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Published on Leave a comment on The Wrath of the Lamb

It's been very sobering to study the wrath of the Lamb this week (Rev 6:16).  Here are seven thoughts (of course seven!) that occurred to me this week while preparing to preach Revelation 6:

  1. This is not so much the anger of the great king against rebels. This is much much worse. This is the anger of the Lamb who was slain to save rebels. This is the anger of the meek and humble Saviour who stretched out His arms to a disobedient and obstinate people. This is the anger of the One who longed to gather His children under His wings but they were not willing. This is the anger of the bloody sacrifice who poured out His life just to redeem and forgive such people. Those who will be sent to hell have not only rebelled against a mighty King, they have trodden on the slain Lamb. They have spurned their only Saviour, who wept and sweated and bled for them. They have hated and trampled on Christ crucified.   And they will not stand on the great day of His wrath.
  2. The great day of His wrath comes after a long wait (Rev 6:17).  He is indeed 'slow to anger'. (Ex 34:6; Num 14:18; Neh 9:17; Ps 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2; Nahum 1:3; cf Rom 3:25; 2 Pet 3:9)  And both the anger and the slowness are good things. It would be terrible if the Father or the Son flew off into a rage without warning. But it would also be terrible if they never got angry - the evil of this world, and particularly the evil of rejecting Christ is damnable. So His wrath is a very good thing.
  3. We are meant to draw nearer to the wrathful Lamb, not flee further from Him.  It is the unbelievers who run from the Lamb in His anger (v15-17), it's the believers who run to Him.  (Cf Psalm 2:12).  As we read of His wrath we are tempted to draw back, but instead we should press closer, ask, seek and knock even more.  His anger should in fact make us draw nearer - if we do, we will find Him to be our Refuge.
  4. Anger is not the last word.  Revelation 6 clears the way for Revelation 7.  "Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds.  After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence."  (Hosea 6:1-2)
  5. It's vital to see that the Father is not the only One angry at sin!  Sometimes we can imagine that the cross is an angry Father being placated by His Son who really isn't that bothered about sin.   "Jesus loves you, don't mind the Father, He's cranky!"  It's at this point that people suppose that true trinitarian theology is opposed to penal substitutionary atonement.  But no the Father and Son are not divided in their attitudes to sin.  The Son is Christ precisely because He loves righteousness and hates wickedness (Ps 45:7).  Rev 6:17 speaks of ‘their' wrath - Jesus is just as angry at sin as the Father. And He suffers in Himself the fullness of His own divine anger at sin.
  6. Chapters like Revelation 6 show us just how intense Christ's sufferings were. Here is the magnitude of the wrath which Jesus faced on the cross. The Lamb faced His own divine anger at sin - an anger that shakes the creation to its very foundations. When we read of Jesus sweating blood in the garden of Gethsemane and overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, He is feeling in Himself the dread of all those who say to the mountains ‘Fall on us and hide us.' After studying Revelation 6 we should have a bigger picture not only of judgement day but also the cross.
  7. We are tempted to measure hell by our sins. Passages like this tell us to measure our sins by hell.  (Spurgeon used to say this often).  What do I mean? We tend to think of our sins as trifling matters and then we read about the terrible judgement of God and think it's over the top. That's backwards. We should read about the terrible judgement of God and then think - that's what my sin deserves. Don't measure hell by your sins, measure your sins by hell. And then rejoice that the Lamb intercepted His own wrath and hid you under His altar, the cross. (Rev 6:9)

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Published on Leave a comment on Forgiveness is sacrificial

This never made it into my sermon 'Why the Cross?'  It's a side thought raised by the question why God doesn't simply forgive us...

Forgiveness is always costly. Whenever people say ‘Why doesn't God simply forgive?' I often wonder what they mean by the word ‘simply'. Anyone who says forgiveness is simple has clearly never tried it. Forgiveness is always painful, costly, messy, heart-wrenching. Forgiveness always involves sacrifice.

Look at this verse from Proverbs:

Proverbs 15:1 A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

Have you ever been in an argument where you're exchanging harsh words with another. And, as this verse describes it, anger is being stirred up and stirred up and stirred up. In that situation what is it like to answer a person with genuine gentleness? They speak harsh words to you - what's it like to answer with gentleness. It is painful, it is hard, it is a sacrifice. It is not just water off a duck's back. It's not a simple matter of forgiving and forgetting - it involves sacrifice.

And this proverb describes it is as a sacrifice. You see the phrase ‘turns away wrath' is a special phrase in the bible that's almost always associated with sacrifices. It's sacrifices that turn away wrath - anger is turned away from you because it's turned on the sacrifice. And this verse says: if you're in an argument and you answer someone gently it's like being a human sacrifice. If we've ever tried it, we know that's how it feels. Forgiveness is always sacrificial.

And nowhere is this more true than at the cross. In the bible, the cross is described as the place where Jesus turns away God's wrath. At the cross the wrath of God is turned away from us and turned onto Jesus. So think of the cross as the place where all our harsh words against heaven are met by the gentle answer of Jesus. His grace heals and restores us but it's costly to Him. The cross is the costly, sacrificial forgiveness of God. But there really is no forgiveness that's not sacrificial.

Think of it from another angle.  When Jesus tells us to pray ‘forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us' the prayer literally is ‘forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.' Our sins are like debts. Now if you cancel someone's debt - that's great for them. But the debt doesn't just vanish. There's still a cost - it just means that now you bear the cost, rather than them. It still hurts, it's still costly, it's still sacrificial to forgive.

So again, think of the cross as the place where all our debts to God are cancelled - it's wonderful for us. It's massively costly to God - He absorbs the debt, He makes Himself liable, He pays off our arrears. That's the cross. It is free and full forgiveness for us, but it is a costly, sacrificial forgiveness, for God. Because all forgiveness is sacrificial.

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Published on Leave a comment on Who is the first horseman of the Apocalypse?

"I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, "Come!"  I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest." (Revelation 6:1-2) 

Is the first horseman Jesus?

  1. He comes at the head of his own judgements
  2. He rides a white horse (Rev 19:11)
  3. He's given a crown (divine passive?)
  4. He conquers emphatically (overcoming, He overcomes) - cf esp Rev 2:26f; 3:21; 5:5 and 17:14

Or is he a counterfeit Jesus - conquering in a bad way?

  1. The beast also conquers (Rev 13:7)
  2. The beast also is 'given power' to do so (Rev 13:7)
  3. The powers of evil often mimic (and distort) the good (the beast speaks like the Lamb - 13:11; the dragon has a seven-fold crown - 12:3)
  4. Christ is not among the four horseman of Zech 1:7-11 - He is the Angel of the LORD to Whom they report (but that's for another post ;-))

 Or is he something else?

I am truly undecided on this.  So let me ask two questions:

1) Who the heck is the first horseman of the Apocalypse?

2) If I'm still asking this question on Sunday (not unlikely!) what should I say from the pulpit?

One thing I'm not keen on saying is 'It's not really important, people can get too hung up on biblical details, especially in Revelation, let me tell you a story about a missionary instead.' 

Anyway, any help gratefully received!

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Published on Leave a comment on Revelation 4 and 5

I posted recently on the importance of trusting the Son of God in hard times, not simply the sovereignty of God.  These thoughts have arisen again as I've been preaching on Revelation 4 and 5 recently.  It's pause for thought to see John weeping aloud in the very throne room of God! (Rev 5:4)  Heaven without Christ is hell!

Good thing the elder in heaven didn't comfort the way we ordinarily do... "Do not weep, haven't you seen the throne?  It is very impressive isn't it?"  John has seen the throne.  He is weeping in the face of it!  No the comfort for John is the Lion-Lamb - Christ.  He is the One who turns weeping into cosmic praise.  Let's make sure our comfort is similarly Christ-focused.

 Here are my sermons on Revelation 4 and Revelation 5 if you're interested.

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Published on 2 Comments on Worthy is the Lamb

I'm preaching on Revelation 5 on Sunday.  Really looking forward to it.  I've taken the opportunity to read Jonathan Edwards' famous sermon on Christ as the Lion and the Lamb: "The Excellency of Christ."  In it his thesis is that the Lion-ness and Lamb-ness of Jesus represent...

"...an admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies in Jesus Christ."

I enjoyed much of the sermon.

I was also dis-heartened by much of it.

Why? 

Well Edwards does not crudely assign all Lamb-ness to Christ's human nature and all Lion-ness to His divine nature. But that's often the flavour of things.  And so he says things like this:

In the person of Christ do meet together infinite glory and lowest humility. Infinite glory, and the virtue of humility, meet in no other person but Christ. They meet in no created person, for no created person has infinite glory, and they meet in no other divine person but Christ. For though the divine nature be infinitely abhorrent to pride, yet humility is not properly predicable of God the Father, and the Holy Ghost, that exists only in the divine nature, because it is a proper excellency only of a created nature. For it consists radically in a sense of a comparative lowness and littleness before God, or the great distance between God and the subject of this virtue. But it would be a contradiction to suppose any such thing in God.

Do you see how straight away Edwards has a pre-formed conception of what humanity and divinity are like - a conception that sits ill with the Glorious-Humble God-Man!  The essence of glory and humility are decided in advance of considering the Lamb at the centre of the throne.  (Ironic given that this is a sermon on Revelation 5!).  If Edwards was determined to have Christ define glory and humility, the direction of the argument would be very different.

Now if Edwards' logic is followed (humility is only proper to creatures) then what we have is a divine nature for which humility is impossible.  How then can Edwards see Christ as humble?  Well it must be only according to his human nature.  To ask whether the Person of Christ is humble would receive the answer - according to His human nature yes, but according to His divine nature, no.  This opens up two problems.

  1. Christ's humanity and divinity are conceived in completely contradictory ways. (Nestorianism)
  2. Christ is not really humble.  2 Corinthians 8:9 ought to read: "You know the grace of our LORD Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, He opened up another bank account with no money in it at all... so that we through His (only apparent) poverty might become rich." 

Edwards' next point is this ...

In the person of Christ do meet together infinite majesty and transcendent meekness. These again are two qualifications that meet together in no other person but Christ. Meekness, properly so called, is a virtue proper only to the creature. We scarcely ever find meekness mentioned as a divine attribute in Scripture, at least not in the New Testament.

Now it's very telling Edwards should want the New Testament to speak of the divine attribute of meekness.  Surely the decisive argument against his position - the argument against which he must guard - is that, pre-incarnation, the LORD is spoken of as meek.  And the truth is, He is spoken of as meek - 2 Sam 22:36; Ps 18:35; Ps 45:4. What's strange is that Edwards goes on to quote Psalm 45 to prove Christ's majesty (v4), failing conspicuously to spot His meekness proclaimed in the very same verse! Now here is an OT description of the God Messiah - and He is majestic and meek. It is not His humanity per se that makes Christ meek. In His pre-incarnate Person He is already meek.  In this way we see that the incarnation is a revelation not a concealment.

Let's look at one last quote:

In Christ do meet together self-sufficiency, and an entire trust and reliance on God, which is another conjunction peculiar to the person of Christ. As he is a divine person, he is self-sufficient, standing in need of nothing. All creatures are dependent on him, but he is dependent on none, but is absolutely independent. His proceeding from the Father, in his eternal generation or filiation, argues no proper dependence on the will of the Father. For that proceeding was natural and necessary, and not arbitrary. But yet Christ entirely trusted in God...

Now where does Edwards get the idea that the Son (at any point) relied on Himself? (From Calvin yes, but where in Scripture!) There is perhaps no statement about His own identity that Christ makes more frequently than that He depends on His Father. Are we to believe that this is a new state of affairs (again the incarnation concealing rather than revealing)? Do we imagine that the One eternally in the bosom of the Father was eternally self-sufficient?

Edwards echoes the distinction Athanasius made between begotten and made - that His begotten-ness was a matter of nature, it was not a matter of will (which would imply ‘making'). But saying the eternal generation was natural and necessary does not get Edwards off the hook regarding the Son's dependence. He is still, as the creeds say ‘God from God'? Is that not genuine and on-going dependence? Does He not receive His life and being from the Father? And does not the Father depend on the Son to be Father? Etc etc.

All this is a playing out of a non-trinitarian concept of aseity that's defining Edwards' concept of ‘divine nature.' Here are some problems:

  1. Jesus is not defining the divine nature. Rather a divine nature different to what is revealed in Jesus is pre-supposed.
  2. Jesus is not defining human nature. Rather a human nature that excludes the glory of the exalted Priest/King/Prophet is assumed.
  3. This divine nature is defined not in relational terms but in terms of aseity (i.e. self-sufficiency)
  4. Jesus therefore fits poorly into the pre-fab mould of divinity - the bits left over are ascribed to ‘His humanity'.
  5. What we see in the Man Jesus is not properly thought of as divine!
  6. There are extra ‘bits' to Jesus when considered from above and below. From below, we look at the Man Jesus, yet this is not all of Jesus. There's an extra bit of divinity that is not like the human Jesus we see. From above, God is one with Jesus except for an extra bit of humanity that is not like the God He's revealing.

Now it's ironic that all of this is based on thoughts from Revelation 5. Because here we read

"You are worthy... for you were slain." (Rev 5:9,12)

It's the death of Christ that causes His worship. It's His very Lambness that we will praise into all eternity. Revelation 5 tells us to accord all divine honours to Jesus not in spite of but because of His death as a human sacrifice. The deity of Christ does not exist apart from His Lambness but is most brightly manifested in it.

Therefore there are no extra bits to Jesus.  His divinity is precisely in His being as the Lamb (and the act this implies).  His humanity is not locked off from His being as God.  There is not 6 feet of insulation between Jesus of Nazareth and divine life.  Jesus is divine.  Even as He is Jesus in all His Lamb-ness.

And He is, in all His Lamb-ness the revelation of the Father.  Our notions of God should not lie behind glass in pristine majesty.  They are laid bare at the rugged cross. 

So, yes, Christ's excellency does indeed consist in an admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies.  But these excellencies are true to the very depths of His Person, true to the depths of eternity, true to the very depths of God.

Worthy is the Lamb

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Published on Leave a comment on What a pastor needs?

I've been very blessed by stumbling across the sermons of Victor Shepherd on the web.

Here's a thought of his prompted by Revelation 5:5:

Then one of the elders said to me, "Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed."

Here's what Shepherd says:

I think that what a pastor must have above everything else is a conviction concerning Christ's victory; a conviction so deep in him that it goes all the way down to his DNA, and he exhales it upon his people both explicitly and implicitly even as it seeps out of every pore. A pastor has to be convinced unshakeably of Christ's victory if he's profoundly to support and sustain his people.

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Published on Leave a comment on ‘Why the Cross?’ sermon

My sermon on Romans 3:21-26 is here.  Audio is here.

I preached on 'Why the Cross?' on Sunday.  Thanks to all who gave help to this sermon.

In the end I guess I did a version of an old style law-gospel talk.  Basically it ran - sin is very serious, thank Christ for atonement.

Now I'm aware that such a shape to preaching has both a long pedigree and a number of dangers.  The dangers of this kind of preaching seem to me to be:

  • Sin tends to be defined merely as transgression and almost never considered christologically
  • It can sound like there's something called 'Justice' which forces God to punish sin
  • It can sound quite impersonal (even if you accept Christ it can be more 'Whoopee I have a pardon' rather than 'Hallelujah I have the Son!') 
  • All in all, it can be, ironically, less than christocentric

But bearing in mind these pit-falls, there is much to commend such an approach.  And I had a go!

Check it out here if you like.

Do you think my fears of law-gospel preaching are unfounded/insurmountable/irrelevant? 

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Published on Leave a comment on 'Why the Cross?' sermon

My sermon on Romans 3:21-26 is here.  Audio is here.

I preached on 'Why the Cross?' on Sunday.  Thanks to all who gave help to this sermon.

In the end I guess I did a version of an old style law-gospel talk.  Basically it ran - sin is very serious, thank Christ for atonement.

Now I'm aware that such a shape to preaching has both a long pedigree and a number of dangers.  The dangers of this kind of preaching seem to me to be:

  • Sin tends to be defined merely as transgression and almost never considered christologically
  • It can sound like there's something called 'Justice' which forces God to punish sin
  • It can sound quite impersonal (even if you accept Christ it can be more 'Whoopee I have a pardon' rather than 'Hallelujah I have the Son!') 
  • All in all, it can be, ironically, less than christocentric

But bearing in mind these pit-falls, there is much to commend such an approach.  And I had a go!

Check it out here if you like.

Do you think my fears of law-gospel preaching are unfounded/insurmountable/irrelevant? 

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