Bigots!

Confess to being a bigot with Charles Spurgeon!


Bigots!: Your weekly dose of Spurgeon




The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "Let Us Go Forth," a sermon preached on Sunday morning, 26 June 1861 at London's Metropolitan Tabernacle.



he reproach of Christ, in these days, takes this shape. "Oh," say they, "the man is too precise. He is right; but still, truth is not always to be spoken. The thing is wrong, no doubt, which he denounces, but still the time has not come yet; we must be lenient towards these things. The man is right in what he says, but we must not be too precise nowadays. We must give and take a little—there must be charity."

God's Word, in this age, is a small affair; some do not even believe it to be inspired; and those who profess to revere it set up other books in a sort of rivalry with it. Why, there are great Church dignitaries nowadays who write against the Bible, and yet find bishops to defend them. "Do not, for a moment, think of condemning their books or them; they are our dear brethren, and must not be fettered in thought." How many days ago is it since a bishop talked in this way in convocation?

Some believe in Popery; but here, again, the plea will be, "They are our dear brethren." Some believe in nothing at all; but still they are all safely housed in one Church, like the beasts, clean and unclean, in Noah's ark.

Those who come out with Christ get this reproach: they are too precise; in fact, they are "bigots." That is how the world brings it out at last, "bigots" "a set of bigots!"

I have heard say that the word "bigot" took its rise from this: that a certain Protestant nobleman being commanded, in order to gain his lands, to kneel down, and in some way or other commit the act of idolatry towards the host, said, when he came at last to the point, "By God, I will not;" and they called him henceforth a "By-God." If this be the meaning of the word "bigot," we cheerfully adopt the title; and were it right to swear, we would aver: "By him that lives!—by heaven!—we cannot speak a lie, and we cannot bend our knee to the shrine of Baal, bigots or no bigots."

The truth is first, and our reputation next.

Then they say, "Ah! these people are behind their time; the world has made such advances; we are in the nineteenth century; you ought to know better; the discoveries of science put your narrow views out of court."

Very well, Christian, be content to be behind the times, for the times are getting nearer to judgment and the last plagues.

"Ah!" but they say, "these people seem to us to be so self-righteous; they think themselves right and nobody else."

Very well, Christian, if you are right, think yourself right; and if everybody else should call you self-righteous, that does not make you so. The Lord knows how we cling to the cross, and as poor sinners, look up to Christ and Jesus Christ alone. Our conscience is void of offense in this matter.

"Ah!" they say, "they are not worth noticing; they are all a pack of fools."

It is very remarkable that in the judgment of their own age, good men always have been fools. Fools have been the ones who have turned the world upside down. Luther and Calvin, Wesley and Whitfield were all fools; but somehow or other God managed by these fools to get to himself a glorious victory.

And then they turn round and say, "It is only the poor—only the lower orders. Have they any of the nobility and gentry with them?"

Well, this reproach we can pretty well bear, because it is the old standard of Christ that the poor have the gospel preached unto them; and it has ever been a sweet reflection that many who have been poor in this world have been made rich in faith.

Brethren, you must expect if you follow Christ to endure reproach of some sort or another. Let me just remind you what reproach your Master had to bear. The world's Church said of Christ, "He is a deceiver: he deceives the people." Incarnate truth, and yet a deceiver! Then they said, "He stirreth up the people: he promotes rebellion. He is no friend of good order: he foments anarchy; he is a mere demagogue." That was the world's cry against Christ, and, as that was not enough, they went further, and said, "He is a blasphemer;" they put him to death on the charge that he was a blasphemer. They whispered to one another, "Did you hear? he said so-and-so last Sabbath, in his sermon. What a shocking thing he did in such a place! He is a blasphemer."

Then came the climax; they all said he had a devil, and was mad. Surely they could go no further than this, but they supplement it by saying, when he cast out devils, that he did it through Beelzebub, the prince of the devils.

A sorry life your Master had, you see. All the filth in earth's kennels was thrown at him by sacrilegious hands. No epithet was thought coarse enough; no terms hard enough; he was the song of the drunkard, and they that sat in the gate spake against himn.

This was the reproach of Christ; and we are not to marvel if we bear as much.

"Well," says one, "I will not be a Christian if I am to bear that."

Skulk back, then, thou coward, to thine own damnation; but oh! men that love God, and who seek after the eternal reward, I pray you do not shrink from this cross. You must bear it. I know you may live without it if you will fawn and cringe, and keep back part of the price; but do not this, it is unworthy of your manhood, much more is unworthy of your Christianity. For God and for Christ be so holy and so truthful that you compel the world to give its best acknowledgment of your goodness by railing at you—it can do no more, it will do no less.

Be content to take this shame, for there is no heaven for you if you will not—no crown without the cross, no jewels without the mire. You must stand in the pillory if you would sit in glory; you must be spit upon, and be treated with shame if you would receive eternal honor; and if you reject the one you reject the other.

---

Healing – medicine or miracles?

Great words from Macca about healing from cancer.


Healing – medicine or miracles?:
Everyone has an opinion on cancer. Since my diagnosis I’ve been given books and blogs and articles to read. Some are conservative and mainstream. Others are out there and adventurous. I’ve learned about surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, phototherapy, herbal medicines, angiogenesis inhibitors, acupuncture, detox diets, and much more. It’s encouraging that research is advancing at a rapid rate and treatment options are available today that wouldn’t have been dreamed of a few years back. But it’s so confusing. There are so many voices. How do we know what’s best? How do we distinguish the quacks and the frauds from the progressive and informed? Do we just go with tried and tested or do we explore and experiment? I’m just grateful for my GP wife who is well equipped to ask the right questions and then translate the answers for me!
I’ve found something else disturbing, and it’s more theological than medical. A belief that treatment should be refused because it’s incompatible with faith in God. One man is refusing any treatment because his pastor has prayed for him and pronounced him to be healed. The problem is that he’s not healed. So what does he do? Conjure up faith that he really is healed, expecting his belief to eventually become reality? Or does he take the advice of family and friends and visit an oncologist?
The faith-healing movement has a lot to answer for. Promises of healing are sometimes presumptuous and dangerous. In some devastating cases people have died because they have refused simple, available, proven treatment options. I know of a number of people who’ve been left riddled with guilt because they (or their friends or relatives) have been promised healing if only they have enough faith. They’re rebuked for having hidden sin in their life. They’re criticised for having a weak faith or doubting God’s ability and willingness to heal. Sadly, this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading people to doubt the goodness of God and the validity of their own faith.
The Bible describes God as the creator of heaven and earth. He sustains our every breath, knowing every detail of our bodies and minds. He is Ruler over all and not constrained in any way by our actions or beliefs, or our lack thereof. He is the Sovereign Lord who gives life and takes it away. He is the Healer who sometimes chooses to heal and other times does not. God works through our trials, struggle, sickness, and pain. He doesn’t promise to remove all suffering in this life, but he does promise to use it for our ultimate good. God has set a day when our healing will be full and complete, but this will be after our death and resurrection.
Ongoing illness needn’t be understood as a sign of personal sin or evidence of a lack of faith. It may simply be a part of God’s good purposes for our lives in this world of decay and death. Nor should we think that God’s ability or willingness to heal is in any way contingent on our faith. Jesus heals many people in the gospels without any mention of their faith. We mustn’t think that our faith is the trigger mechanism that activates God’s power to heal. God can do whatever he likes, with or without our help.
And what’s more, as creator and sustainer of all things, God can use whatever he chooses to bring healing to people. If someone is healed through chemotherapy, then we can thank God! He made the brilliant minds that have taken the products of his creation and applied them to fighting the cancer. If someone is healed through surgery, then we can thank God. He gave the skill to the surgeons, anaesthetists, and nurses. If someone is able to keep the cancer from growing or spreading by keeping to a strict diet, then we can thank God. How generous is God to provide ‘natural’ ways of combatting the cancer. If someone should be healed without any medical explanation and contrary to medical advice, then we should thank God. How merciful is our God, and how great beyond our understanding!
And if God chooses not to heal someone, but to take them home to himself, then we can thank God! We can thank him for our life! We can thank him for his kindness in giving us new life in Jesus Christ! We can thank him for his promise to rescue us from our decaying bodies and bringing us into a glorious future with him.
Healing – medicine or miracles? I really don’t mind. I’d love to be miraculously healed, and soon. I’d be thrilled to have chemo, or targeted drugs, or some other therapy succeed in eradicating all the cancer from my body. I’m very grateful that God has sustained me thus far and I look forward to many days, weeks, months and years ahead – God willing! But death awaits us all, one way or another, and I thank God most of all for the hope of the life to come.

³ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴ and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade —kept in heaven for you, ⁵ who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. ⁶ In 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. ⁸ Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, ⁹ for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.  (1 Peter 1:3-9)

Veggie Tales, Moralism, and Modern Preaching

UPDATE: I didn't write this. Still treating my blog as my facebook page. Sorry if you thought this was brilliant and then drew a wrong conclusion about whose brilliance it was. I am brilliant too, but in a derivative sort of way. Veggie Tales, Moralism, and Modern Preaching:
A number of years ago, my kids were into Veggie Tales.  And, truthfully, so was I.  It was actually quite enjoyable to watch these charming videos, cataloging the journeys of Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber, et al.  Indeed, I could probably recite the opening song word for word.
On this note, it was interesting to learn this week that in an interview with World Magazine the creator of Veggie Tales, Phil Vischer, has expressed regret over the “moralism” of Veggie Tales:

I looked back at the previous 10 years and realized I had spent 10 years trying to convince kids to behave Christianly without actually teaching them Christianity. And that was a pretty serious conviction. You can say, “Hey kids, be more forgiving because the Bible says so,” or “Hey kids, be more kind because the Bible says so!” But that isn’t Christianity, it’s morality.

Now, there is much to be commended in Vischer’s realization. Certainly Christianity is more than simply behaving in a certain way.  Christianity, at its core, is about God’s redemptive work in Christ to save sinners by grace.  Moreover, when it comes to proclaiming the Christian message, we always need to present the imperative (here’s what you should do) within the context of the indicative (here’s what Christ has done).  The latter is always the foundation for the former.
However, that said, I wonder if Veggie Tales can be so quickly swept aside as non-Christian.  Vischer declares, “You can say, ‘Hey kids, be more forgiving because the Bible says so’…But that isn’t Christianity.”   Well, it depends what he means.  In many ways, such a statement is definitively Christian. It calls God’s covenant people (kids in this instance) to obey the authoritative word of their covenant Lord (regarding forgiving others).  Sure, it is a call to a certain moral behavior.  But it is a moral behavior that is in a biblical, covenantal context because it is based on God’s word.  If I said in a sermon, “be more forgiving because the Bible says so,” would that be considered non-Christian?  I hope not.  Surely Christians need to be more forgiving.  And surely the fact that God says so is a compelling motivation (though not the only motivation).
At this point I suppose one might object and say that we are free to give moral imperatives as long as they are always given alongside the gospel message.  But, again, it depends on what one means by “alongside.”  I would certainly agree that any moral imperative must always be rooted in the gospel message of grace and forgiveness in Christ.  But, does this mean that it must always be stated immediately in the very next sentence?   Does it always mean that it must be stated expressly every time you give a moral imperative?  I would argue that the gospel is the foundation for moral imperatives, the context for moral imperatives, and the backdrop for moral imperatives.  But, we must be careful about insisting that there is a magical formula for how that must be expressed in any given proclamation of Christian teaching.  Indeed, I think a number of biblical examples bear this out:
1. The book of James.  When one reads the book of James it is clear that it is a letter of morals.  We are called to not show partiality (2:1), to help the poor among us (2:15-16), to watch our tongues (3:1-12), to stop our coveting (4:1-2), to be patient and longsuffering (5:7-8), to pray faithfully (5:16), and much more.  Moreover, this letter does not explicitly mention the atonement, the cross, justification, salvation by grace alone, or any core aspects of the “gospel” message.  Is James therefore moralism?  Not at all.  You have to take James in context of the entire New Testament and the fact that the core aspects of the gospel message are explained elsewhere.  No doubt James wrote already assuming that his audience understood the basic truths of the gospel.
2. The Sermon on the Mount.  Although it is obvious to anyone who reads it, it is often overlooked that Jesus’ most famous sermon is composed of almost all moral imperatives.  Jesus covers an impressive list of moral topics: anger, lust, divorce, oaths, fasting, worry, and more.  Indeed, Jesus even warns his listeners that God’s judgment will fall on those who righteousness does not surpass that of the Pharisees (5:20), and for those who fail to keep his word (7:21-26).   And, once again, there is no express mention of atonement, the cross, justification, etc.  Does this make his sermon moralism?   No, once again, the sermon has to be taken in the larger context of Jesus’ teachings, and the teachings of the NT as a whole.
3. The book of Proverbs.  Once again, here is an entire book that is fulfilled with moral wisdom on how one should live their life.  It tells us how to act, think, feel, on a variety of critical issues.  And, there is no express discussion of atonement, justification, salvation by grace, etc.  Does this make Proverbs moralism?  Not at all.  These exhortations, once again, need to be understood within the larger context of the Bible’s teachings.
These are just three quick examples designed to make a very simple point: sometimes it is Ok to take large blocks of teaching and focus on Christian morals. One should not have to stop every five minutes to give a “gospel presentation” out of fear of being accused of moralism.   The key issue is whether there is a larger context around those moral teachings that adequately provide a gospel foundation for obedience.  If Veggie Tales were used as a supplemental teaching tool to parents who were adequately explaining the gospel to their children, I could see it as very useful (and very Christian!).  Veggie Tales were never intended (I hope!) to be a complete Christian curriculum for kids, even though some parents may unfortunately use them in that fashion.
Of course, this whole discussion is about more than just children’s videos. It also has tremendous relevance for modern day preaching.  The big push today in Reformed circles, and rightly so, is that we should always be concerned to “preach Christ” from every text.  And I agree 100%.   But, the key question is “What does it means to ‘preach Christ’?”  For some, this has turned into a requirement that every sermon must be about justification by faith alone.  In order to avoid the trap of moralism, we are told that we must find a way to turn every passage of Scripture into a discussion of how we cannot keep the law and how Christ has kept it for us.
Now certainly justification by grace alone is a foundational and wonderful topic. And it should be preached regularly with vigor. But, to suggest that every sermon needs to be narrowly about this topic is to misunderstand the biblical vision for preaching.  Our call to “preach Christ” includes all of his offices not just the priestly one.  Why should we limit our preaching to just this one office?  Can we not “preach Christ” by preaching about his kingly role? Or his prophetic role?  Can we not preach a sermon that primarily focuses on what our King requires of us and how we need to obey him? Ironically, by limiting our sermons to just the topic of justification we are actually working against the very thing we are trying to preserve, namely keeping Christ at the center of our preaching.  If we are really to keep Christ there, we must be willing to preach all his offices.  We must preach the whole Christ.
But, there are other problems with this approach.  If preaching Christ just mean preaching justification then whenever we come across a text that is focused on morals (James, Sermon on the Mount, Proverbs, etc.), then our tendency will always be to focus on the “second use” of the Law.  In other words, our tendency will be to just point out that our congregations cannot really keep this law and must flee to Christ to be justified and forgiven.  While that is true, that is not the only role of the law in the Christian life.  The law is also given to Christians as a positive guide to how we should live in obedience to Christ (known as the “third use” of the law).   We want to make sure that our preaching balances second and third use, and does not just automatically default to one.  If we default to third use, our temptation will be legalism.  If we default to the second use, our temptation will be antinomianism.
Also, and perhaps most problematically, this particular understanding of what it means to “preach Christ” can hamper fair exegesis.  If we feel obligated to preach only Christ’s priestly office, then we must find a way to turn every text to this issue even when it may not naturally go there.  Thus, we “find” Christ in the text in an unnatural way rather than a natural way.   This ends up creating sermons that sound almost the same every time, regardless of what the passage actually says.  This proves to be somewhat ironic in Reformed circles that have historically placed such an emphasis on careful exegesis and expository preaching.  In some ways we have failed to trust the text (and its sufficiency) and have replaced it with our own ideas of what it has to say.
All of this, of course, is not designed to downplay or deny the real threat of moralism in many churches today.  To be sure, many pulpits lack the gospel message entirely and simply preach a “do this” version of Christianity.  But, the solution is not to impose a “one size fits all” version of preaching where any extended moral exhortation is immediately labeled moralism.  Indeed, the Bible is filled with extended moral exhortations. Perhaps we should take a cue from the Scripture on this issue.  The indicative is the ground for the imperative, not its obstacle.

An Indonesian Book Burning

I've decided to post links that I'm sending to facebook onto this blog as well. Perhaps it'll inspire me to write more than a post a month!
UPDATE: Sorry, I was treating this a bit like facebook but I was reminded that I needed to include the detail of who actually wrote the blog!! This is from Doug Wilson.

An Indonesian Book Burning:
There is currently a ruckus over in Indonesia over a book I wrote, 5 Cities That Ruled the World. The publisher there (Gramedia) has formally apologized for their role in it, and has burned their copies of the book.
The first thing about this that I should note is that people on the other side of the world are in significant trouble because of something I wrote, and I don't want to in any way make their situation any more difficult than it has to be. But this is how hostage taking works, isn't it? Unreasonable and belligerent people are always willing to commandeer a situation, and then blame others for the devastation that follows.
Whenever this kind of thing happens, whenever Muslims threaten violence because their prophet was "defamed," they are only proving that it wasn't a defamation at all. The sons of Muhammad do the works of Muhammad.
The offending passage in my book appears to have been this one:

"He [Muhammad] became a marauder and pirate, ordering attacks on Meccan caravans. Two years later, Muhammad ordered assassinations in order to gain control of Medina, and in AD 630 he conquered Mecca" (p. 26 of the English edition).

I think one of the news stories said that I had called Muhammad a "pirate and a murderer," which I repeated in one of my tweets on this situation, but having now gone back and looked at the original passage, I actually had said marauder and pirate. These are sentiments that ought to be unremarkable in a free country, but apparently Indonesia is not quite there yet.

Letting a caravan have it is noted in the Koran itself:

"You were encamped on this side of the valley and the unbelievers on the farther side, with the caravan below. Had they offered battle, you would have surely declined; but God sought to accomplish what he had ordained, so that, by a clear sign, he that was destined to perish might die . . ." (8:42)

For those who want to pursue this subject further, the downstream history of Islam's approach to violence is ably discussed by Bernard Lewis in What Went Wrong? A good brief biography of Muhammad can be found in the first chapter of The Sword of the Prophet by Serge Trifkovic. Another interesting discussion is offered by Mark Gabriel (a former Muslim) in Jesus and Muhammad, in which he chronicles "profound differences and surprising similarities" between Jesus and Muhammad. The place to check would be his Chapter 7, "Spreading the Message." In Secrets of the Koran, Don Richardson (author of Peace Child) has a good chapter on the violent passages of the Koran, and their original context.
In the meantime, I would ask everyone to please pray for the safety and security of anyone involved in this mess which, if there weren't such serious possible consequences for some, would be laughable.

Wiggly kid's talk: God never changes

My kid's talk for church this morning...

Hi kids and hi everyone. Welcome to Gordon’s culture watch. Culture watch is where we watch a video and I give you a verse from the Bible to think about.

Hands up please if you’ve heard of the Wiggles? Keep your hands up if you like the wiggles!

Wow lots of people like the Wiggles. Who’s been to a Wiggles concert? What was it like? Do you have a favourite song?

I’ve got a clip here from my favourite song, and as you watch it you can sing along

VIDEO Hot potato!

(Hot potato. Cold Spaghetti. Mashed banana. Hot potato)

Great song! and you could also see that the Wiggles look a lot younger then than they do now. I’ve got some photos here of how the Wiggles have changed. Most of you kids would know that Greg Wiggle got a bit sick for a while, so Sam joined up

PHOTO. Wiggles with SAM.

Then Sam finished up just back in January! So here’s a photo of the Wiggles with Greg Wiggle back!

PHOTO Old Wiggles. They look a bit older though don’t they! Did you know that Jeff Wiggle is nearly 60 years old? Wow.

So just in the last two weeks three of the Wiggles have said they’re retiring!

Anyway the Wiggles aren’t finishing up completely because there are some new young wiggles, here’s a photo of them:

PHOTO Young wiggles.

And one of the best things is now there is a girl wiggle, and her name is Emma, and I think that is great especially because she comes from close to here, and she was Miss Granny Smith for 2009

PHOTO Emma Watkins Granny Smith.

Now I want to say that sometimes change is good, and sometimes it’s not so good. I used to say to my daughters when they were babies, my job for you is to stay the same forever. But they didn’t! And now my 13 year old daughter is a bit sad that the Wiggles have changed, she says they were the One Direction of her childhood. (You know that One Direction is the world’s greatest boy band, don’t you).

Well I just want to finish with a verse from the Bible where the Lord Jesus talks about change, and it is a great Bible verse because even though it says everything changes, there is one thing that doesn’t change.

Mark 13:31 Jesus said: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.”

So kids, the Wiggles will change. You will change. We might come back in 30 years and this building might not even be here. But God never changes, and the words that he speaks never change, and that’s why we should trust him, and that’s why we should trust all his promises.

Seven Stanzas at Easter by John Updike

Shared this before, no doubt will share again!

Seven Stanzas at Easter

By John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

Telephone Poles and Other Poems © 1961 by John Updike.

John Piper and masculine Christianity

Simone has sparked a fascinating discussion on John Piper's talk, “The Frank and Manly Mr. Ryle” — The Value of a Masculine Ministry.

You can find Simone's post here, but do read Piper's original before drawing conclusions.

It is good to see a thoughtful defence of some of Piper's ideas and expressions in the comments to Simone's post. Not that Piper needs others to defend him, but it is likely that he would have his hands well and truly full if he weighed in to every discussion that referenced his original address.

Find a fool

Preached this yesterday:



Psalm 14: FIND A FOOL

I was a bit surprised when I came to prepare Psalm 14 to discover just how important it is. It is a Davidic Psalm, which means that it was written by King David, the man who gets called the sweet psalmist of Israel in 2 Samuel 23.

but as interesting as that is, the real reasons why this Psalm is so important I would summarize by saying God, the Bible and Jesus.

The first reason is the obvious reason, God spoke it so it is the word of God.

The second reason, which I’d half forgotten, is that this Psalm is repeated almost word for word later on in the book of Psalms, Psalm 53, only a few words are changed, the word LORD is replaced by God, there’s an added reference to the scattering of bones of the enemy, and there is most likely a new tune, if you check the heading that comes with the Psalm. Why is it so? Well you read them yourself and make the comparison,

but I am quite sure that God doesn’t say the same thing twice in two different places without a reason, in much the same way as you may choose to say to children under your care, be very careful crossing the road because we don’t like getting run over, even though you have said it many times before and even if those children can now repeat it even before you say it. That is the whole point! You don’t want them to forget! It’s why there are 4 gospels that tell us about Jesus, not just one!

And I take it that God does not want us to forget any of his Word but especially he doesn’t want us to forget this Psalm.

The third reason this Psalm is important is that it is a Psalm about Jesus, quoted in Romans chapter 3, but we will get to that in a while.

Right now I want to ask the question who is a fool, you see that the Psalm begins with the words ‘The fool’. The fool has said in his heart ‘God does not exist’

And probably the big distraction to get out of the way is that ‘fool’ is not about intellectual ability.

I felt like a fool in 1980, and many times since may I say, but on this occasion I was sitting quietly as a second year sociology student, and the tutor, who clearly wasn’t a fool by anyone’s estimation said, surely no-one here believes in the idiot notion of human nature any more, to which I foolishly said, I do.

Now the tutor, and lots of other people, thought that they had found a perfect example of a fool, but a fool in this Psalm is not just about not being clever or not keeping up with the programme, because as you can see in verse one, the defining characteristic of the fool is the man who says, ‘God does not exist’ or if you have another translation in front of you, ‘There is no God.’

That is pretty clear isn’t it; being a fool is not about an intellectual limitation, it’s about taking the view that the God of Israel—remembering that it is David king of Israel who writes—doesn’t exist, isn’t there.

Now once we’ve worked out that being a fool is not about being stupid…


I mean the world is full of stupid people isn’t it? On July 2 1982 Larry Walters attached helium balloons to his deckchair and rose to a height of 4.6 kilometres with the plan of shooting some balloons with a pellet gun so that the deckchair would slowly come down. He hadn’t meant to go that high, the original plan was about 10 metres or 30 feet. He shot some balloons, accidentally dropped the pellet gun overboard and eventually caused a 20 minute blackout in Long Beach California when the cords from the balloon got tangled in powerlines.

We are not talking that sort of stupid. Psalm 14 says it is about refusing to acknowledge the existence of God, which means that one of the new atheists, undoubtedly brilliant men, like Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins, comes much more easily to mind.

Now they undoubtedly fit the bill of people who say that God does not exist, but there are just a couple of other things to notice in verse 1, and the first is that it is not just an outward denial that we are talking about, it is an attitude of the heart. So yes, there may be an intellectual component but actually there is more going on here, it is an inward, personal attitude that says no, God is not there. And add to that the second half of the verse brings in the matter of action

‘They are corrupt; they do vile deeds. There is no-one who does good.’

Now that additional information makes it immediately harder and easier to find a fool. Harder, because we all know atheists, at least one person who will loudly and prouldly announce, ‘There is no god, it is all just superstition’ and so as soon as the Psalm begins, we think we’ve nailed the person it’s talking about,

and it turns out that we sort of have, but sort of haven’t, because it is talking about an attitude of heart which may or may not be publicly expressed, and overflows into wickedness of action, it is not just someone who thinks bad thoughts but who does bad things. That may have been Christopher Hitchens and it may be Richard Dawkins but if we are honest neither of them are particularly obvious as wicked people; actually there are plenty of people in the world where we might say much more easily, no they are corrupt, they do vile deeds,

in fact once you bring the whole question of what people do into it, you’d want to finger far more public 20th century atheists like Joseph Stalin, or Mao Zedong, or Hitler who said ‘Nature is cruel, therefore we are also entitled to be cruel’ ; people who both actively denied God and went out of their way to kill people, Christians included, who opposed their ideology.

We have to say there is no doubt in King David’s mind as to who the fools are. They are his enemies, in verse 4, they are the ones “who consume my people as they consume bread, they do not call upon the LORD.” But actually, when we think about it in those terms, there are many fools in the world.

We were up at CMS Summer school this week and had a wonderful time, including catching up with the Clarks from this congregation, andy and Nicole Clark and also Michael and Caroline Clark and their kids, who are going off to Munich for Michael to teach theology.

We heard news from every corner of the world, many wonderful things, and some awful things. did you know that in Eritrea, which is next door to Ethiopia, the Christians are undergoing terrible persecution. They are taking Christian leaders and putting them into containers. They are taking those containers and burying them, so that the men inside suffocate. These Christian leaders are being buried alive.

There are other stories too, I hope that if you don’t already, you will get hold of the magazine from the Barnabas fund which comes out every month and find out how Christians are suffering for being Christian in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Indonesia, Nigeria, the Sudan, Egypt, and many parts of the world, if only so that you can be prompted to pray for them on a regular basis.

The point of what I’m saying is that to be a fool is not simply to verbally or perhaps mentally deny that there is a God, that is, to be an atheist, but to carry that action out into the world. Jesus said that the two greatest commands are to Love God and to love your neighbour; the fool is the person who says, well there is no God, and who hates his neighbour and eats him up, he doesn’t love God, he doesn’t love man. That’s what a fool is.

And indeed once we realize that there is your picture of a fool, you actually realize that the question better asked is, who is righteous? Is there anyone who doesn’t act and think like a fool at least some of the time.

All of the people are all fools, some of the time. If Abraham Lincoln didn’t say it he should have.

Really, is there anyone righteous? Anyone who really does love God and love his neighbour?

Now we know that there must be righteous people, because David speaks of them in v 5. “God is with those who are righteous.”

Again in v6, “You sinners frustrate the plans of the afflicted, but the LORD is his refuge.”

And when we come back next week, we will hear even more about righteous people.

But for the moment, let’s look at ourselves not just from the perspective of David who writes the Psalm, but from the perspective of God himself.

vv 2-3

In other words, when God looks down on us, he finds no-one righteous.

That very idea is taken up by Paul when he quotes this very Psalm in Romans chapter 3, let me turn there now but if you have Ps 14 in front of you, please stay there while I read.

Romans 3:10-18

Paul, writing to Christians, picks up David’s Psalm and says that is absolutely true; possibly even truer than David knew. We are all fools! We are all people who say in our hearts, “God doesn’t exist”. What sort of person are you when no-one is looking, when not even family members are noticing? That is the person that God sees, and he sees people who think he doesn’t see them because they don’t see him, and when we are convinced that even God doesn’t see what we do, then we act accordingly.

So who is righteous?

Notice that David himself is righteous, the writer of this Psalm; and not because he is good! The second time this Psalm comes back, when it is pretty much repeated word for word in Psalm 53, is very shortly after Psalm 51 where David confesses and repents of adultery and murder. He is not righteous because he does good things!

Look with me at v 7

v 7

Here David is speaking as someone who is not a fool, but as someone who calls and cries out to God. Zion is the hill where Jerusalem is built. Jerusalem is the city of David, where God is not because he has to be, but because he has promised to be, and that is why David, in the face of fools, can call out for Israel’s deliverance to come from Zion. God will hear and rescue him, and everyone who with David calls out.

And this is of course where the Christian turns, for exactly the same hope. When Paul takes up this Psalm in Romans 3, he uses it to prove that there is no hope at all for any human being, because we are all corrupt in God’s eyes. We all have our own way of saying, “God doesn’t exist”, whether it’s in our secret thoughts, or our secret actions, or in the way we treat each other when we think we can get away with it.

But the very next thing that happens in Romans 3 is that Paul points us to the Lord Jesus, who is presented as a propitiation through faith in his blood. All the terrible things that we fools do, and that quite rightly deserve the terrible judgement of God who looks down from heaven and sees that all have turned away and become corrupt—all those terrible things have been paid for by the death of Jesus on the cross. He is our propitiation; he pays for all the wrong we’ve done, he bears God’s anger against our foolishness..

And so Psalm 14 isn’t in the end just a lament over fools, or over intellectual limitation, or over evil deeds; it’s a prayer of trust that the God who saved king David from his enemies will also save us, if we will put our trust in Jesus, so that there is for those who trust God nothing that will separate us from his great and powerful love revealed in Jesus Christ.

My plans for 2012

Firstly, given that the Lord may return before 2012 anyway, and given that we have not in any way given up on 2011, and given that we want to be giving thanks for his grace at all times and in all places,

Merry Christmas!

And thanks to God who gives us his grace in so many ways, but most especially through the life, death and resurrection of his son, the Lord Jesus.

However I wanted to let blog and facebook readers know in a bit more detail what my plans are for 2012. They are in order of importance: one, to keep following Jesus as Lord; two, to keep loving my family in word and action; and three… well read on.

Due to family and personal circumstances I decided to take a break from AFES (Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students) work half way through 2010. I’m convinced under God that it was the right thing to do so, with some sadness, I finished up as campus director at the Cumberland campus of Sydney Uni.

There was never any intention to step back from the work of gospel ministry, however. So in the time since then, I’ve looked for opportunities to keep on teaching the Bible and God’s message of forgiveness in Jesus—whether in the family with my dear wife and daughters, or in meeting one-to-one with various people, or in preaching at church and elsewhere, including a series earlier this year on the book of Daniel at Cumberland campus.

As well as that I’ve done some writing, including some articles on the resurrection, and some writing and editing for a Bible course, Faith Under Fire for use in the Australian Defence forces, and drafting a statement of belief for a Christian school.

I’ve also been producing a video featuring broadcaster Kel Richards and evangelist John Chapman, and working with children’s gospel worker Bruce Linton in putting together a website for children’s ministry resources (we haven’t gone live on that one yet).

Together with the joys and responsibilities of family life, and part time work singing and playing the piano, and driving hearses, most weeks have become just as full and busy as any of the work that I was doing on campus!

However in God’s grace, a new possibility has come up for 2012. Having talked again to various friends in AFES, I will be starting work with the Conservatorium of Music (known to all and sundry as the Con, part of the University of Sydney) as soon as I am able to gain sufficient support to begin.

Initially I will be working two days per week, but there is a very good possibility that this will increase down the track once we all get a chance to see how things are going. The basic job will be the same as previously: Bible teaching, meeting with leaders and meeting one-to-one to read the Bible and pray, together with a team of others including some friends from St Andrew’s Cathedral, Andrew Lim and Sarah Cheng.

There’s a lot more to be said, but one of the things I must do before I can start is work on building a team of friends and supporters who will pray for the campus and the progress of the gospel, and possibly be willing to offer financial support as well. If you’re a facebook friend or a friend from other parts of life I may already have contacted you about this already, and thank you very much to those who’ve already said they want to be part of the support network for what I’m affectionately referring to as ‘the Con job’!

I’m already making plans to contact more people to ask if they (you?) would like more information about how to support the work of this ‘Con man’ in 2012. But if you don’t want to wait for my call or message, please let me know that. The best way is to message me on facebook and ask for more information, or you can send me an e-mail at ggordonc AT optusnet DOT com DOT au with the words ‘Con job’ (or something similar) in the subject line.

So that’s the latest, would love to tell you more and no doubt will do so through this blog or other means, but if want to make sure you find out, please make contact with me and let me know that.

UPDATE: You can contribute financially, if you wish, by going to this link and finding my name on the relevant drop-down menu.

http://www.afes.org.au/support

Advice please, on lingerie model advertisement

Advice please.

I'm an older man who walks daughters past a lingerie model in the local shopping centre (photo, larger than life size). After school drop-off I went in to complain, saying that in my view the photo was not suitable for public display, and I didn't want said daughters walking past it.

Response from manager was: She was within her legal rights to display, and if the complaint was to be taken further, go to centre management.

She would be ready with her arguments which, in summary, were:

As a Christian, she didn't think the display was

a. provocative

b. immoral

c. illegal.

Different people would offer different opinions on a, and b, but she is correct on c.

What's best next?

beans...

Going to try these beans.

1 lb fresh green beans (not frozen), stem end trimmed off
1 Tbs dark sesame oil
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp black pepper

Preheat your oven to 450ºF while you trim off the stem ends of the green beans. Wash and thoroughly dry the beans.

Spread the beans on an aluminum foil lined baking sheet, then toss with the oil, salt, and pepper. Arrange the beans to fit on the baking sheet in a single layer. Cook for 10 minutes, then stir the beans and cook for another 5 to 10 more minutes, or until the skin is wrinkled and beginning to brown in places.

Let cool for a minute, add a dash more dark sesame oil, then commence super-sonic snacking.

Closing my Cumbo blog for a good reason!

Somewhat late, but I am closing my Cumbo blog. You can read the last post here, or you can hear it here. ;-)

The spur to finally closing the Cumbo blog is to avoid any confusion. In the grace of God, I've begun support raising for a new job, hopefully beginning in early 2012, working two days a week with the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students, still at Sydney University but this time with the Conservatorium Christian Group.

Really excited about joining this team in what Fifi and I are already affectionately referring to as 'the Con job'.

Mozart A minor piano sonata

Written about the time of his mother's death.

I've always thought what Grimaud expresses here:

Grimaud opened with Mozart’s Sonata in A Minor, playing it as if she were lashing a carriage down the streets of Salzburg. “It’s Mozart’s only sonata with fortissimo markings,” she says. “I like to think of it as something quite extreme, and that’s how I play it.”

From here.

Listen to her brilliant performance, here.

Halloween again

Here are some thoughts on Halloween I posted about 12 months ago, in the form of a kid's talk at church.

Anyone here scared of spiders?

Hands up who wants to tell me what they're scared of?

I've got a scary joke book here. [visual aid: scary joke book. Read random joke]

I heard a programme on the radio this week where a lady said she was scared of lettuce.

Anyone scared of Pumpkins? [visual aid: Pumpkin]

Anyway it's Halloween time so there are a lot of pumpkins about, I hope you kids are going to be OK and that your parents will make sure that there are no pumpkins in your house or anywhere in the garden.

The Bible talks about scary stuff. Jesus actually met some of the things we're scared about. I can't tell you if he met any pumpkins, maybe after church some of you will be able to let me know about that. But he did meet a lot of other scary stuff. There was the time where he met a man who was full of demons.


(Insert summary of Mark 5:1-20 here. Punchline: 'You see how Jesus is much more powerful than even 2000 scary things?')



I guess if you see something scary today, which is Halloween, especially if something scary dressed like a pumpkin comes to your door, you get a choice of at least two things.

1. You can go out for pizza with your family. The pumpkin won't know where you are and will go to the next house. We do that quite a lot at Halloween, even though we sort of like pumpkins.

2. You can say hello pumpkin, have a lolly. Did you know Jesus is more powerful than any pumpkin, or any powerful thing in the whole world? Happy Halloween.

We may still go out that evening!

John Chapman on John Chapman and preaching

I'm working to produce a DVD to go with John Chapman's latest book, Making the Most of the Cross. It's an interview between John and Kel Richards.

The first bit of interview between Kel Richards and John Chapman is here, 'On dying'.

The second bit is here, 'And what's the best thing about the Christian life'.

The third bit is here, 'Jesus our Saviour and Substitute'.

This is the last bit, where Chappo talks about himself and preaching. Yes there's more, and if you want it you'll have to wait until the DVD comes out!

Kel: John let’s get to know you a bit. Are you a Sydney boy, were you born in the bush? Where did you come from?

John: Well first of all let me say I’m a five generation Australian and I came from convict stock. My great-many-times-back granny was transported to the colony for passing dud fivers in the Strand. For that she got 10 years. Her husband made the fivers but there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him. He, gallant and all as he was, followed her to the colony. 10 years later and four boys she died.

He was a proper villain; he abandoned the boys and went home to England. The boys were brought up in Governor Macquarie’s NSW boys’ orphanage. They were taught to play cricket and 4 of them represented Australia in cricket. So I—my forebears had a bad beginning but they came good.

Kel: And you have rich blood in your veins—from those people.

John: Well there’s plenty of it. I’m always giving it at Pathology.

Kel: Now your childhood, where was that?

John: I grew up at Oatley and I was schooled there at an intermediate high school at Sutherland and then at Sydney Tech High.

Kel: Now you ended up going into teaching but before you went into teaching you became a Christian.

John: In my last year at high school—in my third year at high school—the boy I sat next to, Dick Tischer, became a Christian, and he began to evangelise me.

I deeply resented that, because he had hardly ever been to church but I’d grown up at church. So I thought—I mean if you go to church all your life you think you are a Christian. It’s nearly impossible to believe you’re not. But I knew nothing about Christianity.

I remember the first time it dawned on me that Christ died for me. It was a terrific shock to the system. I was at church and the guy preaching the sermon said ‘Do you know that Jesus died for you?’ I nearly answered him. And for the life of me I couldn’t work out why he died for me. And then the man said, ‘Do you know why?’ And again I nearly answered him.

And I realized for the first time that Christ had taken the punishment my sins deserved. I remember walking home from church that day and saying ‘Well you don’t have a leg to stand on, because up till now you thought it was about being good’.

But even I could see the stupidity of God saying to me on the day of judgement ‘what are you doing here unforgiven?’ and I say ‘Well I’ve lived a fairly decent life.' Cause He’d say ‘Do you think I’m mad? Why do you think I let my Son die?’

Well that was a big revelation and Dick Tischer was the one who really did that for me. And then I dug my heels in and went on for 12 months knowing I wasn’t Christian but not becoming one, because I didn’t want to have to admit that he was right and I was wrong, which again was stupid.

At 17 I turned to Christ, that was the best decision. I have never regretted that, not for a split second. And it changed the whole course of my life. I personally think for the better.

Kel: John Chapman, young Christian, finished high school, became a teacher. Why a teacher?

John: Neither of my parents had finished their primary education. They were highly intelligent, but badly schooled. They didn’t think they were intelligent but they were.

I made all the decisions about my high school career, because Mum and Dad didn’t know anything about high school. Wasn’t their fault. And so I would ask Dad questions like ‘I’ve got to make a decision about whether I do Ancient History or Mechanics.’

Well Dad would look very wise and then he’d say ‘What do you think would be a good thing mate?’ And I’d say ‘Well I think I ought to do Mechanics’ and he’d say ‘Well seems good to me mate.’

So it took me years before I realized that I’d made all the decisions about my schooling. When I finally matriculated with English, Double Maths, Applied Maths, Physics and Tech Drawing, I wanted to do Ancient History.

Well there was no way anyone was going to pay for me to do Ancient History at a University, with Double Maths, Applied Maths, Physics and Tech Drawing. So I became a Manual Arts teacher, by default. I quite liked that, it was good fun and most of the boys liked it because they—it wasn’t like formal education.

Kel: But you didn’t spend most of your life as a teacher because you switched—still as a young man—to full time ministry. How and why?

John: I—Kel it is an interesting thing but when I left teachers college I decided that if I didn’t do exams I’d never study properly.

So I started doing the ThL course that you did for ordination, simply by reading the textbooks and sitting for the exam. So by the time I went to Moore College I’d 8 of the 10 subjects completed.

It’s not a very good way to teach yourself theology. You don’t learn theology by reading books, you learn theology by talking about it with other people, with other Christians about what the Bible means.

Kel: Discussing and debating...

John: Yeah. That’s the way you really learn. And although I had quite a bit of knowledge I wasn’t well educated theologically. I did some time at Moore College, all too little, and then I was ordained. I worked in the North West, in Armidale Diocese for ten years and then I came back to work in Sydney.

Kel: And you came back to work in Sydney as an evangelist and that’s what you spent most of your life, most of your years doing isn’t it?

John: Yes. When I look back on the Armidale days—I was called a youth director and then I went bald, so they changed the name to the Director of Christian Education. And—but I was really evangelising most of the time. And I came to work in the Department of Evangelism in Sydney, yes.

Kel: I was working for a radio station in Armidale when you were the youth— when you came to speak at our Baptist youth fellowship.

John: Yes.

Kel: And you did an illustrated talk. The drawings were awful but I still remember the talk.

John: Yes, I saw Owen Shelley do work at a children’s mission one afternoon and I came away and I thought to myself, I could do all that. So I started running children’s missions and they ran exactly like Owen Shelley had done that one. He may have done other things on other days but I never did.

Kel: Well you spoke about the conversion of Isaiah being in the temple and the great vision, and his mouth being touched by the hot coals and all the rest, awful pictures but a wonderful story.

John: There you go Kel, and that you can still remember it is highly flattering!


Kel: Now, evangelist for many years, you came to Sydney to be an evangelist.

John: Yes. I pioneered in Sydney a form of evangelism that we’d done in the country in Armidale. We’d ask people to host a meeting in their home, ask some of their non-church-going friends if they’d like to come and talk with me about Christianity. And I would give a short talk and then they would ask questions and I would try and answer them.

Kel: Now your years in the department led you to spend the rest of your life preaching the gospel and teaching the Bible, both here and overseas.

John: Yes. Yes, I had a lot of experience here doing that, and I got some invitations to England and I went to America on a couple of occasions.

Kel: Did university missions, did all kinds of things.

John: Yes.

Kel: When you look back over those years, was that a really rewarding, rich time, having the opportunity to stand in front of that many people and tell them the gospel?

John: It was interesting, when I went to England the first time they put me on a bigger platform than I had ever been on in Sydney.

If you pay for an air ticket to bring somebody half way around the world they have to be good don’t they by definition, so I suddenly became good overnight by definition, and what surprised me was that I could do it. They thought I could do things which I never thought I could do.

Adrian Lane, who is an old friend of mine, was the president of Sydney University’s EU. He said, “We want you to come and mission at Sydney University for us.” I said no, you ought to get a graduate to do that for you. He said, I should have thought I’d get an evangelist.

And I said yes, they’re not mutually exclusive, you know that? And he said, no, but you’ve got to go for the best evangelist; that’s what I’ve done. So there was a long argy-bargy about that. And because I’d never been to a university I thought they were all terribly clever, but they’re just like the fellowship kids at church. They are intelligent but they don’t know much about life. And he said, they’re just like the fellowship kids.

And when I thought about it I said, yeah that’s what they are, I could do that. And so I began with Paul Barnett at Sydney University, then I missioned several times with Phillip [Jensen], the students at Oxford and Cambridge University invited me to give a series of lectures for them, and I suppose in terms of university mission that’s the sort of pinnacle, they are the great universities of England.

Kel: And you’ve invested a lot of your life in teaching other people to preach, haven’t you?

John: I’ve tried to. I’ve tried to set myself as a model that other people could copy. If you take a preacher like Phillip [Jensen], he’s almost unique, isn’t he.

Kel: Yes, only he can do what he does.

John: And when people try to copy what he does, they muck it up nearly every time. He is such a clever communicator. And my dear friend Dick Lucas in London is like that. He breaks all the rules but you remember the sermon, ‘cause he’s good. And he, he can see when people are losing interest, and he changes his tack immediately.

I think I’ve heard Phillip making up illustrations on his feet. And I think, no that’s not one of yours, you’ve made that up for this occasion, you’ve got to be cracking to do that haven’t you? I’ve never been guilty of that in my life. I’ve often thought of a clever thing on the way home in the car. But never on the deck.

Now I thought, I ought to preach sermons which, when I’m gone, they’d say well there wasn’t anything marvellous about that, I could do that.

And I’ve tried to do that all the time. And I remember one day at the Bible college the kids came racing back they said, do you know Rico Tice preached one of your sermons? I said Did he? They said Yeah. I said was it good? They said it’s not the point. I said it is the point! Was it any good? They said, it was great Chappo. Well, I said how’d you know it was mine. They said it’s in the back of Setting Hearts on Fire. I said man, if it’s in the public arena, it’s in the public arena. It belongs to anybody.

What he didn’t know was I’d pinched it from somebody else! And I’m good for a pinched sermon from anywhere, they’re so hard to put together.

Kel: I was struggling to put together a talk once and I came to you and asked, I said, I don’t know how to explain this, and you gave me an illustration. And at the end you said Kel, bear in mind anyone will give you an outline, only a friend will give you an illustration!

John: [Laughs] That’s right! Well Kel I tell you what I was in church at Bingara one morning and I heard my dear friend Peter Chiswell preaching and it was such a good sermon that I repeated it at Inverell in the afternoon, and it was a broadcast service and he heard it.

And he wrote to me next week and said here are three more outlines, and I know you don’t mind pinching them from other people. And I was always glad to get an outline from him, they were always good.

Music Typewriter

Music Typewriter:

Behold the neatest typewriter you'll see today: the Keaton Music Typewriter
that types musical notes on blank sheet music.

The typewriter is so rare that less than a dozen are believed to still
exist (and you can get one for a mere $6K on Etsy): Link
- via Notcot

Chappo: Jesus our Saviour and Substitute

The first part of these bits of interview between Kel Richards and John Chapman is here, 'On dying'. The second part is here, 'And what's the best thing about the Christian life'.

Kel: John let’s talk about your new book, Making the Most of the Cross.

John: Yes, nobody thinks more highly of my work than I do, brother.

Kel: (Laughs) No-one happier to talk about it than you.

John: No!

Kel: Can I say one of the things that really struck me about the book is that you spend half the book on the cross and half on the resurrection, and you say we shouldn’t think of them as two separate events, they’re two halves of the one event.

John: Yes.

Kel: What do you mean by that?

John: When Jesus dies, there’s a sense in which his death is like everybody else’s. But there’s a sense in which it’s absolutely unique. What Jesus did when he died on the cross, I could not do. That is, I cannot bear the punishment for the sin of the whole world, because I’ve got to bear my own punishment. But Jesus, who is sinless, takes upon himself the sin of the world. OK. So far, so good.

In other parts of the Bible it says, the wages of sin is death. If you sin, you will die. So if your sins are dealt with, shouldn’t we expect the opposite of death, that is, undeath—resurrection. So because Jesus is—in terms of the old prayer book—a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, how do you know that it worked? Because he rose again from the dead.

In fact if he doesn’t do the opposite to death, it didn’t work.

Kel: So when God raises him from the dead, he’s saying, I accept the payment, it has all worked.

John: Yes. That’s exactly right. It says lots of things. Like the death of Jesus says lots of things.

Kel: Well let’s unpack the different things that it says. Talk about the death and then we’ll talk about the resurrection.

John: Yes.

Kel: In the first place, it’s about salvation, and you say in your book, that’s even in his name. Someone said that the name of Jesus, translated out of Greek into Australian would mean something like ‘God to the Rescue’.

John: Yes.

Kel: Does it mean that?

John: Yes. It means exactly that. And, when I became a Christian at the age of 17, which is too far back for me to calculate now, but we used to talk about ‘being saved’.

It’s dropped off the vocabulary of most people, they don’t like it, because it always appears to them to be radical and fundamentalist nonsense. But it’s a good description of what happened to me. It says in the Bible of people who put their trust in Jesus that they were ‘delivered from the coming wrath’. [See 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10] The judgement of God is real, and our age of course never thinks about death. If you want to bring a dinner conversation to a crashing, grinding halt, just whisper to your hostess, have you given any thought to your death lately? See how that goes down.

Kel: (laughing) You won’t be invited back, will you John.

John: You’ll be struck of the Chrissy card list, brother. But you see, the Victorians, they were so close to death, and every Victorian novel’s got a deathbed scene, and then a scene on the wake. Most people are not with their loved ones when they die now.

Kel: It’s all in hospitals, it’s all medicalized.

John: And they’re removed away, you’re in the way as it were.

Kel: Yes.

John: And our age pretends it’s never going to happen. Which is the great fad of everybody trying to look younger.

Kel: So we need to face the fact that there’s something we need to be saved from.

John: Yes. You see, I am not ready to meet God unless I’m forgiven. If I stand in the presence of God unforgiven, and he says, what is this man’s track record like? they say, in terms of loving you and serving you, he was careless.

Now when you are forgiven, and God says, what is his track record like, they say, there’s nothing written against him.

They say, how is that possible?

And Jesus says, I erased the record when I died for him. And there’s a verse in the Bible which says exactly that. [Colossians 2:14 ?]It comes from the root word ‘to wash away’ and it says, the record of our sins are washed away. It’s why we can be right with God. And Kel, it’s very good. It’s good to know that you’re right with God

Kel: Fixed up forever.

John: Yes. I was surfing once in Avoca, and the waves were breaking further out than I normally—I body-surf—you can’t actually see my full extent here.

Kel: I’ll try to imagine it.

John: Well you’ll have no trouble imagining it. I caught one of those brilliant waves, you know you’re rocketing, I was going to say, like a dolphin but I think more like a whale in my case. I’m coming towards the shore, the waves are curling up round my cheeks, and it was just brilliant.

There is no fool like an old fool, is there. I thought I’ll go one more time.

So I swam out. I’d been treading water I suppose for about five minutes, and I looked around and the beach had drifted quite a long way away, and I said to myself, old man, you’d better get closer in to the beach.

So I turned around and I swam carefully for as long as I could; I flipped on my back to catch a breath, and I looked and the beach seemed just a little bit further.

At that stage I looked over my shoulder to see if I could see New Zealand, I didn’t want to waste time going in the wrong direction.

And a head bobbed up in front of me in the surf, he said you alright mate? I said no. He said d’you need a hand? I said yeah. He said, Gimme your hand I’ll drag you in.

And we worked together for a long time and the feet hit the bottom, it’s a lovely feeling. Mind you they’re only there for a split second and the next wave lifts you up, it doesn’t matter.

He said to me, old man, you’re too far out for an old man like you. And I made the understatement of the century I said to him, well actually I wasn’t out that far when I started.

But you see, can you imagine anybody being so stupid as to say, no I don’t need help, I’m alright, I always swim out here.

Kel: So Jesus is that rescuer.

John: Yes

Kel: He’s the ultimate life saver

John: Of course!


Kel: You also say, because there’s a whole lot of things that the cross accomplishes, you also say what’s important it’s that Jesus being a substitute. Talk to us about that for a moment.

John: Yes. Jesus substituted himself in my place.

Tell you what, I was at the doctor’s on Monday, and driving home past the little church at Condell Park there’s a notice up and it says Jesus did a trade. He traded his life for yours.

See, somebody’s got to take the consequences of my sin. I’ve done them. They’re there. Something’s got to be done. And I can take the punishment, or I can accept the gift that Jesus did when he took the punishment.

So you can say, I should’ve been there on the cross, but Jesus is there taking my place.

I often say when I’m teaching little children, say in side your head while I say it out loud, Jesus Christ died for me. Jesus Christ died for me. You’ve got to be an important person if God lets his son die for you. You see and that’s what he did, he substituted himself in place of me.

We’re used to that idea. Parents always substitute themselves for their children, when they’ve committed crimes, by paying their fines. You see, we’re used to that idea.

Kel: You said to me once, that it’s only the star of the movie who has a stand-in to take the risks.

John: Yeah.

Kel: And God has seen us as being that important that he sends his own stand-in.

John: Yeah. And a very good one he is too, I might say.

And what's the best thing about the Christian life?

This is more of an interview I'm transcribing, between John Chapman and Kel Richards, from a bit earlier this year. Check yesterday's piece of brilliance, On dying.

This starts in on the Christian life and somehow transmutes into a meditation on the possibilities and deep desire for the new creation.


Kel: And what is the best thing about the Christian life?

John: Ah brother, it’s all good. It’s all good. I remember hearing a bloke telling us about becoming a Christian, he was asked that question; he said, the whole box and dice!

See what could be better than to know your sins are forgiven? What could be better to know that you’re friends with God?

When I was a boy my father hardly ever called me by my Christian name. The only time he ever called me John was when I was in deep trouble. And I always went to ground when he called ‘John’. He called me Ned and I would call him George, neither of which were our names, but they were intimate names of affection—

Kel: Friendship names

John: Yes. And it just said ‘I love you’. I care about you.

And I can’t think of anything better than to be able to call God Father. Paul says when we cry ‘Abba Father’, it is the Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And to have God as a loving, caring Father—I know that some people have had fathers who aren’t—but ‘Father’ is a big word, it’s not a little word, it means more than ‘my father’, and to have God as Father, oh man, that is really something.

It’s great to know that God keeps guiding you through life, he said ‘I’ve got my hand on you for good. I’m going to see that the best things happen for you’. [See Jeremiah 24:6] Well that’s, nothing wrong with that is there? And the retirement benefits are great.

You see to look forward to the new creation—there’s a lovely poem in Isaiah [Isaiah 11], it says, ‘In the new creation the lion will eat straw with the ox’, that’s very good news for the ox isn’t it? He normally gets eaten by the lion.

And best of all, ‘the child will play at the nest of the viper.’ My observation is that people spend hours seeing that their kids are not in danger. But in the new creation you won’t need to worry, there’ll be nothing’ll hurt them. Nothing’ll destroy them.

This is a wonderful world. I’ve been on the top of Niagara Falls in high spring, on the Canadian side there’re all tulips and two enormous magnolias. The daffodils grow wild on the edge of the fall. And there’s always enough mist blown up for a big rainbow. It’s perfect. It’s just lovely.

I’ve been in the Western plains of New South Wales, where ninety percent of the scenery’s sky, the horizon’s about that far off the ground, and at night time the whole thing’s a blaze of lights. And like a little child I’d say to God ‘Do it again, do it again’, it’s so beautiful.

I was at a performance of the Midsummer Night’s Dream by the Royal Shakespeare Company and I laughed so much I fell out of the chair onto the floor. And I thought, it is so brilliant, people are so clever.

In the aftermath of the opening of the Sydney Opera House I went to a concert where Lorin Maazel and the Cleveland Orchestra played Beethoven, and Kirsten Flagstad, that great soprano, the German soprano, sang ‘Elizabeth’s Greeting’ from Tannhauser. When she came onto the stage she was like a battleship in full dress. And I thought—the orchestra began to play—and I thought, there is nobody who can sing above that din, I’ll never hear her.

And suddenly a voice rang out, like a canon and as clear as a bell, and there followed the most brilliant twenty minutes of music making I’d ever heard. And I was beside myself. I didn’t have enough limbs to clap and stamp with. And the guy in front looked around, I said ‘Shout, shout, she might just do it again!’ And it’s brilliant.

But it is all so mucked up, isn’t it? I saw the other night on television a million Soviet soldiers were killed in the Siege of Leningrad. A million! That’s like one in every twenty Australians! And you say to yourself, Oh, if only I could get rid of that rotten part.

One of the old ladies in this village had her purse snatched, it had five bucks in it! And the damage that’s been done to her is like a million bucks. She’s frightened to go out of the front door, that’s wicked, do that to a poor old thing.

And it’s both breathtaking and horrifying at one and the same time.

And when I think about the new creation, brother, it’s just like the sunset and the rainbow and Kirsten—I know Kirsten Flagstad’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but you’ll have a cup like it. And you say, gee this is a marvellous world.

I remember when I was diagnosed as a diabetic, I was on the brink of going to England and I said to my specialist, I was planning to go overseas. He said, to where? I said to London. He said ‘this may surprise you, they know about diabetes in London.’ And you say to yourself… do you know they’re doing experiments now where they’re activating pigs’ livers to create insulin, I think in a decade there’ll be a cure for it. And you say, isn’t that brilliant? That people put their mind to that?

And I want that world that’s just brilliant without the wretched parts to it. And being a Christian I think has helped me to be a realist. I used to be a romantic, but it’s helped me to be a realist, and say, we have mucked this world up properly. We really have mucked it up. With terrific potential, we use it for terrible evil. Why am I like that?

And Kel it sounds like a sermon coming on doesn’t it?

Kel: A build-up to it certainly

John: Yeah! Quite a good one, I think I’ll make a few notes cause I tend to forget things these days.

Kel: They’ll give you a copy of the tape, then you can jot them…

John: Oh good.



The whole interview links in part to Chappo's new book, Making the Most of the Cross".

On dying

Here's part of a conversation between John Chapman and Kel Richards on the subject of growing old and dying.

Kel: John Chapman, I get the impression that getting older, aging and sickness, is not a lot of fun.

John: It depends. If you’re sick, it’s no fun being sick, everybody knows that. And it often is associated with growing old isn’t it. Your parts do start to fall apart. You gather up specialists like some people gather stamps. I always keep saying the next book I’m going to write is called, Another Year, Another Specialist.

But I lost two last year, which you may think is careless.

There are fun things about growing old, because people’s expectations lower. They don’t expect you to do much, and that’s quite nice, because if you don’t want to you don’t have to.

And if you do anything which is out of the ordinary, they’re quite surprised and you feel good about that.

But chronic sickness is no fun whichever way you look at it. And I think you’ve got to be a non-realist to pretend—you know those sort of people who say, ‘my granny got run over by a bus this morning praise the Lord’.

And I want to say, for goodness sake wake up. And if you’re honest, you do spend a lot of time going to your doctor…s, of which you’ve got, you know, many, and a lot of the time of the elderly is spent in just putting all their gear on, to start with.

Kel: If someone said to you, Chappo, I know there are some people who handle chronic sickness well, and some who handle it badly; I want to handle it well, how can I approach chronic sickness and handle it sensibly?

John: Kel, the more I think about growing older, is, it’s hard not to be self-centred, because you do spend a lot of time looking after yourself and getting ready to face the day, and I think it’s hard for your world not to sort of creep in and diminish. You’ve got to work hard at being concerned for other people, I think. And the people who seem to me to handle their sickness well have got an eye out to help other people.

I think it helps to know that you’ve got God with you. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live without the hope that comes for knowing that you’re right with God.


Kel: If someone said to you, Chappo, why is there such sickness in the world, what’s the answer?

John: The Bible’s answer is that when we turned our back on God and said, Leave me be, God said alright. I’ll leave you be. But he keeps warning us that all things are not right. You see, if you lived in a world where nobody got sick and nothing ever went wrong, and it was all Pollyanna-ish and, and —would you worry about God? You wouldn’t. You’d say, I’m in heaven now.

And you would be.


And because I’m not in heaven now, I live in a world that’s just ideal for me, because every now and again it says, ‘Oops! Everything’s not right.’ And if you say, why isn’t it right? Well you say, you turn your back on God, that’s what you ask for. Now we’re all caught up in that bind, so the world in which we live is an ideal environment for people who are not right with God. It keeps saying, all is not well.

Kel: It’s a poke in the ribs to say, ‘Pay attention’.

John: That’s right.

Kel: It’s not working.

John: That’s right. And sometimes it’s a big poke in the ribs. It’s a poke in the eye with a blunt stick. And you say to yourself, you know, did I do something for this to happen? And the answer from the Bible is, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus says neither, but you want to see what I can do? Watch this. And he heals him. [See John 9]

Kel: For those of us who turn from our way to God’s way and give our lives to Jesus Christ, we in effect get the same message Jesus gave to the repentant thief, 'you will be with me in paradise'. [Luke 23:43]

John: Yes.

Kel: As you get older, how important is that hope?

John: One of the things that was interesting to me when I came to live in a retirement village was, I was surrounded by lovely Christian people. They had their trust in Jesus, there was no two ways about that, they’d come to terms with their sins, they’d put their trust in Jesus, they knew what it was to be forgiven. But because nobody had taught them about death and life after death, they weren’t looking forward to dying, and they certainly weren’t looking forward to the new creation. Now when I read the Bible stories about the new creation, they’re so exciting!

One poem in Isaiah says, they will beat their swords into ploughshares, their spears into pruning hooks [Isaiah 2:4]. Imagine a world…you can’t imagine a world without war! For as long as I’ve been alive we’ve been at war with somebody.

And to say there’ll be a time when there’ll be no war—it’s breathtaking.

Kel: And in that world with no war there is also no illness.

John: Well, then you get to the New Testament, He says, no more tears, no more pain, which is good for the elderly I can tell you, no more crying, no more death. You see, death’s a terrible curse isn’t it?

In this village where I live there are people whose spouses have died between selling their house and moving in. Now it’s a big enough trauma to sell your house and move. But to have your partner die on the way, that’s a terrible tragedy isn’t it.

And you would think it was all 'Pollyanna' if it wasn’t for the fact that that’s exactly what Jesus does...

So they’ve had the funeral, they’re carrying the coffin out, the widow’s son of Nain, Jesus says young man I say to you arise and the bloke sits up in his coffin. [Luke 7:11-17]

Now Kel I’ve done hundreds of funerals, and it’s never occurred to me to give that a try, enough trouble at funerals without importing idiots aren’t there.

Can you imagine that?

The bloke sits up in his coffin!

So when Jesus says in the new creation, there’ll be no death, well you say, well he can pull that off, can’t he?

Kel: Well in fact foolish people talk about the fact that, I want to die a good death. Every death is a bad death, every death is a reminder of sin.

John: Oh absolutely, and Kel, we ought to make a distinction between dying, and the process of dying. My observation is that the process of dying can be no fun at all. I mean, I’m a born romantic from ways back. I want to go to bed one night and wake up in heaven. But the chances of that happening are fairly slight, aren’t they.

Kel: So, talk to us about Jesus for a moment, because Jesus actually does our dying for us. What does he do, how does that work?

John: The Bible says that when Jesus died on the cross, he took the punishment which I deserve and you deserve, and Old Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. The sin of the whole world, he took on himself, so that he can give to us the gift of forgiveness.

It’s like as if when you turn to Christ, you get a certificate that says ‘The bearer has borne all his sins’.

And you say, well, where’d you get that from? It was given to me by Jesus. Well that’s OK if he wants to give it to you, he’s certainly earned it. If he wants to give that to you as a gift, that’s his business.

Now you see, to know that I’m right with God is terrifically stabilizing in a world which is changing.

The thing about the elderly is they’re always complaining about the fact that it’s changing. When decimal currency came in I said to my ancient mother, how are you getting on with the decimal currency?

She said, isn’t it a fool of a thing John? Wouldn’t you think they’d have waited until all the old people died before they changed things? Which I think is brilliant.

Kel: She didn’t say she was going to go on using the old money because she liked it?

John: Well she converted everything back to pounds, shillings and pence so she knew how much it was costing.

But you see, to know that you’re right with God, it’s marvellous. And to know that when you get there and you meet him face to face, eyeball to eyeball on the day of judgement, he’s going to say, how good it is to see you old friend. I mean, you can’t think of anything better than that can you?

Kel: No, you can’t indeed. In fact TC Hammond used to say, they said to Hammond, what’ll it be like when you die? And he said oh the moment after I die, I’ll hear Jesus say, Father, this is Tom, I died for him. Hard to think of anything better, isn’t it?

John: Yes!

Kel: Talk to me about old people for a moment. We tend to think that as people get older they will think more about God, they will think more about their relationship with God. Do they or don’t they?

John: Well Kel I used to believe before I was converted that if you were a good person you’d probably be right with God. Now the funny thing was I wasn’t all that good. I laboured under the misapprehension that when I grew old, I’d be ever so terribly good to make up for lost time. That’s stupid. When you get old, you don’t become a different person. You’re the same person who was always there, only it takes you longer to do things. Why I thought I’d be able to catch up I’ve no idea. See, when you become old, you don’t become different.

One of the nice parts about living in this [retirement] village is, collectively, we’ve got an enormous amount of knowledge. If you want to know how to do something, there’s somebody here to teach you. And, that’s the nice part about living with a hundred and twenty, hundred and fifty people. Amongst us all, we’ve got a massive amount of skills. You want to learn to use the computer, the computer club’ll spend time, and they’ve got it, to do with you. If you want to play chess and board games, there’s someone who’ll play with you in the living, in the sitting room.

Kel: So if old age is just like the rest of life, then older people, even though death is approaching, don’t give any extra thought to God.

John: Don Howard used to tell a story of a man he visited in Burwood East. And he urged this man to turn to Christ, he was fit and well. And he said Don I don’t need God.

Don said I visited him in hospital where he was lapsing in and out of consciousness. And Don said you don’t have a lot of time left, you should turn to Christ. And he said you don’t think a fit man like me is about to die do you?

Now you see, if you’ve spent a lifetime of saying no, why would you suddenly say yes? There’s no more new information to have. I’m a sinner; Christ died for me; I need to repent; I need to trust him. If I don’t believe that when I’m seventeen, there’s odds on I won’t believe it at 37.

Kel: Or 77.

John: But at 77 I’ve said no so many times, I hardly need to think about it. And that’s why as you get older, you’ve got to take great care. See it’s possible to have been mistaken. And if you’ve been mistaken for a long time, you really start to want to to dig your heels in and pretend you’re right when you know you’re wrong. But the people I admire are the people who say, I’m stupid, I’ve been wrong.

Kel: So can people do that at any age? Is it possible that at any age to say ‘I’ve got it wrong, I’ve offended God, I want to come back.’?

John: I preached one day at Holy Trinity Adelaide. On the way out a lady said to me, I am 87, and this day I’ve told God I’m going to stop fighting him, and I’m going to put my trust in Him. I said well gee you’ve only just made it sister haven’t you. I said, You were lucky to have stayed alive. She said yes, and I think I’ve been foolish. And I said well, I agree with you. Yeah.


[This is part of an interview that Kel Richards did with John Chapman earlier this year. I'm transcribing it for a DVD. More to come!]

We're in for trouble on free speech

This is bad news.

When Christians speak against the teaching of Muslims or the teaching of homosexuals, they will end up in similar bother and worse, in the near future.

Here's a word of comfort when that day comes.

Riots in London

They are predictable, but no less shocking or disturbing for the fact that you could have seen them coming twenty, some would say 200, years ago.

... the European model, and the British version of it, certainly include a lavish welfare state, multiculturalism, a high level of economic regulation, the eclipse of any special place for religion (especially Christianity), and political correctness.

That's Greg Sheridan, from here.

Elton Trueblood said that we're living in a cut flower civilization. Everything we love about living in the West comes from the soil of Christianity. But cut the flower from its roots, and it can't be kept alive forever in the vase.

If you were hoping for a similar type of civilization to emerge in your lifetime, assuming you could live 200 years, you'd move first to China, and then contemplate a move to Africa.

The conspiracy theory

For those who want to believe, a word from Doug Wilson:

As Jonathan Kay has observed, one of the basic features of the conspiratorial mindset is a deep belief in the hypercompetence of the evil cabal that runs the world. But the Calvinist believes that the Holy Spirit runs the world, and that the conspiracies that do exist to resist Him are to be considered on a spiritual level with the Keystone Kops. The Lord laughs; He holds them in derision.

He says it here, on his Blog and Mablog blog.

For those who love Sydney

For those who love Sydney, and want to remember the world as it was 50 years ago, this blog is worth following.

Chicken for five days, cheep

Probably not five days in our house.

But I found this series of recipes for stretching a single large chicken over five days, here.

I'm going to try the first couple at least.