Escaping the Beast

Revelation is perhaps best known for being unknown. Apart from the first five, and possibly the last two chapters, most people, certainly myself included, would struggle to tell you much about what was going. Except it's weird. Weird and scary. It's certainly hard to read the visions of judgement in the middle of the book and come away worrying about anything else other than how to stand before a Holy God. Which is good. It's obscurity is a bit of a shame though, not only because it's as much part of the cannon as 2 Timothy or mark, but because it's (unsurprisingly) full of good stuff.

Today i was in chapter 12, a vision of the devils persecution of the church. I've been reflecting all day more or less on 2 Timothy 3:12, which seems to be a promise more than a warning, and this chapter doesn't shy away from the rage of the heaven dismissed devil chasing the church with it's destruction in mind. This is real, this happens today. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist. He prowls around us like a hungry lion, looking for someone to devour...how will we resist? Revelation 12:11 gives us three ways:

1) They overcame by the blood of the Lamb.
On account of Jesus blood shed for her on the cross, the church will overcome. What are we to do when the devils comes to us with what we did and thought and said yesterday? When he tries to convince us that our sin means we cannot possibly live in relationship with God, what will we do? The problem with those accusations are that they are true. The devil doesn't need to make up my sins, they're right before me. We remember the blood of the lamb. Because Christ died on the cross there is now no condemnation. There is no more punishment due for my sins. Nothing left to pay, it's all been done at the cross. What a glorious truth, and a mighty weapon in the battle against the devil.

2) By the word of their testimony.
Probably not just 'how i became a Christian' but certainly not less than that. Keep preaching the Gospel, to yourself, to Christians and non Christians. Keep it on your lips and it will warm your heart. Keep speaking, believing and obeying the Gospel all the time. The quiet Christian is the troubled Christian.

3) By not loving their own lives even unto death.
How were they able to do that? How can we? By remembering that death is gain. It's hard to defeat an enemy finally when killing them means they win. It's hard to lose a fight when being killed in action means ultimate victory. These truths stir my heart like few other. They make me want to go to eastern Europe, or the subcontinent and spend my life traipsing from village to village with the Gospel and nothing else. And yet, it can be hard. The devil will convince us, by degree, that staying alive and being comfortable really is preferable to living a life of radical Christ like obediance. A new car or giving to the church building fund? A holiday abroad or supporting a missionary? Larger savings or contributing to the translation of the Bible? If our lives are caught up in the here and now, we will struggle to not love them even to the point of death. If we hold all we have cheap, including our own lives, the devils pursuit of us will lose it's vigour and efficiacy.

In Christ is the victory, we just walk on the road of emulation and obediance. But walk we must.

Fish and Questions

Mars Hill had the hugely successful 'ask anything' series where mark Driscoll promised to preach, and is preaching through, the nine most popular questions as posed on the church website. At Reading Family Church we're doing things slightly differently. Sean Green, who leads the team that leads the church, has asked 'how do you know when God has asked you to do something?'

Go tell him!

Nooma reviews

Greg Gilbert, who is the director of research for the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and an elder at Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, has written three long articles reviewing Rob Bell's popular Nooma videos. He communicates his issues with them far better than i ever did.

In the end, the view of Christianity that Rob Bell communicates in Nooma is just too lifeless, too colourless, too anaemic, and sadly in some cases... just wrong. Any message that claims to be Christian and yet comes out with ' My understanding of Jesus’ message is that he teaches us to live in the reality of God now—here and today. It’s almost as if Jesus just keeps saying, ‘Change your life. Live this way'. Not only misses the point to such a large degree as almost to be off the scale, but also runs the risk of misleading both Christians and non believers alike...

The lack of emphasis on the cross is obviously troubling as well. But understandable. If you don't look at the cross long enough, and in the sweep of the whole Bible, you miss the glory, you miss the gutsy, full blooded hope that it gives to sinners, all you see is something that just doesn't fit into an 'emergent' model. All you see is a demonstration of something rather than anything objective. You end up thinking that Caesar killed Jesus. As Gilbert says 'That’s the real tragedy of Bell’s approach to the cross. He’s not willing to stare at it long enough to see its glory. The wrath inherent to it is so distasteful to him, so off-putting to the audience he’s speaking to, that he ends up, sadly, without the resources to tell his listeners about the most profound and most beautiful love in the universe.'

***Update: Carson on Rob Bell***

Evangelism and Response

Tom, an anonymous commenter on my last post, wrote this:

'Using anger and judgement as a starting point in evangelism, is without good reason, unbiblical and insensitive'

of a quote by John Piper from the book 'the Supremacy of Christ in a postmodern world' based on messages from that conference. So is he right? As i think about Reading's mission week next week, it's good to spend some time thinking about the Gospel and how to inject it into todays universities.

So when i'm flyering outside the library next week, will my starting point be God's (perfectly just) anger and judgement and incoming unstoppable wrath? Well, no to be honest probably not. I love flyering, i like the window of oppotunity it gives me into other people's lives, the chance to be a bit cheeky to some of them, and of course, the thought that by passing them a bit of paper their eternity might be about to change is pretty exciting. So when would i go to wrath and judgement? later, but i would get there. It is very very diffcult, probably impossible to be faithful to the Biblical account of the cross without mentioned God's fury at our sin. It's impossible to talk about the Gospel, without talking about the cross, because the cross makes the announcement 'Jesus Christ is Lord' the best news there is, rather than utterly terrifying news. So talking about the fury of God about sin will, and probably should happen fairly early on in evangelism. This is not for shock value, this is because the Gospel is not a self help programme.

But enough me, what about Jesus? What about how He did evangelism? Two striking and contrasting examples i've been living with recently are the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8: 1-11 and Jesus teaching on Moses in John 5:30-47. John 8 sees Jesus defends the woman from the wrath of the pharisees. Sure, she had sinned, but who among them hadn't? Let he without sin cast the first stone...only Jesus can cast the stone, but Jesus has mercy, Jesus shows mercy. And if the woman goes and really does 'sin no more' (which i take to mean, live a life of repentance and reliance on the grace of God alone) then this approach works. What about John 5? One of those passages that you read and think to yourself 'well goodness, no wonder Jesus got killed'. He tells His jewish listeners that neither He nor His Father will accuse anyone...but Moses, He will accuse them. Now, imagine how shocking that would have been to the legalistic jewish audience! Moses, he's our guy, we're on his team...this Jesus must be stopped. Now Jesus isn't just using it for shock value, but it sure would have been shicking.

What about Luke 18:9-14? This man (the one who cried out for mercy) went down to his house justified, rather than the other. Very scary... This man tursted in his own good works for his justification, and even thiugh he thanked God for them, Jesus calls him condenmed...not justified. So we can see, just from those three examples, that Jesus used a mixture of care, shock and judgement images in his evangelism.

But even then, i'm not sure thats the point. The Gospel is the announcement, proclamation, the warning of facts, concerning the risen Jesus that affect our present and our future. Judgement is a huge part of that message. It's about Jesus, it's not a cardon copy of Jesus. What about the other Bible writers? Paul had no problem calling people accursed in Galatia, he warned the Corinthian church that people had died for mistreating the Lord's Supper. He even rebuked Peter! Peter called false prophets and teachers 'waterless springs and mists driven by storms, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved', James warned people who did not bridle their tongue that their religion was worthless. John, of course, records the terrifying picture of the winepress in Revelation 19, and tells us that it would be better for rocks to fall on some people's heads, rather than for them to face Jesus on His throne. Now, of course, none of that is mutually exclusive with deep and rich pastoral evangelistic sensitivity, but hopefully it demonstrates that talking about wrath in discipleship or evangelism is not unbiblical. Shocking yes, unbiblical, no.

What about insensitive then? Well, we must be very, very careful when we answer people's questions. Why is there suffering could mean from 'why did my mum die last year' to 'look i just want to cause you problems with my questions' and everything in between. So we need to explore that and be sensitive. But we need not, and must not forsake the holiness of God in our evangelism, and what it means for our sins, and our eternity. If my generation has lost sight of one key doctrine, it is the holiness of God. Isaiah had to reinvent the Hebrew language to communicate God's holiness, He is called 'holy holy holy'. Never 'love love love'. God is coming to make war on sin and unrepentant sinners, He is not a frogiveness fairy in the sky. So is it insensitive? Yes, in some cases absolutley, and we must beware in those cases and be sensitive. But it is a little bit like the Hiroshima business man waking up on 6th August 1945 and saying 'my business is in trouble, my wife is sick, my kids are going crazy...don't come here and tell me about the Enola Gay'. And something much much worse is coming.

"When the author walks on the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right...something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise...it will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up."
- CS Lewis

Piper on Christ

We need to proclaim that God is angry with the whole world. If you don't obey the Son then the wrath of God rests on you. There's so much mealy mouthed hesitancy to talk about the most important things in the world, namely getting right with a holy God who will crush you forever if you don't go to the Son he has provided. I came away feeling like i just don't want to play games anymore. Life is short. I don't know how long i have. Jesus as He stands supreme from the Gospels is spectacularly supreme and beautiful and glorious and tough and tender and worthy and attractive and satisfying. Why wouldn't you want to give your life to this?

Piper on writing 'what Jesus demands from the world' in The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World' P150

Friday links

Greg Gilbert has been writing about music:

There’s a whole generation of young people out there now, though, who aren’t emotionally affected by words, whose fires are only stoked when those words are accompanied by great rhythms, skilled instrumentation, and a certain well-recognizable mood that typically accompanies Christian “praise-and-worship.” And the result is that you have young people church-hopping around town, and one of the main criteria of their shopping is “the worship,” by which more often than not they mean “the music.” You have young Christians feeling discouraged because—despite the fact that they sit under faithful preaching of the word Sunday after Sunday—they say they haven’t “felt close to God” in so long. Maybe there’s something important going on there. But there’s also a good chance, I’d argue, that they just haven’t had a good endorphin rush since the last conference they attended.

Dan Phillips tells us a horror story:

It has many of the classic elements. It was apparently night time; there had been a terrible storm; graveyards — and demons. Lots and lots of demons.

and Martin Luther is just brilliant:

“I resist the devil, and often it is with a fart that I chase him away. When he tempts me with silly sins I say, ‘Devil, yesterday I broke wind too. Have you written it down on your list?’”

rubbing my eyes

The Premier League are not, sadly, renown for having the best interests of the wider football world at heart, but today it seems to have hit a massive new low.

If this idea ever happens, not only will i stop watching football, i'll pretend i never liked it in the first place... The worst quote surely is from Mihir 'man of the people' Bose:

Some fans may feel aggrieved, but their concerns will be outweighed in the eyes of the clubs by the financial advantages.

Brilliant

Theology network is live

Christian theology is the most exciting thing possible because it's simply about knowing God better, loving Jesus more, and joining the revolution to bring God's Word to God's world.

Revolution and reformation

I guess the link between evangelism and discipleship, or, better put, what to do with new Christians after they're saved has been a problem since Acts. Too often i've been involved when the approach has either been 'well, you were saved by grace but now you need to do this stuff', or people have ended up thinking 'i'm not saved by anything i do, so it doesn't matter if i live in the same way now that i used to'. Both with some obvious glorious truth applied in a horrible way.

And this is a serious business. Luke tells us:

When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up the spoils.

"He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters

"When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first."

The devil here is depicted as a strong man, someone who can look after himself and doesn't have too many worries about secutiry. His house is his domain, and he rules it without opposition. And yet, when a stronger man comes, the first man is disarmed. Suddennly his arnmour is useless to him, and he has no defence. he was been overthrown. Revolution has come to his house. This is the work that Christ has accomplished on the cross. He has disarmed the strong man, by his death and ressurection, he has overthrown the devils rule in the hearts of many, and rules there. Revolution has come.

But revolution on it's own is not enough. It's not just enough to have the devil overthrown. Our previous passion for the evil one must be replaced with an ardour for our new King, for our savior, the One who has overthrown. Look at the next paragraph. The evil spirits leave the house and can not find rest. So he returns. And what does he find? Not a fortress of love for the new ruler of the house, not a well defended refuge built at the foot of calvary, but instead a house 'swpt clean and out in order'. A house no longer under the devastating rule of the devil, but not aflame with anything else. Just well swept and put in order. Like a show home.

So what happnes? The enemy returns to the house, and the state of it is worse than before. Seven times worse. There was no defence, no home was made for the new King, no preparation made for the hardships to come. On the outside the house looked ok, but it was empty and void. A sitting target.

Our love must be replaced, we must fall for and commit to Jesus wholeheartedly, and more importantly than that, we must make sure that the people that respond to the Gospel in mission week season experience not only revolution, as one king is overthrown for the real King, but also reformation, as the affection and dedication for one king is replaced by affection and dedication for the real King. This is an impossible taks, which is why 2 Corinthians 3:17-4:6 is one of my favourite and most encouraging passages of scripture. We can't make the light shine, God does. Whats our part? preaching the Gospel. Not just to the unsaved but, since the Gospel is God's appointed means of salvation and sanctification, we teach new converts too. And people who have been Christians all their lives. And ourselves. Then, when this light shines brighter than any other Christians will understand why 'don't sleep around' is not a proscription but a prescription. Not something to steal life away, but to impart life and joy. Then we will see not just converts but disciples, people ready to give their all for thier new, revolutionising, reforming, saving, mission enabling King.

Fresh publicity

I wrote last week sometime about the new book 'Fresh' by Krish Kandiah. Here are what some people have said about it:

“As fresh as its title, this is a brilliant introduction to student life, in accessible, daily bite-size chunks of Christian wisdom.
Down to earth and thoroughly realistic, its focus is 100% Biblical and its tone positive and up-beat, full of practical tips and encouragement.

Every Christian student needs to read it!”

David Jackman (Proclamation Trust)

"After years as a student followed by more in ministry to students I am now a parent of one - so, from every angle I can tell you this is a vital book for all Christians going to uni. Buy the coffee mugs and railcard if you like - but whatever you buy, get this book"

Nick Pollard (Damaris Trust)

It'll be launched in March 2008.