Bible by the Beach

Just back from a good time at Bible by the Beach meeting in Eastbourne on the South coast.

Bible readings by Alistair Begg (blog summary by Hugh Bourne at http://www.hughbourne.co.uk/) and good input from Wallace Benn and others, on the theme of the Cross of Christ.  Engaging and winsome presentation of the glory and power of the cross.  It was heartening to have the bible opened and the clarity of preaching the sinbearing work of Christ’s death.  Stuart Townend, Lou Fellingham and Ian White did a great job leading sung worship.

I led seminars on “Maintaining Healthy Marriages” launched “Lives Jesus Changed”, and preached at Victoria Baptist Church http://www.victoriabaptist.org.uk/ on the Sunday  

For an event in its second year it was most encouraging to have over a thousand at the two evening celebrations and an average of a little over 600 over the whole weekend.  Praise God for a great new event!  2011 event planning is well under way (29th April – 2nd May 2011).  See www.biblebythebeach.org

Spectacle Frames and Skeletal Outlines

Spectacle Frames and Skeletal Outlines

We had a great Study Morning with the Students at Wycliffe Hall last week. NT tutor Justin Hardin, Doctrine Tutor Benno Van DenToren and I to bring our integrated thinking to apply academic learning, spiritual formation and ministerial training from 1 Peter. My job was to do a “walk through” sermon from first read of the text to final form.

Sometimes I detect a little impatience when we discuss matters of structure and homiletical form. Surely we need to get on with the task of preaching the message of the bible and spend less time on homiletics?

But I have become increasingly convinced that form and content belong together. The skeleton of the sermon should not be protruding the flesh, but without any bones and support structure the body if formless and lifeless.

As I have mentioned elsewhere (see www.Simonvibert.com) Spurgeon was a master at the art of structuring and simplifying skeleton sermon outlines, producing over 12,000 of them, still in print. I have always felt that John Stott is brilliant at this task, always leaving me with a sense that his sermon has said all that needs to be said about the passage, helping me see it with a new clarity.

To illustrate: I am not very good at looking after my glasses. When they are well cared for and not scratched I hardly notice that I am wearing them. However, at the moment, I have bent one arm and scratched the right lens. The consequence of this clumsiness is that rather than seeing through the lens I am forever noticing the scratch. And rather than having clear focus on objects in front of me I have very aware that I need to wiggle the arm around to get a clear view.

A similar clumsiness at the stage of sermon construction can mean that the congregation is distracted from the content of the biblical passage by the lack of focus in the sermon outline. Instead of seeing the passage clearly, the structure distracts.

If the preacher states: “Rejoice despite trials” (1 Peter 1:6-7) the well educated congregation knows this to be true but fails to connect this with the specific flow of Peter’s thought.

If, on the other hand the preacher says: “Welcome trials and testing because like gold, your faith is precious. God will allow faith to be tested through suffering to make it pure.”

This task of pressing for clarity in the homiletical outline is a gift to the congregation. It enables them to concentrate on how the ancient bible passage applies to contemporary life. Good preachers structure sermons in such a way that the framework supports the bible message and enable congregations to focus their gaze on the God who speaks through his living Word.

Valentine’s Day is not about Lovers but God

On this Valentine’s Day I want to ask the question:  what is true love?

 1 Corinthians 13 is a great place to start.  This might be many people’s favourite but it is much misunderstood:-

 1)     1 Cor 13 is not about romantic love

 I think I can say with confidence that the Apostle Paul did not dictate 1 Corinthians 13 in order that thousands of years later the vicar might have a text on which to preach at a wedding day.

2)     1 Cor 13 is not about Jesus

 It is sometimes said that 1 Corinthians is a “portrait for which Jesus sat”.

Of course, of all people in the world, Jesus was know to fulfil the qualities of v4-7:  He was patient, kind, not envious, humble, respectful, not self-oriented, angry, forgiving, truthful: He alone ALWAYS protects, trusts hope and perseveres.

 But I think I can also say with some confidence that Paul did not primarily have Jesus in mind when he wrote 1 Cor 13.

 Rather

 3)     1 Cor 13 is about the Corinthians

V1-3

This is a church which has caused the Apostle quite a bit of heartache.   Vv 1-3 is addressed to competitive Christians who parade their knowledge, gifts and great acts of faith… which is having a hugely divisive effect on the congregation… Of course it is not so much that tongues, prophecy, interpretation, knowledge, faith, sacrifice, martyrdom are not gifts to be prized.  Rather they had come to perceive these things as being the most excellent of gifts.  And they had paraded them in a way that denigrated those with “lesser” gifts.

So,

V4-7 is also about the Corinthians, for:

-         They are quite clearly not patient, their love is short-lived, they are not kind … Paul believes that when such things are absent in a congregation, however great their other virtues, then things are sadly lacking.

-         There should be no place for competitive, pride etc among God’s people.

V8-12

-         Paul seeks to show them the excellent way of LOVE: The Corinthian view of excellence is incomplete and passing

-         Their gifts, their sacrifices, their wisdom will fade … love won’t

But what exactly does this mean?  What does it mean to say that love will never fade and that love is the most excellent way?

Is love a force which cannot be conquered (as some of our pop songs seem to suggest)?  If we are going to join Cheryl Cole and “Fight for this love” – what exactly is the love for which we fight and what does it look like?

V13

Paul’s conclusion of this chapter is significant, I think.

Faith hope and love remain, love is the greatest.

Why?  Because faith and hope die out in heaven? No.  Rather, because in loving this way we most reflect God.

The key to interpreting this chapter, it seems to me is see why, in Paul’s mind, the greatest out of faith, hope and love is LOVE…

In other words, the secret of true love is: God!

In reaching this conclusion I have been very much helpful over the years by the 18^th Century New England revival preacher Jonathan Edwards.  For Jonathan Edwards, true religion, true worship and true love are very much focussed on God.  Let me illustrate this is in the life and works of this great man.

Religious Affections – In this book Edwards described true love as affection.  In modern parlance we tend to use “affection” to mean “Like, a bit” … but for the Puritans the “affections” were the root of our desires, wants and motivations.

‘The religion which God requires, and will accept, does not consist in weak, dull and lifeless wishes, raising us but a little above a state of indifference: God, in His word, greatly insists upon it, that we be in good earnest, “fervent in spirit,” and our hearts vigorously engaged in religion…’ (p.27).

Charity and its Fruits – Love as “Light and heat”

‘A truly practical or saving faith, is light and heat together, or rather light and love, while that which is only a speculative faith, is only light without heat; and, in that it wants spiritual heat or divine love, is in vain, and good for nothing.  A speculative faith consists only in the assent of the understanding; but in a saving faith which is only of the former kind, is no better than the faith of devils for they have faith so far as it can exist without love, believing while they tremble’ (p.13).

By heat he means warmth.  By light he means truth and intensity.

Relationship with Sarah

Jonathan Edward’s life long study in the love of God was grounded in his “uncommon union” to his wife Sarah.  He wasn’t an easy man, something of a work-aholic, although he did find time to father 11 children…!

When the George Whitfield visited their Northampton home in 1740 he wrote:

“A sweeter couple I have not yet seen… she talked feelingly and solidly about the things of God, and seemed to be such a help meet for he Husband that she caused me to pray God, that he would be pleased to send me a Daughter of Abraham to be my wife”

Another visitor to their home commented that it opened up

“the world in which love lifts the whole animal endowment to an ethical level” (George Gordon)

Edwards was quite clear in his writings to say that True Virtue is not to be found in the love of love, or the sentimental sensations of love.  But rather love for love to be true it flows to and from God.

Love is the root of a relationship with God

Love is the fruit of a relationship with God

Or

All true love is grounded in God

All true love has God as its goal

Do you want to know true love?

Do you want to show true love?

God as the Ground of Love – Know true love

 1 John 4:16: God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.

Put your absolute confidence, security and trust in no one other that God!

You won’t learn to love truly and fully without focussing your life on God

God as the Goal of Love – Show true love

 All love should have as its highest goal, the love of God

Let me illustrate this from the well known, albeit controversial Ephesians 5:21ff passage –

The Daily Mail (see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250464/Curate-outrages-congregation-telling-women-silent-submit-husbands.html)was outraged this week that the Curate of St Nicolas Church Sevenoaks suggested in a sermon that wives should submit to their husbands.  Of course I don’t know the full details of the content of this sermon, but Paul does say in Ephesians 5 that husbands should love their wives with same sacrificial love which Christ loved the Church – in total self-giving.  Wives should submit to their husbands, in sacrificial self giving.

 

Of course this is a tall order, not least in our egalitarian day and age.  However, Paul expects both the husband and wife to see the Lord as the highest object of your affection, not your imperfect spouse.  If you make God the highest object of your delight then loving and serving your less-than-perfect spouse will be possible.

The illustration which I find helpful is from golf.  When lining up to putt the ball, one way of avoiding “choking on the ball”, (which is hitting the ball short of the hole) is to focus on a spot 3-4” beyond the hole and making that your target.   When aiming for that, the ball will drop in the hole.

In a similar way, if we make God our greatest love then loving our less-than-perfect spouse becomes possible.

Jesus said: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it:  Love your neighbour as yourself.’ (Matt 22:37-39)

As popular culture rightly recognises: love is often lacking when it is most needed.  Experiencing true love is our life quest, but is elusive to so many people…

However 1 Corinthians 13 reminds us that true love will only be found when our lives are focused on the one true who is LOVE … for sure, it seems to me, this will do much to enliven Romantics on this Valentines Day, but more, it should and could transform our families, our churches, our friendships and, ultimately the world. 

May God work this God-centred love deep in our hearts so He may be the deep source of our love and the object of our highest affections.  (more on Jonathan Edward’s and Love in this Churchman journal article http://churchsociety.org/churchman/documents/Cman_117_4_Vibert.pdf)

Let’s make Valentine’s day a day which is all about God!

Preaching Survey – The results are in!

Many thanks to all who responded to my two questions:

1.  Who is your most favorite living preacher(s) to listen to?

 2.  Can you name what it is that they do that makes you listen?

I polled students and those on my email address book; I also received a number of results via my Facebook page.  So far, over 200 people have replied.  I do not intend to produce a “most favorite preacher” list (which would be unedifying).  Moreover, my survey was intended to give a “gut” reaction rather than a scientific survey.

The purpose of the survey is twofold

• It assists me in writing the book “Things which 12 popular preachers do well”;
•  The observations made about preaching and preachers will end up becoming part of a soon-to-be launched website on preaching and preachers.

I shared the following comments with my students recently:-

1.  Good preachers manifest Humanity (vulnerability, empathy, warmth), Humour (Story-telling, insight); Holiness (Spirit’s presence, unction, awe, Christ-centered); Heartiness (anointing, urgent, passion). As Jonathan Edwards put it: there is Heat & Light.  This is not the totality of things which good preachers do well, but they certainly feature highly in the congregations sense that the preacher has enabled them to meet with the living God through their sermon.

2. Whilst some of the top preachers include, in no particular order (although I now feel like one of X Factor judges!): John Piper, Simon Ponsonby, Mark Driscoll, Rico Tice, Christopher Ash, John Stott, Tim Keller, Dick Lucas (and there were many more!) – I agree with the comment that someone made:  “I would put down (…) as my favorite ‘big name’ preacher, but in fact, the faithful week-in-week out preaching of my local Vicar is what nourishes me as a Christian.”  I am not interested in starting a guru mentality or personality cult, but rather, I would like us to learn from those who preach well and understand why they connect with us.

3.  Finally, I think Tim Keller is spot on when he says to preachers:

If you put in too much time in your study on your sermon you put in too little time being out with people as a shepherd and a leader. Ironically, this will make you a poorer preacher. It is only through doing people-work that you become the preacher you need to be–someone who knows sin, how the heart works, what people’s struggles are, and so on. Pastoral care and leadership (along with private prayer) are to a great degree sermon preparation. More accurately, it is preparing the preacher, not just the sermon. Through pastoral care and leadership you grow from being a Bible commentator into a flesh and blood preacher.

I have much more to say in this topic, so watch this space!

90 second preaching survey

I am writing a book on what we can learn from good preachers and communicators.

I hope to include an online resource as part of the Wycliffe Hall School of Preaching with observations on some of the best preachers today.

Could you take a moment to answer these two simple questions? (use the comment tag below)

I’ll let you know the results in due course!
Simon

 

1.  Who is your most favourite living preacher(s) to listen to?

 

 

 

2.  Can you name what it is that they do that makes you listen?

 

 

Is my greatest need the thing I least want?

My greatest need is the thing I least want

This statement is true is it not?  It explains why the good news of the offer of new life in Christ is the very thing I am so reluctant to accept.

 Let me expand:  “my heart is restless until it finds its rest in God” (to paraphrase Augustine).  God has put “eternity in my heart” (Eccl 3:11).   

 If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.   (The Timeless Writings of C.S. Lewis: The Pilgrim’s Regress, Christian Reflections, & God in the Dock)

 But, following in the line of Adam, I would rather determine my own destiny, live my life my way, without reference to God, as the master of my own fate.

 I am a dissatisfied soul who refuses to seek the only true solace:

• I am restless.  Jesus says: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matt 11:28);
• I full of guilt.  Jesus says “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matt 11:29-30)
• I want life.  Jesus says “I have come that you might have life and life to the full” (John 10:10).  It is as Jesus said to the Pharisees in his day:  You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.  But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life. (John 5:39-40)

 If it is true for non-Christians that their greatest need is the thing which they least want, this is also true for my experience as a believer.  This is the conundrum of why I know the good but don’t do it.  I am living contradiction. 

  I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good .  For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God — through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Rom 7:21-25)

 Dick Lucas once said in a sermon: ‘The pew cannot control the pulpit.  We cannot deliver “demand led” preaching because no one demands the Gospel’.  These are profoundly pertinent words.

 Of course there is a demand-led kind of preaching, but it won’t do your soul any good The same was true in Paul’s day.  For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers. 2 Tim 4:3.

 So, it would seem to me there are two prayers which Gospel minded people might want to pray:

1. Lord, so immerse me in your word that I think your thoughts and know your mind.  May your agenda, your message, your life-giving Gospel be what emanates from my lips, not the wants and desires of a restless entertainment oriented audience.
2. Lord, help me to want what I most need.  Change my desires so that the attractiveness of the glory of God is my greatest desire, and incite a holy appetite for you in my deepest being.

 Perhaps, with these thoughts in mind, my greatest desires will end up matching my greatest needs, and I will want what a need most.

The Financial Crisis (Part two)

Wycliffe Hall was very fortunate to be able to welcome Lord Brian Griffiths, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, to deliver a lecture on a Christian response to the current financial crisis to our students this week.

His perspective on the causes of this crisis are a combination three things:  excessive public borrowing with the ratio of debt to household income now standing at about 150%;  Banks turning into lending shops, the lack of relationship between lender and borrower, and failures to check people’s ability to pay; and, thirdly, the failures of world governments to regulate what is going on in investment banks.

The most interesting bits of his lecture were his three implications arising out of his Christian convictions.  Regrettably time was short, so these were little more than snapshots:

a.  Throughout Scripture debt is viewed as something that is problematic; e.g. laws about the land, debts and usury in the Pentateuch as well as the perspective of Proverbs 22:7 “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender”

b.  The cycles of economic life (upturn, downturn, boom, recession) need to be interpreted in the light the cyclical flow of the Sabbath, the jubilee provisions etc.  A good example is the Millennium commitments to the forgiveness of debts.  It is even more important that as we go into recession we hold to these commitments.

c.  Jesus says: You cannot serve God and Mammon (Mammon being the personification and deification of money).  Greed is not good – in fact, greed is the cause of excessive worry (according to Jesus in Matthew 6:24ff.).

As the financial crisis continues to deepen, it is good to be reminded of our commitment to care for the poor (and not renege on this as we feel the pinch) and the challenge to ensure that we love the Lord as our highest and best love, not the things of this world.

Wouldn’t it be good if Christian leaders faithfully teach the Kingdom standards set out in the Bible and help God’s people live wisely in testing times?

On being ‘contemporary’ and ‘biblical’ by John Stott

“Imagine if you will, a flat territory that is deeply cut by a ravine or a canyon.  On the one side of the ravine is the biblical world, and on the other side is the modern world.  Between these two territories lies a deep gulf – two thousands years of changing culture.  Evangelical people like me live in the biblical world, on one wide of the divide.  We believe the Bible, meditate on the Bible, and love the Bible.  We are essentially biblical people.  But we are not so comfortable in the modern world, on the other side of the divide.  If like me you’re senescent, if not senile, the you probably feel threatened by the modern world.

Much modern preaching emanates from the biblical world.  Indeed, we wouldn’t dream of preaching from anywhere but the Bible.  But somehow this preaching goes up in the air but fails to land on the other side of the divide.  Our preaching is biblical but not contemporary.

Those who think themselves as liberal often make the opposite mistake.  They live in the modern world.  People listen to them because they seem to resonate with modernity, or post-modernity.  They are not chocked or threatened but the culture of the modern world – they have built in shock absorbers.  They read modern poetry, modern philosophy, modern psychology, modern science; they are moving with the times.  But in reality they have jettisoned biblical revelation.  They may be contemporary, but they are decidedly un-biblical.  Their preaching lands squarely in contemporary reality, but where it comes from, heaven along knows!  It does not come out of Scriptures.

… Evangelicals are biblical, but not contemporary, while liberals are contemporary but not biblical, and almost nobody is building bridges and relating the biblical text to the modern context.

{We need ‘double listening’} Listening to the voice of God in Scripture, and listening to the voices of the modern world, with all their cries of anger, pain and despair…

(From ‘Preach the Word’ (Edited by Greg Haslam) chapter by John Stott entitled “The Paradoxes of Preaching”, by John Stott)