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Here's a hymn.  Not sure it's finished - not happy with switch to first person in final verse.  Critique happily received (very new to this).

It fits with any common metre tune - maybe one of these: Worcester, Moravia, Martyrdom, Manoah, Leicester, Faith, Dundee, Dunfermline, Crimond, Cheshire. Burford, Bradford. Belmont

 

The glory of the bloodied God
His fruitfulness in shame
Stooped lower than all men have trod
In torment in the flame

The writhing worm, disjointed dry
Rejected from His birth
Thrust groaning into Satan's sky
Accursed by heaven and earth

Hell's blackest cloak enfolds with death
From Pinnacle to pit
To choke the Source of Living Breath
Extinguish all that's lit

The Mighty Man at war cries out
It echoes ‘gainst the sky
Resounding as a futile shout
Within a victory cry

Creation torn from Head to toe
His body out of joint
The Rock that splits is split in two
Creation to anoint

Our Jonah hurled as recompense
Into abysmal depths
The beast that swallows Innocence
Is swallowed by His death

Divine appeasing blood poured out
Divinely pleasing scent
While man appraises with his snout
Declares it death's descent

Crowned in curse, enthroned on wood
My God nailed to the tree
The reigning blood, that cleansing flood
Is opened up for me.

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(I'll get back to the series soon, just thought I'd break things up).

I was reading some very familiar words again:

 Jesus then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. "Get behind me, Satan!" he said. "You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."  (Mark 8:31-33)

Here are four shocks:

  1. The 'things of men' are satanic.  To simply buy into the things of men (as opposed to the things of God) is to be a conduit of Satan.
  2. Minding the 'things of men' is a simple matter of moving towards comfort and away from the way of the cross.  Satanism is simply the preference of comfort to cruciformity.
  3. Peter's sin is not even that he desires his own comfort but that he attempts to shepherd another away from the cross and towards comfort.  Peter thinks he is helping Jesus, in fact his encouragement to self-protection is demonic.
  4. The 'things of God' is Christ crucified.  Think of the highest heights of deity - mind the things of God - and what do you picture?  Jesus says picture Him bleeding for demons like Peter.  That's what 'the things of God' consist in.  To shy from this is to embrace the things of men and become a servant of Satan.

 

He began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death."  (Matt 26:37-38)

He fell with His face to the ground and prayed.  (Matt 26:39)

"Abba, Father," He said, "everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."  (Mark 14:36)

Being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. (Luke 22:44)

During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death  (Heb 5:7)

 "My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done." (Matt 26:42)

Perhaps no bible story has had more impact on me than the account of Jesus praying in Gethsemane.  It haunted my teenage years especially.  It said to me: 'This is what honouring God looks like.  This is the epitome of religious devotion - overwhelmed to complete prostration, loud cries and tears, commitment to the point of death.'  And I attempted to emulate this.  Not in practical, daily 'thy will be done' service - no, no!  Instead I would attempt to re-enact Gethsemane.  I'd sneak out of the house at night and find somewhere really scary - a forest in dead of night was best.  And I would literally fall on my face and ask God to take my life, to make me His servant, to do whatever He wished with me.  (Of course I imagined that His wishes would be awful, dark and painful).   Nonetheless Gethsemane had taught me that this was the way and so I'd try (unsuccessfully) to work myself up into some kind of hyper-serious state of emotional sincerity.  I was massively aware that I was falling short of offering the required... what?  devotion?  gravity?  sacrifice?  Whatever was needed, I was painfully aware of lacking it.  But I made my dramatic teenage offering and waited for the results.  But no angel came to comfort me.  No spiritul blessing was poured out.  No command from heaven.  Just an overwhelming sense that heaven was silent and my devotion was clearly not sufficient to rouse Him. 

And, over time, my response to this was 'God doesn't want me, I don't want Him.'  I wandered from Him for years.  But it was Gethsemane that brought me back.  Because all of a sudden I saw what should have been most clear all along.  I'm not at the centre of Gethsemane!  I'm sleeping with Peter, James and John.  I'm the weak, flesh-driven, good-for-nothing follower who cannot stay awake even for one hour.  But Christ!  He prays to the Father.  He intercedes for His worthless, pathetic friends.  He offers to drink their cup.  And suddenly it all fell into place.  Christianity was not about me burying my face in the dirt for Him.  He buried His face in the dirt for me.  It's not about me stooping low enough to be worthy.  It's about Him stooping lower still because I'm not.  I don't offer my life to a silent heaven.  The Man of heaven offers His life for a silent, sleeping, sinful me.

Gethsemane is good news.  There's so much more to be said.  But perhaps it's said best by my favourite preacher on this my favourite passage:  Click here for Mike Reeves on Gethsemane.  Well worth the free registration!  Check it out.

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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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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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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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You want a very quick way of distinguishing Islam from Christianity?  Think of the cross.  The Muslim account of the cross exactly reverses the gracious work of Christ.

In Islam, the sinful man (Judas) is substituted for the righteous one (Jesus).  The Quran says it only appeared to be Jesus on the cross, another was substituted in His place.  The Hadith (Muslim writings that interpret the Quran) claim that the one substituted was Judas.  All this happened because justice demands the death of the bad man, not the good one.  It was necessary for the unjust to be punished and the just to escape.  This is the judgement of human religion.

Yet the truth is the exact opposite of this very human sentiment.  Instead, the righteous One (JESUS) was substituted for sinful man.  He swapped in for the guilty and died in their place.  He determined to be the Just One punished so that the unjust may escape.

He who knew no sin became sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Cor 5:21)

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From Genesis 1, the way of the LORD has always been forming, then filling.

The filled-out reality is there by anticipation even in the forming. The intention for filling is included in the forming. But still the order is ‘form, then fill.':

  • In Gen 1:2 - a formless and empty creation is then formed (days 1-3) and filled (days 4-6) as the Word of God is revealed (Gen 1:3ff).
  • (This is similar to both the tabernacle and the temple where first it is formed, then filled by the Glory of the LORD).
  • Adam is formed (from dust) and then filled (by the breath of the LORD God).
  • Humanity as male and female is first formed in Adam and then filled out in Eve's creation and their consummation.
  • The first Adam is filled by the Last.
  • The people of Israel as the seed of Abraham are filled by Christ, the Seed of Abraham.
  • The law is the form of the covenant and is filled by the gospel events.

In all this we remember that the intention for filling is already anticipated in the forming. The very forming reveals a long-intended desire to fill. The forming sets everything on a trajectory towards something beyond itself.

Is it too much to suggest on this basis alone the supralapsarian tendencies of the Living God? I'll do it anyway!

Eden is not the point. Adam is not the point. Adamic humanity is not the point. Israel and its worship is not the point. All these things are forms, intended to be filled-out by realities to which the forms themselves point but which they do not themselves contain. The intention is always to move through Eden and beyond to the New Jerusalem; through Adam and beyond to the Heavenly Man; through Israel (and its worship) and beyond to the Church of Jesus Christ.

Tellingly, this movement goes through death and out the other side to resurrection.  Thus...

  • The day is not always bright (as it will be in the new creation). Instead it goes from darkness into light.
  • The tree is not first, first comes the seed (John 12:24; 1 Cor 15:37)
  • There are not blessings and curses for Israel as alternative present tense realities but rather the blessings come after the curse. (see Deut 4:23-31; Deut 28-29 culminating in 30:1ff).
  • The cross comes first and then resurrection.
  • The LORD makes the old covenant and then the covenant renewed. (though the new covenant reality is grasped by faith long before both old and new covenants purchased).
  • The LORD makes the old earth and then the earth renewed.
  • First comes my body of flesh and then my spiritual body. (1 Cor 15:44)

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The Christian therefore knows two incontrovertible facts:

1. All things are forward-looking. The best is yet to come (let's never yearn for Adam, for Eden, for Israel, for old covenant).

2. The path to better things is through suffering: the road to resurrection blessing always goes through the cross.

Psalm 30:5 For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favour lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.

Psalm 126:6 He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him.

1 Peter 5:6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.

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I've just preached on Hebrews 2 this Sunday.  "He shared in their humanity so that by His death..."  Or again, "He had to be made like His brothers... in order that He might make atonement." (v14,17)

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Or to quote Kim Fabricius' provocative post: "The crib and the cross are cut from the same wood."

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See the crib and you've seen the cross ahead of time.  You've seen a Man falling, there's only one outcome possible.

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Anyway, it got me waxing lyrical.  Not finished, but here's a sketch of a poem:

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God in a manger
Defenceless, enfleshed
Immanuel crying
And fighting for breath

God in a manger
Wriggling and raw
Laid out on the wood
Enthroned on the straw

God at Golgotha
Pierced in His flesh
Immanuel crying
And fighting for breath

God at Golgotha
Forsaken and lost
Stretched out on the wood
Enthroned on the cross

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You can read/hear the sermon here.

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Anyway, probably won't get a chance to blog for the next week, so let me wish you all a blessed Christmas

May we in darkness rejoice in our Glorious Light.

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