to wait about 15 minutes from him to really get going, but once he does...

My little brother on "Warnings about the coming Judgment" from Luke 12:49-13:9 - sobering and thought provoking

Book Review - A Spectator's guide to World Religions

2008-03-09T15:58:00.002Z

A Spectator’s Guide to World Religions
John Dickson
Blue Bottle Books

What do you know about Buddhism – the current religion of choice for those interested in choosing a new religion? What do you know about Hinduism, or Islam, or Judaism?

John Dickson, known to many as the author of ‘A Sneaking Suspicion’, ‘Hanging in there’, and ‘Stranger than Fiction’, sets out to guide us through the various beliefs of the ‘big five’ of world religions. He seeks to do so from a spectator’s perspective rather than a critiquing perspective – an idea that is both useful and frustrating. His rationale is as follows:

“... Imagine yourself as an art curator who is convinced that one piece in his collection has an unequalled quality. What will you do? Will you dim the lights on the 'competitors' in the gallery and put spotlights on your favourite piece? Of course not. That would be a sure sign you were not actually convinced about the special beauty of your treasured masterpiece.”

And so he sets out to give an unbiased description of each religion in such a way that assumes no prior knowledge.

In this regard he succeeds, setting out clearly and simply what each believes. One of its strengths is that Dickson doesn’t seek to analyse each through a particular grid as many other writers tend to. He doesn’t ask, “What does Buddhism teach about sin?” or “How do Hindus understand forgiveness?” which would be largely meaningless. He says:

“I’ve often wondered what it would look like if an author set out to describe Christianity from the perspective of the Buddhist concepts of 'Self', karma and rebirth. I imagine Christianity would look rather thin.”

That’s a very helpful comment – so often we approach witnessing to different religions through our own framework of ideas and don’t really hear what they are saying. At the end of each chapter there is a handy 2-page summary of what that religion believes.

The book concludes with an interesting twist. Instead asking “What’s wrong with each of these religions?”, he asks, “What do these religions find wrong with Christianity?”. And once again this is a really helpful perspective, putting us in the other shoes and allowing us to see Christianity through their eyes.

Throughout, the book is generous to other faiths, dispelling misconceptions along the way. He really does seek to represent each in its best light.

Having said all that, you can no doubt hear the hesitation in my voice. While I can appreciate what he has done – and he has done what he set out to do – I still think that the book lacks an important critical edge. Dickson regards it inappropriate to critique the other faiths without first attempting to see what others see in them, until you’re able to answer a question like – ‘Why are millions of people attracted to Buddhism?’. I agree wholeheartedly with that, and this book equips you to find out what they believe. But it never reaches the second part of the equation – critiquing after you have understood.

It’s too nice, too understanding.

It’s like a recipe book which has a selection of poor recipes in amongst the good, but the kindly editor doesn’t want to point out which are which. He expects people to be able to tell from the description.

And Dickson’s analogy of the art curator is slightly off because it assumes that if we could see all the religions in the same light we would instinctively choose the right one. It seems to overlook the reality of a deceitful heart that suppresses the truth. When you have a group of vision-impaired students looking at art work, the curator needs to do more than simply turn up the lights – he should explain why one is better than another.

There are a few other quibbles along the way – Given his approach it’s no surprise that when it comes to Christianity he simply describes the differences between what the world would see as the three major brands of Christianity – Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and Orthodox. And therefore it shouldn’t be surprising either to find amongst the list of ‘Famous Christians’ the names of Mel Gibson and Mother Theresa. But given that the author is an evangelical Christian I would have liked to see him give a different set of representative examples of Christianity for non-Christians to look at.

The problem with the book is that it is betwixt and between. It isn't fully useful to non-christians, and isn't fully useful to Christians either. But in what it does do, it does well. It teaches simply and clearly about other religions. And for that I would still recommend the book.

Book Review - The Jesus Storybook bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones

2008-03-06T09:54:00.002Z

As I pastor I've just finished preaching an overview of the bible - I'm passionate about gettting people to see the big picture. So I was really excited to see this for children. The idea is superb, the tying every story to Jesus is magnificent. Our 4 year old daughter has started seeing the connections already. And that excites me. I love how it fits every story in with the plot-line of the bible.

However I have a couple of caveats.

Since children get so much from imagery I was really disappointed with the artwork. I have a problem anyway with images of Jesus since I see them as breaking the second commandment, but I had reservations about some of the rest of the illustrations in the book. The quality is great, but the content very poor, and underscores misconceptions of the bible, actually making the bible look less believable. Noah's ark is shown balancing precariously on the pinnacle of the mountain, as well as being that silly shape that it is often drawn - nothing like the proportions given in the bible. Jericho is a five house town - not much of a conquest there. Goliath is make to look like a gruesome ogre of fairytale proportions. The people of Israel coming to the Red Sea look like a small Sunday school outing rather than 1.5 million people making the exodus. I could go on. For me, the pictures undermine the very thing the words are seeking to do - they push the stories into the realm of fairy tales.

(A far better set of illustrations are by Gail Schoonmaker in the The Big Picture Story Bible written by David Helm.)

The other caveat is that sometimes Lloyd-Jones is a little loose to the story, making up things that aren't in the passage. For example - Jesus being bathed in a golden light at his baptism, there being three wise men, Jesus winking at the boy who brought the 5 loaves and saying "watch this" and others. It's little things like she says Jacob had to wait 7 years to marry Rachel instead of just a week, like God creating by saying "Hello Light", like using "Papa" for Father - a word which doesn't carry the same connotations as Abba. Like the feeding of the '5000 people', rather than 5000 men, plus a lot more women and children. Like Jesus playing games with children. Like Zacchaeus being so small that he had to take a flying leap to get up into his chair for breakfast.

In one sense they're small things, and it is in the style of other children's books. And therein lies the problem - the bible isn't another children's book. It's true in every detail - so when it comes to a Children's version of the Bible, it should be true in every detail. We owe that to our kids.

I'd prefer not to have to edit the story as I tell it. Growing up, we had the Child's Story Bible by Catherine Vos read to us. Time and time again when we thought she was stretching the text, when we looked up our bibles we found she was exactly right. Since we read it so many times, a vast quantity of accurate bible knowledge was imbibed. That's what I look for in a children's bible.

Having said all that - the links to Jesus often make you stop and praise God for Jesus. We've read it following on from the aforementioned Big Picture Story Bible - which I would heartily recommend. And that's probably the best way - read it along with other children's bibles and correct it as you go.

Looking forward to the revised edition of this potentially tremendous asset.

DA Carson talks - about his father and being a father

2008-02-28T09:35:00.002Z

Don Carson is one of my favourite writers, and one who is worth hearing when you get the chance.

His writing is balanced, nuanced and thorough. His intellect seems vast.

He spoke recently at a Desiring God Pastors' Conference on the theme of "The Pastor as Father and Son". The talks are superb, and reveal Carson warmth and his love for his father. Great insights on scripture and on being a pastor, and on being a Dad.

You can find them here.

Dodgy Leviticus commentary??

2008-02-01T14:51:00.000Z

I'm starting to preach on Zechariah at the moment and am enjoying a commentary in the NIV Application Commentary series by Mark Boda.

I was surprised at the series because I had always assumed that it was a light weight series for young people. This one isnt. Its fairly in-depth, and enjoyable. So I was thinking about looking out some others in the series.

Then today through my email letterbox came a missive from Matthias Media. After their usual blurb about The Briefing, there were links to a couple of other articles. One with the following title caught my eye:

Review: Leviticus, Numbers NIV Application Commentary — Leigh Trevaskis points out a major problem with a so-called ‘evangelical’ commentary.

Since the series was in my mind I thought I'd check it out.

Turns out that the guy who wrote the commentary on Leviticus is a Seventh Day Adventist - which doesn't mean he isn't a Christian, but it does raise some questions about how he regards the sacrifices and the effectiveness of Christ's work on the cross.

Here's a section of the article:

Gane unpacks the significance his interpretation has for atonement in the New Testament. Christians receive forgiveness by trusting in the sacrificial death of Christ (i.e. phase 1), but unless they live godly lives, this forgiveness will be revoked on the Day of Judgement.

You may wonder if the inclusion of SDA atonement theology warrants this book's public bagging. It does because the proposed second phase of atonement eviscerates grace from the gospel. And if busy preachers were to accept uncritically Gane's interpretation, they may follow unwittingly his conclusion that Christians who fail to live a sufficiently moral life will lose their forgiveness on Judgement Day.

A heavy reliance on this commentary will erode a Christian's assurance of salvation and confuse one's understanding of the complete sufficiency of Christ's atoning sacrifice.

Now I don't know very about Seventh Day Adventism, but I appreciated the warning that all might not be well in this commentary.

You can read the article here for yourselves.

Book Review - Don't Make Me Count to Three

2008-01-07T14:55:00.000Z

Contrary reviews on Amazon this in not a book about spanking. Nor is it a book about being a dictator. Plowman has written a useful and helpful book that deals as much with the parent's attitude as it does with the child's.

It is a balanced book. She frequently highlights and underlines failures of parents to be loving and God-centred in their raising of their children. And she is humble enough to illustrate these failures from her own experience. It is balanced also in that it recognises the need to react differently with different children and with different ages of children - for her there is no 'one rule fits all' thinking.

It is a practical book. It is an ideal companion to Ted Tripp's "Shepherding a Child's Heart". I felt Tripp's book was light on practical examples, but Plowman redresses that with many illustrations of what to do and what not to do.

It is a heart-oriented book. Her approach is not simply to correct the behaviour, but to get to the roots of the behaviour which lie in the heart. It's relatively easy to create a little automaton who will obey out of fear or reward, and then rebel when your back is turned. Plowman is not interested in such an approach. She seeks to get to the heart - and often that means dealing with your own heart first.

It is a biblical book. As a pastor I dislike intensely seeing verses quoted out of context. Contrary to other reviews Mrs Plowman does not do this. Instead she shows every evidence that she understands the context. But more importantly she calls parents to act not as they find easiest, nor in a way that is comfortable to them, but in the way God requires.

It is also a direct book. Plowman is not afraid to call a spade a spade when it comes to some of the methods advocated by parents, for example 'counting to three', 'making excuses for children'. She shows how these only teach children to disobey until you get to '3' as opposed to obeying immediately and to make excuses when they are disobedient. They are counterproductive and naive.

It must also be pointed out that the majority of this book is about verbal correction. And when it comes to deal with physical correction, it spends as much time correcting wrong ideas, wrong motives and wrong approaches. Here there is also much wisdom and balance. Plowman shows the vast difference between biblical chastisement and unbiblical chastisement.

As a pastor and a parent I welcome this book. Those who read it and consider how it applies in their situation will find much help.

Newspaper articles etc

2007-08-30T17:54:00.000+01:00

Posts are now somewhat infrequent - thats because posts were mostly my articles for the newspapers. Now they're posted over at the two church websites:

http://milfordrpc.org/Newspaper/Newspaper.html
http://www.newlifefellowship.ie/newspaper/newspaper.html

You can subscribe there, or keep reading here - as long as I remember to post them here too!

All handbrake, no accelerator

2007-08-18T20:05:00.000+01:00

What drives you as a Christian? What is the motivating force for how you spend your time, your money, and your resources?

It strikes me that sometimes Christians are all handbrake and no accelerator. Our relationship with God stops us doing plenty of things, sinful things, but what actually drives us? Are our lives distinctively different from those around us in the things that we do do, as opposed to the things we don’t do?

Is the only thing that marks us out as different from our colleagues or our friends the fact that we don’t swear, don’t have sex outside of marriage and go to church things a couple of times a week?

Did Jesus save us to get a tenth of our money, and an hour or two on a Sunday? Or is there more to the Christian life than that?

Jesus taught his disciples to pray, and in that prayer he teaches them what their priorities are to be. The Lord’s Prayer starts with three requests focused on God, followed by three requests dealing with our needs. All to often we start with our needs and never make it to the things that are God’s concerns.

And because our prayers shape how we live, and how we live shapes how we pray, we have lost a vital perspective. It is the perspective of “Your Kingdom come”.

God is not in the business of saving individuals, no more than a builder is in the business of collecting bricks.

Throughout the gospels we see that Jesus has come to build a kingdom. He starts his ministry with the announcement, “The time has come. The kingdom of God is near” (Mark 1:15). He’s called the Lord Jesus because he came to rescue us from the kingdom of darkness and to bring us into his own kingdom. He calls his followers to “Seek first his kingdom… and all these things shall be given to you” (Matt 6:33). The kingdom was the focus of his teaching in the days after his resurrection, “He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:8).

The kingdom was the focus of the preaching of the apostles, “Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly… arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God” (Acts 19:8).

The concept of kingdom gave confidence and drive to the early church, “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken…” (Hebrews 12:28). And that motivated the early Christians, when they were faced with the choice of either calling Caesar “Lord” or death in the arena, they choose death because they had no king but Christ.

This idea of kingdom is central to the life and experience of biblical Christianity. It’s what Jesus was about. It’s what the apostles were about. It’s what the early church was about.

Is it what you are about?

I don’t mean, “Are you a Christian?”. I mean, if you are a Christian, does the concept of Christ’s kingdom drive your choices? Are you a kingdom citizen, or merely a kingdom inhabitant?

The gospel is a call to invest your life in something majestic – in a kingdom that is victorious, that takes in the entire globe, that transforms lives, that has no limits, whose effects last for all eternity. God didn’t save us merely to get us out of Hell and into Heaven. He saved us to allow us to take part in the greatest empire ever seen.

But does our use of time or money or resources demonstrate that we are investing in a kingdom that cannot be shaken?

Consider the reply of the farmer who was asked what he did. He said, “I serve the King of kings, and I keep cattle to put food on the table.” That’s a kingdom perspective.

Consider the man who bought a holiday home in eastern Europe, but lets it out free of charge to local pastors needing a break, or to missionaries looking for accommodation.

Consider what joy you will have in Heaven if you invest your finances in supporting a local pastor in Peru for 10 years, rather than buying a newer model of car.

Consider that where we choose to live, even within Ireland, is a kingdom decision – where in the country needs Christians? According to one directory of churches, 82% of church workers in Ireland are on the east and south coasts. 52% are in the greater Dublin area. That leaves a vast tract of land up the west coast and in the middle. Where might the King want his citizens to live?

It’s a fantastically liberating concept. In 100 years from now where will our cars, homes, TVs, holidays be? Yet when we invest ourselves in living for Christ’s kingdom we will see the rewards for all eternity.

We are only managers of what we have.

Mission doesn’t start with speaking about the gospel. It starts with a fire that burns much deeper, a passion that comes from wanting to see Jesus’ kingdom spread, and pouring what resources you can into it.

When we live in such a way as to show that Christ is precious, then people will begin to take seriously our claim that Christ is precious and his kingdom worth being part of.

Kingdom living – let the Son set you free and you shall be free indeed.

Milford & Letterkenny on iTunes Store

2007-08-04T11:58:00.000+01:00

You can now subscribe to sermons from Milford and Letterkenny via iTunes.

If you use iTunes, you can click the links below to subscribe to the sermon podcasts

Milford podcast
Letterkenny podcast

Click the link and iTunes opens up (if you have it installed - if not you can download it from Apple).
Then Click on the 'Subscribe' button.
You can either set up iTunes to download every new podcast, or you can leave it that you pick and choose which ones you want.

If you don't use iTunes and you wish to subscribe you can do so vis these RSS links

Milford RSS Sermon feed
Letterkenny RSS Sermon feed

Website for Milford

2007-07-25T18:52:00.000+01:00

Finally, and about time too, we've actually got a website up. Very basic. But it will have to do for starters.

Again I'll have to tip my hat to Ballyclabber and Limavady RP Churches - because I borrowed
some material from their sites. But since we are all part of the same denomination - it would be odd if our beliefs pages were radically different!

You'll find it here

Let me know what bits don't work!

Another Voice - On Popes and Pronouncements

2007-07-21T18:56:00.000+01:00

So the Pope thinks that Christian denominations outside Roman Catholicism are not true churches. In layman’s terms – we’re not quite Christian. And there seems to be a right old furore over it.

Oddly enough I don’t have a problem with it. I disagree, but from where he stands it makes perfect sense. The Pope is a man who understands the very simple law of non-contradiction which, in this pluralistic, don’t-ever-say-anyone-is-wrong age we live in, is often ignored.

At the heart of the whole thing lies two very different views about how we relate to God and find forgiveness. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that you are saved by a two-pronged approach – you need both Christ (with his work on the cross) and the Church (with its rites which you must perform). One alone cannot save you: it takes both. On the other hand, evangelical Christianity teaches that it is entirely by Christ that we are accepted. He has accomplished everything necessary for salvation on the cross.

The two ideologies are fundamentally opposed. One says, “Christ+Church,” the other says, “Christ alone”. Both cannot be right.

If the Pope is convinced that he is right, then by definition I (and other evangelical Christians) must be wrong. If I believe I am right, then I must believe that he is wrong about how we relate to God. The dangerous game of ecumenical confusion played by others has obscured areas of grave concern for our souls. The truth is we do not all believe the same thing, and people’s souls are at stake. The Pope recognises this, and expresses his spiritual concern. As a pastor concerned for people’s souls, I appreciate the Pope’s frankness on this issue.

Why is there such an outcry then? The Pope is only stating what has been recognised by committed people on both sides for centuries.

The problem arises because we live in a world where the greatest ‘sin’ is to think that anyone else is wrong. Yet this kills off all intelligent discussion. And ironically those who are horrified at the Pope (or me) for saying that the other side is wrong, will rise up on their high horses to tell us, “You are wrong. It is wrong to tell people that they are wrong.” In a previous generation that was called hypocrisy – now it passes for tolerance.

How are we to decide such issues? Perhaps the wisest course is to see what God himself says. Through the apostle Paul, writing to a group of people who were saying that it wasn’t enough to have faith in Jesus you must also perform certain rites, God says,

“After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?” – Galatians 3:3

Give us today our daily bread

2007-06-07T10:10:00.000+01:00

How much do you eat in a week? How much does your family eat in a week?

Jesus taught us to pray "Give us today our daily BREAD". Bread was the basic necessity of life. Bread and water. And yet we get so much more than the basic necessities - we get dessert too.

Jesus also taught us to pray, "Give US today our daily bread." Our prayers are so often self-centred, how often do we pray, and then act on behalf of the hungry?

Here's a couple of pics from a photo essay you can see the rest of over here. They show what a family in the UK eats in a week, and a family from Chad - along with the relative amount spent on food per week.

Great Britain: The Bainton family of Cllingbourne Ducis

Food expenditure for one week: 155.54 British Pounds or $253.15
Favorite foods: avocado, mayonnaise sandwich, prawn cocktail, chocolate fudge cake with cream

Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp

Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23
Favorite foods: soup with fresh sheep meat

You can hear a sermon I preached on "Give us today our daily bread" here

Another Voice - More than conquering your circumstances

2007-06-06T10:17:00.000+01:00

Two old men were sitting watching a heavily loaded van making its way across an old bridge. The bridge croaked and groaned under the weight. As they watched, a starling landing on top of the cab, and immediately the bridge collapsed in a cloud of dust. One of the men turned to the other and said, “Heavy wee thing, that bird.”

Sometimes it’s not the big things in life that get to us, it’s the collection of little things that mount up, and soon you feel up to you neck. And perhaps you find yourself lying awake at night and your mind is racing with the circumstances you find yourself in, and it gets to the point where you are on the verge of panic.

Perhaps it’s the kids, they’re playing up, and you just don’t have the energy for this. Perhaps it’s bills coming in, perhaps it’s reports coming home from school of disruptive behaviour, perhaps it’s worries about a job, work isn’t coming in, or too much work is piling up. Perhaps it’s losing your job, and how then are you going to provide?

Perhaps it’s just that you are caught in a pattern you can’t get out of – you can’t seem to break free. Perhaps something has you addicted and you can’t break free. Perhaps choices you made have left you in a hopeless situation. Perhaps you have been dumped into your circumstances by others, and you are left there and you feel you are floundering, just keeping afloat and no more.

Is there hope?

We can’t always change our circumstances – despite what Oprah and the positive thinking gurus say. But the Bible teaches that we can be changed in our circumstances. In other words we can live in the same circumstances, but with a radically different mindset, and more importantly with the strength of God working in us and through us enabling us to cope. And often it is as he changes us that God does what we can’t do, and changes our circumstances.

The Bible also teaches that those who put their trust in God find that he controls their circumstances for their good. That gives a strength and a peace amidst the turmoil. And, although it doesn’t always happen, often he does lift us out of our circumstances and transform both them and us.

On Sunday evening (10th) we’ll be looking at what the Bible has to say this on topic in greater detail – ‘More than Conquering your Circumstances’. It’s open to anyone. It will be held in the Day Centre off Oliver Plunkett Road, Letterkenny at 8pm. Why not come along and hear more?

Sermons online

2007-05-18T15:59:00.000+01:00

Just to say I've stuck some sermons online over at www.newlifefellowship.ie should anyone be vaguely interested

Here's a list of whats there at present:

More than Conquering
More than Conquering your suffering

Lord’s Prayer (first sermons missing)
Hallowed be your name
The Kingdom under attack (Preparation for Communion)
Your Kingdom Come (Communion Service)
The Return of the King (Thanksgiving service)

Fellowship
Talks given at Calvary Mission’s weekend
The Importance of Fellowship
The Foundations of Fellowship
The Foundations (2) - How people change
The Practice of Fellowship

Individual Sermons
Come to me all you who are weary and burdened

Another Voice - Getting Past your Past

2007-05-16T23:14:00.001+01:00

If you had an opportunity to plan your life – would you be who you are now? Who we are is, in part, the result of the actions and influences of others.

That’s fine if only good has happened to you. But since we live in a broken world there are many who have been shaped by situations and circumstances that have left deep scars across the surface of their souls. It might have been abuse, bereavement, absent or distant parents, alcoholism, drug dependence, or countless other factors.

We only get one life. It doesn’t seem fair that the actions of others in time past can mar and ruin who we are.

Perhaps this is you, and you’ve tried to hide from the past, but you know that it doesn’t work.

It’s possible to live with the past, and yet not cope with the past. It gnaws away at us. We become trapped, thinking that we have to remain victims.

In Ireland we are very good at putting up masks, and hiding behind them, pretending everything is fine. But underneath lies a soul that is still raw. The past is real; it cannot be changed. Yet it can be conquered.

Our past might define us, but it doesn’t have to defeat us.

But how?

As a Christian, and as a pastor I believe that there is an answer. The Bible offers help to the hurting, so that they can emerge like a butterfly from the chrysalis of their past. God makes a promise to hurting people: “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11).

What great words: hope, future, prosper. The hope that the Bible holds out is of a God who sets us free from the shackles of our past, who takes our past and uses it for good in us and around us. Not only does he rescue us from our past, but he rescues our past as well. The years we thought were lost are turned around and made into something profitable.

More needs to be said, and I will be speaking on Sunday evening (20th) on what the Bible has to say about ‘More than Conquering your Past’ at the Day Centre off Oliver Plunkett Road, Letterkenny at 8pm. Why not come along and hear more?

Sermon audio can now we found here

Website for New Life Fellowship

2007-05-04T10:40:00.000+01:00

Finally, and about time too, we've actually got a website up. Very basic. But it will have to do for starters.

I'll have to tip my hat to Ballyclabber and Limavady RP Churches - because I borrowed
some material from their sites. But since we are all part of the same denomination - it would be odd if our beliefs pages were radically different!

You'll find it here

Is there only ever one right answer?

2007-04-26T17:56:00.000+01:00

Tim Challies is asking over here if error in doctrine is always sin. I would say yes, but that doesn't mean that a person has deliverately chosen to sin. Sin is still sin even if we act in ignorance.

Just yesterday I sent a while responding to a similar question so here's part of that response:

They wrote:

But I think what we differ on here is the fact that you say there is ONE right answer for EVERY issue in the Bible, and I don't believe that to be true.

I replied:

Let me clarify what I believe the bible teaches. It all comes down to guidance - in all matters we take our guidance from the bible. In any decision making process the Christian will find that there are 3 types of decision:

Right or wrong decisions
Wise or foolish decisions
'Doesnt matter'/personal preference decisions

With regard to each of those situations the bible functions like this

Right/wrong decisions - Bible tells us what we are to do and not do
Wisdom decisions - Bible provides guidelines for what is wise or foolish.
'Doesnt matter'/personal preference decisions - Bible doesnt especially speak about them, because they dont matter

Here's how this fits together

Right/wrong decisions - There is only one right answer - a thing is either right or wrong
Wisdom decisions - There is a principle which is right, but it may result in different outcomes depending on situations
'Doesnt matter'/personal preference decisions - There are many right answers.

When we come to look at at issue you need to ask which category does it fit into? Depending on which category it fits into there may be more than one right answer. But not if it is a right /wrong issue. When it comes to wisdom decisions we need to recognise that the principles that guide us are the same for all Christians, but may result in different outcomes. So in a sense there is one right principle, but different outcomes, yet all Christians are bound to keep to the same principles, although some may differ as to which principles to apply.

Also some issues dont just fit into one category - there are aspects of each involved. There may be right/wrong rules to be applied, then wise/foolish principles, finally before you find you have one option left, or maybe you still have several - and you are free to choose which you want. For example - marriage.

Right/wrong decisions - You must marry a Christian, of the opposite sex, and not a blood relative.
Wisdom principles - Bible teaches that they should be good for you spiritually, and you should be able to submit to them.
'Doesnt matter'/personal preference decisions - That still leaves quite a few candidates - so pick one you like!

So no-one can tell you that you are wrong for marrying Bill if Bill is a Christian, single and not related. They might feel that you were unwise, or they mighn't agree with your preference.

When it comes to any issue - marriage, work, worship, baptism, etc - we have to work through each of these categories.

They had said:

Again, from Romans 14, "He who regards one day as special does so to the Lord. He who eats meat does so to the Lord...he who abstains does so to the Lord." How can all these be right if there is just 1 answer? They do what they believe is right before God. "Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind." It doesn't say we all have to be convinced of the same thing, but in our own minds.

When we come to Romans 14 we can look at it under those headings

These people were concerned that meat sacrificed to idols shouldnt be eaten, or that they should keep the Jewish Sabbath as well as the Lord's day, or the other Jewish feasts.

Was it a matter of right/wrong? No, eating meat sacrificed to idols wasnt a sin, neither was not eating the meat. Keeping an extra day as special wasnt a sin, neither was NOT keeping the extra day a sin.

Was it a matter of wisdom? For Paul, who knew there was nothing wrong with the meat, it boils down to a matter of wisdom. The great principle at stake is - Since there is no sin involved, will one action or another tend to build up more? These people arent convinced yet that the meat is ok, so Paul will not insist on eating it in their presence, and offending them.

Was it a matter of personal preference? Yes - for those who didnt eat meat it was important for them to see that this wasnt a biblical position, nor was it unbiblical - simply they had a problem with the close association with idols and preferred not to eat. And it was important that both sides knew that and didnt judge the other.

The issue to note is that neither course of action was wrong in itself, therefore there was freedom. God had not spoken against it.

This is a Category 2 (Wisdom issue) hence - one principle, different answers. Or in might even be a Category 3 (preference) problem - with the people mistaking it for a matter of biblical truth. Each person is to make up their own mind on the matter, and be consistent with what they have decided.

Also they had asked:

As well, the passage in 1 Corinthians 7; 36-38, where Christians are given options of doing things. One way is "right" but another way is "better". Not wrong.

This one is a Category 2 problem - the principle is set out in v8-9. "Dont marry, unless you can't control yourself." He then applies the principle to different groups.

When you asked me was there only one right answer on issues I was thinking of Category 1 issues. Clearly there are other areas where there are multiple answers which are right, but those areas are clearly defined and outside the boundary of category 1.

There are issues on which Christians can legitimately differ without one being right and the other wrong, but only really when it comes to category three. All Christians should agree on right and wrong, and on principles of wisdom. But personal preferences will differ, or cultural preferences will differ.

You might think it seems harsh to think that another person is wrong, or even arrogant. Just because I believe someone is wrong, doesnt mean that I dont love them or respect them, and it certainly doesnt mean I think I am better than them. It is possible to be right on an issue and still expect to learn from others.

Of course it cuts both ways - they think I am wrong. I dont have a problem with that either.

One thing that is missing from much of today's Christianity is the ability to have a robust discussion about issues. Either people get angry, which is wrong, or they think that it isnt loving to disagree.

Humility doesnt mean being wimpish and vague in our belief. Humility is being sure of what you believe and yet being willing to learn from anyone. There is an idea that it is wrong to seek to be certain about anything. Christianity must not accommodates itself to this spirit of the age which says it is arrogant to says that there is such a thing as absolute truth.

However since some matters are complex and sincere Christians do differ, we must hold our positions with humble firmness.

Dale Ralph Davis Sermons online

2007-04-20T09:36:00.000+01:00

Dale Ralph Davis writes great commentaries on Old Testament books. Now you can listen to his sermons online here. They aren't in mp3 format, but I wanted to include the phrase 'mp3' because for some reason I keep getting hits looking for 'Dale Ralph Davis sermons mp3'. Hopefully now people will be pointed in the right direction.

Also - the guy knows how to write an introductory webpage for a church. Have a look at this. Here's a snippet:

"Now I must warn you. This church is full of sinners. Everyone who comes here is one. You'll need to remember that if you associate with us – or you may be unnecessarily disappointed."

Virginia Tech: A great American tragedy

2007-04-19T08:11:00.000+01:00

A friend of mine, Crawford Gribben, has written a great article on a lesson to be learned from the Virginia Tech tragedy. In it he writes:

It’s not fashionable to lament the slow death of the Western imagination – but there can be little doubt that the death of our collective imagination, and our collective imagination’s preoccupation with scenes of violence and death, has lead to repeated incidents of enacted violence. Our collective imagination is the key to our social future – what we choose to fill our minds with is a real indication of what our societies will choose to become.

Read it here.

Another Voice - Give us today our daily bread

2007-04-17T17:55:00.001+01:00

First it was the power going off, then the water, then the power again. Then our car broke down. It doesn’t take much to bring everything grinding to a halt. What do you do when the electric goes off for a couple of hours? What do you do when the water stops running?

It’s funny how easily we are reduced to nothingness. So much of our homes run on electricity. You think when the power goes off, I’ll just go and phone so and so, only to find that your new digital cordless phone doesn’t work. So you think, “I’ll just sit down with a mug of tea and a good book,” but of course there’s no power for the kettle! And then proud of your creativity you think, “I’ll use the microwave to heat the water”. Nope.

We fancy ourselves as great independent people who can cope with life, but the reality is that we’ve become so dependent on progress that we don’t know how to cope when it all breaks down.

I’ve just started preaching on the Lord’s Prayer on Sundays. One of the phrases in it is, “Give us today our daily bread” which covers much more than bread – all the necessities of life – but seems obsolete in a day and age of supermarkets. After all, we earn the money with which we buy our food, and we drive to the shop in our own cars, and we cook the food ourselves. Why bother asking God? Yet don’t the recent problems with water and electricity show us that it is just as relevant 2000 years after Jesus taught it? God hasn’t become obsolete, just because we have moved a step or two away from the raw materials. Instead of reaping our own corn and grinding it for bread, or walking to the well and drawing our own water, we have it all ‘on tap’ so to speak.

Yet when the supply chain is interrupted we find ourselves at a loss. We find we aren’t as independent as we thought – and that we can’t even cope with a few shortages. Our progress hasn’t made us any more independent; it has only blinded us to our reliance upon God for even the simplest things in life.

We need to get back to seeing the need to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread”. It’s humbling, but better to be humble than find God having to humble us for our arrogant self-reliance.

(PS You can hear a sermon I preached on "Give us today our Daily Bread" here)

Prayer and Easter

2007-04-06T14:05:00.000+01:00

...the Bible’s teaching is that we are not fit to approach God ourselves. We simply cannot wander into his presence to worship or to make requests. We are stained with our sin, and with our righteousness. Yes, stained with our righteousness. Like some child who has got covered in thick greasy oil, and then tried to cover it up with white talcum powder. It doesn’t work. Its still a mess.

The only reason Christians can pray is because Christ has made them acceptable by his death on the cross, where our sins and our shabby efforts at righteousness are placed on him, and his cloak on perfect goodness is placed on us. Like Jacob going in before his father dressed like his brother Esau, and blind Isaac knew the voice was different, but the clothes smelt right, and he poured out the blessing on Jacob. So we stand in God’s presence dressed like Christ, and our voice is different, but the Father is not some blind old man, he is fully aware of what he is doing, and says, "I will bless you because you are dressed like my son. I will listen to you because you are dressed like my son. I will answer you because you are dressed like my son. I will answer even before you cry out because you are dressed like my son."

And what was the cost of that cloak that we wear? It cost the death of Jesus, the suffering of Jesus, the hell that was mine poured out on Jesus.

Prayer is a blood-bought privilege.

And that means two things:

One – prayer is only open to those who have put on Christ's righteousness, in other words, Christians.

The second thing we learn from this is the immensity of the privilege Christians have. Prayer is a precious thing. It's precious because it isn’t available to everyone. Its precious because of who we can talk to. And its precious because of what it cost. What a terrible sin we have committed by being prayerless. Perhaps that’s where we need to start, with a realisation of what prayer is, and what it cost.

When we pray we need to keep in mind the heart-wrenching, soul-tearing, agonising cry of Christ on the cross, “My God My God, why have you forsaken me?” Part of the answer to that question is found when you bow your head and say, “Father”. How humbling. How much forgiveness we need for failing to pray.

Nuclear apologetics

2007-03-29T10:40:00.000+01:00

I've just finished listening to a set of lectures by Greg Bahnsen on defending your faith. First class stuff. Get them and listen to them - I'd post them for you, but they're copyright!

So you'll have to buy them yourself, but they're well worth it - somewhere in the region of £1 each. There's ten of them, but why not buy the first couple and see what you think.

Here's a suggestion - buy the first two and get a group of you together and listen to them, and talk about it.

You'll get them here

Another Voice - Money will spit you out

2007-03-27T11:08:00.000+01:00

I was talking to a local businessman who works in the retail sector. He voiced his concerns about the way Irish people regard money at the moment. He sees people racking up holidays, homes, cars and luxury items and he wonders where they are getting the money. In business he increasingly comes across those whose credit cards are being declined when they go to purchase.

We live at a time where banks, manufacturers and advertisers couldn’t care less about the people their products are aimed at. We used to be customers, now we are simply consumers. They tailor their products, not to meet our needs, but to feed our greed. So we buy items with money we don’t have, to do something we don’t need, only to find a newer and better model released next week.

Money is a cruel master. It so easily enslaves those who get a taste for it and for what it brings. Money enslaves us by making us work harder, work longer and work when we should be with our family. It makes us envy those who have what we haven’t. And we won’t be satisfied until we get it, and when we get it we’ll find that it doesn’t satisfy.

The problem is that money is a substitute – our hearts are wired to seek something that will fulfil us and our needs and desires. Money looks like a likely candidate but it can’t take the strain. It will ultimately disappoint. And when it has sucked you dry it will spit you out, either broke, or dissatisfied with all your toys.

When we try to fill a God-shaped hole in our souls with a thing-shaped object there will always be gaps where dissatisfaction seeps through.

Our hearts are wired for something bigger than money; not so much some thing as some one. God is the only master who won’t disappoint, chew up and spit out. He is the only master who doesn’t say “give, give” but instead says, “I will lay down my life for you”. On the cross God says “I’ll pay, I’ll bring you into happiness – don’t go running after it, let me bring it to you: eternal happiness that no-one can take away, that won’t devalue, deteriorate or be superseded.”

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal” – Matthew 6:19-20

Random rant on prayer and pronunciation

2007-03-16T11:40:00.000Z

I was reading Dan Phillips' post here on people mumbling and mangling Jesus' name.

It brought to mind a few thoughts of my own - one backed up by the mighty Pyro leader himself in the comments section of Dan's post.

minor rant
As Phil put it "The possessive of Jesus' name is spelled and pronounced the way I just wrote it." Ministers and pew sitters alike pay attention - it's Jesus' and when you say "Jesus' disciples" it sounds just like "Jesus disciples" not "Jesusiz disciples".

Anyhow...

Slightly more important Rant
When you pray consider these three things:

Leave out the word "just" as in "Lord we just want to just ask you to just help us"

Think about the Trinity when you pray - I don't know how many times I've heard, "Dear father, we just want to thank you for loving us enough to come and die for us". God the Father did not come an ddie for us, that was God the Son.

Also - please don't try to be so calvinistic or whatever it is that you don't actually ask God for whatever it is you want - "Lord pray for so and so who's sick and we ask you to do your will for him, and we know that you will do your will, so we ask you to do your will." It's almost as if we are afraid to ask incase we dont get it and people, us or others, will say "God didn't answer your prayer". Or perhaps it's because we know that God has a secret will and we don't want people to think we dont know it. I don't know

What I do know is this - Jesus tells us to ask whatever we want in his name - over and over again 8 times plus another 3 from the apostles. It's ok to be specific and to ask for specific things. Of course we understand that God will do what is best, but shouldn't let it handicap and mangle our prayers because we are so conscious of sounding right to other theologically astute folks.

Anyhow...

Thou shalt not pass round copyrighted mp3's or rip someone else's cd's

2007-03-01T15:39:00.000Z

Tim Challies has an excellent post on copyright and mp3 and software. Go read it.

As it gets easier and easier to copy music and swap files, Christians need to realise that if you haven't paid for it, and don't have permission to give it away then to do so is stealing.

How many people's hard-drives/mp3 players are filled with music they didn't pay for?

I remember talking to a Christian young person who proudly told me that he downloaded all his software from the internet and bypassed the security with cracks. He then offered to get me the latest desktop publishing software.

It's called stealing, and God forbids it.

Its easy to do. And we can excuse it so easily. I sometimes borrow a cd and rip it to my ipod to listen to and see if I want to buy it. But months later it can still be there. It's time to dump or buy.

So if you need to, repent and clean out your hard-drives.

Another Voice - Heroes at Drinking

2007-02-27T12:41:00.000Z

So Irish people spent €6.5billion on alcohol in 2005. In 2006 we drank 732 million litres of the stuff. That was 232 litres per person over 18 – which is probably a fair enough figure since those over 18 who don’t drink goes some way to offset those under 18 who do. Apparently we top the international league for binge drinking among the under-20s, and in the amount of alcohol consumed by those aged 15 and over.

Add to that the toll of death and injury caused by people driving under the influence of alcohol. Add to that the abuse and violence inflicted on children, wives, and husbands by those under the influence. Add to that the chaos and over-burdening of A&E departments up and down the country at weekends because of alcohol related violence or accident.

Now why is it then that I keep hearing people whinging about Garda checkpoints and ‘morning after’ breath-testing? It’s even got to the stage that some politicians have voiced their disapproval.

There is an innate selfishness about this – “I have a right to drink what I want, and to go out on the roads and endanger the lives of others just because I want to drive.” It’s all about me.

Why should one person’s favourite offence be treated lightly by the law and not someone else’s preferred manner of law-breaking, like downloading child pornography? I suspect most who complain about breath-testing wouldn’t for a moment let a viewer of child porn off the hook. They want other people’s anti-social behaviour dealt with, while being let off the hook for their own. That is the height of arrogance.

God says in Isaiah 5: “Woe to those who stay up late at night till they are inflamed with wine… Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks… Therefore the Lord’s anger burns against his people.”

It’s time to face up to the fact that we have taken one of God’s gifts and made an idol out of it – and every time we do that it will turn round and bite us. We need to repent of this worship of the god of alcohol and turn to the worship of the one true God.

Food for thought - The Mobile and the Bible

2007-02-21T16:44:00.000Z

(Local newspaper column)
I love gadgets. I love having a digital camera and playing around with it. I love my iPod and being able to listen to whatever I want wherever I am. But there is one gadget that just doesn’t excite me – the mobile phone. I do own one, but it isn’t the latest or the smallest and it doesn’t even have a camera. But I see that I am almost alone in this. Everywhere you look someone is gabbing into a bright shiny phone, or a cluster of people are standing round peering at photos on a 2 inch screen, or talking about their latest upgrade deal.

It has become the new mentor that has to be consulted before we do anything. It carries our lives, our diary, numbers, games, messages, pictures, and music. It has become the new Bible. But I can think of several ways that a Bible is better than a mobile:

It doesn’t need charged.
There is nowhere where it is out of coverage.
No-one will beat you up for your Bible.
There’s no monthly bill, or pay as you go.
A mobile turns you into a slave who can always be found, the Bible sets you free.
Phones carry possible health risks; the message of the Bible enables you to live forever.
They don’t keep issuing better models with new options every two months.

I wonder what would happen if we treated our Bible like we treat our mobile phone?

What if we carried it around in our bags or pockets?
What if we turned back to go and get it if we forgot it?
What if we referred to it several times a day?
What if we used it to receive messages from God?
What if we treated it like we couldn't live without it?
What if we took it out of our pocket to pass the time on a journey?
What if we gave it to kids as gifts?
What if we used it as we travelled?
What if we used it in case of an emergency?

One more advantage a Bible has over a mobile - You can get one free from me, but you won’t get a free mobile! If you would like one, or if you would like someone to give you a beginners guide to the Bible, get in touch.

A couple of sermons online

2007-02-18T19:05:00.000Z

Up until now there has been no evidence on the web that I actually preach the sermons I post here. Some perhaps hoped that they never saw the light of day, but sadly the delusion is gone. Real people have to listen this this stuff! :-) And someone has put a couple of my sermons up for the general population of the world to download. (As if there is going to be a mad rush!)

So for those of you who stumble upon this site and want to hear what I actually sound like you can download a couple of sermons I preached at another church here. The church is Killicomaine Evangelical Church in Northern Ireland, and the services were at their anniversary weekend in 2007. They are on Ecclesiastes - Living well when life is easy and Living well when life is tough

Food for thought - Spare the Rod

2007-02-06T17:52:00.001Z

Corporal punishment in schools has been banned for 25 years, according to a report on last Friday’s RTE news. Are we the better for it being gone?

The reporter interviewed a series of older people who had experience of the ruler or the strap at school. Every one affirmed that it wasn’t pleasant but it hadn’t done them any real harm. The reporter then spoke to a group of school children and asked, “Would you like to have been hit for doing something wrong?” – understandably none were terribly enthused with the idea.

I find it interesting the way reporters reveal their bias by the way they ask their questions and to whom they ask them. Who in their right mind asks anyone if they would like to be disciplined? Also choice of the word ‘hit’ has a far wider range of connotations than getting a smack with a ruler. It could mean a solid blow to the head. This loads the issue even further. As for “something wrong” - the impression given is that you could get a battering for not being able to spell antidisestablishmentarianism, rather than for misbehaving and disrupting class.

Now I would accept that there were teachers who were cruel, violent and sadistic and who abused the power they had. I accept that corporal punishment may have been used unfairly on those who had learning difficulties. But the solution is not to remove the power to discipline; instead it is to remove the teacher who abuses the power, and to see that punishment is used appropriately and sparingly.

The report then went on to talk about the new and improved ways of enforcing discipline and finished with the telling line, “In the absence of corporal punishment, schools have had to find other ways of enforcing discipline, which is an even bigger issue now than it was 25 years ago.”

So discipline is an even bigger problem 25 years after the abolishing of corporal punishment than it was when we had corporal punishment – I wonder what has caused this?

Could it possibly be the abolition of corporal punishment?

There is an “emperor’s new clothes” mentality about all this. We go on and on about what a wonderfully advanced society we have here in Ireland, and all the while discipline in schools, behaviour in our towns and respect for law and order are going to the dogs.

Can we not see the connection – we have removed the power of the state to discipline and punish criminals properly, we have removed the power of educators to discipline pupils effectively, and we are pursuing the path of preventing parents from disciplining their own children effectively – and we wonder why we have problems with discipline at every level?

Like the two little boys in Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale of the emperor, the Bible points out the obvious. It says, “Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid” (Proverbs 12:1). That applies not just to those who don’t like being disciplined, but to all who would seek to remove and forbid proper discipline. The well-known adage, “Spare the rod and spoil the child” is from the book of Proverbs (13:24), which also says, “The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother.” (Proverbs 29:15).

The reason we have discipline problems in society at large is because we have ignored God’s word on the issue. First we ignored his guidelines for how discipline should be done. Now we are ignoring his commands for discipline altogether.

The conclusion? When we fail to build our lives around the maker’s instruction manual we shouldn’t then wonder why everything seems to fall apart.

Another Voice - Identity Theft

2007-02-02T15:21:00.000Z

{Column for a local newspaper)

Last week’s Post carried an article on autobank (ATM) scams here is Letterkenny. Apparently people were finding large amounts mysteriously disappearing from their accounts. The week before carried an article about someone getting their credit cards nicked on holiday and losing out. Last November I looked at my Visa statement to find that someone had purchased tickets to fly from Slovakia to England on my card. It took a lot of phone calls and emails to get the thing sorted out.

It’s a shock to the system to look at your bank balance and see not only that it is less than you expected, but that there are several transactions listed you know nothing about. Your stomach clenches up in momentary panic as you try to figure out what’s going on.

And then a wave of relief comes as you realise that it wasn’t you, and that your credit card company is meant to cover this sort of thing. The relief is final when you get the letter from the bank saying, “We’ve credited you account with the missing amount.”

Identity theft is a real nuisance – and can be costly. However, I owe my life to an identity ‘thief’. It was one of those occasions where the switcher came off the worse for the switch. Instead of getting my resources he got my debts. Instead of me looking at the statement and finding all these things going out of my account, there were lists of things coming into my account. Beside each of my debts an equal amount had been entered to clear it.

The identity switcher was Jesus – on the cross he assumed my guilt and my bad record. He took my identity and therefore had to bear the punishment that my sins had racked up. And it wasn’t a mistake either. He willingly assumed the foulness of my record, and paid my debt with God so that I could be forgiven.

As if that wasn’t enough, it was a two-way switch – he became like me so that I could become like him, a son in God’s family with all the privileges entailed. Mind boggling or what! To find out more about enjoying this identity switch for yourself have a look at this website or feel free to contact me.

Food for thought - “I’m not really like that”

2007-01-24T22:50:00.002Z

I see from the news that Jade Goodie, one of the Big Brother contestants, has landed herself in hot water with accusations of racism against Indian contestant Shilpa Shetty.

I’m somewhat sceptical and wonder if it wasn’t all a ploy to increase viewers.

Goodie’s response was, “No, I'm not a racist, but I accept I made racist comments.” That struck me as somewhat odd – a bit like saying “I’m not a racist but my tongue is”. Yet we hear it from people all the time. A young man gives someone a hiding or attacks a woman, and there will be people on the news saying, “Ah but he’s a good lad at heart, I don’t know what got into him.” How often have we heard some hardened convict or serial killer say, “I’m not a bad person”?

We have this notion that we can divorce people from their actions, “You aren’t a bad person, you just do bad things”.

It would be easy to point the finger though. How often are we guilty of making the same excuses? In the heat of the moment we lose our temper with the kids, or we swear at another driver, or we lash out in frustration and then we say to ourselves, “That’s not the real me, that’s not who I really am.”

Unfortunately that IS who we really are. We cannot divorce people and their actions. The Bible says, “out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34). We wouldn’t do these things if there wasn’t a desire to do them somewhere deep within.

What we do, we choose to do. What we choose to do, we do because of desires deep within us.

That leaves us with a choice – we can either pull the wool over our eyes and pretend that we are better than we really are, all the while allowing ourselves to rot from the inside out, or we can admit that there is something wrong at the very core of our being and look for a way to have it dealt with.

There is something tremendously freeing about the Bible’s approach. It allows us to be honest with ourselves and with God about our sin. We don’t have to hide anything. We don’t have to pretend that we are better than we really are. But more than that, we can have the problem dealt with – God doesn’t just want to hear about our faults, he wants to transform us. That’s what Jesus offers to do.

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you… I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” (Ezekiel 36:26-27)

So if you’re fed up with what you see lurking beneath your surface, and fed up hiding from the truth – here’s the opportunity for a fresh start.

Food for thought - Reality TV

2007-01-11T15:42:00.000Z

Does TV shape us or do we shape what’s on TV? Hard to know which it is, but one thing’s for certain – there are a massive number of reality TV shows, shows like Big Brother, X-Factor, I’m a Celebrity get me out of here, Strictly Come Dancing, You’re a Star, American Idol, Soapstar Superstar, It Takes Two, Celebrity Masterchef, etc. The list seems endless, and you can hardly turn on the TV at the moment without being asked to vote someone on or off a show.

Some of them are really good – I’ll have to admit to watching Strictly Come Dancing, especially when it got down to a battle between two sportsmen. But that’s about all – I can’t stand most of them!

In all of this there seems to be something in these shows that resonates with the public. I suspect that part of it is that we love judging! We love to hear the judges’ comments, and then we love to sit in judgement on the judges, disagreeing with them, shouting at the TV “Are you blind/deaf/untalented” (delete as appropriate) and then override the judges’ decisions with the phone-in vote.

And then there’s the top judge of all reality judges – Simon Cowell of X-Factor and American Idol. Opinionated and ruthless, you either loathe him or love him. His outspokenness infuriates people, but he’s generally always right. And there is a fairness about him such that he’ll criticise his own contestants if he doesn’t think they are up to the mark. Added to that there is the simple fact that it is his opinion that all the contestants want to hear.

Added to that there’s the tension of the results show. And they all follow the same format – string it out as long as possible and have long dramatic delays while giving the results (despite the fact that the votes are probably computer-counted and available in a split-second).

Something strikes me about our fascination with these shows. We love the judgment aspect of it. There is something in us which wants to see our opinion vindicated, or wants to see talent win out, or wants to put down the person we think is too big for their boots. And all the while we’re glad we’re not up there, or sometimes we’re thinking that we could do a better job if we were.

Judgment – who would have thought that judgment would be so popular? Yet it is something we all have to face. One day we will stand like the celebrities before the panels of judges, except for us there will be no panel, no Bruno Tonioli or Sharon Osbourne to say nice things when the others have been rightly critical. There will only be one Judge. There will be no phone-in vote to save those condemned. There will be no second chance.

How then are we to face this day? Do we make it our New Year resolution to try really hard to be a decent and kind person? No matter how hard we try we’d still never get that perfect 10. We just don’t have it in us.

Imagine that you have been asked to dance before the judges with no training. Your fate hangs in the balance. Imagine then that one of the professionals steps forward and says, “Let me take your place” and he dances a perfect dance, the judges hold up 10’s, and you are safe.

That’s what God the Judge offers: someone to take our place, one who lived a perfect life, who met all of God’s requirements. That ‘professional’ is no less than God himself – God the Son, Jesus. Go and ask Jesus to take your place, stop relying on your own decency to impress the Judge because it never will. Put your trust in Jesus to do all that is required for you to get you through the Day of Judgment.

So before you sit down to watch the next show, or pick up the phone to cast your judgment, think about your own judgment day. After all it’s God who warns us, “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” (Hebrews 9:27)

Does Dawkins Exist? - A genius parable

2007-01-10T11:40:00.000Z

I came across this clever parable (HT Stephen) about the evidence for Richard Dawkins. I give you the first paragraph to whet your appetite:

In The Beginning

As I thumbed my way through the pages of "The God Delusion", a question dropped into my head. Does Richard Dawkins really exist?

Being a scientific and rational person, I decided that I wasn't going to just accept any old theory on this question. If Richard Dawkins exists, then I would need to be shown the proper evidence for it. Others can have their own superstitious beliefs, based on who-knows-what, but I would only be convinced by empirical science. If there is a Dawkins, why hasn't he shown himself to me?

What Happened Next

As I pondered this, a man wearing a pointy hat wandered into the room. He erected a little box a few feet off the ground, climbed on to it, and began speaking to me.

As he talked he began, rather dogmatically, to insist on a number of things. Apparently, it was clear and obvious that Richard Dawkins existed. Did I not have his own book in my hands? Did it not have Dawkins' name on the front, and the imprints of his thoughts on every page? If I wanted to see evidence for Dawkins, was it not to be found throughout this little tome? Dawkins, he said, had shown himself to me everywhere. What could be a sufficient cause for such a book, if not a Dawkins? The alternatives were incredible. They required far more faith than simply to accept that the pages were the work of the said Richard.

Read on

Food for thought - The Spirit of Ebay

2007-01-02T09:02:00.000Z

(Column for local paper - idea sparked by David McCullough's post)

I’m an Ebayer. For those of you who don’t know what that is, Ebay is an auction website where you can buy and sell almost anything. I’ve bought (occasionally), rather than sold anything. It’s great for tracking down items that are hard to find, or for getting things at a good price.

After each transaction you are rated by the other party, which gives others a guide to how reliable a customer you are. There are different coloured stars depending how many good transactions you have made – it all sounds a bit like first class at school!

Apparently all this positive feedback reinforces the Ebay values. I hadn’t given much thought to what they were until a friend pointed it out, so I went and looked them up on their website. The first three read as follows:

We believe people are basically good.
We believe everyone has something to contribute.
We believe that an honest, open environment can bring out the best in people.

It was the first one that particularly struck me. As a friend of mine writes in another column, “Are they living in the real world? Do they not read the papers or listen to the news? A perverted man murders five women whose lives have broken down – is that basically good?”

This was lurking at the back of my mind when I opened a newspaper lying at my mother and father’s home and read the headline, “How Ebay stole our Christmas”. The article details how Ebay, instead of being a nice open environment where people generously sell off stuff they are finished with, it’s the place to find those hard to get presents, the ‘must haves’, but only at severely inflated prices. It tells the story of Scott who bought 60 or so of the latest ‘must have’ games consoles and sold them off on Ebay for double the price to desperate parents who hadn’t planned far enough in advance. He made £6,000 profit for a few hours work.

You can’t blame Scott and the many others who did likewise, but it does call into question the statements that “We believe that people are basically good” and “an honest open environment can bring out the best in people”.

Much better to admit that the whole system is based on the fact that people are basically greedy, and that greedy buyers who want more for their money, and greedy sellers who want more money for their product keep the whole thing in balance.

Of course it doesn’t make for a great value statement – but at least it would be realistic and biblical. “From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain” (Jeremiah 6:13). Test yourself – were you disappointed with any of your presents this Christmas? Although it was completely free would you have wanted something more? Or perhaps you got all you wanted – would you have been happy with a lot less?

The idea that we can have ‘a community that … brings out the best in people’ assumes that there is a ‘best’ to be brought out. Given the mess of the world and the wars and atrocities of the last 100 years, surely we can lose this myth that man is basically good.

We don’t have to pull the wool down over our eyes and pretend that if we try hard enough we can have an open honest community – God has come into the world to offer to transform people from the inside out to build exactly that type of community. The good news that Jesus brings is that he will transform those who put their trust in him so that they no longer have selfish, greedy hearts, but hearts that delight to live for God and serve others. That’s the only way to an open honest community.

Food for thought - Secret Millionaire

2006-12-15T10:31:00.000Z

A multi-millionaire disguises himself and goes out to live among the poor and needy with a view to giving away some of his money to those whom he feels are really in need. That’s the basic premise of Channel 4’s ‘Secret Millionaire’.

I caught last week’s show with Durham businessman John Elliott who made his fortune after a childhood of poverty. What a fascinating programme. Elliott himself had to get by on the standard state benefit for the duration. He proved that he was quite capable of looking after himself and shopping in the cheaper section of the supermarket. But it was the people he spoke to who proved the most interesting.

There was the man in the pub who talked about why he didn’t see any need to get a job, he could just about get by on the dole – so why should he bother working. There were the bingo playing ladies whom he sat amongst and who felt that they were happy enough with what they had.

I watched it thinking, “Oh how some of these people will kick themselves when they find out the truth.”

Then there was the young couple who had gotten themselves into debt. They knew it was their fault, and were working at clearing their debt. All the same they invited John Elliott in for a meal, and shared what they had with him. They had no idea who they were entertaining.

He also met Patrick from Kenya who had been granted asylum status and was unable to get a job, but continued to volunteer at a centre for other asylum seekers.

Then came the moment of revelation, when Elliott returned and revealed who he really was, and handed over a cheque to the couple for £10,000 – not to clear their debts, but as a down payment on a house. And to Patrick he gave no money, but an offer of a job as an accountant in his factory.

As I watched the programme I wondered what those who had appeared earlier were now thinking, as they saw the opportunity they had missed.

The parallels with our own lives are sobering. A secret saviour is amongst us. He has the wherewithal to radically transform our lives. However most people think that they are doing ok – what do they need anything extra for?

How different it will be when He reveals himself to us, and we see him for who He is. How many will rue that day, and be kicking themselves for the opportunity missed?

Of course it’s not that Jesus offers ‘extra’ in this life – that’s where the difference is with ‘Secret Millionaire’. Jesus offers something that is essential – that he will clear our debt with God for our ; otherwise we will spend eternity paying it off ourselves.

At Christmas we are apt to remember Jesus’ first coming in the same homely way that the citizens of Kensington, Liverpool, greeted John Elliott – nice to see him, and friendly towards him. It was only when he came a second time, and it was too late that they realised who he was. Will it be the same for you – will you realise too late who Jesus is?

Food for thought - Hypocrisy and party pills

2006-11-23T11:10:00.000Z

(Local newspaper column)

So the sex shop in Letterkenny has withdrawn mind-altering 'party pills' from shelves after a public outcry on Highland radio.

But they aren’t the only mind-altering substances on sale in the shop. The whole concept of pornography itself is mind altering. Pornography alters our perception of women and reduces them to objects rather than people. It alters our understanding of sex, reducing it to an act of self-gratification, rather than an act of gratifying the other. Pornography with all its fakery gives unrealistic expectations. Porn alters our psyche with regard to what is acceptable behaviour, as thrill seekers have to descend on a downward spiral to find new levels that will excite them. Studies also show that there is a link between pornography and violence against women.

If a drug was available that reduced men’s perception of women to that of sex slaves and made them violent and more likely to rape or abuse, it would bring about a similar public outcry as the current ‘party pills’. Yet because no-one wants to be seen as a prude no-one makes any fuss, and so we strain out the flea while swallowing a camel.

The final irony is that the owner of the shop said in an interview in the Irish Independent, “Looking at it from a parent's point of view, I would not let my children take them.”

Does that mean that he would be happy for his children – daughters, if he has them – to star in the same films that he stocks, or pose for the same magazines he supplies, and become fantasy-fodder and gutter-talk material for the men from the same town in which they live?

There seems to me to be a certain element of hypocrisy in this. In fact the truth comes out later in the same interview: it’s not his children, but his wallet which concerns him, “I have built up a good loyal customer base in this town and we would be shooting ourselves in the foot if we continued to sell them.”

It’s all just further evidence of what happens when we make a god out of money or sex, or anything – we end up not being able to think straight, or see the inconsistency of our position. It is as God says in Rom 1:21

“For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools… Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator… Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts… Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”

Our only hope is to call men and women not to seek mind-altering drugs, or body-satisfying sex, but to seek the God who alters our damaged souls, and who completely satisfies those who turn from rebellion and put their trust in him.

Book Review - Apostasy, Destruction & Hope

2006-11-22T16:07:00.000Z

Apostasy, Destruction and Hope – 2 Kings simply Explained
Roger Ellsworth
Evangelical Press

What, two reviews on commentaries on 2 Kings!? I know, but do you do when two good commentaries appear at the one time?

As you will know if you have read many of my reviews, Ellsworth is another of my favourite writers. And this commentary on 2 Kings is no exception.

But what is there to be gained from having two commentaries on 2 Kings? Being honest, unless you are going into the ministry, aim to have one book on every book of the Bible. But not everyone is the same, and some will like Davis and some will like Ellsworth.

Ellsworth is different in his style from Davis. Davis would be a little more technical than Ellsworth (telling you about Hebrew words, and chapter structure), whereas Ellsworth’s book came from a series of sermons he preached. Where Davis tends to take one theme and structure each chapter around it, Ellsworth will look at many different themes within one chapter. With Davis it is like inspecting one jewel in-depth, with Ellsworth it is like looking at many different gems.

Both men demonstrate how the Old Testament is all about the gospel, yet both do it in different ways, Davis points to the broad themes and the character of God which make the gospel necessary and possible, Davis looks at the parallels in the Old Testament stories to the Gospel. Both men point us to Christ, but in different and valid ways.

Ellsworth too is masterly in his application, pushing the details of the passage into our lives. He also considers the original audience that 2 Kings was written for – the Jews in captivity – and asks the question, ‘What would it have meant to them’. This in turn opens up other areas of application.

Both are great commentaries – have a look at each and see which appeals to you. Either way you are in safe hands.

Today's favourite website

2006-11-17T15:38:00.000Z

I came across this today with the headline:

"DOES PHYSICAL FITNESS REDUCE THE RISK OF DEATH?
MOST LIKELY IT DOES."

And I thought to myself, "Hmm interesting - I wasn't aware of anything that made death less of a certainty."

Must try exercise, maybe that was Elijah's secret.

Food for thought - Las Vegas in the hills of Donegal

2006-11-17T09:43:00.000Z

(Column for local newspaper)
Donegal band ‘Goats don’t Shave’ appear to belong to the mystical fraternity of prophets and soothsayers. Back in 1992 they were singing about casinos and building “Las Vegas in the hills of Donegal”.

Did they know something that we didn’t? It would seem that way, for if recent talk has been anything to go by then casinos are bound for Letterkenny, if they aren’t already here.

“What’s the harm? Sure it’s just a bit of fun.” I know that we have the EuroMillions jackpot coming up this week, and we have “Winning Streak” and the place is full of bookies and scratch-card outlets; so what harm could a casino do?

It just adds to the pressure. Gambling is destructive to society. Let me give 9 documented reasons why gambling is destructive:

It exploits the poor – UK Surveys show that there are three-and-a-half times more problem gamblers among people earning less than £15,600, than among those earning over £31,200. The people who can least afford to gamble are the ones most hurt.

It often leads to addiction – The cycle of ‘some you win, some you lose’ which makes gambling so attractive is what makes it extremely addictive, according to the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

It allows people to get into serious financial difficulty very quickly. The mathematical rules behind gambling mean that you aren’t meant to come out on top, rather you are meant to get in deeper. Casinos aren’t there for the public good. Organisations that help the public financially are helpfully designated by another name: ‘Charities’.

It leads to crime – The state of Wisconsin experienced an average of 5,300 additional major crimes a year due to the presence of casinos. Those who gamble and run out of funds need to find more funds somewhere to satisfy their addiction.

It destroys lives and damages society – According to the House of Lords/House of Commons Joint Committee set up to look at the impact of gambling, the harmful consequences include “job loss, absenteeism, poor work/study performance, stress, depression and anxiety, suicide, poor health, financial hardship, debts, asset losses, exposure to loan sharks, bankruptcy, resorting to theft, imprisonment, neglect of family, relationship breakdown, domestic or other violence, burdens on charities and burdens on the public purse.” Gambling is not harmless fun – it destroys lives, it destroys society.

It exacerbates weaknesses and develops greed. Gambling confirms some people in their weaknesses and cultivates greed in others. Casinos will draw in more easily those people who need just the opposite, namely, encouragement and guidance in financial matters.

It creates a culture of laziness – where people spend more time at the gaming table or the bookies rather than working to get money and contribute to society. If everyone made their money gambling we would have no-one to staff our hospitals or empty our bins, or sell us food.

It creates a burden for others – It is estimated that each problem gambler affects approximately 15 people’s lives and costs the state £35,000.

It makes a good thing an ultimate thing. Money isn’t evil, but taking a good thing and making it into the ‘be-all and end-all’ around which our life pivots is to make a god out of it. That is called idolatry. Of all the reasons this is the most serious. All the others speak of the damage gambling causes in this life, but this reason speaks of lives wrecked for all eternity. God will not tolerate being substituted by a few measly banknotes.

So often decisions are made for wrong reasons: it will be good for the economy, it will bring people to the area which can only be good for businesses. Seldom are the important factors considered: what will it really mean for people’s lives. Here the evidence abounds: gambling only makes a mess of people’s lives.

As well as all the above evidence, the Bible tells us that: “People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction… Some people, eager for money… have pierced themselves with many griefs.” (1 Timothy 6:9-10). In other words, the desire to be rich brings only grief. And to encourage grief and hardship by permitting casinos is only cruel.

So I urge the town’s councillors to have the courage to stand for what will be good in the long term for our county and not concede to the financial pressures or rewards. Be men and women of compassion and integrity. Take your obligations and responsibilities seriously so that you will not add to the problems of people who are under your care. We don’t want to need more support groups. We don’t want to add to the list of things that push people to the brink of suicide in this county.

Book Review - The Power & The Fury (Dale Ralph Davis)

2006-11-16T15:09:00.000Z

The Power and the Fury
Dale Ralph Davis
Christian Focus

5 years ago Davis brought out his commentary on 1 Kings, and those who enjoyed it have been eagerly looking forward to the arrival of 2 Kings.

What are we to make of the ministry of Elisha – how always seems to be in the shadow of Elijah? What about the endless succession of kings, where it becomes almost impossible to keep track of who’s who?

Davis is a brilliant at explaining the familiar stories, and showing you what is really happening. So often we read the Old Testament narrative as if it was just a filler between Eden and the Gospels – well we may not actually think that in so many words, but we read it simply as stories with a few moral lessons thrown in, instead of asking ourselves what is God doing here. Dale Ralph Davis always focuses on God, the covenant making and keeping God. The great strength of this book is that it helps us to see God rather than the people who fill the stories.

In a way that is refreshing, humorous and penetrating Davis opens up the book of 2 Kings and provides sound, wholesome teaching. It is only when you look in the footnotes at some of the weird and wonderful interpretations from various scholars that you begin to appreciate the quality of what Davis is giving to you. His quick-fire no-compromising-with-scripture demolition job of these authors, coupled with his simple clarity, reassures the reader.

His writing is deceptively simple, but underneath it lies a wealth of knowledge. And one of the great benefits of Davis’ books is that as you read them you learn how to understand how books of the Bible are put together, and how to see the big themes that Davis himself keeps coming back to.

Like his other commentaries ‘The Power and the Fury’ is pointed in its application, and revealing in its illustration. It is hard to read this book and not be encouraged by who God is, and challenged by our own faithlessness.

As I said the last time I reviewed Davis – go and buy everything he has written on the Old Testament.

Book Review - Corner Conversations by Randy Newman

2006-11-15T10:36:00.000Z

Corner Conversations: Engaging Dialogues about God and Life
Randy Newman
Kregel Publications

Randy Newman’s first book ‘Questioning Evangelism’ is one of the best books on evangelism around. If you haven’t read it – buy it, read it and put it into practice. ‘Corner Conversations’ is his follow-up, although you won’t need to have read ‘Questioning Evangelism’ to understand ‘Corner Conversations’.

‘Questioning Evangelism’ was marked by conversations where Newman showed how his principles would work out in practice. ‘Corner Conversations’ is all conversation and no theory – or to put it another way, all the theory is imbedded in the conversations. It makes for a great way to learn. It reminded me of one of my other favourite books on apologetics – ‘Persuasions’ by Doug Wilson which also uses the conversational method. In “Corner Conversations” Newman creates fictional conversations which cover 7 topics, including science, suffering, is Jesus the only way, and homosexuality.

The conversations are all evangelistic and Newman has sought to make them as real as possible by running the book past friends who aren’t yet Christians, as well as those who are.

It is a useful approach, and is based on many conversations he has had in his work as an evangelist on university campuses. It is useful also because it allows us to see that evangelism is long term and relational. None of the conversations end in conversion, but each is a step in the journey to understanding more about Christianity. Too often we expect too much from one conversation, or we think we have to get the whole message across in one conversation. If we are doing our evangelism where we should – primarily among those we see regularly – we won’t need to unload everything at once. One of its strengths is that it lets you see how ordinary conversations can come around to deal with some aspect of Christianity, and flit in and out of the subject.

Newman has been clever in many ways, but one that I enjoyed was that the style of the conversations is different – some are very friendly, some employ the cut and thrust of friendly but pointed argument. Yet each conversation is marked by openness and compassion. So there is something here for each of us, and something here for our different types of friendships, each conversation having several points that you feel that you could use yourself. And the chapters finish by pointing you to further resources.

It isn’t a book to read in one sitting though – you can get over-conversationed!

The one area I felt Newman was weak on was the chapter on science. His character, and hence Newman suggests that we don’t need to hold to a literal 6-day creation, and that those who hold to literal 6-day creation aren’t good scientists. His implication is that they (or we) are naïve and don’t really understand what is happening in Genesis. I would venture to suggest that the naivety lies elsewhere in allowing the ever-changing views of science to influence our interpretation of the Genesis.

That said, there are enough strengths to the book, and enough help to be gained for it to be worth reading.

Ecclesiastes 3:16-4:16 - I can’t get no satisfaction

2006-11-10T09:20:00.001Z

What really satisfies you? Is it work, or food, or friendship, or your car?

The thing is, like many people find, when you get what you want, it has a hollow feel to it, it doesn’t really satisfy, and if you think different just ask yourself how you feel when they bring out a new model?

Like U2's lyric many would say – "I still haven’t found what I’m looking for."

From the tail end of Chapter 3 and all of chapter 4 Solomon points out 6 things that make life unsatisfying, and we will see how they find their ultimate answer in Jesus.

Life doesn’t satisfy
Now some people would disagree with that statement straight off. They would say that they are very satisfied with life – but I would want to ask them, “Are you satisfied with sickness, are you satisfied with unfairness that happens at school to your kids, are you satisfied with the pain you have in your hip because although you have everything, your body is getting old and falling apart, are you satisfied that there are people in parts of the world working in sweatshops so that you can enjoy simple pleasures in life?”

And unless we bury our heads in the sand or live in some sort of isolation chamber we have to face the reality that life is ultimately disappointing.

Solomon sets out six areas which make life unsatisfying

Injustice
v16-17 “And I saw something else under the sun: In the place of judgment—wickedness was there, in the place of justice—wickedness was there.”

Early Friday morning 3 Christians in Indonesia were executed. According to news reports it was for masterminding a series of attacks on Muslims.

Their execution had been postponed three times, then the government removed the police chief who gave the stay of execution and replaced him with a hard-liner who favoured their deaths.

Evidence pointing to their innocence was ignored and death threats made against their legal representatives, and a bomb was planted at the house of one legal advisor.

The three Christians were evacuating children under attack in a church school. Militants burnt the school to the ground. No Muslims have been brought to justice.

According to Jeff King, President of International Christian Concern: 'In the attacks from 1998 to 2003, there were approximately 10,000 Christians murdered, 1,000 churches and 80,000 homes burned down. In that orgy of violence against Christians, the only individuals the government chose to convict were these three Christians - this is a glaring injustice.'

There’s something in us that knows instinctively what justice is and wants it done.

But the great failure of this world is that justice doesn’t always happen and sometimes, worse happens and the innocent are punished because the wicked are in power. And it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

So how do you live in an unjust world?

Death
Death and the prospect of death leave a bitter taste in the mouth. Life gets cut short, we don’t know when this invading force will step in an out lives will be over, and there is something deeply unnatural about death – something in us cries out against it. It doesn’t seem a good enough answer to life.

It’s like staying up late to watch the end of a film and it just finishes abruptly with so much left unsaid, or like reading a book and finding that the last ten pages are missing.

And it doesn’t seem right that conman and Christian, nuisance and neighbour, each so different just come to the same end.

In a sense we all live in a death row cell. And we can enjoy life, but we still live on death row. And there is something in us that cries out for it to be different.

Oppression
And then as Solomon looks around he sees something else that creates in us a longing for something more, a hunger that there has to be more to life than this. Oppression. Injustice is when the judge has found in favour of the guilty, that’s injustice, but Solomon sees oppression as well – its just the fact that bad stuff is happening, not in the courts but everywhere, people are taking advantage of anyone less fortunate than themselves. Tim Keller reminds us that “only a small number of people in the world have lived in relatively safe conditions, and we are part of that privileged minority.” We can’t allow our western comfort to mollycoddle us from the harsh realities that our fellow human beings live under.

And when you watch the news and you see people starving in Africa because rich countries can’t be bothered to use their resources to take their excess. That’s oppression. And when you see people dying in shantytowns in flash floods because those in power have spent all the money on palaces and country retreats. That’s oppression. And it doesn’t stop when the powerful get what they want – they don’t turn around and start to help the needy – power is on the side of the oppressor and the poor still have no comforter. And when you see that, your heart should cry out – there’s got to be more to life than this. The one life that people have is made misery – that’s not right.

Work – dissatisfaction with what we do and get
Solomon turns to the dog eat dog world of work, where envy drives people to get up early, stay late, to get more, to be one step ahead, to have what the neighbours have, to have what they don’t yet have. And when you get what you wanted, you don’t actually enjoy it because the motive for getting it is tainted, and so then how can the fruit satisfy?

Or where work becomes an end in itself, and the endless chase of perfection and excellence comes to dominate all. And even when we get things to where we want them, we aren’t able to slow down because we have worked ourselves into the habit of work.

Or where you work so hard, but don’t have time to enjoy the fruit of your work v8.

And something in us says, “There’s bound to be more to life than this?”

Loneliness
Solomon moves on to something that increasingly is becoming a feature of 21st century life. Loneliness. As big a problem in 10th century BC as in the 21st century AD. The world is becoming smaller, we can communicate globally, but people are becoming increasingly isolated. In America

Social Changes in America over the Past 25 years

the number of restaurants is 25%, snack places is down 50%, but fast food outlets are up 100%
family dinners are down 33%
having friends over to your home is down 45%
from 1980-93 America’s #1 participant sport, bowling, was up 10% but bowling leagues were down 40%

In a world where communication abilities have increased incredibly actual communication has decreased. And people are lonely, and here is another factor that leaves an unsatisfactory taste in the mouth – is this what life is about?

Fickleness
Solomon looks then at a scenario in v13ff. He describes a young man who comes from disadvantage to rule a country in the place of a foolish king. People follow him with enthusiasm, but as time goes on the mood changes and his popularity goes. There is a fickleness in politics and in people, where opinions seem to change at the drop of a hat, and you are left wondering “What happened there?”

To be let down by friends or family, or people we have worked with or for is part of life, yet when it happens it leaves a bitter taste in our mouth – and it is just one more area where we find life deeply unsatisfying.

And that is what Solomon is wanting us to see that no matter where we look in life there is a bug in the system, something that prevents us from finding complete satisfaction. He knows that we are apt to ignore it, and just focus on our own little lives, hoping that we will find satisfaction, but then when problems arise we are surprised because we think that an easy life is our right. Solomon says, that isn’t the way it is.

And what he is showing us is that there is a deep set of longings inside us that long for satisfaction that is beyond the scope of this life to produce.

We have an innate hunger for justice, for life, for comfort, for satisfaction, for companionship, for stable relationships. And what Solomon is doing is highlighting all these things so that we will see the collective force and be dissatisfied with life and look for more. Because all these are good God-given longings. And so what people claim as objections to God, or proof that God doesn’t exist are actually given by God to point us to him – to show us that we should make gods out of things, but rather seek him. And Solomon in his own ways provides pointers to God as he goes, but what I want us to see this morning is that all these longings find their ultimate satisfaction in Christ. Now we’ll not find Jesus’ name in Ecclesiastes, but Ecclesiastes is a book of questions that don’t find their ultimate answers until Jesus comes.

Finding Satisfaction in Jesus
As in the ancient Roman Empire all roads led to Rome, so it is in Christ that we find the iultimate answer to these dissatisfactions.

And Jesus is the answer in two ways – first he is the answer because he provides the solution to all these longings, and second, he is the answer because he has stood in each of these places and felt the injustice, and oppression and loneliness and the hollowness of work, and fickleness of the crowd. So when we come to him, not only has he the answer, but he knows how we feel, and the answer comes from the depths of his experience. And that is comforting.

Let me show you how Jesus is the answer to each of these problems. Some of you are still looking for satisfaction in yourselves or your work, remember the Rolling Stones, and U2 “I can’t get no satisfaction” and “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”. I want you to see that Jesus far surpasses all of them. There is nothing that satisfies like Jesus, and his is a multifaceted satisfaction. Some of you are have found peace and forgiveness in Jesus, but its all too easy to replace him with other things when it comes to finding satisfaction.

Jesus will bring justice
Too many of life’s stories end untidily, unless of course this is not the end. That’s what Solomon tells us here in v17.
“I thought in my heart, “God will bring to judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time for every deed."

So in Luke 18:7-8 Jesus says:
7And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly.”

It will be a profound justice, every wrong will be righted. And the person who comes to Jesus has the burden of injustice done to them lifted because they know that Jesus will deal with it. He will either deal with it by bringing judgment or bearing it. He will judge those who have not asked him to bear their judgment. And he will bear the judgement deserved by those who have asked him to bear it.

But there will be justice. All loose ends will be tied up. Death doesn’t mean that justice has been escaped, but rather than justice is now guaranteed.

And that gnawing hunger for revenge, or the bitterness of resentment is taken away.

And for those smarting under the feeling of injustice, in Jesus you will find one who knows exactly that feeling – accused and tried for crimes he was innocent of, by men who were desperate just to kill him, and who broke every law in the land to get him killed. You can take your injustice to him, and find one who knows where you are coming from, and will provide the strength to live with it util you see him come.

Jesus defeats death and brings life
Death is not natural. Our longings know that, and that is why Jesus promises in John 10:10:

“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

“our Saviour, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel”

Here is the promise of a life that will not be interrupted, which will not be cut short. But it is also a promise of a way of life here and now in which death is no longer an ominous threat. The sting of death has gone, and death becomes a doorway into this wonderful new existence for all those who come to Jesus now.

And he has stood there, he has seen loved ones die, as a boy his father died, as a man his friend Lazarus died. He knows the pain of death as a bereaved one. And he says to the bereaved, let the ache of bereavement and the dissatisfaction that it brings, bring you to me, so that you may find life and have it to the full.

Jesus brings comfort to the Hurt
Solomon makes the statement that it would be better not to have been born than to face the hurt of this life. And many of us think that’s ridiculous, but that’s because our lives haven’t hurt as much as others. Listen to these words of a friend of mine after writing that his mother shouldn’t have been allowed to have children:

“I know that going by this standard I would not exist - I have no problem with this - I honestly believe that my mother should have been forced to abort me.”

How do you identify with someone who has borne so much suffering? I can’t. And it would be patronising to attempt. But can anyone say to one who bore in his body all the sins of his people and the punishment that he can’t know their pain? He has seen all hurt in close up technicolour detail, and experienced the awfulness of it as it was laid on him.

And now he says, “I will wipe away every tear from their eye”. He is the father to the fatherless, the defender of the widow and the orphan, he came to release the oppressed.

And he does so by giving us a hope that nothing in this world can take away, and he does it by taking all our hurt, and turning it into a trowel with which he builds his kingdom. Through our hurt he reaches to others who are hurting so that they can come and find healing and completeness. In all these things we are more than conquerors.

Jesus brings contentment in a world of envy
Solomon’s observation is that it is a dog eat dog world which doesn’t actually satisfy. When we get what we want, we find we want more. That is because we are wired in such a way as to know that somehow somewhere there is more to life, but like little boys without a compass we don’t actually know how to find it, or what it is we are lacking.

Yet what Jesus does on the cross is to purchase for his people everything they will ever need, so that they can say:

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall lack no good thing”
“I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”

So we know that if it is good for us to have something, God will give it to us. We don’t need to get into the rat race. For what’s the point of being top dog in a death row cell. Jesus liberates us from the cell and says, “I’ll give you all you need for this life.”

And then he gives us a task that is born, not out of envy, but out of compassion. “Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations.” And when you succeed you know that it will last forever.

Jesus is the friend who sticks closer than a brother
Solomon acknowledges that friendship is the cure to loneliness, but in Jesus we find a friend who says, “I will never leave you or forsake you” And why does he make that promise? Because he knows the awful pain of being forsaken by his friends, being despised and rejected of men, and he knows what it is to be forsaken by his father.

And not only that, what Jesus does on the cross is to purchase a welcome into his family and the community of his people for anyone who comes to him.

And loneliness, even the loneliness of being in a crowd of people and still being lonely, is a signal in our hearts that our hearts are still looking for one who will never leave us.

And so to all the lonely Jesus comes and says, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” John 14:18

Jesus is unwavering and faithful
In a fickle and changing world where people change and let us down, when we rely on people only to be disappointed we need one who is unchanging, and who will never drive us away. And so it is only in Jesus that we can find that rock, because even a faithful friend will desert us at death, but here is one who is there for us continually in life and in death.

“whoever comes to me I will never drive away” (John 6:37)

James describes God as “one who does not change like shifting shadows” – James 1:17

And to those hurt by the changeable opinions of others, Jesus says, I too know what it is like. What musts it have been like to hear your closest friend say, “I never knew you” or to see 11 of your closest friends turn and run, or to be betrayed by one with whom you had shared meals.

He knows and because he knows he is able to bring satisfy those who are hurting because of the fickleness of others.

So in all these areas where life can let us down we find one who never lets us down, one who provides for us in a deeper and more lasting way than anything this life can offer. Every hunger is satisfied.

A life that satisfies
Not found in things but in a person.
We want to finish by applying this. How then should we live?

Put your trust in the one who satisfies
If your stomach is sending out hunger signals you don’t eat chewing gum – although it might suppress the hunger pangs for half and hour or so, it doesn’t solve the problem. You get something that fills you.

Some of you are trying to satisfy yourselves with the chewing gum of life instead of the steak of Christ. Like being in a top class restaurant see menu – all paid for, all you want the lollipop by the till

You need to come to the one who satisfies ultimately and completely. Because sooner or later in life you will find that all the others let you down, the only problem is that often it is too late to change, because you have convinced yourself that they really satisfy, and like a homeless man who has the offer of a house but who is so used to sleeping outside in the gutter that he has convinced himself that it is better.

You need to come to Jesus and ask for forgiveness for putting your ideas of what is important in the place of him. And you need to ask him to come and transform your life so that you can see what is important.

Live like Satisfied people
All this doesn’t mean that life suddenly takes a turn for the better and that you no longer experience injustice, death, loneliness, or envy, or being let down by friends. But it does mean that you have a way of looking at all these problems. You look at them from the perspective of someone who has hope.

We need to keep finding our satisfaction in Jesus and not in our circumstances.

With regard to injustice we can leave it all in his hands – we can look beyond and live beyond the injustice done to us.

With regard to the uncertainty of life – we know that we will go at exactly the right time, when our saviour calls us home, when our work here is done.

With regard to hurt caused by others to us – we can learn to live with gratitude to the one who took hurt and was oppressed so that we wouldn’t be. And if being hurt by others is a consequence of following Jesus, well, surely we can take a few shots for the one who took our hell.

With regard to the continuous pursuit of more in life – we can learn to life with contentment because we have a saviour who provides everything. And so we can trust the shepherd to provide for his sheep, whatever happens – illness, or farming, business disaster.

With regard to loneliness we need to learn to cultivate our relationship with Jesus, to develop our relationship with him, so that when we find ourselves lonely we turn to him. Develop our relationship with Jesus’ people.

With regard to the fickleness of people – we need to realise that people will always let us down, but that Jesus will never. We need to learn to build our self esteem not on others view of us, or even our view of ourselves, but on what Jesus thinks of us. Because no matter what has happened to us, or what we have done, or what we think of ourselves, Jesus tells us that if anyone is in Christ they are a new creation. They are his child, they are precious. It is when we build our satisfaction on others that we find dissatisfaction, because only Jesus can sustain the weight of expectation – only Jesus knows how bad we are and is prepared to completely overlook it.

Christ is the only one who will satisfy all our needs. But if we were to stop there we would be wrong.

Ecclesiastes isn’t just about us, it is about living in this world. And so if we are to live like satisfied people we will want others to see that it is Christ that makes the difference, therefore:

With regard to injustice, we need to be people who encourage justice, and who deal fairly, and who stand up for those who have been dealt with unfairly. Solomon writes that God allows man to behave in such a way so that man will see the animal likeness of his actions and be shocked. But we are not to be like that. Christians are to stand out for how they treat others.

With regard to the uncertainty of life Solomon tells us that we need to live in such a way that people can see that the shadow of death doesn’t hang over us – we are to enjoy all that God gives, family, food, friends, relishing the gifts of God. Also we are to be people that make it clear to others that there is a difference between man and beast.

21 Who knows that the spirit of man rises upward and that the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?"

We are to be people who stand up for the oppressed, who seek to make life easier for others. That may mean being like our saviour in living sacrificially – putting yourselves out for the sake of those less well off, so that they will see Christ in us.

With regard to work, we need to learn to take Solomon’s advice to heart – better one handful with contentment, than two handfuls with toil and a chasing after the wind. In a world where everyone is encouraged to seek advancement, which means that you have more work heaped on top of you, and more responsibility, the Christian will draw the line and say – this is as far as I want to go. Or of circumstances permit they will say, I can go further. That may mean cutting back on work so that we can enjoy the relationship that God has given to us. It gives us a right perspective on our work. It isn’t the be all and end all of our lives – it comes after our relationship with God, and our family, and our church. We will seek to avoid the rat race.

With regard to loneliness we will seek to draw near to others, to befriend. In a world of loneliness, those who have been befriended by Christ should be reaching out to those who are alone. We will also invest in friendship.

In a world of fickleness we will seek to mirror Christ’s acceptance, and steadfastness in friendship, even when we are let down.

When Adam and Eve cut the tether that bound all of life to God that had a knock on effect in every area. Life needs to be tethered to God, nothing else provides a solid enough basis. Solomon’s counsel to us is to look to God rather than things for satisfaction in life, because all else will fail, but God will fail you never.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 - Life under the Loom

2006-10-28T10:34:00.000+01:00

Imagine two little mice who live in a weaver’s shop, a way back 100 years ago. All day long the steady hum of the loom fills their life. Overhead the shuttle passes back and forth colours appear and disappear. Every so often the loom stops and scissors appear and snip a thread and tie it off. A new spool is loaded on and a new set of colours starts. “What did he do that for?” asks one of the mice. “Black is all wrong – why did he stop that beautiful burgundy?” Then off the noise will go again with different colours mingling in among, black, and reds, golds, and purples, greys, and creams, greens, and then it all stops, and snip and more threads are started in – pinks, and oranges, and sunset tints, with yellow and burnt umber. Then stop and snip. And off it goes again.

"That looks a right mess," says one of the mice.

"Well the weaver knows what he is dong."

"What weaver? I don’t believe in a weaver. Sure that machine goes on and on like it always has – right from the day you were born, it just keeps tramping along. No-one outlasts the loom. It will still be going the day you die. And I don’t believe in a weaver."

"Sure there’s a weaver. What about all the changes, what about the rhythm of the loom? What about the design of the carpet?"

"There can’t be a weaver sure the thing is a shambles. Straggly ends of tails everywhere, colours mixing and clashing."

"Ah but it will look great from the other side says the other. There’s a time for gold, and a time for black, a time for red and time for browns, a time to cut and a time to tie. A time to tighten and a time to slacken. That’s the weaver at work – you mightn’t see him, but each thread is planned and designed by him to create a masterpiece. You have to remember that we live under the loom, and we can’t see the whole thing, and even if we could see it, we’re so small that we couldn’t see it all at once."

Living under the loom means two things: we can’t see the weaver, and we can’t see what he is doing – and so to us it looks a mess.

The way the world deals with this is to either pretend that there isn’t a weaver, or that he’s not very good, or that there are some weaving vandals who sneak in and weave dark threads in and although the weaver sees his work marred by these dark threads there’s nothing he can do about it. So either a non-existent weaver, or a stupid one or a powerless one.

What Solomon is arguing here is that there is a weaver, that his plan incorporates all that happens and that he is both good, clever, and all powerful.

God is in control of your life, not you v1-8
The opening verses of ch 1 speak of the repetitive cycle of life, as if the world were some sort of giant machine that just keeps rolling along. Life as we look at it and as Solomon looked at it seems chaotic random and repetitive. Things seem to happen for no particular reason – illness, death, disaster,. But what Solomon is saying in these opening 8 verses is that there is a pattern, and that that pattern is overseen by God.

There is a time for everything. There is nothing that escapes the control of God. There are no flukes or chance happenings in God’s universe.

These verses aren’t our marching orders – these verses aren’t telling us that we need to make time to tidy up and time to throw stuff out, or that we need to make time to laugh and take time to weep. Those things are true, but that is not what Solomon is saying here.

Solomon is not prescribing what we should do, he is describing what happens regardless of what we do. He is not telling us to put order into our lives, he is telling us that there is order in the events that happen to us in our lives. And more than that he is telling us that so much of our lives is beyond our control. We like to think of us as setting the course of our lives, but Solomon outlines here either things that happen to us, or ways that we react to things which happen to us, all of which are beyond our control.

There is a time to live and a time to die. We have no say about when we arrive in this world. Its not as if we were sitting around some table in Heaven with God and we said, “Well now’s the time I would like to make an appearance”. And neither, in the natural course of things, do we choose the time or manner of our deaths.

These are events over which we have no control. And Solomon is saying much more than the set events of birth and death are decreed, but everything in between. It is all appointed by God.

There is a time to plant – sowing in winter is pointless, God has set the season for planting and the season for harvesting.

And even when man does what he should not – the destructive events of life like murder – these are not outside of God’s decree. God isn’t sitting wringing his hands wondering what’s going on. And although man is utterly sinful and chooses to sin, God is still sovereign. Nothing catches him unawares.

There is a time when healing comes, and we get better from whatever was afflicting us – who chooses that time? Some of you would love to be able to choose that time, but that timing is in God’s hands. Neither do we choose the times of joy in our lives, and we can’t choose the times of sorrow – they come, often when we are least ready. They catch us unawares.

There’s a time of victory – scattering stones on fields was was victorious troops did to render the land unproductive; and there’s a time of defeat – when you are on the receiving end. Again it’s not up to us.

There’s a time when close family love is able to be expressed, but there are times and circumstances that mean we aren’t able to embrace. Distance, work, sickness.

Things get lost and we have to look, things wear out and we have to ditch them. Often the timing of that isn’t in our hands. We don’t plan to lose something and spend half and hour turning the house upside down looking for it. We don’t plan that today I will wear out my washing machine. It happens. So much of our lives are outside of our control.

And so it goes on –

a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,

Grief, along with the tearing of garments comes unbidden, and unannounced. But there is also a time when grief’s pain has subsided and we can mend the garments and start to get life back in order. But these times aren’t something that you plan or orchestrate yourself.

a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,

Times when we are in circumstances where we are filled with love, times we are brought into circumstances where we see things we wished we hadn’t.

a time for war and a time for peace.

All of life is encompassed, all our emotions are included, the whole sweep of human existence, the good and the bad, the creative and the destructive and what Solomon is saying is this – you don’t control your life half as much as you think you do. And he is not being fatalistic, he’s not talking about the tyranny of time, as if he wants us to throw up our hands and say – well it doesn’t matter what I do.

The whole point of this is to put us in our place.

Unlike William Ernest Henley who wrote a famous poem called Invictus which ends like this:

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Solomon says, “Oh no, by no means are you the master of your fate or the captain of your soul. You can’t even control what happens to you and around you.”

And how often we are apt to make that same mistake we think, “ I’ll go here and do this, I’ll save for Christ years, and then buy such and such. I’ll retire at 50 and take the rest of life easy.” Or the most famous one, “I’ll become a Christian when I’m older.” As if we are somehow in control of the twists and turns of our lives. As if we know that there will be a later, or a 50, or 7 years time.

These verses are humbling
We are not the mighty intrepid explorers of life that we think we are, instead we have to take what cards we are dealt.

In one sense he does want us to despair. He wants us to despair of thinking that we rule – because that is the whole point of sin, we think we rule our lives, that we can shake our tiny fist at God and say, “How dare you tell me how to live”. Solomon wants us to see the futility of thinking we’re in charge of our own lives.

And as James says,

13Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." 14Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." 16As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. (James 4)

These verses are also realistic
Look at the list and see what Solomon is saying –
Life for us in unpredictable. Life will have its share of pain. Some Christians live as if God has forgotten what he is doing whenever trouble comes – they think that if you trust Jesus all will be rosy for you. Not Solomon. For Solomon, disaster doesn’t mean that God is absent. Too often I hear pastors and Christians after some tragedy or disaster saying something like, “God didn’t want this to happen, God didn’t plan this, God had nothing to do with this.” And while that seems like nice advice at the time and seems to let God off the hook, it simply reduces God to some weak ineffective nice old man who wanted nice stuff to happen but is powerless to make it happen.

Solomon’s God is much more robust than that. Solomon’s God is sovereign over the disasters as well as over the good times. We come to the obvious question in a minute.

These verses also give great confidence to the one who trusts God.
Everything is planned – there are no flukes, no accidents. The Bible tells us that he knows the number of hairs on your head, that he is aware of all the movements of even the smallest birds – and it is not just a case of knowing what is happening, it is a case of directing it. So when God says, “I know the plans I have for you” (Jer 29:11) he means exactly what he says. Everything that comes to you, from the cradle to the grave, comes from the hand of a God who only ever does what is right. Here is a warrant for confidence

This is breathes life into us when the hard times come, this gives us stability when the storms of life batter down on us – everything under the sun is controlled by a sovereign and personal God.

That raises an obvious question – if the universe isn’t a soulless series of events but rather is a series of events orchestrated by a personal God – is that not worse? Consider if a branch falls from a tree and kills your child that is completely different from someone cutting the branch off a tree to land it on your child.

Two aspects to the answer – this world isn’t all that there is, and this world isn’t the way God designed it to be. That doesn’t mean that he is helpless to change it – it just means that the change required is much deeper reaching that we ever imagined. Our world is full of natural disaster and sickness because we are here – God condemned the whole physical universe because of our sin. So if all sickness and suffering and disaster are to be banished, then man will have to be radically dealt with too. We either need to be wiped out, or transformed.

And that is what the Gospel promises. Everyone who comes to Jesus will be transformed, everyone who doesn’t will be punished. And tehn there will be a new earth populated with people who no longer have the ability to sin, and the earth will no longer rebel at our presence or be under God’s curse.

This is what we long for and this is in part what Solomon means when he says, “God has set eternity in our hearts.”

There is a big picture, but you can’t see it v9-11
Solomon expects us to ask this question that’s why he says, “What does the worker gain from his toil?” – this is his way of asking what is the purpose and meaning in life? “I have seen the burden God has laid on the hearts of men” – he means this whole business of the ups and the downs, the good and the bad, the fluctuations of life.

And then he answers his own question and he tells us 3 things

There is a big picture and each piece fits
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Solomon is not saying that everything is beautiful in itself, but in its time. Bad things happen to Christian and non-Christian alike. But what Solomon is saying here is that there is a big picture, and each event has its place in that picture. And what God is doing is creating something beautiful. We get glimpses of that even in our own lives, where something has happened to us, it has been hard at the time, but God has used it for good. And when we get to see the pbig picture we will see that everything has its place.

Here is where part of our confidence comes from – it isn’t all haphazard, each event has a purpose and place.

We know instinctively that there is a big picture
Solomon tells us then that we know instinctively that there is a big picture. “He [God] has set eternity in the hearts of men”. Although it’s kind of hard to prove, monkeys, and cats and cows aren’t sitting wondering why things happen to them, or why they are here, or what their purpose is in life. This belongs to mankind. God has wired us in such a way that we know instinctively that there is more to life than this. Someone dies, and we know they have gone, but somehow we feel that they still exist. There is something in us that knows that there is more to life than this. When we see a great evil done, and the perpetrator takes his own life, we instinctively feel that that isn’t fair, that there has to be some form of justice. That’s not just a fond yearning, God has set eternity in our hearts.

Whenever things happen to us we instinctively want to know why – that is part of eternity being set in our hearts – because God is a rational God, and he has made us in his image and because of that we know that there has to be a reason for everything, things don’t just happen at random. So the very act of wanting to know why is a God given instinct.

We feel that in eternity we will see everything evened out. There we will see the big picture.

We can’t see it in this life
Solomon tells us that “no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end”. What he is saying is that although there is a reason for everything, and although we instinctively know that – we don’t actually know the reason.

We don’t get all the answers. And that’s frustrating. In other words, God gives us a desperate thirst for answers to why – but he only ever gives us glimpses of the answers. Now why would he do that? Because he wants us to set off on a search, not just for the answers, but for the answerer. Our big problem isn’t that the world is puzzling, and that we need solutions, our big problem is that we are messed up and we need help.

God’s big aim is that we get to know him. If you don’t have the answer to something, you set out to look for someone who does. And all the questions that we ask find their answer in God.

But more than that God does it because he wants us to trust him. You see even when you become a Christian you don’t get some sort of answer book, its not as if you have become the teachers pet and get the inside track on everything. Solomon says here, “they cannot fathom” that means no-one.

And that’s comforting in a strange way for many times things happen to the Christian adnd we wonder why – why a miscarriage, why an illness, why did I have to spill water on my keyboard when I was writing this sermon and fry my keyboard. How does that fit in to God’s vast eternal plan? And we never get an answer. And the reason is this, God doesn’t just want to satisfy our curiousity, he wants to satisfy our deepest longings. He isn’t going to be treated as some sort of cosmic answer man, but he wants us to trust him and relate to him.

There are times when as a father you have to do things that you can’t explain to your kids, they just don’t have the mental ability to take it all in – the factors are too complex, so you say to them just trust me. That’s what God is doing.

How then should we live? v12-15
3 responses then

Humble yourself and trust God
If the whole point of the ups and downs of life is to bring us to the point where we see that we aren’t as wonderful as we thought we were; and if God has given us this instinctive reaction that we know there is more to life than this, then the thing to do is to humble ourselves and go to this God and say, I can’t cope, I need you.

That’s what v14 is saying, “God does it so that men will revere him.” The whole purpose of it is to bring men and women into a right relationship with God.

And why would that God accept a person who for years has said “I want nothing to do with you?” Ecclesiastes doesn’t tell us, for that we have to go to the New Testament, and we find that Jesus is the one who reconciles men to God. Because Jesus came to bring people back to God, and he did it by taking the blame for all their years of self-rule and putting other things in the place of God.

And this is important because as v15 says God will call the past to account. There will be a day of judgment when all people will see that God is in charge, and that he will punish all who failed to recognise his authority.

And the fact that we are not in control of our own lives as much as we think we are will be that we are totally unable to escape what God has in store for us, unless we have asked Jesus to take the punishment for us.

Live by trusting God
For the Christian the issue of trust isn’t just about starting the Christian life, it is how we live it. Whatever comes to us, we need to realise that our times are in his hands (Psa 31:15)

The Christian is like a mouse who gets to run on the half finished rug on the loom. We can see why some of the colours are there, sometimes we know why some of the blacks are there, but we can’t see the full design yet. And its only in Heaven we will get to see the full design and to understand fully why there are all the colours and shades that make up our lives.

Yet while we are here we need to remember that there is a weaver, and because of Jesus he cares passionately about us.

And where the illustrations break down there is another great truth – for becoming a Christian is like having a personal relationship with the weaver. You still can’t see the whole picture, but you know the weaver and you know that as he weaves the threads into your life, it is out of love and nothing else. And because you know him and you know he loves you, you can trust him with you life, and whatever colours he introduces you take as being from the hand of God.

And in all circumstances the weaver has said I will always weaver what you need into your life – whether it is strength, comfort, courage, my presence. He promises that the ups and downs of the times of our lives will never be so much to swamp us.

There are things we will never fully understand in this life – but we are never to give up on God’s sovereignty.

And because of that it is possible to

Enjoy life as it comes
v12 and 13 Solomon writes “I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink and find satisfaction in all his toil, this is the gift of God.”

Once we accept that God is sovereign and we are limited, and put our trust in him through Jesus, then we can know that there is a big picture which will turn out for our best, that we have a personal relationship with the weaver of our lives, and that this plans are not to harm us but to prosper us and to give us a hope and a future.

And this is a gift from God – not something we can earn. And if we let this truth sink down into our lives we will be able to live lives marked by contentment, enjoyment and confidence amid all the tensions of the times that come to us. And this doesn’t mean walking about with inane grins on our faces, but this joy is deep and profound, one that sees the trials instead of ignoring them, but looks to the hand of a gracious father behind them all.

You see, some Christians don’t think this life is to be enjoyed - they look on this life as something to get through – fix your eyes on Heaven, thole life – and you can tell them by the look on their face. Grim determination. Rarely do you see them smile and relish the simple pleasures. Solomon hear only echoes Paul “Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do it all to the glory of God”. There is a joyless Christianity that betrays our Saviour.

But delight in God is our duty – and it is a possibility, “delight yourself in the Lord” Ps 34:7 says, Neh 8:10 says the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

And this is what Ecclesiastes is about, delighting in living for God and under God in a fallen world, delighting because we have a saviour who died for us, a father who loves us and a Holy Spirit who transforms us, delighting because your God is sovereign, and nothing can happen to you except what he permits for good reason. Here is the freedom to enjoy life as God gives it – not always harking back to the past, or looking forward to the future for better times, but enjoying whatever time God has put you in now.

That is a gift of God to those who live under the loom of life but trust the weaver who has laid down his life for them.

Ecclesiastes 1:1-2:25 - Nowhere to run to

2006-10-06T14:16:00.000+01:00

At the 2003 MTV awards show, Johnny Cash’s video “Hurt” was nominated for an award. Cash didn’t win. But the showing of the video caused an almost palpable discomfort in the crowd. The video to the song features haunting images of his youthful glory days—complete with pictures of his friends and colleagues at the height of their fame, now dead.

As the camera pans Cash’s wizened, wrinkled face, he sings about the awful reality of death and the vanity of fame: “What have I become? My sweetest friend/ Everyone I know goes away in the end/ You could have it all/ My empire of dirt.”

“It’s all fleeting,” he told MTV News. “As fame is fleeting, so are all the trappings of fame fleeting; the money, the clothes, the furniture.”

The face of Johnny Cash reminded this generation that he has tasted everything the MTV culture has to offer—and found there a way that leads to death. His creviced face and blurring eyes remind them that there is not enough plastic surgery in all of Hollywood to revive a corpse.

Cash found an alternative to the vanity of shifting celebrity. He found freedom from guilt and the authenticity of the truth in a crucified and resurrected Christ.

(from this article)

Johnny Cash was a modern day Solomon – both had lived the life of celebrity, enjoyed all that this life has to offer and seen through it. And both sat down to write their experiences as a warning for the rest of us.

Are Cash and Solomon cynics and pessimists? No, although this book seems really pessimistic, Solomon is doing us all a favour. He is recording the results of his fouled up life which he lived like an experiment to answer the question – What is life for? What makes my life worthwhile?

He isn’t sitting pondering this in his mind, he writes like Johnny Cash – from a well of experience that he doesn’t want others to plumb. And he tells us four things from the depths of that well

Without God your life is a footprint in sand 1:3-11
v1&2 Solomon introduces himself and his theme. In v3 then he asks a key question

“What does a man gain from all his labour at which he toils under the sun?”

Or “What profit does a man get after all his labour?”

The word profit here is an accounting word, used of an accountant sitting totting up the columns in his book, and he comes to the bottom of the list, and all the costs, and payments have been made – what is left? What has been gained that is of real and lasting profit?

That’s the question Solomon is asking.

He has already given us his answer in v2 – profitless, everything we could do is without lasting profit. And now he seeks to show us that whatever we devote ourselves to is as lasting as a footprint in the sand, washed away by the next wave or blown away by the next breeze.

In v4 he reminds us of the tragedy of death. Life is not profitable because, despite all the toil in life, one day you will have changed nothing on the earth and then you will die. And man who is made of the earth disappears while the earth of which he is made remains constant – almost as a mockery.

Solomon tells us three things about our great lives that we think accomplish so much:

Man himself is fleeting – a footprint in sand
v4 Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.

One generation enters the earth as another is dying off. Each generation thinking that they will make progress, but the only progress they make is to the grave. And as wave after wave of men, women and children return to the earth, the earth itself remains constant. The earth tramps on regardless – not even pausing to note the passing of great men or women.
Man’s work is fleeting
The earth itself illustrates this futile round of things – the sun rises and sets, and there it is in the mrning again. The rivers do the same, always running, never emptying, you cut the grass and it needs cut next week, you wash the dishes and you turn your back and the sink is full again, you get your hair cut only to need it done again in a few weeks time, you weed the garden only to find the weeds back.

One generation after the other enters the earth frantically moving with all the vigour of a guy on an exercise bicycle peddling like mad and going nowhere. And then we die, and our gardens which we so carefully planted return to the wild, our house which we so carefully kept clean fills with dust – someone else moves in and it is as if we were never there. Even the great civilisations of the Babylonians, the Incas and the Greeks are reclaimed by nature and little remains of the mighty empires.

Man’s innovations are fleeting
Ah but what about people who really make their mark? Who like? Like the guy who invented the Tilly lamp, or the fiddle for sowing corn, or the ram for pumping water from a river to houses uphill. Or what about the guy who invented the Betamax video recorder? Or what about the walkman, the record player, the valve radio, or the indicators that used to pop out on the side of cars.

And the people who invented all these are no more remembered than a footprint in the sand.

There is nothing new under the sun –

v10 Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

But what about nuclear power, or computers, or robotic milking parlours? What are they really but ways to do the same things as before except in bigger and faster ways. The only thing that changes is the scale – more power, faster calculations, bigger herds.

Even the best achievements of man are fleeting.

Man’s remembrance is fleeting
v11 There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.

As a kid my favourite tv programme was record breakers. I loved seeing the attempts to see who could lift the most, eat the most, balance the number of crates on your chin etc. I loved browsing through the Guiness book of World Records. But there is something ultimately depressing about GBWR – old editions sitting in second hand shops. Worthless because they commemorate worthless achievements because the achievements have been surpassed. All that effort and training, all for no avail, the next year someone beats your record. And no one remembers your name.

This is bleak, but ultimately it is right – we are so used to placing ourselves at the centre of the world and thinking that the world rotates around us – but here is a sobering reminder the earth itself pays no attention, and neither ultimately do our fellow man.

Walk along the beach, near the waters edge and watch your footprints dissolve – that’s what you are, a fleeting imprint that is there for a little while and is gone.

Ah, you say, maybe I shouldn’t look to leave a mark then, I should just look to get as much as I can here and now. Solomon tried that, and he found that there is no sufficient replacement for God

There is no sufficient replacement for God 1:12-2:10
In these verses Solomon enters in to a great experiment. He asks himself another question in v3

“I wanted to see what was worthwhile for men to do under heaven during the few days of their lives.”

And so like many people before and since Solomon set out just to enjoy life for all it was worth. And these verses instead of being 3000 years old could be a description of Letterkenny main street on a Saturday. Solomon surrounded himself with comedians v1, he tried alcohol, not getting totally plastered, but enough to have a good time free from inhibition v3, he then went for live bands and music of all descriptions v8, and then sex as much as he wanted as often as he wanted v8 – he had 700 wives and 300 mistresses. v10 There wasn’t anything pleasurable that he skipped out.

And it wasn’t just pleasure that he went for, like so many people before and since he poured himself into his work, amassing property, building great schemes, both business and farming, gathering money, so much that it says in 1 Kings 10 that silver was as common as stone.

Whatever there was to do this guy did it – whether pleasure or work.

You see our problem is that there are very few people in the world who have the time or the money to pursue pleasure or work as far as they want. And so the myth persists that if only I was a little richer, or a little more successful, or a little more attractive, or had some more land, or some more brains, then I would be happy.

So mankind persists in chasing a lost cause. And we don’t stop to listen to the voices of those who have been there, Solomon, Johnny Cash, or even Robbie Williams – who once he got to the height of his fame found that fame and money still left him feeling empty inside.

It is the despair that Solomon voices 2:11

Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done
and what I had toiled to achieve,
everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind;
nothing was gained under the sun.

v 17
So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

As Scottish band Del Amitri said, “The disappointment of success hangs from your shoulders like a hand-me-down dress.”

What Solomon wants us to see is that none of these things, nor anything else is a sufficient replacement for God.

You see this is what sin is – so often we think of sin as being doing wrong things, but at its heart lies this – putting something else in the number one place in our hearts. Sin is basing your life on anything but God. That’s what the first commandment is – you shall have no other gods before me. Sin is taking even a good thing and making it into the ultimate, building your identity around a thing rather than God. So if you make as the main source of your happiness in life your self-esteem, your farm, your success, your looks, your goals, the approval of others, your children, anything – if you say If I had that, or did that, or achieved that I’d be happy – what is it that you want more than anything else – if that isn’t God then you are doing what Solomon did. Except he got what he aimed for because he had enough money and enough time on his hands – and still he said it doesn’t satisfy.

These things, the search for self esteem, riches, approval, success, whatever will drive you into the ground, if you get what you want it will disappoint you, if you fail to get what you desire it will crush you.

These things are not a sufficient replacement for God, because Jesus is the only master who satisfies, and when you fail him, he is the only one that will die for you to make you right again. And you can see that yourselves – ask the question what use are any of these things when the great trials of life arise?

Young people here is a guy who has had it all, standing before you today pleading with you to set your heart o God, because all else fails.

The thing to realise is that your heart is an idol factory – even for the Christian – constantly inventing things for you to put in the place of God. And Solomon says to you – all of them will disappoint you in the end.

So our significance and meaning are not to be found in making a mark on the world, or in living life to the max. As Solomon says in v23 – All this is meaningless – unprofitable, empty. Solomon isn’t being cycnical or pessimistic he is being utterly realistic because he wants us to see that:

Without God, despair is the only honest alternative 2:11-2:23
It is a very clever book – Solomon is setting out to drive people to despair. Not out of cynicism, but out of love. He has lived this life, now in his old age, broken by his sin, having seen the effects it has had on his kingdom, he writes with a repentant heart to warn people of the dangers of following the idol factory of our hearts. He knows that most people don’t get to see the emptiness of life until it is too late, they aren’t rich enough or successful enough to see that the path they are on falls of the edge of a cliff. But Solomon has been to the brink and comes back to tell us.

But he isn’t the only one to see it. An atheistic philosopher once said, “Suicide is the only sensible option, but few have the courage to take it.” And he is right if all there is to life is be born live, die. If there is nothing to live for, and if disease, disappointment, depression, and doubt along with break up of relationships, family and natural disasters can strike anyone in random fashion then he argued what’s the point of going on?

That is precisely the force of this opening section of Ecclesiastes. Without God despair is the only honest alternative. There is a dishonest alternative – to bury your head in the sand and shout, “I don’t believe you.”

And as I have said before those who are on the brink of suicide and depression sometimes see life most clearly. We all think that they are deluded when they ask “What’s the point? What’s the point in getting a job and then working for a lifetime when you’re only going to die? How do you know that someone will love me and be there for me, how do you know that things will get better? This world just rolls on and misses no one, so I’ll not be missed.”. But at a deep level they see things more clearly, they have stood on the brink and seen what Solomon has seen. And the vast majority of life just gets on with life, getting hopelessly lost in the boring repetitiveness of life with all its trivialities – pretending that the big questions don’t exist.

Well they do exist, and Solomon wants us to look at them, so he launches his attack to destroy the false optimism that people cling to.

And what Solomon is saying is that this despair is vital. If you haven’t come to that point of despair – either about your own state before God, or about life in general, where you know that you don’t have the answers and that you can’t help yourself, and that you know that nothing in this life can either – then you aren’t going to see life as it really is. Jesus job is to show you the meaninglessness of life apart from him. Like Paul in Phil 4:8 – I consider all things dung without Christ – because all things are dung without Christ.

And so if you are not a Christian and things are going wrong in your life – God is teaching you. He is forcing you to look at life and see what your priorities are, to see what has claimed the place that belongs to him. What is most important to you? See that unless you have a relationship with God you will fill your life with all sorts of stuff to fill the emptiness, and then you will grow to hate the stuff because it ultimately lets you down.

But where the atheist philosopher had no answer, and where our hearts cry out and override our minds and say, “But there has to be more to it than this” Solomon doesn’t stop – he points us to an answer.

With God there is meaning purpose and joy 2:24-26
That’s where he brings us to in v24-26.

He doesn’t stop with meaninglessness. He tells us that enjoyment itself and making sense of this world, and finding a way to understand life, to have happiness amid the monotony of life, and the hurt of life is a gracious gift of God.

v24 reads more literally “There is nothing good in a man that he should eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work.”

In and of ourselves there is nothing, absolutely nothing that we deserve. It’s all a free gift from God. And so even when those who aren’t Christians enjoy things in life – this too is a message from God. He is seeking by his kindness to draw you to him. CS Lewis said “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our consciences, but shouts to us in our pains; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” God has given you that in grace.

What Solomon is saying is that when we make wisdom, knowledge or happiness our chief aim, we get meaninglessness, but when we make God our goal it is then that we get wisdom, knowledge and joy given to us, because this pleases God.

This is quite simply the gospel – give God his proper place, and he will freely reward you – not because you earned it, but as a gift of his grace. Free, the ability to enjoy life with God at the centre is a gift that God gives. You can’t earn it.

Push God off the throne, and you may get short term pleasure in this life, but you will find that it has been of no profit to your soul. Restore God to his rightful place, and you will find that no matter what life throws at you, you will see a meaning and a purpose – and that will give you a deep contentment even amidst the trials.

Christian friends, pushing God off his throne isn’t just something non-Christians do. We know Jesus is king, but we still find ourselves putting other things in the place where he should be. And when we do we find ourselves getting discouraged and down – and that’s because things or people can’t sustain hat weight of expectation, they will let us down. And so even when our heads ell us that we know Jesus is first we find ourselves discouraged because we have low self esteem, or because we don’t feel as appreciated as we want, or because we are saying “If only I had this, or if only I was like this, then it would be so much different”. And we have made exactly the same mistake. We have tried to find our meaning, value self worth, in acceptance, success, possessions, love of something, or someone other than Jesus.

And in the low points Jesus is our teacher, even more than Solomon is and he comes and says, You’ve pushed me off my throne, you need to find yourself in a deep love relationship with me, and then you will have meaning and joy and esteem, and love, and in me you will have success, and position far more than this world can measure.

Letters: More on Relationships

2006-09-16T23:21:00.000+01:00

XXXX

Good to hear from you again. Hope your studies are going well. I see doubts are still playing on your mind. You mentioned the other girl who you have more in common with:

This worried me as I was scared I would fancy her. I don’t think I do, but its always a fear of mine that could happen.

That is something you can have control of - the devil will always find someone to tempt you with in a relationship, no matter who you marry. So you need to learn to fix your mind and your eyes on one person. The grass always looks greener elsewhere. It wont happen if you don't let it.

also xxxx seems to really really really really love me, and that scares me.

It's understandable that you're scared if you aren't sure about your feelings for her - you don't want to hurt her that much.

I love spending time with her, and love being with her, but when were apart I only rarely miss her

I'm exactly the same. I can go away for a conference and not miss Judith at all, until I phone her, or hear her voice. I think some of us are wired to focus on what we are doing at one moment, and we are so focused on it that other things don't get taken into account. I wouldn't worry too much about that issue. The fact that you love spending time with her is the key aspect.

these are her good points
1 loving
2 Looks out for the best for me
3 patient
4 Puts me first over her - a lot

These qualities above are ones that make her a good partner.

5 Great Christian striving to grow more with God
6 Encourages me to grow

These are the mark of a good Christian partner

7 attractive
8 her family are great

These are nice bonuses!

All-in-all that's more than most relationships have!

not so good points…

No-one is perfect, the issue is can you live with these imperfections? If this is all that's wrong, I would suggest you are on a winner!

find her humour irritating(not so a bad point, but I can’t seem to let it not annoy me at times)

Partners do annoy each other at times, the key is to deal with it Christianly. I can tell you that no matter who you marry you will always find something annoying about them. And the devil will magnify it and make it seem like the most annoying thing in the world. Its all about how you react. Pray about it. (not that she'll become funny, but that you'll be able to live graciously with the things that annoy you.)

don't share alot in common

Not so important as long as you have things you can talk about. If you have everything in common there isnt as much to talk about. Now you have twice as many areas. Learn to be interested in what interests her. Make every effort to understand her life and remember to ask about the things she's doing. Be genuinely interested and remember what she says and ask more the next time.

sometimes doesnt listen well, but she is striving to improve.

You can help her by talking about the problem openly.

she seems to see my bad points and move past them and want to marry me.

That's a mark of maturity. Again another good sign. It might be the case that you need to focus on maturing more as a Christian - ie growing as a man of God. In other words focus on growing closer to God and that will bring you closer to xxxx.

Focus on the Godward relationship and the relationship with xxxx will be helped.

To sum it all up:

- You wont find the perfect partner. And she seems first class.
- Ask yourself, "Is she someone I could come home to every night?"
- Don’t ask yourself, "Is she the right one for me?" but "Am I being the right one for her?" in other words, Do I put her 1st over me, and look out for what's best for her? (What areas are you praying that xxxx will grow in as a Christian? - that will be a good indicator of how to look out for her heart.)
- Dont make any decision yet. Wait a year and concentrate on your relationship with God.

You need to tell her:
- that you are waiting a year with no pressure to decide.
- that she's not on trial, she's nearly perfect!
- that you love her, but you want to make sure that you are right for her.
- that you're giving yourself time to grow as a Christian, not leaving time for her to prove she is perfect after all

Then:
- do all you can to grow as a Christian
- do all you can to show xxxx she's important to you
- talk about things openly - dont leave her guessing
- praise her good points, and dont draw attention to her bad points. (this will help you to keep from focusing on the things that annoy you.)

Hope this helps. From your brother in Christ.

Sorry its so long an email, but relationships are never simple!

Mark

Quote of the day

2006-09-13T12:12:00.000+01:00

Walter Kaiser makes this comment regarding the death penalty:

"Such action is favoured in scripture, not because men are sovereign or because society and the bereaved are somehow benefited, but because man is so vastly important to God - he is made in the image of God. To kill another person is to kill God in effigy."

And we all know the fuss that is made whenever a effigy of some world leader is burnt.

Letters: More on Relationships - We don't have that much in common

2006-09-09T23:11:00.000+01:00

XXXX,

Good to hear from you. I'll just go down through your email and make a few comments and then try to tie it all together at the end. Hopefully that will help.

The problem is that I don’t know exactly what I have doubts about. Sometimes I find that she really irritates me! And then that really troubles me - if we are like this now, what might it be like later.

It's 'ok' to find each other irritating 'sometimes', as long as its not too regularly! A relationship is between two sinful people, and a relationship between two Christians is one that the devil will especially seek to get each to rub each other up the wrong way. No relationship is perfect this side of Heaven. That doesn't give you licence to be irritating though!

There are things about me that irritate Judith, and vice versa. I am completely untidy and she is completely organised. She tidies up, and then I cant find the things that I had left lying about.

But the amazing thing is that God's grace has been like an oil that reduces the friction, as he makes us more Christlike.

also I don't have much in common in xxxx.

I have very little in common with Judith. I'm a rock climbing, rugby loving, football watching, fan of every sport imaginable who loves to read, and design stuff on the computer, and discuss theology. Judith doesn't have much time for sport at all, doesn't read books much, and doesn't discuss theology the same way other friends do. I enjoy it when a day takes unexpected turns, she likes to know exactly what's going to happen next.

If you tried to match Judith and I up using conventional dating methods we would never be put together. But God put us together. Thank you, God.

I think we can put too much emphasis on what the world puts its emphasis on. They know that there is something in being like-minded, but they don't realise that being like minded in Christ is the most important one. And if that is right, many other things will be covered by growing in grace.

After we started going out I met another girl with whom I have alot more in common. This worried me as I was scared I would fancy her.

There are plenty of other girls that I know and care a lot about that I have more in common with. Girls who are sporty, girls who love books, girls who discuss theology - but do I want to spend my life with them? No.

Also I have discovered more things about Judith since I married her that have made me see that God has us perfectly matched - but the point to note here is that it was after we married that I discovered them! God's plan for marriage isn't for two identical people to get together - Eve was made as an emotional, intellectual, physical, spiritual counterpart to Adam to complement him, not to match him.

(Of course having a few things in common helps a bit!)

All the best for now

Mark

Letters: On Relationships - Is she the one?

2006-08-31T22:06:00.000+01:00

hello there.

how goes it? I have to say congratulations on having another baby! So hows that all going? Sounds cool!

Got plenty of assignments to do, which is loadsa fun. Things with xxxx have been going well. But I still have doubts. Sometimes I think I will get married to her, and then there are times where I’m like I dunno about anything, and I’m just a bit confused and have doubts. The thing is she really loves me, and she knows that I have doubts at times.

I wish that I could be sure of us. I’m worried that in a years time or longer I’ll realise that we shouldn’t go out, and I’ll look back and realise I shouldn’t have held it on for so long, because I don’t want to hurt anymore than possible. Am I being selfish holding it on and hoping that I’ll become certain or what?

Why couldn't life be easier!?

Trying to start a case for Christ - so far so good!

XXXX

Hi XXXX

Good to hear from you again. Having a new baby in the house is great. And Eva really loves her.

About you and xxxx – doubts are part of the process, at least they were for me. I had periodic doubts about marrying Judith until near the wedding! That might sound odd, but it makes sense in a way. If two Christians are right for each other and will be good for each other, the devil will try and get in whatever way he can to disrupt their relationship - it might be through physical temptation, or through giving you doubts. What I kept coming back to in my own mind was that I had prayed for Judith to love me, and now she did, and if God had answered that prayer then I wasn’t going to let the devil get in the road!

The other part of the problem is that we allow feelings to guide us too much. Love isnt so much a feeling as something we do. Yes, feelings are involved, but if we depend on them and we go through a rough patch we'll end up getting divorced! And if the rough patch hadnt happened then the divorce wouldnt have happened!

Don’t focus on your feelings, focus on who she is, and what qualities (godly and others) you like about her.

Another thing I've often thought about is this - and its easy for me to say now that I'm married - I'm not convinced that God means us to give all this anxiety about who we're going to marry.

I think we spend too much time worrying about, "Is she the one?", as if God has promised to reveal specifically the girl we should marry. I think God is more interested in what teh relationship will be like, rather than who it is with (provided we obey his commands to marry only in the Lord, and to be wise).

My reasoning is simple - For the most of the history of mankind you didnt have a choice. Your parents chose a wife for you and you had to settle down to the serious business of being a loving husband, whether you felt like it or not!

Its only in the last 100 years that this has changed and only really in the western world. So that suggests to me that that perhaps we should be less focused on who we are marrying (as long as they are a christian, and a wise choice within biblical guidelines), and more focused on what sort of man we will be in the relationship.

And be thankful that at this point in history we have the added bonus of being able to pick someone we like!

So course there is a balance to be kept, but I think at the minute we get too hung up on "Is she the one?" and focus too little on "Am I who I should be?".

So dont let feelings be your guide - focus on the facts - will she be good for you as a Christian? Will she help you grow? Will you be able to help her grow? Are you and her compatible - I mean, "Do you see eye to eye on important issues? or will they become a source of conflict in a marriage." Do you like her? Can you see yourself being married to her?

And then concentrate your efforts on being a godly Christian man towards her, helping her grow, allowing her to help you grow, and the wonderful thing is that in the process of doing this you will find real deep love for her growing.

Give the relationship all you have at this stage, within the limits we talked about in the last email - ie not spending all your time together etc. Pray that if it isnt right that God would make it plain, and then get on with giving the relationship everything, and if God doesnt want it to happen he'll make it plain.

I hope that makes sense.

God bless

Mark

Letters: On Relationships - Not getting too physical

2006-08-18T09:03:00.001+01:00

Hi XXXX

Glad things are turning the corner with the doubts. Now on to the big one – relationships!

Things with xxxx and i are not that great. At the start we didnt really prepare ourselves for a relationship, and sometimes went a bit 'far'. We strived to not do it, and focus more on Christ, by Bible studys etc. But at times we fall again.

Yeah, I remember that feeling. I think for me one of the key things was realising that we can substitute the physical side of things (especially prolonged kissing), for almost any other aspect of the relationship - conversation, doing things together. In a sense the physical side of things is a cop out. It's quick and easy satisfaction. And if it is taking more time than anything else, or is going too far, we need to be fairly ruthless, and cut back a lot.

I have no hard and fast rules here, because people are different. But it might be a good idea to say, "We'll limit physical contact to holding hands and a brief peck on the cheek" and both of you stick to that, holding the other accountable.

In my experience its nearly always the guy who wants more physical contact, and its nearly always the guy who expects the girl to draw the limits - so he takes and takes until he then realises that its going too 'far'.

As the bloke you need to draw the lines and stick to them, and not wait for her to tell you to stop. And yet she needs to help you and hold you accountable.

Also, most girls are more happy with a show of affection, and some attention to who they are and what they're doing in life, than with a long passionate snog.

Most recently being yesterday. We're talking about it tomorrow. I said that if it was her best Christian friend and she was doing what we did would she want that relationship to continue. She’s coming round tomorrow to talk. I feel that maybe if we wanted to grow closer to Christ it could be better apart - even though i think that she would make an amazing Christian wife. I’m pretty unsure what to do.

I think the key question you need to ask yourself is, "Am I going out with this girl because I want to be in a relationship, or because I really want to marry her? Do I want to serve her sacrificially in a Christ-like manner (Eph 5:25) for the rest of my life?"

I tend to think you should only enter a relationship if you are aiming for marriage, in other words if you can specifically see yourself marrying, and want to be married to, this person.

If you're only going out with her because you want to be in a relationship, then that's not fair to her. If you think that she'd make 'someone' a great Christian wife, but aren’t necessarily convinced that you must be that 'someone', then I would feel that it might be better to stop.

On the other hand, if you really can see yourself marrying her, and feel that she would be good for you as a Christian (Does she spur you on in the Christian life?), then I wouldn’t see the need to break things up now.

It might be the case that you need to sit down together and set down some basic guidelines. Both of you are at uni - so your priority over the next number of years is your studies, not each other. Therefore you need to limit the time you spend together - say, twice (or three times) a week. Perhaps you need to say that only one of those occasions will be alone, the others will be when lots of other people will be around -- say meeting up for lunch. This will provide a safe-guard, to some degree.

The thing about the physical aspect of a relationship is that it is like lighting a fuse that only burns for so long before it explodes. And while marriage is a long way off, for example when people are at university, the longer you can keep from lighting that fuse the better. By our very nature, our bodies know that sex is the final destination, and we quickly get dissatisfied with each level below that, and want more. So there is little point in starting the process when the goal isnt attainable, ie when marriage is a long way off.

(Also the more you lay off the physical the more you can develop the relationship.)

Another guideline might be that you lay off the physical side of the relationship and concentrate on building up the conversational, the spiritual, the enjoyment side of things. For example:

read the same books (not necessarily Christian ones) and talk about them.
Buy a kite and go and fly it together.
Find an interest and work at it together - photography, putting together an album of the trip to the Antarctic etc.
Or start up a blog at Blogger.com and both write about what you have learned from a passage of scripture. It doesn’t need to be for others to read, just for each other. The idea is to spend time working together because that is what a marriage is, working together.
Or if you are doing a bible study dont feel you have to use a study book, try taking a book of the bible and agreeing to read a chapter a day, and then meet up once a week to talk about what you've both learned. Judith and I used to do that. Its much less formal and preparation can easily be incorporated into your own devotional time.

Why don’t you map out the areas you want to grow in as a Christian, and get her to do the same, and talk about them, and talk about how you can help each other, and how best achiving your goals can be realised.

Sorry for such a long email. Give us a shout and let me know if any of this makes sense!

In Christ,

Mark

Letters - Doubt

2006-08-17T21:35:00.000+01:00

Here's a new feature - Occasionally I get emails asking for advice, and often the same topics are covered. So I'm going to print a series of letters I've written to a young person over the last while. Names will be removed to protect the poor soul who has had to put up with my advice, and I suspect that I will amalgamate several correspondents into one.

Hopefully it will be of some use. Now stop trying to guess who wrote them…

Hi XXXXX

Good to hear from you, I was wondering whether my email had got through or not.

Thanks for feeling you could email me. Feel free to use me as a sounding board or to pick my brains, whatever use they might be. I'll intersperse my comments with yours:

Sometimes i fell myself doubting and questioning it even though i think it to be true, i just find it unbelievably difficult to whole heartedly believe, sometimes i feel like thomas.

I wrestle with doubts too at times. When I start to have doubts I usually think back to the concrete events that cannot be denied - Jesus was born, he claimed to be God, he was crucified, and the evidence for the resurrection is pretty astonishing. And if all that is the case, then Jesus is who he said he was, and if he is who he said he was, then what he says about God and about scripture must be true.

So for me one of the key issues is to settle in my mind firmly the issues of his existence (the historical proof), his crucifixion, and his resurrection. Probably the best book around is 'The Case for Christ' by Lee Strobel.

I just feel that i dont have any sort of relationship with Christ, i feel I barely know Him.

At times I feel like that myself. Sometimes its a good thing because it means that we have a hunger to know him more. But we can never let it rest there. If we are hungry we need to feed ourselves!

I would suggest taking time to read books about Jesus - something really good, like ‘The Cross he Bore’, or ‘Is it nothing to you?’ both by Prof Frederick Leahy, or ‘Seeing and Savouring Christ’ by John Piper. Any of those will, if read slowly and prayerfully will give you a greater appreciation of what Jesus has done for you. And as your understanding grows, your heart will be warmed.

You could also try the three sermons on Christ's tears that are linked in the side column of my blog. I would suggest printing them out and perhaps using them in your devotions over the space of a week or two. Often we rush things rather than spending more time.

Hope that helps to point you in the right direction

Mark

Heaven

2006-08-11T10:10:00.000+01:00

Sorry for the long absence - summer has been hectic, but here’s something to cheer you up.

The church camp where I am the leader is for 13-15 year old boys. On one of the evenings we looked at different questions that they might either have or be asked, with the purpose of showing them how to be ready to give an answer. The layout of the evening is quite a useful one, so I’ll set it out here in case any of you want to use it. The boys are divided up into groups of 5 or so, and a leader briefs them for about 3 minutes on how to answer a particular question. They then rotate around to another leader who plays devil’s advocate on that question for about 5 mins, and then debriefs for a couple of minutes, before he then briefs them on how to answer another question, and then they rotate again.

Anyhow… the question I was briefing them on was, “What’s wrong with looking at pictures of naked women?”.

And me being me I wanted to get them to think of Christianity and God as being more than a set of negatives. So started off by telling them this:

“God is not a spoilsport. He has designed a time and a place when you can look at a naked woman when you want, and as much as you want (within reason).”

Obviously that got their attention. Then I asked, “What’s it called?”

At this point all of the groups caught on and answered, “Marriage”.

Except for one small boy who, with a wistful look in his eye, sighed and said, “Heaven”.

Another Voice - Parenting 3

2006-07-14T12:22:00.000+01:00

Samuel Taylor Coleridge once fell into conversation with a gentleman who believed that children should receive no formal religious instruction: they should, rather, be free to choose their own religious faith upon reaching a suitable age.

Coleridge did not disagree, but later invited the man into his rather unkempt garden. "You call this a garden?" the visitor exclaimed. "There are nothing but weeds here!"

"Well, you see," Coleridge replied, "I did not wish to infringe upon the liberty of the garden in any way. I was just giving the garden a chance to express itself and to choose its own way."

No matter what well meaning sociologists claim, a child is not born morally and religiously neutral, as if all they need is to be left to its own devices to grow up untainted and noble and wise. If you just let a child go with its natural tendencies they will become destructive and self-destructive. All you have to do is to see a tantrum thrown by a 3-month-old child – they’re mad enough to kill you, but they only weigh 10 pounds and not 210!

The Bible teaches that children are born with an inherent inclination towards doing wrong. And so that’s why Paul writes in Ephesians 6:4 “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.’

It is not enough to “not exasperate” them, we are to have a positive input into their spiritual and moral upbringing. We are to “bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord”.

What does that mean? It means that, since we have brought people into the world who have an eternal soul that will go to either Heaven or Hell, God holds parents responsible for teaching their kids about him, and about what he requires, and about what Jesus has done for us. It means letting them see that wrong is wrong and will be punished. It means letting them see that God is not just Holy, but loving and has provided Jesus to pay the price for our sin.

This is part of what the “training and instruction of the Lord means”.

Practically it means that we should be reading the Bible to our children, teaching them to pray, taking them to a church where God’s word is taught and explained. But of course we’ll not want to do that unless we have a right relationship with God ourselves. For even if we do it, we’d be hypocrites telling our children to be interested in something we weren’t interested in – and that would exasperate them, which we are commanded not to do.

The answer is found not in simply following God’s instructions for parenting, but in following the God who gives them. God has commissioned parents with a challenging but eternally significant role. How will you respond?

Another Voice - Parenting 2

2006-07-12T12:58:00.000+01:00

(Column from Letterkenny Post)

Parenting – part 2
‘Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.’ – Ephesians 6:4.

Exasperate means to frustrate or annoy greatly. And although he directs his command to fathers, mothers are included – because it’s not alright for them to exasperate their kids! What do we as parents do that exasperates our kids? Let me suggest 6 areas:

Hypocrisy – “Don’t ****** use that sort of language with me,” I once heard a mum say to her daughter! That’s hypocrisy. When we tolerate and justify faults in ourselves, but not in our kids, that exasperates them. Often when we see our own faults in our kids we can be more severe on them because we hate the reminder that that is what we are like.

Inconsistency – One day we correct them for doing something, later we ignore them doing the same thing. One day something is ok, the next day the same thing is a major crime. Or maybe we don’t like to set too many boundaries. That’s harmful; children need to know where the limits are. Otherwise we are messing with their sense of right and wrong, and frustrating the life out of them in the process.

Too high expectations – Do we expect a 5 year old to behave as a 10 year old? Or a 13 year old to think/behave like a man? Are we seeking to live our dreams through them? Maybe she doesn’t want to do the gymnastics that we always wished we had done.

Same expectations – Each child is an individual, with different tastes and interests. To treat them as if they were identical can lead to frustration on their part. Do we take time to get to know our kids and what makes them tick?

No encouragement – Are we always faultfinding, but never seeking things to praise? Or perhaps we aren’t faultfinding, but we aren’t encouraging either. If a child puts effort into some idea and comes looking for our praise and gets none, they go away crushed and disheartened.

Neglect – Not just the ‘no food, no care’ type of neglect, but the neglect that goes on in well-to-do homes where mummy and daddy are so busy working, or relaxing that young children become frustrated because they don’t get to see mum and dad as much as they would like to.

God commands us as parents not to exasperate our kids. What should we do if we have been guilty of this? Thankfully we can come to God and seek forgiveness for it, and ask him to help us as we try to bring our children up and show them how to live.

Another Voice - Parenting 1

2006-07-11T18:09:00.000+01:00

I'm back from holidays - sorry for the long delay. Over the next few days I'll be posting several of the columns I had written for the local newspaper while I was away.

Parenting – part 1
On Sunday mornings we’ve been looking at a book of the Bible called Ephesians. Last week we looked at a couple of verses that were directed at parents and children. So I thought I’d take the few weeks to share with you some of the things we found.

Paul writes,

‘Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.’ – Ephesians 6:4.

The verse specifically singles out fathers because he expects them to take the lead in the home, and not abdicate responsibility as they often do. Yet Paul’s instructions include mothers too.

Why is parenting important in God’s sight? It is important because parents have a massive responsibility – not just the physical care of their children, but because they are setting the spiritual compass of their children’s lives. Your beliefs and values will be the first that they adopt as their own. What a sobering thought it is to think of our children standing on the Day of Judgment and saying, “Dad, Mum, why didn’t you tell me any of this stuff?”

Why does God care what sort of fathers we are? Because dads in particular have an extremely high calling – we are called to be a picture of what God is like. When I read in the Bible that God is like a fathermy mind fills with images of a loving, protecting, disciplining, passionate father like my own. Unfortunately I know that there are those who have a very different image of a father – absent or abusive, unloving or angry, inconsistent or volatile. How will God the Father treat those who have blackened his portrait to their children? Your children’s idea of God as father is shaped hugely by their own father. How much do you fathers try to reflect godly qualities to your children? Did you realise that this was your job?

So fathers, you and I are to take our lead, not from society, nor even our own fathers, but we are to care for our families as God cares for his. To do so we need to know personally how he deals with his children – that can only come about when we ask him to bring us into his family through Jesus. Then not only will we experience the perfect father’s love and care first hand, but we will find him giving us the strength to demonstrate his fatherliness to our own children.

Another Voice - Addicted to Noise

2006-06-08T08:45:00.000+01:00

I read Mark Driscoll's article here - and thought "That's me". I've used it as the basis for this article for the local newspaper.

Addicted to noise?
It was a very normal day until I realized that I was actively destroying my own soul.

The day began with my alarm jolting me from sleep. I went down the stairs and as I went into the study I switched on the computer to hear it ping with e-mail that had been left while I slept. Then I stepped into the shower where I listened to my waterproof radio.

Throughout the day the computer frequently pinged at me to tell me that email had arrived, or that someone I knew had logged on to Microsoft Messenger. As I tried to work the phone rang almost constantly. Lunchtime came and I headed out on the bike, putting on my iPod to listen to some music.

Back for lunch I turned on the TV to catch the headlines and then headed out in the car to do some visits. I flicked on the radio to give me something to listen to as I drove. While I was out, the mobile rang and beeped at me to tell me of missed calls and incoming text messages. After coming back in from a meeting that evening I flicked channels on the TV for a half an hour to find something worth watching before going to bed.

As I drifted off to sleep, it dawned on me that I had hardly a minute of silence during my entire day. I suspect I’m not the alone in this. Many go out walking or jogging with earphones in; everywhere you go there’s a radio on – or music is being piped in from somewhere. Even in our relationships with friends we find the need to talk rather than just enjoy the silence.

We have become addicted to the unholy trinity of Hurry, Worry and Noisy.

Are we afraid of silence? What would happen if we had a moment or two of silence? It might be that we would actually start to think of the important and not just the urgent. Noise keeps us focused on the present – calls to answer, events that are happening. It keeps us focused largely on the trivial – how often is there something of life-changing importance discussed on the radio? Fairly infrequently.

It is in the silences of life that our mind is freed from the tyranny of the present and set free to plan for the future. But it isn’t silence in itself that is important – it is what we do with the silence. In Psalm 46:10 God says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”

This is why we need silence, and pause in life – to hear what God is saying to us. It’s possible that God has been trying to say some very important things to you, things that would bring sense to your swirling world – but you can’t hear Him because of all the noise, and hurry and worry.

God says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”

Outreach Conference 2006

2006-06-07T16:54:00.000+01:00

Trial forms for the conference - posted for committee and others to look at.

Sweens and Mark on way to Cinema

2006-05-20T11:46:00.000+01:00

T-Shirt for Da Vinci tract distribution

2006-05-18T23:03:00.000+01:00

As worn at Letterkenny Cinema by Simon and Mark

Church Weed Watch

2006-05-11T09:15:00.000+01:00

Gardeners' Corner
Weed Watch

Some of our gardens are in better shapes than others, but we always need to be on the lookout for weeds. The following are among the hardiest in the church garden, but need to be dealt with if any real growth is to be noticed.

Nonus Bendus - A particularly difficult weed to shift. Has been around for a long time and has never budged before, so why start now. Very attached to its roots.

Notmyjobis - While many other plants take their part in breaking up the ground, fertilising the soil, pollinating and flowering, etc., this weed takes no active role in the flowerbed. Best recognised by its total dormancy.

Mono Mano Bandis - A close relation to the previous culprit, this weed is often surrounded by a number of others of similar ilk. It leaves all the work of the garden up to the gardener; after all "that's what he's paid for".

Infearandtremblingus - Masquerades as a flower, but is actually a weed. This plant is paralysed by a sense of weakness. It is easily discouraged by the hardness of the soil and the hazardous climate. Sounds like a plant that needs special care, but, however, this weakness is only a 'red herring'; the plant is known for drooping in even the best of climates. It will hold back any growth or expansion in the flowerbed.

Me inmy smallcornerus - Experts have concluded that this is not one plant but a tightly knit cluster of plants which huddle together and can fill a flowerbed. Sounds good, but this group produces nothing good, and will reject any attempt to bring in new life. Happy with things the way they are, they have no desire to see new plants.

Dividusandconquerus - Looking much like a flower to begin with, this is actually a hostile weed. It moves into a flowerbed and very quickly entrenches itself between other plants, causing great damage. Other plants fail to flower because all their energy is sapped combating this weed. Consequently the plot becomes very dishevelled in appearance. Characterised by an utter lack of regard for other plants.

Sacrificeisntmykettleoffishus - Other plants will gladly give up some of their space, or do without for the good of the flowerbed. Many other plants recognise the principle of growth through sacrifice. Not this weed; it is unwilling to give up anything for others or for itself.

Neitherhotnorcoldus - Is it a flower or a weed? We're not quite sure. It certainly doesn't bloom like a flower, or show any interest in the beauty or growth of the flowerbed.

Nowyouseemenowyoudontus - Can use up valuable resources in a flowerbed if you have a number of these. Very difficult to deal with. Often deep rooted, but rarely seen, except when they need attention.

Book Review - God, Satan and the Jews

2006-04-20T15:17:00.000+01:00

God, Satan and the Jews
Frederick S. Leahy
Cameron Press

With a title like this one you might wonder what sort of a book this is. Perhaps it’s one of those wildly speculative books that links together the Jews with some bizarre end times prophecies. Not from the late Professor Leahy it isn’t. He was a man renowned for basing his thinking securely on what God had revealed, rather than on what we might speculate.

Instead this book is a safe introduction to, as the subtitle puts it, “The place of the Jews in Prophecy and History.” Perhaps you aren’t really sure what the Bible teaches about the Jews now that Jesus has come. Perhaps you’re wondering “What place is there for them in God’s plan?”.

If you’re not sure how to answer – then this is the place to start. In typical concise fashion Prof Leahy lays out the basic teaching of scripture on the place of the Jews. It is a brief book, but it will answer many questions. Not only does he model careful biblical thought, but also he displays a tenderness and love for the Jewish people that we should learn from.

Milford Reformed Presbyterian Church

2006-04-18T12:57:00.000+01:00

Here's a map and directions for anyone looking to come to our church in Milford.

Coming from Lettereknny via Ramelton you will be coming in at the bottom right corner of the map.

The Church is the first one you come to as you head out the Kilmacrenan Road.

Service on Sunday morning is at 12 noon.

Map drawn by John Callanan

New Life Fellowship, Letterkenny

2006-04-17T12:29:00.000+01:00

Here's directions to where we met in Letterkenny should anyone want to come along some Sunday morning. It would be great to see you.

If you're passing through on holidays or whatever you'd also be welcome to drop by.

Coming into Letterkenny from the Dry Arch roundabout go straight on at the next two roundabouts.
This will take you up to a set of traffic lights at Main street. Going straight over and down Main street, you pass the square on the right (small area with a bandstand).
Take the first road on the left after the square (just before the library).
Take the second road off it to the left and the Day Centre is the single storey building at the end.

Trueman on Psalms

2006-04-16T07:56:00.000+01:00

I'm reading Wages of Spin by Carl Trueman at the moment. It has a chapter entitled, "What can Miserable Christians sing?" which points to the fact that the book of Psalms with its supremely honest wrestling with emotions provides a praise book for all Christians, no matter whether you are lonely, angry or downright miserable.

As well as that, he touches on the same issue in the next article, The Marcions have landed. Here's a great quote which made me laugh. I like this guy - he doesn't just make his point, he makes it in style:

Then, in our church practice, we need to take the Old Testament more seriously. It astounds me, given the overwhelming use of psalms as central to gathered worship in the first four centuries, the absolute importance given to psalmody for the first two centuries of the post-Reformation Reformed churches, and the fact that the Book of Psalms is the only hymn book which can claim to be universal in its acceptance by the whole of Christendom and utterly inspired in all of its statements - it astounds me, I say, that so few psalms are sung in our worship services today.

Moreover, often nothing seems to earn the scorn and derision of others more than the suggestion that more psalms should be sung in worship. Indeed, the last few years have seen a number of writers strike out against exclusive psalmody. Given that life is too short to engage in pointless polemics, I am left wondering which parallel universe these guys come from, where the most pressing and dangerous worship issue is clearly that people sing too much of the Bible in their services. How terrifying a prospect that would be! Imagine: people actually singing songs that express the full range of human emotion in their worship using words of which God has explicitly said, 'These are mine!' Back here on Planet Earth, however, there is generally precious little chance of overloading on sound theology in song in most evangelical churches as the Marcion invasion is pretty much total and unopposed in the sphere of worship. Yet I for one prefer Athanasius to Marcion as a patristic thinker and, in his letter to Marcellinus, he gives one of the most beautiful and moving arguments for psalms in worship ever penned. It is a pity more have not taken his words to heart.

Another Voice - Easter Rising

2006-04-14T13:43:00.000+01:00

(Column for Letterkenny Post)

“Today, Ireland begins a week of remembrance, reconciliation and renewal.” So spoke the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern at the opening of the exhibition at the National Museum commemorating the 1916 Rising.

This key event in Irish history has set the tone for many of the events of the past 90 years. The Proclamation of Independence sets out the goals of the Easter Rising, as freedom, fairness and equality in a new community.

Yet Irish historian, Diarmaid Ferriter, writing in last Monday’s Irish Times comments that, although we have freedom, the aspirations of fairness, equality and a new tolerant community have yet to be realised.

It strikes me that, at the deepest level, these aims can’t really be met by remembering the Easter Rising of 1916. You have to look much further back to the original Easter Rising of 30 AD. What Jesus set out to do at the Cross was to create a new community of people no longer at odds with God and with each other, but reconciled and made new – to use the Taoiseach’s words.

Jesus didn’t just come to live as an example, nor did he come simply to pay the price for the sins of those who would trust him. He came to make new the hearts, minds and attitudes of people, to change us from the inside out. That’s what we need before there can be any real and lasting change in society. We need to be made new inside – the old selfish ways, the anger, the indifference etc. removed, and new qualities of love for God along with love for our neighbour created.

That’s what Jesus came to do – to create a new community of people where there is equality, love, compassion, and acceptance. His resurrection guarantees the truth of what he came to do. He was more than a martyr, he actually has the power to change lives.

While the goals of the 1916 Rising are noble, even if we were to achieve them, what use are they if we enjoy them for only the few short years we live on this earth, and then lose out for eternity. On the other hand, if we remember the rising of the 1st century, and find peace from God and are made new by him, we will be ready to face eternity, and we will also achieve here what the seven signatories of the Proclamation set out to achieve, a new community of fairness, equality and tolerance.

Food for thought - A Famine of Hope

2006-04-11T17:29:00.000+01:00

(Column for Milford newspaper)

We live in a world where there is a famine of hope. People despair, and struggle with depression. People drop out, walk out, or fall out often because they have lost any sense of hope. They can see no way out. Sometimes in my line of work I meet with people who are struggling with this loss of hope and are wondering, “What’s the point of life? What’s the point of working hard and saving up, and having a pension, if you’re going to die anyway?”

And well-meaning family and friends will say things like, “Cheer up, things aren’t that bad” or “Work hard and settle down, that’ll lift your mind off things”, or “Don’t worry you’ll meet someone else”.

There is a degree of clear-sightedness about those who see the hopelessness of life. Life is uncertain. We will die. Things are bad. How do we know that “you’ll meet someone else”? Is it such a good idea to have our minds lifted off things – if the things are serious and need to be thought through?

On Sunday mornings we’ve been looking at St. Paul’s letter to a group of new Christians at Ephesus. In it he describes what they were like before they came to know Jesus. He says “Remember that at that time you were without hope” (Ephesians 2:11).

In an uncertain world hope can only be found in that which does not change, and which can change us. In other words hope can only ultimately be found in Jesus. He doesn’t change, but he changes us. How can I tell someone whose relationship has just fallen apart that they will find someone else? I can’t, but I can tell them about someone who will love them, and who will be there for them, and who will never leave them. That’s Jesus. How can I tell someone that things will get better? I don’t know their future. But I can tell them about Jesus, who guarantees a home, and a welcome, and a future to all who come to him. Jesus is the one who will give strength to cope.

The hope that Jesus gives isn’t vague or insubstantial, it is utterly certain. It has been purchased by him with his life. Paul goes on to describe elements of this hope – we are heirs, we are family members, we are citizens of God’s kingdom. All of these are about belonging, and having a secure future. That’s what Jesus offers – acceptance, belonging and a hope that no one can take away. Peter picks up this theme too:

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade – kept in Heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power.” (1 Peter 1:3-5)

If you would like to find out more about this hope, please contact me or come along to one of our services.

Mark Loughridge is the minister of Milford Reformed Presbyterian Church and Letterkenny New Life Fellowship. You can read more by him at http://three17.blogspot.com.

Book Review - The Da Vinci Code – From Dan Brown’s Fiction to Mary Magdalene’s Faith

2006-04-10T20:40:00.000+01:00

The Da Vinci Code – From Dan Brown’s Fiction to Mary Magdalene’s Faith
Garry Williams
Christian Focus
£1.99

If you’re looking for a crisp concise book to give away setting out the facts about the Da Vinci Code and the Bible, then this is it. Garry Williams and Christian Focus have done us all a service in producing this. Williams deals with seven major claims that the book (and after May 19th, the film) makes about Jesus, the New Testament and Mary Magdalene, all in the first chapter. Having reduced the Da Vinci Code to mush, he then looks to see if the New Testament can stand the same sort of rigorous treatment. He finishes up by asking what lessons does Mary Magdalene really teach us.

One of the things that comes across in virtually every book about the Da Vinci Code is the basic schoolboy errors that Dan Brown has committed. Williams quotes with relish one review from the Sunday Telegraph, “Brown’s book is not garbage. It’s garbage on stilts, it’s hyper-garbage…”.

Williams is smart, he knows his stuff, and communicates it clearly. If you only have half an hour to get your head around the basics - then this is it. If you are looking for something in depth, this isn’t it – try Stephen Clark’s book The Da Vinci Code on Trial, or Darrell Bock’s Breaking the Da Vinci Code. But if you are looking for something brief to give away this is the job.

Another Voice - April's Verse

2006-04-07T08:51:00.000+01:00

(Letterkenny Post newspaper column. Once a month the article covers a verse on a calender we gave out inLetterkenny with the Baptist church)

It was the day after Christmas day 1944, in the small Italian village of Sommocolonia. Lieutenant John Fox of the US army was stationed in a tower in the village and was acting as an artillery spotter for the big guns in the Valley. Shortly after 4am he was awoken by the sound of gunfire.

As dawn broke over the mountains, the 29-year-old lieutenant saw that the streets below him were swarming with German troops. They were determined to take the village en route to taking a strategic port to the south to cut off supplies to Allied forces.

By mid morning the fighting was brutal with the villagers joining with the small group of 70 G.I.s stationed in the village. The men in Sommocolonia fought on until more than two-thirds of them were dead or wounded, seeking to slow down the German advance.

From his observation post Fox had been calling in artillery fire on the German troops. But now the tower was surrounded by the enemy troops.

He made one last call to his friend Otis Zachary, the gunnery sergeant. “Put everything you’ve got on me.”

Zachary protested, “I can’t do that.” “Fire it” came Fox’s response.

High explosive shells rained down on the observation post, and when the dust cleared Fox lay dead, surrounded by bodies of more than 100 enemy troops.

Three days later, the German offensive sputtered to a halt. Fox had given his life so that others could live.

“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us” – 1 John 3:16

“Put everything you’ve got on me.” They could have been the last words of Jesus. From his observation point in Heaven, he sees the punishment that is stacking up against us for our sins. He knows that those sins have to be paid for, that punishment has to be poured out, and so he looks his Father straight in the eye and says “Put everything you’ve got on me.”

On the cross he took the punishment that would have been poured on his people for all eternity, the anger of a holy God, poured out on thousands upon thousands of sins.

The message of Christianity is that if you want to know what love is, put your trust in the one who offers to take your punishment.

Another Voice - Escort agencies, Call girls and Jesus

2006-03-31T10:18:00.000+01:00

(Column for Letterkenny Post - responding to an article claiming that escort agencies are eyeing up Letterkenny)

What should a pastor say about prostitutes coming to Letterkenny? Maybe more to the point, what would a pastor say to the prostitute?

I’d say, “Come to church, and find cleansing, forgiveness, and acceptance from Jesus.”

What would a pastor say to the man who used the services of a call-girl? I’d say exactly the same. What Jesus offers is better than the fleeting pleasures of a one-night stand.

What would a pastor say about the town of Letterkenny? Is it going to the dogs?

I’d say that this whole town needs Jesus. We’re kidding ourselves if we think that escort agencies coming to Letterkenny are the cause of the problem. They only go where there is a demand. The problem doesn’t lie out there with escort agencies, the problem lies within.

And it may be much closer than we think. It lies in our own hearts. True, not everyone would use the services offered. But we each have our own ways of ignoring God and his rules. We classify our own ways as acceptable, but the things others do that we find offensive we call unacceptable. But to God they are all unacceptable.

Within each heart lies the seed of every sin. And until the problem of the human heart is dealt with we’ll have escort agencies, prostitution, and people willing to pay for sex. And if it isn’t call-girls, it will be something else that springs out of the human heart – drunkenness, lies, greed, marital unfaithfulness, bitterness, etc – all of which wreak their own havoc in more subtle but equally destructive ways.

Ultimately there is only one way to deal with these problems. External measures like legislation are helpful, but it deals only with externals. We need a new heart that is wired to following God’s ways. Only Jesus can bring about that change.

The answer for all concerned, from the call-girls to the punters, to every one of us is simply, “We need the fresh start Jesus offers.”

Read these verses from a letter the apostle Paul wrote to a town that knew all about escort agencies and the problems of the heart – and keep reading until the end of the quote.

“Don't fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, idol worshipers, adulterers, male prostitutes, homosexuals, thieves, greedy people, drunkards, slanderers, and swindlers – none of these will have a share in the Kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But now your sins have been washed away, and you have made right with God... because of what the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God have done for you.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11)

Pride

2006-03-29T17:07:00.000+01:00

“Should that man be proud that has sinned as thou hast sinned,
and lived as thou hast lived,
and wasted so much time,
and abused so much mercy,
and omitted so many duties,
and neglected so great means?
-that hath so grieved the Spirit of God,
so violated the law of God,
so dishonoured the name of God?

Should that man be proud, who hath such a heart as thou hast?”

Richard Mayo

Abortion hypocrisy

2006-03-29T09:27:00.000+01:00

BBC News item about doctors in India scanning a foetus to determine its gender. Apparently its illegal in India to scan to determine the sex of a child since 10million females foetuses have been murdered in the last 20 years, leaving an imbalance in society. The implication of the article is that it is wrong for people should abort on the basis of gender.

So it's wrong to abort a foetus if it's female, that's foeticide. But if you abort them simply because you don't want them, that's ok?!? Or if its less convenient to you to have a child, that's ok??

And so the UK and those in Ireland who support abortion will look down their collective nose at India who are so 'primitive' to kill off baby girls in the womb, while we are so 'advanced' that we kill off both boys and girls.

Sabbath Sermon - This is a day of Good News (2 Kings 7:9)

2006-03-28T23:03:00.000+01:00

Several years ago a family was travelling in Oklahoma when a gunman commandeered their car and held them hostage for several days as they drove around over the countryside.

Finally, they stopped at a little station out in the country. The husband saw his chance and he grabbed his abductor and begged the station owner to call the sheriff. "Please," he cried, "Please call the law."

The owner got his own gun and told them all to leave. "I do not want any trouble around here," he said. "Just all of you leave." The terrified family drove away with their captor. The next day the couple and their two children were found murdered. Their bodies had been thrown into an abandoned well.

Their killer was finally brought to trial and convicted. Later the state tried the station owner and convicted him for his failure to notify authorities and perhaps to save the family's life.

One writer says, “Sometimes silence is golden, but sometimes silence is just plain yellow.”

To be silent when we have something lifesaving is criminal. And yet this is something that no Christian needs to be told. Our own consciences tell us this often enough. I don’t think that there is a Christian in existence that doesn’t wish that he or she witnessed more for their saviour.

However, the simple truth is that we don’t speak as we should. So how can we? This verse and this passage give us several key pointers:

2 Kings 7:9 Then they said to each other, "We're not doing right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let's go at once and report this."

An Admission to make - We have not done right
The lepers at the gate of Samaria feel that they have nothing to lose. Perhaps the enemy will have pity on them because hunger certainly won’t. So they make their way from the gates of the famished city and approach the outskirts of the camp. The first tent they come to, you can imagine themselves prodding one of the four towards to the door, and he straightens himself up, and rehearses mentally what he is going to say, “Excuse me sirs, we’re not really part of the city, and we were wondering if you would show pity on us because nature hasn’t shown pity. We suffer enough in life.” And as he steps into the first tent there’s non-one there. So they approach the next, and the same again, and the next and the next. And they end up running from one tent to another deeper into the camp and there is no-one there. And things have just been left as they were. There may have been some meat sitting ready to be eaten, some stew hanging over a fire that had burned out. And so they tuck in and it’s amazing.

But soon their consciences start to get he better of them. And they say to each other, “We're not doing right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves.”

There is something morally repugnant about the image of people feeding their faces, and gorging themselves on fine food while others nearby starve and even the richest haggle over a donkey’s brains.

And yet, here in Milford we are able feed ourselves on God’s word, and delight in his salvation week after week, while hundreds/thousands just beyond here starve for want of food.

If we are going to be a witnessing church, here is where we have to start. Confession –

As a congregation we need to confess that we have not done right. We have been placed in this town as a witness and we have by and large kept the gospel to ourselves. This is where we must start.

As individuals we need to confess that we have not done right. Too often we are silent when we know we should speak.
It’s not right because people are dying.

It’s not right because its not as if our salvation is something that we have worked hard at, as if there is a secret to be guarded, as if salvation devalues the more people who are saved. We were starving beggars when God saved us. And he saved us, we did nothing to earn this, so how can we keep it from others.

To hide the great discovery of God’s provision for mankind is utterly wrong. Illustration from Cambodia. “How long have you had the gospel in your country?” “for 1600 years” “Why did it take to 1948 for you to get here? My father died looking for enlightenment.”

So perhaps we all need to come to this point and seek forgiveness

And we need to learn to see the urgency of the situation.

An Urgency to Grasp – if we wait
The next thing to see here is that there is an urgency to grasp. As these men stand out in the camp, people are starving in the town. And as they stand there they grasp this urgency. Listen to them:

Literally: “This day is a day of good news… if we wait until morning…”

They grasp the sense of urgency. Why is it urgent? Two reasons:

Silence is dangerous because some will die - today
Each moment they delay brings another closer to death. While we delay people are going to Hell.

The death rate for Ireland is 8 people per 1000. For Donegal, that means that approx 1120 people will die this year. That’s three a day, entering into eternity. Somewhere between 2-4% are professing evangelicals. 20 –40 people per year from Donegal entering Heaven. 1 every 3 weeks. While 62 others enter a lost eternity.

These men where feasting and enjoying food for themselves, and it was right that they nourish themselves.

We need to feed first on Christ so that we can speak of him to others. If any say to you, “Are you sure that it is true?” you will answer, “Certainly I am, for I have tasted and handled of the good word of life.”

But we can go too far, and spend all our time feasting, and all the while people are going to Hell. What a despicable thing that while we should be enjoying the blessings of God’s word people are lost because we wont go to them.

Now we have to be honest with the passage here. There is a difference between the people besieged inside Samaria and the people around us today. The people in Samaria knew that they were hungry. All you had to do was to point them I the direction of food and they would run for it. That is not the situation we are in with regard to evangelism. People do not realise that they are starving to death. It isn’t just a matter of pointing them in the right direction and then they will be sure to go.

But their plight is no less real. Yet it is true to say that where God is working in a person’s life, then they are aware that they are hungry, that they are on the brink of death. And where that is the case they are more like the people in Samaria. And we need to be praying that God will give people a hunger for him, and we need to be telling people where to find spiritual food, because we don’t know who the hungry are.

Silence is dangerous because God will punish
In v 9 the lepers say to each other:

“If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us.”

These men know that to delay with such good news which can save so many lives is really a criminal offence. And because it is such, then they will face punishment

How does God view his servants who do not do good when it is in their power to do so?

Luke 19:20 "Then another servant came and said, `Sir, here is your mina; I have kept it laid away in a piece of cloth. 22 "His master replied, `I will judge you by your own words, you wicked servant!…

Why has God allowed you to find out the solution? So that you can tell others. To not tell is contrary to the entire purpose of your salvation. We were saved to speak, not just for our own personal pleasure.

You see the death of Jesus Christ and his resurrection and the triumph that he won is so precious that God wants it to be told so that his son will have honour and glory. When we fail to speak of it we dishonour Jesus, and displease God the Father.

A Message to tell
A Simple message
Can you imagine the lepers returning to the city? Can you hear them shouting up at the gate keepers? “The army has gone! There is food for all in the camp!”

It wasn’t a complex message. It was a simple one.

We don’t need to know everything. We worry because we wont know how to answer questions. Can you imagine the lepers handling this one? The people of Samaria shout down to them, “Well if you know so much about this food, tell us what way is the chicken cooked? What seasoning was used – was it thyme, or basil, or oregano? How long were the vegetables done for? Where did the bread come from? What was the name of the baker?”

“We don’t know all the answers, we just know that we ate the food, and it has filled our stomachs. If you have questions come and taste it for yourself.”

Likewise our message is a simple. God has taken the punishment on himself so that we don’t have to face it. Jesus has died to free you from God’s wrath.

A Focused message
Imagine the lepers standing at the gate of the city talking about the weather - no they spoke about what they had found. Their message was a focused one.

A Necessary message
Everyone we meet has the same problem. God is angry with them. But we know the solution. Jesus has taken wrath on himself so that we don’t have to. So we need to call men and women to come to Jesus.

It is the greatest message that anyone could ever hear. All have sinned. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

Not when you think of evangelism and witnessing – perhaps the key thought in your mind is that “I wont know what to say.” Or, “What if they ask me a question that I wont know how to answer?”

Let me tell you something that puts you miles above everyone you will speak to. If you are a Christian you have experienced the truth of what you say.

A True message
We know because we have experienced the solution

Can you imagine the lepers going to the city and the people of Samaria saying to them. “We don’t believe you – there is no such thing as free food”. Would that throw the lepers? How would they react? “You can say what you like, we have eaten, our bellies are full, we know that what we speak of is true. Nothing you say will make us change our minds.”

There would be a confidence about them – wouldn’t there.

And then there would be the usual accusation that we hear all the time when we are confident about what we believe – “You Christians always think you are right.” Can you hear them saying that to the lepers,. “How dare you stand there and be so confident, there are more of us here, and you are so few – how could you be right?”

We know because we have been there, we have tasted of the feast of God’s forgiveness, we have enjoyed the sweet wine of peace, and the joy of burdens lifted. You can’t tell us that these things aren’t real.”

You know I think there would have been a confidence about those lepers in the food they had eaten. They would take any criticism and still stand there, for after all they had enjoyed the food, and the others had known nothing of it. And fellow Christian that is exactly the position you are in. Of course there will be questions you and I can’t answer. But we can and should have confidence in what we have experienced. We should have enough confidence in the gospel, and in Christ to say to people, come, come and see for yourself. Come and hear God’s word. Come and hear the gospel.

The lepers knew that once they would get the people to the food that all doubts would be swept away. We should have similar confidence in our God.

A minister once came to Spurgeon and said, “I have been preaching for three months, and I don’t know of a single soul having been converted.” Spurgeon asked, “Do you expect the Lord to save souls every time you open your mouth?” “Oh, no, sir I” he replied. “Then,’ I said, “that is just the reason why you have not had conversions: ‘According to your faith will it be done to you’”.

And this is the way it is even in the Bible – remember the women Jesus met at the well, “Come and see the man who told me everything.” She spoke of what she knew, what her experience was. She had a message to tell.

An Encouragement to Take
Lepers and unnamed servants bring the good news
I love how God goes out of his way to emphasise in his word that it is not by the strong, the mighty, the influential, the wise that he works. Who is it that God uses here? Four lepers.

Not just four lepers, but when the news goes to the city gate, and comes eventually to the kings palace, and the king is aroused, and he is irate, “are you all thick, don’t you know that this is just a trick, honestly, why do I have to do all the thinking around here”, and then an unnamed servant speaks up. And that unnamed servant convinces King Jehoram to send and check anyway.

Four lepers and an unnamed servant bring salvation to an enormous city. It’s not the person, but the message that matters.

Unnamed people have played a big part in the history of God’s people – there was the unnamed preacher whose simple sermon was used by God in the conversion of Spurgeon, whose preaching was then used by God in the conversion of thousands. There was the unnamed preacher who was used by God in the conversion of John Owen, the mighty Puritan preacher whose writings and preaching secured the gospel from many attacks, and promoted truth in a dark age.

We’re not popular; we’re not on the town council; we’re not well known; our names aren’t mentioned by people when they speak of Letterkenny or Milford.

But I’m glad because when I read my Bible, I see that God uses the weak, and the foolish, the outcast, and the unnamed to bring good news of great joy to many.

Not only that but see the slightly different roles they play. The lepers are news bearers. They bring the good news, but it wasn’t enough that the good news was brought to the city. The role the servant played was vital too. He was a convincer.

Both news bearers and convincers are needed. You may be a news bearer or a convincer. It may be that you haven’t ever directly started a conversion about the gospel, but there is someone you know who has questions, and they ask you, and you answer, and by your answering you are seeking to convince them. And here we also see that God will provide convincers when his people speak. That’s an encouragement for us – we speak and people ignore us, and yet we don’t know who God will bring across their path.

A Reaction to Expect
When the good news comes to the King – he can’t believe it. It sounds too good to be true. This is not unbelief. This is disbelief. It is not a refusal to believe the news, but just that the good news is too good – there has to be some sort of catch

But here is a reaction we should expect. And it is one that we should seek to answer – “That’s why its called Good news, and not reasonable news.” “If sin is as bad as the Bible makes out, then we can’t do anything, and God has to do it all.”

A Vision to Pray for – v16
Also here is a vision to pray for:

“Then the people went out and plundered the camp of the Arameans. So a seah of flour sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley sold for a shekel, as the LORD had said.”

The people went out. They heard the news that God had provided for their needs and they responded. Isn’t that what we want?

We want the message to go out so convincingly, and for God the Holy Spirit to work so powerfully that we will see the people going out, going out to church to hear the gospel, going out to ask their Christian colleagues and friends where can they find spiritual food.

Oh friends this will not happen by our talking, but by God working. That doesn’t mean we don’t talk, but it means we pray and then talk.

Lets pray.

Another Voice - Yellow Lines

2006-03-27T10:48:00.000+01:00

(Newspaper column for Letterkenny Post)

Funny old thing the lines on the road. You don’t miss them until you don’t have them. Take the road at the mountain top – It’s kind of tricky to negotiate those bends in the dark, especially with on-coming headlights to dazzle you. Without lines to tell us where the edge of the road is, you could end up in the wrong lane or demolishing an oversized ice-cream cone on the garage forecourt.

The other day, on another road, I saw a man who had needed lines to keep him right. He had missed a right hand bend and was sitting in the middle of a field bogged in to the axles.

We all need edges in life. We need direction, we need guidance otherwise we’ll end up away off course, hurting either ourselves or others, or getting nowhere. Thankfully, God has told us exactly what to do and where we need to go. He has given us the yellow lines for life. His 10 commandments show us how we should live, and His son said “I am the way … no-one comes to the father except by me” (John 14:6). Unless we follow this way, we’ll end up nowhere.

The thing is most people don’t like God’s yellow lines, or directions. They think that they can find their own way. I’d like to see them take the same approach to the guys that paint the yellow lines on the road!

“Hey you! Yes you with the yellow brush in your hand. What do you think you’re doing?”
“Just painting lines”
“What makes you think you can tell me where to go? What gives you the right? I’ll drive where I want”
The line painter shrugs his shoulders, and stands aside, “Whatever you say sir.’

So off he goes. Bouncing out across the fields, hurtling through hedges, demolishing crops, banging his head alternately off the steering wheel and then the roof, pursued by a horde of angry farmers. Eventually he collides with a tree, and in the wreckage of his smoking, battered car, he thinks proudly to himself, “Nobody will tell me where to go and how to get there.”

Yellow lines are for our benefit; we would do well to follow them. When God says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding; acknowledge him in all your ways and he will direct your paths” (Proverbs 3:5,6), it is because he knows what is best for us.

“Love your God with all your mind” - JP Moreland

2006-03-24T10:40:00.000Z

Tim over at Challies.com posted a review of a book Phil at 16:16 recommended to me years ago. It was "Love your God with all your mind" by JP Moreland. I really enjoyed it then. Later Matt Brennan who chips in at Irish Reformation suggested that a group of Irish pastors read it and discuss it via email. Here's my comments of chapter five - for those who havent read the book - it might make you want to read it; for those who have - it might serve to make you think about what you read. I don't think you'll need to have read the book to find some of this useful.

All in all its a good book.

Summary and Comment on Chapter 5 of “Love your God with all your mind”

This is the second chapter in the second section on developing a mature Christian mind, and falls into two main sections:

Forming habits of the mind
Principles of reasoning

Forming habits of the mind

Good points

The need for discipline in order to think Christianly. “To develop a Christian mind skilfully, you must want to be a certain sort of person badly enough that you are willing to pay the price of ordering your lifestyle appropriately” – p105 I think this is something amongst Irish Christians that we need to encourage. We need to be setting before them the need to spend time reading and thinking over their Bibles, to the extent that sacrifices need to be made in other areas – such as entertainment.

His section on the virtues to be cultivated in Christian thinking had much useful material. Five sections of virtues – Wisdom/honesty – trust – nondefensiveness – fortitude/zeal – commitment to God’s glory not our own.

The first section on honesty made an excellent point “God is not honoured when his people use bad arguments for what may be correct conclusions.” This is something we can help people with in our preaching, by being rigorous in what illustrations, examples we use. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to tell people that there is no proof that Darwin recanted, that NASA haven’t found the missing day of Joshua, etc.

The second section on trust seemed slightly out of place, yet the point is a necessary one. We need to have a complete trust in God and trust that his truth is complete and perfect and thoroughly equips the man of God for every good work. Our people need to see that we are happy to face the hard questions, that we have a supreme confidence in the word of God. When we answer such questions, or counsel on the basis of the Bible and not popular psychology, and when we take a stand on ethical/moral issues on the basis of what God says – then our congregations will be encouraged to see the Bible has being complete, and that they have nothing to fear in trusting the Bible.

The third virtue of nondefensiveness – great point. We need to learn to dispassionately dissect the oppositions arguments and highlight their weaknesses. Also we need to be able to see the good in what someone is saying so that we can, if possible agree on some issues, before launching an attack.

Fifth virtue of not caring what the world thinks of us is a useful one too, especially when many of our decisions will be at odds even with other ‘christian’ church leaders.

Weaknesses
I would have added love and humility to the lists of virtues to be cultivated. It is easy to become proud in what we have learned, or in our intellectual ability. It is easy to wheel out the big guns of our arguments and blow someone out of the water – it might make us feel good, but it doesn’t win the soul.

Application to Ireland

I really think we need to do all we can to encourage and equip people to ‘gird up the loins of their mind’. Perhaps more one-to-one discipling would be useful – for if we can equip them to think and to use the resources God has given them, then they will grow more, be better equipped for standing for Christ.

Encouraging our people to read good Christian books, perhaps meeting with a few people to show them how to study their Bibles, rather than just assuming that they know how. One to one Bible studies on a weekly basis with a few people.

Great comment - “If all you do is read simple books or those that over emphasize stories or practical application, you’ll never learn to think for yourself as a Christian” (p112). Perhaps we could do more to encourage our congregations to read. Or perhaps it requires a more particular approach – recommending specific books to specific people.

Challenging sloppy thinking in our discussion and Bible studies. Too often perhaps we allow someone to say, “To me, the passage says…”followed by a comment utterly removed from the context. If we love people we have to help them (gently) to think biblically. I sometimes think that the failure of Christians to be able to see what a passage says stems from a style of preaching where the minister took a text and used it as a spring board to launch into a hundred other topics, and people think “Wow I could never have got that out of the verse”. And hence they think that when we look at verses we are to look for something that isn’t there! The corrective for this is to explain the text in such a way so that people can see that everything we say comes out of the passage.

Principles of reasoning

Weak points

Ok, so I like argument, and logic, but I wasn’t completely sold on the whole presentation of syllogisms etc. You can think clearly without necessarily being able to divide your arguments into their component parts, just like you can drive a car well without being able to dismantle the engine.

I wasn’t sure how much use this section would be to our congregations/fellowships. We’re not going to stand up and teach a logic class. Perhaps too much emphasis on the intellect – Christianity isn’t just for clever people.

Emphasising logic has its place, but logic taken beyond the bounds of scripture is heresy. Sometimes people can get so caught up in logical thinking that they reach unbiblical conclusions. Moreland doesn’t emphasize the need to allow scripture to govern logic at every stage

I think that this is one weakness overall of the book (which I still think is an great book) – Moreland doesn’t pay enough credence to the impact of sin on the intellect. He seems to think that if only we could present things clearly enough people would be persuaded. But sin leaves us radically damaged in our mind as well as our heart.

Good points
The most useful aspect of this section was the part dealing with fallacies. These are much easier to grasp and explain than all the syllogism diagrams, and people use them all the time in argument. Once pointed out, they can be seen over and over again. Many conversations contain a good number of these fallacies, and so becoming familiar with them will help Christians in conversation and witnessing.

It also will help believers to base their own arguments on a more factual basis rather than false arguments.

Applications to Ireland
I suppose we need to watch that our preaching is well argued and reasoned, rather than emotional hype. Also that our argument is based on the text and not on emotional or fallacious reasoning.

I wonder whether taking an evening at the midweek meeting and using it to share what we’ve read in this section, especially the fallacies, would be helpful.

Letters along the Way

2006-03-19T16:25:00.000Z

I was listening to the 9marks interview with Carl Trueman the other day. If you haven't listened to it, it's a good listen. He's one of my favourite theologians at present. Somewhere in the middle of it he recommended a book that I had forgotten about, called "Letters along the Way" by John Woodbridge and Don Carson. Its a series of letters written from an older Christian to a younger Christian, from teh time of the conversion of one until the passing of the other.

I don't know much about Woodbridge, other than the fact that he has collaborated with Carson a number of times. Carson on the other hand is probably one of my favourite writers, and there is a wealth of material in these letters, all presented in a most accessible format.

I was so taken with it at the time that I created an index. Here it is for anyone who wants it. You'll see from the index what sort of topics they covered.

TOPIC PAGE

1 Cor 3 26

Adams, Jay 107
Agnosticism 79
AIDS 254
Alcohol 89
Assurance 21

Backsliding 70
Books for new Christians 12
Buddha 214
Building each other up 229
Burden of sin 15
Burn out 229
Buying books 183

Call to the ministry 132
Capitalism 114
Christian Academics/Criticism 173
Christian differences in belief 46
Christian freedom 89
Christianity in France historically 64
Christianity in France today 60
Church discipline 240
Common grace 26
Communism 75, 114
Cultural influence on Scripture 214

Darwin on Trial 271
Death 279
Doing your own thing 122

Eastern Europe 264
Economics 114
Eschatology 222
Evangelism 85, 260
Evangelicalism in the UK 51
Evolution 42

Forgiveness 70

Guilt feelings 142

Heart vs Head 167
Homosexuality 254
Humanism 208

Inerrancy 158
Inspiration 214

Justification 15, 70, 274

Liberalism 200
Liberation theology 194
Lordship 32
Lordship/Saviour 26

Marriage 142
Matter 42

Natural theology 147
New Age 268

Pastoral advice 222
Philosophy 42, 147
Pluralism 179
Post Iron Curtain 268
Prayer advice 258
Priesthood of all believers 229
Priorities 246
Psychiatry, psychology 107

Qualities of a minister 126

Revolution 264

Sexual immorality 70
Social action 89
Sound doctrine 96
Spiritual dryness 96

Temptation 102
Theological colleges 137
Theological training 189
Time management 235

Universalism 79

Women’s ordination 214
Worldliness 122
Worship 250

Book Review - Basics for Believers

2006-03-14T10:20:00.001Z

Basics for believers
DA Carson
IVP (130 pages)

Wow! – don’t let the title put you off this book. How often in the Christian life do we need to be reminded of the basics? I heard Carson say at a conference recently that he would far rather be writing something to feed the souls of believers than refuting error and dodgy doctrine. And here he does it. Carson covers the basics without being basic. This is warm and nourishing, and at the same time searching and challenging.

‘Basics for Believers’ is a study of Philippians. There is near enough a chapter for each of the four chapters of Philippians, but it is not a book to be read a chapter at a time, much less the whole book in one sitting. It is a book to be read slowly – each chapter is split up into sections and I found that each section had enough meat in it to provide food for thought for each day.

Carson’s writing is packed full of biblical wisdom and insight. This is a cross and Christ centred book, which will give you a deeper appreciation of the transforming power of the Gospel. His two final chapters on ‘Emulate worthy Christian leaders’ and resolutions to help us never to give up the Christian life are particularly good.

(NB - The link in the Blog-title is to the Baker edition, Amazon don't seem to caught up with the change in publishers yet)

New Blogger joins the Blogosphere

2006-03-06T22:56:00.000Z

My good friend and colleague in teh ministry, who also has a general inability to type the word 'the' correctly, David McCullough has started blogging. You'll catch him here.

David is the pastor of a church planting work in Dromore, Co. Down, Northern Ireland.

He kicks off with a couple of posts that I suspect I'll be 'borrowing' ideas from for up and coming articles.

Welcome to the madhouse David

Sabbath Sermon - How to live in a world God is angry with (2 Kings 6:24-7:20)

2006-03-05T09:31:00.000Z

Boxing Day tsunami
Hurricane Katrina
Flooding in New Orleans
Hurricane Rita
Earthquake in Pakistan
Famine in Africa
Mudslide in Guatemala

We live in a world that is full of tragedy and accident. Yet many of these ‘accidents’ were called acts of God by an older generation. They weren’t trying to pin the blame on God, simply describing it as something outside of man’s control.

But we don’t call them that any more – we call them ‘natural disasters’. That seems perfectly reasonable, because they involve nature, but at the same time calling them ‘natural disasters’ misses out on a key lesson.

Disasters aren’t natural. Death isn’t natural. Destruction isn’t natural. And in a world where God is in complete control there are no accidents. We need to realise that we live in a world which is full of billions of people whose every breath is constant rebellion against God.

And so we live in a world that is under God’s just wrath for its rebellion. But how are we to react when things go wrong around us, or even in our own lives?

In this passage we see this truth set out for us, and how to live demonstrated.

We live in a world that God is angry with
Despite the fact that Elisha had spared and feasted his troops, and cured his general Naaman, Ben-Hadad, the King of Syria is determined to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Never has there been a people that has been so harshly treated for so long. Even right into the present day.

Ben-Hadad comes with his army and lays siege to Samaria. The price of food rises. And as the price of the food has risen the quality of the food has dropped. And here a donkey’s head is a high priced delicacy. There can’t be much meat on it, but if you wanted a donkey’s head for your dinner, you would have had to pay somewhere around 6 years wages!

And although the NIV translates it seed pods, literally the phrase is dove dung – which apparently has been eaten by people in really dire circumstances. A half pint of dove dung would have cost 5 months wages.

And if you think that is bad – that is not the worst. Mothers had resorted to killing and eating their children.

This should have rung warning bells in the people’s minds. Why was this happening? Was it the fault of Ben-Hadad at the gate? Well yes at one level it was. He was the one stopping food getting through. But several times in his word God had warned the people about what would happen if they persisted in ignoring him, and disobeying his laws. In Deut 28:52 we read:

52 They will lay siege to all the cities throughout your land until the high fortified walls in which you trust fall down. They will besiege all the cities throughout the land the LORD your God is giving you. 53 Because of the suffering that your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the LORD your God has given you. 54 Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, 55 and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating.

Is it that God is sick and twisted? No, this only comes at the end of a long list of threats, each one increasing in severity, and in Leviticus 26:27 they are prefaced with “If in spite of this you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile towards me, then…”

This is God saying, if you wish to live without me, then I will gradually and increasingly withdraw my presence, and as I do you will see what it is like to live with out me. For without God all sorts of evil fester. Our world, even after the bloodiest century in the history of mankind, where even when you rule out wars, we still managed to murder and exterminate more people that died in any other century – even after the 20th century, man still believes that mankind is basically good. We are not, the only thing that keeps us from the most awful of crimes is the restraining hand of God. And here it is being withdrawn – beware those of you who want nothing to do with God. This is what can happen.

This is what is happening to our world. People say, “We want nothing to do with God” and God gives us what we ask for. Not only that but he ends what he said he would send – famine, disaster, war to alert us to the fact that we cannot cope at all without him.

But why is God angry? Two answers:

Our continual sin – Just like Samaria
Our rejection of Jesus Christ – how much more angry should he be with our world?

How should we live in a world under judgment?
The circumstances within Samaria should have acted as an alarm bell in the minds of the people. This isn’t just hardship, this is living under the judgment of God. And as the months progress under this siege more and more boxes are ticked that prove that it is the judgment of God. But do they change their ways? No! They persist with ignoring God. And we see here three reactions to God’s judgment:

How are we to live in such a world – the person who is a Christian must have substantially different reactions to those of others.

Don’t just put your head down and get on with it
Two women of Samaria had made a pact. They would kill and eat their children to hold of their own starvation. So they murder one child and the next day the first woman returns to see the bargain fulfilled but the second woman, having feasted, has hidden her son.

Gross foul sinfulness. Here are people who are utterly oblivious to God’s judgment. They don’t care. They’ll do it their way. They’ll solve their problems themselves thank you very much. They don’t need God, they don’t want God.

And we see many people like that today. They may not have descended as low as this, yet, but their reactions to problems in their lives is not to throw themselves at God’s feet and plead for mercy – and he is a God who delights to show mercy – instead they try to sort it out themselves.

If you think God is trying to tell you something – listen, before he withdraws himself even further, and things become even darker.

How do you react?

Now we need to be careful, because not every problem is a result of our disobedience. Let me say that again – not every problem we face is a result of our disobedience. God may send problems into our lives so that we may grow stronger in our faith. Or to enable the glory of the gospel to be seen more clearly.

But even so – when we face problems we should ask “why”. In a world where God is sovereign nothing happens by accident. And if repentance isn’t the necessary response, there are other responses that are necessary. It might be “Lord help me to hang in here. Lord keep my faith strong. Lord help me to make do without such and such.”

Don’t get angry at God
Then we come to King Jehoram. We read something interesting about him in v 30

30 When the king heard the woman's words, he tore his robes. As he went along the wall, the people looked, and there, underneath, he had sackcloth on his body.

Surprising! Sackcloth was the sign of humbling yourself before God. And Jehoram seems to be going about it in a right way – he doesn’t display his sackcloth or all to see. Indeed no-one would have known about it except he is so distressed at the awfulness of the situation that he tears the royal robes which were covering the sackcloth.

The Bible condemns outward show of religion, and the king certainly wasn’t putting on an outward show. But sadly his words in the next verses demonstrate that this wasn’t a humbling that led to repentance. We see him take an oath that his own life would be forfeit if Elisha wasn’t executed that day. And in v33 you can hear his impatience, “Why should I wait for the Lord an longer?”

It would seem as if Elisha has already told him to wait on God, to humble himself and to turn back to God. And Jehoram has come along with that. But its only skin deep. Its not repentance, its bargaining with God. Its almost as if he’s saying, “You told me that if I put on this sackcloth stuff, that God would sort it all out in his time. Well I’ve done all that, and it hasn’t worked.”

He’s like someone who says, “my wife was ill and I prayed and prayed, but God didn’t answer my prayers, so therefore he doesn’t exist. I’ve tried religion and it doesn’t work.”

But God isn’t impressed with bargaining. If I do this, will you me happy with me. Look at what I’ve done. I’ll pray to you, but you give me what I want. Why should God give you what you want? You haven’t given him what he wants – he wants a broken and contrite heart, he wants you to repent and trust him.

And what is missing from it all is genuine biblical repentance.

And amidst the judgment Jehoram gets angry at God. And we see a man more concerned about starving people, than about sinful people. And we see a man shake his fist at God and blame God. And things haven’t changed. In our world God has promised that if we ignore him he will pull back his hand, and then when he does exactly what he said he would do, and there is a disaster, an explosion, people start shouting and blaming God. When if they would humble themselves, and repent of their sin God would return. In Zec 1:3 we read

3 This is what the LORD Almighty says: `Return to me,' declares the LORD Almighty, `and I will return to you,' says the LORD Almighty.

Have you been angry at God over something? Anger at God is never right. You may need to humble yourself and repent, and seek God’s forgiveness. Perhaps some of you think you can bargain with God. God hates to be bargained with. Bargaining only works when you have something the other person needs. God does not need you. You on the other hand need God. And you must come on his terms.

Trust God amidst judgment
There is a third reaction to the judgment. It is that of Elisha. And here we see that God’s people aren’t exempt from trial, or from experiencing God’s judgment on the ungodly. Christians die in earthquakes, are starved in famines, and killed in bomb-blasts. But there is a difference between being under God’s judgment and being caught up in it.

The believer may well be caught up in it. Daniel of whom there is nothing wrong recorded was in Babylon. Elisha, again of whom nothing wrong is recorded, is caught up in this siege. Suffering does not mean for are under God’s judgment. This book was written to the people of God in exile, and here is encouragement and instruction for them. Elisha doesn’t appear to be panicking, from what the king says, it appears that Elisha is waiting on God’s timing. He isn’t ranting and raving, instead he is sitting calmly with the elders of the city.

There is a quiet trust here. And when God speaks, there is a trust in the promise that God gives. What a great example for the Christian. We live in a world that is under God’s judgment. At times we may experience more of God’s judgment than at other times. At times there may be specific ways that a country or a community come under God’s judgment. And if not, then we all still live in a world that suffers the general judgment of God when Adam disobeyed. And we suffer illness and bereavement, and disappointment, and have to worry about cancer diagnosis, and accidents, and depression. And how are we to live?

In quiet trust, depending on the promises of God and waiting on his time. And like Elisha in v32, if there is anything that we can do to prolong our life, or to alleviate the problems we face then do it.

Do you know the promises of God? Which promises are precious to you?

Amidst wrath there is Grace
The word of the Lord comes to Elisha and it is a startling promise. v1
Elisha said, "Hear the word of the LORD. This is what the LORD says: About this time tomorrow, a seah of flour will sell for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria."

There will be food, at the gate, tomorrow. Here is an astonishing promise, and one that is astonishingly specific. Elisha foretells the prices and the quantities.

The people don’t deserve this, but God isn’t going to bring deliverance. That’s grace. Mercy where their should be judgment. Blessing where there was cursing. That’s what the gospel is. And these people are going to live in a time of God’s grace.

We live in a strange world. It is a world that is simultaneously under judgment and yet living in a time of grace. The bad news of sin is all around us. Yet the good news of the gospel has arrived. How do you react to this good news?

Don’t mock God’s grace
When Elisha had spoken to the king the promise of deliverance from God the officer with the king laughed. It’s always someone on the fringe, isn’t it? Some smart-alec in the background that opens their mouth and mocks. It’s rarely the person you’re speaking to.

2 The officer on whose arm the king was leaning said to the man of God, "Look, even if the LORD should open the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen?"

This is wicked scornful unbelief. Elisha is renowned for speaking God’s words. What he says happens. But this man sees the man of God as an easy target. But God will not tolerate his word being mocked.

Men have mocked it down through history. They have denied it. They have claimed that parts cannot be true –

John gospel wasn’t written by John in C1. Written in C2. Then a fragment of John’s gospel found wrapped with a mummy in Egypt from C1.

Those who say you can’t trust to Bible say so in spite of the evidence. Those who trust God’s word have nothing to fear. It is always trustworthy. Never be ashamed of trusting God’s word. God will not tolerate his word being mocked.

Or his grace being scorned.

And Elisha speaks quickly and forcefully to him:

"You will see it with your own eyes," answered Elisha, "but you will not eat any of it!"

These are shattering words. There is a promise of great blessing. But he will see none of it.

What solemn words. This man choose to disbelieve not because he had any evidence that Elisha had ever been wrong before.

I fear that there may be some in this congregation
I fear that there are many in churches across this land

For whom this could be said. You have heard the promise you have refused to believe it, you will see it fulfilled, but you will taste none of the blessings yourself.

Think on what it must have been. To be starving. To be at the gate, people are rushing out to get food, maybe you’ll be able to go soon, maybe you’ll get some of those coming back in. And then to be knocked down, and in the crush feet pound over you, you can see food, you can smell it, and yet not to taste of it. And last things you see as your eyes close is the sight of people rejoicing as the darkness closes in around you.

Part of the great sorrow of Hell it would appear is that you will see the joy of the believers, enjoying what could have been yours. And you will weep tears of bitter bitter rage. And the saddest cry will be the sound of your voice saying - “It could’ve been me.”

And this is something that is utterly absolute. When God gives a promise of salvation and you refuse to believe it, and you mock the grace of God – God will not excuse you. Look at v16 – it happened exactly as foretold. And then God underscores the whole incident so that there will be no mistake. V17 – the mocker is identified, his fate recorded. And then in v18-20 the whole incident is restated so that we can be very clear on this. Then in v20 we read “And that is exactly what happened, for the people trampled him to death in the gateway and he died.”

God will not tolerate his grace being mocked. God hates to be distrusted. As the writer to the Hebrews says, “how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation”. Hebrews 2:1

Seize the day
There were four other characters in this account. At the gate to Jerusalem there were four lepers teetering on the brink of starvation.

So they make their way to the enemy camp only to find it empty. In the last passage God had enabled someone to see an army that was there. In this passage he causes an army to hear another army that wasn’t there. And we see again how easy it is for God to throw the plans of men and women into disarray.

And the interesting thing is this – the army was gone. It is dusk, evening time when the lepers go out – the army had probably been gone from before the sun rose that morning, for the people of the town would have heard or seen them go. And so for the most of a whole day in Samaria desolate people were pulling their belts tighter around their waists, going to bed hungry when they had no need to be hungry. Had they known it, they were free, free to feast and eat and enjoy the blessings of the abandoned camp. They were starving in the midst of plenty, when they might have been feasting.

God works, and God has provided for man’s great need. Is it not a strange thing – a city under siege and yet not under siege, starving and yet with easy access to food? We see how easily God bewildered the Syrian armies, but do you also see the lesson here?

Isn’t it like so many around us? The Lord Jesus has come into the world to save sinners from the awful punishment that is theirs. The good news is that people don’t have to die in their sins. Salvation is available. They are living under judgment when they could so easily be living under grace. Part of the very reason that God is angry with them is the key to their salvation. God is angry because they reject the salvation he has provided.

Come out, come and find food for your souls. Come and find life giving water, come and find the bread of life. That the message we take.

And there are lepers at the gate of Samaria. Not allowed in, not wanting to move away. Usually they probably got food from the city. But now they feel that they have nothing to lose. Perhaps the enemy will have pity on them because hunger certainly won’t.

They seize the moment. And move from having nothing on the brink of death, to having everything, and life opening up before them.

And here we need to encourage people to think like these lepers. “We have everything to gain, and not very much to lose” they say to each other, “We have everything to gain.” This was what he French mathematician and genius Blaise Pascal said, “If I am wrong and you are right, and God does not exist, I have enjoyed life, and lost nothing. On the other hand if I am right and you are wrong, and God does exist, I have gained everything, and you have lost everything.”

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

Another Voice - March's Verse

2006-03-01T11:58:00.000Z

(Newspaper column for Letterkenny Post)

Along with the Baptist church in the town we gave out a calendar to many homes in the town. The theme of the calendar is “God is Love”, and each month has a different verse from the Bible on this theme.

March’s verse is Hosea 14:4 “I will heal their waywardness and love them freely.”

Hosea is one of God's preachers in the Old Testament. He is a man who hurts much because his wife sleeps around with other men and everyone knows it.

And Hosea is called by God to demonstrate a faithfulness and patience that is utterly beyond the call of duty. He is to wait, he is to love, and he is to rescue his wife. Out of his own pocket he buys her back from another man – paying for the one who is rightfully his.

Hosea’s life is a real life parable of God's love for his people in the Old Testament. They were his people, he showered love on them, but they rejected him over and over again. They chose false gods rather than the God who had rescued them from slavery in Egypt. And yet he didn’t wash his hands of them, but waited, pursued and loved them.

This verse comes at the end of the book where Hosea’s wife has returned to him, and God is now speaking about his own unfaithful people, and he says, “I will heal their waywardness, and love them freely.”

Perhaps you feel that your chequered past excludes you from God's love. Not so – God says here that he will welcome anyone who turns to him, no matter if they have paid as scant attention to God as Hosea’s wife did to Hosea. And more than that, God says he will pay the price to rescue you, and he will love you with a love that is beyond measure.

There are no hopeless cases with God. There is a welcome awaiting anyone who turns to him.

Darwinian Meltdown Over Intelligent Design

2006-02-22T12:37:00.000Z

Richard Dawkins, the great High Priest of Atheism, gets told off by a colleague for "knee-jerk atheism" and for being an "absolute disaster in the fight against intelligent design.”

My thoughts exactly!

See here for the full article

Sabbath Sermon - How to live in a Godless World (2 Kings 6:8-23)

2006-02-20T09:29:00.000Z

How do you feel about this world we live in? There are some Christians who are like Eeyore the depressed donkey in the Winnie the Pooh stories. They are always lamenting the state of the world.

They are other Christians who have a really positive outlook and that’s great, but when trouble strikes in their lives, and they are diagnosed with cancer, or when they are wiped out financially, they find that their optimism was just that, it wasn’t based on God’s word, and now that trouble has come they flounder in their faith, and in fact some are so badly shaken that they don’t recover.

And then there are those who come to church and they can’t see the point in joining the church, because from where they stand it seems to be doomed.

And there are others who when they look at the church they see either a group of misery-guts who talk about joy and whose face looks as if it would crack if they ever smiled, or they see another group who are so filled with a shallow joy that falls apart when trouble comes – and they wonder what’s the point?

So how are you to live in a world that ignores God, defies God, where Christians get cancer, where children of Christians get knocked down – how are we to live? Because on this hinges the questions – is Christianity real, has it anything to offer when live falls apart?

Paul answers that question for us in 2 Corinthians 4:18:

“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

He gives us a new perspective, and that verse in 2 Cor sums up wheat we learn from 2 Kings 6:8-23. Here we see three principles for living in a godless harsh world before Christ returns.

See the Futility of defying God v1-14
Can you picture the scene here? First of all we should notice the wickedness of what is happening here. The King of Aram was at war with Israel – What is wrong with that? Well his general Naaman has recently been healed of leprosy. The Bible tells us that it is a great sin to return evil for good. And here the King of Aram attacks the country that was responsible for helping their great general.

It may be that Naaman refused to be part of it, for v8 strictly should be translated, “He conferred with his servants”.

And he insists on carrying out this wickedness – flying in the face of God’s goodness to Naaman. And as he pores over the maps of Israel he decides to set up an ambush in a particular location, knowing that the king of Israel would be passing close by. But he waits and he waits and nothing happens.

So he chooses another venue, and waits and waits. And nothing happens.
So he chooses another venue, and waits and waits. And nothing happens.
So he chooses another venue, and waits and waits. And nothing happens.

And at this point you can see him standing in his tent with his servants and officers around him, and he slams his gloved fist down on the table and shouts, “Well who is the traitor?” and he walks around the tent glaring at each one of them in turn.

Eventually one of his men says, “Please sir, its none of us, its Elisha the Prophet, he knows everything we do. Even the very words you speak in here”.

You see you can’t defeat God. You can’t outwit him, you can’t out think him, you can’t out manoeuvre him, you can’t out last him, you can’t out run him, you can’t surprise him, you can’t defy him forever. He knows your actions, he knows your thoughts, even before you think them.

How do you live in this world if you are a Christian? Don’t envy the ungodly – Because God will frustrate their plans. God is always one step ahead. They may seem to get away with everything. Nothing happens without his say so. God runs no mopping up operation. Like a master chess player he knows what way you are going to move even before you move.

How do you live in this world? If you aren’t a Christian – you aren’t ever going to outsmart God. It shows the folly of trying to outthink God. Look at the king’s words in v13. Elisha is the source of all the problems, God reveals to him everything that the king is thinking, all his plans, so in the face of such an invincible weapon what does the king do – go home and resign himself to the greatness of Elisha’s God. No, we read in v13:

"Go, find out where he is," the king ordered, "so that I can send men and capture him."

As if Elisha isn’t going to know about it!! Do you see how futile it is to defy God? Defiance of God never works. It always ends in defeat. Every secret thing will be revealed. The very thoughts you have right now as I preach this.

How comforting that is for the church – Nothing the world can do will frustrate God’s plans. Nothing will stop the growth of his kingdom. We could be depressed at how the media always twist things to uphold sinfulness, and to hide righteousness, and to make Christians seem narrow minded. But nothing they do will halt God’s kingdom. Politicians and councils may make things hard for churches but only if God the supreme commander allows. No-one and nothing can harm, or hinder the church unless our supreme Defender allows.

We should note that there are times that he does allow trouble to come to us. But that is always for our good. But no plan of Satan catches God unawares. How depressing that must be for the enemies of God.

Any wonder the Psalmist says in Ps 2:

1 Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? 2 The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the LORD and against his Anointed One. 3 "Let us break their chains," they say, "and throw off their fetters." 4 The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them.

As you live in this godless world, remember that there is no chaos, God is guarding his people.

Don’t focus on the evil around you v15-17
The forces descend on Dothan. Elisha’s servant is going out to chop wood for the fire for breakfast or something similar, and as he opens the door you can almost picture him shutting it again in shock, and then opening it a crack and peering out. Then he runs to Elisha,

15 "Oh, my lord, what shall we do?" the servant asked.

Here is a young believer. He is Gehazi’s replacement. He hasn’t been with Elisha long. He is new to the job. And he is afraid. Young believers are often taken aback by opposition. Things can go so well at eh start for the first few months, but then the Devil comes with some attack.

And it isn’t just young believers that falter – we all can if we forget one simple lesson. Elisha hasn’t forgotten it though, and he tells the young man the most startling of truths. “Things are not what they seem, Those that are for us are more than those who are against us.” It must have seemed like madness to this young believer. He could see the chariots, the tanks of the day lined up outside the village. Probably hundreds of soldiers. And there he stands with a frail old man with long white flowing beard beside him.

More of us than them?!?

But Elisha could see what the young man couldn’t see. He could see the armies of Heaven arrayed in majesty all around them. And Elisha prays and this young man learns a lesson that has been recorded in scripture for us to read so that we will not forget it either.

There are realities that the natural eye cannot see – the soldiers couldn’t see the heavenly host
There are realities which the untrained spiritual eye cannot see – the young believer couldn’t see them

But they are realities nonetheless. And God will enable you to face fear and danger and a godless world with courage when you lift your eyes from what is seen to what is unseen.

How we may ever actually see fiery chariots and horsemen, but that makes them no less real. And we need to remember the reality. We tend to think of angels as nice willowy feminine creatures with soft and gentle complexions, but how is it that every time in scripture that they appear, they have to say, “Don’t be afraid.” The Angel of the Lord visited the Assyrian camp later on in 2Kings and he dispatched with 185,000 soldiers in one evening.

And we see further the futility of defying God here. The lives of those soldiers hung by a very slender thread, at a word from the commander of the heavenly hosts they would have been swept off the face of the earth.

Friend, if you are not a Christian – God holds your life in your hand right as we speak, he can cut the silver cord of your life. He could place his finger on your heart and stop its beat and summon you into his presence to give account. You could be swept into eternity in a split second.

Christian friends, remember this lesson – Invisible spiritual realities are far greater than visible problems and circumstances. Whatever problems you face, you may not see the chariots, but they are there nonetheless. Scripture tells us in Psalm 34:7 “The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.”

In Hebrews 1:14 we read “Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?”

This is how much God cares for his children. Billy and Anne and Esther – cruise. Ministering servants there to take care of needs.

An ocean liner left a British port during WWII and headed for a harbour in the U.S. Enemy ships were everywhere. The captain was given secret directions charting the route. Added were these instructions: “Keep straight on this course. Turn aside for nothing. If you need help, send a message in code.” After a few days at sea, the crew spotted an enemy cruiser on the horizon. It appeared to be trailing them. The captain immediately sent a coded message: “Enemy cruiser sighted. What shall I do?” The reply came from an unseen vessel: “Keep straight on. I’m standing by.” No friendly ship could be seen, but the captain kept the liner on course until it safely reached port. Within a short time, a British submarine glided quietly into the same port. Although it had been out of sight, it had been present all the way.

There is an unseen army watching over the people of God

On this morning Elisha was aware of this level of protection. That explains the perfect peace that surpasses understanding that he had. It didn’t make sense in human terms to be calm in the circumstances. That’s why he was untroubled.

Have you ever seen that in an older Christian – facing illness or death, completely at ease? Its because they are conscious of the level of God’s protection for them.

If he has given his Son for you – he isn’t going to lose you at this stage.

And there will be times when you will need to lean of the fact of v16, when you can’t see the chariots of v17.

Remember the legions. Peter forgot the legions of Angels. He thought he had to do it all himself. He lashed out with the sword in the Garden and Christ said, “Could I not call more than 12 legions of Angels to rescue me?” That’s 72,000 angels. God’s protection and care of you is more real than you can ever imagine. And its ok to ask him like Elisha did for a glimpse – sometimes we are like the young fearful believer and we need a glimpse – it may come through a verse of scripture, a promise, it may come through another believer, it may come through a passage like this, where suddenly you are made aware that you are not alone.

Lift your eyes from the problem – it may be serious surgery, it may be illness, it may concern for family, it may be farming problems – lift your eyes from the problem and look beyond them to the provision and providence and care of God. Bunyan in Pilgrims Progress has Christian approaching the Castle Beautiful – on the path are two great lions, and they are fearsome, and there was only a narrow pathway between them. And they frighten young Christian, and Bunyan adds, “The lions were chained, but he saw not the chains.” How much worry and fear would we be freed from if we learned to see the chains that restrain evil, or the angelic hosts that are arrayed around us.”

And there may be a need for you to be like Elisha to others and to

Help other believers to see the invisible
Notice what the prophet doesn’t do. He doesn’t rebuke the fearful believer harshly. He is gracious
Notice what he did do – he assured him – do not fear, and gave him a reason – he teaches him this great truth
Then he prayed that the young believer would be able to see this for himself.

Here’s how to live in a godless world with a deep contentment – not a naïve jollyness that is unaware of the difficulties, but a peaceful calm that acknowledges the difficulties but sees beyond them to the God who is in control.

Display Christ’s love to those who would wrong you v18-23
There is a danger that as we live in a world that ignores God, and as we see the futility of defying God, and as we see the awesome forces arrayed on the side of God, the great danger is that we become self righteous. The Christian can look down their noses at unbelievers, as if they are stupid – forgetting that God had to open their eyes before they could see the truth also.

Or there is the danger that the Christian who loses sight of these previous two great truths can become frustrated and seek to take matters into his own hands.

But that is not how God wants us to live. In this chapter we have seen what our attitude to God should be, what our attitude to problems should be, and now in v 18-23 we see what our attitude to those around us should be.

How do we react to those who deliberately and defiantly flout God’s laws, and seek to harm, insult or persecute God’s people?

In 1 Peter 3:9 we read “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.”

And that is what we see Elisha doing here. We are to do nothing but good to those who are outside of Christ. The soldiers are arrayed outside Dothan. And Elisha prays for another miracle. It is the reverse of the first. In it he had prayed for a young man’s eyes to be open, here he prays for an armies eyes to be blinded. I don’t think that it’s the case that they couldn’t see, for they were able to travel the 10 miles to Samaria, but rather that they couldn’t see what they should have seen.

Do you see how easy it is for God to confuse those who would oppose him?

Now some would accuse Elisha of lying in v19 when he says,

"This is not the road and this is not the city. Follow me, and I will lead you to the man you are looking for." And he led them to Samaria.

But who was it that they had been looking for originally v8-9. They had been looking to attack the king of Israel. They had only been looking for Elisha because he had spoiled their attacks so often. It was the king they wanted. And in any case – here is a man of God, who has just prayed for God to work a miracle, and then another one, and in a minute or two will seek a third miracle. Is it likely that God honours a man who speaks lies?

So he leads them to Samaria, and he prays for their eyes to be opened. And suddenly they realise that having been in a position of power they are now in the enemy stronghold.

And the King of Israel is beside himself with vengeful glee, “Shall I kill them? Shall I kill them?”

And Elisha teaches him this great lesson – Don’t retaliate to the ungodly. Do not repay evil with evil.

How easy it can be for the Christian to get fed up being the subject of mockery, of being passed over, of being ripped off, or being ignored, and to want to seek some form of revenge. We want people to know what it feels like.

But here, Elisha, the man whose life had been threatened shows us how to react.

He sets the men down to a feast. And now can you imagine the story that these men tell as they go back home? “We suddenly found ourselves in the palace of the King of Israel with his soldiers all around us, and we thought we were dead men, but the man of God the one Naaman had told us about ordered that we have a feast!”

Friends that should be our response. Paul writes in Romans 12:17-21

17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. 20 On the contrary: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

And why should we treat people like this? Because this is how we have been treated ourselves. God has every right to wipe us off the face of the earth, but instead of the wrath we deserve we are invited to sit at the Kings table and feast at his expense.

How can we display anything less to those who frustrate, mock, irate, tease us.

How should we respond?

Prayer – not "Lord, make them nice, but save them, bless them, give me a love for them."
Show kindness when they are needing sympathy, politeness that is genuine not cold, loe that acts.

And as we live in this world, with these three attitudes of heart we will be a witness to the unseen God, who spares those who deserve death.

Book Review - "The Edge of Known Reality"

2006-02-16T14:25:00.000Z

The Edge of Known Reality and Beyond – Jonathan Skinner
Evangelical Press

Weird title; sounds as if it was written by Buzz Lightyear – but don’t let that put you off! This is a particularly useful book on the existence of God.

It starts off asking the question “Why are we here?” not a question of purpose, but a question of cause – what caused us to be here? Skinner then looks briefly at the evidence of design from science, and chapter two has several great quotes and examples from different scientists.

He then moves on, having established that there is a designer to ask “What is this designer like?”. To answer that question he looks at what the designer has said about himself in the Bible, and at how we can know whether the Bible is really the designer’s word.

Skinner comes to the crunch chapters in closing as he presents the ultimate proof that God exists as he looks at Jesus and at what he said. Here is crisp and clear presentation of the gospel. And that’s really what this book is – and evangelistic book. It’s one to give away to those who are asking questions about God’s existence and perhaps are hung up on the science question (although it doesn’t deal comprehensively with it).

All in all it’s a fairly brief, and not overly heavy, survey of the facts (72 pages of reading), aimed at university/secondary school students.

Worth reading, with a view to giving away.

Mark Loughridge

PS If you’ve broadband and are looking for an excellent talk on God and Science check out this link

Another Voice - ‘Walk the Line’

2006-02-14T08:02:00.000Z

‘Walk the Line’, the Johnny Cash biopic, charts the life of one of music’s most enduring icons – The Man in Black. But in charting his life it downplays one of the most significant details about the man, the one fact that unlocks everything else about Cash. Cash was a Christian – not in the general sense in which we use that word, but in the biblical sense. He was a born-again, bible-believing Christian.

He was the archetypal prodigal son. He had stood on the heights of success and excess, and he had wallowed in the depths of drug abuse and adultery. In it he saw the emptiness of all this life has to offer – this empire of dirt as he refers to it in one of his songs. A broken marriage and a brother’s death for which he was blamed all left their mark, and left a burden.

And it was when he found forgiveness in Jesus that he found his burdens lifted. In his songs Cash dealt realistically with sin, not in finger-pointing condemnation, but from a heart intimately acquainted with the struggle. He was fond of saying the only reason he didn’t carry a burden of guilt was because he figured that, if God had forgiven him, the least he could do was to forgive himself.

Johnny Cash reminds this generation that he has tasted everything the MTV culture has to offer—and found it to be a way that leads to death. In a culture that idolizes youth, Cash reminds the young of what MTV doesn’t tell them: “It is appointed to man once to die, and after this the judgment” (Heb 9:27).

One of Cash’s final songs was also one of his best. The masterful ‘The Man comes around’ exudes an intensity of something written by someone who knows his time is short. The lyrics include the lines, “There's a man goin' 'round takin' names. An' he decides who to free and who to blame. Everybody won't be treated all the same.” The warning is stark, and it comes, not from a man who likes to point the finger, but from the voice of a pilgrim at the end of his own journey, filled with compassion for those who are still on theirs.

Thousands of his fans recognized in Cash a sinner like them, but a sinner who mourned the tragedy of his past and found peace in ‘the man [Jesus] who’s coming round.’

Piper on those Cartoons

2006-02-09T23:20:00.000Z

Just in case you haven't seen it yet. John Piper had written a great article entitled

Being Mocked: The Essence of Christ’s Work, Not Muhammad’s

You can read it here

Food for thought - "Believe"

2006-02-04T12:03:00.000Z

If you stop nearly anyone in Ireland and asked them, they'll tell you that they believe in Jesus. Preachers always talk about believing in Jesus. There's that great command, "Repent and Believe" and the other one, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." But are we all talking about the same thing? What does it really mean to believe?

Clearly it can't mean that we believe just a set of facts about Jesus. Although, I reckon that this is what most people mean when they say they believe in Jesus. They believe in him, in the same way they don't believe in the tooth fairy - they believe that one exists and the other doesn't. Why do I say that 'believing' isn't this simple? Well, Jesus' own brother James writes, "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and shudder." (James 2:19). So clearly this kind of belief isn't the belief that saves, because no-one is seriously going to argue that the devil is going to be in Heaven.

There are really three aspects to believing.

The first is that which we have just spoken about - knowing the facts about Jesus.

The second component is believing that those facts are true.

But it is the third aspect that many forget about. The third element is trust. If I say I believe that all mushrooms are poisonous, but continue to eat mushrooms - then I don't really believe, because I don't throw all my weight upon my convictions. I don't really believe what I say I believe.

These three components are essential for saving faith.

And of the three elements, most people are missing the third. They know the facts, they believe the facts are true, and they are hoping that that is enough. But they aren't personally trusting in those facts. Jesus says, "You aren't able to get to Heaven, you have to trust in me to get you there." But people still insist on trusting in themselves.

Perhaps the most famous illustration of this comes from the high-wire performer Blondin. Back in 1860 he strung a cable across Niagara Falls. The cable was 1000 feet long, and 160 feet above the raging waters.

As more and more people and media converged, he did more death-defying feats. Blondin walked to the middle and did a backward somersault. He cycled across. Then he took a chair to the middle and sat on it, balancing on the back two legs. Later he went across on stilts. He even carried his manager across on his back.

On one occasion he turned to the crowd and asked if they thought he could take a man across on his back. They all cheered and said they knew he could do it. So Blondin picked out one man who had been particularly vocal, and said, "Get on my back." The guy's face paled and he refused. He believed in Blondin, but only up to a point. He wasn't prepared to totally trust him. And so he didn't get to the other side.

Unless we are prepared to leave behind our own efforts and trust Jesus totally we'll not get to the other side.

It isn't enough to know the facts, even to believe the facts, we need to place our trust in Jesus, and only in him.

Another Voice - February's Verse

2006-02-02T09:31:00.000Z

(Another Voice is second column I write for another local paper.)

Along with the Baptist church in the town we gave out a calendar at Christmas. The theme of the calendar is "God is Love", and each month has a different verse from the Bible on this theme. Each month I intend to explain a little of what that month's verse means.

February's verse is 1 John 4:7-8 "Love comes from God… because God is love."

Do you ever wonder why it is that humans have this inborn tendency to love? A friend of mine who works as a vet in Belfast was startled one evening when a local paramilitary leader broke down in tears in the surgery when he was told that his hamster had inoperable cancer. Even the hardest heart leaks love in some direction. Why is that? It's because we are made in the image of God - in other words when God made us he made us with the ability to love because that's what he himself is like. God is love.

Each time you enjoy the love of someone, or find yourself displaying love it is a reminder that that ability isn't yours - it is a gift from God. Without it, the world would be an even more terrible place: friendships would be impossible and all families would be marked with permanent and ugly strife.

And yet for some this may strike close to home. They have been badly hurt by family or friends, and there is a deep-seated anger and bitterness in their heart. It gnaws like a cancer. What hope is there? "Love comes from God… because God is love." God is the one who can remove from us a bitter and angry heart and replace it with a loving forgiving heart. In the words of Psalm 23, "He restores my soul". He does this only when we come seeking peace with him through his Son Jesus Christ. And when we do that we receive such love from him that it transforms all our other relationships.

Obituary for Frederick S. Leahy

2006-01-27T14:30:00.000Z

Here is a great write up on Prof Leahy who passed away earlier this year. See this post for more.

PS if the first link doesnt work see here for something similar

Pensées on Pride - 19-21

2006-01-27T10:20:00.000Z

Ezekiel 31:10 "Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: Because it towered on high, lifting its top above the thick foliage, and because it was proud of its height"

Ezekiel 31:14 Therefore no other trees by the waters are ever to tower proudly on high, lifting their tops above the thick foliage. No other trees so well-watered are ever to reach such a height; they are all destined for death, for the earth below, among mortal men, with those who go down to the pit.

Ezekiel 32:12 I will cause your hordes to fall by the swords of mighty men--the most ruthless of all nations. They will shatter the pride of Egypt, and all her hordes will be overthrown.

Ezekiel 33:28 I will make the land a desolate waste, and her proud strength will come to an end, and the mountains of Israel will become desolate so that no-one will cross them.

Daniel 4:37 Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, because everything he does is right and all his ways are just. And those who walk in pride he is able to humble.

Daniel 5:19 Because of the high position he gave him, all the peoples and nations and men of every language dreaded and feared him. Those the king wanted to put to death, he put to death; those he wanted to spare, he spared; those he wanted to promote, he promoted; and those he wanted to humble, he humbled. 20 But when his heart became arrogant and hardened with pride, he was deposed from his royal throne and stripped of his glory…. 22 "But you his son, O Belshazzar, have not humbled yourself, though you knew all this."

God humbles every proud man. Not one escapes.
Pride is utterly abominable to God.
And the No 1 sin in man.

Daniel 10:12 Then he continued, "Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them.

Do we want God to come closer?
We need to humble ourselves before him.

2 Corinthians 7:4 I have great confidence in you; I take great pride in you. I am greatly encouraged; in all our troubles my joy knows no bounds.

There is a right pride to take in others.
Paul takes pride in the Corinthians believers. Stunning, given their faults.
Or is it only stunning because I rarley think of taking pride in others?
Do I take pride in other believers I know no matter what their faults?
Or am I more concerned about me? And whether or not I am regarded well?
Here is a key test as to whether my world revolves around me or not.

Book Review - Be Patient, God isn't finished with me yet

2006-01-25T09:39:00.000Z

Be Patient - God hasn't finished with me yet.
Lessons from the Life of Jacob
Roger Ellsworth
Evangelical Press

Ellsworth has to be one of my favourite authors for books to use in my quiet time. He has written a number of really helpful books: Strengthening Christ's Church, He is Altogether Lovely, and The Shepherd King, to name but a few.

I was really looking forward to studying Jacob; the title really does speak straight to the heart of any Christian - at least it should! It's easy to look down on Jacob because he was so obviously a flawed man; extremely blessed and extremely flawed. But then the mists clear and you realise that we have more of Jacob's problems than we would care to admit, and perhaps less of his admirable qualities than we would like.

Ellsworth does a good job of getting you into the life of Jacob and the circumstances he found himself in. I learned a lot of lessons from the life of Jacob that I hadn't seen before and started to appreciate him in a different light. But more, I started to appreciate my God in a different light. Jacob's continual backsliding is met with the persistence of God's grace in bringing him back. Without God Jacob would have been "a blot on the pages of history, but God had other plans". How true for all of us!

Incidents that had perplexed me in Jacob's life were made clearer, and Ellsworth applies the lessons well to Christian life today. One thing I liked was that he keeps bringing us to see Jesus and the blessings we have in Christ.

The only downside was that perhaps the book wasn't as in-depth as I would have liked. I didn't feel it was as good as some of Ellsworth's other books, but nevertheless it is a good introduction to the life of Jacob and the faithful persistent grace of God.

2 Kings 6:1-7 - Do not be anxious about anything

2006-01-20T09:41:00.000Z

Sorry for the long absence - things are always fairly busy in January, and along with that, I have decided that I don't want to become mastered by the need to blog. "Everything is permissable, but I will not be mastered by anything."
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What lessons do we learn from this passage? Perhaps as we read through it you were wondering - what are we going to learn from this today?

Are there any lessons? Don't chop wood near a river with borrowed tools. That we should be as conscientious as this man was when we do borrow from others? Don't involve ministers in building projects? Use professionals?

Part of our problem when we come to read the Bible, and especially these Old Testament stories is that we are constantly looking to find ourselves in them. What should I learn from this? How does it apply to me? Is there an example for me to follow or avoid?

Those are good questions and they have their place. But instead the first question we should ask is, "What does this tell me about God?"

And when we ask that question we see the lesson straight away. God cares about axe heads. Or God cares about things that happen to us, that in the big scheme of things aren't really that important. This lesson that God cares is one that the writer of 2 Kings has been driving home for quite some time now. This is the same sort of miracle as the five in ch4. There we saw God provide when someone was in great need - the widow who was in debt, he provided when a woman was is despair - she was childless, he provided when she was in deeper despair, and her beloved son had died, he provided when there was danger in the pot of stew, and he provided when there was a shortage in the dinner menu.

God is a God who provides. And the writer of 2 Kings wants us to really get this. Why does he tell 6 stories when one would have done?

We're very good at finding things to worry about aren't we? It isn't enough to be told "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear" for we'll think "what about family, or my job - he didn't mention those.

But there are no loopholes in God's care policy. He cares for us in every way. That's what these stories drive home - they're the foundation for Paul's command, "Do not be anxious about anything."

God cares for us in every aspect - be it in need, in personal pain, or grief, or danger or shortage, or in this case, just an ordinary every day accident. God cares.

We're going to look at this passage from three directions

God cares for his people in every circumstance
Three aspects to God's care:

God is concerned about the simple needs of his people
Can you imagine the scene?

There is a theological college - that's what the company of the prophets was. They are tight for space. And these men of God are practical men, they decide that they would like to built larger premises. But rather than just head off and do their own thing, they seek the guidance and permission of their teacher - Elisha. He gives them his wholehearted support, and they ask him to accompany them.

So off they go down to near the Jordan river and they are busy chopping trees. One man has shown initiative and gone and borrowed an axe. And as he swings at the tree trunk with all his might the axe head hurtles off and there is distant splash. And as the axe head sinks so does his heart - for it wasn't his, it was borrowed.

And he laments his case to Elisha, the man of God. Note that is what he is called in v6. The author wants us to realise that it is not Elisha who is the focus, it is God who is about to act.

And Elisha chops down another branch and throws it in, and as it sinks, the axe head floats. It is a miracle for heavy iron axe heads do not float.

God is concerned about an axe head. The laws of physics, the laws of the universe, are temporarily suspended because an axe head has fallen in a river. What does that tell you about your God?

No concern is too small for him. It might be a relatively simple need, but it still matters to God. On a world scale there might be trouble brewing in Assyria, the King of Israel might be flouting God's law at every turn, there might be a famine in the country, but down by the Jordan one of God's people has had a simple accident, nothing traumatic - just a lump of metal fallen in the river.

But that matters to God. I find that immensely comforting. I've found that, have you? - God is concerned about roofboxes - Expand - Start with sitting in café reluctant to spend €1 on the Dealer. Begrudged spending the money because not likely that there would be a roofbox in it

Tomorrow your car might not start - is it worth praying about?
Your washing machine might break down just as you are about to start 5 loads of washing.
You may have some mundane ordinary task to do on the farm - clipping of fencing, and you need to get it done, but things keep getting in the way - is that something you can bring to God?
Your heaters may not come on on a cold morning …

Surely we should be able to cope with these sorts of things?

Do not be anxious about anything. Why - not because these things don't wind us up - but because we don't have to be anxious.

God is concerned for the Genuine needs of his people
Having emphasised the simplicity of the need, we need to be balanced and emphasise that this was a real need.

The axe head has flown off the handle and sunk out of sight into the river. And the man is conscience stricken. Why so? It was borrowed. What's the big deal - can't he pop next door to Diver's hardware and get a replacement?

It's not quite so easy. Although the Iron Age had been around for about 2-3 centuries, Israel had struggled with this new technology. Iron implements weren't that common. It took a tremendous amount of effort to smelt the ore. Many hours had to be spent. Huge numbers of trees had to be felled to light the fires to heat the furnaces. The ore needed to be quarried. The tools had to be shaped and sharpened.

This was a Rolls Royce of tools. And your man has just heaved it into the river!

And there isn't much spare cash floating about in these times - these are the men that go out scavenging for food. This man has borrowed and lost something that he has no hope of replacing.

This is a genuine need. This wasn't that he would have liked an iron axe head for himself. That would have been luxury. This is a man going into quite a sizeable debt. And what do we learn about God? God is concerned about our genuine needs.

Here is why you don't need to be anxious about anything - if there is anything that would genuinely be for your good for God to do - he will do it.

Of course our problem is that we often have different ideas about what would be good for us - or what we need. But here God demonstrates that he is not blind to our distresses or our emergencies, or genuine needs.

In fact sometimes it is in our distresses, emergencies or genuine needs that we see God act in the most marvellous ways.

God cares in advance of our needs
The key issue for the man on the bank of the Jordan was that when he turned to look for the man of God - Elisha was there.

The presence of the man of God was the crucial factor in this incident. Why was Elisha there? Look at v 3. Well done that prophet who asked Elisha to accompany them on a building expedition! Where would they have been if that question hadn't been asked? And yet God had prompted that man to ask that question at that time, so that later on in the day, or maybe even a day or two later - we don't know how long they were at this task - Elisha was there when he was needed.

So much hangs on such an insignificant detail. But God had the answer in place long before the problem arose.

Have you found that? I have - let me go back to that roof box - God had had a man in Belfast buy a roof box, for a car very similar to ours, and leave it at a camp site in Kerrykeel, and then in the week that I decide to look for one - he tells the campsite manager to put it in the Dealer.

I remember another time when I was in this situation that this man finds himself in - I had borrowed a car. I removed a chunk of the paintwork up the side of the car. Distraught - how could I ever afford to pay for that. I got home, and found a cheque that had been posted two days previous sitting on the table.

Here is another reason we shouldn't be anxious about anything - God often provides in advance for the needs of his people. And seemingly insignificant details and decisions can turn out to be the very things God uses to provide. And so often we find that God had his provision in place long before we needed it.

God cares for his people. Let me emphasise that God cares for his people. These are his prophets. This level of care and attention isn't bestowed on everyone. The person who refuses to put their trust in Christ has every reason to be anxious about everything. For they do not have a heavenly father looking after them in every circumstance in life.

You see for those of you who are Christians when Christ died at the cross for you he did much more than wipe out your debts. He brought you into his family. He purchased for you all the rights and privileges of the sons and daughters of God. What father can sit by and see his children anxious about anything? It may be a simple need - Eva is upset because Piglet has fallen below the bed. Do I tell her not to be silly - its only a stuffed toy, and she can have breakfast without it?

Here too is the depth of his care for us. Everything you need for life and godliness has been purchased for you at the cross. All that you will need is available. God has prepared it all in advance.

Perhaps you look at your life and you can identify more with the axe head than the man who lost it. You feel as if you are at the bottom of the muddy old Jordan. You feel that things are hopeless. God cares and God is able to raise you up out of whatever depths your soul may have plunged to. It may be that in your discouragement it seems to you that God doesn't care, and that things are too bleak, that the situation is hopeless. Here we see a God who specialises in turning hopeless situations around.

Don't lose hope - do what this man did take your request to God. He who wouldn't let the prophet lose an axe head certainly wont allow you to be lost.

But it would be wrong simply to look at this passage in terms of our personal needs - there is more to it than that.

God cares for his church in dark days
This passage shows God's care - not just for his individual people, but also for his people as a body - the church.

As we look at this passage and ask the question, "What do we learn about God here? Or What is God doing here?" we see something else.

And we need to bear in mind the people that this book of 2 Kings was written for. They were in exile in Babylon. The author of Kings is being guided by the Holy Spirit to select accounts that will be not only of help to us, but also of help to them in the dark and discouraging days in which they live.

And so what do they see when they read this passage?

What has just happened? Gehazi, the servant of the man of God has just been dismissed. The cause of God in Israel would seem to have taken another blow. The heart of Elisha's right hand man was not set on the things of God after all.

But look at how ch 6 starts off:

The company of the prophets said to Elisha, "Look, the place where we meet with you is too small for us.

Gehazi may be gone, but God's work is flourishing. Bishop Hall writes:

"There was no loss of Gehazi; when he was gone the prophets increased. An ill man in the church is but like some shrubby tree in a garden, whose shade keeps better plants from growing. The view of God's just judgments doth rather draw people unto him than alienate them."

Gehazi may be gone, but the theological college has to be extended. What may seem loss to man is not loss with God.

The people in exile could identify with this, many of their people had been lost, the true remnant was being whittled down. The question in their minds was, "Is there a future for us? Does God still care?" In this passage both those questions are answered. Even while God is removing the godless from among the church, he will also be extending it, bringing others in to fill the seats of those who once sat there.

Not only has this happened in the context of Gehazi being removed, but also in the context of an idolatrous godless nation. And amongst this godless nation God is building his church. God still cares for his people although the nation may have forsaken him.

It would have been encouraging for another reason. Look at the miracle itself. How often does the church seem to be like that axe head? All seems lost, we seem sunk in the depths of muddy old Jordan. If we knew our church history - how much help there is there.

I mentioned last week about the revival in 1859 in Ulster and we may wish that we lived in such days - days when spiritual issues were discussed in public, and people went to church en masse. But those days started among bleak dark days. And it is in the darkness that God often starts, because it is in the darkness that his true and faithful people get really down to the serious matter of prayer, and begin to take seriously the command to reach out.

When the church seems sunk, when the world pronounces the death of the church, or pronounces it to be irrelevant, God raises the axe head to the surface again.

Look at it from another perspective - here are the people of God working at some great scheme. As they work, an accident happens, something unforeseen that would seem to be a great hindrance to the work. And yet events that to all would seem to signal the end of the work, are not a hindrance to God. God may take away men from congregations, but if his work is truly being done he will provide and the work will flourish.

A key figure in the life of a church may be taken, but God will provide. So let us be encouraged - God cares for and builds his church even in the darkness.

God cares for sinners in hopeless lostness
I want to finish by addressing those of you who haven't put your trust in Christ yet. By now you know all the facts, you may even believe the facts to be true. If anyone said that Jesus didn't exist, or that he was a liar you would argue with them that they were wrong. But yet you still haven't come to that point where you have thrown yourself before him and said, "I need you to save me."

There is encouragement for you. For you are like this man in this story. There has been placed on you an enormous debt that you cannot hope to pay off. It is your debt. For you have borrowed something from God - your life. It isn't yours, it is on loan from God. Every breath you take, every step you make, is a gift from him. And one day you will have to give an account of what you did with your precious God given life.

And if you haven't placed it in his care and in his service for safe keeping, you have lost it at the bottom of muddy old Jordan. It doesn't matter what you are doing, whether you are living at decent life, or living a foul life, when you're on the bottom of a river bed it doesn't really matter.

But the day of reckoning will come when the owner will seek the return of what was leant. And like this man there will be an enormous debt to pay.

The good news is that just as for this man God had his provision in place long before it was needed. God has had his provision in place long before you needed it. Jesus Christ will redeem your life, rescue you from the depths of rebellion and lift you out of the miry clay of judgment. The good news of the gospel is that God has already provided the answer - Come to him. Come now.

Be like this man, turning to the man of God he said, "Alas it was borrowed." "Alas, my life is borrowed, alas I will have to give account and I cannot pay." And when you turn to the Man of God, God the Man, he will raise you up, and pay your debt.

Here is reason to praise God.

Why? Because God cares, not just for his people and for his church, but for lost sinners.

"A prince and a great man has fallen this day in Israel"

2006-01-05T00:46:00.000Z

Professor Frederick S. Leahy - theologian, pastor and author passed away yesterday evening.

I suspect he won't be known to many of you. But let me recommend that you get at least one of his books - "The Cross He Bore - Meditations on the Sufferings of the Redeemer." It is perhaps the book that best sums up the heart of man - brief, yet each phrase weighted to perfection and packed with theological insight and observation on his most esteemed of topics - the cross of Christ. Prof Edward Donnelly wrote in the forward, "Here is satisfying truth, painstakingly quarried and crafted for the needs of God's people." It is one of those books that has had the most impact on me as a Christian.

Until I read this book I don’t think I had begun to grasp what Christ had gone through on the cross, and in the events leading up to it, for our sake. One line always stands out for me “Gethsemane is not a field of study for our intellect. It is a sanctuary of our faith. Lord, forgive us for the times we have read about Gethsemane with dry eyes.”

You can read my review here.

The following exchange from the life of Puritan Richard Rogers could have been from the lips of Prof Leahy:

"Mr Rogers, I like you and your company very well, but you are so precise."
"Oh Sir," said Rogers "I serve a precise God"

Whether it was in writing or in preaching or in lecturing he was a precise man - in the best and most magnificent sense of the word. A phrase of his contained more than paragraphs of many other men. He was a man of immense theological insight and astuteness. He stood no speculation, or compromise on God's word. He loved to plumb the depths of the unsearchable riches of Christ and to bring nuggets to the surface for the rest of us.

He was an immensely clear thinker, with a quick and easy sense of humour and a gentle pastor's heart.

I would commend his writings to you. They can be purchased ether through Amazon, or through the Reformed Presbyterian Bookshop.

Satan Cast Out
The Cross He Bore
Is it Nothing to You
The Victory of the Lamb
God, Satan and the Jews - The place of the Jews in Prophecy and History
Biblical Baptism

How do you know if you are a Calvinist

2005-12-13T14:19:00.000Z

This guy's photo-essay is hilarious. This Calvinist finds it funny. And if you dont find it funny - don't come looking to me for sympathy! The ability to laugh at yourself is somewhere near the theological foundation of Calvinism.

(PS I did mean that last statement - Calvinism allows no room for pride. Pride will not laugh at itself. So if we cant laugh at ourselves we must be too proud of ourselves for our ability to hold the truths that we hold to - which is a denial of biblical Christianity.)