Ad Trinitatem

We were reminded, in a new topical sermon series at church on the Lord’s Day, that guidance is a promise, not a problem. We were referred to Psalms 23 and 119, although one might equally look in Proverbs 2.

In Proverbs 2, we have an extraordinary promise from God:

If you call out for insight
and raise your voice for understanding,
if you seek it like silver
and search for it as for hidden treasures,
then you will understand the fear of the LORD
and find the knowledge of God.
For the LORD gives wisdom;
from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
he is a shield to those who walk in integrity,
guarding the paths of justice
and watching over the way of his saints.
Then you will understand righteousness and justice
and equity and every good path;
for wisdom will come into your heart,
and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;
discretion will watch over you,
understanding will guard you,
delivering you from the way of evil,
from men of perverted speech,
who forsake the paths of uprightness
to walk in the ways of darkness,
who rejoice in doing evil
and delight in the perverseness of evil,
men whose paths are crooked,
and who are devious in their ways.

So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman,
from the adulteress with her smooth words,
who forsakes the companion of her youth
and forgets the covenant of her God;
for her house sinks down to death,
and her paths to the departed,
none who go to her come back,
nor do they regain the paths of life.

So you will walk in the way of the ood
and keep to the paths of the righteous
For the upright will inhabit the land,
and those with integrity will remain in it,
but the wicked will be cut off from the land,
and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.

The Triune God gives wisdom to his people when they ask him for it. But Biblical wisdom, as we are so often reminded, is not so much concerned with what job I should do or where I should live or what vegetables I should buy, but is first and foremost about rightly relating to God, fearing him and knowing him, and then walking in his ways. God promises to his people who ask for wisdom that he will protect them like a shield, he will guard them and watch over their ways so that they walk in the way of justice and righteousness. Such wisdom, knowledge and understanding will be theirs, and so they will be protected from dark and evil works and deeds. The wisdom that the covenant God gives to his people protects them from sexual immorality and what leads to death, and instead do what is right, and receive their inheritance of salvation from the Lord, in the language of the Proverb, ‘dwelling in the land’ and in the light of the coming of Christ, life in him and the hope of resurrection and eternity in the New Creation.

So as St. James tells us, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting.” I take it that means we must ask God, trusting his promise to give wisdom to those who cry out to him for it, and prizing wisdom, the knowledge of how to live righteously and justly, above all else, not wanting to go both God’s way, and the way of darkness.

The Prayer Book lectionary has moved me on to Proverbs, and a couple of things have struck me. These thoughts are not especially profound or original.

In chapter 1.20-33, we have Wisdom personified crying aloud in the streets, rebuking the simple ones, scoffers and fools (i.e. those who do not fear the Lord, see the contrast in 1.7), and calling them to turn, or, if you like, repent. Wisdom promises to pour out her spirit to the one who does, and make known her words. Those who don’t listen, will experience calamity, terror, distress and anguish and at that point it will be too late; they will face the consequences of their choice of action and be destroyed. In contrast, the one who listens to wisdom (and by implication acts on what he or she hears) will be at ease and will face no disaster.

Although Wisdom here is personified as a woman, it is quite clear we have in these verses the gospel in shadow form. When we come to the New Testament, everything comes into focus and we see the Word incarnate, Christ the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1.30, Colossians 2.3), who walked the streets and marketplaces of Palestine calling sinners to repent and listen to him. Christ pours out the Holy Spirit on those who do and he makes known his word to them (Acts 2.17). The Holy Spirit is, of course, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding (Isaiah 11.1-2). Those who reject Christ will face the consequences of their actions and experience God’s judgement, whereas those who listen to him and respond to him find security and know that no ultimate disaster will befall them, because Christ has been raised from the dead, as will those who belong to him. I wonder if this passages goes some way to explain why St. Matthew and St. Luke report Jesus using that curious phrase, when after describing the unbelieving response to the Son of Man, he says that ‘wisdom is justified by her deeds’ or ‘children’ (Matthew 11.19, Luke 7.35). The Son of Man is the Wisdom of God who is rejected by men, but is ultimately vindicated by what he does and achieves: his perfect life, atoning death and glorious resurrection, ransoming sinners for God.

While I admit that I’m in a minority who hold this view, I don’t think it’s exegetically sustainable at all to read this passage as teaching about Christ’s return, for a number of reasons:

1. The context is Jesus talking about the destruction of the temple (v. 2), which the disciples then ask him about (v. 3).
2. We can’t just assume ‘the close of the age’ (v. 3) means ‘the end of the world’. Given that Christ is talking about the destruction of the temple, it is quite natural to read it as talking about the close of the Old Covenant era with the destruction of its apparatus.
3. Jesus is addressing those disciples immediately gathered before him. They are the ones who are not to be led astray, be alarmed and who will be delivered up to death and hated (vv. 4-9).
4. vv. 15-21 are clearly talking about AD70 and the destruction of the temple, and not solely as an illustration of the persecution that will characterise the period leading up to Jesus return - this is the climactic event in Jesus’ discourse.
5. The apocalyptic language of v. 29 doesn’t have to be speaking about the end of the world. In fact, it echoes language used of the destruction of Babylon in Isaiah 13.10, and appears to be making the point that is made at length in the book of Revelation: that Babylon is Jerusalem and is being destroyed.
6. The coming of the Son of Man (v. 30) is in its biblical context most emphatically not about his coming to earth to judge but about his coming to heaven in vindication over and against his enemies, and to receive authority over the whole earth (Daniel 7.13-14, 21-22).
7. Fig trees (v. 32) are symbolic of Israel (see e.g. 1 Kings 4.25)
8. All the things mentioned in Matthew 24.1-33 - including the coming of the Son of Man - will take place in the lifetime of those disciples to whom Jesus was speaking (v. 34).

Now, that doesn’t mean Matthew 24 doesn’t have application to the church today. We can still learn from the exhortations not to be led astray by false prophets and false Christs, not to fear at natural disaster, to stand fast in persecution, to remember God’s grace in restraining persecution for the sake of his elect, to recognize Christ’s authority over all things &c.

Extracts from ‘The Deacon and the Liturgy’, Being a Deacon Today by Rosalind Brown (Canterbury Press 2005):

It is sometimes supposed that conduct is primary and worship tests it, whereas the truth is that worship is primary and conduct tests it.

We do, indeed, assemble in buildings to worship, but the deacon is the constant irritant to anyone who thereby supposes that daily life is left at the door when we enter, or that worship ends with the dismissal; it merely changes location and expression. Liturgy is radically related to how we live our lives, how we fulfil our baptismal vocation, how we offer God our souls and bodies to be a reasonable sacrifice.

When we are unaware of the social implications of the liturgy, or ignore those implications, we fail to that extent to offer ourselves to God as a ‘reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice.’ For each time we receive the Body and Blood of our Lord, we are by that act sent to be witnesses to Him before the world. This does not mean that we are to lead pious lives, but that we are to be in the thick of the struggle for justice and freedom and peace.

What will it do, for example, to our missionary responsibilities, when we realise that we not only proclaim Christ’s redemptive work in the liturgy, but we offer our own souls and bodies with His in the very same work? And what sort of a social order shall we be content with after we experience a community in which the elements of food and drink are provided and blessed at Christ’s table?

The deacon as a liturgical person must be a person who understands what is being grasped at here - that liturgy is formative in ways of which the casual worshipper cannot dream, that to be given to liturgical ministry is to set outselves in the path of constant transformation.

Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith. Here she is on her throne in the House of Lords, wearing the Imperial Crown and robes at the opening of the new session of Parliament.

I want to take this opportunity to celebrate life under the British Monarchy. There was a time when the British Empire extended over a quarter of the world’s population and a quarter of the Earth’s land area. It was the largest empire the world has known. All that remains are the British Overseas Territories - Anguilla, Bermuda, British Antarctic Territory, British Indian Ocean Territory, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Monserrat, Pitcairn Islands, St. Helena (including Ascension, Tristan da Cunha), South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekielia and Turks and Caicos Islands. Her Majesty the Queen is also head of state of sixteen independent commonwealth states. The role of the Queen is very important. As the monarch, she is the one who has to give Royal Assent to legislation passed in Parliament. She opens each session of Parliament, the Prime Minister has to ask her permission to dissolve Parliament when he wishes to call a General Election, and it is the Queen who invites an individual to form a government as the next Prime Minister. She is well-informed about what is happening in her realms, spending several hours a day reading through her ‘red boxes’, containing papers from government departments and offices. Since she has been the monarch for over fifty years, and has seen ten Prime Ministers during the course of her reign, she is in a position of considerable wisdom, and has regular meetings with her ministers, including a weekly meeting with the Prime Minister, in which she has a right to be heard, to encourage and to warn. She also has an important representative function, outwardly to other nations, and also inwardly, in her honouring of the achievements of her subjects. The monarchy is good value for the British people, costing each of us only sixty-six pence a year.

It is of course sad that there are those who in the past violently rejected British rule and now forgo this great privilege, for example, the Thirteen Colonies who declared independence on this day in 1776. I can’t help but recall in regard to this affair the words of the apostle Paul: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities” (Romans 13.1). I also think of his injunction to ‘pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed’ (Romans 13.7), which he did not qualify with “no taxation without representation”, at least not in my Bible. I was heartened therefore to receive an e-mail this morning from an American friend whose uncle wishes he were a subject of the British Crown, is an imperialist, and thinks the American Revolution was sinful and that they ought to have been loyal subjects of King George.

God save our gracious Queen,

Long live our noble Queen,

God save the Queen:

Send her victorious,

Happy and glorious,

Long to reign over us:

God save the Queen.

O Lord, our God, arise,

Scatter her enemies,

And make them fall.

Confound their politics,

Frustrate their knavish tricks,

On Thee our hopes we fix,

God save us all.

Thy choicest gifts in store,

On her be pleased to pour;

Long may she reign:

May she defend our laws,

And ever give us cause

To sing with heart and voice

God save the Queen.

Today is a very special day. In the Calendar of the Book of Common Prayer, today is the day when we remember the translation of Martin, Bishop of Tours in the fourth century AD.

At the age of 10, Martin, against the wishes of his parents, went to the church and became a catechumen. At the age of fifteen, he had to serve in the army and, a few years later at the gates of the city of Amiens, he met a beggar and gave him half his cloak to clothe him. That night, as legend has it, he had a vision of Jesus wearing the half-cloak, and so he was subsequently baptised at the age of 18. Two years later he was convicted that he shouldn’t serve in the army, just before a battle with the Gauls at Worms, was imprisoned for cowardice, volunteered to go unarmed to the front of the battle, but before his superiors could agree, peace was made.

Once released from military service, Martin went to serve under Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, after whom the term after Christmas before Easter is named in Oxford, and who defended Trinitarianism against the Arian heretics. Hilary went into exile and Martin became a hermit, but when Hilary returned, Martin and he set up a monastery which was a centre for evangelism in the surrounding area and Martin himself travelled and preached through Western Gaul. When he was consecrated Bishop of Tours in 371, he enthusiastically destroyed the apparatus of pagan religion.

The writer to the Hebrews exhorts us:

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever. Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings. - Hebrews 13.7-9

The significance of this day, the fourth of July, lie in its challenge to us to follow the example of God’s faithful servant Martin, and obey Jesus’ word that ‘whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me’, hold fast with Martin our faith in God the Holy Trinity, and like him preach the gospel of Christ that many would turn ‘from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come.’

John Stott writes in the introduction to his Canticles and Selected Psalms in the Prayer Book Commentaries series:

Christian worship would be almost inconceivable without singing. During the service of Morning Prayer, for instance, the average Anglican congregation sings at least seven times - three hymns, three canticles, and a psalm.

I have written elsewhere why I am an Anglican, but as a matter of personal testimony, it was the liturgy which reintroduced me to Anglicanism when I was seventeen or eighteen. After squash on a Wednesday afternoon, I got in a little before four o’clock, and one week I tuned in to Radio 3 and heard a broadcast of Choral Evensong. For the first time I heard the Psalms properly sung. I dug out an old Prayer Book from my mother’s wardrobe and followed along. And I just kept listening, week after week. When I came up to university, I went to an Anglican church where I discovered that the Church of England wasn’t entirely dead but that there were still evangelicals in it, and that they were the ones who stood in direct succession to the Reformers.

However, it is a lamentable fact that the evangelicals who insist most loudly that they are the true Anglicans theologically tend to be those who have strayed most of all from the great, profound, Biblical, Anglican liturgical heritage. All we are left with is a pick-and-mix approach to the Anglican liturgy: one week we might say the Lord’s Prayer, another week we might say the Apostles’ Creed. The closest we get to a canticle is occasionally singing “Tell out my soul” by Timothy Dudley-Smith. I would suggest that forsaking the liturgical inheritance which we have received from men like Thomas Cranmer is to our detriment. I have written repeatedly elsewhere about singing the Psalms in corporate worship, and so I want to focus on the canticles, specifically the Benedictus (Zechariah’s Song: Luke 1.68-79) , the Magnificat (Mary’s Song: Luke 1.46-55) and the Nunc Dimittis (Simeon’s Song: Luke 2.29-32).

Over the past couple of months, I have been following the pattern of the Book of Common Prayer in my devotional times. It has a lot to commend it - the BCP lectionary suggests a pair of Bible readings in the morning and evening, taking one through the Old Testament and Revelation once in a year, and the rest of the New Testament twice, and going through the Psalter once a month. The canticles occupy the place of songs of praise in response to God’s word. What has particularly struck me is how helpful the canticles are in developing a biblical theology: these Scriptural songs celebrate the pattern of God’s salvation seen in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, patterns which echo throughout the whole Bible. Reading, saying or singing the canticles regularly attunes one to these patterns which find their ultimate fulfilment in the Christ. I am sure there are more examples of this than there are grains of sand on the seashore, but here are some recent examples to illustrate my point.

In the Benedictus, we praise God for how ‘he has raised up a horn of salvation for us’ that ‘we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.’ At the beginning of the book of Judges, we read that ‘the LORD raised up judges, who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them’ (2.16) and ‘whenever the LORD raised up judges for them, the LORD was with the judge, and he saved them from the hand of their enemies’ (2.18).

In the Magnificat, we read how God ‘he has filled the hungry with good things’, and in the story of Ruth, we learn that God has visited his people (also echoing Luke 1.68: ‘He has visited and redeemed his people) and provided food for them. We also sing “he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate” and in 1 Samuel, we see how God removes the kingship from Saul who rebels against his word, and instead chooses David, the youngest son of Jesse, the one who keeps the sheep, to be his anointed king. In the book of Esther, too, Mordecai’s elevation and Haman’s execution are more examples of God bringing down the mighty from their thrones and exalting those of humble estate, and although God is not directly mentioned in the book, the preservation of the Jews in the book as a whole makes the point that “He has helped his servant Israel in rememberance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and his offspring forever”, saving them from the hand of their enemies and showing them “the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant”.

The Nunc Dimittis beautifully ends the day, and can be a fitting response to readings such as Romans 3.21-26 as it was at Evensong a few months ago now. Simeon was able to depart in peace in the sense that he could die happily because he had seen the Lord’s Christ as he had been promised. We too may sing it at the end of the day in that we can sleep happily having seen God’s salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ if we’re Christian believers, with our sleep being both a picture of death, and also the time of greatest vulnerability where it is the knowledge of the salvation that we have in Christ which enables us to sleep peacefully, whatever may potentially befall us.

James B. Jordan’s words remind us of the significance of liturgy in enabling us to understand the Bible correctly:

Ancient and medieval literature abounds in numerical symbolism, large parallel structures, intricate chiastic devices, astral allusions, sweeping metaphors, typological parallels and symbolism in general… When the Psalms were at the center of the Church’s worship, Biblical symbolism was much better understood because the Psalter abounds in it… The traditional liturgies of the Church, being thoroughly grounded in Scripture, communicated Biblical symbolism… This has disappeared from the modern… Church, and the result is that it is much harder for us to read the Bible accurately. - Through New Eyes pp. 14-15

Click below for the recording of the sermon I preached at Morning Prayer at St. James’s, Poole, on Sunday 22nd June.

Nehemiah 2-3 (27:03, 6.19MB)

(Apologies for the poor recording quality.)

For Morning Prayer, St. James’ Poole, Sunday 22nd June 2008.

Introduction

The God of heaven will make us prosper, and we his servants will arise and build. - Nehemiah 2.20

A recent report has found that the Government has shown a lack of understanding of, or interest in the contribution of the Church of England, and has consciously decidd to focus almost exclusively on minority religions. This, the Communities Secretary said, was common sense. ‘We live in a secular democracy.’ One bishop replied, “That comes as news to me - we have an established Church, but the Government can’t deal with Christianity.” This comes on the heels of the Bishop of Rochester’s article about the steep decline of Christian values and influence in society. What part does the church have to play in the public life of our nation? It’s an important question, as the present situation could lead us to despair, withdraw or give up, or make us think it’s not worth bothering with as there’s no future. Nehemiah 2-3 forces us to consider the question: it’s a drama about kings, queens, governors, armies, high office, accusations of political subversion, and the servance of God. It first shows us the right perspective on the church and the society in which it exists:

1. God’s power extends over earthly rulers (Nehemiah 2.1-8 )

The plight of God’s people and city (Jerusalem) moved Nehemiah to tears, fasting and prayer. God’s city is at the heart of his purposes for healing our broken and divided world: it’s a community, a society where his transforming rule is known and flows to the end of the earth. To Nehemiah that looked as though it was in tatters. As he discharges his duties, his grief shows through, the king notices it, doesn’t appear to have much time for it, and leaves Nehemiah very afraid (v. 2). This is understandable: he’s being rebuked by the king of one of the greatest empires the world had yet seen. Nehemiah gives his reason (v. 3), the king realises something’s up and asks him what he wants, Nehemiah realises this is his opportunity, and prays (v. 4), the culmination of a time of extended prayer in chapter 1. He had prayed for favour in the sight of the king, which seems to be going through his mind as he replies (v. 5). They discuss details and timings, and then it pleases the king to send him. If that’s not extraordinary enough, he asks for a passport (v. 7) and building materials (v. 8 ) and gets them all, as well as an army (v. 9). It’s like the PM giving the doorman at No. 10 permission to rebuild Pompeii, and giving him a blank cheque from the Treasury and an armed escort. It’s inconceivable. Nehemiah tells us why it happened. God did it. He answered his prayers. He overrules the decisions of one of the most powerful kings the world had yet seen, in order that through one of his people he might build his city. See Proverbs 21.1. This matters profoundly for Poole in June 2008. From those who returned to the rebuilt city came Christ, and living this side of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, God’s city is no longer limited to one physical place in the Middle East, but is a heavenly city, the community of those who through faith in Christ, because he bore God’s right judgement on sin when he died on the cross, have been brought into fellowship with God the Holy Trinity. That city is visible in local congregations like St. James, into which we’re admitted in baptism. See Hebrews 12.22-24. It’s in the church that people know Chrit and his rule and are transformed by his word by the Holy Spirit to live how God intended us to live, rightly relating to him and to one another. So this section of Nehemiah 2 has much to say to us here, today, as we think about the part the church has to play in the public life of our nation and how we relate to our society: God rules even over the most powerful earthly authorities, and exercises his rule to establish and build his city, the church founded on Jesus Christ in this world, through which the world finds rescue and restoration. Nehemiah 2 is a part of that work and in a small way foreshadows it. That has implications.

2. God’s people can serve with courage and boldness (Nehemiah 2.8-20)

Nehemiah sets out and gets through passport control (v. 9) and building takes place in the context of opposition from those who do not want the promotion of the security and prosperity of God’s people (v. 10). Nevertheless he is conscious that God is over and above it all, achieving his purposes - it was God who moved Nehemiah to rebuild Jerusalem in the first place (v. 12) - so undeterred in the face of opposition, he embarks on a commando operation to survey the ruins in order to being the building work, which is top-secret, happens in the dead of night, with the minimum of equipment, and is not easy (vv. 12-14). Despite the shadow of opposition, he goes public, reminding the people of the problem and the derison they suffer (v. 17), and when he tells them how God is at work behind it all, and even the king is within his power and has allowed and resourced the project, the people say, “Let us rise up and build,” and they strengthened their hands for the good work. Trouble intensifies - they are laughed at and threatened, yet Nehemiah doesn’t back down. He doesn’t argue that what he’s doing is legitimate (although he could have). The point is that he knows God is ruler of all, his power extends over all, he has promised to restore his city, and so he and his people are confident to do the work of rebuilding, because God will make it prosper (v. 20). These kinds of opposition are modern - it’s a source of displeasure to people if the church prospers as it’s uncomfortable to hear the gospel message and it’s uncomfortable when Christians by their lives show up the self-centredness of the world and its morals which fall short of God’s standards. The church is a source of laughter - in the light of science, we are thought of as primitive, and in our weakness, divisions and lack of influence, we are thought to have no future and to be wasting our time. The accusation of rebellion against the king is very contemporary, e.g. the experience of the two preachers in Birmingham recently. The challenge to us is to allow what we have seen of God’s power over the rulers of the earth to penetrate our hearts and minds, allow it to move us to defy those who don’t like what we stand for, who write us off, who oppose us in the name of a tolerance which tolerates everything except Biblical Christianity, and so be stirred up to be involved in that work to build God’s city, that his kingdom would come and his will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. No matter what temporary blips there are along the way, God will make the work prosper. Those who oppose the building of God’s city will not have a share in its future. When God rescued the people, he gave them the Promised Land as their inheritance and each family had a portion of the land as their possession for ever, and the abundance of the land and rest in the land was God’s blessing and gift for them to enjoy, their spiritual inheritance. Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem, because of their opposition to the building of Jerusalem, will not have an inheritance or place in it, and will not enjoy God’s blessing. It may be that there are some for whom that is a warning: like them you’re not on board with God’s plan of building his church, whether it offends you, you find it laughable, or whether your priorities are to follow the priorities of society. God will make his plan prosper. One day Christ will return and bring it to completion, God will ‘wipe away every tear’, ‘death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more’. If you have not supported the building of God’s city, then you will be shut out from the experience and enjoyment of those things in eternity. See Matthew 12.30. You need to turn back to Christ, seek refuge in him as your saviour, and become one of his servants, and you’ll be forgiven, included in his people, and given a share of that great inheritance when God’s city is built.

What does this courageous and bold service look like in practice?

3. God’s city is built by his varied servants (Nehemiah 3)

Nehemiah takes us on a circular tour of the walls. All kinds of people are involved in the building - priests (v. 1), goldsmiths and perfumers (v. 8), rulers (v. 9), temple servants (v. 26), merchants (v. 32). In the building of God’s city, there is something for everyone to do, whatever your status or occupation. There is no one for whom the work of building God’s church is above them or beneath them. The city is built as people serve in their immediate contexts. People build opposite their own house (vv. 23, 28-30). It’s built as you and I in our own little spheres of influence speak about Christ and live in obedience to him. It’s looking for that opportunity to just say something about our faith to a colleague at work or a neighbour down the shop, or inviting a friend to a course explaining the Christian message. It’s living distinctively at work, not engaging in the gossip, and showing love for and serving our colleagues in a practical way. It’s growing in personal holiness, battling against that particular sin, whether in our thoughts or acted out, as God answers the prayer, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” All these are ways in which the community, the society is build where Christ and his transforming rule are known and experienced. This is not just about us as individuals (v. 12). Whole families are involved in the work. This is a perspective that we perhaps need to regain that runs through the whole Bible, OT and NT. God promises to be God to us and to our children (which is why we baptise our children). The expectation is for us to bring up our children to know and trust him from their earliest days, telling them about him and what he has done and how we should respond to him, praying to God that he would be at work in them. Our homes are to be places where Christ is known, and trusted, and obeyed, established as little communities over which Christ is king. Just like termites we see on nature programmes, small but diverse, each fulfilling their own particular function, creating huge colonies and building complex nests, so in all our different walks of life, with all our different skills and abilities, as we witness to Christ by our words and actions in our own lives, as we bring up our families to know and trust Christ, mundane though our lives may appear to be, small though our efforts may seem, those are efforts that take place alongside many other people, and God’s city will be built.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

I have the pleasure to eat regularly with a family from church who begin their weekly Sabbath meal delightfully with a Sabbath liturgy consisting of a toast, a little catechism, blessings for the family and a prayer. For no particular reason, here is a short liturgy with a bit of an Anglican flavour.

Catechism

1. What is the fourth commandment?
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

2. How is the Sabbath day to be kept holy?
On it you shall not do any work, you or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.

3. Why is the Sabbath day to be kept holy?
For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

4. Why else is the Sabbath day to be kept holy?
You shall remember that you were a slave and the Lord your God brought you out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.

5. Why do Christians keep the Sabbath on the first day of the week?
On the first day of the week Jesus rose again from the dead, rescuing us from slavery to sin and death and resting from his work of new creation.

Responses

The Lord is gracious and merciful
Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love

The Lord is good to all
And his mercy is over all that he has made

The eyes of all look to you
And you give them their food in due season

You open your hand
You satisfy the desire of every living thing

(Psalm 145.8-9, 15-16)

Collect

O God who causes grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden his heart, oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen his heart, we who believe and know the truth receive this food with thanksgiving, for everything created by you is good, and is made holy by your word and prayer, through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, the living bread who came down from heaven, and gave himself for the life of the world. Amen

Does ‘Thou shalt not covet’ apply to ministers’ studies?

Click HERE for possibly the most exhilarating sermon I’ve heard this year, preached by the Rt Rev Dr Tom Wright in Oxford on June 1st.

So far in Isaiah 6-10, we have seen a number of problems with God’s people. King Ahaz is characterised by unbelief (7.12), they fear things other than the Lord (8.12-13), the Northern Kingdom is characterised by pride (9.9), false teaching (9.16), devouring one another (9.21) and gross injustice (10.1). As a result, there will be destruction of the land (10.23).

However, there have been glimmers of hope - the ‘holy seed’ of 6.13, Immanuel of chapters 7 and 8, the child who will reign on David’s throne whose government will be ever increasing (9.6-7) and who will establish an era of peace, justice and righteousness, and the remnant of 10.20.

The coming of the Lord Jesus Christ prophesied in Isaiah 11 in many ways continues that trajectory of hope and provides the solution to those problems. He is the Spirit-anointed king (v. 2), descended from Jesse (v. 1), who will be wise, understanding and might, whose fear is in the Lord (vv. 2-3) who reigns and judges justly (vv. 3-4). The ‘fruit’ that the branch from the roots of Jesse bears is described in the terms of a vivid metaphor in vv. 6-9. We shouldn’t be surprised at this kind of language, given the genre of this section of Isaiah. It is poetry, after all. We have already had lots of imagery - Assyria is a bee and a razor (ch. 7), a mighty river (ch. 8), a forest (ch. 10). Moreover, similar language is used in ch. 65, which also talks about the longevity of the people - ‘the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed’. I think there is good grounds for thinking that Isaiah 11.6-9 is therefore not talking about the new creation which will be established when Christ returns, but about the present reign of the Messiah. Isaiah 65.17 speaks of this state of affairs as a new heavens and a new earth - through Christ’s reign, the new creation is being established now, on this earth, although it will only be fully consummated when Christ returns. Richard Sibbes has this to say about this portion of Scripture:

“It, by way of prophecy, foretelleth what shall be the fruits of Christ’s kingdom under the gospel, shewing that miraculous change Christ should make upon men, shadowed out in the scripture under the similitude of beasts, as lions, wolves, bears, leopards, &c. The sum whereof is, that God will take from us that fierceness, malignity, and bitterness of nature in us, and bring us, in place thereof, to a loving, sweet, mild, and meek society together.” - Works vii, p. 129

The reason for this is in v. 9. Sibbes goes on to say:

“And this is the reason which is added why there shall be no hurt nor destroying in all this holy mountain, because the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea; meaning there shall then be an abundant knowledge, which shall keep everyone within their limits, everyone knowing his duty, so maintaining a mutual peace in all this holy mountain.” - Works vii, p. 129-130

The earth being filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea will be seen in the gospel age. The time when that happens, is the time when the nations shall enquire of the root of Jesse who stands as a signal for the peoples (v. 10), when the nations, and the exiles of Israel, are gathered together as one (v. 12) under him. The apostle Paul describes God’s mercy to the Gentiles through the gospel as the fulfilling of this prophecy. Christ’s resting-place, that is, where he reigns, will be glorious (v. 10). We have seen how the Northern and Southern kingdoms were hostile to one another. That will come to an end (v. 13). This is described in terms of those who rally to the signal the Lord has raised - Christ - conquering and plundering and ruling over the Gentile nations (v. 14). This is a second exile, described again in poetic terms (vv. 15-16).

In terms of the implications of the text, it holds out hope for God’s people still living very much in a society like that described in chapters 6-10. It impresses upon us the goodness of Christ’s reign and the transformation he brings in people’s lives, which should increase our love for him. It should humble us when our behaviour is out of tune with the behaviour that characterises Christ kingdom and cause us to repent and pray for him to change us. It should strengthen our trust in and commitment to the Lord Jesus - he is the signal the Lord has raised for the peoples, that they may flock to him and know his blessing. It should give us confidence in our evangelism, to know that in the long-term, there will be much fruit. And it should motivate our prayers: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” is what we should be praying for the world now.

“Yet you are he who took me from the womb;
you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.
On you was I cast from my birth,
and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.” - Psalm 22.9-10

I was studying Psalm 22 with a younger brother at the weekend, and what we noticed was that in David’s distress, a pattern ultimately written large in the suffering of Christ upon the cross, one source of comfort for him, one ground for prayer for deliverance, was his past relationship with God. God had been committed to him from his mother’s womb and so he could faithfully pray, “Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help.” Psalm 71.5-6 makes the same point.

It is the normative experience for someone born in the covenant community to grow up trusting in the Triune God and knowing him as his God. This is what God promised Abraham in Genesis 17.7: “And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.” It springs entirely from God’s grace. David says, “You made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.” It is on this basis that we baptise our infants, giving them the sign and seal of God’s covenant, formally establishing that relationship. It is on this basis that we can say with the Prayer Book, on the principle of charitable assumption grounded on the word of God, “We yield thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath pleased thee to regenerate this Infant with thy holy Spirit, to receive him for thine own Child by adoption, and to incorporate him into thy holy Church.”

It must therefore be concluded (and this saddens me, for I have dear friends who are of this persuasion) that a conversionist and antipaedobaptist approach to those born within the covenant community, in which they are regarded and reared as outsiders, unbelievers and unregenerate, until such time as they reach a point where they pray a prayer of repentance and commit their lives to Christ, withholding baptism from them until profession of faith, is profoundly out of tune with the hope and experience held before us in the Psalter, to the detriment of their faith and comfort in later suffering.

But it was a great joy on the Lord’s Day, at the annual river baptism service, amongst all the students and similarly aged people being baptised, to hear one family declare their intention for their infant daughter to be a Christian, their belief that the Bible teaches that children should be brought up from their earliest days to know and trust the Lord, and that baptism in the Bible marks the beginning of that process, and consequently their desire for her to be baptised.

Can anyone explain the vesture here?

This morning I went to the University Sermon, where the Rt Rev Dr N. T. Wright was preaching, and he was absolutely superb. He is a gripping preacher and I could listen to him for hours.

He began by mentioning that he seems to come down to Oxford or London only to lament the lack of interest in ministry in the North. His staff in Durham are having a meeting tomorrow about how the needs for the ministry of word and sacrament, and evangelism are going to be met in the diocese. When posts become available, few apply for them. This is in considerable contrast to the situation in Dorset and other such places. Part of the problem is that the church centrally is trying to reduce the number of stipendiary clergy. Rich dioceses can afford to ignore this and pay for however many clergy they want. Poor dioceses, like Durham, have to abide by the rules, otherwise they will go bankrupt. To approach this problem, one has to consider it against the bigger picture of God’s kingdom.

At this point, he identified two kinds of Christians, gospel Christians and epistle Christians. Gospel Christians tend to read the gospels, and see all that Jesus is doing and make that paradigmatic for what the coming of the kingdom should look like. The epistles get neglected. It’s the position of modern liberalism. Wright recounted the story of the time when he was chaplain of Worcester College and the Provost asked him what his DPhil was about. When he replied, “St. Paul,” the Provost answered, “He was a wicked man.” Epistle Christians on the other hand focus on Paul’s letters and treat the gospels as merely illustrative material. Conservative evangelicals tend to occupy that position. They are wary of the gospel Christians because it has the potential to undermine justification by faith. They emphasise those parts of Scripture that supports their system of saving sinners from the world and use the gospels to illustrate those truths. Despite claiming a high view of Scripture, this doesn’t do justice to the Scriptures at all. Evangelicals have had more in common with Bultmann than they realise. With regard to the NT reading, Luke 8.4-15, they would point out that it is the word that is being spread; we have to preach the message about how people can be saved. The gospel Christians would say that Luke 8.4-15 is abot the word of the kingdom, so we need to get on with transforming society. The gospel Christian position is itself inadequate, no better than social work with a pious face. Wright acknowledged that he was generalising and caricaturing here.

It is about time the gospels and the epistles were brought together. To do that, we need to consider the great biblical themes of new creation and covenant. Genesis 1 is programmatic. This fallen world is being redeemed: Luke 8, like Genesis 1-2 are about seed being sown and bearing fruit. The renewal of the covenant is described in creation terms. The Old Testament reading we had - Ruth 2 - points to this - abundance and fruitfulness. Paul’s letters are full of new creation allusions, according to Wright, but to unpack that would take a whole series of lectures. As Wright said, “Another time.” As in the Lord’s Prayer, this reality is to be increasingly known now, on earth as it is in heaven. But it will not come through our own attempts to make the world just a little bit better than it is now. It is new creation, and it comes as people are redeemed and transformed through the gospel message. The doctrine of new creation is like Nelson looking out and keeping the hordes who advocate a two-tier universe (being saved from the earth for heaven) at bay.

The heart of the new creation is the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Evangelicals have tended to have the wrong emphasis on the resurrection - proof that there is life beyond death, or a purely individulised affect on personal outlook and behaviour. Yes, it is about those things, but it is about new creation. Liberals on the other hand, in seeking to demythologise the resurrection, have removed the theological, ontological and epistomological foundation of their own movement.

This has massive implications. It has implications for the poor, for example, those communities with third-generation male unemployment, those scarred by the closure of the pits. The seed must be sown there. As Ruth 2 indicates, the poor and the foreigner find abundance in God’s new creation. Those who hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and patient heart, and bear fruit and serve the Lord do not have to live sixty miles from London! Wright also pointed out implications for third-world debt and climate change. The former I am not certain of the details and the second I am unconvinced about, but the principle that these things matter to God is, I think sound. He left the rest of the application to us. When we sow the word of the kingdom, it will be plucked from some, others will receive it joyfully at first and then fall away, others will be choked by the cares of the world, but in yet others it will bear fruit, and it is through this that the world is renewed.

Overall, I think it was entirely fair. Evangelicals and liberals rightly got beaten up by Wright in his sermon. A couple of things to be concerned about have been highlighted by a learned minister of the word. Wright has a tendency to identify two errors and then present his view as the solution to them. Also, while error is error, the consequences of the liberals’ error, rejecting the gospel of salvation from sin, are different to the consequence of the evangelicals’ error, while they were presented as equivalent. I think that’s a fair representation of what he said. If anyone was there and wants to add or correct something, please do. I’m hoping there’ll be a transcript to which I can link in the near future.

I was very impressed by the good bishop. Now I need to read properly some things he has written on justification so I can get my head around that. But on the new creation and resurrection, he is excellent.

I stumbled across THIS article on preaching fortuitously this afternoon. It resonates with some frustrations with the general conservative evangelical culture a number of friends and I have been discussing recently and I think it is spot on in its analysis. It highlights failures in contemporary English conservative evangelical preaching, and points to reasons for these weaknesses. It has also made me want to go and repent of my past preaching in sackcloth and ashes.

The author has a weblog at http://grace-city.blogspot.com/ and I understand he is training for ministry in Cambridge.

Here are some highlights from the article (emphasis mine). I make no apology whatsoever for the fact that this post mainly consists of lots of quotations and a few comments.

This paragraph describes the problem well:

The anecdotal evidence that was the germ seed of this article was simply the large numbers of people from within evangelical circles who express dissatisfaction with preaching. From Ireland, England, America and Australia, I have heard a large number of faithful, enthusiastic and Biblically literate Christians complain that they find the preaching they listen to regularly, to be of a poor standard and not very helpful to them in their relationship with God. After hearing a number of people talk about this I began to notice common threads in the complaints. Again and again people complained of a ‘dryness’ and a ‘patronising tone.’ There are many who feel frustrated that every week they hear a simple issue preached about ‘as if it is a complex issue’. Numerous people are exasperated that they are constantly told the preaching in their church is of a high quality- but no matter how attentively it is listened to, God still appears to be distant and cold. Others are told by a friend that the sermon was ‘excellent’- but when they are asked what was so good about it, no meaningful answer can be given One person put it well, “The preacher tells me life is about a personal relationship with God, but then he seems to just give me impersonal facts.”

He goes on to point to some reasons:

There may be two problems that have developed as a result of the drive for clarity. Firstly, there can be the unspoken assumption that making things clear is the principle [sic] task of a preacher. The preacher can then spend a lot of time trying to explain issues in the passage - such a focus tends to produce a patronising tone. People are quick to notice this!

Secondly, our desire for simplicity has lead to many definitions and phrases becoming accepted jargon in preaching. The phrases have developed as simple explanations of key ideas in Christianity; such a thing is desirable. However many of these are simple to the point of ignoring rich and deep insights of previous generations of Bible teachers. This problem is all the more serious as the areas of theology that have been summarised by these catchphrases are naturally the ones most central to explaining the gospel.

While the author rejoices that the church has advanced in its welcome of outsiders, he notes that this has also led to its own problems:

Making things welcoming to outsiders is a matter of being warm and friendly- not assuming that they are not clever enough to understand our supposedly intellectual teaching. Outsiders notice when evangelicals feel awkward about issues such as The Lord’s Supper, financial giving, hell or teaching topics that clash with modern secularism. There is no need to feel awkward about these issues- unbelievers know they are coming to the church as opposed to some other gathering such as the cinema.

While the author affirms that Scripture must have an effect on the lives of the hearers, certain forms of application can be harmful:

This advance may have led to an unexpected problem- there is an overwhelming tendency to focus on external activities in application. The application turns out to be an invitation to come to a prayer meeting, Bible study or encouragement to do evangelism. This focus on the external is harmful as it ignores the deeper and prior internal aspect. We ought to recognise that the internal desires and attitudes are the foundational aspect of a person, and it is to these the arrows of application need to be shot. Aiming for the external only results in a superficial change, not the deep heart change the Spirit brings about.

Focusing on the external application of a passage also tends to produce a heavy handed shepherding approach, where the preacher gives the impression that he knows what is best for other people’s lives, when in actual fact the situation may be more complex. Listeners begin to feel squeezed and pressurised into doing the applications. Once they give in and do the activities suggested they are given a false assurance that they are experiencing genuine relationship with God. In actual fact they may merely be ticking external check lists, while the deeper internal reality of a relationship with God starves and shrivels up.

The author affirms the centrality of preaching (the undermining of which by Bible study groups must not be permitted) in glowing terms:

Only in preaching is the church family gathered to grow together. As the most authoritative method of proclamation, preaching displays the glorious authority of the gospel to command all to repent and cast their hopes on Jesus Christ. The gospel is not up for debate, it is not an idea to be played with- it is God declaring that He is God and in Christ has conquered sin, wrath and death. The power and majesty of the gospel is exhibited by pulpit preaching in a way that it cannot be by other methods. People can be exhorted, moved, threatened and affected by preaching in a way very conducive to awakening genuine faith and love in Jesus.

There is much to be said for the affective element in preaching, which has been neglected, perhaps as an overreaction to other Christian circles:

The affectionate teaching of Jonathan Edwards is little more than an explanation of what it really means to have a relationship with God. He argued that facts were necessary for a relationship, but the foundational and crucial thing in a relationship is more to do with feeling the passion of love, the joy of thankfulness, the sadness of sin, the eager hunger for heaven and the zeal to win people to Christ. Talking about the activities that may accompany such passions is no substitute for stirring up the passions.

We step back from that tradition for many reasons - culture, other groups’ excesses and our own culpable sinfulness. Sermons end up becoming explanations of facts within a passage because fundamentally we feel more comfortable with such cold lifeless things than we do with the immensity of a God of passion and power. People complain that sermons do not seem to be an experience of hearing God speak - because we have shifted the agenda to such an extent that hearing God speak is no longer the aim of a sermon. We are too scared to hear God speak, so we preach our non relational framework instead. This should not surprise us - for it is exactly the kind of thing our sinful nature tends to cause. It is the essence of sin that it creates a desire within us to avoid genuine relationship with God. Unless we actively guard against the influence of sin in this area it will bear fruit.

He goes on to say:

Our sermons are weak because we have forgotten that love requires more than facts, and the passion of love for Christ is set alight only by preaching that is not scared of relational engagement with the text, God and people.

He points to Calvin’s example:

Calvin was not satisfied with an accurate explanation of the facts of the gospel- he realised that the whole point of preaching was to stir up a ’sense of’ God’s wonder, to make men ‘feel’ the reality of their dependence on God - in short to place their entire ‘happiness’ in God. Piety was the word Calvin used to denote this warm, experiential, heart felt depth of personal relationship which is the fruit of the gospel.

He has a stinging conclusion:

Dealing with the matters of the heart should be our default position - it should naturally arise from our sermons, not be found despite them. To the extent that our preaching has lost the affectionate relational aspect of the gospel, our lives let the vitality of true piety seep out, leaving behind a cold mechanistic life style. To put it bluntly - a sermon that does not stir up a deeper love for Jesus is not a Christian sermon. It may have many excellent features and could possibly be a good lecture, but it is nonetheless a failure as a sermon.

We had a very helpful sermon on Matthew 24.36-25.13 last night. I’m still convinced ch. 24.1-35 is about AD 70 (more to follow in the fullness of time), but, following some of David Field’s comments on Matthew 24 I think a transition to the second coming in v. 36ff can be sustained. The disciples ask two questions - one about the destruction of the temple and the one about his coming and the close of the age - and it is quite reasonable to see that Jesus answers them in turn. There is a transition from references to “those days” to “that day” in v. 36. Moreover, the language of being cut in pieces and being put with the hypocrites in the place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, and of the bridegroom coming to the marriage feast is suggestive that Christ’s second coming is in view here.

One thing that was highlighted last night was that the point of being ready and keeping watch in light of Christ’s unknown return is to make sure we are serving God faithfully and relating to the Lord Jesus. The emphasis in the parables is on the bridegroom’s delay.

I merely want to add to that the further point that none of this requires the Christian to believe that Jesus could return at any moment. For example, Peter is told in John 21.19 that he would die before Jesus returns. He certainly wasn’t expecting Jesus to return in his lifetime. Yet that didn’t negate the need for him to be faithful and prepared in the present. Indeed, there’s a thought going round at the back of my mind that maybe the fact that the virgins in the second parable, having prepared (or not) beforehand fall asleep and are woken by the cry that the bridegroom has arrived suggests that Jesus’ hearers were even meant to expect that they would die and then be raised up to meet their Lord when he finally returned. A long delay is to be expected. Murray in The Puritan Hope also makes the point that the expectation that Jesus could return in the lifetime of each generation of Christians, from the first generation onwards, would mean that we have been misled for the past 2000 years.

Given that we have the promise, for example, that “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you” (Psalm 22.27), and since we don’t quite see that yet, on the basis of God’s word, we don’t have to live expecting that Jesus could return at any moment. Yet the master’s delay isn’t a license for unfaithfulness and unreadiness. We need to serve faithfully in the light of his eventual return, and make sure that we are obeying the gospel, and repenting of our sins and trusting in Christ.

I currently have the pleasure of reading John Piper’s The Pleasures of God with a friend. The more I read, the more I grow in respect and admiration for this man. He clearly has a big brain (well, he does have a doctorate in theology), and he uses words like ‘ineluctable’ that I have to look up in a dictionary.

In the second chapter (’The pleasure of God in all he does’) he recounts a letter he wrote to someone who was preaching at a conference who taught that God is our model risk-taker. The impression I’m getting is that Piper is very much a gospel optimist and may well have postmillennialist leanings, and I’d love to know where I might go to find out more about his eschatology. He references The Puritan Hope mentioned in a previous post a few times and recommends it as further reading for those who were inspired by the pleasure of God in all he does to spend themselves in world mission. In answer to a point about God taking a risk by entrusting the Great Commission into our hands, he writes:

The Great Commission is not in question. “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14 - although I’m not sure that’s what this verse is about). “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. For dominion belongs to the LORD and he rules over the nations” (Psalm 22:27-28). The full number of the Gentiles shall come in (Romans 11:25). “The earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD” (Numbers 14:21). All of Scripture affirms the victory of God in world missions. It is not in question. God has promised. God is sovereign! Because he rules over the hearts of men and is the Lord of his church, his purpose cannot fail! - p. 57

I was thinking about 1 Corinthians 7 as one does, and further to a comment on a post on singleness last year, I’m warming to the idea that when Paul is saying that singleness is better (1 Corinthians 7.38), he is addressing a particular redemptive-historical context. Could “the present distress” (v. 26), the “appointed time” which has “grown very short” (v. 29), the fact that “the present form of this world is passing away” (v. 31), and the requirement for some slightly odd behavior more in keeping with a temporary situation than normal life (v. 30), be referring not to the whole of the last days, but a particular crisis, maybe even AD 70? Jesus advice for AD 70 (see e.g. Matthew 24.17-19) bears some resemblance to vv. 29 and 30. That then forms the context for the anxiety and divided interests the married man faces which Paul wants to avoid (vv. 33 and 34).

The implication of Paul’s teaching for us in the chapter as a whole is therefore first to be content with our current situation, second realise that there may be particular situations of crisis which makes singleness a better state to be in (not morally, but practically), and since Paul’s aim is to promote good order and secure undivided devotion to the Lord, it seems fair to say that those in some kind of courtship or marriage should be to make sure that they are charactised by good order and undivided devotion to the Lord.

Thanks to Liam Beadle for drawing my attention to the existence of The Puritan Hope by Iain Murray. It’s a stimulating book, showing that the Puritans, as well as Reformers such as Calvin and evangelical leaders of the eighteenth century held to an optimistic view of the future, in which prior to the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, the church would enjoy a blessed state on earth, the nations would be converted to Christ, and the earth would be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. In the main, the belief appears to have been held that abundant gospel blessing for the world would come as a result of the Jews as a race being converted to Christ. They appeal to texts in Romans 11, and I am unconvinced by their arguments. Such an advance of Christ’s kingdom among the nations of the world would come as a result of the work of the Holy Spirit by the preaching of the gospel. Murray believes that this will take the form of a series of revivals; whether the Puritans actually believed that is unclear from his quotations: there may be a degree of imposition of revivalism on the gospel optimism of the Puritans. While we do pray for revival and we believe that God has worked and can work through general revivals, we don’t want bursts of conversions followed by stagnant periods. While we long for revival, we want the fruit of any such activity to include the instruction of the next generation, that they might tell their children, and so that they would set their hope in God (cf. Psalm 78.5-7), and we want such dynastic work to begin now. Murray demonstrates that the fruit of the Puritan optimism that the nations of the world would bow before Jesus Christ as their Saviour and Lord was world mission. Their view that this was a way off in the future in no way diverted their focus from the ultimate hope of Christ’s return and their resurrection from the dead. They did not feel it necessary to believe that Christ could come at any moment.

Murray then introduces us to the premillennialists (among whose ranks even J. C. Ryle could be found, and who could work out what Spurgeon thought?), who believed that things would get worse and worse until Christ returned (and that could happen any day), raised the dead believers and reigned with them on the earth for a thousand years, before the judgment. The fruit of this was a lack of long-term gospel investment. What mattered was saving souls now, not building missionary schools that would be their in two hundred years’ time. No longer was the work valued like the explorations of David Livingstone, in preparation for future missions. Murray doesn’t deal with the amillennialist position for whatever reason, although it should be clear that the general pessimistic outlook and the belief in the potential for Christ’s imminent return are common to both and they do have similar fruit, with the lack of planning for the long term and a tendency to a lack of appreciation of anything that isn’t directed to the immediate salvation of souls. “What’s the point of X? It’ll burn anyway.” But what about building an inheritance for our children and our children’s children? We have departed from the hope of the Puritans, a hope which had such a wide and deep impact.

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. - 1 Corinthians 15.24-26

Christ has been raised from the dead, ascended into heaven, and is now reigning at the right hand of the Father. When he returns, he will hand the kingdom to the Father. But he will only hand the kingdom over after everything has been put in subjection to him, death included. This subjection of all things, the last of which is death is a process that takes place while Christ reigns before he returns and hand the kingdom back to the Father. I take it therefore, in this time after the ascension of Christ, that we can assume that to an increasing extent, Christ’s enemies will be conquered, so that by the time he returns, all his enemies will have been conquered (then the last enemy, death, is destroyed and the kingdom is handed over to the Father).

I warmly recommend Doug Wilson’s sermon on the Ascension, which I think is a great exposition of Philippians 3.20-21. Because of the ascension, earth has a new capital city, heaven. ‘Our citizenship is in heaven’ doesn’t mean that we’re just passing through this world and then we’ll go to heaven for all eternity. It means that the church is a colony of heaven, that is, ruled by heaven and intended to spread the rule and influence of heaven around it (just as Philippi was a Roman colony, and that didn’t mean that everyone would retire from Philippi to Rome). Bishop Tom Wright makes the same point in his in many ways excellent book Surprised by Hope. We do not live in a gnostic two-storey universe in which we’re waiting to be saved from this terrible world to go to heaven where everything will be nice. When we go to heaven, it will be appropriate to ask, “How long before we get to go home?”. When we die, we visit the capital city temporarily, before Christ returns and renews the earth. In the meantime, we look forward to his coming, when all things will be subject to him. We can expect that before his coming, most things (death excepted) will be subject to him. This will be achieved by the preaching of the gospel. The fact that the earth will be transformed rather than thrown away means that our labours in the Lord now are not in vain, even if the labours of the world’s empires are (where is Assyria now? Babylon? The Medes? The Persians?). We should start Christian businesses and schools with the hope that they will pass from one generation to another and still be there in a few hundred years’ time. God behaves inappropriately towards us. He shows us grace and mercy in redeeming us, sending his Son to die for our sins, which we don’t deserve.