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THINKING AGAIN……
An Unfamiliar Gospel
I heard a preacher say that the dominant characteristic of God is love.
Just listen to an old man. When he wrote his letters which we have in our Bible, John the apostle was an old man; the general opinion is that he was around 90 years old.
When he was young, he had spent three years with Jesus. He had preached the Gospel for maybe 50 to 60 years so he well knew what it was.
John’s First Letter, chapter 1, verse 1. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life.” NKJV
John is uncompromising in asserting his qualifications to write. He had walked and lived alongside Jesus Christ in a unique way.
2. “The life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us.”
What more majestic testimony could be written about who Jesus was? John had seen Jesus in the flesh, and he had a glorious revelation of who he was.
3, 4. “That which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full.”
John declares the ultimate purpose of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ – extraordinary fellowship and joy.
Therefore, bearing this testimony of John’s in mind, he is qualified to define the Gospel better than anyone else ever could. It is true that John is known as the Apostle of love, and he does indeed emphasise later on in this letter, “God is love.”
However, what is the actual starting point of John’s definition of the Gospel? What is its foremost characteristic? What are these introductory verses building up to?
Read his words:
5. “This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.”
GOD IS LIGHT!
Absolutely pure light. Absolute holiness.
Maybe many of us who have preached in this generation need to take John’s starting point of the Gospel more seriously.
We live in a largely lawless society that needs to learn the true difference between right and wrong. Holiness is a non-issue. Our society needs to hear the law of God because only “By the law is the knowledge of sin.” Romans 3:20 NKJV.
That law is the law of a holy God, the God who is light, the God who dwells “in unapproachable light.” 1 Timothy 6:16 NKJV
Yet he is the One who has provided the perfect Saviour for law-breakers, to bring them “Out of darkness into his marvellous light!” 1 Peter 2:9 KJV.
We need to preach again the old Apostle’s gospel – GOD IS LIGHT! That is God’s governing characteristic. All his other characteristics flow from that.
“God is Love” can only make sense to those who have been convinced that “God is Light.”
John
July 22nd 2010
Rainless Clouds in the Church
‘A Protestant Christian church that emphasizes the authority of the Bible and salvation through the personal acceptance of Jesus Christ.’
That is the definition of an evangelical church in my dictionary.
In such a church, the glorious righteousness and holiness of God is preached.
In order to expose sin in deceitful human hearts, the law of God is preached.
Christ’s substitutionary death for powerless and guilty sinners is preached.
The command to repent of sin and to believe on Christ crucified and risen is preached.
The need for the Holy Spirit of God to transform his people is preached.
And more.
An evangelical church must dedicate itself to the glory of God alone; it is offensive to God to give or to seek glory for anyone else.
We have a unique Gospel to proclaim. We must treasure and use our wonderful freedom to preach the ‘unsearchable riches of Christ.’ And nothing else. What a privilege!
Sad to say, many evangelical churches do not live up to that dictionary definition and its implications. Man-serving alternatives have displaced the Biblical Gospel emphasis.
Churches disqualify themselves from using the term ‘evangelical’ when their teachings have little benefit either to the Lord’s people or to lost sinners.
Many years ago, I was listening to a sermon in an ‘evangelical’ church. After 25 minutes or so, I wrote the following:
I heard no word of Calvary
I saw no trace of blood;
I came, so hungry, hungry, yet –
my soul still starved of food.
By the end of the sermon, I was still unfed.
In this part of southern England, in mid-July, we were in need of a lot of rain. Much of our grassland was brown; some shrubs and trees were looking a bit sad; vegetable gardens were gasping for water.
Farther west and north, there was rain, but we were only on the edge of the fronts and depressions. We had plenty of cloud and wind but no rain. That’s how it was; great promise of rain but precious little came, a mere damping of the soil.
As we walked one evening and enjoyed one of Somerset’s Nature Reserves, it reminded me of how rich God’s creation is in illustrations of spiritual truth.
Some of these words came to my mind:
“These men are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm – shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted – twice dead.” Jude 1:12 NIV.
Today in the UK church scene, many of those ministries and churches which contradict the definition of evangelical are exactly that. They are ministries which promise much and deliver little. They purport to feed Christ’s flock, but the sheep are starved. “They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind.”
No wonder the prophet Amos predicted “A famine of hearing the words of the Lord.” Rainless clouds in the church are a major cause of such a famine.
On a recent Sunday evening, we visited a very small country chapel. The preacher had no University or Bible College training, but he was soundly and clearly evangelical. We were fed, and the Gospel of salvation in Jesus was made clear to those unbelievers present.
We sang some serious and uplifting hymns and songs; heartfelt prayer was made, and after the ministry of the Word, we joined in a precious remembrance of the Lord’s death at Communion.
We were in an evangelical church, a meeting of the Lord’s people to which we could comfortably invite anyone.
In such a gathering, we could expect the clouds to drop refreshing showers, and maybe in God’s sovereign grace we might hear “the sound of abundance of rain.”
Praise the Lord, there is hope!
“Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap in mercy;
Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord,
Till He comes and rains righteousness on you.”
Hosea 10:12 NKJV.
John
July 19th 2010
Moving the Pulpit!
“Right in the middle.” That’s what the preacher said on Sunday.
He was reminding us that the traditional nonconformist building had its pulpit in the middle for an important reason. As well as its position being good for the acoustics, it was symbolic of the centrality of God’s Word as the central and unique means of God revealing himself as our Saviour.
We were once familiar with a Baptist church which had its pulpit at one side, while the communion table and the elders’ seats occupied centre stage. Significantly, the building dated from 1892, a time when belief in the divine inspiration of the Bible was being seriously undermined.
The time came when a new evangelical pastor suggested they should move the pulpit to the centre of the front platform. Some folk were upset. But the work was done!
Symbolism is a relatively minor issue, but in some cases, it can serve a useful purpose and underline a vital point of doctrine.
In the second half of the 19th century, there were two influences which, metaphorically, pushed the pulpit to the sidelines.
First, the publication in 1859 of Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species.’
Second, the application of secular literary criticism to the Bible.
Both of these influences led to confidence in the full divine inspiration of the Bible coming under serious attack, even from within the churches.
However, defenders of the orthodox Protestant position found their champion in the godly Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon.
In 1887, in his publication, ‘The Sword and the Trowel,’ his pen became his sword against the ‘Downgrade Controversy,’ as it became known. He led the way in demonstrating that this ‘scholarship’ was undermining the very foundation of the Christian faith.
In effect, these sophisticated critics were saying that the Bible was no longer trustworthy as sufficient in and of itself to lead a person to know God through the Lord Jesus Christ. They were asserting that without their exclusive discernment and insight, an ordinary person’s understanding of the Bible and its message was defective.
How tragic that another Downgrade Controversy has emerged in our day, equally subtle and damaging. It is a movement that is trying to push the all-sufficient Biblical pulpit back to the sidelines.
Ordinary Christians are being seduced by those who are reiterating the first recorded words of Satan, “Did God really say that?” Genesis 1:3.
John
May 26th 2010
Moving the Pulpit!
Consider the sequel to those first recorded words of Satan, “Did God really say that?”
Eve plainly restated God’s unambiguous command not to eat from one particular tree in the Garden, and the devil immediately countered with his ‘superior knowledge’ – “God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:4,5 NKJV.
Those 19th century intellectuals also paraded their ‘superior knowledge’ and ‘insights.’
They attacked the inerrancy of Scripture because they themselves heeded Satan’s subversive question, “Did God really say that?”
Sound the alarm! Satan is alive, and is similarly undermining the trustworthiness of God’s Word today. So-called scholars are again parading their superior knowledge and insight, and are concealing their subversive teachings within seemingly-evangelical ministries.
Their websites contain teaching that is grossly incompatible with our orthodox Protestant understanding of Scripture. They seem to be engaged in an insidious assault on the reliability of the Word of God, presenting their distortions as advanced learning and insight.
Sound the alarm!
Paul did. His farewell address to the elders of the Ephesian church is right up-to-date.
“Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard!” Acts 20:30,31 NIV.
We need sound the alarm loud and clear because it is from within the professing church of today that the original satanic question is being posed, “Did God really say that?”
OK, these people do not ask the question as plainly as Satan did. No, they wrap it up by telling you there is some hidden meaning in a Bible phrase or word, in an illustration or some use of imagery, or in some New Testament quotation from the Old. They tell you that your understanding of Scripture is faulty or inadequate or needs adjustment.
But they are in fact telling you that God did not really say what you thought he said.
As the Apostle Paul warned the Ephesian church, “Be on your guard!”
Praise the Lord that we don’t need these self-defined superior teachers.
Jesus himself identifies a Teacher who for hundreds of years has been capable of leading his children into all truth. “The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” John 14:26 NKJV.
Not many weeks after Jesus gave that promise, a couple of ordinary fishermen were used by God to heal a crippled man; the Jewish religious leaders were confounded. They “saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men.” Acts 4:13 NKJV.
The apostle John clearly had confidence in that same promise of the work of the Holy Spirit. “These things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you. But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.” 1 John 2:26, 27 NKJV
Don’t let these deceivers from within the church move the pulpit to the sidelines again!
In answer to their insidious question, “Did God really say that?” we should cry out triumphantly, “Yes, he did!”
John
June 9th 2010
Moving the Pulpit!
Let us not underestimate the influence of these misleading ministries within the evangelical church. Many thousands have already accepted their ‘superior’ teachings and some have become their avid disciples.
Under such teachings, many, many more thousands are being troubled in their souls and spirits. Right now, there are dear, ordinary Christians who are hearing the Scripture handled in confusing ways, curious ideas being drawn out of the plain text, Old Testament ceremonial issues unjustifiably imposed on the simplicity of the New Testament.
Many such believers are confused. Deep within, they have the feeling that something is wrong; this novel ministry just does not add up; they have an uneasiness in their spirits, and cannot say exactly why, or what precisely is going on.
So how are these troubling ministries operating?
Cleverly. Subtly. Their sermons and writings begin Biblically enough, but before long, a considerable amount of Hebrew and Jewish references, quotes and explanations creep in. They are careful to give impressions of great learning as they interpret and explain Scripture passages and words in unusual ways. They draw excessively on sources other than the Bible, often quoting non-Christian Jewish authors.
A careful study of these ministries reveals that a common feature of their deception is to discredit the Reformers, the Protestant Reformation, and much of our characteristic perception of the Scriptures.
They assert that much of the Biblical scholarship of that period was at fault because the ancient Hebrew and Greek texts they studied were only considered from a Western viewpoint.
The fundamental justification for their ‘superior’ teachings rests on the fact that the Old and New Testaments were largely written ‘by Jews for Jews.’ Consequently, they deduce that only a Jewish perspective can render the true and full meanings of Scripture.
Do these people really believe that a Gentile cannot be saved unless he has an instructor with a knowledge of Hebrew to help him to understand the Word of God?
I emphasise emphatically that in no way is it anti-Semitic to see that such an idea is patently untrue.
My Bible tells me that before the foundation of the world, God designed salvation for both the Jew and the Gentile purely and only through the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ as declared in his revealed Word. The Bible is God’s revelation to mankind, not a confusion of hidden meanings and obscure notions that need some superior intellect to unravel.
That pure revealed Word of God has wonderfully saved and transformed unnumbered thousands during the centuries both before and since the Reformation.
Has their salvation been invalid or deficient because they had no access to this ‘superior learning’? Has the plain written revelation of God been inadequate to save sinners?
Praise the Lord that the Protestant Reformers took away control of the Scriptures from the Roman Catholic priesthood and gave it back to ordinary believers exactly as the Lord intended.
Back in 1199, Pope Innocent III issued a statement regarding the Scriptures:
“The mysteries of the faith are not to be explained rashly to anyone. Usually in fact, they cannot be understood by everyone, but only by those who are qualified to understand them with informed intelligence.”
No, you deceivers, you are not going to move the Protestant pulpit back to the sidelines.
You are not going to control our understanding of the Scriptures and make us subject to your “informed intelligence.”
We will not be seduced by the ancient satanic question, “Did God really say that?”
We know that the enemy’s greatest weapon is to sow seeds of doubt about the reliability of God’s precious Word.
In churches up and down our land, we need to be on our guard.
We need to “Blow the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain!” Joel 2:1 NKJV
John
June 21st 2010
Moving the Pulpit!
Dogmatism hates to be challenged or questioned.
Intensely hostile to anything that contradicted their own doctrines, the Thessalonian Jews organised mob violence and a riot in response to the preaching of the apostle Paul. Fired by jealousy of his success in winning converts to the Lord Jesus Christ, these Jews would stop at nothing to hinder or destroy that work. Acts 17
Sadly, some of the ‘pulpit movers’ described above respond similarly to those who dare question their teachings. Easily roused to anger, the vitriolic language of some of them is more appropriate to gang warfare than to the Church of Jesus Christ.
Moreover, the severity of their judgments on fellow Christians who differ from them in some secondary doctrines is unbelievable.
The Jews in Berea were different. They were open-minded. Being eager to hear what Paul and Silas preached, they examined the Scripture every day to see whether what they had heard was true.
“They examined the Scripture.”
They were confident that God had already given them the source of true wisdom and knowledge. They were confident that the Scriptures they possessed were trustworthy and sufficient to prove or disprove what Paul had preached.
For them, it was Sola Scriptura, Scripture alone, just as it was for the Protestant Reformation preachers and theologians.
It is that absolute reliability and sufficiency of Scripture which is under severe attack today. Much of the evangelical church seems to have forgotten that vital foundation of our faith.
There are some things which are hard to understand – Scripture itself says so – but if we seek clarification on any point, Scripture is reliable and sufficient in and of itself to explain itself.
God’s chief means of revealing himself is through the preaching of his Word. He sometimes also uses books, commentaries, discussions, conversations and other means of communicating the truth, but to be beneficial, those means must be consistent with Scripture.
That is why the Berean example is so important. Whoever and however someone purports to utter God’s truth, we must, we must, we must, ‘search the Scriptures to find out whether these things are true.’ That great promise of the Lord Jesus Christ stands sure - the Holy Spirit will ‘lead us into all truth.’
It is in the context of deceiving teachers that the apostle John places the same promise of the Holy Spirit’s teaching, “These things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you. But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you.” 1 John 2:26 NKJV
We urgently need to sound the alarm, to examine the validity of every ministry, whether in meetings, literature, word of mouth, or invading our homes via the internet or other electronic media.
Make no mistake; the same old enemy of truth who raised his head in the Garden of Eden is still slithering amongst the people of God.
He is just as subtle, just as cunning, just as subversive, just as determined to sow doubt and breed error.
It seems that more and more of the leaders of God’s people are falling into the devil’s ancient trap. The corridors of the UK church today are again echoing to that persuasive question, “Did God really say that?”
We need to reassert the centrality and sufficiency of the Word of God against all the ‘wiles of the devil.’ We need, as never before, to brandish “The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.” Ephesians 6:18
Whatever plausible and attractive teachings and ministries assault our minds and hearts – “To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Isaiah 8: 19, 20 NKJV
We need to make the most of the unconquerable weapon by which the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour banished that persistent tempter in the wilderness –
John
July 5th 2010
Is Integrity Dead?
Following its victory in the British Parliamentary election of 1997, New Labour declared the end of years of Conservative sleaze and the introduction of a new political age of integrity and transparency.
‘Whiter than white’ was Tony Blair’s glorious pronouncement.
However, time soon demonstrated that New Labour was no better than its predecessors. The blueprint had not changed. Yet again, the proud claims of integrity evaporated into clouds of disillusionment and distrust.
Some while ago, I read the life of a different kind of politician.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper was born into one of the rich ruling-class families of the nineteenth century, eventually becoming the seventh Lord Shaftesbury.
Educated at Harrow and Oxford, he entered parliament as Lord Ashley in 1826.
During his long parliamentary career, he refused several highly-paid Government positions in order to devote himself to the welfare of the poor, and his dedication to that cause persuaded him to maintain a somewhat independent political position.
For fifty years, this independence enabled him to fight for the welfare of boy chimney sweeps, mill and factory workers, mentally-impaired people, women and young children in the mines, and countless others who were the casualties of exploitation by the powerful.
Visiting hospitals in Lancashire, he was appalled to see those crippled and mutilated through unsafe working practices. He learnt that in coal mines, children, sometimes as young as four or five, were working up to eighteen hours a day.
Such revelations struck his opponents dumb, but even so, his initial proposal to limit work to ten hours a day met with fierce opposition.
He also fought for education for poor children, promoted better housing, and influenced the better treatment of young offenders.
He brought many Bills before Parliament and engaged in numerous lengthy battles to get working-class conditions improved. He determined he would never rest until the law protected the whole mass of workers.
His high moral stance caused him immeasurable difficulties, heartaches, disappointments, opposition, and great personal loss. However, bit by bit, the consistency of his cause and of his life gained many benefits for the vulnerable sections of society.
When he died, he had the respect of the whole nation, ruling classes included. Not only had he gained the respect of millions – he had gained their trust.
He openly supported evangelical work such as the London City Mission and the Bible Society, because he believed that the Christian Gospel should be the supreme influence on British society. His consistent stand for the unchangeable moral teaching of the Bible drove his work to success.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper was a politician with integrity which the passing of time could not discredit.
John
May 4th 2010
“Righteousness exalts a nation.” Proverbs 14:34 NKJV
“He who walks with integrity walks securely, but he who perverts his ways will become known.” Proverbs 10:9 NKJV
“The integrity of the upright will guide them, but the perversity of the unfaithful will destroy them.” Proverbs 11:3 NKJV
“Better is the poor who walks in his integrity than one perverse in his ways, though he be rich.”
Proverbs 28:6 NKJV
Hanani is described as “A man of integrity and feared God more than most men do.”
Nehemiah 7:2 NIV
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