Psalm 30

Eyes closing, I drift in time and watch my
Father counting rusty nails one by one
And dear Mother the gallons of water
Clear and cool in the hand-hewn cistern
But this morning I look down
And count my ribs in unceasing pain

I heave in air from the midday heavens
And remember the scripted and dark night:
Messiah bird caught in a fowlers net.
I, brought down to tears in a garden
And rough, soldier hands, wear a
Crown of thorns for the world to see

My friend, Iscariot, Judas, I see
His eyes in every skull gazing at me
Abandoned by God and man, darkness comes
To hold me between Heaven and Earth
To pour out the nothingness
I have, my blood and final breaths

The seed, I said, must fall into the ground
And now I am falling, falling so deep
Absent from Heaven I descend into Hell
I am weakness now, spent, beyond life
But it’s my aloneness that’s died.
In the cool of the dawn, the stone rolls…

…away! I breathe the stale tomb air in thanks
The angels and I sing songs and we dance
Then stop: the scent of spices makes us hide.
Like children disguised, we dig the rich earth
Leaking joy. Knowing the women can
Only hold a little, I say, ‘Mary!’

What is a Prophet?

If you’re going biblical you might think Jeremiah, or Elijah, or Samuel…If more secular perhaps Bob Dylan – at least he licked his finger and poked it the wind! These days some might say Jordan Petersen or even Russel Brand.

Prophets announce the imminent collapse of a culture too set in its ways and raise hopes of a new future.

But with biblical prophets, it would be a mistake to view them as merely postmen and postwomen of the Almighty as if their ‘Thus says the Lord’ pronouncements were not grounded in something. Their principal mission was to call the people back to the covenant…to have faith in its promises and to obey its vision rather than deliver impressive predictions disconnected from the foundations. That’s where the gnarly word ‘repentance’ comes from. ‘You’re going the wrong way!’ says the prophet. ‘Repent! It’s this way!’

In Old Testament times, therefore, prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah were calling the Jews back to the Abrahamic Covenant which is preserved in Genesis 12 and 15. Jeremiah also foresaw, as did Ezekiel, the need for a New Covenant, as Israel had proven faithless to the Abrahamic Covenant, now the Old Testament. (Testament and Covenant are interchangeable terms, hence Old/New Covenant/Testament)

When Jesus broke bread with his disciples just before the crucifixion he announced the inauguration of the New Covenant that Jeremiah and Ezekiel had prophesied hundreds of years previously.’This is the New Testament in My blood…’The church, then, needs to be called back to the New Covenant when it strays. 

The terms of the New Covenant can be found in Jeremiah chapter 31 and Ezekiel Chapters 36

Jeremiah 31 v 33 ‘…this is the covenant I will make with the House of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will write My laws in their minds, and write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be My people. No longer shall every man teach his neighbour…saying ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know Me from the least of them to the greatest…because I will forgive their iniquity’

Ezekiel 36 v 26 ‘I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My ways’

In the Old Covenant/Testament the Jews failed to keep the commandments, The Law, which was written in stone (Moses’ 10 Commandments) and lost faith in the promises in Gen 12/15. In the New Covenant what we could not do by our own efforts – God has promised to do. Now the law is written on our hearts and we have a new spirit and His Spirit within us. 

It’s an inside-out faith, not outside-in.

A prophet in the New Testament will sound a particular note, reminding us of what God has promised us, warning us not to be ‘religious’ or try to be righteous, but to trust that His life has become our life and that we are designed to leak! 

Not only to call us back to this if we have got lost but to speak in the present: to remind us that His Spirit lives in us and that He isn’t dumb! It’s a daily relationship. His life through us. Not just in church meetings! 

Once that’s established then we have a window on the future and can begin to see what the prophet sees; then the battle is really on. The fire in the belly of a prophet will call us to jettison anything and everything that is not blowing in the wind; church traditions, styles, and practices included. Seat belts on.

Romans 7 – why, Paul did you write Romans 7?

We – that is evangelicals who believe the bible is the inspired and inerrant word of God – have a problem. We know we can’t say it because it’s daft and contradictory, but, secretly, we have a problem.

There are some scriptures we don’t really believe.

They are slippery like bars of soap. Because we’re evangelicals we know they must be true but the truth is they haven’t ‘entered’ and shed any light…yet.

Some say the journey of the word is from the head to the heart. Not so. The words are no-where near our heads – if our heads are where our understanding lies.

The word of God, in fact, anything from God, who is spirit, is spiritually discerned. That’s the location for everything that happens, our hearts, our ‘inner man’, our spirit joined with His Spirit. That’s where it all kicks off.

Didn’t Jesus say ‘my words are spirit and life’? Not an intellectual puzzle that only the bright can discern.

So it is with one of perhaps the evangelicals’ most treasured scriptures – Paul’s letter to the Romans.

Romans works nicely up to Chapter 5 v 2.

Then we question Paul’s logic.

We want Paul to jump straight to Romans 8 v 1 and carry on. Maybe miss out Romans 9-11 (not much use to us unless you like endless debates about free will and predestination in the different packaging of election and grace, or Israel and the church). Romans 12 to the end is OK as a final flourish, but really, say many evangelicals (I’m one: if an evangelical is a person that believes the bible is reliable and, more than that, is the word of God) ‘Why didn’t Paul stop at the end of chapter 8…that’s what I would have done’.

5v2/8v1 ‘…we have access into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in the glory of God’….‘therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’

‘This would have been much better, Paul. Your ‘therefore’ flows perfectly, now, and I’m happier with that.’

Here’s verse 3, and here’s my guess why we have so much trouble with the continuity with Romans. We know that commitment to Christ (in fact commitment to anything, any cause) will bring conflict and suffering, so we can ‘accept’ it as unavoidable, if unpleasant, but my hunch is that we don’t really ‘see’ how it fits in with Paul’s argument that runs from Romans 1v1 to 16 v27. We know it’s inevitable but we don’t really have much of a handle on why; it’s not integrated not our ‘theology’.

‘And not only that but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance, and perseverance character, and character, hope…’

There’s that word again ‘know’ like Paul uses a few verses on in chapter 6 ‘…knowing this that our old man was crucified with Him…’

Verse three is a small warning shot that leads on to chapters 6 and 7.

Chapter 7

As you may know, there’s an interminable debate about who the ‘I’ is in verses 13 to 25. Some verses seem to suggest the pre-Christian Paul and others the Christian Paul…and therefore ‘us’ by extension.

Let’s not get distracted; it’s verses 1-6 that are key.

Paul uses marriage between a man and a woman as a metaphor for being ‘married’ to the law i.e. trying to please God by obedience to the law by our own effort.

The woman, the wife, is married to her husband ‘the law’. Her husband is good, there’s no doubt about that. He’s perfect. But all he can do is point out the imperfections in his wife. He won’t help her, only condemn her. It’s not much of a marriage, and she has had enough.

She can’t divorce him (it wasn’t permitted) so the only way seems to be to wait until he dies then she will be free. ‘But if her husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband’ v2. She can’t marry another man whilst married to the law or she’ll be an adulteress. It looks as if she is stuck.

But remember Romans 6 v 6 – and her we climb out of the metaphor for a second and return to reality. The reality is that we have been crucified with Christ. She has died!

‘Therefore…you have become dead to the law through the body of Christ’ v 4

The husband hasn’t died. The Law hasn’t died. But she has!

Now we begin to see the purpose of our crucifixion with Christ. It is to release us from the law, from the impossibility of obedience from our own efforts (trapped as we are in Adam – see chapter 5). Now we are free to marry another.

‘…so that you may be married to another – to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.’

Now we are married to Christ. Every believer. Not the old you. That was crucified, died and buried with Christ. But now you have been raised as a new creation, married to Christ to bear fruit that come from being married to Christ – a far better husband, who can and will help us.

We seem to have arrived back at 5v2 ‘we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in hope…’and then Paul goes and spoils it all over again by writing about the tortured person in v 13-25. It was looking so good? Why write 13-25?

The reality is that the wife has been married so long to the law and measured herself against his high standards. And, in the past when she failed, she redoubled her efforts, her resolve, and used all her ingenuity and imagination and resources to ‘improve’. Now she is married to a marvellous, loving husband, she really wants to please him and so sets about on the same path. The bible calls this self-effort the ‘flesh’. But her new husband, Christ, is showing her a new way, ‘not by might, not by power, but by My Spirit’. In chapter 8 Paul summarises it like this:

‘if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if you live according to the Spirit you will put to death the deeds of the body, you will live’

In the West in particular, we have been trained, taught, and encouraged to stand on our own two feet, to work hard, to be good, to be rational and solve our problems using our minds and so on. But if Christ, if Jesus, is going to help us we must listen to His way, which is to live by the Spirit. We need to be re-trained.

All our previous ‘in Adam’ way of living must die. Our crucifixion with Christ must seep through every part of our being.

Jesus was perfect. He was the sinless Son of God. We are rightly taught that He died in our place, for our sins, to save us from our sins. If you like that was to deal with the negative aspects of our life. But Jesus also taught there was a positive aspect of His death for us:

‘Truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces many seeds. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.’ John 12 v 24,25

Here, the purpose of the crucifixion of Christ is not redemption but reproduction.

As a result of his sacrifice, going into the ground and dying, is more fruit, more seeds. Exact copies of the original, with the same life as the original seed.

Each believer is now a ‘seed’. That’s great you say! ‘I’m a new creation, no more in condemnation’, as the song goes. We’re back at Romans 5v2 ‘here in the grace of God I stand’.

But in your heart you know, you know, you know, what Jesus said. Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies it remains alone. You know the scriptures say we’re being conformed to His death:

‘That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death…’ Philippians 3 v 10

This is the Christian life. This is the path ahead for all disciples. It was for THE disciples, and it is for us. We are not to be lone Christians, we must fall into the ground and die…or we will remain alone. All that independent thinking, all that reliance on our own ability, all that pride, all that strength, all those credentials, all that ‘I’.

We learn a new way:

‘…so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit, not in the oldness of the letter’ 7v6

My L-plates are on. They have been since day 1 as a believer. There are no experts in the body of Christ. There is one head and that is Christ. We must rely on His life as our life. His life in us will shine like a light and show us where we are still relying on our own resources.

Final note

Living by His Spirit in us does not render us as passive imbeciles, controlled as puppets with a new set of strings! We don’t become religious automatons! Jesus wasn’t. Our souls are precious. Our minds – our ability to think is a wonderful gift. Our whole emotional apparatus is extraordinary. And our ability to choose left or right, our wills, are invaluable. And all the more, if the river of God is flowing through them to others beyond our souls and bodies.

Triple Jump Christianity Part II – Romans

Please click here For Triple Jump Christianity Part I

Romans: Hop: 1-5    Skip: 6&7     Jump: 8+

If you, like me, when you first read Romans, you reached chapters 6&7, only to have your joy exhausted and find yourself almost shipwrecked. But you pushed on and, thankfully, landed on the soothing shores of Romans 8 ‘For there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus’ wondering why Paul had included Romans 6 & 7. If that’s you, you are not alone!

Then, moving through Romans 8, excitement mounting, you’re filled with visions of glory by the with such stirring verses as ‘the whole of creation is standing on tiptoe waiting for the sons of God to be revealed’ or ‘nothing can separate us from the love of God’ and all seems well.

Well it’s not. And you know it.

Like me, the truth is, you’ve fallen, stumbled over Romans 6 and 7, and left loose ends in your theology, in your system, unresolved.

In the past few years, I feel I have moved on a little from simply wishing to convey the truth of Romans 6&7 and what the verses mean, to their relevance. If I can put it this way, without claiming any prophetic gift, their prophetic relevance for the church; a new sense of direction and calling on the church.

To start:

Romans 6 v 6 ‘…knowing this that our old man was crucified with Him…’

Ask yourself, ‘Do I know this?’

If you’re a Romans 1-5 Christian, you’ll ‘know’ some fantastic life-changing truths. You’ll know, maybe, that Christ died for you; that you are justified (put right with God) by faith not by works; you’ll know the peace of God and that by His grace you have received the gift of righteousness. You KNOW these things.

How? Not because you’re clever. Not because you have a brain that can understand biblical thinking, but by revelation.

What do you do when you gaze at a verse of scripture, and it makes no sense? You might believe the bible is the inspired, inerrant word of God…but this does you no good on its own; it is, afterall, the ‘entrance of the word that gives light’, not the existence of the word.

If you find yourself saying things like ‘I know the bible says the old man is crucified but he seems to be grumbling still…’ or ‘I’m a sinner saved by grace’ you may be suffering from the lack of Romans 6&7 SKIP in your triple jump!

If the old man is ‘grumbling’, he can’t be crucified. The old man has been crucified according to Paul in Romans 6, so you can’t still be ‘a sinner’. Either you’re right or Paul is.

Is there any other NT evidence for these statements? Is it consistent with the rest of Scripture?

2Cor 5v17 ‘…therefore if anyone is in Christ Jesus, he is a new creation; old things have passed away. See? All things have become new’

Gal 2 v 20 ‘I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who lives, but Christ lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me, and gave Himself for me’

Colossians 3 v 3 ‘…you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God, when Christ who is our life…’

CS Lewis wrote of Christians that we are ‘…really new. It is not a change from brainy men to brainier men: it is a change…in a totally different direction – a change from being creatures of God to being sons of God. Christ…is the origin…and life…of all the new men…and He transmits it not by heredity but by being ‘in Him’.

In another quote he said: ‘Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else’.

Once Romans 6 v 6 is secure the rest of the chapter falls into place.

Baptists often quote Romans 6 v 3 and 4 as a picture of water baptism. I’m sure that water baptism is symbolic of verse 3 but the spiritual truth of verse 3 is that a believer is someone who has been ‘baptised into Christ Jesus’ – and no Baptist would say that water baptism itself places you in Christ.

The biblical language of being ‘in’ someone is foreign to our usual way of thinking and it is this that is often a barrier to understanding how you can be ‘crucified with Christ’. ‘After all’, says your brain, ‘I wasn’t even alive then, so how can I have been crucified with Christ?’

A key verse to get to grips with this thinking is: 

1 Cor 1 v 30 ‘But of God, you are in Christ Jesus…’

Biblically it is important to see who you are ‘in’. In Old Testament times, for example, Hebrews says Levi was ‘in Abraham’ giving tithes to Melchizedek (Heb 7 v 9,10). The Jews in the Exodus were ‘all baptized into Moses’ as they travelled to the Promised Land. Thinking biblically, whoever you’re ‘in’ means you have participated in all aspects of their life at the time they did. Levi, for example, was alive centuries after Abraham had died, just as we are alive after Christ was crucified hence in Romans 6 ‘our old man was crucified with Him’.

The evangelical gospel falls short, wonderful though it is.

If you’ve become a Christian after hearing the Romans 1-5 gospel you will know your ‘sins’ have been dealt with by Jesus on the cross, but you will have no concept of the ‘sinner’ being dealt with apart from your repentance and ‘dying to sin’ as you commit yourself to God.

To use technical language, you will know that the death of Christ was a ‘substitutionary’ sacrifice – He died instead of me. I deserved to but He took the punishment I deserved.

You may have heard the following illustration. A judge is about to pronounce sentence on a thief, standing in the dock. He declares him, rightly, guilty and the fine is £500. He then removes his wig and speaks to the guilty man in the dock and says ‘You are free to go. Acquitted. Someone has paid the fine.’ I love this illustration, but there is a problem. The thief can’t believe his luck, someone has had mercy on him, he is grateful, of course, and it may encourage him to live a better life, but his sinful Adamic nature has remained unchanged.

Another picture of salvation is the redemption we have in Christ. An illustration often used is of a slave market. A slave is for sale in the public square. He costs £200. A man comes along and pays the price. The slave has been redeemed. In terms of the gospel, Jesus, by dying on the cross, has paid the price for me, a sinner, a slave to sin, to be set free, to be redeemed! That’s wonderful but the nature of the ‘in Adam’ man, the sinner, has not been changed.

But God has achieved far more for us through the death of Christ on the cross.

His death was ‘inclusive’ as well as ‘substitutionary’ It includes you and me. We have been crucified with Christ. The old, ‘in Adam’ (read Romans 5) me has been crucified with Christ and buried. And when Christ was raised…I…the new ‘in Christ me’ was raised as a new creation in Him. A son of God.

Once you ‘see’ this, you can never say ‘I am a sinner saved by grace’. It has to be modified: ‘I was a sinner, in Adam, but now, through the death of Christ Jesus, I am in Christ, and a new creation’.

We can no longer say ‘the old man is grumbling’. He’s been crucified and buried.

The bible does everything the wrong way round as far as our ‘natural mind’ is concerned. I hear you screaming OK ‘but how come, then, that I still sin, still do wrong, still fail?’

But did your salvation become true because you lived a perfect Christ-like life? No. You have faith that you are forgiven, and change started from day one. So too with the inclusive death of Christ; the more our eyes are opened to this NT truth, the more the reality will grip us.

Once Romans 6/7 is in place it makes chapter 8 even more precious. Romans 7 awaits.

Thank you for reading. This is the hard work bit, digging the foundation, so more can be built.

Triple Jump Christianity

Three phases 1054, 1521, 1906.

An Introduction

Fifty days after Passover, during which Jesus was crucified, buried, and resurrected, the disciples were baptized in the Holy Spirit:

‘When the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all together, and suddenly there came from heaven a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Tongues of fire sat upon each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.’

Acts 2 v 1-4

Christianity was born

The book of Acts records how the message of the resurrection, of the promised Messiah, the gift of the Spirit spread around the Mediterranean from that explosive beginning.

By the end of Acts we find fully formed churches in Jerusalem, Antioch, Galatia, Corinth, Philippi, Ephesus, and Rome and with St Paul hoping to take the gospel to Spain.

We also read how the church came under tremendous persecution from external political powers such as the Jewish Pharisees, or from Roman emperors, and cities, such as Ephesus, where the whole political and economic institutions were maintained by occult power.

Pressure also from within: Judaizers attempting to enslave believers under Mosaic law, Gnostics wrapping up the faith in mystery whereas Paul taught that the ‘mystery’ of the gospel and Christ had been revealed and made known.

Nevertheless, in city after city, the apostles appointed elders (same word as ‘bishops’ or ‘presbyters’) to oversee the one church in the city. There were no divisions or denominations like we see today; CofE, Baptist, Methodist, Vineyard, New Frontiers, Kingdom Faith… All the letters of the New Testament are addressed in the same manner to the one church in a location e.g. to Corinth:

‘Paul…to the church of God at Corinth to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints, with all…who call on the name of Jesus Christ’

From heaven’s perspective, this is still the case.

The ‘church history’ books will tell a different story. In 1054 the schism between East and West occurred and Orthodox churches of the East developed on different lines to the West under Roman Catholicism. Then in 1521 Luther was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church and his ‘protest’ became the origin of the Protestant movement and the recovery of such doctrines as Justification by Faith.

In 1906, in Asuza Street, Los Angeles, during the preaching of a one-eyed, former slave, William J Seymour, scenes very similar to Pentecost in Acts 2 were witnessed and the Pentecostal churches were formed which then spawned the Charismatic Movement characterised by the recovery of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Holy Spirit such as healings, miracles, prophecy, and speaking in tongues.

It’s not that the history books are wrong. All the facts are verifiable with dates and places. But there is another history which is less well known, that tells the story of the continuation of the living ‘body of Christ’ the church through all the centuries. E H Broadbent’s book The Pilgrim Church is an excellent portal into this way of looking at church history.

To give just one example; The Camisards in the rugged mountains of SW France in the late 17th and early 18th Centuries were Protestant believers who spoke in tongues and prophesied. When speaking in tongues they were enabled to speak in fluent and highly developed French despite French not being their native language. It is estimated that 500,000 Camisards were either murdered or fled, along with virtually all French Protestants (called Huguenots), to Protestant England or elsewhere.

For further reading: Camisards tongues and prophecy

Concluding Comment

At each point of church history, the same pattern emerges…suffering before a new phase emerges:

• Jesus – it cost him his life to inaugurate what we call the New Testament, the New Covenant, in which each individual believer receives the Holy Spirit

• The apostles – continuing rejection and persecution

• Luther and Protestants (later ‘Evangelicals’) including the Huguenots – extraordinary persecutions the Roman Catholic church outlawing, excommunicating, suppressing, and slaughtering those who dared to ‘protest’.

• Pentecostals and Charismatics – often thrown out of existing churches when the life and gifts of the Spirit were resisted and banned in traditional churches.

• Current day. The ‘apostles’ of the charismatic renewal and churches in the 1970s in Britain and elsewhere often, at great cost to themselves, had to leave the structures they were in to form ‘new wineskins for the new wine’. But most of these pioneers have died:

Michael Harper, David Watson, Colin Urquhart, Bryn Jones, Arthur Wallis, Terry Virgo, David Pawson, Dennis Bennet, and others you may wish to add to the list.

Questions arise – where are we now? Where are we heading? Are we at a fresh departure point? If so, will it be costly? New wine, new wineskins?

I’m hoping I can share some answers to these questions. My first destination is Paul’s letter to the Romans. For Luther, Wesley and so many others, Romans proved to be the launchpad for the future not a tired framework for old arguments.

Hop: Romans 1-5     Skip: Romans 6 & 7     Jump: Romans 8+

***

Click here for Christianity Triple Jump Part II

Funny Place England!

There are 16,000 Church of England church buildings across the land, widespread as is the ignorance of the faith they supposedly proclaim.

I heard bible readings each morning at school for 17 years, and at church on Sundays when I accompanied my parents, but if you had asked me – or countless others of my generation – just two questions you would have discovered an uncomfortable truth.

Question 1: What does the word ‘gospel’ mean?

Question 2: What is a Christian?

Try it on friends, family and work colleagues.

Answers for Q1 will include: ‘Books in the New Testament?’ or ‘Truth – like ‘gospel’ truth’. Or, if you’re of a certain age, an incorrect answer, ‘Isn’t it the name of a musical?’ 

In more recent years there’s been a resurgence in ‘Gospel’ music and choirs. But I’ll bet you a tenner no one can tell you the right answer, despite growing up in a ‘Christian’ country with countless church buildings of all denominations in every city, town and village.

Answers to Q2 are often like an anagram.

Funny place England. Things are not quite what they seem.

40 days that changed the world

Review of some comments in Philip Yancey’s
‘The Jesus I never Knew’

Some things, they say, stick out like a sore thumb. There’s a short paragraph in Yancey’s book that is so wide of the mark that I feel sure he would like to review it. Why he wrote it baffles me. The rest of the book runs smoothly; it is informative, evocative, and does what it says on the cover and I enjoyed reading it.

‘When Jesus returned after death…he tarried a mere 40 days before vanishing for good. The time between the Resurrection and Ascension was an interlude, nothing more.’

If you could travel back in time, what period of history would you choose?

With the bible in mind, I’ll pick three:

1. With Daniel in the Lion’s Den and/or Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace

2. Listening in to Samuel as he spoke to Saul on the roof (1 Sam 9v25)

3. The 40 days between the resurrection and the ascension

Tempting as it is to write about all three, I’d like to think this article could serve to transport us back to Jerusalem three days after the crucifixion at Passover, when thousands of pilgrims were dispersing back to their towns and villages, before returning for Pentecost, fifty days later. Gossip and conversation would have been rife concerning the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth.

The New Testament records one of those conversations. Two disciples of Jesus were leaving Jerusalem walking disconsolately along the road to Emmaus. In talking to a stranger (who turned out to be the resurrected Jesus) they said: ‘Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem and have you not…(heard)…of Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet…we were hoping that He would redeem Israel…’.

The disciples – approximately 120 men and women – were coming to terms with early reports of the resurrection and were ‘locked away for fear of the Jews’ John 20 v 19.

Commentators, typically, have either pointed to the Resurrection and/or Pentecost to explain the staggering transformation amongst the disciples from disillusionment and fear to fearlessly proclaiming the resurrection and the gospel, and the phenomenal spread of the faith around the Mediterranean in the decades that followed.

‘It was the resurrection, their belated faith in the resurrection, and the proof that Jesus had risen from the death that dispelled their fears’ would say one commentator.

In essence, this is the Evangelical argument; its proponents having no experience of the Holy Spirit coming upon them in power, or of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. An Evangelical believer, a true disciple of Christ, knows Jesus as Saviour but has no personal knowledge of Jesus as Baptiser in the Holy Spirit.

The Pentecostal and Charismatic believer, acknowledging, like all evangelicals, the authority, inspiration and inerrancy of the Scriptures, looks more to Pentecost to explain this phenomenon: ‘Despite the appearances of the resurrected Christ it was only when the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples at Pentecost that they were back on the streets fearlessly proclaiming the resurrection and the gospel’.

These two events – and, not forgetting the Ascension – no doubt contributed to the disciples’ boldness and power. But Yancey, and I suspect many of us, have overlooked the 40 days between the Resurrection and the Ascension. Like Yancey, evangelical and Pentecostal/charismatics might think of that period of resurrection appearances as ‘nothing more than an interlude’. But this is not the case.

The order of events, as summarised in Mark’s gospel is this:

1. Women buy spices on Saturday evening after sunset – the end of the Sabbath

2. Early on Sunday morning, before dawn, they go to the tomb and find the stone rolled away

3. Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene (and the other women)

4. The women go back to the disciples, but the disciples don’t believe their account

5. Jesus appears to the disciples and rebukes their unbelief

6. Jesus speaks to the disciples and commissions them to go into all the world and preach the gospel

7. The Ascension

8. The disciples go into the whole world preaching the gospel with miracles following

But numbers 5 and 6 and the period before 7, the Ascension, take us to the 40 days between the Resurrection and Ascension. And more details are found in the other gospels.

It is in Luke and John’s gospels, and then Acts, that we derive a fuller picture of what was going on in that 40-day period.

4 (a) Mary Magdalene and the other women tell the disciples about the resurrection. ‘…their words seemed to them (the men) like idle tales (nonsense, old wives’ tales) and they did not believe them’ Luke 24v11

4 (b) But Peter, v12, ran to the tomb. John also (John 20 v 2). Either then or soon after the Lord appeared to Simon (Peter) Luke 24 v34

If you’re familiar with the New Testament you will know that Jesus appeared to the eleven and the others later the same day. But, before you rush over this, you may be shocked to find a small detail that is often overlooked.

For those present, there was an awkward elephant in the room: Peter and the other disciples had disbelieved Mary Magdalene and the women who had accompanied her to the tomb. Imagine the scene: the women on one side of the room sitting around a table, the aroma from the unused spices filling the room as their tears fell, and their anger rose towards the men they’d spent three years with. Dismissed as liars, fanciful thinkers, not as trusted friends, if there were glances across the room, they would not have been friendly. The men over the other side were bewildered and upset, having witnessed the man they had pinned their hopes on, dying on a cross three days ago. And, now his body is missing from the tomb. In addition, fear of arrest and being found guilty of sedition stalked the room. Lookouts on the door kept watch. It was into this atmosphere that Jesus appeared to the eleven and those with them.

‘Later he appeared to them as they say around the table and he rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart…because they had not believed the women who had seen him after he had risen.’ Mark 16v14

Jesus appears and speaks to the men after they had ‘disbelieved for joy’. ‘Men,’ Jesus said. ‘Come and sit down.’ At least that’s how I imagine it went.

What was first on Jesus’ to-do-list in this 40-day window? To slay the elephant in the room. To repair the relationship between the men and the women. He gets the men together. Mark’s account is brief. We are left to speculate. Can you imagine the men? Men who had left their nets to follow him, left their tax-collecting, left their terrorist organisation, all to follow him. And now, embarrassed. Looking down at the table. The women across the room, still upset. And what happened as a result of Jesus’ rebuke? In my imagination Peter stands up and walks across to Mary Magdalene with tears rolling down his rough Galilean fisherman’s face. Forgiveness flows as they embrace, Jesus looking on with the peace he had offered them.  The elephant is no more; peace re-entered the room. It had been a long day but, at last, they could not only enjoy the fact of the resurrection; watch Jesus eat fish and yet disappear and appear at will, they could enjoy each other’s company once more. Fear subsiding. Joy increasing.

But this was just the start.

Moving on to day two, and the subsequent days during which Jesus appeared until the Ascension.

In the first chapter of Acts we read: ‘(Jesus)until the day he was taken up…presented himself alive after suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God’ Acts 1 v 2,3

There was purpose in these forty days. It was not as Yancey believed, an ‘interlude – nothing more’. Nor were the appearances merely to convince the obdurate (male) disciples of the resurrection. One appearance would have sufficed. Seemingly, if you belong to this school of thought, there was no purpose to this long 40-day period. But the New Testament tells us quite clearly what was going on.

If Jesus’ first task was to heal the division between the men and women and bring peace, his greater purpose was to ‘speak of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God’. He had spent the past three years or so doing this through parables, sermons, and miracles to convey the truth about the kingdom. Surely there was no need for more?

To resolve this conundrum, we turn to a combination of verses in Luke and John.

‘He opened their understanding that they might comprehend the Scriptures.’ Luke 24 v 45. These disciples, from their childhood, had, at home and in the synagogue, been marinaded in the scriptures. Familiarity was not wanting. What was wanting was understanding. Even after three years with Jesus!

In John’s gospel we find the reason for this:

‘I will pray the Father and He will give you another helper…the Spirit…He dwells with you and will be in you’ John 14 v 17

At some point during the 40 days, we read ‘He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’’ John 20 v 22

Paul, when writing to the church in Corinth said this: ‘But the children of Israel were blinded, for until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament…a veil lies on their heart, nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit.’

In other words, Jesus knew all along that his disciples could not truly understand the scriptures until they had received the Holy Spirit. At Pentecost they would be baptised in the Spirit, but in this 40-day period, the Holy Spirit lifted the veil over their hearts and, for the first time in their lives, they understood the Scriptures.

Now can we begin to appreciate the enormity of these days and the ministry of Jesus to his disciples during this period?

‘These are the words which I spoke to you…that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.’ Luke 24 v 44

He had the same conversation, the same purpose in conversation, with the two disconsolate disciples on the road to Emmaus: ‘And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself’ Luke 24 v 27.

Have you ever wondered how Peter could have stood up on the Day of Pentecost and preached such a sermon? That Galilean fisherman. As the rulers were later to express incredulity ‘When the rulers saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marvelled. And they realised they had been with Jesus.’ Acts 4 v 13.

It is difficult to imagine the experience of the disciples, the apostles, during these 40 days. Jesus was appearing to them and opening their understanding; getting them ready, finally, to be sent out, their hearts full of faith and understanding, and, from Pentecost, in the power of the Holy Spirit. It took forty days.

After forty days of revelation, Jesus told them: ‘not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father…you shall be baptised in the Spirit not many days from now’ Acts 1 v 5

Isn’t it interesting how the disciples’ response to everything that had occurred over the previous forty days is dismissed in commentary after commentary as proof that they still did not understand – even when the scriptures tell us quite plainly that Jesus had opened their understanding to the kingdom?

Look at their question again: ‘Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel’ Acts 12 v 6.

It is exactly the right question. The logical conclusion. Here was the resurrected Messiah, the Son of David, the King of Israel, King of the Jews. His rightful position was to be crowned in Jerusalem and bring in the kingdom, to ‘restore the kingdom’ the true monarchy to Israel. And from there the apostles would fulfil the calling on Israel to be ‘a light to the gentiles.’ Jesus’ answer is not as enigmatic as some suggest:

‘It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority…’ v 7

This is tantamount to saying: ‘Not yet’.

It is not a kind answer obscuring the dreadful frustration ‘Do they still not get it?’ which is often suggested in Commentaries. Jesus was not frustrated. He knew they were ready. He left, ascended from Galilee, ten days before Pentecost. That gave them time to travel back to Jerusalem and wait.

Two bookends:

• Jesus rebukes the men for their unbelief for not believing the women

• The disciples’ question concerning the restoration of the kingdom to Israel

The 40-day period in between Jesus rebuking the men and answering their question about the kingdom had done its work. It is, as the scripture had said, it is ‘the entrance of the word that brings light.’ The word was now alive in them. Look at Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost. No notes. No rehearsal. No texts up on a screen. No microphone. In the summary of the sermon, recorded in Acts 2 Peter quotes from the following scriptures: Joel, Psalm 16, Psalm 68, Psalm 132, Isaiah, Psalm 110.

He ended his sermon with these words ‘Repent and let everyone of you be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ (Messiah) for the forgiveness of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit’.

About three thousand (Acts 2 v 41) responded to Peter’s sermon and were baptised.

Forty days that changed the world. Believing the resurrection must have been an important step along the way to the boldness we see. It’s the same today. You can’t be a Christian unless you are convinced that Jesus rose from the dead. Resolving disputes and being at peace despite external fears, that helps. Having one’s mind opened by the Holy Spirit to the things pertaining to the kingdom, that’s a vital ingredient. As is experiencing the gift and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Take any one of these away and we need Jesus to renew them.

The time between the Resurrection and Ascension was a great deal more than a mere interlude.

Welcome to the launch!

What’s all this about then? Unless the Seed?

Am I mourning the passing of my allotment or covertly seeking horticultural advice in advance of warmer weather? No, as you’ve probably realised, one way or another, the posts will be related to Jesus’ parable of seed falling into the ground. 

To start with some posts will be reviewing The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey.

Not a book review as such but picking up on a few things he said. It’s an excellent read but a few paragraphs set me a thinking. Controversial issues.

First: the state of American politics. The book was written in 1995. The dangers of deepening polarisation

Second: Lepers/AIDS/the Unvaccinated

Third: a sentence that I wonder if Philip Yancey would like to re-consider. That’s a polite way of saying…’hmm’.

Unless a Seed will contend that the church* is missing an important piece of its theological jigsaw. ‘Substitution’ is foundational but ‘Inclusion’ is rarely preached.

If I can, I want to share something of my journey from agnosticism, to rejecting agnosticism in favour of believing that Jesus was a real historical figure, then ‘getting it’ about the cross, that He died for me (substitution), baptism in the Spirit, Christ in me and other aspects of faith. Then a long delay before ‘getting’ the inclusive nature of the death of Christ. If I can share something of that journey Unless a Seed will be worth it. 

So, buckle up!

*by ‘church’ I don’t mean any one particular blend of church. The New Testament speaks about the ‘church’ as the body of Christ, a living, functioning body, full of His life.

Three Crowds

Jesus Enters Jerusalem

‘Crucify! Crucify!’

Pentecost

If I had been there watching what was happening – where would I have been standing? 

What would I have made of the crowd with palm branches and a man riding on a donkey? Or hearing a mob crying out for someone already covered in blood to be crucified. Or the wind, and the flames, and the preaching at Pentecost?

A popular misconception goes as follows:

‘Look at the Jews of Jesus’ day – one moment they’re laying down their cloaks in front of him and waving palm branches to welcome him into Jerusalem and hailing him as The King of Israel, and the next they’re like a mob crying out for him to be crucified. How fickle!’

It was Passover. Jewish males were commanded under the Law of Moses to attend the three great feasts in Jerusalem each year (Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles). We get a picture in Luke’s gospel when Mary and Joseph with their friends and relatives lose Jesus because he had stayed behind in the temple listening to the teachers and asking questions. Thousands of family groups were travelling to and from Jerusalem from all directions: North, East, South, and West. The city streets would have been full, and noisy with the bleating of thousands of sheep and other animals ready for sacrifice in the Temple.

A commotion on one side of Jerusalem would easily be completely missed by pilgrims on the other side of the city.

Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey from Bethany descending from the Mount of Olives. Luke’s account makes it quite clear who made up the crowd who were shouting out ‘Hosannah to the Son of David’ and ‘King of Israel’; it was the multitude of his disciples who had been travelling with him. No doubt others joined in, some observing from the side-lines, and a few ready to denounce him.

Later that week, the Chief priests and the Jewish rulers ‘stirred up the crowd’ who were with them to shout ‘Crucify!’ when Pilate asked what should be done with him.

I doubt very much if any individual in the mob crying out for Jesus to be crucified had been amongst those laying down their garments when the crowd hailed him as the Son of David. His disciples may well have been as confused looking on at the tragic events unfolding, but to suggest that they had abandoned ship and were baying for his blood is not only far-fetched it has the whiff of something far worse – dismissing Jews as fickle. 

Israel was divided. Jerusalem was divided. Jesus was controversial. 

Jesus had said ‘Do not think I have come to bring peace on earth. No, I did not come to bring peace but a sword’. When Jesus was a child Simeon blessed Joseph and Mary and Jesus and said to Mary ‘This child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that will be spoken against…that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed’. All four gospels testify how Jesus divided the nation. On the whole the rulers, the priests, the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees were opposed and many sided with them – fearing, as they did, that Jesus not only wasn’t who he claimed to be but that Israel would collapse and their privileges under Roman rule would be removed if Jesus instigated insurrection.

This sense of division is preserved quite clearly in the account of the Day of Pentecost. Imagine the scene. Just fifty days after Passover the pilgrims are back.

‘…devout Jews from every nation under heaven…Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamia, Pontus Asia…’

The dramatic events of Pentecost, early in the morning, start to unfold:

‘And suddenly there came from heaven the sound of a rushing mighty wind…and fire sat on each of the disciples (probably 120 men and women). They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages as the Spirit gave them utterance’.

A crowd gathers. Peter preaches. Again division:

• ‘Those who gladly received his word were baptized…about 3000 were added’.

• ‘…others mocking said ‘they’re drunk!’’

Where would you have stood? That’s where you stand. Today at least.

Passover, Pentecost…Tabernacles? More about Tabernacles to come.