Jesus is the Word of God
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EPISODE 15: Doesn't the Bible Support Slavery?
What comes to mind when we mention Slavery? The African slave trade? ‘Upstairs Downstairs’? Imperialism/Colonialism. There are many ways in which we face slavery today. Some might say the Bible supports it. Is that right?
I'm somewhat rambly at times, but there are some raw materials here to help you answer the slavery question for yourself.
In the interests of balance... sometimes "fixing" aint miserable comfort:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg]
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Here's a stark example of a very common life philosophy today: "Life's too short to waste your time on people who aren't like you." I see this kind of thing - even if not the name snobbery - on countless Facebook walls and it's scary, scary, scary. (Favourite moment at 6:00).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edZjdgU0asM]
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Gotta love Ashton Agar. Unfortunately he'll never get another chance to break his own record. Cos he'll never bat 11 again!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12kJXapWi-g]
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And, if you ask me, it's nice that the kids have seen an alternative way to play this summer...
Four years ago I preached 8 sermons on "The Church in the Wilderness".
Among other things it was an attempt to orient our expectations for the Christian life. We are a redeemed people, saved from slavery, headed for glory but, now, enduring wilderness hardships. In the meantime we are sustained, guided, lead and promised a wonderful future. Ultimately, though, our Christian lives are upheld not by our obedience and perseverance, but Christ's.
Click on the title for text. The mp3 is underneath.
Church in the Wilderness 1 - INTRODUCTION - Deuteronomy 8
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Church in the Wilderness 2 - SAVED BY THE BLOOD - Exodus 12
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Church in the Wilderness 3 - BROUGHT OUT - Exodus 13-15
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Church in the Wilderness 4 - SUSTAINED - Exodus 16-17
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Church in the Wilderness 5 - GUIDED - Numbers 9
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Church in the Wilderness 6 - LEAD - Numbers 27 & Psalm 95
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Church in the Wilderness 7 - PROMISED - Numbers 13-14
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Church in the Wilderness 8 - FULFILLED IN JESUS - Matthew 3:13-4:11
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(NB: Original sermon not recorded. This mp3 is from a different sermon on same Scripture)
I've been thinking about Job a lot recently (see yesterday's post). When I consider the miserable comforters, I'm often reminded of this...
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAXOu-RSKmg]
The interviewers and those phoning in were undoubtedly well-meaning. But so were Job's comforters (Job 2:11). They do want to fix him. But again, that was the motivation of the comforters too. Yet, after endless rounds of "Do this and be healed", comfort becomes torment.
Interestingly, Chris Sands was eventually cured because a brain surgeon was watching one of these interviews. He wondered whether a tumour pressing on a nerve was the problem. It was. And so Chris went under the knife for drastic surgery. That was the answer and it went so much deeper than all our home spun remedies.
The true answer to suffering is so much deeper than our little platitudes ever acknowledge. In our pastoral care, let's have true compassion on people, admitting our own helplessness and pointing sufferers away from their paltry efforts to the true Doctor of our souls.
For the last two days we've been filming Book by Book's study in Job. Here's me with Richard Bewes and Paul Blackham - what a privilege to be involved! I think the DVD and Paul's insanely good study guide (best resource you'll find on Job!) will be available later in the year.
In the past I've blogged my way through Job on the King's English:
The LORD gave and the LORD hath taken away
Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward
Escaped by the skin of my teeth
I know that my Redeemer liveth
...And given this sermon on the whole book...
But it was great to look in more depth at the book. Some new thoughts I've had as we've studied this more together:
1) So much of Job is about knowing Christ - the Mediator. His mediatorial work comes up at key points - Job 9:32-35; Job 16:19-21; Job 19:23-27; Job 33:23-28; Job 42:7-9. Whenever Job is doing well, he has his eyes on Christ. Whenever he's doing badly, he has his eyes back on himself.
2) The great problem with the miserable comforters is a total ignorance of Christ. Eliphaz, the prosperity teacher, thinks you can get your best life now without Christ and His future. Bildad, the works righteousness preacher, thinks you can become just by your own efforts. Zophar thinks you can be spiritual, without Christ, just by your own devotional commitments. From their christlessness flows their terrible theology - in their various ways they basically believe 'you get what you deserve.' And from their terrible theology flows their terrible pastoral care.
3) The comforters don't intend to be tormentors. They come in chapter 2:11 to sympathise with Job. They spend a week sitting in silence with him - what commitment! It's just that having miserable theology means - necessarily - giving miserable comfort. Application: If you don't know the gospel, don't you dare do pastoral care!
4) Elihu is a good guy. Once you grasp this, it really helps you a) to take his own wisdom more seriously, but even more importantly, b) to reappraise Job as someone who errs as well as speaks rightly (cf 32:1-4). Job errs (especially from chapter 30 onwards) in continually justifying his own uprightness to the friends, and even to God. Job is certainly a believer and he hasn't brought his suffering on himself through any particular sins. However, he ends up insisting on his innocence almost as much as the comforters insinuate his guilt. In his better moments he forgets about either innocence or guilt and looks to Christ. But when he doesn't, he invites the critique of Elihu (and then the LORD).
5) Job's insistence on his innocent suffering - while correct on one level - tips him, at times, in the direction of a miserable-comforter-style theology of glory. Towards the end, he begins pitting 'knowing God' against 'experiencing suffering'. He becomes nostalgic for times of intimacy with God. But he loses sight of the intimacy he can have in suffering. This is a key truth Elihu brings.
6) I'd never really noticed them before but Elihu's words in Job 36 are some of my favourite in the book:
"But those who suffer the LORD delivers in their suffering; he speaks to them in their affliction. He is wooing you from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from restriction, to the comfort of your table laden with choice food." (Job 36:15-16)
Beautiful!
7) Job asks for answers throughout the book. But he never gets them. Instead he gets an experience of the LORD in suffering (Job 16:19-21; cf Job 38-41) and a promised hope after it (Job 19:23-27; cf Job 42). It's the same with us. Who cares about answers? We need the LORD Jesus Himself and the future He will bring.
8) When James looks back on Job, his take-home message is: "Job’s perseverance and... what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy." (James 5:11) Job's ending is crucial. It's a happily ever after that pictures the good purposes Christ has for all our suffering. When we read Job all the way through, our response should be: "Hallelujah, the Lord is so full of love and grace!" If we're not saying this, we haven't understood the book (and we won't cope with suffering as we should).
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Here's all nine parts of Ben Myers' sermon series on the Apostles' Creed.
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Individual Sermons...
1. "I believe"
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2. "In God the Father, Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth."
VIDEO AUDIO
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3. "And in Jesus Christ, God's only Son our Lord"
VIDEO AUDIO
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4. "Conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary..."
VIDEO AUDIO
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5. "Suffered under Pontius Pilate..."
VIDEO AUDIO
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6. "He descended to hell; the third day he rose again from the dead."
VIDEO AUDIO
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7. "And he will come to judge the living and the dead."
VIDEO AUDIO
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8. "I believe in the Holy Spirit..."
VIDEO AUDIO
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9. "The forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead..."
VIDEO AUDIO
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A while back The Big House asked Emma and I to come up with some resources for a conference called Porn Scars. It's material to help foster discussion of porn among teens. We came up with a fictional story, some discussion questions and a bible study in Colossians 3. The Big House turned it into a very attractive pdf which you can download here.
It's billed as an evening's worth of material, but if you did everything it would take 2.5 hours easy. Feel free to download the attractive pdf and use in your own context.
Below is the text:
FREDDY'S STORY:
Finally, Freddy’s parents got him a smartphone. And not just any smartphone - it was 4G, with dual core processor and unlimited internet. It was faster than his dad’s laptop. He wasn’t allowed it at school, but as soon as he was home he was surfing the net, messaging friends and playing games. As far as Freddy was concerned this was the best present ever.
One day he was watching the latest viral video on Youtube. It was pretty funny - something about sneezing pandas dancing to Korean pop songs. At the end there was a link to another video. It was a compilation of girls in bikinis falling over. Pretty funny too. Then there was another link. This one was basically just the bikini girls.
At this point, Freddy plugged in his headphones. He didn’t want anyone to hear. When the "bikini girls falling over" finished there was another link - this one from a porn site. He swallowed hard, locked the door and clicked again. It was nothing he hadn’t seen before on TV but there was an address on the video. He typed it in and instantly his screen flashed red. Freddy almost jumped out of his chair. It was a massive sign saying “Restricted Access. You must be over 18 to enter this site.”
In a fit of honesty Freddy clicked the box saying saying “No I am not 18”. Suddenly he was returned to Youtube. “Oh!” he said, surprised by how loud he said it. It felt like he’d come to the borders of a mysterious land but instead of exploring, he had turned back to boring normality. Nothing on Youtube seemed remotely interesting now. He took a deep breath and hit the back button. This time he clicked “Yes, I am 18+”. In an instant he had a dozen naked women in the palm of his hand. His heart was pounding so hard it felt like it might beat a hole through his chest. ...continue reading "Resource for Addressing Pornography in Church / Youth Group"
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV6YjPBTMtc]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKY5fmDGVLs]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT4eirlFxuI]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbv2vOX71hM]
A repost from 2 years ago...
Emma's posted up 22 reasons she nags. Stunningly, none of them is "Glen shirks responsibility like it's cryptonite." That was gracious of her.
In the interests of restoring some kind of balance, I thought I'd post 7 thoughts on how I relate to nagging. I'll be stark in the interests of spotlighting the darkness and hopefully chasing it away a bit...
So... here's how I relate to nagging...
1. I create it
We really do need to think about scheduling our holidays, and booking the car in for a service and fixing the back gate, etc, etc. But I naturally flee responsibility. The needs build up. Something needs saying.
2. I invite it
On a very foolish level (one that I'll later despise in myself), I'd like to be mothered. "You're so much better with that detail stuff" is code for "I'd like to be kept as a little boy."
3. I provoke it
Given my fear of responsibility, I will affect an exaggerated air of ease. I project an image of stoner-cool (occasionally backed by Scriptural "fear nots") so that I can label every sense of urgency (legitimate or otherwise) as uncool and ungodly. It will be seriously tempting for Emma to burst this bubble with a good sharp nag.
4. I fear it
It's not just that I'm being asked to engage with the thorns and thistles. It's not just that I'd rather withdraw and serve myself. It's that, deep down, I fear I don't have what it takes to forge ahead in this world. When she says "Can you fix it?" I hear "Can you be a man?" She doesn't realise it but, in the male imagination, her simple requests are loaded with the weight of a thousand gender insecurities.
5. I withdraw from it
I tune it out the way a teenager tunes out his mother (see 2). Of course this only provokes more (see 3).
6. I hate it.
It confirms my deep suspicion that I am a little boy. Yes, I know I wanted to be a little boy earlier. But that's why it grates so much!
7. I silence it
Anger works best. Sometimes it just takes an exasperated sigh or a withering look. Anything that shifts the focus onto her and how she's being unreasonable, uncool, ungodly. Other women aren't like this. Have you read Proverbs recently?
Men have locked up women as hysterics for centuries. It's happened throughout history, but it also happens in marriage. We're good at despising women for their needs. Then they're doubly good at despising themselves for them.
So she'll slink off and maybe determine to "button it" (which some might call "submission"). Or she'll just fume. Or she'll deaden her hopes for the marriage, deaden her hopes at being heard, deaden her hopes that her man could ever lead. She might well do all of the above. But it's only further fuel for the nagging urges.
The way out of the nagging cycle?
Both Ephesians 5 (v18) and Colossians 3 (v1-4) preface their marriage discussions with being filled with the Spirit! Having a spiritual buoyancy from Christ. My identity, status, honour, beloved-ness is NOT being threatened by my spouse. I've got it all. Laugh!
Now husbands, LOVE your wives and don't be harsh.
Wives, trust your husbands and receive that love - the heart and soul of submission.
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If you're being suitably Christ-centred in your evangelism - and I hope you are - one question bound to arise is this: What about the Old Testament? If Christ is so important, how come he only showed up 2000 years ago?
As you might imagine, I have some thoughts on the matter...
LISTEN/DOWNLOAD (15 mins)
[audio http://revivalmedia.org/medias/audios/TEP014.mp3].
My Christ in the OT blog series.