CONTENT IN A CULTURE OF DISCONTENT

Dearest family,

In Shakespeare’s tragedy, King Lear, the description of the times as “the winter of our discontent” well characterizes our own culture. I have recently done two messages on ‘the culture of contempt’. I guess Sunday’s message was yet another possible addendum to our summer culture series. The working title of what I spoke about was: How to keep giving thanks on Black Friday, sub-titled, How to be content in a culture of discontent. There’s nothing like discontent for suffocating and silencing our thanksgiving.

We laid a biblical foundation for our discussion, in the teaching of Jesus (Matthew 6:24-34; Luke 12:15-21) and from the epistles of Paul (Philippians 4:10-13; 1 Timothy 6:3-10). I have repeated these references so that you can re-read them and consider their instruction first-hand. Wouldn’t everyone of us like to know Paul’s secret about how to be “content in any and every situation.” The context here is that Paul had received a gift of money from the Philippians through Epaphroditus. He knows what it is to be in need: what it feels like. The fact is that circumstances affect us but the extent to which a PREDICAMENT will affect us is determined by our PERSPECTIVE. How we MANAGE such circumstances will be dependent on what we MIND. Paul was concerned that the Philippians understood the following: that he was sincerely thankful for their gift, but that if it had not come, his life and work would not have been entirely dependent on their provision. He would have remained fruitful and joyful. He wanted them to know that his real sense of need and neglect had not brought with it a sense of discontent that had affected his love for them and relationship with them; the demands and expectations we put on others can bring such discontent to our lives and theirs, when we become so person-dependent. He was actually much more interested in their spiritual advantage than his material support. The supply of his needs NOW was nothing compared to the credit they would receive from Christ when they gave an account of their stewardship THEN.

Together, Paul and the Philippians supply an antidote to discontent. Paul does so through the fact that the gift was not the source of his contentment, and the Philippians, through the fact of their giving, especially since they were poor. They refused to succumb to the priority of their own need and in their giving overcame discontent. “There is one act par excellence which profanes money by going directly against the law of money, an act for which money is not made. This act is giving.” (Jacques Ellul)

Paul said, “I have learned…. To be content…” The word he uses here for “learned” is a technical expression that was used to describe the instruction of initiation rites, implying a severe degree of difficulty, of a course of experience that was not a natural choice. Paul’s learning was not just something he’d picked up through a patchwork experience of tough times and hard knocks. The tense used here is that this learning was a once and for all experience in a definite point of time, which then opened up the possibility of a continuance of this same experience in all circumstances, whether good or bad. Paul puts this experience in the context of our salvation no less. It was the change of heart that salvation wrought that changed his perspective, that taught him how to be content now in whatever circumstance because his life no longer consisted in the stuff, or in the feelings, or in the circumstantial securities.

This means we cannot say that contentment is only possible for those who are thus temperamentally suited: more placid and passive, less demanding, more holy. Contentment is presented as a fruit of our salvation. Contentment is not an elective, not an option. This is why the Puritans called it a “necessary lesson.” And now we understand why Paul stressed it was “through Christ” because he can take no credit for his contentment as if it was particular to his ability or spirituality.

In summary, this is what we can say about contentment from this passage thus far: it is a necessary evidence of conversion, a supernatural and not a natural characteristic and response, an necessary choice because it is an expectation of our heavenly Father. I need to reference the use of one more word, namely the word content. Again, this is a word, like “learned” that Paul rescued from non-Christian usage, for it was the word that described the self-sufficiency of the Stoics. However, Paul changes its meaning for clearly it now has to do with God-sufficiency, but nonetheless, there is an emphasis here on what is truly within him, the resident Holy Spirit, the abiding Christ, the kingdom of God. There is immediate provision for the circumstance and it is within, not because it is self-derived like the Stoics, but Christ empowered like the saints. Paul could handle the freezing temperatures on the outside because of the heating on the inside. The ship was righted in the storm, not because of an array of external ropes and props but because of the ballast within. Paul is separating the Christian attitude of mind here from that of the Stoic: the bite your lip, tough it out, bear it and grin it syndrome. This is not about RESOLUTION but about RELIANCE. It is utterly Christ-generated. This is not about toughing it out, but trusting it out. It is not about how we relate to the circumstance primarily, but how we relate to Christ.

Will you join me in praying that our thanksgiving will never flounder on the rocks of discontent. That like Paul we will realize that contentment is a supernatural and spiritually learned behavior. That we will realize that contentment is not just an issue at times of adversity but a state of heart and mind for all times. Edith Schaeffer described the ingredients of contentment “like the raw fibers that we can weave moment by moment into a fabric of contentment.” On Sunday I suggested some things that seek to tear those fibers apart (complaint, complexities, comforts, complacency, comparisons, competitiveness, compulsions, compromise) but also many things that tighten and strengthen the weave (spiritual death, dependence, devotion, discernment, discipline, discretion, dedication, delight).I have suggested some of those fibers to you; whether discretion or discernment, whether devotion or delight, but I have also suggested some nails that can snare and tag it, like complexity or compromise, like complaint or complacency.

At the end of the day Paul was right. We can be content yet pressing forward for more of God. At the end of the day the psalmist was right. We can be like the deer that pants for water – never dissatisfied but always unsatisfied, because of the desire for God Himself more than anything else. As John Bunyan put it:

I am content with what I have

Little be it or much

And Lord contentment still I crave

Because thou savest such.

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

CULTURE OF CONTEMPT, PT. 2

Dear Family,

This past Sunday I did an addendum to my previous message: “The Culture of Contempt.” We looked at a biblical incident, the occasion of Michal’s contempt for David when the ark was recovered and returned to Jerusalem. At one of the great moments of potential restoration and transformation in the life of Israel that marked the possible return of the presence of God no less to the national life, there was a massive outburst of contempt that almost threatened the recovery of the nation. The joy is violated by two dark incursions: Uzzah’s death by the side of the arkcarrying cart that he tried to steady with his hand (contempt for the Word of God), and Michal’s despising of a dancing David (contempt for the Worship of God). You might say it looked more like the Dance of Death than a happy revival meeting. Basically, the wheels came off the wagon, and the dancing shoes almost came off David’s feet. Contempt is the characteristic demonic response to the presence and purposes of God, to the commands and character of God. The enemy has always opposed our experience of the presence of God with contempt: for Christ, for us, for others. This results in our despising of God, others and self. What was the opening satanic volley in the record of scripture? “Has God really said?” (Genesis 3:1) Contempt is the first manifestation of the diabolic subversion of God’s presence which led to the expulsion from Eden and the loss of “the sound of the Lord God as He was walking in the garden.”

I argued that usually, behind a manifestation of destructive contempt, there is a story that explains how the despising person got to that place and posture. To know that story, to discern its damaging influences is not to excuse the contemptuous person, but to understand them; not to react in condemnation but in compassion, not in reactive mockery but in mercy, regardless of how contemptible they may appear to be. Though they are totally responsible and accountable for their own sin, they are nonetheless candidates for the healing and delivering power of God to rescue them from the grip of the accumulated experiences that have resulted in their present bitter bondage, and consequent disparaging communications and demeaning and defaming actions. To be caught in the crossfire of contempt, whether as object or agent, is a dangerous place to be. Contempt as offence in the agent, so often becomes contempt as defense in the object.

We took Michal as a case study, and looked at all the references to her from 1 Samuel 18 through 2 Samuel 6. Clearly, space does not afford me a recital of all the observations that we made as if it was a healing prayer session. I urge you to re-listen to the message, even though it is a bad, sad story. Why did we consider this story? I suggested that the excursus was important because it is a narrative that we can relate to, given the same way that key events in our lives become the cartilages that hold the bones of our histories together, providing reasons for our contempt and our wounds from contemptuousness. But the good news of the gospel is greater than the bad news of the story, for it presents forgiveness and deliverance for the one who is the agent of contempt, and healing and restoration for the one who has been the damaged object of that contempt.

God specializes in removing reproach, removing the roots that cause us to despise others and the garments of reproach with which others may have clothed our characters and spirits. From November 14, 2017 Genesis 30:23 onwards God says, “I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt.” The question then is: how has God done this? How has He absorbed all despising that I may be absolved of it? The answer is the core of the gospel: in His own body on a tree. He became the toxic waste dump of the world’s despising. “He is despised and rejected of men … He was despised, and we did not esteem him” (Isaiah 53:3). No one was more drained of esteem than Jesus, or held in more contempt. Not surprisingly, one of the most often quoted psalms in the gospels with prophetic reference to the cross, has this emphasis: “I am a worm…a reproach of men and despised by the people…All those who see me ridicule me…They shoot out the lip…He trusted in the Lord…Let Him rescue Him” (Psalm 22: 6-8). And after this concentrated horror of despising comes an unbelievable delivering truth: “God has not despised the suffering of the afflicted.” When anyone is moved to repent of the ways they have despised Him and not esteemed Him, God takes the repentant response as personally as He took the sin of despising: “a broken and a contrite heart I will not despise.” There is forgiveness for our despising, there is deliverance from its bondages and healing from its defacements of identity and spirit. Thus, at the cross we can kneel, whether a despising Michal or a despised David. Is it any wonder, given the nature of despising and its satanic character, that the gospels in their crucifixion accounts read as they do?

• In Mathew “they bowed the knee and mocked him, Hail King of the Jews…the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him…those that passed by reviled him…”

• In Mark: “those crucified with him reviled him…”

• In Luke: Jesus predicts they will mock him and insult: “Falling on their knees they paid homage and when they had mocked him…” the cross’ power to remove our despising and the consequences of being despised! Consequently, the fruit of the resurrection is our empowerment by the Spirit, to now respond to the despising of the enemy.

As we sang in our closing hymn: “Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned He stood, Sealed my pardon with His blood, Hallelujah, what a Savior.” Redemption embraces both the despiser and the despised. May we all know that cleansing and healing, through our repentance from our own contemptuousness, and our forgiveness of others’ contempt, and may there be no barbs and splinters left to fester in our spirits.

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

P.S. If you have received any ministrations of truth by the Holy Spirit in these two messages, I urge you to come to the next Healing prayer service and sit in the presence of the Lord, or maybe make a prayer appointment, to seal what the Lord is doing and to receive the salve of His healing. Call Monique at the office: 202-544-9599

LIVING COUNTERINTUITIVELY (KYLE BOWMAN)

[1] Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved. Exhortation, Encouragement, and Prayer. Philipians 4:1

CULTURE OF CONTEMPT, PT. 1

Dearest Family,

On Sunday I spoke to the title, ‘The Culture of Contempt”, and tried to draw your attention to how embedded this is and how insidious and destructive it is to the image of God and the human spirit. “Contempt is becoming a cultural phenomenon. It’s seeping into every banal aspect of our lives. Not just anger, though there’s plenty of that, too. No, I mean pure, unabashed, undignified contempt for fellow humanity. This is so toxic.” Even secular cultural commentators are beginning to realize the horror of it.

There are three main constituent elements of contempt:

1. Condemnation and consequent judgment: someone or something has failed to meet your privatized standards for behavior or whatever are your self-preferred, self-chosen social, cultural, racial, emotional, intellectual or even spiritual norms. The more we elevate our unquestioned individualism and sense of personal rights, the more we idolize our preferences and particularities, then the more we have to condemn and hold in contempt.

2. Superiority and consequent separation (segregation) and distance because you’re better than someone. It’s all about hubris, vanity, pretension, conceit, disdain, condescension, insolence, pretentiousness, presumption, pomposity, aggression, narcissism, brazenness, incivility, shamelessness, and any of self-love’s progeny like self-admiration, self-exaltation, self-confidence, self-assurance, self-reliance, self-righteousness – the pharasaism that dominates the media and its commentating pundits.

3. Hostility and consequently the desire for someone to be removed, whether from sight, the public square, the relationship, or the job. There are plenty of ways for the hostility of contempt to remove someone, including just ignoring them. But murder? That’s taking it too far. I’d never do that you say. That’s a bit extreme! Not according to Jesus when he redefined our understanding of murder in Mt. 5: 21-26. Jesus describes the separation and distance of contempt as equivalent with murder that separates someone’s life irremediably from all relationship and guarantees reconciliation will be irrecoverable. Listen to Jesus: “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with their brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother ‘Raca!’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” What do you make of that? ‘Raca’ was an Aramaic term of malicious contempt, imposing inferiority on the one so named. Isn’t it interesting that Jesus’ teaching on reconciliation with a brother or someone to whom you are indebted (unreconciled accounts) follows this warning about contempt – the great cause of irreconciliation and the great barrier therefore to reconciliation. This is evil name calling, as all name-calling is evil. Why? Because it removes the significance of the real name, of personhood and personality, of creational uniqueness. To call someone Raca or Fool was to strip them of their identity and impose on them a false identity. Contempt is identity theft. It makes someone what they are not, and usually reduces them to less than human. Gen. 9:6 tells us why murder is so heinous: “for God made man in His image.” So, if contempt is equivalent to murder then you now know why God takes it so personally and judges it so severely: it is October 18, 2017 primarily against Him, His image, before it is against that person or that race. These elements alone give an analysis of the present state of the civic soul.

And nowhere does this contempt more masquerade than in the relational divisions and racial irreconciliations of our nation. Whether violator or victim, we have our own infected and infested systemic corruptions of viral contempt for God, for others and for self, deeply embedded in a history past, despicably maintained in a history present, and doomed to continue in a history future. ‘Prejudice’ is just not strong enough a word. We need to come to terms with the darkness of our acidic, deforming contempt – deforming of self, and others, of the image of God. There cannot be transformation without the excising of the deformation of contempt. The words of Jesus Himself should be our warning and our motivation to get reconciled. The contempt that wants someone to be removed, to disappear, to become persona non grata, to become invisible in the system, to vaporize in color-blindness, is the sin of murder.

I compacted over 100 scriptures to present something of the nature of contempt, but you’ll have to download for scriptures. It is the nature of the devil and all that is diabolic (‘diabolos’ means hurler of slander); of evil; of pride in particular; of the root of so many sins (I mentioned several); of all falsehood, heresy, division and schism; of the last days.

This may seem like a lot of bad news. However, if we have been cut down by any kind of despising, personal or corporate, familial, parental, or racial – God happens to specialize in choosing despised things (1 Cor.1:28) and forgiving and changing despising people. God specializes in removing reproach, removing the roots that cause us to despise others; removing the garments of reproach with which others may have clothed our characters and spirits. From Genesis 30:23 onwards God says, “I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt.” How has God done this? How has he absorbed all despising that we may be absolved of it? The answer is the core of the gospel: in His own body on a tree. He became the toxic waste dump of the world’s despising. He was “despised and rejected of men … He was despised and we did not esteem him” (Isa.53:3). No one was ever more drained of esteem than Jesus, or held in more contempt. One of the most often quoted psalms in the gospels, with reference to the cross, not surprisingly has this emphasis: “I am a worm…a reproach of men and despised by the people…All those who see me ridicule me…They shoot out the lip…He trusted in the Lord…Let him rescue him…” (Ps.22: 6-8) And after this concentrated horror of despising comes an unbelievable delivering truth: “God has not despised the suffering of the afflicted.” When anyone is moved to repent of the ways they have despised Him and not esteemed Him, God takes the repentant response as personally as He took the sin of despising: “a broken and a contrite heart I will not despise.” There is forgiveness for our despising, there is deliverance from its bondages and healing from its defacements of identity and spirit. Hallelujah!

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

TOUCHED BY HIS WOUNDED HANDS

Dear Family,

It was so good to be back with you all on Sunday at the Communion table. By way of preparation, I drew your attention to the fact that when the Gospel writers use the phrase “according to the scriptures’, one of the main prophets they are referring to is Zechariah. He was one of the Restoration prophets at the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, together with Haggai. He is writing to people who are feeling a bit like many of us are in the context of a besieging culture, where you feel like a struggling remnant. But at the heart of the hope of his message is Messianic prophecy. The main meat of his message was in fact about Jesus.

• The Messiah revealed (9:9-10)

• The Messiah rejected (12:10-13:7)

• The Messiah rewarded (6:9-15)

The last six chapters of his prophecy account for the largest portion of the prophetic allusions in the Passion narratives.

The Passion events were not invented by the gospel writers to fit the prophecies of Zechariah. They were able to understand those events, particularly after the resurrection (the Gospels record that they did not understand at the time the gospels say) and they interpreted the scriptures in the light of the events that had already taken place. Here are some key examples of his prophecies:

• 9:9 The triumphant entry “on an ass” (Mt. 21:4; Mk.11:1-7; Luke 19:29; John 12:14)

• 9:11 “the blood of my covenant” “the covenant of my blood” (Mk. 14:24 then 13:7 the first thing he says when he gets to the Mount of Olives and Gethsemane)

• 13:7 “strike the shepherd” – Zechariah key to the understanding of Jesus as the good shepherd – 6 major references chapters 9-14. (Mt. 26:15; Mk. 14:27)

• 11:6; 11:12-13 thirty pieces of silver and the potter’s field

• 12:10 looking on the one they pierced – hundreds of years before crucifixions were practiced (Jn. 19:33-37” look on him they pierced” – only gospel to deal with nails and piercing of Jesus’ side)

• 14:8 living waters

• 14:21 cleansing of the temple – no more traders in my house

Christ’s passion was the fulfillment of the redemptive plan of God, attested to by over 300 prophecies that were fulfilled in its execution. This encourages us in the assurance of God’s word, the assurance of His purposes and the assurance about His promises about the outcomes for you and for me today.

On Sunday, I asked if Zechariah had any connection with what was presented about healing at the Communion service? Indeed, he did. In 13:6 a question is raised about the wounds on the body “between your hands”, which were received in the house of those who were meant to be friends. The prophet foresaw the wounded Christ. I was looking again last week at the awesome presentation of the throne in Revelation 4 and 5, at the center of which was Lamb as if it had been slain – still bearing the marks of wounds. Following the resurrection, Jesus says to Thomas, “Look at my hands and feet.” The OT prepared us for these wounds. A hope arises through the October 4, 2017 prophets that One will come to cleanse the wounds of “sinful folly”. They talk about the uncleansed wounds (Isa. 1:6) and begin to express their longings and hopes for the wounds to be healed. Jeremiah and Hosea spoke of a restoration and return to creational health when “He will bind up your wounds.” This hope for the healing of woundedness reached its climax in Isaiah’s declaration of the suffering servant, the dying Messiah: “By his wounds we are healed” (53:5). We learned there was One who would be wounded for our transgressions in order that the wounds of our soul could be healed. There was no salve for our wounds but his own wounds that shed his own blood, which became our transfusion for resurrected life. And this is the confidence that Peter declares to his readers who are pressed and persecuted and experiencing unjust suffering. This was their assurance in troubled times above all else: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24).

Jesus, our risen host, still stands as it were with wounded hands. His scars are spiritual-war medals of victory. There is healing by the power of the cross and resurrection for our woundedness, whether personal sin and its consequences self-inflicted, or afflictions from other sources. We can be healed by Jesus’ wounds. We have a choice about our wounds. We can bear those wounds unhealed, whether from sin or circumstance. We can bandage them up, or cosmeticize them, but we can no more hide them than we can do a plastic surgery job on the Savior or photo-shop the wounded Christ. The invitation of Sunday still stands. Come to Jesus, whose healing hands put his healed wounds on your head, on your spirit, a promise and proof of the healing desired for your life. You can choose to believe the scars of your wounded past are the perpetual reminder of your disqualification from being used by God, loved by God; you can choose to use them as weapons against those who wounded you, or you can think of the risen slain lamb whose wounds are not the expression of being a victim but of being a victor. Unless our wounds are healed and we become wounded healers, we will continue to be the victim and we will want revenge on our wound-ers.

We are all wounded healers, but the scars we bear on our hands, both the wounds of Jesus and the healed wounds of our own lives, are the very qualifications for our anticipation to be used by God and loved by God. The wounds that begin as the reason for our unacceptability and acceptance in God’s eyes, our own eyes and the eyes of others, when touched by His wounded hands, become the very badges of authority and authenticity, and the foundation for a healing ministry.

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

THE INTOLERANCE OF TOLERANCE

INTRODUCTION: THE MIND OF CHRIST

Dearest Family,

Despite so many folk being away, we did an introduction to our new summer series: “Christ, Christians and Culture.” If you were away you may want to catch up. When it comes to defining culture, we discovered that there were two possible extreme outcomes: a definition that is so simple and general that it ceases to define much at all, or a definition that attempts to include any number of constituent elements but inevitably still ends up as incomplete. Even the anthropologists agree that it is “notoriously difficult” to define. To put it as simply as we can, culture has different levels, but three main ones are: observable artifacts, values, and underlying assumptions (a world view). Culture is about things, ideas and behaviors. The Bible has a word to describe it: “the world” and to be wrongly influenced by it is “worldliness.” But as we saw on Sunday, the Bible understands the world as not just acting on its own but in relationship with the flesh and the devil.

Particular to a Christian understanding of culture is our belief about human nature (it is fallen) and our belief about the devil (demons and principalities and powers). Christians have always believed what some anthropologists are just beginning to admit. It is not just about what is out there but what is in here, meaning within us. Cultural analysts have been adamant that culture has no agency like a person or individual – no personality. That it could “act almost independently of human actions.” But we believe there is a prince of the power of the air who operates through the agency of culture in a personal way. It’s interesting that in the Old Testament the idea of a city with its culture is described by two words: one that refers to its physical existence and the other that attributes to it a spirit, like attached angels. We forget that the Bible’s explanation of the building of cities as cultural centers was rooted in Cain’s disobedient rebellion against God. Post-Eden culture was spiritually antipathetic and opposed to God’s creational intention – and this climaxed in the Tower of Babel and the spirit of Nimrod. There is a spirituality to culture.

A short summary of Sunday is not possible but let’s make this point. There is a big difference between being culturalized and enculturated. By culturalized, I mean an informed understanding of prevailing culture that comes from a commitment to discern truth, and to be alert to that which is counter to the gospel and to Christian lifestyle. By enculturated, I mean the state whereby a Christian, a church or a spiritual movement has taken on board culturally determined assumptions, behaviors and practices, usually defending themselves by saying that this is the way to reach people. In the last 48 hours, with two pastor friends on two different continents, I have had to relate to the sad and disastrous enculturation of a church and her pastors in one case, and an entire denomination in the other. They got to where they ended up, because they chose to make culture their non-negotiable basis for determining what was right: culture was their starting point, not Christ and the Scriptures.

Many years ago now, in a project entitled Breaking with the idols of our age, Os Guinness and John Seel outlined four steps to destructive enculturation:
Something modern is assumed: Some aspect of modern life or thought is entertained not only as significant and therefore worth acknowledging, but as superior to what Christians now know and do and therefore worth assuming as true.
Something traditional is abandoned: Everything that does not fit with the new assumption is either discounted or cut out. (Not just altering tactics but truth itself.) Something modern is assumed to be both true and proper. Everything no longer assertable in the face of it must go.
Everything else is adapted: What remains of traditional belief and practices is then altered to fit the new assumption. It is translated into the language and expectation of the new assumption which becomes the controlling assumption.
The original is assimilated: At the end of the line, Christian assumptions are absorbed by modern ones. The Gospel has been assimilated to the shape of the culture, often without a remainder.

The above is illustrated by a quote from a non-Christian magazine, The New Yorker: “The preacher instead of looking out upon the world, looks out upon public opinion trying to find out what the public would like to hear. Then he tries his best to duplicate that and bring his finished product into a market place in which others are trying to do the same. The public, turning to our culture to find out about the world, discovers there nothing but its own reflection. The unexamined world meanwhile drifts blindly into the future.”

We are all deeply affected by this. As a pastor, I know the deep pains of being told by someone who decides to leave our community, that our standards are too high and untenable or that we are not relating to where people are at, or that our view on biblical sexuality is unrealistic and outdated. In most cases, sadly, people have made a decision in favor of cultural assumptions, not biblical convictions, and will choose a lifestyle that they continue to defend as spiritual, whether they left for social or sexual reasons. It may be religious but it is not Christian. Holy culturalization has succumbed to unholy enculturation. “Do not love the world or the things that are of the world … We have not received the spirit of the world … We were in slavery under the elemental forces of the world … Our struggle is against the powers of this dark world … Because he loved this world he has deserted me … Keep oneself from being polluted by the world … If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.” (1 John 2:15; 1 Corinthians 2:12; 2 Corinthians 10:3; Galatians 4:3; Ephesians 6:12; 2 Timothy 4:10; James 1:7; 2 Peter 2:20)

I spent most of Sunday’s presentation focusing on the need to take seriously “the mind of Christ” and to think Christianly, and not allow the tidal currents of cultural experience to erode or wash away the foundations of biblical explanation. Let Paul, the great theologian who dealt with the relationship between the gospel and Gentile culture have the last word: “Do not conform to the pattern of the world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2). Think man, think!

Yours for heavenly citizenship,

Stuart

LUKE 14 PARABLES

14 One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully. 2 And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy. 3 And Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” 4 But they remained silent. Then he took him and healed him and sent him away. 5 And he said to them, “Which of you, having a son[a] or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?” 6 And they could not reply to these things. . . (ESV)

Luke 14

THE UNTAMABLE POWER OF THE SEED

Dear Family,

To understand Jesus’ teaching we must understand the parables but they present two main problems: they are too familiar in a Sunday school sense, but they are not familiar enough. We think we know what they are about but often we have as much idea as the disciples did at the time they were told. On Sunday, I suggested that Matthew 13, a concentrate of kingdom parables, was essential in order to understand what Jesus wants us to focus on, and I stressed the importance of this truth in times that are culturally challenging and confusing, like our present context. What sort of focus do we need if we are to see kingdom of God style transformation in our world? What are we meant to perceive when we look at what’s out there, and when we see everything that opposes or blurs our vision? And what has this got to do with sowers and seeds, wheat and tares, mustard trees and yeast, treasure and pearls, dragnets and buckets.

The Parable of the Sower and the Seed (v3) is presented in all the gospels as the first parable, and the one we really need to listen to, if we’re to understand what follows. “He who has ears to hear let him hear.” So what is it about? Is it the parable of the sower, or the parable of the seed, or the parable of the soil? Does it make any difference? Sure, it’s about the kingdom, and about people’s response to the message of the kingdom, but what’s the main point? You could preach a message out of it about all the kingdom’s enemies under three main headings:

• the distress of self-oriented, life-consuming worries and anxieties;

• the deceitfulness of riches, of material opposition to the supernatural;

• the distraction of other desires, appetites, priorities, preoccupations, principles, preferences, other lovers and on and on.

The message would then be: O boy, you’re in for a tough and rough time my friend and you’ll be lucky if anything happens. But is that the main point, the focus?

But is it just about the enemies of the kingdom message: the hardness of unploughed hearts, the roadways of selfish, idolatrous life-styles, of business as usual, of commuting through life without ever communicating with God? Is it just about the shallowness of most people’s responses to the glories of God and His presence? Is it just about initial enthusiasm that never matures into final endurance; about charismatic joy that withers and never matures into disciplined perseverance? Does this parable not say that the seed can be snatched, scorched, withered, and choked? Yes, you could say there is reason for sadness here because there is clearly a failure to bear fruit in some places.

All of these observations are valid and relevant but to focus on these is to totally miss the point. Of course, Jesus was a realist, and understood the hostility and enmity and resistance to the kingdom in Israel at that time, and in DC in ours. Matthew 12 that precedes this is about nothing but opposition to Jesus, including the inception of plans to kill him and silence the kingdom message forever. Someone may say that he was asking for trouble, just throwing that seed all over the place like that. Isn’t that indiscriminate? Isn’t that a waste of resources? Part of the problem is that people think that the seed that Jesus is talking about has to do with messages, and Bibles and tracts, and crusades and events. This isn’t about planting these kinds of resources! So what is the seed? Who is the sower? The sower in none less than God the Father Himself! And the seed? The seed is the Word that is Jesus, the logos, who the Father has thrown into our world with a loving May 31, 2017 abandon that defies the imagination. Did not Jesus say the field was the world? How wonderful is this parable! God is typically non-exclusive. He casts Jesus into the most provenly difficult of places where the kingdom is least likely to succeed according to the experts – like amongst the poor, like amongst the tax-collectors and the prostitutes. God seems to be oblivious of all that and throws Jesus in anyway! He isn’t embarrassed by a small seed, by small beginnings, by it not looking much at first to a watching world. The Almighty God could not care less that His arrival does not look like much to some. Is He not the expert at being born in an outhouse, at riding donkeys in to cities? So, what is this parable about? It will give us the clue on how to interpret all the others in this chapter?

Jesus is telling us something crucial about what our focus and therefore our vision should be, what our perspective should be, on our communities, our cities, our nations. He is not asking us here to focus on the soils that range from the possibly hospitable to the downright hostile. This is all about the seed. About the irrepressible, untamable, unstoppable power of the seed. Even the birds of the air pass the devoured seed in their droppings, a manure package to help it grow well! How frustrating is that for the enemy of the seed. Even the attempt to devour it ends up fertilizing it, which is why the church grows in times of persecution. This is not about God blessing the seed of our efforts, our strategic plans, or even asking Him to perfect them and make them even better than we could do them. This is not about our version of the kingdom, but just a little more sanctified, but about His vision of the kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. This is about the nature of the kingdom which is Jesus Himself, no less. Every city, every community, every nation is looking for its foundation stone so it can be built right, and so its inhabitants can live right – and that stone is Jesus! Sure, like Jesus, mention the hindrances to fruitfulness, (stones, rocks, thorns) but the hindrances are just a set-up for the main presentation. When you’ve listed all the hindrances to kingdom work, to church growth, to church planting, and enumerated all the obstacles, and all the opposition, and all the disbelievers, and all the nay-sayers, and all the seed catalogue experts, the bird-watchers, the rock analysts, the thorn-surgeons, you’re in fact leading up to your main point which is – guess what? There’s nothing any of that can do to stop the transforming breakthrough power of the seed. Don’t limit the returns. There is a progression of return, and Jesus wouldn’t say a hundred times more than we could have hoped for if He didn’t know that was more than a possibility. God does not tempt us with the impossible. The unreachable is an invitation to go there. The unbelievable is an invitation to believe. The unthinkable is an invitation to think about it – all the time. Take stock of the terrain, sure. We’re not to be ignorant of the battlefield. It’s just not the main point here or even equal to the main point. Don’t focus on the difficulty of the terrain. Focus like Jesus on the seed-popping, blade-shooting, stalk-bending, kernel-cracking power of transformation, of the kingdom of God.

You will have to listen to the message to get the application of the other parables but suffice it to say that the main point has been established. In the same way that the hostile kinds of soil could not prevent a harvest, the tares could do nothing about the presence of the wheat, and the tiny mustard seed was no indication of the size of the tree that the kingdom could grow, and the lumpy dough could do nothing to stop the effects of the yeast once it was in, and the pain of the search for treasure and pearls could do nothing about the joy of discovery. And when we think that our buckets are not full of the kind of fish that we want, or think qualify, the kingdom of God is like a massive dragnet that pulls in the range of people that we would never catch on our fishing rods. Thy kingdom come!

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

ASKING AND SONSHIP

Dearest Family,

Welcome back to all the women who attended the Women’s Retreat. Good reports and testimonies have ensued. On Sunday, in keeping with the men’s study theme this year of ‘sonship’, I was asked to speak on some aspect of ‘asking and sonship’. It was not a men’s meeting because ‘sonship’ is not a gender term in scripture but a dominant metaphor for our relationship to the Father as sons and daughters. C. S. Lewis, who had a tragically sad relationship with his own father, wrote: “When the Bible talks of ‘sons of God’ this brings us up against the very center of theology.” I might add that it brings us to the very center of our understanding of prayer, of asking, but sadly the relation between assurance of sonship (intimacy with God as Father) and the practice of prayer (asking of the Father) is rarely treated in books about God’s fathering. This is a significant oversight.

There are three fundamental truths that are the foundation of our asking. The first is that God hears our asking; the second is that He responds. Both of these attributes give “confidence” (1 John 5:14) to our asking. But there is a third, which is the most foundational one, which Jesus most emphasized in His teaching and exampled in His practice. To those who love God and are His sons and daughters by spiritual adoption, He is the Father. It is this familial and filial relationship and trust that essentially grounds and secures our confidence in asking. As P.T.Forsyth described it, “He (Jesus) made the all-knowing Fatherhood the ground of true prayer. We do not ask as beggars but as children.” Jesus taught that we were to ask in a child-like way of the Father. Bonhoeffer understood the relationship between these two truths. “The child learns to speak because the father speaks to him. He learns the speech of his father. So we learn to speak to God because God has spoken to us and speaks to us.” He understood that the reason we can ask in the first place, is because we have the speech of the Father, and when we ask, we are simply repeating the Father’s “own words after Him.” It is the most natural thing in the world for children to ask the Father. Jesus assumed this.

• He said that if earthly fathers will give their sons what they ask, “How much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” (Luke11:13). Every answer to every prayer is premised on God’s fatherhood – on his fatherly response to His sons and daughters.

• When the disciples ask Jesus how they can ask in prayer, what are Jesus’ first two words? “Our Father.”

• How did Jesus always ask? “Father, Lord of heaven and earth” (Matthew 11:25); “My Father if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me” (Matthew 26:39).

• Following the raising of Lazarus, Jesus makes clear the ground of his assurance for His own asking: “Father I thank you that you have heard me” (John 11: 41).

• If last words give any indication to what is of utmost importance, then we should note that in the Last Supper discourse, Jesus references the Father 44 times and 6 times in his ‘high priestly’ prayer: “I will ask the Father …” (John 14:16); “Father, the time has come” (John 17:1); “Do you think I cannot ask my Father for twelve legions of angels” (Matthew 26:53).

• So when it came to asking, it is clear that the apostles got what Jesus taught: “Since you call on a Father” (1Peter 1:17); “We have an advocate with the Father” (1John 2:1). Paul got it: “I keep asking … the glorious Father … For this reason I kneel before the Father” (Ephesians 1:17; 3:14). Like Jesus, and like the apostles, our asking is related to our assurance of God’s fathering. But our asking does not begin in our relationship with Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but in their relationship with each other.

Do you see what all this means for our asking? It is not just some expression of our need initiated by us. The asking Godhead invites us to boldly ask. Our asking has been elevated, honored, and blessed. The Father invited the Son to ask him. The Son did. The Son now asks us to ask the Father. We do. They invite us to insert our asking into their communications with each other. They all get in on it, and they respond to it, and thereby we discover this relationship between asking and accessing. To ask is to access the Trinity no less. May 10, 2017 This also helps us understand what the main outcome of our asking is all about. It is not our particular answer, but as Jesus put it, “This is to my Father’s glory!” (John 15:8) John Piper comments: “The first function of prayer is to pray that people will pursue the glory of God.” Our asking is the great means to the glorification of God no less. “Ask and I will do whatever you ask in my name … so the Son may bring glory to the Father” (John 14:13). The more asking the more glory to God, not just from us but from Jesus Himself. Asking is a way we express our pursuit of His glory in all the earth. Was this not the entire point and purpose of Jesus’ asking in His last hours? “Father … glorify your son that your son may glorify you.” In a theology of asking it is the fatherhood of God, and consequently our assured sonship, that is the premise for all assurance about the naturalness, the necessity, the appropriateness, the liberty, the expectation, the confidence of asking. The only limit on our asking is the limitation of our relationship with the Father.

The evidence of the New Testament is theologically conclusive and therefore persuasive about this. Asking of ‘the Father’ is the essential expression of prayer. The fatherhood of God is the underpinning of the apostles’ theology of asking. Just before he tells us that it is the Spirit who helps us when we do not know what we should ask for, Paul tells us that the most instinctive cry of the Spirit of sonship through us is “Abba, Father!” (Romans 8:15,26) Asking is the response of a son to the Father. It is what sons do all the time. The Apostle James understood that everything we ask for, including wisdom and every good and perfect gift, comes from the Father, the God he exhorts us to ask. (James 1: 5,17). Peter understands that we “call on a Father” (1 Peter 1:17) The object of all asking and the consequent source of all answering is the Father. This was the bedrock conviction of the early church as it asked of God from the very beginning, when their asking of the Father in the upper room, imitative of Jesus’ asking of the same Father for the same thing, received that commonly desired answer of the Father, the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Any weakening of our sense of sonship, anything that subverts our assurance of His fatherhood and fathering, will be a weakening in our confidence to ask, or a redirecting of our asking from Father to other sources. There are many who will religiously acknowledge the Fatherhood of God in a creational or creedal sense, but do not know God in a personal fathering sense, not because God is an absent uninvolved father, but because they have such distortions of fatherhood through injurious parental experience; or because, though spiritual sons and daughters, they are actually living as orphans or slaves in the Father’s house.

I went on to look at how and why the orphan or slave spirit is so destructive of asking. I urge you to download the message and understand these important observations, if not for your own prayer life, for helping others to whom you minister.

The bondages I talked about gag the asking. When there is a fracture in our assurance of our relationship with the Father, for whatever reason, and when we are tempted to live as a slave or orphan instead of a son, the external conflicts with circumstance and the internal conflicts with self, will eliminate our asking. You do not ask of a source you have chosen not to trust. Anger and pride, hostility and hopelessness, fear and resignation, do not ask. But it is because we are sons and daughters that we are free to ask of the Father. That God is our Father is the glorious truth that validates our asking; that nurtures and us as we wait in the answer-gap for the responses to our asking. What above all things assures our asking, and anchors our theology of asking? In the words of Jesus: “Father, I thank you that you have heard me” (John11:41). Jesus’ Father heard and responded to His Son. He will respond to you too, dear son and daughter of His. Begin asking with the same words Jesus used: “My Father!”

Your asking-brother (because we have the same Father),

Stuart