Friday 30 August 2013

Advice About Churches

This part is not about heresies but about practical application of what I have covered so far to your local congregation and the group of congregations to which it is linked.
There are some churches that do have serious problems. If you go to one of those you will have to take care not become infected yourself!
Some will be infected with one of the heresies I have discussed. As long as you can keep yourself from absorbing that heresy God might want you to stay part of it because it is otherwise a good church for you to go to for the present: this side of heaven there is no such thing as a perfect church.
Others may in fact be harmful to an extent that you aught to leave.
A classic is the church that was at one time thriving, growing and effective for God. Then somewhere along the line they have taken the wrong road. In any one of a multitude of possible ways they have followed the dictates of sinful human nature instead of obeying Christ.
I have seen cases where people have let their church “brand” has become an idol: their motivation has changed from doing things because they are pleasing to God to doing things so that their church will survive or grow big or become famous.
Another dysfunctional church type is where the minister or “the leadership” (If people talk about “the leadership” of their church treat it as a danger signal!) become control freaks. Remember the quote “In essentials unity; in non-essentials liberty; in all things charity.” Well these churches allow no personal “liberty” and soon “charity” or Christian love is strictly reserved for those who slavishly obey “The Leadership”. Yes! There really are churches like that. They will seem friendly, welcoming, even kind and loving at first – but you will begin to see that this is conditional on your doing, thinking and believing everything you are told. Get out while you can! Your devotion and obedience belongs to God, not to any human – we humans, even the best intentioned of us, are all fallible sinners!
However, assuming the church you start to go to is a normal, ordinary but healthy church my advice is this:
First: be prepared to cut them a bit of slack!

This may sound strange but it is applying what the Bible calls “humility” which is a really important and really good attitude, and it is also being “kind” which is another action the Bible says we should always do.

The people in the church we go to will be “sinners” like us. They are also (mostly) God’s adopted sons and daughters like us. They will still have their annoying sides just as we do. Hopefully they are trying to let God change them day by day into someone that acts like Jesus just as we are.

So we need a tricky balance of being tolerant of things that we just happen to find annoying or that look a bit silly to us on one hand; and of helping each other to recognise and live up the behaviour God wants from his children on the other. It is a tricky balance, but at the start it is better to emphasise the “tolerance” bit.

I have pasted below an extract from C. S. Lewis’s book “Screwtape Letters” about what a new convert is likely to think when they first go to church. This is an “opposite sketch” supposedly written from the devil’s point of view – but Lewis is using this form to try to say some serious things:


  “MY DEAR WORMWOOD,
      I note with grave displeasure that your patient has become a Christian. Do not indulge the hope that you will escape the usual penalties; indeed, in your better moments, I trust you would hardly even wish to do so. In the meantime we must make the best of the situation. There is no need to despair; hundreds of these adult converts have been reclaimed after a I brief sojourn in the Enemy's camp and are now with us. All the habits of the patient, both mental and bodily, are still in our favour.
     One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do riot mean the Church as we see her spread but through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes I our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather in oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like "the body of Christ" and the actual faces in the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy's side. No matter. Your patient, thanks to Our Father below, is a fool. Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous. At his present stage, you see, he has an idea of "Christians" in his mind which he supposes to be spiritual but which, in fact, is largely pictorial. His mind is full of togas and sandals and armour and bare legs and the mere fact that the other people in church wear modern clothes is a real—though of course an unconscious—difficulty to him. Never let it come to the surface; never let him ask what he expected them to look like. Keep everything hazy in his mind now, and you will have all eternity wherein to amuse yourself by producing in him the peculiar kind of clarity which Hell affords.
      Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman. The Enemy allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavour. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by Stories from the Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek. It occurs when lovers have got married and begin the real task of learning to live together. In every department of life it marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing. The Enemy takes this risk because He has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His "free" lovers and servants—"sons" is the word He uses, with His inveterate love of degrading the whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with the two-legged animals. Desiring their freedom, He therefore refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to "do it on their own". And there lies our opportunity. But also, remember, there lies our danger. If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt.
      I have been writing hitherto on the assumption that the people in the next pew afford no rational ground for disappointment. Of course if they do—if the patient knows that the woman with the absurd hat is a fanatical bridge-player or the man with squeaky boots a miser and an extortioner—then your task is so much the easier. All you then have to do is to keep out of his mind the question "If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?" You may ask whether it is possible to keep such an obvious thought from occurring even to a human mind. It is, Wormwood, it is! Handle him properly and it simply won't come into his head. He has not been anything like long enough with the Enemy to have any real humility yet. What he says, even on his knees, about his own sinfulness is all parrot talk. At bottom, he still believes he has run up a very favourable credit-balance in the Enemy's ledger by allowing himself to be converted, and thinks that he is showing great humility and condescension in going to church with these "smug", commonplace neighbours at all. Keep him in that state of mind as long as you can.”
(from “Screwtape Letters”)
The Bible puts it this way in Colossians 3.12
12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

The other thing we need to extend to our fellow church members is the principal :
In essentials unity; in non-essentials liberty; in all things charity”
So forget that you and they are on opposite sides in politics, or support different football teams. Look at Jesus disciples: one was a Zealot the other a Tax Collector. That is: one had been a resistance fighter trying to kill soldiers of the foreign army controlling their country; the other was an active supporter of this “enemy”. They would not have got far if they started talking politics to each other (unless of course each of them had left their previous politics behind once they met Jesus). But there they were both members of Jesus’ inner twelve.
Forget that they and you have different ideas on any of the many things devout Christians differ on, as the Bible says in Romans 14 which I quoted a bit from earlier:
 1 Accept those whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. 2 One person’s faith allows them to eat everything, but another person, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. 3 The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted that person. 4 Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master they stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.
 5 Some consider one day more sacred than another; others consider every day alike. Everyone should be fully convinced in their own mind. 6 Those who regard one day as special do so to the Lord. Those who eat meat do so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and those who abstain do so to the Lord and give thanks to God. 7 For we do not live to ourselves alone and we do not die to ourselves alone. 8 If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. 9 For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.

 10 You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat your brother or sister with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat.

Lastly remember that you are God's beloved "baby". Yes he wants to see you grow to maturity in Christ, but that will take the rest of your life. In the meantime so long as you desire to remain his child, you can count on him holding you safe in that relationship. As Paul says at the end of Romans 8: 
"I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love. .... No power in the sky above or in the earth below - indeed nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
(final post in this series)

Monday 19 August 2013

Morals & Ten Commandments

The Ten Commandments...
It has been a long time since my last 'Morals' post. But at last I think I am ready to say something about the Ten Commandments. More than that, now I think I have something really interesting to say! In this I am much indebted to John Bright's “A History of Israel”.

That the ten Commandments show similarities to treaties of the time is said so frequently that we forget to ask “why?”. It is in the answer to this question using some of the information Bright and others have supplied that I found the really interesting bit.

According to Bright we have examples of Hittite 'suzerainty' treaties. The Hittites built an empire with its capital in what is now central Turkey (I've been there and seen the ruins of it). They got going somewhere around 2,000 years B.C.. Reached their peak about the time of the Exodus when Hittite and Egyptian armies fought each other to a standstill, made a truce, signed a peace treaty and each king went home claiming to have won a great victory (this was political spin possible before iphones, internet, or even TV) Hittite influence waned and their capital was burned to the ground sometime around 1180 B.C..

Apparently the Hittite empire incorporated a lot of little kingdoms where the kings remained in charge, but had to swear allegiance to the Hittite king (and pay taxes). The agreements between these vassal kings and their Hittite overlord were 'suzerainty treaties' Of course other empires had such treaties, in particular we have evidence of Assyrian ones (The Assyrians had Nineveh as their capital city, took over much of the Hittite empire, and were themselves vanquished by the Babylonians – Nineveh fell in 612 B.C.)

The point of this little history digression is to pave the way for two important points: 1. Why the Ten Commandments being like any suzerainty treaty is important; and 2. Why echoing a Hittite rather than an Assyrian treaty is important.

1. The importance of treaty-like format.

OK, we all know the story of the Exodus: God sends Moses toe-to-toe with Egypt's Pharaoh to get the descendants of Israel (aka Jacob) released from slavery. God and Moses then lead this horde out into the desert to Mount Sinai. There God makes a covenant with them, and gives the Ten Commandments to Moses to give to the people. From then on we have this tribal league bound together mostly by having the shared experience of this covenant between them and God.

So when God puts the Commandments in a form that looks (to modern scholars at least!) like a Hittite suzerainty treaty, was that significant?

The Hittite treaty, after a recitation which I will talk about in the next section, laid down the obligations of the vassal king to the Hittite king. Chief among these was that the vassal was not to make any treaties with any other country – they had to be totally loyal to the Hittite empire. So when the Ten Commandments say “You shall have no other gods besides me...” That has a lot more punch as part of a “treaty” between God and this new nation. The peoples around them worshiped many gods, so to serve Yahweh exclusively was unparalleled – but to not make treaties with any king except your own overlord that was a familiar and very compelling concept.

Succeeding parts of a Hittite treaty included relations with other vassal states. One vassal was not allowed to make war on another vassal state. Also if there were disputes between vassal kings they had had to bring their complaint before the overlord, who would decide the case. Thus when the Ten Commandments move to dealing with relations between people this is exactly what a human overlord did in order to keep peace in his empire.

Taken together this makes a lot of sense of why God may have chosen to echo the form of treaties of the time. It also helps us understand the function of these Commandments. They were not a 'law code' they were the terms of the covenant entered into by God and the Israelite tribal league. But as such they did give the guiding principles which could be embodied in laws made to meet what would be ever-changing conditions. This is so much more useful than a law-code which would quickly become out-of-date!

2. The importance of  Hittite rather than Assyrian.

True, the time of the Exodus was also the time of the zenith of Hittite influence. But when you think about how God used the different personality and life-story of  prophets – say Amos and Hosea – to fit the different message he had them deliver, I can't help but think that had an Assyrian type fitted his purpose he would have arranged events to suite. So I am going to take it that the Hittite form served God's purposes.

Now the Hittite treaties stressed personal relationship and persuasion. The Assyrian form stressed compulsion.

So the Hittite treaties started which a recitation of the relationship history of the overlord and the vassal king, often in an “I … thou” form. It enumerated the good things the overlord had already done for the vassal which put him under an obligation to be loyal and obedient out of gratitude.

The Ten Commandments have “I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of slavery ...”. The covenant is based on the fact that God has already done them a great good, to which they should respond out of gratitude. For us Christians there is an even greater covenant with God based on the incalculably great 'good' which God has done for us in Christ Jesus. Like Israel there is no 'good work' we could ever do which would put God in our debt! We are, like they were, always the unworthy recipients of God's bounty.

These elements of personal relationship and gratitude leading to voluntary obedience are so different to the Assyrian ideal of brute force and obedience out of terror that I think it is really significant that God used the former model rather than the latter! It gives a glimpse of his character – one which gives first and then hopes for voluntary loyalty in return, not one which obtains it by force.


Interesting eh?  

Saturday 17 August 2013

Heresy : You Can love Sin & Still Be In.

The last heresy I will talk about is this: Telling Christians it is OK to live in sin.

This happened even way back in the Old Testament. I quoted earlier the bible passages where God complains that the false prophets did nothing to turn the people away from their sins, so I will not repeat that here.

The New Testament is also clear that God has standards of behaviour for his children.

John the Baptist preached:  8 Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God.” (Matthew 3.8)

Jesus said (just to take one instance out of many): (Matthew 28.19) “19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

So there is something to be obeyed, there is a way of life that marks out people who have repented. This way of life is difficult for two main reasons. Our human nature is corrupted and doesn’t want to do it. Our society is corrupted and will put social pressure on us to conform to its ways. Here are some Bible verses on that:

Galatians 5 (it is worth reading through the whole chapter but here are a few key verses)
16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. 17 For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever[c] you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
 19 The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

1 Peter 4 : “3 You have had enough in the past of the evil things that godless people enjoy—their immorality and lust, their feasting and drunkenness and wild parties, and their terrible worship of idols.
 4 Of course, your former friends are surprised when you no longer plunge into the flood of wild and destructive things they do. So they slander you.5 But remember that they will have to face God, who will judge everyone, both the living and the dead. 
1 John 2.3 : “3 And we can be sure that we know him if we obey his commandments. 4If someone claims, “I know God,” but doesn’t obey God’s commandments, that person is a liar and is not living in the truth. 5 But those who obey God’s word truly show how completely they love him. That is how we know we are living in him. 6 Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Jesus did.”

2 Timothy 3.12 warns us that it will be hard to live good lives in a corrupt world: “3 12 In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 

John 15.18: Jesus warned his disciples: “ 18 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. 20 Remember what I told you: ‘Servants are not greater than their master.’[a] If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.”

You will remember that the people who persecuted Jesus were the religious establishment of his day. It is not surprising that in our day anyone who follows Jesus will find that many of the established church leaders are their opponents rather than their friends.

Sadly large numbers of ministers, priests, bishops and archbishops and even whole sections of denominations are acting just like the false prophets of long ago and not turning their own church people, let alone the nation, from their sins.

Tragically when the “acceptable conduct” of the society they live in is different to God’s clear commands repeated throughout the Bible, they side with society and against God. They seek peace with their society by conforming to it, when they should be acting as God’s agents in transforming it. (As I said earlier, they may be ardent crusaders for some political cause but their work is fashioned and empowered by the principles and outlook of this fallen world, not from the Bible. One giveaway will be that they will condone things the Bible repeatedly condemns.)

Worse still they often become propaganda merchants for the things their society loves even though God says he hates them. They will try to silence, sideline or throw out of the church anyone who accurately points out what God’s standard of behaviour is.


Do not be fooled by them! Do not give in to them! Read the Bible for yourself and obey its commands.

Wednesday 7 August 2013

Heresy: Miracle Healing for All

This is a truth taken to the extreme where it becomes a lie. God can and does work miracles, you won’t read too far in the Bible without discovering that. What he does not do is always cure every disease of every Christian “if they have enough faith”.
This heresy is sometimes called “over-realized eschatology” which is theologian-speak for thinking we have here and now things which the Bible promises we will enjoy in heaven. Yes in heaven we will all be healed eg Rev.21.4 “ 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death[b]or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Yes God does do some miracles even now to authenticate the message about Jesus and to give us little flashes of heaven. But no, he does not heal every Christian – we are still in this world and it is a world marred by sin, suffering and death.
Let me illustrate some of the pain this heresy causes from some of my own experiences as a priest. 
I was visiting patients in the tiny country hospital in my parish when I and everyone else heard a zealous Pentecostal pastor shouting “In the name of Jesus you are healed!” to a woman dying of cancer. She died some weeks later. But fearful of losing her “healing” by exhibiting lack of faith she refused any pain relief. She still died, but she died in terrible pain. I heard that the Pentecostal pastor explained her death away by saying she didn’t have enough faith to be healed.
About the same time there was a world famous Anglican Charismatic leader Rev. David Watson. He was stricken with cancer. Believers all over the world were praying for his healing. He died. Without missing a beat the Pentecostal spin doctors announced that “obviously” he was not healed because he didn’t really want healing.
It struck me with these and other cases that the people who put out this heresy were simply not honest. Suppose a scientist says: “If my theory is true 'X' will happen” Now suppose 'X' does not happen. T he scientist will say “my theory is wrong”. These people say “you are healed” but when this did not happen even in the clearest way possible- that is by the person dying - they still cling fanatically to their now disproved “theory” and invented spin to cover up the truth.
So my experience was that this doctrine caused great harm. Also because it dealt in lies, it was of the devil, not of God. My experience has also been that once a believer has been hooked on this teaching nothing can rescue them.
There is a saying “Reality bites”. They can shout all they like and claim with total conviction that a person is healed but if the person then dies of the disease that was supposedly healed then reality has “bitten”: what they claimed was not really true at all. Jesus said “I am the Truth ...” and also “the devil is a liar and the father of all lies” So however much there healers take the name of Jesus on their lips, they are actually doing the work of the devil.
Yes, since we long for heaven we would love to have its joys right now. So Yes we would love to believe this doctrine and believe the evangelists who spread it. But it is always better for a person to act on a painful truth than to believe and act on a comfortable falsehood!
Most importantly this teaching like the other heresies is spiritual carbon-monoxide. Our old human nature really wants “religion” that gives health and prosperity. So these teachings that God will heal every disease once we learn the secrets of “faith” to make him do it is one our sinful nature will grab with both hands.
I have not yet trotted out Bible verses for a very good reason. This teaching is a truth taken to an extreme where it becomes a lie. So if the false teacher says “the Old Testament has lots of miraculous healings” I say “True, it does and I believe they really happened” When the false teacher says “Jesus healed all kinds of diseases and ever raised dead people to life” I agree. He did. When he or she continues: “And God did great miracles through the Apostles like Peter and Paul.” I say again “I too believe those accounts in the Bible are true.” When they play their trump card and say: “And God still does miracles today” I say: “Yes indeed, I too have seen many miraculous answers to prayer. I have seen enough genuine miracles believe beyond doubt that God still does miracles today.”
So most of what these 'faith healers' preach, I believe is true. But it only takes a tiny bit of poison added to a healthy meal to kill you. The “poison” in their otherwise true teaching is in three parts:
1. It is a false, worldly view of the Christian life. Jesus never promised a bed of roses (in this life anyway).
2. It is a false “faith”. They turn the real and precious attitude of devotion trust and unshakeable reliance on Jesus into a mind game which soon crosses over into shamanism.
3. It makes a basic error of logic. They confuse God being the same “yesterday, today and forever” with God acting the same when circumstances change. Big mistake!


Lets look at these in a bit more detail:
  1. Jesus didn’t promise a bed of roses. Quite the opposite: he made it clear that becoming his follower was the hard choice, that there was a cost, that some believers would fall away when they realized this. He warned of hardships and persecutions in this life, but glory in the world to come. I have already mentioned the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13) He warned that some believers would fall away when they found it was hard going. He would not have warned that if he was promising them a trouble free life if they followed him. Another parable was the builder who didn’t figure out the cost before he started (Luke 14.28). Read and think about it for yourself. Jesus is not talking home economics, he is talking about people deciding to be his followers. He is warning them that there is a cost. In this life the easy way is to ignore Jesus. Following him is harder (in this world) – so would-be followers should count the cost up-front. Once again Jesus would not say this if he was offering to magic away all life’s problems. … He never promised that!

    The rest of the New Testament is dotted with statements to the effect that while the Christian life is hard now, the heavenly reward far outweighs the cost, and Christ is with us through all our trials and suffering. I will give just a few examples.

    Philippians 3 “
     7 I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. 8 Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ 9 and become one with him. The point I wanted to draw from this was that happiness in this life was not the be all and end all, almost the reverse: for Paul all that counts is the joy of knowing Christ as savior.

    1 Peter 1 “
     6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

    2 Corinthians 1: “
    3 All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. 4 He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. 
    These verses were to comfort Christians going through trials and troubles. For Peter the pain is outweighed by the eternal benefit of a faith that has stood the test. For Paul writing to the Christians in Corinth it was that God comforts us in our trials rather than magic-ing them away, and we in turn can comfort others. The common point is that God does not always rescue us from suffering in this life.

    The false teacher will say: “Ah, they are only talking about persecution, it does not apply to disease” My answer is that in New Testament times no one was stupid enough to think God would sweep all disease and disaster away from every believer – these were just part of living. So of course Peter and Paul did not talk about these in their letters. What new believers had a problem with, and needed re-assurance about were the extra sufferings that were happening just because they were Christians.


  2. Faith” is really basic to Christianity. Abraham is the prime example in the Bible of faith “because he believed God”. Interestingly Genesis depicts Abraham “warts and all” and he had as many of those as most people. He wavered, he doubted, he did silly things, he even laughed when God said he would have a son by Sarah. You might say he just clung on to believing by his teeth – but the Bible gives him top marks. Jesus is often calling his disciples “little-faiths” but he persevered with them. Most of them ran away when he was arrested, and Peter swore he didn’t know him – but they go on to be the Apostles. Jesus told them that if they had faith as big as a mustard seed they could move mountains. I think the point he was making, and I am trying to make here is that even a little bit of faith counts a whole lot with God. He will of course want to train us to have a whole lot more over our lifetime, but for a start the teeniest bit will get us going. The “faith healer” uses “faith” in a totally different, and I believe wrong way, and runs the risk of blinding people to what real faith in Christ actually is.

    The Bible gives some other examples of great faith. Hebrews 11 is a good example. It lists as heroes of faith with equal praise for people who had the faith to be miraculously delivered and people who had faith to keep trusting in God even when there was no miraculous deliverance. This puts the lie to the “faith healer”s excuse that people “didn’t have enough faith to be healed”. No, the Bible indicates it takes every bit as much faith
    not to have a miraculous deliverance from suffering and still hold fast to God..

    Hebrews 11
    32 How much more do I need to say? It would take too long to recount the stories of the faith of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and all the prophets. 33By faith these people overthrew kingdoms, ruled with justice, and received what God had promised them. They shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the flames of fire, and escaped death by the edge of the sword. Their weakness was turned to strength. They became strong in battle and put whole armies to flight. 35 Women received their loved ones back again from death.
    But others were tortured, refusing to turn from God in order to be set free. They placed their hope in a better life after the resurrection. 36 Some were jeered at, and their backs were cut open with whips. Others were chained in prisons. 37 Some died by stoning, some were sawed in half,[d] and others were killed with the sword. Some went about wearing skins of sheep and goats, destitute and oppressed and mistreated. 38 They were too good for this world, wandering over deserts and mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground.
    39 All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, …”


  3. The “faith healer” frequently recounts the miracles of Jesus, stresses with great literalness that he “healed all the sick” (eg Matthew 8.16), then quotes the text “Jesus Christ the same yesterday today and forever” (Hebrews 13.8) and jumps to the conclusion “therefore Jesus will heal all the sick today!”
    That is a false conclusion. The result of Jesus being
    unchanging in his nature is that he will in fact respond differently in different situations.

    Let me illustrate it this way.
    Think of a teacher marking “multiple choice” exam papers – you know the sort where for each question you answer by circling (a), (b), (c) etc on the exam paper
    Suppose the correct answers are (a) for question 1. (b) for question 2. and (c) for question 3.

    The teacher should mark every student who circled (a) for question 1 “correct” and every student who marked anything else for question 1 “wrong. And so forth down all the questions. To put this in the language we were using about Jesus
    the teacher uses the same list of right answers to mark every paper in that exam.

    So why do some students get good results and some get bad results?

    The answer is obvious: some students knew their subject and marked lots of the correct answers and some students didn't know their work and marked lots of incorrect answers.

    The teacher's marking was the same for all students : so he or she awarded good marks to good students and bad marks to bad students.
    In the Bible there are enough examples of God maintaining an unchanging attitude, but changing his actions because people changed their ways. In Nineveh, Jonah tells them God is going to destroy the city because they are so wicked. They repent and stop being evil. God relents and does not destroy them (much to Jonah’s annoyance). God stayed the same, so when the situation changed his response to it changed too.

    Jesus is the same “yesterday today and forever”. Yes. But if the situation “today” is different then precisely because he remains dependably the same, he will respond differently.

    When he was walking by the shores of Lake Galilee he was claiming to uniquely speak for God. He even said (John 5.36) “
    the very works that I am doing—testify that the Father has sent me.” So miracles were his authentication.

    If we are preaching Jesus to people who do not believe and God judges that miracles will likewise authenticate our message, then indeed we would expect God to work them.

    If we are not preaching Jesus where the message needs authentication, but would like some miracles for some other reason (to big note ourselves or our church for instance) then we would not expect him to work them.




The crux of the problem is that they are telling people to expect (and demand of God even) what God promises we will enjoy in heaven, not here on earth. Certainly he gives little foretastes of it now just to encourage his people to set their hopes on Jesus and of being with him in heaven. God is always surprising us by his kindness, goodness and generosity. He is an incredibly wonderful being!Also he also sometimes gives a sustained burst of spectacular miracles when he judges it necessary in order to authenticate his message. But to tell people that Jesus will heal every believer every time is wrong! It also has two really, really bad consequences. First it sets them up for the devil to pull the rug from under them and cause them to lose their faith in Jesus. Second it focuses them on themselves and their health and their comfort in this world – that keeps them as spiritual infants and mere worldlings. Grow up!
Yet if you ask: “But should we pray for healing?” My answer is “Yes. It is part of our relationship with God that we can safely ask him for anything.” As it says in 1 Peter 6.7 …
 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”


Monday 5 August 2013

Colossians 3: 1 - 11 Preached 4/Aug/2013

Colossians 3:1 - 11. Human religion looks as though it can change us but it can't. The way that really can change us comes from a better understanding of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Yhis is a great part of Colossians. There is still more in the rest of Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 but because I am preaching from the reading set for each Sunday in the lectionary, this will be our last sermon on Colossians for the present. Next week we start on that exciting look at 'faith' in Hebrews 11.

Thursday 1 August 2013

Appealing to your fallen human nature heresy: example: "God wants you RICH!"

First example: Prosperity doctrine
This is the most obvious facet of a raft of false doctrines which are common in some churches. The personal appeal is that it pretends that lust for this world’s wealth and goods is a Christian virtue. Our old human nature jumps for joy at that! The church-building appeal is that we sinners will flock to a church where this is preached. An old man in my first church asked a keen young convert how they could get more young people to come. “easy!” replied the young believer, “A pig on a spit and a keg of beer will get them in – of course it won’t make them Christians!” If you want to build a big church or a great “ministry” preaching what is attractive to sinful human nature is a winner. So, no wonder it is widespread and no wonder preachers with multi-million dollar empires proclaim these false teachings.
If you come at these teachings shielded by what Jesus said about being his follower and by what other parts of the Bible say about the Christian life, you will likely see through them without me or anyone having to join the dots.
What did Jesus say? A good one-liner to remember is Matthew 6.24
You cannot serve both God and money.”
You remember the parable he told about preaching the Gospel being like a farmer throwing seed over his field (Luke 8.4-15). When he explained it to his disciples he described one class of convert this way:
14 The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature. 
Jesus also said in Matthew 6
   19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
And in Luke 12.15:
Then he (Jesus) said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”
Jesus is trying to cure us from thinking our life consists in the abundance of our possessions, stop us from pursuing earthly treasures, warn us that chasing after this life’s riches or pleasures will choke us spiritually and bluntly that we must chose between serving God or Money: it cannot be both. So if we are seeking Jesus, we need to run away from anyone who is appealing to our old nature’s love of money or dependence on material things.
This false teaching was a problem from early times. Are two warnings in the New Testament.
1 Timothy 6.5 “ … people of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.”
1 Timothy 6.9 “9 Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”
Hebrews 13.5 5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, …”
The Bible has plenty more to say along the same lines, but I hope that is enough to warn you that anyone who is playing on your old human nature’s love of money is leading you astray.
Having re-awakened your old human nature and its lust for money, they may be content to merely have that as the bait to bring you into their little empire. In this case their message will be some variation on “God wants you rich” buy my DVD lecture series, buy my books, or even just come to my church, and you will discover how to become wealthy. But generally they want lots of your money. The usual ploy is to persuade you that giving it to them you are just “investing” it and you will get as dividend from God what you and they love most: money.
They will make it sound pious. They do make frequent use of “invest” because that appeals well to our old nature, but they will also call your payment to them “seed” or even “seed faith” to allude to biblical motifs.
They will dress it up in Bible verses, but ultimately they want you to believe that God will give you back umpteen times more money than you give them. They are just putting a business proposition to you and appealing to your greed. Of course confidence tricksters the world over succeed by appealing to people’s greed: it is how they work. But those tricksters only steal people’s money, these “Christian” tricksters choke the spiritual life out of their victims as well!