Christmas, what a great idea!

I love Christmas, I love the presents, I love the Turkey dinner, I love spending time with family and friends but most of all I love that it is about God's love. John tells us that God so loved the world that He sent His one and Only Son into the world so that whoever believes on the Son shall have eternal life. The Son came because God loves us, that is awesome! I love it that at the centre of Christmas is Jesus, the Christ, I love it that no man thought up Christmas it was God's idea. In Genesis while Adam is still hiding in a bush, God comes looking for him. Whilst He comes in judgement He also comes in mercy. The serpent is told that the seed of the woman shall crush Satan's head. That Satan's handiwork would be crushed through the one born of a woman. Later in Genesis, God calls Abraham from paganism, God's idea! He tells him that his seed would be a blessing to all nations, by the end of Genesis we know that this seed will not only be a descendant of Abraham but that he will be of the tribe of Judah.

Luke chapter 2 tells us of a bunch of Shepherds, shepherds in the C1st were not known for their piety, actually it was quite the opposite they were regarded as the scum of the earth. While people were waiting for the Messiah in those days, these shepherds were not waiting. They were not likely to have been in a pray meeting when the Angel showed up. The appearing caught them totally off guard. Maybe moments before they showed up they were drinking and swearing, laughing and mocking each other. These were tough, rough guys. Yet they were the first to hear the message of the gospel. Good news of great joy. A Saviour has been born who is Christ the LORD.

Saviour

Our greatest need is not reformation but transformation. Our greatest need is for the damage of sin and the curse of death through Adam's sin and our own to be removed from us. Jesus came to crush the head of the serpent. It is fitting that this message was given to Shepherds because He had come as the good Shepherd to lay down His life for the sheep. He was also the spotless lamb who John the Baptist said "would take away the sins of the world." He came to save us and to live a perfect life, the life that we should live and then to die in our place.

Christ

It is amazing that the word the Angel used according to Luke is Christ not Messiah because that is a message in itself. God news for all people, while some Jews were waiting for the Messiah not many Gentiles were anticipating the coming of the Messiah. Yet Luke (a Gentile?) writes to tell us that the Angel said good news for all people, Christ has come. David was described as the LORD's anointed or Christ but David had much blood on his hand, he was a sinner, at the end of his life he bows his head in shame and points away from himself to another yet to come. This is true of every King, every High Priest and every prophet. Throughout the OLD Testament there are types of the Messiah to come but they are mere shadows. Jesus is not The LORD's anointed like David, He is the Anointed LORD, fully man and fully God. A mediator between God and man to bring about reconciliation to mankind.

LORD

Luke starts chapter 2 with Augustus master of all he sees, ruler of the greatest empire at that time. Caesar Augustus was regarded as LORD and as a god. The chapter moves on to tell us of the baby born to a lowly peasant woman and placed not in a palace but an animal feeding trough. Yet the Angel tells us that this baby not any in Rome is the LORD, and by this he means LORD God. Paul tells us in Colossians that all things were made through Jesus, through Him and For Him. He is LORD of the universe and the Christmas message is that this God, the creator and sustainer walked amongst us, that God became a missionary to restore a lost world to Himself and that is extremely good news and that is why I love Christmas because it was God's idea.

Merry Christmas

Stephen <><

Calvin on the gift of salvation

I read this succinct comment from Calvin, in Joel Beeke's 365 Days with Calvin this morning.

'Faith is purely a gift from God, so people may not praise themselves for having come to the light of the gospel, in which they have found happiness and salvation. Instead, they ought to glorify God, for they are indebted to him for choosing and calling them to salvation. '

Salvation from a Calvinist perspective is completely a work of God, God working with one energy monergism, or as some people put it one handed salvation. When we consider that salvation is all of God and that the only thing we contribute is our need and our sin then God gets all the praise.

Glory to God in the highest!

Shalom

Stephen <><

Calvinism and Evangelism

Joy and I have just returned from a three week visit to the States, where I got to share a platform with my father-in-law at a School of Evangelism, attend my bro-in-law's wedding and where I got to visit two Bible centred mega churches, one less Bible centred megachurch and a growing new reformed church. My father-in law also gave me his copy of Christianity Today on Calvin the Comeback Kid.

The headline article reminded me of a comment a friend of mine made before we left for our trip, he said why are none of the great evangelists Calvinists? He then proceeded to name several evangelists most of whom were Calvinists. Calvinists are always perceived as being pre-occupied with election and unoccupied with evangelism, this is a misconception. As Mark Dever says, many Calvinists are terrible at personal evangelism but so are many Arminians. Some of the greatest evangelists of the past were Calvinists. Here is a wonderful quote from Timothy George's excellent article from C.T. in September 2009:

The elect are not the elite. There is no place in Calvin's thought for the kind of spiritual snobbery reflected in the old camp-meeting ditty, "we are the Lord's elected few/let all the rest be damned./There's room enough in hell for you,/we don't want heaven crammed!" The true Calvinist preaches the gospel promiscuously to all persons everywhere, aware that God alone infallibly knows all those who belong to Him.

In Calvin's day, Geneva became a great center for church planting, evangelism and even "foreign" missions: a group of Protestants supported by Admiral de Coligny carried the message of Christ to the far shores of Brazil in 1557, more than 60 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. William Carey, the father of modern missions in the 18th century, went to India with a Calvinist vision of a full-sized God- eternal, transcendent, holy, filled with compassion, soveriegnly working with His Holy Spirit to call unto Himself a people from every nation, tribe, and language upon the earth. -C.T. September 2009 p.30

The new reformed church I visited was a baptist church where before they went reformed, the church had had no conversions or baptisms from outside the congregation for years. They are now reaching college students with the gospel and are seeing both conversions and baptisms. They estimate by the end of the year they will have 50 baptisms. Awesome for a small college town.

Let us all be promiscuous in sharing the gospel with the whosoever!

Shalom

Stephen <><

A Song worth singing

I was talking recently with some evangelicals of a different theological stance and they asked me what God was saying to me at the moment. I got to share how I am utterly amazed that as a sinner I have received God's undeserved kindness and how that brings real joy to my life. I was coming home from work a few weeks ago and was moved by Lamentations 'Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed.' How easy it is to forget that we do deserve God's wrath rather than his mercy. Forgetting that it is His love poured out into lives each day which stops us from being consumed by His holy wrath. Isaiah 12 talks about a day when someone will sing 'I will give thanks to you O LORD, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away that you might comfort me.' The realisation that we do deserve wrath is something worth singing about. That God and God alone is our source of strength, that He is our song and that He has become our salvation. Understanding the wrath we deserve is not morbid, it is delightful. It is delightful because it shows God's gracious kindness towards us as more marvelous. Grace is more amazing when you understand that you were a wretch.

Shalom
Stephen <><

An awesome gospel tract

I remember with horror the first christian tracts I ever saw, I think they are called Chic tracts and contained cartoon pictures in black, white and red. The red often represented blood from the period portrayed in the Left Behind movies and they really needed to be left behind themselves. Living Waters however have produced some attractive gospel tracts in the style of £10 stirling, I found yesterday you can't give them away fast enough. On the reverse they ask the million pound question. Will you go to heaven? It then asks have you ever told a lie, stolen anything, used the LORD's name in vain, or looked at someone lustfully? It then presents the bad news that if you have you are a lying, thieving, blasphemous, adulterer at heart and deserving of hell before articulating the gospel. In the last British census 70 % of people claimed to be Christian probably believing that they are good and that good people go to heaven. This tract shows that we are not good because we all fall short of God's standard. These tracts are a useful tool to awaken the conscience to its need of the good news before presenting it. These tracts are very portable too as they can easily be placed in a wallet but don't try to spend them as it might lead to disappointment.

Shalom

Stephen

p.s The note is for one million pounds, I wonder if that is because it has a picture of a credo-baptist on it.

why Christians should blog

Hi,

It has been a while since I blogged hasn't it? It's not that I have come to the conclusion that blogging is unimportant but at the moment what with parenting, working and preaching I seem to have little or no time to blog. A blogging friend of mine, pastor Jonathan Hunt whom I have never met but whose blog I enjoyed has given it up. I wish he hadn't he had a lot of good things to say and his character came out. I have been reflecting on why we should blog and this is my reasoning.

In the C14th an English priest by the name of John Wycliffe translated the Bible into English for the first time. He isn't given the credit for that, that honour goes to William Tyndale whose translation was 200 years later, this was after the invention of the printing press, allowing Tyndale's work to spread easier and faster than Wycliffe's.

The writings of Wycliffe did make it across the Chanel to Bohemia where a young priest by the name of Johan Hus was convinced by Wycliffe's writings and started a mini reformation. The reformation of Europe would have to wait a further 100 years for the preaching and writing of Martin Luther whose writings spread across Europe like a Californian wildfire spreads across a dry forest. The reason Luther's impact was greater under God was the invention of the printing press. Luther took whatever means he could to spread gospel truth across the information super highway of his day. In the C21st we can communicate gospel truth with the use of the Internet. This is the reason why I blog. Here I sit, I can do no other, God help me.

Shalom
Stephen <><

Theology and the Preacher

Yesterday I enjoyed a discussion about what is a preacher and what is a theologian. Sometimes, sadly, they are very different. I know of theologians who cannot preach, worse still I know of plenty of preachers who "don't do theology." I was reminded by Al Mohler that the calling of a pastor is the calling of a faithful theologian. Mohler writes, 'Every pastor is called to be a theologian. This may come as a surprise to those pastors who see theology as an academic discipline taken during seminary rather than as an ongoing and central part of the pastoral calling. Nevertheless, the health of the church depends upon its pastors functioning as faithful theologians-teaching, preaching, defending, and applying the great doctrines of the faith.' R. Albert Mohler 'He is Not Silent' p.105

Mohler goes on to say, 'The Pastoral calling is inherently theological. Given the fact that the pastor is to be teacher of the Word of God and the teacher of the Gospel it cannot be otherwise' p.106

Mohler rightly sets this in context- theology is not the result but the means, the means to faithfulness in preaching, in mission and in discipleship. ' Being faithful to this theological task will obviously require intense and self-conscious theological thinking, study and concentration. If the church is to be marked by faithful preaching, God-honouring worship, and effective evangelism, the pastor must give concentrated attention to the theological task' p.109

I am thankful to God for Albert Mohler and theologians like him who believe in the authority of scripture and the power of God to change lives. I am thankful for my time at HTC where I encountered lecturers like him. We need to pray though that the church will love to grapple with the Word and to seek preachers who preach it and live it.

Shalom

Stephen