Month: January 2021

So here are the headlines on my BBC app this morning:

Russia braces for latest Navalny protests; EU and UK ‘reset’ relations after NI vaccine row; Trump ‘parts with lawyers’ before Senate trial; Rashford racially abused on social media; I was scammed out of £17,000 on Instagram; Situation in CAR’s encircled capital ‘apocalyptic’.

Tomorrow will be similar and the day after. A world at war with itself from nations to neighbours.

Since the beginning of time the blood of Abel cries towards heaven.

Can you remember why the Flood came? It was corruption and violence (Genesis 6:11)

Violence grieves the heart of God.

If the Beatitudes were a list to try and achieve then I, even in Christ and with Him by my side have failed every one of these. The Beatitudes are teachings from Jesus that are far more about the person we are and where we find ourselves than what we do.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” (Matthew 5 v 9)

This may have been a shock to those waiting for a Messiah to come and overturn the Roman Empire and establish a new kingdom.

Are you a peacemaker?

If you are then you will have stories of finding yourself in an uncomfortable place. In the middle. Being in the middle sometimes causes both sides to dislike you. In fact I have known times when the opposing sides allied against me, the peacemaker.

So let’s be reminded on how God dealt with the violent world. He first sent Moses with the Law and the prophets to speak His Word and priests to bring atonement. All of it was lacking. The greatest enmity between God and the world was still there.

So He came Himself.

On the cross, arms stretched out, Jesus became the Peacemaker. He experienced the wrath of God and the slander of the world on the Cross of Peace.

Is this you in a lesser version?

Then yours is the kingdom and therefore happiness is yours for you are known as a child of God. God is seen in you, in the painful place of the middle.

If you don’t know what carbolic soap is then you must have gone to school after the 1970s in Britain. It has an unusual and unique smell and was used a lot in the hospitals because it was seen as powerfully hygienic.

In the 1970s teachers were still permitted to use corporal punishment. I was used to the cane but not the carbolic soap which was put into the mouth of any child because they had been heard to use bad language.

The reason why I think of carbolic soap this morning is because of our next beatitude:

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (Matthew 5 v 8)

It is so difficult reading the beatitudes without thinking I am failing in probably all of them.

Can I see them differently?

There were at the time four major groups in the Jewish religion, the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and the Zealots, all of whom presented a different viewpoint to the Jewish people. The Pharisees demanded strict observance of the Mosaic Law expressed in the Torah, but also accepted the oral tradition of Jewish customs and rituals. The Sadducees were mainly from the priestly families and strictly accepted the Law of Moses but rejected oral tradition. The monastic Essenes awaited a Messiah that would establish a Kingdom on earth and free the Israelites from oppression. The Zealots were a militant Jewish group who wanted freedom for their homeland, and were centred in Galilee; one of the Twelve Apostles was Simon the Zealot.
Jesus is bringing a new teaching of love. Not a teaching of force. The Pharisees were basing their approach to God, were basing their acceptance with a holy righteous God, Jehovah, upon their external righteousness. So much so, that they had 600 plus rules and regulations added to the word of God by which they could come closer to God Himself.

Describe purity and we have to get out our lists of do’s and don’ts. These lists change over time.

When we closely study the life of Jesus one fact is consistently surprising.  The group that made Jesus the angriest was the group that, externally at least, he most resembled. Scholars agree that Jesus closely matched the profile of a Pharisee. He obeyed the Torah, or Mosaic law, quoted leading Pharisees and often took their side in public arguments. Yet Jesus singled out the Pharisees for his strongest attacks. ‘Snakes!’ he called them. ‘Brood of vipers’, fools, hypocrites, blind guides, whitewashed tombs.

What provoked these outbursts from Jesus? The Pharisees had much in common with those whom the press might call Bible-belt fundamentalists today. They devoted their lives to following God, gave away an exact tithe, obeyed every minute law in the Torah and sent out missionaries to gain new converts. Against the relativists and secularists of the first century they held firm to traditional values.  Rarely involved in sexual sin or violent crime, the Pharisees made model citizens.

Jesus was fiercely against legalism.

And although legalism takes different forms now then if did years ago I don’t think it has gone away, and its dangers represent a great threat even today.

Things that have been considered sinful in the past and deemed unacceptable by the church, is common practice now, although the manifestations have changed the spirit of legalism has not. We are more likely to encounter today the legalism of thought. There are authors today who dare to question doctrine on issues of abortion for example and face the same judgement that a ‘social drinking’ Christian faced in the fundamentalist subculture. Tony Campolo has received so much abuse from Christians in his pleas to show more compassion to homosexuality. Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the bible ‘the message’ made him a target of a self-proclaimed cult-watcher as he was ‘tampering with the word of God’. Richard Foster dared to use words like meditation in his writings on spiritual discipline and people have put him under suspicion of a new ager. Chuck Colson received abusive emails from Christians when he accepted the Templeton Prize for Progress of Religion, which sometimes goes to people who are not Christians, and when he signed a statement of mutual cooperation with Catholics he received even more abusive. What is going on?

Legalism is a subtle danger because no one thinks of himself as a legalist. My own rules seem necessary; other people’s rules seem excessively strict.

Jesus condemns the legalists’ emphasis on externals. And in the Sermon on the Mount in this passage of the Beatitudes Jesus shows a different expression of love for God.  Not one that is just about the externals but one that is about our internal state.

Blessed are those who are pure in heart, those who are honest. Those who have pure motives and are not doing things just to be seen by others and praised by others.

In other words the proof of spiritual maturity is not how ‘pure’ you are but awareness of your impurity, which is what the Beatitudes try to demonstrate. And it is that very awareness which opens up the door to grace.

Why would Jesus tell us to do something we cannot do?

We cannot do this beatitude if it is a command. We are hypocrites. We may look good but we aren’t.

But here is the invitation to those of us who want to be good people, who want people to think we are good and who also want others to be good too. To those of us who have spent our whole life trying harder, resolutions are made every day not annually, but the more we try the more we have to try harder. Is there any hope? Yes says Jesus! The kingdom invitation is here: come on in! And we try and answer by asking what good do we have to do to accept the invitation or we puff out our chests and say God must be happy with me because of the invitation. And we fail to understand the invitation.

We fail until we see Jesus, the one who took our imperfections when he died on the cross. We fail until we see the broken and bleeding body of Christ who bore our legalistic efforts and demands and judgments on others who don’t meet our standards. We fail until we see Jesus. But when we do all our efforts fall to the ground as we rest in His purity. Our obedience is not work to prove but love and joy. We live life knowing He makes all things beautiful, even impure hearts pure. His blood washes cleaner than carbolic soap!

This is not an updated list of the 10 commandments. Moses had a list and now Jesus has his. These are not 8 badges of merit. Get these and you’re in the kingdom and you are blessed/happy.

Difficult that it is for us as we have been trained and conditioned to perform our Christianity but we must come away from a commandment relationship with Jesus and his kingdom. It’s risky and we might be afraid to do so. It may feel wrong and turning our theology upside down. But the kingdom is near, Jesus says, and we need to know who gets into it. For what we understand is it is not a course of action that brings happiness but it is the kingdom.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” (Matthew 5 v 7)

At the cross we see justice and mercy collide. Justice poured out on Jesus and mercy poured out on the world. Mercy is not giving us what we deserve, judgment. It looks like the world has taken advantage of God. God loses and the world is free. God waits and as He waits He continues to show mercy. We understand that.

A reminder of the context of that mountainside. Jesus is teaching the disciples in ear-shot of the crowds. Who were these people? “… people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed …” (Matthew 4:24)

Would you have these people on your team?

Within those crowds were also the Religious leaders and the Roman sympathisers, ruling with oppression, judgment and condemnation.

Blessed are the strong, those with back-bone and those who uphold the standards of God.

Would you have these people on your team?

Who is right amongst the crowd?

Those who don’t break any rules?

Those who don’t make the standard?

Jesus says those who are right are those who look like God. They are merciful. They look like the world has taken advantage of them. It looks like they have lost and their world has won. The world has hung a sign up saying, ‘You are not welcome here’. Happy are these people in the kingdom. Happy not because they have achieved mercy but mercy in disqualifying them from their world has opened for them the door to the blessed kingdom. This is not a list it is about being last.

Have you been taken advantage of? Walked right over? Ignored by your world? Forgotten in your brokenness? It is a mirror of God at the cross. Mercy is yours. Welcome the kingdom of happiness is within you.

Planning meetings have taken on a whole new experience. When I was a Pastor and planning the Church BBQ we would have to plan a contingency for if it rained. The meetings I attend now are far removed from the simplicity of factoring in the weather. It is all about when will we be out of this pandemic? Will we be able to gather by then? What restrictions will be in place? So my diary has dates that are provisional and back-ups and events that are online or online with possibility of a few in-person and in-person gathering with online also. The diary looks crazy.

Let me just save some time and just get straight to the point:

Are we in danger of longing to be back to normal more than we are longing for Him?

I hope that when the Church comes out of the pandemic and goes back to whatever normal it is that we do so with a longing for the justice of the kingdom; a desire to walk right with one another and a craving for God to move with salvation in our cities and towns. If those were the 3 overwhelming desires of everyone within Church then that would be something worth coming back for. Anything else, programmes and plans, will come to nothing if our appetites are not for Him.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. (Matthew 5 v 6)

Jesus said this at a time when the Jews were heavily taxed and the money used for the building of the Herodian’s lavish palaces and homes for the gentry, hunger was very familiar to most.

Today there are people who stiff suffer at the hands of their governments and broken infrastructures. We are still to discover the true findings of the negative impact of this pandemic but prior to it at the commencement of 2020, a report by the Social Metrics Commission stated that 4.5 million children were living in poverty in the UK. That will have greatly increased.

Of course that doesn’t compare to the many famines that have happened and are still going on around the world. Fuelled by war, corruption, ideologies and apathy from the rest, many are hungry today.

But on that mountainside were people hungry for God to once again step in and end the suffering of His people which historically was seen to have been caused by their wandering from Him. Jesus is teaching his disciples but the crowd are listening. I wonder if Jesus had this Scripture in mind when he gave this Beatitude?

Psalm 107: 4-9 “Some wandered in desert wastelands, finding no way to a city where they could settle. They were hungry and thirsty, and their lives ebbed away. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He led them by a straight way to a city where they could settle. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind, for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.”

The Church needs to find its hunger point again.

We do not have everything. We cannot by our own efforts see Church growth and effectiveness. We boast and advertise our riches but it all comes to nothing. We need God to enter. We need to be able to say, “He has filled.” So …

Are you hungry?

Do you have an insatiable longing that can only be satisfied by God?

Is there a strong desire for more?

Are you pouring out your soul?

It is better to be hungry than not needing a thing.

So let’s hunger for Him today.

Mugs, cards, shirts, jumpers, phone covers and bags are just a few terms of merchandise that can be purchased since the year 2000 all with the famous slogan blazoned on it.

The slogan was first used in 1939 by the Ministry of Information which served as the British propaganda department. In fact, it was created but it was never used and when Britain faced a huge paper shortage in 1940, 2.45 million posters displaying the slogan were pulped.

The slogan is of course, “Keep Calm and Carry On”

Moving into the 3^rd of the Beatitudes list we see something far more than a slogan:

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5 v 5)

On that mountainside we may have a picture of idyllic beauty with not a care in the world. But it is in the region of Herod Antipas. After Herod the Great’s death the nation was broken up into smaller regions and one of his sons, Antipas, ruled the region of this mountainside. Antipas had imprisoned John the Baptist because John had been condemning his affair with his sister-in-law who he had stolen from his brother. The people lived at a time where the powerful chased more power. Whether that be the political leaders or the religious leaders they would assert themselves over others in order to advance their own causes. Sadly we still see it in our world today. Jesus was meek but he wasn’t weak. He was strong in facing the religious hypocrites and he was strong to go to the cross but he never trod on anyone for any reason. The Apostle Paul said he himself had learnt to be content in every situation.

There isn’t many people operating a ‘keep calm and carry on’ policy. The angry fight and conquer. I have wrote blogs on the abuse of leadership however it isn’t always top-down. Yesterday I was mistakenly copied into an email from a member to a minister (actually they weren’t even a member) accusing them of being divisive, hurtful and discourteous. Why? The minister wanted to bring a really small change. There’s nothing like enforced change that challenges meekness. A few days before that I sat with a minister as he experienced a fierce onslaught from a member who didn’t like his ministry. After 20 minutes (19 minutes too long) I had to stop the conversation and said, ‘I had never heard anything like this for 30 years, meaning I have never heard anything like it at all.’ It isn’t that I am against criticism. I think the reason why we don’t get better is we ignore the critic. However I am against anger and the grabbing of power. Abuse is all around us and we need to make sure it doesn’t take up residence as acceptable behaviour.

We live in a world which will do absolutely anything to cling on to power. It exists in the Christian world as much as outside of it. It flies in the face of the 1939 slogan. More importantly it has nothing to do with the counter-cultural invitation of Jesus when describing His Kingdom.

Look at what the Message says: “You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.”

So Keep Calm and Carry on even if you’re in a war.

I was only a child but I found the courage to kneel at the Mercy Seat. Every Salvation Army building has one. It is basically a bench at the front where people kneel to pray, to confess and to receive their salvation. Tears fell easily in that moment as I realised that even in such a small amount of years I had offended God. I had hurt the one who loves me. I was Peter who looked at Jesus and wept. Someone knelt down next to me and prayed a prayer with me. I returned to where I had been sitting tears still falling. I don’t know who the lady was and no doubt she had good intentions but after the meeting she came to me and said, “Why are you still crying? You should be happy now.” The process of mourning was disrupted by a woman wanting me to be happy.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (Matthew 5 v 4)

Do you remember your own tears of salvation story?

Do you remember those church services where after a call to come to Jesus people lined up at the front in tears because their heart of stone was being turned into a new heart and their spirit was being reborn by the Spirit of God?

My prayer is that there is going to be a renewed, fresh, loving conviction falling on the ministry of the Church in all that we do, whether inside or outside our buildings. Can you hope for this too?

But there’s more to this statement of Jesus. Here is the help from the beautiful paraphrase from the Message: “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.”

I would think that I have known more grief in the last 10 years than at any other time in my life.

Through my work I have seen a broken world more than ever. To sit with the suffering is to sit in tears.

But then to experience the personal loss of loved ones has been a pain of deep pain, anger and depression. What have I learnt?

I have become acquainted with a world broken by sin, death, injustice and wickedness.

I am understanding the impact that this brokenness has on God and the need for change and transformation.

I have discovered the most important thing: God is present in the place of mourning. He is familiar with suffering. He is longing for the day to wipe away every tear (Rev 7:17) and so our mourning has hope, death is not in vain (1 Thess 4:13)

Happiness comes through grief. For leading you into mourning, through it and out of it is the God of all comfort (2 Cor 1:3)

He is there and where He is we are happy.

Slow the title above down. You may not agree with it and if you don’t then you are not alone. But your pursuit of happiness may not in the end bring you the happiness that you thought it would.

Jesus is about to bring his famous sermon about the kingdom but first he starts out with a list.

“He said: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5 v 3)

The Message is going to help us: “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.”

It helps us because we realise that this list is not something to be achieved but what actually is. Preachers would often preach that we should be poor in spirit to be part of the kingdom. But not so much now since Dallas Willard’s Divine Conspiracy, which enables us to see the list as descriptive not prescriptive. The list has categories that are opposite to what we would deem happy.

The world teaches us that happiness is achieved with what you have gained or earned. Jesus teaches us that happiness is found in Him. Those that enter the kingdom are people who realise that all that they chased after would never have satisfied anyway.

So, if today your life is unfulfilled and maybe empty of what the world says you should have then step into this kingdom again, His domain and rule for your life is yours because there is room for Him.

If you want to keep the list descriptive then there will be times when you have to physically sit with the poor in spirit to embrace their loss and become one with them, especially if you are stepping into greatness in areas of your life. Doing so is not for their benefit but yours for they are citizens of the kingdom and are richer than you. They remind you that happiness is not in having but not having.

Where and how should discipleship take place?

In the pursuit of this word (discipleship) Churches are being challenged over how well they are doing in making followers of Christ. They are being questioned and rightly so as no one is above scrutiny. Some think the Church as we know it is over as we search for a more meaningful, accountable and effective discipleship.

Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them. (Matthew 5 v 1-2)

I don’t think the traditions of the Church need to be seen as out-dated and rejected, they simply need refreshing for a new generation. Let’s look at these 2 verses again.

Jesus begins to teach the disciples (not just the 12 but his followers up to that time) but he is aware of the crowds listening. The message has been ‘the Kingdom of heaven is near’ and his teaching will be to explain the kingdom to the disciples but it is in the context and the hearing of the crowds. Discipleship has always got to be lived out within the crowds of life.

But what fascinates me is that Jesus remains within the traditions of the Jewish faith and custom.

He follows Moses the teacher who ascended the mountain of Sinai.

He ‘sits’ in the tradition of the rabbis.

He teaches his disciples as the custom of the rabbi’s. (The difference was he never borrowed from other sources but had his own authority. Matthew 7:29)

Discipleship can be done within the traditions and customs of the church and Jesus shows us this. But of course we can always do better.

The Church on the move, not contained inside a building, but physically expanding and reaching every sphere of society within the village, town, city and county and even nation, covering the whole area, no place left unreached. But doing what?

• Teaching the truth but with amazing application in mass open air gatherings but also packing smaller gatherings in the many buildings of worship.
• Proclaiming the good news to those who have not heard of the kingdom.
• Healing every disease, rising with authority to overcome every evil act.

Imagine this …

The Church being talked about even beyond its borders. And the effect?

• People coming from every direction because they have heard that the Church can make them better.
• Crowds coming from places that had not known the gospel, from different faiths, attracted to what was happening in and through the Church.

Can you imagine this again for your Church?

It has happened before. It happened to the Christ, the Head of the Church.

It can happen again to the Body of Christ, the Church.

“Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis,Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.” (Matthew 4 v 23-25)

It can happen again. Imagine this …!

Francis Chan: Why I quit my megachurch and started again.

That was the headline from an article I read this morning online.

Here’s another one:

Peter, Andrew, James and John: Why we quit our business and started again.

“As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him. Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.” (Matthew 4 v 18-22)

There are many conversations amongst Church leaders about discipleship than anything else at the moment. In each and every one of those conversations the question has arisen: what is discipleship?

Sometimes I wonder if we over complicate things? Why does everything always have to sound like you need some sort of degree to be involved in the conversation? Why do I have to carry a thesaurus around so that I too can use words that have never been used before?

Here is my attempt at what discipleship is?

The steps of discipleship are:

1. Encounter

We have to hold the Matthew verses to one side for one moment realising that this is not the first time that these 4 radicals had met Jesus.

In John’s gospel he tells us that Andrew had left John the Baptist’s discipleship team and joined Jesus having brought his brother Simon Peter to him also.

Andrew and John (probably) had been following Jesus at a distance until he turned around and asked them what they wanted. They replied they wanted to see where Jesus was staying. So Jesus took them into his house and it radically changed their lives. These 4 radicals were following Jesus before the call that Matthew records. In this following they were encountering Jesus who said things like, “you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.” (John 1:51) They were going to see an open heaven and he would take them on an incredible adventure as Jacob experienced in his dream of which the next day he called the place Bethel, the House of God. In fact the whole purpose of John’s gospel could be that he is revealing Jesus as the new Temple, the House of God. We certainly need the encounter of God. May our homes, work-places and our churches be places of Bethel!

2. Practice

These 4 radicals accompanied Jesus to the Wedding of Cana where it was there that they believed (2:11). They witness others encountering Jesus and they baptise with Jesus. They see the Temple being cleared out and the encounter with the Samaritan women at the well. In their journey to be a radical they witness Jesus as a radical offending the norm. Above all they are listening to what he is saying. After all that is the mark of a disciple and their rabbi. The disciple wants to be able to copy exactly what their rabbi has said just as Moses copied exactly the Torah from the mouth of God.

We certainly need the practice of discipleship in our homes, work-places and our churches. We can see evidence of that. We can see the transformational stories that Jesus brings. We can see the teaching of Jesus that Christians base their life on.

I know that the Church in the UK is needing a revival but let us not fall into the danger of rubbishing it all. There is so much good that is taking place. The Church you attend has many stories of engaging with the community through projects such as Foodbanks etc. Faithful men and women serving the community and each other in the church giving their time, energy, money to the work of mission here in the UK and internationally. Each week listening to sermons and then trying to apply the lessons into their life so that they might become more like Jesus. Steadfastly praying for the good to happen, for God to be glorified and people to know Jesus.

But there is more and it is where we now pick up Matthew’s verses.

“As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him. Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.”

3. Sacrifice

I am writing this in bold because it is directly connected to the verses in Matthew and my main thoughts this morning.

It is nearly a year that has passed since they first met Jesus. They are living their lives so much better now that they have encountered him and been involved in what he is doing. During that year something was rising within their spirit so that when Jesus came by one day they responded easily to the official call he gave them.

Let me caveat what I am about to write: Sacrifice isn’t necessarily seen in leaving but staying in your home, work-place and church but leaving the person you are in those situations.

• Matthew doesn’t record that any of the radicals were frustrated with their business prior to leaving and that is maybe because they weren’t. Frustration isn’t always the sign from God to quit.
• They didn’t take the catch of fish with them but they didn’t burn their fishing boats either. We know at the end of John’s gospel Peter went back to his business.
• They left their father in the boat but they didn’t abandon their family. Matthew will record how Zebedee’s wife, their mother, was one of the women at the cross. They had kept a good example which led their family over the next couple of years.
• They sacrificed to be fishers of men. They were not leaving their family units to join some Qumran Jewish monastic group. Mission is everything. If the lost were not going to be caught then they might as well have continued fishing for fish. They left for mission. The sacrifice is mission.

In conclusion. Whether Francis Chan was right to leave his mega-church is absolutely nothing to do with me. I am more concerned about the 4 radicals and what they can help me with. Sometimes when we make that final sacrifice and leave, people question us. We disturb their status quo perhaps and they dont like what our actions say about their apathy. I just don’t see that from the families of the 4 radicals. If it happened, the gospel-writers don’t mention it. But they do tell us what discipleship involves: Encounter, Practice and Sacrifice. I believe those 3 principles are in a recurring cycle of experience for us. Which principle are you at right now?