The Way Jesus Launched

A few years ago I was talking with someone who knows a lot more about Christian ministry than I. Such folk are not hard to find, but this mentor is especially sagacious, and I relish his insights. We were lamenting the tendency of one celebrated and wildly successful (if numbers, popularity and resources count as success) Christian group to focus almost exclusively on the fashionable and the well heeled. My friend noted that Jesus practiced the exact opposite. For proof he cited that incident in the region of Gadara on the far side of the lake. You will remember that the case involved madmen, demons and pigs. Decorous it was not.
I thought back to that conversation as I spent a little time in Matthew 8 and 9 yesterday.
The Sermon on the Mount stretches across the whole of Matthew 5-7, preceded by the Temptation in Chapter 4 and the Baptism in Chapter 3. Working our way back to Chapter 2 we are already at the Birth Narrative. So effectively the beginning of Jesus’ ministry proper, at least after that stunning inaugural sermon, commences at Matthew 8.
How then does He begin?
What emphases does He foreshadow?
Is there an intentional (could Jesus ever be unintentional?) pattern here meant as a model for us?
Those initial signals constitute a kind of gauntlet thrown down. He begins by cleansing a leper. Then He heals a Centurion’s servant from a distance after offering to enter the man’s home. While that Centurion had gained some favor with the Jews he was still a Gentile and an occupier. Jesus extols the Gentile’s faith noting that it was especially praiseworthy compared to the faith of Israel. This from the Jewish Messiah! Impolitic that. Not at all what was expected. At the beginning of Chapter 9 Jesus calls the author of the First Gospel, Matthew himself, to become a member of the Twelve. He thus renders permanent His association with the despised for the balance of His biological Life. His was not a perfunctory ministry to the outcast. He actually invited a tax-collector to live with Him and become His permanent envoy.
Can we see a pattern yet?
He appears to actually favor the Low and the Loathed.
Do you think these memoirs were contrived?
Impossible!!!
If these accounts were spun from fancy they would have been crafted in a far different way.
The agenda of Jesus of Nazareth did not originate in the First Century.
The language of Jesus of Nazareth was not originally spoken on this planet.
And that was just the way He started out.
Outreach to fallen women, Samaritans and the Zaccheus-like wretches of the earth follow in their turn.
Chesterton said we ought to sing “Glory to God in the Lowest” when we hail the coming of this Christ.
He seemed always to specialize in the unfashionable and the counterintuitive.
In Chapter 8 we learn that Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law. Mark informs us that about the same time the paralytic was lowered from a roof rudely peeled off someone’s home. That house was likely Peter’s. Would it be amiss to imagine that Simon Peter may have been among that vast number of the married and the male who secretly prefer a healthy roof to a healthy mother-in-law? The very presence of Jesus seemed always to precipitate the unexpected. And often the uninvited. That’s one reason we’re sure the Gospel accounts were not made up. Men don’t make up that which they cannot imagine. The life and teaching of Jesus would have settled no First Century controversy in a hoped for direction. He vindicated no cherished position. He enfranchised no school of thought.
The message He brought, the model He showed pleased neither the Scribes nor the Pharisees. Not the Herodian or the Sadduccee, neither the Essene nor the Zealot would have been attracted to His teaching. Their prior convictions and commitments ruled out such a possibility. Only an Anna here or a Simeon there would have been pleased, and those two rare and worthy ones were in heaven well before He approached young manhood.
No, the thing cannot have been contrived.
“Cui bono?” the ancients sometimes asked. For whose good? Who would have profited from the doctrine and actions of this Jesus?
Nobody.
No one but the hopeless sinner.
None but the Sovereign God.

The Capital of Darkness

Last week Jane and I traveled to Krakow, the beautiful “Little Prague”, on the Vistula, Poland’s former capital and home to John-Paul II. While there I spent an afternoon at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp.
Auschwitz is one of those places many want to visit once and nobody wants to visit twice. I was amazed at the size of the crowds so late in the season.
Samuel Johnson said that we are more concerned about a pain in our little fingers than the suffering of thousands we do not know. In the main I suspect he was right. The exception may be Auschwitz. It marks us. It inspires a kind of ultimate sobriety and changes the way we look at the world. We’ve grown accustomed to endless analyses of the Holocaust and its lessons. Still the lessons should not be ignored. We may uncover new lessons if we refuse to forget.
1) Anti-Semitism in any form is a thing to be opposed. This species of iniquity is particularly malignant and has a tendency to metastasize quickly. And anti-Semitism is still alive and well in Eastern Europe. A European poll conducted a few years back showed that a plurality of Europeans believe that Israel is the chief cause of terrorism. One of Hungary’s two major parties, appealing at one level because it champions more conservative and religious causes, still fosters a dark tolerance of anti-Semitism. This alone is sufficient ground for the Christian to withhold support.
2) Of course Hitler did not reserve his malice exclusively for the Jews. Thousands of Slavs and Gypsies were murdered at Auschwitz and other camps. Secular saviors tend to become advocates of liquidation sooner or later. It is likely that his racial obsessions cost him the War. The Ukrainians initially welcomed the Germans as liberators. That soon changed when the Nazis treated them as sub humans because they were Slavs. The Germans lost a valuable ally who could have turned the tide against Russia. Had Jewish genius been enlisted on the side of Germany it is hard to imagine Germany losing. But if the Nazis had honored the Jews they wouldn’t have been Nazis
3) The capacity for human evil is apparently unlimited. You know you are beginning to think theologically when you hear the phrase “The Fall” and think of Genesis 3 instead of Autumn. We are fallen. The sin nature asserts itself. If that nature proceeds unrelieved by regeneration and the restraining power of the Holy Spirit the consequences can be dire. Cicero remarked that in war all law is suspended, but there’s no doubt that the Nazis would have continued their extermination program after the war. Dachau was built before the war began. Our potential for wickedness is staggering. Chesterton wrote that it is surprising that the doctrine of human depravity is so universally rejected because it is the one Christian doctrine which can be proved empirically.

4) To sin against spiritual light and privilege invites woeful results. The Germans as a nation were the first to embrace the Bible through the Reformation. It may be claimed that they were also the first to reject biblical authority through Liberal Theology and the Higher Criticism. It’s only fair for a fiercely Protestant observer like myself to note that the Nazis appropriated many of Martin Luther’s anti-Jewish rants for their own purposes. I have no inclination to defend Luther on this score except to quote his biographer Roland Bainton who pointed out that most of those abysmal utterances came in the last two years of Luther’s life when he had, in Bainton’s words, “lost his emotional poise.”
5) We may thank God for the noble few who stood up. We remember the Dutch family who sheltered Ann Frank. Corrie ten Boom and her sister stand out. At Munich University there were those intrepid students called The White Rose, who along with Professor Kurt Huber, were decapitated for their courage. Let us note that 40,000 Germans were executed for opposing the regime including the heroic Dietrich Bonhoeffer who could have saved himself at the end by playing along with Himmler’s plan to make a separate peace with the Allies. He refused and was hung for his principles.

Religion itself is no cure for the world’s murderous tendencies. It is a false religion which convulses the world as I write. It was a professedly religious people who insisted that the Savior be crucified. Pilate, the representative of the secular power was quite satisfied to beat Jesus and let Him go. And let us be honest. Untold savagery has been prosecuted in the name of Christ in the history of the world.
But those who use the name of Christ as a pretense for slaughter do not employ the doctrine of Christ Who laid down His life for the nations.
The Lord gives us no promise that there will not be another Holocaust, perhaps next time directed against Christians. We are only assured of wars and rumors of wars. No vague religious sentiment or specific religious enterprise will help. It is that personal relationship entered into by faith in Christ’s promises which we need. The specific trust in Jesus that leads to actual Christ-likeness is the only hope for us as individuals.
Corporately the only hope is the actual return of Jesus Himself.
It can’t come too soon for me.

The Mustering of the Host

“The Lord of Hosts is mustering a host for battle.” Isaiah 13:4

One day I may write a book called “Errors of the Quiet Time.” It would be mainly autobiographical. My qualifications as author include an habitual underachievement in the devotional realm. It is something I wish to mend.

One error is coming to prayer keen to involve God in my plan. Most will know Bill Bright’s Four Spiritual Laws, the most effective evangelistic tool of my generation. As a new Christian it was one of the first things I was taught. As an older Christian it may be the last thing I learn. The first law reads, “God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.” I fear I often imperfectly incorporate that truth into my approach to God.

Too often I treat God as a prospect for my current enthusiasms. It is as if I say: “Dear God, I know you love me, therefore I’m sure you’ll want to bless my plan.” Thus Law One is turned upon its head.

How can we forget that God has a plan?

In January I wrote of God The Amazing Star-Breather (Louie Giglio’s term). Louie masterfully expounded the theme of God the Creator--the God who fills the vastness of the inter-stellar reaches and fashions the stars in their magnitude. Let us also remember that God manages the microcosm, including that microcosm called me. He manages the microcosm of my days and nights. The God who has a plan for eternity has a plan for the hours. Let us then celebrate The God who Numbers Hairs on Heads, The Knower of Sparrows, The Tailor to Lilies. As we get to know this God, we will discover His plan for us.

When I began the Christian life it felt like enrolling in a class. As I go on it feels more like preparing for a war. Years ago I heard a professor lecture about the run-up to the Trojan War. He told of the enlistment phase. There was reluctance on the part of the Greek champions to risk their safety for an unfortunate husband in pursuit of a faithless wife. Odysseus, the most resourceful, feigned madness, while Achilles, the manliest among them, disguised himself as a woman! After being unmasked by Agamemnon, both Odysseus and Achilles took their places in the expedition to Troy. Classical scholars have a name for that enlistment phase. They call it The Mustering of the Host.

The Great Apostle compares the Christian life to the life of a soldier (2 Timothy 2:4). With those who rise early to march and to fight, we share a kindred calling. In its current and cosmic phase Christian experience takes on the shape of battle. As I read the reports of the G-20 Summit and the speeches before the U.N. General Assembly, I thought of Psalm 2. The heathen rage and the peoples imagine a vain thing. The rulers still take counsel against the Lord and against His anointed. What are the toxic rants of Gadhafi and Achmedenejad but a raging? There are those who submit to God’s rule. Most do not. We are a minority against the armed and the powerful. God’s plan for us may necessarily include collisions. Our part is not to take the life of another. We are advanced beyond Old Testament warfare. We are New Testament believers. Our weapons are of a different kind (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). We take up our life to lay it down.

A few step forward boldly. Others must be wooed. Some shrink back.
So it is in the world. So it is in the Church.
May we enlist among the eager.
When we do God will reveal His plan and assign our role.

We go with those sensitive to God’s honor and jealous for God’s glory.
May our sense of privilege be obvious.
We start at break of day.
That’s when the muster begins.

Five Things About September 1rst

‘He maketh peace in thy borders…’ Psalm 147:14

It’s a beautiful September morning in the old Hungarian capital. We hope to visit Krakow this month, perhaps next week. A missionary who was in our wedding lives there and we’ve never been.
Seventy years ago today Adolph Hitler fulfilled his own wish to visit Poland. Before daylight that morning he sent 40 divisions over the frontier and the Second World War was on .It was less than 21 years after the Armistice which ended the previous war.

What have we learned?
1) There will always be war. Jesus said there would be wars and rumors of wars. Jesus also declared the poor would always be with us. At the beginning of the 20th Century many of the most celebrated thinkers in the English-speaking world (men like HG Wells and Bernard Shaw) believed that the end of war and poverty was not only possible but near. The great hope was socialism. The founding of the Soviet state appeared to those people to make that dream even more plausible. How did a Galilean Carpenter born in the First Century know more about the 20th Century than the leading intellectual lights who entered the 20th Century as adults?
My guess is that it is because long before He made anything in that Nazareth shop He made the world and everything in it.
2) Pacifism is an admirable ideal. It is seldom a practical possibility. A very high percentage of European Christians are pacifists. Our greatest living preacher (my opinion) is a pacifist, a unilateralist and was a conscientious objector in WW II. His name is John Stott. Nearly all Eastern European and Russian Christians are against capital punishment. There are good historical reasons for that. But should our fathers and grandfathers have allowed Hitler to kill ALL the Jews, ALL the Gypsies, and All the courageous people in Germany who stood up? Should Hitler have been allowed to enslave all the Slavs? Would it have been better if we had not even tried to rescue Ann Frank and Dietrich Bonhoeffer before they perished? Is that what God wanted? I don’t think so. It would be possible to make a nearly airtight New Testament case for pacifism were it not for one verse: “… he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.” It’s a position we don’t normally associate with Jesus but there it is in Luke 22:36. While we are in Krakow we will make the obligatory visit to Auschwitz. The place holds a lesson which begs to be mastered.
3) Some forms of evil are intransigent. Perhaps I should say that evil by its very nature is intransigent. Hitler could not be TALKED out of Austria, the Sudetenland, Prague or the Danzig corridor. He had to be evicted by force.
4) Moral clarity is elusive in war. Both sides accumulate considerable guilt. Stalin helped Germany carve up Poland as Hitler’s admiring accomplice. At the end of the War Poland was still enslaved, not by the Germans but by the Soviet Union.
5) The answer individually is regeneration. The answer globally is the Coming of the Son of Man. It is a tired objection that some of the worst wars have been religious wars. Jesus did not exempt religious wars from His prophecy. It was religious people who killed Him. When professing Christians are guilty of aggressive warfare or wanton slaughter they are not being faithful to the New Testament. Indulge my prejudice please but I don’t think either Communist ideology or the Koran can be said to offer comparable safeguards against all which leads to war.
May peace come soon to Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Sudan, and to all the earth’s habitable spaces.
And a September full of peaceful and pleasant things to you all.
Even so come quickly Lord Jesus.
Selah.

Freedom: 20 Years On

The first time I visited Eastern Europe I baptized 12 Hungarians in secret at Lake Balaton at 10:30 in the evening. They were mostly students. For security purposes we arrived suddenly and departed even more suddenly. The words pronounced over the students in the water were echoed antiphonally in Hungarian on the shore by someone now a colleague in Budapest. He had (and has) a heavy South Carolina accent. I’m sure the startled loiterers on the beach remember that night even more vividly than I.
“Because of your profession of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord
And because you’re trusting in His death and in His shed blood alone to save you from your sins
I baptize you my brother Gabor (or my sister Anna)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit
Amen.”
Last Saturday I said those same words over 9 Czech and Slovak university students in a little lake in Moravia, Czech Republic. We were right out in the open at the end of a week-long Conference also in the open. I drove over two borders to get there and was never asked to show my passport. Such are the new realities which accompany freedom in Eastern Europe.
The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. With it the Iron Curtain dissolved. It had stretched, in Churchill’s famous formula, “from Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic...”.
What seemed like a permanent fixture in our lives was suddenly gone. The disappearance of the Soviet Bloc was not one of those gradual Roman Empire-like decays with barbarians finally at the gates. It was more like Belshazzar’s feast. In a moment it vanished. And anyway the barbarians had always been ruling from inside the gate.
Can it have been 20 years?
The Hungarians have always received too little credit. Our memory is settled on the Germans thronging each side of the wall shouting “Freiheit!, Freiheit!, Freiheit!”. I am grateful that our family was in Germany that unforgettable day.
But the thing was actually precipitated in Sopron, Hungary, at an obscure crossing into Austria. The Hungarians opened the border and let everyone through without challenge. Ernst Honecker the East German leader and Nicolai Ceausescu the Romanian ogre begged Gorbachev to send the tanks in as they did during the ’56 rising. He refused and the game was over. In a startlingly short time the Soviet Empire disappeared.
The vestiges of socialist conviction and Communist idealism are alive all over the world. In China, fast becoming the most consequential nation on the planet, the Communists still rule. It’s important to remember that political and economic theories are just that: theories.
It was the Communists themselves who always insisted we look to the verdict of History.
Agreed.
And the verdict of history is this:
No one ever died trying to escape from the West side of the Iron Curtain to the East side.
In one of the first blogs I told you about Lenka, a remarkable Czech songwriter. I’ve attached two of her songs sung after the baptism last Saturday for you to enjoy.
You won’t understand the words but I think you will agree they are beautiful.
They may even help you to worship as you reflect upon God’s providence among the nations in 1989.
Lenka became a believer soon after the events of those days.

On the Reading of Old Books

Andrew A Bonar

Benjamin B. Warfield
Warren Wiersbe warned against forsaking the books of the ages for the books of the hour. We are reading books now which will not be read 50 years hence. If a book will not be read in an after-generation it is doubtful whether it should be read as a contemporary edition. The obvious problem with this thesis is that the classics were new in their own generation, and the only way to determine which books should endure is to read them. That notwithstanding, it would seem prudent to bulk our reading diet with volumes which have endured. CS Lewis (who else?) recommended that we read two old books for every new one. Sound counsel that.
It is possible of course to take our preferences for the old to an extreme. If I opposed everything new and ephemeral I would be a hypocrite to write this blog. For a very brief period Lewis and his colleague JRR Tolkien succeeded in eliminating every book published after the death of Keats from the Oxford English syllabus! Their argument (which I won’t go into) took some funny turns and (unlike most of their arguments) was easily refuted. Owen Barfield (Lewis’ best friend while an Oxford undergraduate) condemned what he called “chronological snobbery’ which meant prejudice against something because it was old. But the thing can work in reverse as well. We of an antiquarian bent run the risk of rejecting something of value simply because it is not old. Still I prefer the old, and am convinced, that “…the old is better…” (Luke 5:39)
It’s the same with music. Many years ago I was listening to Twila Paris (then a contemporary favorite). Most of her recorded songs are her own. In the middle of one CD though, I was startled by the words:
“Rise up my soul arise
Shake off thy guilty fears
The bleeding sacrifice on thy behalf appears”
Much as I admire her it was immediately obvious that she did not write the song. And not only that, I was convinced THE SONG COULD NOT HAVE BEEN WRITTEN IN THE 20th CENTURY.
“Before the throne thy surety stands
My name is written on His hands.”
I read the liner notes to confirm the obvious.
The thing was done by Charles Wesley.
(By the way, Twila’s updated version was terrific.)
Even CS Lewis confessed to enjoying the novels of his contemporary EM Forster. He was also a great fan of PG Wodehouse (my own favorite secular author- candy for the mind and highly addictive) who outlived Lewis by over 11 years. CSL himself was contemporary with some of us and it would be a dreary year if we couldn’t read him. Plus sometimes we have to read the new to appreciate the quality of the old. And (returning to my theme), I again insist: THE OLD IS BETTER.
Rather than simply plead let me commend. I offer two books unfamiliar to some.
The first is by AA Bonar (1810-1892) who came from a remarkable family of Scots Presbyterians. Bonar combined real scholarship (he wrote a commentary on Leviticus which is still in print) with arduous labor in pastoral ministry. His was a godliness which showed itself chiefly by a deep humility. Bonar’s most fervent aim was to please God in all he did, and his most sincere conviction was that he’d fallen woefully short of the mark. He was the friend and biographer of Robert Murray M’Cheyne who is generally regarded as Scotland’s greatest preacher, though he reached heaven before he reached 30. Iain Murray, the Founder/Editor of Banner of Truth Publishers, knows a thing or two about old books. When he was asked to list the most important book Banner had republished he named two. One was Bonar’s biography of M’Cheyne. (The other was Spurgeon’s Autobiography). But it is Bonar’s journals, published in a volume called ‘Diary and Life’, which I put forward. My wife calls it the most spiritual book she ever read, and I would agree.
Though he was a high Calvinist and thus believed everything profitable to us eternally comes solely because of God’s gracious initiation, he could still write:
“I see that we must make EFFORTS if we are to be blessed.” March 29th 1847
Prayer was his great preoccupation yet he warns, “We must not talk about prayer-we must pray in right earnest. The Lord is near. He comes softly while the virgins slumber.”
He knew that it was possible to live with privilege and yet to languish. Consider this: “Last night…nothing shamed me more than the sin of praying little when we might ask in Christ’s Name so much and receive so much. We have stood at the well all day and scarce drawn up a few drops.”
The book is laden as a feast of hearty things like “wine on the lees well refined.”
I also commend ‘Faith and Life’ by BB Warfield (1851-1921) the great Princeton theologian. If Bonar’s book is for the serious Christian then this second volume is for the serious Bible student. The two ought necessarily to go hand in hand should they not? But I fear in practice it is not always so. The book is a record of Warfield’s addresses to his students at Princeton Seminary during informal gatherings on Sunday afternoons. In written form the addresses appear as essays on varied texts linked by a common profundity but otherwise unconnected. For breathtaking insights on verses we thought were familiar the book stands alone in my experience.
When I read the chapter called ‘Light and Shining’ I wondered if I’d ever even remembered anything I’d learned in Bible study. That essay examines the reasons Jesus taught in parables. While reading I realized that still by my mid-fifties the true explanation had eluded me. Most of the teaching is quite accessible e.g. why did the Lord commend child-likeness? Not, Warfield argues, because innocence is the thing desired but rather it is the qualities of dependence and trust which advance us toward the Kingdom. Other lessons are not as easily appropriated and the reader is required to yield something like seminary study itself to benefit from all Warfield offers.
“Not,” he writes, “as if knowledge were the end --life, undoubtedly, is the end at which the saving processes are directed….”
Insights like those served up by Bonar and Warfield are seldom encountered in contemporary writing or preaching.
But because such treasure is still available we must avail.
By availing we may help to mend the age.

Calvin at the Half-Millennium

John Calvin (1509-1564)

About the time I became a Christian one of the first teachers I heard warned, "Never form an opinion of anyone based on data supplied by their enemies." In context he was speaking of the Puritans. It’s especially important to heed that warning in the case of John Calvin (whom the Puritans revered) who was born July 10, 1509 in Noyon, France. I remembered that when I read William Manchester's book 'A World Lit Only By Fire.' I admire Manchester’s work as a historian. As a theologian he is not to be recommended. Doubtless his theology improved just after his death a few years ago. Manchester ripped Calvin unmercifully and, I would guess, inaccurately. Calvin is one of the most vilified figures in Western history.
He is also one of the greatest.
He is to theology what Shakespeare is to literature.
Sadly Calvin is mistrusted and even reviled by large numbers of Evangelical Christians. For these and other reasons it is important to read Calvin himself. It’s even more important for those inclined to oppose him.
Full disclosure demands that I confess I have not read all of Calvin's Magnum Opus, Institutes of the Christian Religion, but what I have read is thrilling. Calvin maintains a variety, pace and intensity unparalleled in theological writing. Calvin speaks of what he calls "the exuberant goodness of God," and he himself writes with an exuberance which never flags. Other apologists cede much to unbelievers in seeking common ground for dialog and witness. Calvin conceded nothing. Every paragraph Calvin wrote burns with the conviction that the God of Israel is immaculate, matchless in His perfection, and unassailable in His judgments, while the sinner has nothing to commend himself in the face of God's holiness. For the sinner then the only hope can be a grace never merited, never deserved. Calvin was THE apologist of the Protestant Reformation par excellence. As a proclaimer, defender and expositor of God's sovereignty and majesty he has no peers.
In the Fourth and Thirteenth Centuries God gave the Church Augustine and Aquinas. That he would give Luther and Calvin in the same generation is proof of the grace which marked the era of the Reformation.
The greatest quote I know is from Calvin. I only learned it from a secondary source and if anyone can help in locating the original I'd be grateful. Nicholas Woltersdorf the distinguished Yale philosopher shared the quote in the volume "Philosophers Who Believe." Quoting Calvin he wrote:
"To be human is to be that point in the cosmos which responds to the goodness of God with gratitude."
One reason that insight rocks me is that it is so difficult to define what it is to be human. The Marxists claim the key is economic, the fascists racial, the Freudians psycho-sexual, and the Darwinians biological, but none of these keys fit the lock. The Bible teaches that Man (by which we mean man as male and female) is a steward, a fallen image-bearer who can be rescued only by a Wounded Healer. That Man is fallen accounts for the horrors even Christians are capable of. That Man is an image-bearer accounts for the nobility detectable in all, even those who don’t believe.
And here is Calvin nailing it. We are created for God's glory. To give Him glory we must find Him good. If we find Him good we must give Him thanks.
And the definition is not a mere abstraction. Prof. Woltersdorf was gripped by what Calvin wrote during the season of his own son's death at 25. When I read his essay he seemed to ask the question: "My son is dead. Is God still good? And am I still grateful?"
Whether we FEEL it to be so or not, the answer to the first question is always “Yes.”. God grant that we would always be able to give a “yes” answer to the second question as well even if sorely tested.
As much as any Christian who ever wrote Calvin helps move us toward the right answer.