Afterwords -- week 21
"But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you." (John 14:26 ESV)
"The work of the Spirit of God was, from the beginning and still is, to ensure that the churches know, worship, serve, and teach the real Christ... That means that the Christ we preach today must never deviate from the historical Christ we meet in the gospels. The standard of teaching and ethics in the established records must never be subtly altered or compromised." (Dick Lucas, "The Apostles in Training")
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May 14, 2022
Dear friends,
"TEACH ME YOUR WAY." Psalm 25 ends with, "Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his troubles" (v 22). And who doesn't want to be delivered from troubles? But the focus of David's previous verses has to do with himself personally. It's a psalm about being humble and teachable: "Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths" (v 4). Often, I have sought deliverance from troubles in my life without humbling myself to seek the needed moral and spiritual changes. In my years of pastoral ministry, I discovered this in others, also -- many who came for counsel about problems were seeking deliverance from their painful difficulties, rather than learning how to live differently in God's sight. A band-aid is no substitute for a cure. It's learning about God's path, and walking upon it, that brings healing: "...make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed" (Heb 12:13).
PREACHING THE OLD TESTAMENT. I have really enjoyed listening online to John Woodhouse (from Moore College, Australia) teaching on 2 Kings at this year's Basics Conference at Parkside Church. Here are two of his excellent messages, here and here. In an interview with Nancy Guthrie, Woodhouse said, "What God planned to do through Jesus is so big that it took a massive preparation; and the preparation is recounted for us in the pages of the Old Testament" (TGC podcast).
MORE ON CONSPIRACIES. In my last newsletter I referenced this article about Christians and conspiracy theories. I got some push-back on this, and that's to be expected. My main concern is not that there isn't truth to be found in some of the political and scientific claims (and counterclaims) being made today, but that for Christians to move from the certainty and focus of the authoritative Scriptures to become preoccupied and obsessed with speculative and unsubstantiated claims of other "authorities", is to exchange one authority for another -- divine for human -- and so to move from faith to fear, and then to anger. The prophet Isaiah had to deal with this in his time: "Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the LORD of hosts, him you shall regard as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread" (Isa 8:12-13). A reader recently sent this article from The Atlantic to me. It's lengthy, but it's well-written and thought-provoking. The author, Tim Alberta, makes this conclusion:
"...FloodGate and churches like it have grown in direct proportion to how many Christians 'felt betrayed by their pastors.' That trend looks to be holding steady. More people will leave churches that refuse to identify with a tribe and will find pastors who confirm their own partisan views. The erosion of confidence in the institution of American Christianity will accelerate. The caricature of evangelicals will get uglier. And the actual work of evangelizing will get much, much harder. God isn’t biting his fingernails. But I sure am."
WHAT I'M READING: The biography of John Stott, in two volumes, by Timothy Dudley-Smith. Stott wrote about his conversion at age 17:
"After I received Jesus Christ as my Saviour and Lord, one of the first ways in which I knew that something had happened to me was that the Bible became a new Book. As I read it God began to speak to me; verses became luminous, phosphorescent. It was as if I heard the very Word of God through the Scriptures."
WHAT I'M LISTENING TO. I'm enjoying the messages by Dick Lucas on the Gospel of John (quote and link at top). Though she has gone home to be with the Lord, Elisabeth Elliot had a remarkable ministry to the church worldwide. Here she is speaking on loneliness, the first of three messages at Ligonier some years ago: "We are lonely because we are human."
DRAMA AT THE BIRD FEEDER. We enjoy watching the birds at our feeders on the deck. Among the songbirds there is a definite pecking order (literally). At the top are the blue jays and the red-bellied woodpeckers, who have both size and formidable beaks to their advantage. Next are the catbirds and mockingbirds, who are very protective of the fruit (especially) that they find in the feeder. The cardinals, titmice, doves, and finches are rather patient and wait until all the other aggressive birds have finished. It seems the bigger birds scatter the seed more, and so, all of the birds end up finding something to eat (Matt 6:26).
That's it for week 21!
Sandy
Image credit. Above, Matthew writing his Gospel, art from the Lindisfarne Gospels, 8th century. Wikimedia Commons.