1 Corinthians 5 (and a bit of Exodus 12!)

One of the best reasons i can think of for blogging is to help me think. I'm meeting up with Lorenzo tomorrow for some 1 Corinthians 5 action, and i'm not sure i'm really there yet...so maybe this will help. These thoughts owe a lot to Joel Edwards.

1-5

The Corinthian church didn't care about sexual purity, they didn't care about being a church after Christ's heart. We can see this because they didn't deal sufficiently with the man caught in incest. Maybe they were worried about what the rest of the city would think if they started kicking people out. maybe this guy was a leader, maybe he was well supported by his faction. Paul calls them to remove him from membership (i guess thats what 'hand him over to satan so he might be saved). This was serious, this was purity. They didn't care.

6-8

I'm slightly obsessed by this at the moment. Perhaps providentially i was studying Exodus 12:1-29 earlier also for tomorrow. I've never been sure what to do with the middle bit about future dinner plans in the description of the narrative. Paul quotes it here and it's fairly clear he's talking about deal with sin, and the pervasiveness of sin. Get rid of the leaven, because it affects a whole lump. But that can't be a fair application from the Exodus passage can it? That can't be what the Israelites were thinking when they were told/read it at the time/years later. Text + context = meaning i guess.

9-13

Paul doesn't want the church to avoid all the immoral people of Corinth, that would mean hiding from all of them! God will judge the outsider, their conduct was outside the jurisdiction of the church. The insider, however, wasn't. The church needs to deal with this immoral behavior. They need to look different to the world for the sake of the world.

Grace isn't licence. It's not a chance to indulge in sinful passions knowing that it will be ok because of the blood. Christ bought us a new life on the cross, life to the full. Not a life doused in sexual immorality. The church is a group of sinners, so we need to look after eachother. To look out for eachothers sin. Not because some people are without sin, but because all are wary of it's consequences.

As Paul says, Christ, our passover lamb has been sacrificed. So, like the exiting Jews should have done, we need to live in the light, and truth, and beauty of what happened on the cross. And help others to as well...

The Race

The Race have just emerged from the studio having recorded their second album, “In My Head It Works”, with famed producer Dave Eringa - www.daveeringa.com. Their debut album “Be Your Alibi” received enthusiastic critical acclaim on its release on Shifty Disco Records in September 2006:

“Forget Razorlight and their ‘All my life/I've wanted to shift units in America’ empty gestures, The Race are the real winners in the anthemic indie stakes” NME;

Besides this, two of them are regulars at Reading Family Church, so do independent music a favour, and check out their website:

inmyheaditworks

Fixtures

The fixtures for the new football league season were released today. Wycombe start at home to Morcambe before trekking to Chester on the second weekend of the season. Exeter at home and Gillingham away over Christmas and Notts County at home on the last day of the season. Not bad, but it's all a bit underwhelming. When you could have been playing Leeds United and Leicester, home games with Bury and Barnet seem less attractive somehow.

I guess that's how if feels to support wycombe wanderers at the moment. it's too soon yeh? I still see Liam Dickinson firing stockport into the play off final in May i still see Tommy treading on the ball and Leon not getting back quick enough, and then, in a moment, the season's gone. We'll never look as beautiful as we did heading up the M6 that day. Not for a while at least.

Recently another set of fixtures were released as well. ECU Pirates start away at Virginia Tech and then at home to Virginia, they play at UAB in Alabama on the Thanksgiving weekend, and finish off at home to UTEP (no idea who they are). Those are their Conference USA games anyway, there are some 'Bowl' games as well apparently. I don't really know what they are, but i do know ECU won the Sheraton Bowl away in Hawai'i last season. Now thats an away game i could get excited about...surely i deserve a trip there after all my away games to Mansfield and Rotheram!

Here's the nub though. I don't really understand the different between the C-USA games and the Bowl games. I can sit and tell you why i think the late 20s early 30s Wycombe team was better than the team of the fifties, but not the seventies team. How i'll always be biased towards the early nineties team because i grew up watching them. I can also give you a little parenthesis about how interesting it is that Wycombe's glory years coincide with the best periods of English domestic football (fifties, seventies and nineties) whereas the eighties were generally a horrible write off ( we were awful in the eighties).

So when it comes to sporting life in eastern North Carolina, i haven't much got a clue. Everything's different. Even North Carolina's one pro football team (Carolina Railhawks) have a section in their websites FAQ entitled 'what happens if it rains?' They 'play on' apparently. Well yeh. And they play somewhere called the SportsMed Park or some sort of other silly franchised name. So everything different. Apart from one thing. The Gospel.

Hey, people in North Carolina still need to be called to repentance, still need to be baptised, still need to gather with other believers for worship and instruction. The Gospel's still true. People get squeamish about the Gospel. They'll say that we can't possibly call people all over the world, in every tribe, tongue and nation to believe on Jesus. How western, how white. How Republican. But, Reading or Washington, RG1 or 27889, the Gospel is true, Jesus is the only way to the Father, and people need to hear about it. Jesus is still providentially ruling for His glory and His people's joy.

What hope, what joy, what security we endanger when we think about throwing out the uniqueness of Jesus. What silliness.

Seven

1) Starbucks with Tim for the last time. Great to end with the challenge to 'not waste our minas'. Great that Jesus made it unflinchingly to Jerusalem. Great that his revolution wasn't an earthly one.

2) 'Through the gates of splendour' by Elisabeth Elliot. Probably impossible to read that book and not be moved by it.

3) The last student bar-b-q of the year at Scotts house. As it began so it ends. Probably a good thing the water pistols didn't work in the end!

4) Euro 2008 comes alive. 'we are going to have to readjust our parameters of whats possible in a game of football'

5) Thank yous and goodbyes

6) 'yet i tell you, the least in the Kingdom of Heaven will be greater than him'. Desiring spirutual greatness with all my heart more than worldly greatness.

7) Great, long hearty and helpful conversations with my helper. 362 days to go...

'one word from God, and galaxies come into being'

I think this is probably the best promo for...anything...i've ever seen. Not just because of Sinclair Fergusons lilting tones or Paul Tripps nifty facial hair, or the incredible music of the neccesirty of the message...but all of it.

One word from God...ONE WORD and galaxies are created, one word and and all the is around us is made. The Lord up holds the universe by the power of His Word.

I wonder how long the drive from eastern North Carolina is to Minnesota. A long way i'd guess...

drink!

Knowledge, for Christians, is not an academic category, it's a moral category. We know we have understood not when we have mentally comprehended the Bible, but when we do what it says. Non-Christians can get the meaning of a lot of the Bible, but they haven't understood it because they don't obey. Its just an exercise in epistemology. If Christians leave biblical understanding at the level of knowing in the abstract then there are reasons to doubt whether we have understood anything.

From the Grauniad

Outside Wimbledon the uglification of sport has been accepted as progress whether people like it or not. But surely "whether people like it or not" is an important consideration in sport. And who ever liked the move to pyjama cricket? It is quite unnecessary for opposing cricket teams to wear different coloured kit because it is perfectly obvious what is going on without it: one team has bats and there are two of them and the other is everyone else.

Through the gates of splendour

The life of a missionary calls for infinate adaptability- from winning a national oratorical contest to struggling with an unwritten language...from starring on the college football field to teaching a bunch of small indians to play volleyball...from prospects of a law career in a north american city to a life in the jungle of south America. marilou, who had been music director in a big church slowly and carefully taught the indian children to sing two line songs which seh and Ed had written in the Quichua language...They were fully prepared to be fools for Christ's sake

'Through the gates of splendour' Elisabeth Elliot P42 .

There is no such thing as attainment in this life. As soon as one arrives at a highly coveted position he only jacks up his desire another notch or so and looks for further achievement- a process which is ulitmatly interuppted by the interventio of death. Life is truly likened to a rising vapour...coiling, evanescent, shifting. may the Lord teach us what it means to live in terms of the end, like Paul who said 'neither count i my life dear unto myself, that i might finish my course with joy.

Jim Elliot quoted in 'Through the gates of splendour' Elisabeth Elliot P7

I once was blind

Luke 18:9-19:28 seems to be about sight. Some people can't see Jesus, some can. Those who can, can because Jesus opens their eyes.

So what do the disciples, the blind man and Zacchaeus have in common? None of them can see. The disciples hear of Jesus imminent death, but the meaning is hidden from them, so they can't see. The blind man is blind, his lack of sight is obvious, Zacchaeus can't see, because (and when i discovered this i actually said 'wow' out loud) he was too short and had to climb a tree.

Eventually all three people/groups see. The blind man and Zacchaeus straight away, the disciples when Jesus rises and explains. This sight belongs to Jesus, He will impart it on those who faithfully seek. Also Zacchaeus was rich which proves the rich young rulers problem earlier on was not simply that he was rich.

I love Luke's Gospel. Luke is so clever at arranging material to show us who Jesus is and how we must respond. I don't think me and the doctor would be best mates, i'm far too messy for him i would imagine, but from the pages of his Gospel i admire him from afar.

Discipleship 101?

One thing i love about reading the Gospel's slowly is that i'm picking up on (really obvious) stuff i would have missed otherwise. The middle bit of Matthew 10 is a good example of this.

Jesus is sending out the twelve on their first, maybe the first, short term mission. He's told them where to go and what to focus on, he's told them to beware persecutions, both long and short term, and now, in verses 24-31, he'll tell them how to react. How to live, how to be a Christian in a hostile Devil ruled environment. How to sing the songs of Zion in Babylon.

1) Don't be surprised (24-25)
If people hated Jesus, they're bound to hate those who serve Him. And probably much more. They hate the master, they'll hate the servants, they hate the teacher, they'll hate the pupils. This shouldn't surprise us. We shouldn't be put off by it. In fact it's good...it means we get to be like Jesus! We get to know, in a small, small measure what He went through. Their hatred of the twelve, and us will be different, but it will be the same in type. Don't be surprised. Don't be discouraged.

2) The truth will be known (26-28)
Don't fear them, says Jesus. Nothing that is not known now will be hidden forever. All we be uncovered all righteousness will be made known. Their evil and your good, revealed for all to see. So don't fear them. The truth will be known. What have you got to fear. And since this truth will be known, make it known. What Christ has told you in the dark, tell in the light, what you have had whispered to you, shout from the rooftops. What you see in the Bible in study and under preaching, make known to all. Cut with the flow of Divinely appointed history, and preach the Gospel.

3) Do not fear (29-31)
And as you do this, don't be afraid. People will hate you for it, but don't be afraid. Why not? Well not only because all righteousness will one day be revealed, but there is a much greater reason than Jesus gives here. That reason is Himself. Man can kill us, man could kill all twelve of the disciples, and, with the obvious exception, eventually did, as far as we know. But that's all man can do. Jesus can destroy you forever in Hell. So fear Him. I mean, even when man kills you you're just being sent to enjoy eternal pleasure and fullness of joy. You will go to God, your exceeding joy. So don't fear man who can kill, but Jesus who can destroy. Why else shouldn't we fear man? Because we are of more value than many sparrows. Jesus illustration moves from the minor to the major. If the Father knows intimately the movements of sparrows, how can he not know about you? Indeed, He loves you, and knows the hairs on your head.

So preach the Gospel, get hated for it...even get killed for it, because the body they may kill, His truth abideth still.