The sermon at Bala Evangelical Church on Sunday evening was a real pleasure. The preacher was Alex Collins (I think I have the name right!), who ministers in Cardiff but this week was chaplain at one of the EMW Camps being held at Bryn-y-Groes. He took the story of Jepthah, reading from Judges 10:6 through to 12:7. Quite a chunk, but it was well read and the sermon was faithful to the text, dodged none of the issues and was wonderfully Christ-centred in the best possible way.

It was a ‘three-pointer’ sermon and the title of the second point is the title of this post. In Judges 11 Jepthah - an outcast from his own family because his mother was a prostitute and the natural sons did not want him to share the inheritance - is recalled to lead Israel against the Ammonites. Having agreed to do so and having made his promises before the Lord Jepthah makes contact with the Ammonite king:

Then Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites and said, “What do you have against me, that you have come to me to fight against my land?” And the king of the Ammonites answered the messengers of Jephthah, “Because Israel on coming up from Egypt took away my land, from the Arnon to the Jabbok and to the Jordan; now therefore restore it peaceably.” [Judges 11:12-13 ESV].

As the preacher pointed out, the Ammonite version of history was not true. It was an attempt to rewrite the history of the people of God, to make a false claim for land that had never been theirs. Rewriting the story of the church is a favourite occupation of the world, which would like to not only rewrite the story but also, if it could, write the Lord and his people completely out of the story for all time. Jepthah rightly challenged the Ammonites with the truth and at the same time made it plain he was willing to stand in battle for the truth. The Ammonites had had three hundred years to make their claims; previous greater kings had made no such attempt to dislodge Israel. Jepthah determined that the truth could not be allowed to vanish, whatever the cost.

Walking my parents dog this morning up on to the Berwyn mountains above Llandrillo I reflected on what had been preached in the light of the history of Wales. In this area the twenty-first century seems to slip away. The hills seem as they must always have, there are sheep, very few homes, mainly just farms which have perhaps worked the same land for many years. There is a quietness about the land: one cannot hear the roar of any motorway or noise of industry. It is a beautiful land, even during a wet August. Many people love this land, and the Welsh are justifiably proud of it and jealous of the influences which might shape it. This is an area where the Welsh language retains its influence and where there is a strong movement to retain Welsh culture. All of that would have my support, but the truth must not vanish.

‘What truth?’ would be a good question in our post-modern age. Truth is what you make it, history can be rewritten. The Ammonites would have had a fine time with ‘truth’ in our time! The modern Ammonites have surveyed Wales, and the story they have written is one that contains a great deal of truth. It is a story of a western Celtic stronghold on an island where for the most part other influences came in and drove out the Celtic language and traditions. Wales is different, it is not England and it should never have been treated as a kind of appendage to England. But the modern Ammonites do not want to stop there. In their rewriting of the story, there is an enemy that comes in and undermines the real Celtic culture, takes away the ancient beliefs and imposes a kind of captivity, which the modern Ammonites now see is losing (or has lost) its grip. Time, they say, for the real Wales to return, the Wales of the bards and the druids and the ways that are in harmony with the earth and the land. The enemy is the Christian faith, a faith imposed on the real Wales for far too long.

Ammonites certainly don’t change, even though the period of the Judges and Jepthah was some three thousand, three hundred years ago. The Ammonites of Jepthah’s day and the Ammonites of the twenty-first century would recognise one another, at least by their shared tendency to rewrite history so that the people of God have no real part. Sadly for the Ammonites, there is such a thing as objective truth. Objectively, Wales was one of the earliest parts of the British Isles to come under Christian influence. Almost certainly the limited Roman contact brought with it some news of the message of the Lord Jesus Christ, but certainly other Celts, most likely from Ireland, made sure that Wales heard the gospel. In common with the rest of Britain a foreign faith was eventually imposed, a corruption of truth called Romanism. Still, truth never really died out and the Reformation reached Wales as surely as it reached the rest of Britain.

There was more, much more, and something the Ammonites certainly do not want to be reminded of. The light of the Reformation was not so strong in Wales, and imposed episcopal Christianity from England did not bring great benefit. For a long time the people of Wales found little in the churches, the Bible was a dark book and the ministers who themselves knew little of the Lord Jesus Christ offered no help. God had not forgotten Wales, however. Great men of Wales were raised up. George Whitefield from England came and offered his help. The light began to shine from the pages of the Book. The work of the Holy Spirit became known in the land, and the faithful men God raised up preached a saving message that saw thousands swept into the kingdom of God. They did not lose their Welshness; indeed many hymns were written in the language. It has been said that from the early part of the eighteenth century through to the end of the nineteenth century there was scarcely a day when there was not a revival somewhere in the land. On Sunday’s the people flocked to hear the message not just once or even twice, but often three times. There were communion seasons, when thousands would gather to hear four or five preachers. Daniel Rowland once watched the crowds coming over the hill sides to Llangeitho, and said that ‘here they come, bringing heaven with them.’ In those days the hills were quiet as they are now, and yet alive with something that we have lost. But it was real, it affected tens of thousands, it was a great work of God and it was a special time for Wales. The Ammonites lie when they forget it, deny it or distort it. The people of God, like Jephthah, must be valiant for truth even when that truth is in the past.

And what the Ammonites never imagine, never think of, is also true: the Lord who came before in this way can come again. And one day, he will come again in glory. On that day, the Ammonites will bow before the Lord of truth and they wil know that never again can they rewrite the story.

It has been a while since I quoted from 'The Valley of Vision,' the collection of Puritan prayers. Not that it wouldn't be a rich source of quotations anytime, but that I don't want to overwhelm with material from the one place! This morning though I was reading from there the prayer called 'Contrition,' as usual a wonderfully balanced piece that I find so helpful in leading my own thoughts. Just the closing lines seemed so relevant, to me at least, and well worth sharing:

In all my affairs may I distinguish between duty and anxiety,
and may my character and not my circumstances chiefly engage me.

It is part of my personal weakness that anxiety often drives me, but I thought that the final part, that my character and not my circumstances should be at the centre was truly an important reminder. Circumstances can be (and are right now) very pressing! Lord, that my chief concern amidst the storm of circumstance and the pressure of dealing with it all, my be my character as your servant.

I have been made aware that the last post, 'Sunday: so what?,' might be somewhat controversial. I think I probably knew that, although it would be true that I have not been giving enough thought to how much the view of the Lord's Day has changed among conservative Christians. In any case, even sober reflection has not changed my mind! This morning I came to the end of Sinclair Ferguson's excellent book, 'In Christ Alone.' The close of the book includes a chapter called 'Sabbath Rest' in which Professor Ferguson gives a lovely and heart-warming exposition of the Hebrews 4 passage about the Sabbath. It is not an angle I would have thought of without reading it, but it is well worth reading by anyone who is concerned to understand why the Lord's Day matters. That it does matter is, I think, beyond question. It may be that it is far more important than any of us realise. I have certainly thought it 'a matter of opinion' in the past and as it is certainly not a salvation issue it has not been often central in my thinking. But I am increasingly of the opinion that the current willingness to abandon the sanctity of the Lord's Day says more about us than we would want. May the Lord Jesus Christ give me the grace not to allow this question to become more important than it is, but at the same time to have the zeal of Isaiah for the truth. I recommend a slow and prayerful reading of Isaiah 58, but here are the last two verses:


““If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.””
(Isaiah 58:13-14 ESV)

Long Post Warning! You will need a few minutes to read through this! If you prefer to do that at your leisure rather than online, you can mail me via the contacts page and I will send you a PDF.

There is a great deal of difference between working out our understanding of Scripture - our theology - in the study or the armchair, and in practice. One can imagine all kinds of scenarios and think through some of the issues related to them, but the acid test comes when we are faced with the practicalities: something is happening or not happening, holiness is not being seen amongst the people of God, the issues are pressing.

The question of Sunday, whether or not it is the Sabbath and how we should observe it, and what bearing this has on the question of worship, is one of those questions that has come to life for some of us. It has moved out of the study and in to the forefront in one sense, and yet it has done so when for many Christians the battle is over and the matter has settled. How has this come about?

Historically speaking it is a mystery, in the sense that the opinion of the mainstream Christian church for centuries has been that Sunday is in some sense the Christian Sabbath, that it is a day set aside for holiness, quite apart from the other days of the week. The great teachers of the past and the times of the greatness of the church concur on the issue: God has appointed a day on which he requires that his people spend their time in holiness and in worship. It is not that there is no difference in some respects between the various teachers on this matter. If we take Calvin, for example, we find that he is prepared to consider the question of whether Sunday need be the day on which we meet. In the ‘Institutes’ he says:

I do not cling so to the number seven as to bring the Church under bondage to it, nor do I condemn churches for holding their meetings on other solemn days, provided they guard against superstition. This they will do if they employ those days merely for the observance of discipline and regular order. [2.8.34]

Calvin might on the strength of this and similar comments be thought by some of as at an extreme in the matter, but we would be very unwise to rush to the conclusion that Calvin supported a modern view of the day set aside for the things of God:

Strange and monstrous are the longings of our pride. There is nothing which the Lord enjoins more strictly than the religious observance of his Sabbath, in other words resting from our works; but in nothing do we show greater reluctance than to renounce our own works, and give due place to the works of God. [2.3.9]

Religious meetings are enjoined us by the word of God; their necessity, experience itself sufficiently demonstrates. But unless these meetings are stated, and have fixed days allotted to them, how can they be held? We must, as the apostle expresses it, do all things decently and in orders (1Cor. 14:40). So impossible, however, would it be to preserve decency and order without this politic arrangements that the dissolution of it would instantly lead to the disturbance and ruin of the Church. But if the reason for which the Lord appointed a sabbath to the Jews is equally applicable to us, no man can assert that it is a matter with which we have nothing to do. [2.8.32]

The matter is clearer still in the thinking of Jonathan Edwards. His famous ‘resolutions’ include this:

38. Resolved, Never to utter any thing that is sportive, or matter of laughter, on a Lord’s day. Sabbath evening, Dec. 23, 1722.

There are many places where Edwards continues to work out that resolution in his teaching and practical living, that speak in a similar manner. Indeed, Edwards says in commenting on Isaiah 56:1-8:

Now here it is foretold, that in the days when “God’s salvation shall be come, and his righteousness revealed,” by the coming of the Messiah, this wall of separation should be broken down, this ceremonial law removed out of the way; (but still taking care to note, that the law of the Sabbath shall be continued, as not being one of those ceremonial observances which shall be abolished) . . . .

At this point we can move straight to the modern Sabbath controversy, because Edwards has touched on an issue that is immediately relevant. Recent thinking on this issue has moved us to the point where speaking of ‘the Sabbath’ and its requirements for the Christian is the most obvious of all faults. Even among the Reformed churches many would regard this as legalism, wrong thinking by its very nature. Here is a statement from a Reformed web site, made on 28th July 2008:

We believe the Old Testament regulations governing Sabbath observances are ceremonial, not moral, aspects of the law. As such, they are no longer in force, but have passed away along with the sacrificial system, the Levitical priesthood, and all other aspects of Moses’ law that prefigured Christ.

Note that this is a head on collision with the view that Edwards expresses. What Edwards says (and prior to him the Puritans in Scotland, England, America and Holland also said) is that the Sabbath commandment is not ceremonial; the modern statement is simply the exact opposite of that. It appears on the surface to be a ‘matter of opinion,’ but in reality it is much more. Here we are considering the very broad and important issue of how Christians, the people of the new covenant, relate to the laws given under the old covenant. The consistent teaching prior to our times is one that recognises a division in the law between ceremonial, moral and civil aspects of the Mosaic law. The one place where the line was held to be very clear was in the matter of the ten commandments; these were held to be entirely moral and furthermore to be the direct expression of both the character and will of God, since he himself wrote them and Moses was merely the deliverer. The ceremonial law (largely the sacrificial system and the matters of the priesthood and details of temple worship) was always seen as prophetic in that it pointed to the Lord Jesus Christ and therefore passing away. It is not too much to say that no-one (who claimed orthodox belief) dared say as much of the ten commandments. Now, that barrier has not only been broken down, it is absolutely destroyed in the minds of those who take the modern position. Edwards’ view of the Sabbath is not simply a minority view in our time, rather it is opposed as unacceptable on a number of counts.

It is not only by simple contradiction in saying that the fourth commandment was ceremonial that the modern case is made. Obviously with so many people saying so much on the issue it is difficult to produce one statement to which all would assent, but the following points are commonly made:

All days should be held to be holy by the Christian.

Worship is not a one day activity but something that should characterise all the Christian does.

The Sabbath was ceremonial and pointed to Christ, and with his coming it is therefore abolished.

Any day would be a suitable day for Christians to meet, Sunday happens to be traditionally convenient for many but has no special requirement of itself.

The New Testament does not reiterate the Sabbath commandment: this proves that the Sabbath is not for Christians.

One interesting issue that immediately arises is that the first two points are almost unarguable. Who is going to stand up and say that all days should not be held to be holy in that our lives are to be lived coram deo, before the face of God? Who will deny what the New Testament clearly teaches, that everything is to be received with thankfulness and every work done with the same remembrance that we are always in the Lord’s presence? The Scripture proofs seem to be almost superfluous and the battle over before it has begun!

Well, not quite. Supporters of the modern view are very quick to claim Calvin as on their side (the Reformed web site I quoted above does so) and it is certainly true that the great Reformer seems to be saying something similar in that he can be shown not to be Sabbatarian and to be quite flexible on the issue of what day is appropriate for the church to meet. He does not refer to ‘the Sabbath’ anything like as freely as Edwards does and he certainly does explore the possibility that other days could be used for services of the church. Note, however, the two quotations above from Calvin and in particular these points:

There is nothing which the Lord enjoins more strictly than the religious observance of his Sabbath, in other words resting from our works . . . .if the reason for which the Lord appointed a sabbath to the Jews is equally applicable to us, no man can assert that it is a matter with which we have nothing to do.

Let me clarify what we are seeing here. To repeat, Calvin certainly is not a ‘Sabbatarian’ and it would be interesting to hear a debate between him and Edwards, but at the same time Calvin is very far from the current popular understanding of the Sabbath. He takes the ‘day of rest’ principle, in terms of resting from our own works, extremely seriously, and he is also very concerned that the Sabbath should not be simply abandoned but rather that its meaning and the intention of the Lord in giving it should be transferred to our time. Because Calvin is a wise pastor, he knows our tendency to ‘be given an inch and take a mile,’ so his teaching on this issue as with so many other things is peppered with warnings against allowing what we think of as Christian liberty to become mere licence.

This is where Calvin is most certainly not in line with the modern teaching. One must sadly say that the result of the modern teaching shows where it originates. It would be wonderful if we had produced a generation - or at least a large body - of Christians who lived every day as if it were before the Lord; of whom it might be said that their day by day lives were so much in worship that one could not really determine in quality the difference between their working and family lives, and the day on which they met to worship. Indeed, it would be marvellous if there were any such signs anywhere of the beginning of such an age, but the truth is that we are not only not quite there but we are further away from it than ever our forefathers were in their supposed Sabbatarian ignorance. The ‘de-emphasising’ of Sunday has simply led us to a day on which we grant that it is good to meet together for worship as the people of God (although we have accordingly devalued even that, since we believe the ‘important issue’ is our daily lives of worship), but we also feel quite free to do whatever pleases us. Elders of churches feel no shame in spending a substantial portion of Sunday watching sport on television or doing whatever else they feel fits in with their ‘day of rest;’ not surprisingly, the majority of the people of God draw no line more strictly than their leaders. Even on the mission field attendance at one short morning service is enough and the rest of the day is free for whatever one feels one wants to do. It is, after all, ‘a day off.’

It is not ‘reading in’ to Calvin to realise that such a situation would have been wholly unacceptable to him and to say that he would have been horrified both by those who claim to be his heirs in terms of theology and perhaps even more so by those who claim Calvin himself as their authority. In any case Calvin is not the standard by which this issue is to be considered and he would not have wanted to be. It is to Scripture we must go, and Scripture must settle the matter. Consider a further statement form the Reformed web site mentioned above:

The Sabbath was the sign to Israel of the Mosaic Covenant (Exodus 31:16-17; Ezekiel 20:12; Nehemiah 9:14). Since we are now under the New Covenant (Hebrews 8:7-13), we are no longer required to observe the sign of the Mosaic Covenant.

Now if it were true that the Sabbath was a ‘sign of the Mosaic Covenant’ it would certainly be an important issue, and the old/new distinction introduced here also has weight. Scripture is referenced quite liberally, in these two sentences at least. Nobody (as far as this writer is aware) is wanting to sign up with the Judaizers who Paul opposes so vehemently in Galatians! The framers of this Reformed statement know that and so they go on to say:

In Galatians 4:10-11, Paul rebukes the Galatians for thinking God expected them to observe special days (including the Sabbath).

The matter looks settled, until one examines the statement more clearly. Notice first that Paul does not refer to the Sabbath as such in Galatians 4:10-11. It could be implied, of course, although we cannot be sure. Even the NET translation notes say of this text In light of the polemic in this letter against the Judaizers (those who tried to force observance of the Mosaic law on Gentile converts to Christianity) this may well be a reference to the observance of Jewish Sabbaths, feasts, and other religious days. The reference by the NET translators to Jewish Sabbaths is of importance; the Judaizers might have tried to re-impose the Mosaic Sabbath with all its attendant laws and traditions and if they did Paul would be opposed to that. But that is speculation, not fact as the statement suggests. Secondly, all the Scripture proofs cited to show that the Sabbath was a sign to Israel do not include the original statement of the ten commandments in Exodus 20. Why not? Well, the Sabbath commandment is cited in two ways in Scripture. The first reflects the institution of the Sabbath, which takes place at Creation when the Lord is said to rest on the seventh day. Exodus 20 does just that; in verse 8 the Sabbath commandment begins and runs through the requirement and prohibitions of the day to conclude in verse 11 where the reason for the commandment is made plain:

For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. [Exodus 20:8 ESV]

This is one reason why the Sabbath commandment is not questioned by our forefathers in the faith; its roots are clearly stated to lie in the act of creation and therefore in God himself. In Mark 2:27 this is further developed by the Lord Jesus Christ who reveals that the institution of the Sabbath is an act of grace: it is made for man, as part of the blessing of creation, and the Lord Jesus Christ (who, as the New Testament makes clear, is the active Creator) is Lord of it. It is true enough that the passage in Exodus 31 says of it the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever (v16). But verse 17 goes on to say It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed. Unless the claim is that Christians are not a result of creation it seems to me the argument of the statement is somewhat weak. It is quite legitimate to recognise some things in the old covenant as limited to the old covenant people of God alone; it can hardly be right to do that when the Scripture uses something as universal as the truth of God’s special creation of the earth. There must be a more than local principal where the Lord uses such a universal canvas. The Ezekiel passage referenced seems to me equally weak in establishing that the Sabbath is uniquely for Israel. It says Moreover, I gave them my Sabbaths, as a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the LORD who sanctifies them. What is unique to Israel here? Is the intention to consider sanctification as something Christians have no interest in? Surely not! It would seem to be more in keeping with the intention of the framers of this statement if they had cited the Sabbath commandment from Deuteronomy 5:12ff where the reason for the Sabbath reflects the alternative to linking it to creation, representing the second way in which the Sabbath is cited:

You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. [Deuteronomy 5:17 ESV]

The problem is that the link to salvation history is no less strong than that of creation in terms of the demands it makes on our thinking on the relevance for Christians. Is the history of salvation not the record of the same grace of God by which we ourselves are saved? At least one might argue that the delivery from Egypt was in the limited historical sense peculiar to the people of Israel, even if the origin of the Sabbath commandment and its major citations are not!

One reason I am not linking to the web site I am quoting here is that I do not want to be thought to be attacking a specific writer or group of Christians. My use of the site here is because what they are saying is very much in the mainstream of current Christian thinking on the Sabbath question and it is useful to interact with what someone has actually said, rather than what I might imagine they could say. Nevertheless, I have to go so far as to say that the kind of argument used is both misleading in itself and in its use of Scripture. Here is a further statement from the same source, same context:

There is no evidence in the Bible of anyone keeping the Sabbath before the time of Moses, nor are there any commands in the Bible to keep the Sabbath before the giving of the law at Mt. Sinai.

This is at least misleading in two ways. First, it is true there is no codified statement of the law of God at all prior to Moses. Note, however, that Cain is still guilty of murder, that Lamech in Genesis 4:23 is guilty of murder and is the first to take two wives, and that in spite of the absence of a codified law of which we are aware the people of Noah’s day are viewed as deserving ultimate punishment. We must be very careful in what we suggest in relation to this period because, if we are not careful, we shall find ourselves speaking ill of the Lord. Is it even remotely possible that the great judgements recorded of the Flood, the judgement at Babel, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, all fell on a people who had no revelation of the will of God? What then did Noah preach for 120 years? How did that holy man preach righteousness if there were no known standard by which to differentiate righteousness and unrighteousness? The truth is that Scripture prior to Exodus 20 is full of references that tell us that some aspects of the law as we know it were known and understood as the commands of God. Secondly, Moses refers to the Sabbath in Exodus 16 in connection with the gathering of the manna. Since it is the Lord who gives the ten commandments in Exodus 20 Moses must have prior knowledge from somewhere that the Sabbath is a fact. One can only assume that it was known to some extent at least along with other laws. Or if not, how then was the Sabbath made for man, if for centuries it was unknown?

It is a similar case with this statement:

Nowhere in the Old Testament are the Gentile nations commanded to observe the Sabbath or condemned for failing to do so. That is strange if Sabbath observance were meant to be an eternal moral principle.

This is misleading because while the Scripture does pronounce judgement against the Gentile nations it never does so on the basis that they have not kept the laws of God that are specific to his people. By saying that the Gentiles are not commanded to keep the Sabbath the framers of the statement seek to rest their case that it cannot be an eternal moral principle, but it has never been the case that ‘the nations’ are expected to keep the laws of God. Scripture is quite specific that the conscience of man, coupled with an observation of the created order, is the limit of what men have without special revelation. The Sabbath cannot of itself be within the scope of conscience, although it can be argued that a realisation of God through conscience demands some regular worship. Be that as it may, the reasoning behind Christian conversion is that the person converted is ‘born again’ into the people of God, becoming part of a holy nation that makes very specific demands. This is the same principle that exists in the Old Testament, where people who were not born into Israel could nevertheless become part of Israel by being part of the people of God. The famous examples would be people like Rahab and Ruth who become part of the genealogy of the Lord Jesus Christ. These begin life as Gentiles but by their faith in the Lord become subject to the law of the God of Israel. More pointedly, the Lord speaks through Isaiah to say that the Sabbath is required of those who come to faith in the Lord:

And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant. [Isaiah 56:6 ESV]

It does not seem to me to be too difficult to read the negative into this, that those Gentiles who do not join themselves to the LORD etc., are condemned. The statement at this point overreaches itself and descends to being untrue.

There is one more statement from the same source that I will deal with:

The New Testament never commands Christians to observe the Sabbath. On the other hand, each of the other nine commandments are reiterated in the New Testament.

The other nine commandments are nowhere referenced as one coherent block of text, of course, which is what would be needed for the New Testament to make a statement that could be clearly seen to exclude the Sabbath; without that this verges on being an argument from silence, but we shall consider the specific issue. Again, there are two points that should be considered here. The first is that omission from the New Testament as a clear statement is no proof that the Sabbath has no relevance to Christians. The division between the Old Testament and the New is artificial in the sense that all of Scripture is shown (in the New Testament, and most emphatically by the Lord Jesus Christ himself) to be the Word of God. The point I am making is that the division between the old covenant and the new is not as simple as a couple of blank pages between Malachi and Matthew. One might take the issue of tithing, which is only mentioned in the New Testament in passing, albeit positively (Matthew 23:23 for example; note these you ought to have done refers to the tithe. Still, as the Lord is speaking there before the cross one could argue that this is still the old covenant). Tithing is not without controversy; there are those who say that Christians are not under obligation to tithe and that they are simply required to give as they are able. As far as I know, however, no-one is arguing that Christians should give less than a tenth as a principle. (It remains a fact that churches that teach tithe as a principle have consistently higher offerings than those that do not; presumably those who reject tithing are still wrestling with how generous they should be!). In my view the argument against tithing is self-defeating precisely because the only logical step is to say that one does not agree with the tithe because Christians should give more. Granted, but then why not retain the biblical example of the tithe as an illustration of what Christians should, as the minimum, do? In the same way, trying to localise the Sabbath in the old covenant has the same effect. Is the suggestion that Christians, with all the revelation of the grace and love of God clarified in Jesus Christ, can do without a day set aside solely for God? One of my concerns with the decriers of the Sabbath is that they and their followers seem to live lives that do consistently reflect less honour and glory given to God than the old covenant Sabbath. Secondly, the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ specifically claims for himself the title ‘Lord of the Sabbath’ ought to make Christians sit up and take notice. It is not good exegesis simply to say that the Lord spoke this way simply to abolish it. As we have seen, the Sabbath memorialises creation and therefore has its roots in the grace of God determined before the foundation of the world. What are we wanting to see abolished here?

All of this leads to the question, what are we then to make of the Sabbath? Whatever one makes of the totality of Calvin’s comments on the Sabbath, he is undoubtedly right in commenting that:

There is nothing which the Lord enjoins more strictly than the religious observance of his Sabbath, in other words resting from our works . . . .if the reason for which the Lord appointed a sabbath to the Jews is equally applicable to us, no man can assert that it is a matter with which we have nothing to do.

Calvin’s argument for Sunday could be reduced to the fact that it is the traditional and convenient day for the church to meet: that is what many of his modern readers would most identify with, and it is accurate but not a complete picture of what he says. We must concede however, that though he says strongly that without it the church would be in danger and insists upon a high degree of observation of the day accompanied by reverent and godly intent, he is not Sabbatarian in the sense that Jonathan Edwards is. Edwards refers consistently to ‘the Sabbath’ and takes it as normal that there is to be a degree of holiness attached to it that separates it from any other day. There is no evidence at all that Edwards contemplates any day other than Sunday. When he refers to the day other than by the term ‘Sabbath’ it is as the Lord’s Day; in his thinking it is as fixed as the seventh-day Sabbath was for the people of the old covenant. How shall we take a course that honours these two giants of the church? We can take first the points on which Calvin and Edwards would agree:

There should be a day set aside for the church to meet.

That day should be marked for believers by a willingness to attend the services that are set.

Outside the time spent gathered as the church, believers should keep the remaining time for godly pursuits: reading the Word of God or other spiritual material, meditation on the things of God, prayer etc.

It will require a conscious and determined effort on the part of the Christian to do all this.

It is to the glory of God and the blessing of his people that it should be so.

Perhaps that is enough. It may be that to go any further is to limit true Christian freedom, that Calvin is right in his caution on this matter. What is certain is that any less is not faithful to Scripture, nor is less than this faithful to the historic witness of the people of God, including Calvin. It should give us pause that all our talk of finding and promoting new covenant freedom is leading to manifestly low standards of godliness and holiness that our forefathers would not have tolerated. There is no stage in church history where the faithful people of God have taken it that the day the church sets aside for gathered worship should consist of just an hour or two of that worship, with the rest of the day given over to what pleases the individual. There is no stage in the history of the church, apart from our own, in which even legitimate worldly entertainment is an acceptable focus for the people of God on the Lord’s Day. The time should not be now, and may the time never be.

Finally, we might reflect that the position that Edwards took is the view of many godly men throughout the history of the church. There have almost always been debates on this issue and I am not suggesting that Edwards is right in all he says, but simply that he is representative of a large and important class of godly people throughout the history of the church. He does make his case well in Sermon 13 in Volume Two of his works, ‘The Perpetuity and change of the Sabbath.’ But perhaps John Owen would be a better representative: in Volume 18 of his works (in the section devoted to the book of Hebrews) he devotes almost two hundred and fifty pages to an examination of the Sabbath question, concluding in the end that the Sabbath is part of the moral law, that the observation of the seventh day as the Sabbath is alone tied to the old covenant, and that God has sovereignly and graciously located the Lord’s Day as the Christian Sabbath. He argues that a ‘Pharasaical’ observation of the day is never warranted, but that the nature of it as a gift of God’s grace and the fact of it being a memorial of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ demand from us a holiness in the observance of it. It would be well if some of the modern detractors from this position would labour for a while in dealing with Owen’s investigation and perhaps then produce some statements of their position that do justice to Scripture and to the history of the church.

It is really quite difficult to determine a suitable title for this piece. I don't want it to sound like I have all the answers, because I don't and never will have, and in any case there are many who might read this who are far better preachers than I. I don't want to indicate that preaching in our time is in a total mess, because there are very good preachers about, including men whose names do not feature on the conference agenda or 'best-known preachers' list. Last but not least, everything I say is a generalisation; there are always exceptions to be found somewhere!

Still, having said that, both at home in the UK and here in Zambia there are good men who know their doctrine who are not moving the hearts and minds of the people of God, unless one considers movement in the direction of sleep or disappointment to be desirable. Zambia is a several thousand miles from the UK geographically and in a different condition in several important respects (and in some of those respects, in a better condition!). But in the Reformed world at least there are several similarities that link Zambia and the UK; Reformed theology takes several variant forms and these transfer easily to Africa. The Reformed movement is growing in strength and influence among evangelicals. Reformed worship is certainly more conservative than most other evangelical streams.

The Baptist movement in Zambia is strong and largely evangelical, and Reformed Baptists are doing well here. There are very successful Reformed ministries in place in Lusaka and other large centres. It may be easier to hear Reformed ministry in a medium-sized Zambian town than it is in the UK. In terms of Bible translations, the NIV dominates in Zambia in a way it never has in the UK among the Reformed, but that is because it is easier to obtain than anything else and its English is accessible. Among pastors the ESV is increasingly known and appreciated - the Reformed Baptist pastor in Chingola preaches from it although his congregation mostly has the NIV. The KJV has little access in spite of the TBS sending out copies: its archaic English really is another language for most Zambians. The TBS will no doubt continue to publish how many copies of the KJV it sends to Zambia and other countries. What the statistics don't say is how many of those copies gather dust. All the TBS needs to do is publish something along the lines of the NKJV, using the translation principles they think are right, and they would be doing a much greater work.

But what about the preaching? In both Reformed and evangelical churches in Zambia, there is good preaching to be heard in the sense of exposition of the text and in the sense of application of the text to the hearers lives. What is noticeably lacking is a Christ-centred message. Gospel sermons are 'reserved' for evangelistic campaigns and special crusades. The Christ-centredness of the Reformers and their successors has somehow not transferred to Zambia. Congregations are getting a great deal of 'the patriarchs did this and so should you' (or not, depending on the patriarch and the incident!), a lot of careful exposition of the text in a direct sense, and not a lot of the glory and sweetness and saving grace of the One who ought to be at the heart of all preaching.

Sadly, that is the case in many UK churches. Having friends in different parts of the UK is a great advantage when you want to get a sense of how people perceive the ministry they are getting, and the simple fact is that we have a good number of 'sound,' doctrinally correct preachers who are not having the impact they should. There are dull and hard-hearted hearers, of course, but one does not have to go too far or even think too hard to realise that something is wrong. In this sense, Zambia and the UK are nearer than one might think.

Finding a solution is not easy, especially when quite a few people want to deny there is a problem! One thing we need is more people willing to pray for preachers in a serious way. It is well enough to identify the problem, and quite another to decide that the answer is to dispose of the present preacher and simply get another. The diagnosis may be right, but the cure is wrong. There needs to be a work of the Holy Spirit in the minds and hearts of both congregation and minister, and the whole issue needs to be handled with grace and a desire to honour the name of the Lord. Ministers can repent and congregations can learn to discern properly what they are listening to.

In the grace of God our age is not without men who can guide us in all of this. Professor Edward Donnelly in Ulster, Sinclair Ferguson, John Piper, Art Azurdia (at the Aberystwyth Conference this year, I think), Charles Mahaney and many others spring to mind. Strangely enough, the older writers are a great help too if only we will read them with open eyes.

Suppose you could ask Jonathan Edwards what the purpose of preaching is. What do you think he would answer? Try this from his 'Religious Affections:'
. . . . to promote those two affections in them [the congregation], which are spoken of in the text, love and joy: “Christ gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; that the body of Christ might be edified in love,”. Eph. iv. 11, 12, 16. The apostle, in instructing and counselling Timothy, concerning the work of the ministry, informs him, that the great end of that word which a minister is to preach, is love or charity. And God has appointed preaching as a means to promote in the saints joy: therefore ministers are called helpers of their joy.

'Helpers of their joy!' I wonder how often I have failed that as a test of the ministry I have delivered, or rather, I don't wonder. I know I have very often failed. But Edwards is himself a helper - he suggests the remedy. In 'Religious Affections' Edwards makes a careful case that true religion must move the heart as well as the mind. His concern is that some of the men of his day saw excess in the response people made to passionate preaching in times of true revival. He does not seek to excuse the preaching as being all correct, and he certainly is not defending excess. Where his concern finds focus is in the response to excess, which in his day was to reject any heart-moving and passionate ministry and to put in its place 'solid' doctrine presented in a way that addressed the mind but not the heart:


. . . of late, instead of esteeming and admiring all religious affections, without distinction, it is much more prevalent to reject and discard all without distinction. Herein appears the subtilty of Satan. While he saw that affections were much in vogue, knowing the greater part were not versed in such things, and had not had much experience of great religious affections, enabling them to judge well, and to distinguish between true and false; then he knew he could best play his game, by sowing tares amongst the wheat, and mingling false affections with the works of God’s Spirit. He knew this to be a likely way to delude and eternally ruin many souls, and greatly to wound religion in the saints, and entangle them in a dreadful wilderness, and by and by to bring all religion into disrepute.

Edwards doesn't mince his words, however, when he turns to the opposite error of discarding the affections:

We may hence learn how great their error is, who are for discarding all religious affections, as having nothing solid or substantial in them. There seems to be too much of a disposition this way prevailing at this time. . . . .
He who has no religious affection, is in a state of spiritual death, and is wholly destitute of the powerful, quickening, saving influences of the Spirit of God upon his heart. As there is no true religion where there is nothing else but affection, so there is no true religion where there is no religious affection.

Edwards case is mainly directed to ministers, and he is radically against 'sound and solid' preaching where the solidity is similar to that of suet pudding. He wants Christ-centred preaching, he wants the preacher's heart as well as his mind fully engaged and he wants the preaching to be such that it aims for the hearers hearts and minds, by the grace of God.

Edwards is not an easy read for many, but it seems to me it would be worth making the effort. Reformed teaching is without doubt the clearest expression of the intention of the word of God available in our day. An urgent need is that that teaching be always consciously Christ-centred, and it is the preachers duty to ensure that it is so. Only the preaching of the Lord Jesus Christ will really move hearts. Without hearts moved by what is being taught, a people addressed by preachers who are clear that a heart-moving ministry that brings love and joy to its hearers is vital, the Reformed teaching of our day in both Zambia and the UK will nevertheless be barren in a real and lasting sense. The message is far too valuable for us to even think of that being allowed to happen. More than that, the souls we have been given now and the people that we might reach ought to be precious to us in a very sense. Whatever pains a preaching ministry may involve, it is as nothing compared to the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ to win the souls to whom the preaching should be directed.

This story was posted on the Desiring God website which is one you should visit if you do not already. It is one of the most moving accounts I have read in a long time. I am not ashamed that it brought tears to my eyes, I am ashamed that it needed this to make me realise how greatly the Lord has blessed me.


Real Freedom in Jesus
(Author: John Knight)
The 4th of July is a different sort of ‘Independence Day' for me. On July 4, 1995 my multiply-disabled son entered the world and my life came crashing down around me—and would soon include a deep and intense bitterness toward God.
I never denied that God existed or is powerful; I concluded he was mean and capricious. But it also began God's work of creating an affection for him and for the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. I am often astonished, when thinking back, that I am now able to praise God for his goodness in giving my son his autism and blindness.
None of this happened easily or by accident. I can point to five specific things that God brought to bear on my life:

1. Faithful pastoral leadership.

I can still remember Pastor Tom Steller, now leading The Bethlehem Institute, walking up my front steps with a note from Pastor John. And I remember sitting with and emailing Pastor David Michael.
These men, with great courage and biblical conviction, entered into dangerous territory. My attorney, a man trained in conflict, said that my intensity and bitterness frightened him. But my pastors never wavered from bringing a message of hope and absolute certainty in the sovereignty and goodness of God, even when I pushed them away.

2. Faithful people of Bethlehem Baptist Church.

Shortly after my son was born we dropped everything at church—our small group, volunteering, Sunday school class and attendance. One couple refused to let us go and loved us with a gracious, firm, consistent tenderness that made me want to understand how they could love someone like me, my wife or my son so completely.

3. A faithful father.

My own father was the first person in the world to understand and communicate my son's value and inherent worth as a creation of a good and loving God to me. Through 13 years, he has stood with me through much pain and sorrow—and joy.

4. A faithful wife.

My wife and I have not walked the same path; hers has been much harder than mine for many reasons. But by the grace of God we are together and I thank God every day for this woman whose spine is made of steel and who loves me and our four children.

5. The sovereignty of God as revealed in his word.

I remember a particularly heartbroken, bitter email I sent to Pastor John. He had every right to discipline me, but instead wrapped the words of the bible around my heart. God used those words from the bible, among many others, to create longings I didn't have, to start a dead heart beating, and to reveal, when I was incapable of seeing, the beauty, sufficiency, and majesty of Jesus Christ and his cross.

God has done it all, and it was his word that proved decisive.
Living with a boy, now a teenager no less, who will always be dependent on someone for all his needs is hard. I have a daily, often hourly, fight for joy in my salvation. Yet, through my oldest son's daily care, through my youngest son's premature birth, and now through my wife's ongoing battle with metastatic cancer, God is not just sustaining me, but revealing more of his goodness because he is sovereign over all these things, for his glory and my good.
So, on this Independence Day I am grateful to Jesus for my real freedom in him and for giving me my boy to help me see it: So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed (John 8:36).

Happy birthday, Paul.

Well, not quite . But Calvin does say something of great relevance that I thought might be worth reminding ourselves of, which I will introduce first. 
One of the 'delights' of Islamic fundamentalists is to accumulate martyrs, which they do at a great rate by bravely blowing themselves up against serious military targets such as funerals, weddings, busy markets crowded with women and children etc., most of whom are fellow Muslims but of the 'wrong flavour.'
Among the many annoying things of the Western media is its willingness to refer to 'martyrs' and usually to relate the Islamic 'struggle' to the largely imaginary 'Palestinian problem.' Calling these wretches 'martyrs' associates them with Christian martyrs in the public mind, and leads inevitably to the common conclusion that 'religion is really responsible for the troubles of this world.' We don't talk much about martyrs in the Christian Church these days, perhaps at least partly because of this situation. It's a great shame, when the truth is that literally millions of people, probably more in the twentieth century than in any previous century, have bravely laid down their lives for the sake of their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Many of them are unknown to us, ordinary people in many places and at many times, who were willing to die rather than deny the Lord who saved them and counted the heavenly treasure far higher than what life in this world could offer. On reflection, maybe that's why we don't mention them much in the West; perhaps we are so unwilling to part with earthly treasure that we are embarrassed by those who think more of the words of the Lord Jesus Christ and act accordingly.
Be all that as it may, in his 'Institutes' Calvin is reflecting on the 'natural' proofs for the truth of Holy Scripture. In 1.8.13 he says:
. . . . with what confidence does it become us to subscribe to a doctrine attested and confirmed by the blood of so many saints? They, when once they had embraced it, hesitated not, but boldly and intrepidly, and even with great alacrity, to meet death in its defence. Being transmitted to us with such an earnest, who of us shall not receive it with firm and unshaken conviction? It is therefore no small proof of the authority of Scripture, that it was sealed with the blood of so many witnesses, especially when it is considered that in bearing testimony to the faith, they met death not with fanatical enthusiasm, (as erring spirits are sometimes wont to do), but with a firm and constant, yet sober godly zeal.
You will have spotted the bit that interested me - Calvin speaks of those who meet death with fanatical enthusiasm which is a very good way of describing the Islamic militants. But he draws the contrast with the true Christian martyrs who died with a firm and constant, yet sober godly zeal. As I said above, the vast majority of the martyrs are unknown to us (but certainly known to the Lord who took them to be with himself in eternal joy). But those that are known, the great examples of history such as Polycarp, Latimer, Ridley, the young men of the Amazon in the nineteen-fifties, the godly Christians of Sudan who have endured so much, have died with a dignity that befits the conclusion that the 'blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.'
'Martyr' is originally derived from a Greek word which means 'witness' or 'testimony.' I was going to say that perhaps it should be reserved for its Christian meaning, but on reflection, while Christians do witness to the Lord Jesus Christ in giving their lives, Muslims also witness by it. Not all Muslims are terrorists, of course. There are peaceful Muslims, just as there are Muslims who favour a secular society. But the real question is, what is the nature of Islam itself? The Islamic fundamentalists do no favours to their peaceful brethren, but fundamentalists they are. What they are thinking and practising is what the Koran actually teaches, just as Christian fundamentalists get to the core of the what the Scripture says. It is a plain fact that is often forgotten in the almost universal despising of ‘religious fundamentalism’ that the many Christian fundamentalists have not produced a single terrorist. That’s because if you take the Bible literally you cannot get around the fact that it urges obedience to state authorities and above all a peaceful approach to others founded on love, even when they are enemies.
The Koran is corrupt, Satanic and far from peaceful in its intent. The Islamic fundamentalists witness is to the insatiable evil that their hollow system really is.

One of the effects of getting older (and like the much-appreciated John Piper I am not ashamed of, or complaining about that!) is that one tends to find the 'big issues' of earlier years fading. Don't worry too much, I am not about to declare myself Catholic or Orthodox, or whatever is the latest trendy exit point for evangelicals. And for further reassurance, the Lord Jesus Christ becomes more central to me as time goes by, as does the gospel, as does the precious work of men like Calvin, Owen and Edwards in that I see in their work more and more of the Lord Jesus Christ. But some issues do fade, and I think they should. For example, for much of my Christian life I have been a firm Baptist, but latterly I have been convicted that I have not given enough respect and consideration to my Reformed friends who take a paedo-baptist view. I remember the excellent Ian Hamilton (Cambridge (UK) Presbyterian Church) pointing out to me that something like 95% of published Reformed theology is in fact paedo-baptist in origin. (I have forgotten the actual figure he quoted - it may well have been more).

I suspect that in my earlier years I would defend any corner that was a minority, just for the sake of it. Maturer reflection has allowed me to savour the riches of a more rounded and covenantal view of theology that has taken me to the point where I am quite willing to admit that I would baptise the baby of truly committed believing parents who held to a proper covenant view of that act.

That does not mean I do not regard myself as baptistic any longer, or that I would not baptise an adult believer. It means exactly what I said; the rough edges having been knocked off my thinking, I think more of my brothers in Christ who have so courteously disagreed with me for so long, and I think enough of them to have seriously considered their position and find myself unable to wholly reject what they are saying. Of course, I am very wary of the abuse of the paedo-baptist position, but then so is a paedo-baptist like Ian Hamilton, who has in the past put up with TV cameras and all the negative media publicity that goes with them rather than sacrifice his profoundly Christ-centred, serious and well thought-out theology of the place of children in the covenant.

The issue of baptism is not the only one on which I have found myself moved to modify my views. There are other things that I now realise are not so central as I had fondly imagined. And all this was confirmed all the more after I began to write this piece. I read another chapter of Sinclair Ferguson's excellent book, 'In Christ Alone.' If you have the book, take a look at the chapter titled 'Discernment: Thinking God's Thoughts.' If you don't have the book, buy it! Then this morning I read another prayer from 'The Valley of Vision,' part of which said:

May my cry be always, Only Jesus! only Jesus!
In him is freedom from condemnation,
fullness in his righteousness,
eternal vitality in his given life,
indissoluble union in fellowship with him;
In him I have all that I can hold . . . . 

That is where I want to be, in my thinking and in my practice; Christ crucified and Christ glorified, to be able to say 'in him I have all that I can hold,' to consider that the lesser issues are really not worthy of pursuing if they detract from him and put me at odds with my brothers in the Lord.

I have not attained all this, of course. I am sharing my aspirations and my weak, trembling steps along a road I pray you will tread far more readily than I have. Nor is this an excuse for a kind of theological woolliness, although I know some will inevitably think so! I am going to make this post longer still by copying a piece by Ray Ortlund that I completely agree with. Please note that - completely agree with! That means the opening of the first paragraph as well, where Mr Ortlund affirms his own Reformed position. If the first two sentences were a signable document, I would sign. Beef it up by adding one of the historical Reformed confessions, and I would still sign! Please read on, it's well worth it.

(The title is a clickable link back to Ray Ortlund's blog) 

Truly reformed

I believe in the sovereignty of God, the Five Points of Calvinism, the Solas of the Reformation, I believe that grace precedes faith in regeneration. Theologically, I am Reformed. Sociologically, I am simply a Christian – or at least I want to be. The tricky thing about our hearts is that they can turn even a good thing into an engine of oppression. It happens when our theological distinctives make us aloof from other Christians. That’s when, functionally, we relocate ourselves outside the gospel and inside Galatianism. 

The Judaizers in Galatia did not see their distinctive – the rite of circumcision – as problematic. They could claim biblical authority for it in Genesis 17 and the Abrahamic covenant. But their distinctive functioned as an addition to the all-sufficiency of Jesus himself. Today the flash point is not circumcision. It can be Reformed theology. But no matter how well argued our position is biblically, if it functions in our hearts as an addition to Jesus, it ends up as a form of legalistic divisiveness.

Paul answered the theological aspects of the Galatian error with solid theology. But the “whiff test” that something was wrong in those Galatian churches was more subtle than theology alone. The problem was also sociological. “They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them” (Galatians 4:17). In other words, “The legalists want to ‘disciple’ you. But really, they’re manipulating you. By emphasizing their distinctive, they want you to feel excluded so that you will conform to them.” It’s like chapter two of Tom Sawyer. Remember how Tom got the other boys to whitewash the fence for him? Mark Twain explained: “In order to make a man or boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.” Paul saw it happening in Galatia. But the gospel makes full inclusion in the church easy to attain. It re-sets everyone’s status in terms of God’s grace alone. God’s grace in Christ crucified, and nothing more. He alone makes us kosher. He himself. 

The Judaizers would probably have answered at this point, “We love Jesus too. But how can you be a first-rate believer, really set apart to God, without circumcision, so plainly commanded right here in the Bible? This isn’t an add-on. It’s the full-meal deal. God says so.”

Their misuse of the Bible showed up in social dysfunction. “It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised. . . . They desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh” (Galatians 6:12-13). In other words, “When Christians, whatever the label or badge or shibboleth, start pressuring you to come into line with their distinctive, you know something’s wrong. They want to enhance their own significance by your conformity to them: ‘See? We’re better. We’re superior. People are moving our way. They are becoming like us. We’re the buzz.’” What is this, but deep emotional emptiness medicating itself by relational manipulation? This is not about Christ. This is about Self. Even Peter fell into this hypocrisy (Galatians 2:11-14). But no matter who is involved, this is not the ministry of the gospel. Even if a biblical argument can be made for a certain position, and we all want to be biblical, the proof of what’s really happening is not in the theological argumentation but in the sociological integration.

Paul had thought it through. He made a decision that the bedrock of his emotional okayness would forever lie here: “Far be it from me to boast [establish my personal significance] except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. . . . For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation” (Galatians 6:14-15). In other words, “Here is all I need for my deepest sense of myself: Jesus Christ crucified. His cross has deconstructed me and remade me, and I am happy. Everything else is at best secondary, possibly irrelevant, even counterproductive. Let Jesus alone stand forth in my theology, in my emotional well-being and in my relationships with other Christians!” This settledness in Paul’s heart made him a life-giving man for other people. He was a free man, setting others free (Galatians 5:1). This is the acid test of a truly Reformed ministry – that other believers need not be Reformed in order to be respected and included in our hearts.

Whatever divides us emotionally from other Bible-believing, Christ-honoring Christians is a “plus” we’re adding to the gospel. It is the Galatian impulse of self-exaltation. It can even become a club with which we bash other Christians, at least in our thoughts, to punish, to exclude and to force into line with us. 

What unifies the church is the gospel. What defines the gospel is the Bible. What interprets the Bible correctly is a hermeneutic centered on Jesus Christ crucified, the all-sufficient Savior of sinners, who gives himself away on terms of radical grace to all alike. What proves that that gospel hermeneutic has captured our hearts is that we are not looking down on other believers but lifting them up, not seeing ourselves as better but grateful for their contribution to the cause, not standing aloof but embracing them freely, not wishing they would become like us but serving them in love (Galatians 5:13).

My Reformed friend, can you move among other Christian groups and really enjoy them? Do you admire them? Even if you disagree with them in some ways, do you learn from them? What is the emotional tilt of your heart – toward them or away from them? If your Reformed theology has morphed functionally into Galatian sociology, the remedy is not to abandon your Reformed theology. The remedy is to take your Reformed theology to a deeper level. Let it reduce you to Jesus only. Let it humble you. Let this gracious doctrine make you a fun person to be around. The proof that we are Reformed will be all the wonderful Christians we discover around us who are not Reformed. Amazing people. Heroic people. Blood-bought people. People with whom we are eternally one – in Christ alone.

In Spring, we are told, a young man's thoughts turn to love. Perhaps on similar lines you'll forgive an old man's thoughts turning to theology in autumn, especially as it is autumn here in the southern hemisphere!

My thoughts were turned that way by reading the Douglas Moo commentary on James which I got at a bargain price. It wasn't actually the price that drew me - I didn't know it was 'on offer' until I got to the till - but the fact that I am quite interested in James and Douglas Moo is a name I know and respect in the evangelical world. I have his commentary on Romans and other books in which he has a part in editing or authoring the material.

All the more disappointing then, to be faced with a thorny problem while reading the James commentary. There are a number of issues in interpreting biblical text and I am not an expert in any of them, but I do have my doubts about the way Scripture is treated sometimes. I can outline my view of Scripture this way:

1. Scripture is entirely and completely the Word of God, in the original (Hebrew and Greek) perfect in every way and still in translation infallible and inerrant.

2. I recognise the human authorship of the books of Scripture and that those authors have left their mark in terms of style and other non-essential matters. Nevertheless I believe the Holy Spirit to be the original author of Scripture because all Scripture is God-breathed.

3. This original divine authorship of Scripture means that the Bible is not like other books. Through it God himself speaks, judging, correcting and encouraging his people.

It is this last point I particularly want to comment on here. It is essential that we do not ever treat Scripture as merely a human book, because in that way we will find ourselves degrading the truths it is meant to convey and at the worst we will put ourselves in the position of allowing ourselves to judge Scripture rather than submitting ourselves to it, as we should.
Scripture really is unique. This is evident in Peter's comment (2 Peter 1:21) where he says:
For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Quite plainly in the most natural sense Peter is referring to the Old Testament, but in that 'prophecy' in the context carries the meaning of conveying the Word of God it equally plainly applies to the New Testament as well. Peter has more to say:
Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. 
(1 Peter 1:10-12)
The meaning here seems plain enough: the human authors of Scripture sometimes found their curiosity aroused by what they themselves had written. Or put another way, 'carried along by the Holy Spirit' they wrote things that were not wholly clear to them in meaning. They knew that, and although they sought to know more fully, the Holy Spirit revealed that what they had written was for a future time which Peter identifies as the age in which we live - the Gospel age, between the first and second coming of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.
If there is a lesson from these texts it must be that the idea that is regularly promoted even by evangelical authors, that the first and most important question in studying a passage in the Old Testament is its meaning to the author and original authors, cannot be true. I do not mean to suggest that historical context has no importance, indeed far from it. Knowing where we can the approximate dates of an author and gaining some idea of the political, economic and religious milieu in which the text was written is of great advantage and importance. But to imagine that what the author or original hearers understood of a text is of primary importance or even in some cases any major importance is to deny the truth of the two texts we have quoted. To give just a couple of examples, both from Isaiah, I have only a general idea who the prophet's original hearers or readers were, and certainly not too much clue about what they understood of what we call Isaiah 6 or Isaiah 53. But I do know this: that the real significance of the first part of Isaiah 6 is revealed in John 12, where we told that it was the glory of the pre-incarnate Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, that Isaiah saw; the significance of the last part of the chapter is revealed in a number of gospel passages where the Lord tells us that Isaiah spoke of the generation he was addressing (and by natural extension all who hear the gospel and reject it). I know too that the real meaning of Isaiah 53 only becomes apparent in the light of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Back to Moo, who is wrestling with the text of James in a day when it is a very controversial text for some who want to find passages in the New Testament that will suggest that Paul is somehow a 'rogue apostle' promoting a gospel that differs from that of the Lord Jesus Christ and other apostles. Dealing with these issues and producing a coherent commentary on the text of James is no easy matter and I do not think that I could do better than Douglas Moo. But what does disturb me is the heavy reliance in this commentary on the early date for James (pretty certainly true) as a reason why James and Paul do not seem to agree: James is writing to a largely Jewish readership at an early stage in the history of the church and therefore the development of apostolic theology permits James to express things in a way he might not have done in the light of the later developments by Paul. (That is my summary of what Douglas Moo says at a number of points.)

Of course it all sounds reasonable enough, unless you bring to mind that the 'prime cause' author is not James but the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit knows perfectly well what he will inspire Paul to write, and everyone else. James leaves his mark on the text in many ways, but if Peter's comments mean anything we can be sure that the 'carrying along by the Holy Spirit' will mean that James will write beyond his own understanding where that is necessary. I say where that is necessary because James, as an apostolic author, writes under the promise that the Holy Spirit will reveal all truth to him and bring to mind the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ and more. James is not doing his best in the circumstances. Instead, the Holy Spirit having illumined his mind and now carrying him along as he writes, he produces pure and accurate truth for the Gospel age. The truth is not limited to him or by him. He knows far more than you or I or Douglas Moo (or even NT Wright, for that matter!) and his work is not some 'early stage' production that we can now see the fault lines in. Here is apostolic truth that speaks into in our lives, judges us as a living word sharper than any two-edged sword, and gets right to the heart of our sinful problems. Here is the pure Word on which the church of God is founded. Here God speaks, as he does through all Scripture but with special clarity in the New Testament where the Gospel is revealed, expounded and explained.

I think Douglas Moo would agree with most of what I have said. But sadly, I think evangelical scholars sometimes now too easily adopt the methods and presuppositions of the liberal scholars, and thus undermine a high view of Scripture which is essential to a true and living faith.

(Quotations in this post are from the English Standard Version of the Bible.)