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Category: gospel

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Published on 8 Comments on In praise of going through the motions [repost]

Isaiah warned us and Jesus repeated it - it's hypocritical to honour the Lord with your lips while your heart is far from Him (Isaiah 29:13; Mark 15:8).  It's something I pray about every Sunday, "As I preach or pray or sing, may my lips and my heart be set on the Lord Jesus."

But there's another danger.  We can react the other way and disdain anything 'external'.  We say to the world: "I reject 'works', I'm all about the inward life."  And so we're constantly taking our spiritual temperatures.  We neglect ritual (as though it always leads to ritualism).  And we start to think of faith as a thing - the one really meritorious work!

The faith-works polarity becomes, in our thinking, an internal-external polarity.  Internal - good.  External - bad.  We start to imagine that mental acts are good old grace while physical acts are nasty old law.

But that's not how it is.  There can be a crippling legalism of the heart (ever felt it?) and there can be a wonderful liberation in gospel rituals (ever experienced that?).

Take communion.

Please.

No but seriously, take it.   Because here is a gospel ritual which, because it is external, brings home the grace of Jesus all the stronger.

We are not (or at least we should not be!) memorialists. Jesus has not left us a mental duty with the bread and wine as mere thought prompters.  We have been left a meal.  To chew.  And to gulp down.  There are motions to go through.  And they are the same motions we performed last week.  And the week before that.

But here's the thing - these motions are means of God's grace and not in spite of their externalism but because they are external.  Here is a gift that comes to you from outside yourself.  And it comes apart from your internal state.  But nonetheless it is for you - sinner that you are.

So take it regardless of whether your heart is white-hot with religious zeal.  Take it regardless of whether you are really, really mindful of the gravity of it all.  And as the minister prays the prayer of consecration and your mind wanders... oh well.  Don't ask him to start again.  Go through the motions I say.  Your heart is meant to catch up with the motions.  That's why the motions were given.  Because our hearts are weak and not to be trusted.

So allow the Word to come to you from beyond.  Allow Him to love you first. Don't disdain 'going through the motions.'  For many on a Sunday -  those grieving or sick or gripped by depression - they need to be carried along by these motions.  And for all of us - if we're going to be people of grace, we need these externals.

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Published on 5 Comments on Grace is not a cheese sandwich

Recently I read an internet discussion on how much "grace" we should preach.  You know, as opposed to preaching the life of the kingdom, the demands of discipleship, missional living, that kind of thing.  One side said they'd like to see more grace, another side said they'd like to see less.

Perhaps you're thinking "I know which side Glen would take."  Don't be so sure.  I think they are falling off either side of the wrong horse.

Let's call one side "the more grace people."  These were keen to argue that none can perform the works of the kingdom without the empowerment of "grace."  The "less grace people" kept saying "Yeah, but, c'mon.  Commands are there.  Loads of them.  Stop sidelining half the Bible!"

And back and forth it went.  The more I read, the more I wondered whether I'd stumbled across some intramural Roman Catholic dispute.  Whatever differences they thought they had, both sides seemed to assume that grace was a substance.  Both spoke of the empowerment and encouragement of 'grace', but the real concern of both parties seemed to be our life of discipleship.  Thus, it was really a discussion about motivational techniques.  Some thought that carrots are better, others reached for the stick.

On this view, "grace" is like the cheese sandwiches which David brought to his brothers at the front line (1 Samuel 17:17-19).  Here grace is an encouragement and empowerment from the christ to go out and fight the good fight.  The christ gives you strength, victory is down to you.

And if that's grace, then naturally, some people think David should make some really tasty sandwiches, top quality pickle, mature cheddar, olive focaccia bread and plenty of it.  Other's say, "Don't stuff the troops, keep 'em lean and mean, teach 'em how to fight!"

Now if that was the dispute then, really, I have no desire to weigh in on the optimum  cheese-sandwich / military-briefing balance.

What I want to declare to both sides is the true meaning of grace.  Grace is not David's sandwiches, grace is David's victory.  Grace is David volunteering to fight for his doubting and disdainful brothers.  Grace is David delivering the killer-blow for troops who would otherwise be slaughtered.  Grace is David himself, the anointed champion, doing everything to win the day.  To put it another way - "grace alone" is just another way of saying "Christ alone".

Once you see that, you, your Champion and the whole battle has been shifted.

Suddenly we've been plucked from the front-lines, our lives in the balance, and now we find ourselves caught up in a victory we could never have won.  Now we're shouting with joy and advancing on the Philistines to plunder them.

And yes, at this point, both sandwiches and briefings come in handy.  But they must be rightly related to David's victory.  Without it, David's sandwiches may as well be poison.

And if anyone thinks they can ignore the victory of our Champion and move straight to the 'battles we must fight' they've completely misunderstood the gospel.  Yet I find that both the sandwich people and the pep-talk-people do this.  Both the "more grace people" and the "less grace people" carry on as though David's victory can simply be assumed and the Christian life boiled down to our attempts at plundering.

The real distinction is not between gracious or legal motivations towards our work.  The real distinction is between Christ's work and our work.   Which battle do we think we're in?  Are we facing down Goliath or are we victors already?  That really is all the difference in the world.

You might say: But Glen, we all know that we're victors through Christ, let's get on and tell people how to plunder.  I say: Really?  We know we're victors through Christ?!  Not even "the more grace people" seem to know it!

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Published on 2 Comments on Disciplines

At the Cor Deo Conference on Saturday (mp3s to follow) there was a great question on Bible reading.  It was addressed to Ron and he both answered at the time and has written some more thoughts here.  I thought I'd add my two-pence, because, well, that's what I do.  Whether invited to or not.

The question of disciplines arises whenever you emphasize God's approach to us in Christ, over and above our approach to Him.  Well then, people ask, what place does our devotional life have?

I attempted to answer that with the preface to my own devotional, but let me put it another way.

On Saturday I spoke of the difference between a medieval system of salvation and the gospel announcement of Christ as Saviour.  Bible reading happens in both paradigms.  But in the system, it's a rung on the ladder.  In the announcement paradigm, it's a revelation.

Here's the thing - when I haven't read my Bible for a while and/or when I'm in a bit of a spiritual slump, the devil plays a brilliant trick on me.  He adopts the voice of an earnest religious devotee and says "Ah Glen, what a pity you're so far from God.  But not to worry" he says, masquerading as a spiritual adviser, "two weeks of solid Bible reading and you'll be back on top of your game."  Ug, I think.  And so I slide deeper into my spiritual sulk.

The system paradigm just doesn't get me reading.  But what if I realize the gospel?  What if I tell myself, "Closeness to God does not lie on the other side of two weeks hard graft!  Closeness to God is IN JESUS.  And that's where I am.  Let's pick up this gracious word and be reminded."

If I'm believing in the system, I might open the Bible but only to receive a lecture, or a to-do list.  More often I'll leave it closed.

If I realize I've already arrived, you never know, I might just open the Bible, eager to receive Christ!

 

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Published on 7 Comments on Galatians – An Introductory Sermon

Both Jesus and Paul warned us about wolves in the strongest possible terms.  Christ is the Great Shepherd and His  church is His flock.  But wolves will come to attack the flock.  These wolves are false teachers.

What do you think false teachers teach?  What is so savage about these wolves? What do they preach that threatens the flock so greatly??

When Paul had been in Ephesus 3 years he left the leaders of the church with this charge:

28 Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. 29 I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. 30 Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. 31 So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.

32 ‘Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.

Paul was clearly very worried about wolves, coming in to destroy the flock.  Sheep have no defences against wolves.  Wolves are savage with sheep.  And these wolves – some of them – will arise from the Ephesian church.  Isn’t that scary?  It scared Paul.  For three years he never stopped warning them, night and day with tears.

Now, what do you imagine these wolves to be teaching?  In what ways are these people going to savagely destroy the church that Paul had planted?

Now, the truth is, we don’t know.  But what’s fascinating is how we naturally think of wolves.  What kinds of teaching do we think will tear a church apart?

When I hear people accused of being wolves these days, usually it’s because they’re soft on sin, lax on the law.  People who won’t teach good biblical principles, something like that.  What does Paul mean?

Well notice the one protection he offers to this vulnerable flock in verse 32: “The word of God’s grace”, that’s what will build them up.  He’s been teaching them the word of this grace and his parting words are for the Ephesians to be committed to the word of God’s grace.  With the wolves coming, that’s what they need to know.

Because the wolves which seem to concern Paul most in his letters aren’t so much those who are soft on sin or lax on law.  Actually the wolves are the very ones so keen to teach "biblical principles for living" and to bring the flock under the law.

There are different kinds of wolves, it's true.  But when Jesus mentions wolves, it's in the context of Pharisaism.  And the false teachers who seem to cause Paul the most sleepless nights are the legalists - those earnest preachers with their Bibles open, urging you to godliness by bringing you under the law.  They are, most consistently, the savage wolves who Paul has in his sights.

Is that what you thought of, when you thought of wolves?

READ MORE HERE

SERMON AUDIO

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Published on 6 Comments on Twit-bits

You'll have noticed my blogging output aint what it was.

Part of the reason is my recent discovery (which you all made years ago): most of my blog posts are nothing more than tweets inflated by a hefty dose of soap-box rhetoric.

So, for those not subscribed, here are some rants limited to 140 characters...

- What's the first thing Lazarus saw after rising from the dead? The tear-stained face of Jesus.

- Just seen Apprentice 1: Starting out calling your team "Phoenix" is a particularly supralapsarian move.

- I'm always hearing "Such and such a place is spot on theologically, they're just quite unloving." Nonsense. They Must be wrong theologically

- If u just preach hell as future threat u concede that hell aint essentially Christlessness & it aint that bad. #hellisnow #john318#rom118

- Christ's work does not 'make possible' a relationship with God. If that were true all our work would be ahead of us...

- ...Christ's work renders all our work as filthy rags - including the work of 'having a relationship with God.'...

- ...Christ IS my relationship with God...

- ...Which is why atonement debates over "Penal Sub" vs "Christus Victor" are inadequate. Deeper still is Christ's *ontological* achievement

- ... Or to put it another way: Christ aint just my slaughtered goat, nor just my scapegoat. He's my high Priest. And He's sat down!

- I want to write a book on Luther, from "Bondage of the Will" to his dying words. I'd call it "Choosers can't be beggars."

- Jesus is not calling you out of comfort into service. He's called you from cocoons into real life.

- Maybe u thought you were sacrificing comfort in order to be godly. Actually Christ was removing your chains and giving you joy. Phil 3:1-11

- Why we don't connect in conversation: we spend our time Proving ourselves, Protecting ourselves and Pleasing ourselves.

- Sick of 'Jesus is Lord' interpreted according to Caesar. Didn't Jesus explicitly define His Lordship in opposition to the Gentiles? Mk10:42f

- If you think 'I AM WHO I AM' is about divine self-sufficiency, remember: It's spoken by the LORD's Sent One (Ex 3:2,14)

- For every use of 'gospel' as adjective I want 3 explanations of the noun & if u bang on abt gospel-centred by golly u'd better centre on it

- Ever noticed: James Cameron's (& the popular) cosmology is the reverse of Bible's: the Abyss is friendly, the heavens have malign 'Aliens'

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You can subscribe to my Tweets here.

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Published on 2 Comments on More than a million dead [repost]

I first published this a week after the Haiti earthquake in January 2010...

Since the earthquake - more than one million have died worldwide.  150 000 per day.  Every day without fail a Haiti-sized disaster strikes.  This is not to play down the horror of this crisis.  It's to awaken us to a daily horror that we accept all too readily.  56 million people - that's almost the whole UK population - return to dust every year.  And I will be one of those statistics.  Sometime this century.  I live on a fault line every bit as treacherous as the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault zone.  No house could ever be structurally sound enough.  This world will be the death of me.

'Not one stone will be left on another, every one will be thrown down' said Jesus about the house of God (Mark 13:2).  This was just the start of a top-down judgement.  First the flesh and blood House of God was torn apart on the cross.  Then the brick and mortar house of God in AD70.  One day it will be God's house - the whole cosmos - that comes crashing down.  The stars from the heavens, the sky torn in two, the moon turned to blood.  It's scheduled for demolition.

Can you imagine how the disciples would have viewed the temple after Mark 13?  For the next 40 years they would visit the temple (e.g. Acts 2:46) but they would never again be taken in by its 'massive stones' and 'magnificent buildings (Mark 13:1).  They knew it was about to be shaken to its foundations.

We know that earth and heaven will be shaken (Heb 12:27-28).  And in the meantime, we see portents.  Earthquakes (Mark 13:8).  This is the world that we know.  Tsunamis destroy, volcanoes erupt, plagues devour, cyclones flatten, wildfires rage and the very earth upon which we stand quakes.

But here's a surprise.  Jesus doesn't call these 'death-throes'.  He calls them 'birth-pains'. (Mark 13:8)  Because the demolition to which we are heading is, in fact, a palingenesia - the renewal of all things. (Matt 19:28)  This top-down judgement is for the sake of a top-down resurrection.

We're heading towards 'the end' - the goal of all things (Mark 13:7,13); summer (v27); the cloud of His presence (v26); gathering (v27) and the power and glory of the Son of Man (v26).  We're heading for a new heavens and new earth - a kingdom that 'cannot be shaken' (Heb 12:28).

May this earthquake awaken true compassion in us - (here are some places to give money).  May the Body of Christ speak boldly of the Redeemer from all evil (Genesis 48:16) and demonstrate His suffering love in the midst.

But may we also reconsider our own precarious position.  This ground is not solid.  Not right now anyway.  It will be shaken and it groans under the weight of sin and curse.  It will rise up to strike me down and swallow me whole.  Yet so often I marvel at the 'massive stones' and' magnificent buildings' of 'this present evil age.'  I cosy up in the demolition site.

May we wake again to the reality of a whole world under judgement.  May seeing these deaths re-ignite our hatred of death.  Every day the tragedy of Haiti is repeated the world over.  But mostly we try to ignore that the last enemy is swallowing everything we love!  Let us wake up and snort with indignation at the grave the way Jesus did (John 11:33-38).

And then, through the lens of His resurrection may we look to the most audacious hope - a new Haiti, secure, prosperous, radiant, gathered under the wings of the Son of Man, every tear wiped away by the Father Himself.

The non-Christian can hope for nothing greater than 'safer' buildings on the same old fault line.  And as they labour admirably for this, many will ask why God does not seem to be cooperating with their desire to pretty up the demolition site.  They plan to build some lovely houses on this sand and they imagine God to be standing in the way of their saving purposes.  Of course it's the other way around.  And of course it's we who have a small view of redemption.

The Lord has a salvation so audacious He can call earthquakes 'birth-pains'.  (As can Paul - Rom 8:22).  Certainly they are birth-pains.  But they are birth-pains.  Jesus has a redemption so all-embracing that it will include even these evils.  It won't simply side-step Haiti, or make the best of a bad situation, it will (somehow!) lift Haiti through this calamity and birth something more glorious out of the pain.

We know this because Jesus began the cosmic shake-down with His own destruction.  And He was perfected through this suffering (Heb 2:10).  His death (Matt 27:54) and His resurrection (Matt 28:2) were attended by earthquakes - they were the original earth-shattering events.  And through this death and resurrection was birthed a new creation reality beyond death and decay (1 Cor 15:54-57).  Where the Head has gone, we will follow, and the whole creation with us.  And as Christ bears and exalts the wounds of His own suffering into eternity, somehow the evils of this last week will also be caught up into resurrection glory.

I don't pretend to know how and I don't pretend that this answers our grief or our questions.  It's the answer of faith and not sight.  But, unlike the answer according to 'sight', this answer takes us deeper into the tragedy - we all face this fate (Luke 13:4-5!).  And it points us much higher to its redemption.

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My sermon on Mark 13 from last year

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Published on 2 Comments on Bubba Good

After Saturday, and the worst sporting event I will ever witness, it was a joy to see Bubba Watson win the Masters.

He's well-known for not taking golf too seriously...

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_fJQTn0zjc]

But his priorities seem to be in the right place.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv9dwK4fDAg]

On his Twitter account he describes himself as "Christian. Husband. Daddy. Pro Golfer."

Maybe that's what takes the pressure off, freeing him up to make these kinds of shots...

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSi_koC1Jto]

For more on Bubba's faith, see here.

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Published on 2 Comments on Easter and Suffering

I've been thinking about suffering recently.

Easter tells you everything you need to know. Meditate on each of these truths for 5 minutes and it will revolutionize your thinking about God, yourself and the world.

1) The Cross shows us God's perfection...

Therefore suffering can never be incompatible with the all-wise, all-powerful, all-good God (1 Corinthians 1-2)

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2) The Resurrection shows us God's purpose...

Therefore His plan has never been to pretty up this old creation but to raise it anew (1 Corinthians 15:36-50)

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3) The Son of Man must suffer and be glorified...

If that's the route for The Man how could man tread any other path.

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4) On the Day of Man (6th day), Jesus puts us to death. On the Day of Rest (7th day), He finishes the old creation. On the Day of New Creation (8th day), He rises into a whole new week, a whole new world.

Christ's purpose is not simply to restore Paradise but to bring us into a reality greater than anything we've seen. 

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Published on 5 Comments on Jonathan and Charlotte – a Parable of the Kingdom

Have you seen this parable of the Kingdom?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsNlcr4frs4]

The one despised blows the roof off.

The one judged rises up in glory.

Those who had judged are themselves judged and made to look fools.

We thought she was carrying him.  No - he carries her.

He would have overwhelmed her if it weren't for his grace.

"We're going to stay as a duo" he says - and upward they rise.

This is Christ's universe.  All Hail the Lamb!

 

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Published on 1 Comment on Repentance: A Parable

Waking at 5 this morning, I head for Eastbourne's seafront. Andy and I are filming some evangelistic videos and we wanted to shoot a timelapse sequence of sunrise.

We get there in plenty of time and point the camera East. It's dark but in the frame you can see the pier and across the gloomy water is Hastings.

Andy pushes on to another job leaving me to take photos at 30 second intervals. It's cold but invigorating, the sky is clear, the sea is still. Light is dawning and I'm praising God for the scenery when all of a sudden a golden ball of fire rises up out of the ocean... completely out of shot. In fact we were about 45 degrees out. Quite a mistake.

But here's the thing, I watched the light of the world rise 'in the wrong place' and for about 5 seconds, maybe longer, I entertained the thought: "Maybe that's not the sun."

Hoping against hope that we'd framed things right, I was even prepared to think 'Perhaps that orange light emerging from the sea is something else.' I couldn't imagine what, but maybe, just maybe, there was some coincidence at play here. This giant orb of light was a diversion. Surely the 'real' sun would rise in its 'proper' place. And this impostor would be revealed as a counterfeit.

Soon enough the orange fireball rose clear of the ocean and I had to admit: We got it wrong! So I sighed and swivelled the camera around to the right.

It's scary how committed we are to maintaining our 'frames'! I suppose we need to take a long hard look at the Light of the World, realise what's most obviously true, and re-frame our vision to fit.

The Bible calls it repentance - it's literally 'a change of mind'. It's being convinced of the glory of Christ and swivelling around your frame so that He's at the centre.

The Light has dawned, the Kingdom has come, repent and believe the good news. (Mark 1:15)

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