Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Doubt. One of the things I love about the Bible is its earthy realism. It understands the world we live in – the good and the bad, the joys and the sadness. It also understands how we feel about life’s injustices especially when we see people who mock the notion of God, enjoying success. Nothing ever seems to go wrong for them. And as well as the unfairness we often feel, there are the realities of droughts and famines, floods and destruction, earthquakes and despotic rulers. Why doesn’t God step in? It seems so out of character.

Questions. True faith will always have questions. In fact, the faith that refuses to ask questions is one that leaves itself open to the contempt of the skeptic. True faith will want to address tough questions and be willing to experience the doubts that arise.

To have doubts is not to lack faith for doubt is not the opposite of faith. Doubt and unbelief are two very different things. Doubt is something that only a believer can experience, for you can only doubt what you believe.

People who believe in God often find their relationship with him grows stronger and more intimate when they are willing to face their doubts by asking tough questions. Psalm 73 is a good example of this. The writer tells us that he came close to abandoning his faith in God: But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled; my steps had nearly slipped. Yet by the end of the psalm, he can say: But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge,… (73:28).

Through the psalm, he recounts his spiritual pilgrimage – how he progressed from doubt to a complete trust in God. He touches on his reasons for doubt and then the solution. One of the big questions for him is framed against the principle that God is good to the upright (73:1). ‘So why is it’, he asks, ‘that many who are godless find life easy while I suffer? Where is God?’

Solution. As he reflects on this, he perceived their end… God would bring about their downfall – and it would be eternal. The idea of a final day of accounting is often mocked today. But, as thoughtful people point out, if there is no final judgment, morality becomes irrelevant. Indeed, unless we see that there is a future accounting, goodness itself has no value.

Strategy. In Psalm 73:15ff we learn how the poet worked through his doubts. He went to ‘church’: When… I went into the sanctuary of God… I perceived their end. Good churches not only read God’s Word, they believe it to be God’s authentic, written, self-revelation, and teach it. Confronted with God’s Word the psalm-writer began to see what happens to those who choose not to believe: They are like a dream when one awakes; on awaking you despise their phantoms (73:20).

We today have all the more assurance about this because we have the evidence of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Without him we will not know life in all its fullness and joy. C.S. Lewis once put it this way: All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it, or else, that it was within your reach and you have lost it forever.

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© John G. Mason – www.anglicanconnection.com

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Getty Music Worship Conference: ‘Sing…!’ – August 19-21, 2019, Nashville, TN

Theme: ‘The Life of Christ’ – www.gettymusicworshipconference.com

John Mason speaking – Breakout Group: Monday, August 19, 3:00-4:00pm.

Topic: ‘Thomas Cranmer and Christ-Centered Worship. 

Wednesday, July 3, 2019

‘Downcast…?’ 

Hippocrates, the 5^th century Greek physician, identified four kinds of temperament: the sociable extroverts – the sanguine; the driven leaders – the choleric; the analytical and reflective – the melancholic; and the relaxed and inward looking – the phlegmatic. While medicine today has much more sophisticated models identifying the complexity of personality, certain characteristics may dominate.

Some people have a greater tendency to depression than others. This is just as true for professing Christians. Some of the great ones of the Bible, such as Elijah and Jeremiah, and later Christian leaders, such as the poet William Cowper, or the English preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, suffered from depression. It is simply wrong to dismiss a believer who experiences mood swings as having a spiritual problem. In fact, the reality of their faith is seen in the way they persevere despite their mood swings.

Psalms 42 and 43 illustrate this well. The writer(s), had been forcibly taken from his home city of Jerusalem into exile, either at the time of the Babylonian exile or, more likely, when king Jehoash of the northern kingdom of Israel defeated king Amaziah of the southern kingdom, Judah (2 Kings 14:14).

Far from home and from the temple in Jerusalem where he led the worship, the writer asks: Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you so disquieted within me? (42:5, 11; 43:5). He was depressed and disturbed. Any talk of joy and peace would have been empty and false. God seemed remote as we see in his cry: As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God (42:1-2).

Many of us today know what it is like to move away from the comfort and security of family and friends. A good part of how we respond will depend on our underlying temperament. And this can all combine to affect our spiritual awareness – as was happening in these two psalms.

The Psalm writer points us to the solution. When he says: I say to God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? (42:9), we see that we should admit our feelings to God, even asking him questions. This takes courage. Further, we learn that we need to address our inner self, our soul.

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, a great English preacher wrote: ‘The main trouble in this whole matter of depression is that we allow our Self to talk to us instead of us talking to our Self.’ The psalm-writer’s soul has been depressing him, crushing him, so he stands up and says, ‘Soul, listen! I will speak to you: “Hope in God; I shall again praise him, my help and my God”.’ Don’t let your feelings dominate.

Throughout these two psalms we see the movement from depression, to admission, to self-exhortation, and then to prayer: Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people, the writer says; Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me… (43:1, 3).

Confident in God’s grace, he is assured of the day when, again filled with joy, he will sing songs of praise to God. Psalms 42-43 urge us to move beyond believing things about God, to actually sensing the living presence of God, whoever we are, and whatever our situation in life.

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© John G. Mason – www.anglicanconnection.com

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Getty Music Worship Conference: ‘Sing…!’ – August 19-21, 2019, Nashville, TN

Theme: ‘The Life of Christ’ – www.gettymusicworshipconference.com

John Mason speaking – Breakout Group: Monday, August 19, 3:00-4:00pm.

Topic: ‘Thomas Cranmer and Christ-Centered Worship. 

Wednesday – June 26, 2019

‘Joy…?’ 

C. S. Lewis once observed, ‘I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to “rejoice” as much as by anything else.’

Was he right? Is there real joy in our lives? I am not talking about a manufactured, false kind of joy – putting on a brave face when we are anxious or when things go wrong in life. I am talking about, and I am sure Lewis was talking about, the deep joy that springs from a clear conscience.

The concluding verses of Psalm 32 read:

   Many are the torments of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord.

   Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

Why should we be glad and rejoice? What might motivate us to shout for joy?

David wrote Psalm 32 following the humiliating exposure of his affair with Bathsheba. While he wrote it about himself we too can benefit, for if we are going to find the kind of joy that he is speaking about we need to attend to his words. Verses 1 and 2 read:

   Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

     Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

Misdemeanors? Freud told us that guilt is a psychological hang-up. But King David tells us that it is something objective, something real that stands between each one of us and our Maker. The God who rules the universe is not simply an impersonal force. He is a moral being, a holy judge. However, we do not naturally lead godly lives, pray, trust God, and generally delight in honoring him. Our natural inclination is to try to cover up our sin, thinking of our failures as foibles and misdemeanors. So, we often compromise on issues we know are wrong, calling it tolerance; we slide into godlessness, thinking we are free.

In Psalm 32 King David is telling us that when we ignore God we offend him. This is one of the tough words of Christianity. Malcolm Muggeridge, a former editor of the English Punch magazine put it this way: The depravity of man is at once the most unpopular of all dogmas, but the most empirically verifiable.

Forgiveness. The only safe way, the only permanent way, to deal with guilt is to have it washed away. And there is only one person with the cleansing power needed to erase such stains – the Lord himself. David knew this: Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

We have a far better knowledge of the truth of David’s words because we live on the other side of the cross of Jesus Christ. Christ died for our sins, the apostle Paul wrote. And it is Psalm 32 that he quotes in Romans 4:6-8 where he argues that God, in his mercy, declares an amnesty for sinners who turn to him in faith. We are saved by grace alone, not by any intrinsic good within us or by any good works we have done.

Reason for joy. Too often our lack of joy comes because we have not been honest with God and opened our hearts to him. We have not truly grasped that in Christ our sins are washed away and that each day we can enjoy a fresh start in life.

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© John G. Mason – www.anglicanconnection.com

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Getty Music Worship Conference: ‘Sing…!’ – August 19-21, 2019, Nashville, TN

Theme: ‘The Life of Christ’ – www.gettymusicworshipconference.com

John Mason speaking – Breakout Group: Monday, August 19, 3:00-4:00pm.

Topic: ‘Thomas Cranmer and Christ-Centered Worship. 

 Wednesday, June 12

‘Suffering’

‘If God is great and good why is there so much suffering?’ A question we regularly hear, especially when the topic of Christianity comes up. Certainly this is one of life’s tough questions that we all want answered. The reality of pain and suffering is probably one of the biggest reasons people give for rejecting the existence of God.

For the professing Christian person it’s one of the toughest, if not the toughest question to have to answer and, I have to say, there are no complete answers. It would be wrong to insist that there are. So what can we say about this profound and perplexing subject? Let me briefly raise a number of points we can consider.

Reasonable logic. To use a simple Philosophy 101 syllogism, one line of argument often goes like this:
          A God who is all-powerful would be able to end suffering and pain;
          A God who is all-loving would want suffering and pain to cease;
          BUT suffering and pain exist;
          Therefore a God who is all powerful and all loving does not exist.

At first sight it seems to make a lot of sense. But consider the response by the philosopher Alvin Plantinga: A God who is all-powerful would be able to end suffering and pain;
           A God who is all-loving would want suffering and pain to cease;
           BUT suffering and pain exist;
           Therefore a God who is all powerful and all loving has a bigger plan.

So, what is the larger picture that God has in mind? Is there any evidence for it? To answer this question it is helpful to see what the records about Jesus’ life have to say on the subject.

Luke 8:40-56 tells us of two sets of people faced with suffering and anguish – the first, a woman who had an incurable haemorrhage for twelve years; the second, a man whose twelve year-old daughter was dying. Both turned to Jesus for help. In him, both found the help they needed.

Transcendent power. Jairus, a recognized synagogue ruler, was charged with ensuring that the law of Moses was taught and upheld. Yet he made no claims to his position when he met with Jesus. Rather, he fell at Jesus’ feet, humbly asking for help. And when the sick woman interrupted Jesus’ progress to his house, Jairus did not object, despite his anxiety. He had a quiet confidence in Jesus. During the delay, news came that his daughter had died. Shockingly Jesus urged him not to fear. Rather ‘believe’. His words underline a major theme in Luke 8. With Jesus, the fear that grips us can give way to the release which faith allows.

Arriving at Jairus’s house, Jesus passed by the mourning and disbelieving crowds. Going to the girl’s bedside and taking her hand he said, ‘Child, arise.’  At that she rose and was given food.

Compassion. Jesus’ miracles point to his real nature – he is truly God in human form. Furthermore, they are mini-portraits of the deeper blessings he offers our suffering world. He invites us all to lean on him in our time of need. He will not always remove our suffering now, but he does promise to be with us. He is also committed to providing a future where there will be no crying or pain. 

 Wednesday, June 5

‘Is Anyone There…?’ 

HG Wells, author of The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, wrote: “I am an historian. I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history.”

Why would an unbeliever say that ‘Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history?’ What is it about Jesus of Nazareth that has captured the attention of great and lesser minds from amongst all peoples? Is it the power of his words, the magnetism of his personality, the integrity of his life even in the face of the gross injustice perpetrated against him? Or is it his extraordinary feats, noted by 1^st century historians such as Josephus? Or is there something more?

Records. Something we often overlook about the records concerning Jesus is that they were not written by just one ‘recorder’, or even by Jesus himself. There are four distinct writers who tell us about him – Matthew and John, who were amongst the twelve, Mark who most likely obtained his information from Peter, another one of the twelve, and Luke the physician, who assures us of his careful and thorough research. Given Jesus’ extraordinary transcendent power and compassion, his unique teaching and claims, this is important to know.

Consider the times when we feel helpless and alone. It may be that our job has gone or the unexpected death of someone we love. We are reminded of the times when men and women in Jesus’ life were afraid and utterly helpless. We ask, ‘Is anyone there?’

A storm. On one occasion Jesus was crossing the Sea of Galilee in a boat with his close followers (Luke 8:22-25). We are given a glimpse of the ‘private’ Jesus: he was so exhausted that he fell into a deep sleep. He had to be wakened when a massive storm threatened the lives of everyone on board.

Shallow and set between high hills, the Sea of Galilee is notorious for its sudden squalls. As every sailor knows, this can be extremely dangerous, for rapidly moving air streams can quickly cause the waters to rise, making them treacherous. Experienced fishermen though some of Jesus’ followers were, they were terrified of this major storm. They felt helpless.

A Cry. Afraid, they awoke the sleeping Jesus saying, “We are perishing”. Amazingly, at his command, the storm was stilled.

Luke wants us to feel the compelling reality of their cry for help: “We are perishing!”

Yes, we too face times of fear and helplessness. But we have this assurance: whatever our situation is, Jesus, the Good Shepherd, will hear us. Our helplessness can be changed into hopefulness. He is committed to using his vast resources to bring good out of the darkest moments of our life (Romans 8:28-30). We can be assured that we are never alone.

Luke would put to us the question that Jesus put to his disciples in the boat: “Where is your faith?”

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© John G. Mason – www.anglicanconnection.com

Note: Material for today’s ‘Word’ is adapted from my commentary, Luke: An Unexpected God (Aquila: 2019, 2nd Edition).

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Getty Music Worship Conference: ‘Sing…!’ – August 19-21, 2019, Nashville, TN

Theme: ‘The Life of Christ’ – www.gettymusicworshipconference.com

John Mason speaking – Breakout Group: Monday, August 19, 3:00-4:00pm.

Topic: ‘Thomas Cranmer and Christ-Centered Worship.