Archive for October, 2008

Faith and encouragement

October 27, 2008 at 3:30 pm · Filed under Christian living, Jesus Christ, Old testament ·Tagged , , ,

Faith and encouragement

Jeremiah 32: 6-15, Heb 11:1-10

One day the Devil was showing his junior demons around his workshop. On the bench and arrayed around the walls were all kinds of implements: tools which Satan used to harm God’s people:

·  There was a horrible spiky object – “this is Spite and Hatred, that’s very useful”.
·  There was a rat-like thing -  “this is Envy which gnaws at a person’s soul until they have no peace”.
·  “These chains and fetters are Lust and Avarice. With these I load people down and prevent them from being free”.
·  “In this bottle is a bitter potion  – an Unforgiving Spirit. It can poison a person’s whole life”.

“But here is my most powerful weapon”: and he held up a small, sharp, insignificant thing -  just like a little pebble that might get in you shoe and stop you walking properly.  “This really hinders people”. 

“What is it?” said the junior demons.
“It’s Discouragement,” said Satan. 
Discouragement stops people from doing what God wants them to do and from being what God wants them to be. Don’t get discouraged in the Christian life. It is easy to do so when we consider our own failures, the weaknesses of the Christian church, or the world’s attitudes to Christian standards. All these things can discourage us. But discouragement is a form of unbelief – it is  the opposite of faith. And conversely: faith is the antidote to discouragement.

Jeremiah and the field

The Bible is full of examples of people of faith – Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Ruth, Daniel, Esther. Many of these are named in the great “hall of fame” of people of faith in Hebrews 11.

One great man of faith is Jeremiah. He lived at a time of great wickedness. The people of Judah had turned from the true and living God. They worshipped idols – even in the Temple itself. They sacrificed their children to the god Moloch. Immorality was rife in pagan temples. The rich oppressed the poor. There were great inequalities. All the prophets had spoken out against these sins but the people would not listen. And they wouldn’t listen to Jeremiah either. He warned them of a coming destruction – that God was going to let his people be overcome by their enemies the Babylonians because they had abandoned him. If they would turn from their sins there was a chance God would spare them as he had done in the past.

Alas, they did not repent, and it all happened just as Jeremiah had predicted. The Babylonians came and invaded the land, and then Jeremiah was thrown into prison as a traitor. (He had predicted this invasion so he must have been on the enemy’s side!)  Yes, Jeremiah had a lot to be sorrowful about, and his name has become a byword for gloom and doom. (“Don’t be a Jeremiah!”, people say.) But at the darkest hour – when he could have been excused for lapsing into discouragement Jeremiah showed tremendous faith. (Jer. 32)

At the very time the army of the King of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem, and Jeremiah was locked up in the courtyard of the guard, he made arrangements to buy a field from his cousin Hanamel! 17 shekels of silver were weighed out, the deeds, signed, sealed and witnessed. Then Jeremiah gave the deeds to his assistant Baruch, who was told to put them in an earthenware jar so they would keep for a long time.

You see, Jeremiah had faith that the time would come when the Babylonians would themselves be defeated and the Jews would be allowed to return to their land.

 ”This is what the LORD says: As I have brought all this great calamity on this people, so I will give them all the prosperity I have promised them. 
Once more fields will be bought in this land of which you say, ‘It is a desolate waste, without men or animals, for it has been handed over to the Babylonians.’ 

Fields will be bought for silver, and deeds will be signed, sealed and witnessed in the territory of Benjamin, in the villages around Jerusalem, in the towns of Judah and in the towns of the hill country, of the western foothills and of the Negev, because I will restore their fortunes, declares the LORD.”
(Jeremiah 42-44 )

The people must have thought Jeremiah was a fool – to pay so much money for a useless bit of land which would soon be overrun by the enemy. “A fool and his money are soon parted”, they must have said.

But Jeremiah’s faith was vindicated – 70 years later, fields were indeed bought and sold in that land. Life did returns to normal. The Jews did return to their land and they even rebuilt the Temple. The future of Judah was assured.

Now we have need for the same kind of faith. We wonder what the future holds for Christianity in Wales. The way that both chapels and churches are declining. We may even wonder if it worth  trying to live the Christian life.  Or we may grow despondent about the state of society and the way our nation is going. Like Jeremiah we must have faith in a God who is in control of the future.

 

The prayer of faith

Faith is not only the antidote to despair – it is the fuel for prayer.
“Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11: 6)
Faith is the driving force behind prayer, and prayer without faith is like a car without petrol. But when we pray we have to put our faith into action.

Hudson Taylor was a great pioneer missionary in China in the c19th. When he was on his way to China, the ship in which he was sailing was becalmed in the South Seas. They were very near an island inhabited by people who had a reputation for being fierce cannibals. Inexorably the current was carrying their ship toward the island. There was every possibility they would be killed an eaten.

The Captain and crew were desperate and said to Hudson Taylor: “Please pray to God for us.”
“Yes, if you will set up your sails to catch the wind God sends”.

Now, the Captain didn’t want to be a laughing stock: he refused to set up the sails in a dead calm.
“Very well then, I will not pray”.  Eventually the Captain was desperate enough to do what Hudson Taylor had said: he gave orders to raise the sails.  Hudson Taylor got down on his knees in his cabin and began to pray for wind. After some considerable time there came a knock on his cabin door.
“Are you still praying for wind?”
“Yes”.
“Well, Captain says you can stop  now – we’ve more wind than we can manage!”

This incident show us the kind of faith we need to have. It has to be linked to action. Prayer and action go together. We need to pray in faith and act in faith as that captain did. Let us be open to whatever God might be asking us to do.

Conclusion

“Let us not grow weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap a harvest, if we do not lose heart.”  (Gal. 5: 9).

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The Top Ten

October 6, 2008 at 1:13 pm · Filed under Christian living, Old testament ·Tagged ,

Exodus 20:1-21,  1 John 4:7-21

Introduction

The Ten Commandments – what a topic! There was a time when every well brought-up child could recite them. In former times they were displayed on the wall of  every parish church in the land. In the USA at the moment there is a debate on the posting of the Ten Commandment in schools. It is surely good thing that people should know the Commandments. But he trouble with this approach is that  some will get the idea that the Christian faith is a legalistic thing – just a list of do’s and don’ts.

Also one can look at the Commandments and become pharisaical. We can say, “I’ve never murdered anyone, I’ve never stolen, I’ve never committed adultery”. So we think we are sure to get a place in heaven because of our goodness. Whereas the Gospel is a matter of Grace, not Law.
 
But we do need the Law. After all, it’s no use telling people that Jesus is the answer to their sins if they don’t even feel they’ve got any sins. So it is the task of the preacher,  not just to proclaim the Good News, but also to teach the Law, which is the essential preparation for faith in Christ.

This is how it works: we hear the Law and we try to obey the Commandments. Under the convicting influence of the Holy Spirit we come to realise that we can never keep these Commandments perfectly. And so we throw ourselves on the mercy of God and the grace of Jesus.

 

In Galatians  Paul writes that the Law is like a guardian or schoolmaster to lead us to Christ.

 Before this faith came, we were all held prisoners by the law. We had no freedom until God showed us the way of faith that was coming. In other words, the law was our guardian leading us to Christ so that we could be made right with God through faith. Now the way of faith has come, and we no longer live under a guardian.
(Galatians 3: 23 – 25)

The primary purpose of the Law is to lead us to faith in Jesus. Then its secondary  task is to give us guidelines for Christian living as we seek to live out the spirit of the Commandments. Jesus said that the whole Law could be summed up by: “Love God with all your being, and love your neigbour as you love yourself”. (Matthew 22:34-40)

The first four of the Ten Commandments are all about our relationship with God and the remaining six about our dealings with one another.

If your tired of those chart shows on TV in which they list the 100 best  programmes, or the 100 worst dressed men, then turn away from the world and look at God’s “Top Ten” Commandments:

 
No. 1: No other Gods

God wants us to love and worship him.  But we have this fatal tendency to make gods out of other things. For the Israelites there was always the temptation to worship the various gods of the nations around them. We might think that this is not a problem today, but even in this C21st. millions of people worship other gods. In the Hindu religion alone, thousands of gods are worshipped.

 
No.2: No idols

We are commanded not to make or worship idols – that is, carved or painted images of a person or animal which is meant to represent a divine being. 

Again, we can see many literal idols if we look at the various religions of the world. And some forms of Christianity are not free of their images of saints and the Virgin Mary. People bow down and offer prayer to these images. As Protestants we remember that this was one of the reasons for the Reformation.

The Apostle John wrote: Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.     (1 John 5: 21)
But idols are not just literal carved images. We can hold a wrong conceptions of God in our minds and we can worship these rather than the true God.  These too are idols.

 
No.3:  Don’t take the name of the Lord in vain

That is : do not misuse his name.
We tend to think of profanity here – people using the names of God or Jesus as swear words. But there is more to it than that. If we use God’s name in an empty or frivolous way we take it in vain. God’s ‘Name’ is his nature. If we bring dishonor to him in any way we take his name in vain. As Christians we bear the name of Christ: do we live up to that name or do we bring shame upon it?

Jesus said:  Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?                      (Luke 6:  46)

So you could argue that the religious hypocrite is misusing the Lords name more than the most foul-mouthed blasphemer.

 
No.4: Keep the Sabbath.

 This commandment was given was so that the Israelites would not become slaves to work. They had formerly been slaves in Eegypt, but now they were free.

It’s good also for the Christian to keep a day for rest and for worshipping God. To remind us that spiritual things are more important even than our daily work.
The next six Commandments are all about our human relationships:
No.5: Honour your father and your mother

This is  about respect for older people and for those in authority, as well as for actual parents’.

This respect is one of the pillars of any stable society. In our inner cities young men grow up without paternal authority. They have no positive male role models to follow. They join violent gangs which become like a surrogate family for them – and then we wonder why we have an increase in knife crime and violence.

 

No.6:  Don’t kill

 - or rather, “don’t murder”. (This is the literal meaning of the word.) This Commandment  forbids unlawful killing.  Respect for human life is also a sign of a civilized society. Respect for human life in all its phases – from womb to grave.

The Nazis would be a prime example of disdain for this commandment. They euthanized the elderly, the handicapped, the mentally ill. They gassed millions of Jews and Gypsies as well as such people as homosexuals, communists and other political opponents. Human life was cheap to them  – it had no intrinsic value.

Jesus pointed out that one can be guilty of murder without actually killing someone
You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.
(Matt 5: 21-22)

and also 1 John 3: 15 we read:
Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

To hate someone is not just to lose your temper with them. It means that you despise them and wish to do harm to them. Such hatred is really murder in the heart.

 
No. 7: Don’t commit adultery.

This teaches the importance of the sanctity of marriage.
Again Jesus makes this relevant to all when he points out that one can commit adultery  in the mind, while appearing to be outwardly respectable.

You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’
But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.       (Matt 5:23:27-28)


No.8:  Don’t steal

Respect for other people’s property. We can think petty pilfering is pretty harmless – a “victim-less” crime, we may think. But it leads to increased costs for everyone and it erodes the structure of society.

 I read once about a man who pilfered a whole lot of plants from his local garden centre over a period of years, and planted them in his garden. Then he became a Christian and he realized he had to make reparation for his theft. So he hired a huge lorry and loaded onto it all the plants from his garden which had been stolen. (Some of them were full-grown shrubs by now.) When he arrived at the garden centre the staff did not know what to do -  there was no protocol for this kind of behaviour!

I can’t help but think there must have been a better way to make reparation – he could have just written a cheque for the amount -  but I have to admire his steadfast determination to make reparation. He took his sin of stealing seriously.

 
No.9:  Don’t  bear false witness

Primarily this applies to the situation in a court of law where lying about someone else could have serious consequences -  even possibly leading to the death of an innocent person. But it is also about those who spread malicious rumours.  By this means we can destroy a person’s reputation. In its widest sense this commandment is about respect for the truth in all its forms.

 
No.10: Don’t covet

We are not allowed to be put out by our neighbour’s success. We are to rejoice when they are doing well. There is nothing so small-minded as resenting what someone else has. It might be his house, or his car, his wife or his family, his wealth, his happiness, his good looks, his fame or his talents. A certain type of person is never happy if their neigbour is doing better than they  – they must ‘keep up with the Joneses’ at all costs.

 

Conclusion

So these are the Ten Commandments. Quite a lot of ‘don’ts’, but they can be expressed in a positive way:
The Ten Commandments put positively

Above all else love God alone;
Bow down to neither wood nor stone.

God’s name refuse to take in vain;
The Sabbath rest with care maintain.

Respect your parents all your days;
Hold sacred human life always.

Be loyal to your chosen mate;
Steal nothing, neither small nor great.

Report, with truth, your neighbour’s deed;
And rid your mind of selfish greed.

(Elton Trueblood}


Or to sum it up even more succinctly, as Jesus did:  Love God and love your neighbour.

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