Saturday 29 April 2017

Social Progressives: Today's Idolaters

Social Progressive : Today's Idolatry


In the Old Testament the continual failing of God's people was to abandon him for worship of idols. In the new testament the call of missionaries like Paul to pagans was to give up their idols and believe in God through Jesus.

What of Western society today? I say that we have abandoned – or are well into the process of abandoning – God for a new idolatry. Not the crude idols cast from metal or carved from wood or stone, but every bit as real, destructive and demonic!

So if it is not these externals, what are the real features of “idols”?

Through Jeremiah God says: “you have abandoned me, a spring of living water and hewed out cisterns for yourselves, cisterns that can hold no water”. I think this gives us both a cause and effect: the basic idolatry is putting our trust in any “thing” other than God. The result is that we forego the utterly dependable “spring of living water” and end up with something which will ultimately always fail us “cisterns that can hold no water”.

So take the example of agricultural life in ancient times. God controlled the weather and promised Israel prosperity if they served him and obeyed his laws. Instead they continually fell to believing that Baal controlled the weather, attributing Gods providence to another! Then they tried to propitiate Baal by such destructive things as ritual prostitution and human sacrifice. This led to God withdrawing his provision – sometimes heralded in advance as with Elijah announcing as God's spokesman: “there will be neither rain nor dew until my word.” At other times reflected on later as in the common prophetic: “I gave you famine in every city; yet you did not turn to me.”

So our modern idolatry is simply making substitutes for God. As In the past, we have also attributed the good things God has wrought, to our idols and embraced practices which can bring only misery.

The most obvious substitute is in morals.
The proper source and authority for morals is God – his perfect moral character exemplified par excellence in Jesus, and his commands revealed in the scriptures. As I have often said, being human we may disagree and debate on how to understand and apply these, but vitally we accept God as the ultimate reference and authority.

The substitute moral authorities are human collectives. Here God is specifically excluded from consideration. Moral values and decisions are humanly derived and the group proposing them depends the psychological weapons of propaganda, 'group think' and social engineering to obtain conformity within their number and on stamping out competing voices and brute force to impose their chosen rules on society.
In Australia, and I suspect the West generally, the “new morality” has been diametrically opposed to the “traditional” moral mores largely formed by Christian thought. I hope to be more detailed in future posts. But as to results we are already seeing some of the misery caused by the new sexual morals through marriage and family breakup and its devastating effect on children plus the magnified incidence of sexual abuse of children by step-fathers.

Another substitute is “Nature” instead of God.
The Bible stresses the fact that God created the heavens and the earth and everything in it. The “how” is irrelevant. If science is right about the mechanisms (as I think likely) that detracts nothing from God's role. Scripture teaches that the earth and its plant and animal life belong to God and were provided chiefly as a home for us humans (whom God created in his image) and given to us to dominate and manage for him. This gives a very balanced and nuanced approach to dealing with the natural world.

Modern Western environmental activism and “animal rights” movements reject all this. Instead they deny all the above. In varying shades from a sort of pantheism or nature worship to treating “the planet” as an end in itself, they show a strong tendency to be anti-humanity. Take just one example: in Australian waters we have a surging population of “great white” sharks – partly because of bans on fishing them. Increasing numbers of surfers are being attacked and killed by the sharks. “Conservationists” lobby against culling the shark numbers claiming the ocean is their (the sharks') domain and if humans enter it and are killed, so be it! This is a truly frightening, and not isolated, attitude.

Some marks of the new paganism:

a) As stated, the opposition to and active destruction of traditional “Christian” morals and values (for example to value of human life and joy; and virtues such as goodness, kindness, fidelity and self control)

b) Opposition to Christianity to the extent of utilising groups whose morals clash violently with their stated values. For instance pandering to and encouraging Islam and using it as a stick to beat Christians with (eg Christians are “islamophobes” hence morally bad) even when treatment of women within Islam goes against every fibre of feminism!


c) It runs with the worst in human nature – which is the easy downhill road; whilst the godly fight against that nature, try to reform it and encourage the best in it – which is an uphill road!
For instance the encouragement of sexual immorality (which needs little encouragement!) is like the pagan religions of old; The whip-thin vegan “I use bicycle not polluting car” echoes the self flagellation of many pagan religions which as scripture teaches does nothing to reform corrupt human nature.
Another feature I have noticed goes hand in hand with progressivism is hatred. Love is the teaching of scripture, but it goes against the grain to love others as ourselves, and particularly to love our enemies, yet this is the goal we strive towards. Hatred on the other hand is a strong passion that comes easily out of corrupted human nature. And I have noticed that almost uniformly adherents to “progressive” beliefs hate with a passion all who dare to disagree with them. Mercy is a Christian virtue, even in dispensing justice the motto grown into Christian jurisdictions has been “justice tempered with mercy”. Adherents to the new paganism conspicuously show no mercy.

d) It is Nietzschean in its definition of “truth”. Traditionally in Christian societies “truth” matters. A statement is true if it corresponds to reality. For the new morality truth = utility. A statement is true if it advances your adgenda.

e) The new pagans look to a perfect world created by humans: Christians see this world as always in a process of decay due to corrupt human nature and are encouraged in their attempts to build a better world by the assurance that Heaven, ruled by God, will indeed be perfect.


Sunday 23 April 2017

Lessons from Paul on Revival

Lessons from Paul on Revivals


We have in the biblical texts examples of how Paul addressed both Jews and non-Jews. It will be interesting to see how his messages to these quite different audiences compare, particularly since in the West Christianity has been so effectively pushed from the public sphere for so long that it is debatable whether a new wave of Christianity will require revival of known but abandoned faith or proclamation and conversion to a previously unknown religion. Indeed I have heard it argued that Paul's missionary work among Gentiles is a more accurate model of what will be required.

1. Paul speaking to fellow Jews.
Soon after the dramatic conversion of Paul (aka Saul) he preaches in the synagogue arguing a) that Jesus is the son of God and b) that Jesus is the long awaited Messiah (Acts 9. 20-22). This brings threats to his life both in Damascus and Jerusalem and he is shipped off to safety in his native Tarsus.

In Acts 14 we have a detailed account of the sermon Paul gave in the Synagogue at Pisidian Antioch. The audience there was both Jews and “God-fearers” - People who were attracted to the monotheism and moral uprightness of Judaism but had not yet become full converts. After carefully laying a preliminary foundation Paul comes to the crux of his message: 

Jesus is the promised saviour descended from David: 
the elders of the nation did not recognise him and had him executed:
but God raised him from the dead: 
Now in Jesus is proclaimed forgiveness of sins – forgiveness not available under the Mosaic law. 

He concludes with a warning against scoffers. Some Jews and God-fearers believe and join him, but the remainder are incensed when they see Gentiles become interested and expel Paul and start a persecution which drives him from the town.

There are two interesting points come out of this episode. 

First, Paul presents it as a fulfillment of God's promises to the people of Israel: “What God promised to our fathers he has fulfilled for us their children by raising up Jesus …. from the dead.” 

Second, there is not the call to repentance we heard from Peter on the Day of Pentecost, but there is the same stress on forgiveness of sins through Jesus: “Therefore, brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses.

In Thessalonica (Acts 17) Paul began as usual in the synagogue. “He reasoned with them from the scriptures explaining and proving to them that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. 'This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ.” 

Fleeing persecution to neighbouring Berea they again spoke to Jews and God-fearers: “they received the message with great eagerness and examined the scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”

In Corinth (Acts 18) Paul began by preaching to both Jews and Greeks. “Testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ” until they rejected his message and expelled him.

His defence to his fellow Jews in Jerusalem (Acts 22) moves from how he was at first violently opposed to “the Way” but then confronted by Jesus and converted. Then his speech is terminated when he mentions Gentiles. Before Felix his message is: they cannot prove their charges but “I admit that I worship the God of our fathers as a follower of the Way...” 

Before King Agrippa part of his defence is the narrative of his previous persecution then conversion to believe in Jesus of Nazareth. Concluding “I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen – that the Christ would suffer and as the first to rise from the dead, would proclaim light to his own people and to the gentiles.” At that point Festus interrupts and the speech is terminated.

In Rome (Acts 28) Paul met with the local Jews and “explained and declared to them the kingdom of God and tried to convince then about Jesus from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets.”


2. Paul Speaking to Pagans.

In Acts 14.8ff Paul gets to address a group of pagans who seeing a miraculous healing have taken Paul and Barnabas for their gods Hermes and Zeus! Their message, which is cut short by the arrival of hostile Jews who win over the crowd and have Paul and Barnabas stoned is: “We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God who made heaven and earth ...”

In Philippi (Acts 16.22ff) Paul and Silas are in prison praying and singing hymns. There is an earth quake but the prisoners do not try to escape – saving the jailer from having to kill himself. He asks: “What must I do to be saved?” to which they answer “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved – you and your household” Then they spoke “the word of the Lord” to them.  

Thus their call was for belief in Jesus, filled out with teaching about Jesus.


In Athens (Acts 17.16ff) we learn first that Paul was “preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.” In the famous speech at the Areopagus the argument goes:
 
* Praise for their being religious:
* “what you worship as something unknown I am now going to proclaim to you”:
* There is a living God whose offspring we are so he is not an idol:
* “in the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands men everywhere to repent...”:
* The man he has appointed to judge the world he has accredited by raising him from th dead.
                     (Here his speech is terminated by scoffing at the idea of resurrection from the dead.)

In Ephesus (Acts 19) as well as the statement that he preached “the word of the Lord” we get an inkling of at least one item of the content of this from his opponents: “He says that man made gods are no gods at all” This was brave preaching in the very home of the worldwide cult of Artemis and the place of its most holy idol!

So it seems that to Jews Paul's message was Jesus: that he was the Messiah: That his rejection and suffering were the fulfilment of prophecy: that God raised him from the dead.
To those who knew nothing of Judaism Paul's message seems to have been a call to leave behind idols which are no gods at all and worship the living God through Jesus whom he raised from the dead. 

It is significant that Paul preached against idols even when – as at Ephesus – this was bound to be met with hostility and that he preached the resurrection from the dead even when he knew – as at Athens – that the audience would reject this concept out of hand. It is clear from both the time he spent on teaching believers, and the content we have in his letters, that the message about salvation through faith in Jesus was spelt out in full.

Both to Jews and Gentiles the message seems to have been presented positively as “good news” not negatively as the “repent or perish” of earlier times. Especially to non-Jews the thrust was “God has overlooked idolatry in your ignorant past … but now he commands obedience”

This suggests to me that if the West is granted a revival; to a generation separated from Christianity by both the success of progressivism and the failure of churches to present the Gospel the message would be along these positive lines. 


 

Friday 14 April 2017

Revival under Peter

Revival Continues under Peter & Other Apostles


PS: as I am writing this on Easter Saturday let me greet you all in the words the faithful around the world will use tomorrow:

Christ is Risen


He is risen indeed!


Back to our investigation:
The first century revival in Palestine paused for a moment after Jesus crucifixion, resurrection, period of appearances to his disciples and ascension into heaven. Then on the Day on Pentecost it resumed with renewed vigour. The reason scripture gives for the renewed vigour is the newly bestowed gift to all believers of the Holy Spirit.


The first thing we note in the Acts account is the change from timorous seclusion to bold going forth into the public arena on the part of the Apostles and other disciples. Peter we see standing in front of the crowd and urging them: “let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” and then: “Repent and be baptised, every one of you , in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.


We see the age old message “Repent (turn back to your God) and you will be forgiven” coupled with the astounding new additions: Jesus as the long awaited Messiah, now raised from death and the presence of the Holy Spirit as God's gift to all who believe in Jesus.


We also see (which was absent in previous revivals) the formation of a new community of believers separating out from the general population. “3,000 were added to their number that day” “and all the believers used to meet together in Solomon's colonnade. No one else dared to join them ...” Paradoxically the new community although distinct, had not completely separated itself but existed within the general national and religious body. But by the time of Paul's missionary journeys we see him start within the synagogue of each town he visits, then being expelled from it and taking the believers with him forming a separate fledgling “church”. So that while Christianity was even then still in the eyes of many a sect “the Way” within Judaism, expulsion is forcing it to become completely separate.


Sociologist David Moberg in his extensive book on religion in the United States back in the 50's described the life cycle of a church. It went like this:
a) Period of effectiveness
b) Period of decline where symbolism and ritual continue though emptied of spiritual vitality
c) then either a reform movement starts or the church continues its decline
d) the reform group EITHER remains within and renews vitality OR leaves as a splinter group.


Previous revivals under the Old Testament prophets and God-fearing kings either failed or stayed within the existing nation and gave renewed vitality to its faith. Under John the Baptist and Jesus despite opposition from the powers that be, people affected by the revival remained within the national – religious system. What happens in the time of Peter and the other apostles is an increasing persecution and separation which eventually becomes a complete parting of ways between Judaism and what is by then known as the “Christians”. We will see a similar thing happen in the revival in England under the Wesleys


The other notable feature is that the working of miracles which was a feature of Jesus' ministry but which was absent from John the Baptist continues through the Apostles.


In looking for information that help our understanding or expectations for modern day revival, what can we draw from this?


a) The Apostles are told to wait until they are “clothed with power from on high”, referring to the Holy Spirit. Thereafter there are mentions, not only of miracles at the hands of the Apostles, but instances such as when Peter and the others were hauled before the Sanhedrin we are told that the formerly cowardly Peter “filled with the Holy Spirit” confronts them boldly and with surprising eloquence. In our time, we should realise that revival will only be accomplished in the power of the Holy Spirit, and we need to fall in line with the God's plans, not make our own and expect God to fall in line with us!


b) In the Old Testament persons performing outstanding deeds in God's service, be it prophets, artisans, or warriors are said to have done so in the power of God's Spirit. With John the Baptist and in Jesus ministry scripture is even more explicit about the role of the Holy Spirit. In Acts it is the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost which starts the explosive growth of the church. But the unique fact at (and since) Pentecost is the gift of the Spirit to all believers. True at first it is Peter and the other Apostles who are public figures, but upon the persecution that sees believers scattered we read: “Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.” I think it is fair to observe that the activity of the Holy Spirit in all believers now facilitates the spreading of the Gospel through all believers.


c) The message is always the old “turn back to God and he will forgive” but now with a richer understanding of God: That “God was in Christ Jesus reconciling the world to himself” and the presence in believers of the Holy Spirit. This begins the understanding of God's triune nature as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.




Saturday 8 April 2017

Revival and Jesus

Jesus: Revival and Much More


There is a sense in which the revival begun under John the Baptist continued under Jesus ministry, but there is also so much more to it than that!

When you read John’s Gospel slows and slows like a mighty piece of music coming to its dramatic crescendo as the narrative approaches Jesus death on the cross and resurrection on that first Easter morning. One cannot escape the centrality of Jesus suffering, death and resurrection. Paul puts it in words “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” (1 Cor 15.3&4) 

So Jesus making possible the forgiveness of sins – as Paul puts it in Romans 3.25ff “whom God purposed to be by the shedding of his blood a propitiatory sacrifice …. in order to prove his righteousness (this was necessary on account of the overlooking of sins in the past in God's forbearance), in order I say to prove his righteousness in this present time, so that he might be righteous even in justifying the one who believes in Jesus.” (translation from C.E.B. Cranfield's excellent commentary on Romans, 'bold' emphasis mine))

The crunch is that for God to be – as he eternally is – absolutely righteous, and yet forgive the misdeeds of the guilty – as we all are – even when we put our faith in him through Jesus required Jesus death and resurrection.

As to the mechanics of this - much has been said in and to every generation putting it in terms understandable in their social setting. Unfortunately these explanations or “theories of the atonement” generally looked strange or even bad to later generations according to their social milieux.
I have come to think that it is better not to try to explain it. Just to say: “that was the way God chose to be who he is and yet forgive us sinners and take us in his arms as his sons and daughters “by adoption and grace”. And to rejoice that he did all this for us!


Having said this, there are two points for our project on understanding the biblical pattern of revival.

a) the universal plea; “turn back to God and obey his laws and he will forgive” is now put in context: God, Father-Son-Holy Spirit can forgive because God in Jesus died for our sins and rose again from the dead! And the mind-boggling cost to God of doing this has demonstrated in neon lights that he is willing to forgive when we turn back to him!

b) the Gospel (euangellion literally: Good news of a victory that has been won) of God's victory in Jesus Christ his son over all that can separate us from him is the central message of any revival.


It is entirely consonant with this that during his earthly ministry Jesus' message was “repent for the kingdom of God is at hand” and the statements and parables about himself as one greater-than-a-prophet and the proper object of people's hope for salvation and worship: “For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. before Abraham was born I AMthe parable of the wicked tenants (and many others), “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me.” , “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. And that he taught the way of life that should follow repentance. It is also consonant with this that his message was authenticated by miracles, or to use John's favourite word “signs” of his divine credentials.


Sunday 2 April 2017

Revival Under John the Baptist

Revival Under John the Baptist


Just prior to Jesus' public ministry there was a sweeping religious revival in Judea with John the Baptist as main person. John himself, as we shall see was a special case so we should not expect to see his likes in our time, but there may still be lessons in what happened then that we can learn from.


John was the fulfillment of prophecies made more than 500 years before his birth. Jesus attested to this: “a prophet? Yes, I tell you and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written: 'I will send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare the way before you' [Mal.3.1]” (Luke 7.26,27) and the Gospels bring in another prophecy: “He went around the Jordan preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet. 'A voice of one crying in the desert, “prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filed in, every mountain and hill made low. The crocked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. And all mankind will see God's salvation”' [Isaiah 40.3-5]” (Luke 3.3ff).


His birth was doubly miraculous: It was announced to his father by the Archangel Gabriel and it involved an elderly previously barren woman becoming pregnant! Gabriel's message was: “ he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth. Many of the people of Israel he will bring back to the Lord their God. And he will go before the Lord in the power of Elijah ...


After his birth his father gave an oracle which included both these themes after the vital part that God's salvation was about to dawn in the person of Jesus: “Praise be to the Lord the God of Israel, because he has come and redeemed his people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David ...” (Note: Jesus was, but John was not of the line of David) “And you my child will be called a prophet of the most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare the way for him. To give his people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins ...


So John was no ordinary evangelist and this was no ordinary revival, it was to prepare the way for Jesus ministry among the people. None the less it was a revival and we see again the key element which marked the earlier prophets.


The immediate purpose was to bring the people back to God by them coming to repentance so that they could receive knowledge of God's salvation by the forgiveness of their sins. This is an important and succinct statement of God's purposes for humankind! It is then in Jesus that we learn what it cost God to make this forgiveness available.


John's message was as blunt as any of the prophets before him: “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance … a man who has two shirts should share with him who has none …” (to tax farmers) “Don't collect any more than you are required to” (to soldiers) “No bullying, no blackmail: make do with your pay” His message is also easily recognisable as in harmony with all the Old Testament prophets.


His reception among the people however was much better than his predecessors. “And so John came preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins they were baptised in the Jordan River.”


His reception among the religious leaders was in stark contrast. We see this illustrated in an exchange between Jesus and the religious leaders when they questioned his authority and he asked them about John's authority: “John's authority, was it from heaven or from man?” They discussed among themselves: “If we say 'from heaven' he will ask 'why didn't you believe him' But if we say 'from men' the people will stone us because they are persuaded that John was a prophet” (Luke 20) The saddest part of this, besides the fact that the religious leaders had not believed John was that they did not care whether his message was from God or not. Earlier Luke comments: “the Pharisees and experts in the law rejected God's purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptised by John.” (Luke7.20)


Lessons I think we can safely apply to our times are these:
a) John, like the prophets, was sent by God: this revival did not spring from any human plan or desire.
b) John's message, like the prophets before him, was: “repent and receive God's forgiveness, and show it in your new lives.”
c) John operated outside the religious institution, and indeed the established religious leaders rejected his message.