Hope for 2016

A million reasons for hope in 2016
Christians can look to the future with great hope! There are more reasons than we could ever list. Our God is the sovereign Ruler of the universe - and over our individual lives. He is our loving Father in heaven. He has in mind only good plans and intentions for his children. He watches over us day and night and has promised never to leave us or forsake us. He forgives all our sins. By his Spirit he is with us continually - indeed even in us. He has given us a loving family in the people of God to encourage and care for us. Even in the face of death we have the hope of eternal life because Jesus rose from the dead - all who believe in him will also one day rise to inherit a world of joy.

The reality of fear and worry
And yet in spite of these assurances worry and fear can - if we are honest - often flow across our hearts. We worry about what might happen, we can worry about what may not happen. We may even worry about our weaknesses and sin - will they result in our ruin?

From FEAR to HOPE
How then do we move from FEAR to HOPE?  In Isaiah chapter 7, we are given five steps to hope. God's people were fearful of a coalition of two kings who had vowed to destroy them; so fearful they were shaking as trees shake in a wind. Into this fearful situation, God sends Isaiah with words of hope. That is the key to hope - to hear the words of God rather than listen to the lies of Satan.

"Do not be afraid" - is God's first word to fearful saints (verse 4). This is a word we need to hear every day, a word often on the lips of Jesus to his disciples. A simple word, just "don't be afraid".

"The harm you fear will not happen"  (verses 4-7). The two threatening kings might look fearsome but they are nothing more than two near-burnt-out stubs of smouldering wood. The harm you fear will not happen, full stop! God watches over us and will guard us from all harm. Mark Twain once said "I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened." This is the nature of worry, we worry about things that will not happen, that will not harm us.  Why fear? Harm cannot touch us?

"God is in sovereign control" (v.7-9a). The true King is God Most High, not these two little tin pot earthly kings. God not ISIS, God not government, God not Satan. His ways may be mysterious, but they are trustworthy. Why fear when God is at the helm?

"Stand firm" (v.9b). This is the only exhortation - thing we have to do. The other four steps to hope are promises. Here God encourages his people to stand firm. This is not a time for wavering or giving up or giving out to the enemy! Seasons of fear are just the seasons for standing firm in our faith.

"I am with you" (v.14). God gives to his people a sign - a baby born among them by the name of Immanuel (God with us) as a visual aid. "Who is that boy?" "Why that's Immanuel, God with us." We have no need of signs for by his Spirit the true Immanuel dwells within us. Why fear when God is with us?

Believers stand at the portal of 2016 with great hope, because they have a Great God, a great Saviour,   great promises! The best, indeed is yet to be!

Immanuel - and Facebook

The example of God
At this time of the year we remember one of the most wonderful titles of the Lord Jesus Christ - "Immanuel."

"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel" (Is 7:14)

There is something amazing and profound about this name - God was not willing to stay aloof, stay away, stay apart from the people he created but was determined, out of his great love, to come among us - "God with us", "Immanuel", in the person of Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, the Son of God.

What had God done in the past? He had communicated through prophets and theophanies in visions and writings, but all of these were "inadequate" and "incomplete" communications. God had to come "in person", through his Son who is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being.

How to talk
In our day, when we have many kinds of communication open to us, we need to learn afresh that the best way, the ideal way is not by phone, not by email, not by text, not by Facebook, but face to face. God has set the example of embodied communication.

There are good reasons for this. We use the whole body to communicate. When we are in the same room with someone we say things we wouldn't say if the communication is less direct, we avoid saying things that we might say if the communication was less direct. We read non-verbal signs - which may completely change what we are about to say. 

Facebook et al
And this is where Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and the rest of social media fails. Any communication that is only via those means will be hampered and stilted and open to misunderstanding. We might think we are communicating when in fact we are not at all.

We see through a glass darkly now, but it is God's will that one day we will see face to face. In the new heavens and earth, God makes it clear that he will be with us. "Now the dwelling of God is with men and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with the, and be their God." (Rev 21:3-4).

Face to face beats all other forms of communication, for it was and will be God's way of communicating with his people. We desperately need a theology of communication in an age of social media, and the incarnation provides us with that. God talks by coming to us in flesh and blood, not on Facebook but God with us, Immanuel.

Why were the Salvation Army Successful?

The Poor in the Victorian Age
I have no idea where the Salvation Army are today, but when they started, they were Gospel people led by a fiery Gospel man.

William Booth estimated that of the 30 million people living in Victorian England a good 10%, or 3 million, were poor. By poor he did not only mean "no money" - a very limited view of "poverty". The poor were not only materially poor, they were spiritually poor: they were without God and without hope. And Booth understood that it was impossible (and unwise) to separate both kinds of poverty.

In Booth's mind material poverty itself went much further than money: the poor were in every way poor. Crime, homelessness, addiction to alcohol, grime, illness, were all bound up together in this forgotten 10%. He knew that sin and poverty very often go togethe:

"Their vicious habits and destitute circumstances make it certain that, without some kind of extraordinary help, they must hunger and sin, and sin and hunger, until, having multiplied their kind, and filled up the measure of their miseries, the gaunt fingers of death will close upon them and terminate their wretchedness." (all quotes from "In darekest England and the way out")

Can you imagine that truthful - but perfectly politically incorrect - assesment being said by anyone today?

Few people, including the state, were doing anything effective for these desperate and poor people.

What did Booth do?
William Booth called together an army of Christians to help this destitute poor, "Now I propose to go straight for these sinking classes", he declared. He found them homes, found them employment, visited them in their distress and most of all.....

.....shared the Gospel with them. He was convinced that life in Christ was a poor man's only real hope:

"My only hope for the permanent deliverance of mankind from misery, eithe rin this world or the next, is the regeneration or remaking of the individual by the power of thr Holy Spirit though Jesus Christ.." 

Every evening these folk would gather together for 2 hours and sing, hear testimonies and hear short good preaching. EVERY EVENING.

The success of the Salvation Army
There were three reasons why under God the Salvation Army under Booth proved to be so effective.

First, they knew that unless a man is put right with God through Jesus Christ good works are of little long term value to him. Put a drunkard in a nice house, give him a job, and money, and within a few months he'll be back in the gutter. Only the Gospel can change a man's life (starting on the inside).

Second, Booth knew that caring for a man's material needs paved the way for him being opened to the Gospel. The practical help given was never an end in itself but always a means to an end, that these people would be able to hear of the love of Jesus Christ.

Third, Booth shared the Gospel with them EVERY DAY. This is how lives are transformed, not by once a week, but by every single day being among God's people, hearing God's word.

So, in the end, Booth's Salvation Army turned out Christians: and that was the key to his success, nothing more, nothing less.

Adam's Sin and Every Husband's Potential Weakness

This one vast sin
Not surprisingly, the first sin ever committed by anyone in the human race ran deep and wide. Because of that one sin we all became sinners, mysterious though that seems - and sounds.

The more you consider Adam's sin, however, the more you see the failure of so many husbands and the temptation of every husband, and every wife.

The key to understanding this aspect of the first sin is in Genesis 3 verse 6 which tells us that Adam was there when the serpent spoke to Eve, he was watching, he could have stepped in. He didn't.

In this blog I want to examine the gender-bending nature of this very first sin....

Gender-bender sin
Adam's first sin? I thought it was Eve who sinned first! No, says Paul in Romans 6, sin came into the world through one man, Adam, not through Eve; that, as we shall see, is the point. So what happens?

(1) Eve is beguiled by being spoken to
First of all, Eve is flattered by the mere fact that the serpent addresses her. Satan has done this on purpose, of course. He is trying to turn upside down  God's design - men are called to lead the home. Eve is absolutely flattered that the serpent should address her rather than her husband.

(2) Adam is impressed with Eve's clever talk?
Adam, who is head over heels in love with the gal, is so impressed with the cleverness of his wife, that he completely overlooks what is goin' on. Why doesn't he step in and correct her wrong thinking and wrong speech? After all the word of the Lord about the trees in the Garden came to him, before Eve was even around: he knew better that Eve what God had said. Why didn't he step in when the serpent spouted error and then his wife spouted errors?  Was he overawed by this clever gal? Blinded by brains?

(3) Adam and Eve both transgender roles
The end result is what? Eve does what Adam should be doing - she leads the whole show, from temptation to eating. Adam does what Eve should have been doing - follows. In the end it was all Adam's fault, "Because you listened to your wife..."(3:17).

Husbands and Wives today
Adam's sin is still every husband's temptation. When his wife is going astray, instead of correcting her, and thereby demonstrating that he is her best friend, he just 'lets it all happen', 'can't be bothered'. Perhaps for many years she has got her way by throwing a wobbler and now he's just too weary of fighting. And Eve, instead of saying to the serpent "You're talkin' to the wrong person, speak to my husband", is flattered by assumed leadership and takes Adam's role.

Every Christian marriage should aim at reflecting the pattern and beauty of the Great Marriage between Christ and his Church. Christ leads his wife gently - but firmly (read the early chapters of Revelation), and his wife is called to follow her Lord respectfully and lovingly.

When this happens the world sits up and notices both love and respect, and children born into such a family are given the best start and example for their own future marriages.