Consider Jesus

Can i tell you a secret? I didn't much like coffee when i first drunk it. I remember the morning well, i was at one of the coffee bars on Reading University's campus, and ordered an 'americano,' with no real idea what that might be. I was pretty sure i'd been poisoned, and i'm sure i didn't finish it. But, for whatever reason, i wanted to drink coffee, so i kept going. First with milk and sugar (forgive me) and sometime around the summer of 2007, black and fresh and strong, as the Lord surely intended.

Why am i telling you all this? Because i think it's a good analogy for the Christian's relationship with Jesus. In Hebrews 3:1 the author tells his readers to 'consider Jesus,' to think about Him to remember Him and to listen to Him. The first six verses of chapter 3 segway into one of the first sections of exhortation, and out of the wonderful picture of Jesus we find in chapter 2.

Consider Jesus, high priest and apostle. Offering and offerer. Messenger and message. Consider Jesus, the crushed crusher. Consider Jesus, the sympathetic sufferer who knows what you're going through. When we start to consider Jesus, it takes a little bit of work. Like me and coffee, you have to really want to do it. When i started reading the Bible every day i could only read maybe half a chapter at a time, now i spend my day reading, studying, thinking and applying about it. When i started to pray it felt like a chore, now i set my alarm early to make sure i have the time. We grow in our consideration of Jesus, all of us.

Even Paul, probably the greatest Christian who ever was. In Philippians 3:10 he wrote of his desire to know Him, and His power. If Paul needed to know Jesus more, then surely we do. Maybe this is the reason that much of our joy is paper thin, we simply don't consider Jesus. In times of trouble we comfort ourselves with any number of idols and false gods. We consider our bank balance, our friends and our success at work, but seldom Jesus.

Maybe this is why so much of evangelical culture looks like the world. We don't consider Jesus, we chase numbers on Sunday, better facilities and more programmes. And in not considering Jesus, we forget that He is quite capable of building His church without the latest fad left over from the nineties.

Like coffee and me, we simply have to consider Jesus until we enjoy Him. We have spend time with Jesus until we can imagine nothing else. We have to make time in our days, ask for the Spirit's help, and behold our saviour. Then we will become what pleases Him. Then in times of trouble, or in times of triumph, then, whether our church is going multi meeting, or we're meeting in a room off to the side we will naturally 'remember Jesus Christ, descendant of David, risen from the dead...' And in remembering, rejoice.

Holiness and Friendship

Richard Sibbes says this:

as the woman poured oil on the head of Christ, so we will do well to pour some oil on the feet of Christ. Let us do to His members what we would do to Him if He were here, that we may further our communion with Christ.

What do you think about holiness? What do you think about holy people? Is there, in your mind a group of people so close to God, so 'holy' that you'd never actually want to spend time with them? In fact, time seems to stand still when you're with them. They might be handy when needing to know about the finer points of supralapsarianism, but you don't want to get trapped next to them at the church fellowship.

Is this the Biblical view of what holiness does to a person? Removing them from the norms of social interaction? No! As Sibbes points out above, from the conclusion of his sermon on Song of Songs 1:2, and as Paul shows us in 2 Timothy 4:9-12, real holiness, Biblical holiness, issues in a deeper love for friends. Sibbes tells us that the woman who poured perfume on Christ's head is to be our example. In the body of Christ we have the opportunity to serve Jesus by serving His people. That might be taking someone out to lunch after their first visit. It might mean giving someone a lift to church who doesn't like to drive after dark. It will almost certainly mean leaving our comfort zone for the sake of someone else.

What did it mean for Paul near the end of his life? Stuck far away from sunlight and fresh air, knowing the end was coming, almost deserted except for Luke? It meant he wanted to see Timothy, his son in the faith, one last time. Demas has deserted Paul, and he has sent Crescens to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia and Tychicus to Ephesus, presumably holding this letter in his hand. Even towards the end Paul was burdened for his churches. But he wants Timothy. Yes he wants books, and parchments and a cloak to keep him warm  but he wants Timothy. One more time of prayer together, one more word of mutual encouragement, one more opportunity to help this young man out. One more chance just to be with his best friend, his son, his brother.

Pick up Mark on the way, he tells Timothy, for he is very useful to me. Mark had left Paul, Paul didn't want to take him back, but now ten years later, he wants to see him again. And this won't be a 'drop the books and run,' this will be a sweet fellowship, this is what Paul wants as he ends his life. Other people.

I guess we'll never know if Timothy and Mark made it in time. It's impossible not to be moved by the thought of Timothy setting off from Ephesus, racing to Troas, willing the boat onward across the ocean. Maybe there was a reunion, or maybe Paul had received his reward by the time Tychicus arrived.

Regardless, as Sibbes points out, and as Paul demonstrates, holiness doesn't mean being cloistered away. Holiness issues in close, loving, fellowship. Holiness wants to share, and spread. And of course it does. Who is our triune God but a spreading holiness? Of course, when people are shaped back into his image, they want to be together, they want to share. This is the very nature of God, and it should be ours too, that as we grow in holiness, we grow in love and we grow in fellowship. Our hearts not hidden away and suffocated, but reaching out, as the Father reached out to us.

The Christian Life is a Delighted Life

Concluding my script for a recent message on 2 Timothy 2:3-8

One of my historical heroes is Jonathan Edwards, the great New England preacher of the 18th century. Edwards was not only and incredible preacher, but also a very quotable author. He once said that we should do everything we can in this life to obtain as much joy, as much delight, as possible in the next. Look at verse 6 with me.

What was life like for farmers in the first century? It was tough. Long hours, hard work, little visible reward most of the time. That sounds like the Christian life sometimes doesn’t it? We pray, and nothing seems to happen. We share the Gospel, and no one gets saved. we invite to church, and no one comes. Just like the farmer looking at his crop, after all the sowing all the watering he sees little growth, he wonders if his hard work is worth it. And so do we sometimes, if we’re honest. There’s so little growth in our family, in our Sunday school class, in ourselves, we wonder why we keep doing it.

Until, harvest time. One day the farmer wakes up and looks out, and his field is full of crops! There is his reward, the harvest that he has labored so long for has come, and he is delighted in it.
The same is true for us, as all three of these word pictures come together. If we are dedicated, if we are directed then we will be delighted, then we will enjoy a spiritual harvest that we can’t even imagine now. One day we’ll see Jesus face to face, and all our struggles will seem worth it in this life. Meeting Jesus isn’t something that makes us shrug our shoulders and say ‘it’s ok.’ Meeting Jesus will just about make our hearts explode for joy. In fact, unless we were held up by His grace meeting Jesus would simply overwhelm us. It will be worth it.

But maybe you think it’s different for Paul, you can understand his focus on Heaven given that his life was nearly over. But this truth, this final delight was what had kept Paul faithful throughout his life. In his letter to the Philippians he tells them that it would be better for him to go and be with Jesus, but for their sake, for the sake of his ministry to them, he has to stay. Paul knows that whether he is alive or not, Christ will be glorified. Paul knows that all his dedication in hardship and all his faithful directedness will pay off. And you and I are in exactly the same situation. We have to keep our eyes on the delight. That is our reward. As we suffer hardship, be dedicated because you will be delighted. As we follow direction, no matter how hard or counter cultural it seems, be well directed, because of the delight that will come at the end.
Dedicated like a soldier, directed like an athlete, and delighted like a farmer at harvest time, these are the three Ds of the Christian life.

The Christian Life is a Directed Life

The Christian life is dedicated, and the Christian life is directed.

Look at verse 5 with me. An athlete is in view here. An athlete does not win the prize on offer unless he competes according to the rules. Greek athletes who wanted to take part in the ancient Olympics had to train fro 10 months under supervision to make sure they were up to the task. When they competed, they had to stay in the rules. They had to stay behind the line when they threw, they had to run in their lanes. The same is true for us as we live as Christians. As athletes were directed by the rules of the Olympics, so Christians are directed by God’s Word.

You and I can’t simply make up our faith as we go along, we have to hold it up against the standard of God’s Word. Does this action bring pleasure to God, is that word acceptable to use, what should I do with my time, how should I spend my money? What we watch on TV, what we do at the weekend, how we treat our server at a restaurant. We don’t have freedom in these areas, we simply have to serve Christ according to His Word. We must strive lawfully in our life according to the Scriptures.

Why are we Protestant not Catholic? You need a good reason not to be a Catholic, you need a good reason to choose one church over another, with a different flavour on every corner. Are your decisions directed according to the Word? Is your life directed by the Word of God?

This is the link between verses 4 and 5. The more dedicated we are, the easier we will follow direction, and the more directed we are, the more dedicated we will become. Verse 6 tells us that this takes diligence, or hard work, or labour. Again, Paul knows nothing of easy Christianity, and neither should we.

The Christian Life is a Dedicated Life

The following three posts come from a recent sermon on 2 Timothy 2:3-8.

First we see in verses 3 and 4 that the Christian life is a dedicated life. Let’s read those verses together. Paul tells Timothy and us what to expect from being a Christian in verse 3. What word does he use? Hardness! Paul was not seeker sensitive tv evangelist. He didn’t tell Timothy, send me money, touch the screen and all your worries will go away. He tells Timothy that his life will be full of hardship if he’s serious about being a Christian. For Paul it meant a number of things that you and I will probably never suffer. 2 Corinthians 11 talks about his beatings at the hands of the Jews, his shipwrecks, the trouble he faced from his enemies every day, and soon he knew that this hardship would end in death. At this point in Paul’s life he was completely isolated from the outside world, chapter 1:16-17 tell us that Onesiphorus had to search diligently for him when he came to Rome, that, coupled with the fact that later on Paul describes himself the lowest ranked of all Roman prisoners, show us how much hardship Paul was undergoing as he wrote this letter. Timothy was suffering as well. He was living in Ephesus, one of the most sinful and difficult cities in the ancient world, he would have been tempted every day to give up on his faith. He was being attacked from within his church by false teachers and people who said he was too young to lead them.

You and I will probably never suffer life Paul and Timothy did, either in what we suffer from, or how much they make us suffer, but we face hardship as a Christian nonetheless. Maybe it’s the hardship of looking on helplessly while loved ones are sick, maybe it’s the hardship of seeing someone in your family fall away from the Lord. Maybe it’s the hardship of being the only Christian in your workplace. Whatever it is, sometimes, maybe even most of the time, our faith makes our life more complicated. But Paul tells Timothy, and us, that we have to endure this hardship. Why is that?

We have to endure because we are dedicated to Christ. Look at verse 4. Paul tells us that no soldier is entangled in civilian life. The word entangled is the same word used for a braid in a woman’s hair, and that’s a great picture isn’t it. When a girls hair is braided you can’t really tell where one braid begins and the other ends. Paul says we are not to be this way in our relationship with the world, we’re not to get caught up in it. Paul would have had firsthand experience of this, the solider guarding him never left him to go and sell bread at the market, he was dedicated to his post.

One of the hardest, but most rewarding activities is getting my Grandad to talk about the war. It’s hard because he doesn’t want to talk about it. When the war was over he put his medals in a box and got on with his life. But it’s rewarding to get these stories out of him because they illustrate the dedication that Paul was talking about. None of his stories involve him taking some time off to go shopping when the marines were invading Italy, or enjoying a week at the beach when he was in the northern Atlantic or stopping for pictures when he was preparing to invade Japan. Of course he got some leave to go and see his family, but while he was on duty, nothing stood in the way of his dedication. It was actually worse for his brother, who left home in 1939 and didn’t come back once before the war was over in 1945. Why did he do all this? Paul says, ‘to please him who hath chosen him as a soldier.’

Paul isn’t saying that Christians withdraw from the world and live in a monastery, but that we get our priorities the right way around. We live our lives to please not ourselves, but our saviour who enlisted us in the army. If we’re more interested in making money that please Christ, or sports that pleasing Christ, or celeb gossip than pleasing Christ, or our family or our kids’ grades then pleasing Christ, then our priorities are out of order. Paul said he counted all things as loss for the sake of knowing Christ. All things includes good things. There’s nothing wrong with your family being a top priority, but it must be the top priority. It must be put to one side to serve Christ. We must be dedicated soldiers of Him. A dedicated life is a life of loss. A life where we say no to good things so that we may say yes to better things. A life that is dedicated to Christ as our one passion.

Pass The Baton

The Gospel, and thus the local church, is only ever one generation away from disappearing from the face of the Earth. If no Christian alive today taught his children, or reached his friends with the Gospel, then there would be no church for our grandchildren to attend. It is one of the most remarkable, and overlooked, miracles that the church today still possesses and proclaims the apostolic Gospel.

How does that happen? We pass it on, we tell people about Jesus. We reach out to those who don't know Him, and we reach over, to help those who do know Him to know Him better. Paul shared this concern with Timothy in his final letter to him. If 2 Timothy 1 is about the protection of the Gospel, then 2 Timothy is about the propagation of the Gospel.  Paul tells Timothy to remember the Gospel he preached. Paul's not talking about a private conversation here, a ministry insight he shared with Timothy over coffee one day, but something that happened 'in the presence of many witnesses,' maybe at Timothy's ordination, or maybe just on a normal Sunday. Timothy's apostolic authority remained as long as he was faithful to the apostolic message. Paul didn't tell Timothy to reinvent the wheel. He didn't tell him to remember what the people in Ephesus liked, he simply told Timothy to remember the Gospel he had heard.

Then Timothy was the 'entrust' that message to others. He was to pass it on to 'faithful men.' This could've happened then and can happen now in a variety of ways. Firstly, it had to happen from the pulpit. As Timothy looked out on a Sunday morning at his people, he knew part of his job was to preach the Gospel to them, to help them remember what they had heard from Paul. But it had to happen elsewhere as well. When Timothy met with a troubled family, he had to remember the Gospel, when he married people, he had to remember the Gospel, when he went to buy bread, he had to remember the Gospel. And he had to pass the Gospel on. He had to find the faithful men in his church who he could train and disciple, the men to whom he could entrust the message. He had to meet with them, spend time with them, and love them, just as Paul had with him.

One thing i love about being a Youth Pastor is when i see someone's eyes opening to the joys of the Bible for the first time. The Bible stops being something their parents read, and becomes their's. It stops being something for Sundays and starts being food for the day. It stops being a chore and becomes a delight. I love seeing that and hearing that. I love passing it on.

At the moment, it's my responsibility to pass on what has been given to me. And soon it will be theirs. What a responsibility all of us, whether in paid ministry or not, have to find faithful men and women and teach them, the Gospel, so that they can pass it on in years to come.

Holiness is a Group Effort

What do we think when we think of holiness? I guess depending on how deep or shallow our relationship with God feels at the moment we're asked, our answer will fall somewhere on a line between boring and beautiful. If we're drinking from the cracked cistern of sin, we'll see holiness as dull, as something that ruins our fun, if we're bathing in the living water that comes from Christ you'll see holiness as life itself.

But how often, when we're asked about holiness, do we think about the local church? The local church is holy in itself in two ways. First, that it is set apart from the world, as the visible body of Christ in it's town or city. It is holy in that it is different. Second, it is holy in that the men and women who make up the church are, or should be anyway, men and women who love Jesus and who see Him as their first priority, who love Him and seek to honour Him.

But the church should make us think of holiness in this way too. We need the local church, the gathering of Christians in a certain place, at a certain time, to be holy. I'd even go so far as to say that you're love for Jesus, and therefore your commitment to holiness is directly reflected by your commitment to the local church.

Paul is saying his goodbyes to Timothy in 2 Timothy. He knows the end is near, and he'll probably never see his son in the faith again. In chapter 2:22 he exhorts his young protege to holiness. He calls on him to 'flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace. along with those who call on the Lord with a pure heart.' Sometimes we overlook the small but important parts of the Bible. Timothy's holiness was a group project. He wasn't called to do it by himself, but to do it 'along with those,' who were also running after righteousness, faith, love and peace. There is no way Paul expected him to do that in any arena other than the local church. You could argue that Paul just described the local church!

We need to be along with those. We need to be along with those, as in people who are like-minded and like hearted, people who will do us good. And we need to be along with those. We need to be together with these people. Sharing our lives, our time and our homes with them. Sharing our Sunday mornings with them. This is where you might think, 'well i'm ok with just Jesus and me, i don't need the church.' Well, yes you do, for at least three reasons.

• Jesus will return for a bride, not a harem. 
• You're not ok. Your mind is an idol factory, and apart from good teaching and correction in the local church your mind will happily call any feel good idol 'Jesus.'
• The local church needs you, your gifts, your abilities. And you need the gifts and abilities of the local church. This was Jesus' plan from the beginning. He instituted the church and  organised a religion. So stop going out into the woods with your candles!

Your commitment to the local church shows your commitment to Jesus. Your commitment to the local church shows your commitment to holiness. Holiness is a group project...get involved!