The Rev. Vaughan Roberts: two more audio sermons on the Gospel of Luke
Continuing with the series on Luke’s Gospel, titled “Jesus, Saviour of the World”, preached by the Rev. Vaughan Roberts of St. Ebbe’s Church, Oxford in the United Kingdom, here are two more audio sermons:
- The temptation of Jesus (Luke 4:1-12)
- The manifesto of Jesus (Luke 4:13-30)
J.C. Ryle admonishes us concerning temptation, the subject of Luke 4:1-13, where Jesus faced His temptation by the devil:
Let it never surprise us, if we are tempted by the devil. Let us rather expect it, as a matter of course, if we are living members of Christ. The Master’s lot will be the lot of His disciples. That mighty spirit who did not fear to attack Jesus himself, is still going about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. That murderer and liar who vexed Job, and overthrew David and Peter, still lives, and is not yet bound. If he cannot rob us of heaven, he will at any rate make our journey there painful. If he cannot destroy our souls, he will at least bruise our heels. (Gen. 3:15.) Let us beware of despising him, or thinking lightly of his power. Let us rather put on the whole armor of God, and cry to the strong for strength. “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7.)
This is much needed advice for any time in history – particularly the present!
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This week’s sermon by the Rev. Johann Vanderbijl of the Anglican Church of St. George the Martyr in South Carolina is titled “Life in the Net” and is based primarily on Psalm 66:
Psalm 66 Colossians 1:3-12 St. Matthew 9:18-26
Life in the Net
“Where is my faith? – even deep down…there is nothing but emptiness and darkness…I have no faith…So many unanswered questions live within me – I am afraid to uncover them – because of blasphemy – If there be God, – Please forgive me…In spite of all – this darkness and emptiness is not as painful as the longing for God…What are You doing my God to one so small?” This is an excerpt from a letter written by one of the greatest saints of the 20th Century, Mother Teresa.
These words have often come as a shock to many, especially since she seems to have endured this darkness for about forty years, but she was not alone in her spiritual suffering. “Across the ages, great saints have gone through similar trials…Teresa of Avila…endured eighteen years of dryness, saying the prayers of the church with her mouth but not with her heart. Bonaventure described these dark nights as the experience of diving into God’s darkness where one only experiences the silence of God. The trials of Job, David, Paul and Peter and all the prophets, poets, kings, philosophers and fishermen who wrote the books that became the Bible testify to periods of “downcast souls” when “they despaired of life itself.”
“St. John of the Cross wrote that the dark night of the soul was often a prelude to a much darker night – the night of the spirit…(He wrote): “They harbor in the midst of the dryness and emptiness of their faculties, a habitual care and solitude for God accompanied by grief or fear about not serving Him.” (Mary Poplin, Finding Calcutta, IVP Books, Downers Grove, IL, 2008, 101-102)
Another well known 20th Century saint of God – in this case a Protestant – wrote: “Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be – or so it feels – welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?” This is an excerpt from A Grief Observed, the published reactions of Clive Staples Lewis to the lingering death of his wife, Joy.
How many of us can identify with such thoughts? How many of us have knelt before the gates of heaven, weeping until it felt as if we would cease to breathe, only to leave in silence without receiving any positive reply? How many of us have yearned for something – whether that be a release from sin, guilt, hurt, disease or something as intangible as memories – or the receiving of peace, provision or healing – whatever…but something we have yearned for for years and years and years without ever seeing, much less experiencing the so-called end of the tunnel? Oh, we may forget that something for a while – we may suppress it – we may deny that it bothers us from time to time, but when it does resurface, usually at the worst of times, then we are confronted with the reality of a darkness that has largely remained untouched by the Light.
Take, for example, verses 10-12 of our Psalm for today, Psalm 66. “You, O God, have tested us; You have refined us as silver is refined. You have brought us into the net; You laid affliction on our backs. You have caused men to ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water…” And I want to stop there because all too often we rush on to the ultimate without really dealing with the penultimate. Life isn’t like that, is it? In real life we don’t always see the ultimate…we don’t always see the positive end…not while we are trapped in a net, and struggling against it to get to the surface of the overwhelming depths that threaten to drag us down into the abyss. And we do ourselves no favor when we move on too quickly towards the all too often glib clichés that really provide no comfort at all. “Let’s just praise the Lord…”
No, in order to make sense of our pain we have to linger there a little longer.
In our Gospel lesson for today, we meet two people in pain. One a parent of a little girl who has died…at this point his sufferings had been short lived and would soon come to an end as his daughter would be restored to life. The other, a woman whose sufferings had been an ever present reality for twelve years. I want to focus on her for a moment. St. Matthew’s account of this event is rather brief…we find much more about this woman in the Gospels of Sts. Mark and Luke who report that, not only was there a constant excessive loss of blood, but that she had been to many doctors, spending all she had, and yet her condition had only grown worse. In fact St. Luke seems to indicate that her condition was incurable.
But there is another side to her suffering that most Christians fail to see. In Leviticus 15 we read that “if a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, other than at the time of her customary impurity, or if it runs beyond her usual time of impurity, all the days of her unclean discharge shall be as the days of her customary impurity. She shall be unclean. Every bed on which she lies all the days of her discharge shall be to her as the bed of her impurity; and whatever she sits on shall be unclean, as the uncleanness of her impurity. Whoever touches those things shall be unclean…” This woman not only suffered because of an incurable disease of some sort, but she also suffered because the society she was part of considered her ritually impure. In other words, dearest brothers and sisters, she was ostracized…marginalized…pushed aside…rejected and perhaps even ridiculed by those who knew – and in a community that small, we may assumed that this could have been everyone. For all we know, she was probably excluded from all family functions…she couldn’t touch her husband, which would constitute a divorceable offence and perhaps this is the reason why she had no more money to pay yet another physician.
I do want the feeling of this woman’s despair to sink in. This is a believer, dearest brethren. We are not talking about someone who did not know God. She knew the God of Israel…the One Who promised never to leave her nor forsake her…the One Who promised to heal all her diseases….the One Who promised that no pestilence would come near her dwelling. In fact, it was this God’s law that kept her embedded in the net…and, you know, I find it ironic that when she finally reached out to touch Jesus, she reached out to touch the hem of His garment – where the tassels which represented the very law that barred her from a happy life would be located. But this God of the Law was a merciful God, was He not? So, where was His mercy? For twelve long years she banged on the gates of heaven…begging, pleading. And it’s not like she just left everything up to God or to fate or to chance…no, she did her bit too…she went to as many physicians as she could…she spent all she had trying to find a cure…hoping against hope that she would one day be reunited with those whom she loved. That she would be free from this constant plague and weakness. That she would be free from this social stigma…but there was nothing but silence…no comfort…no light…no hope. Here is the dark night of the soul, as it were.
Yes, she was healed of her sickness…yes, the little girl was raised from the dead too…and yes, the Psalmist does indicate that God brought Israel out to rich fulfillment. But not all stories end happily ever after, do they? I will never forget a statement made by a very depressed believer in Africa after I pointed out that Job’s sufferings ended on a positive note. I can still see her face before me today. She turned to me and said, “This is true, but what about Lazarus?” Do y’all remember Lazarus? Not the brother of Mary and Martha, but the beggar, full of sores, laid at the rich man’s gate, desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table…whose sores were being licked by dogs…perhaps the very dogs who would eat his corpse when he finally died? Do y’all remember him? There was no positive note for him, was there? Oh yes, once more we move too quickly to Paradise…into the bosom of Abraham…but dearest brethren, while Lazarus lay there, what do you think he was going through? Do you think he cried out to God for relief? And, if we are honest, we have to admit that on this side of eternity, there was none.
Now, I know that most of you have not experienced forty years of darkness…or even twelve years…but some of our brethren have and do and to ignore the possibility of there being no sin or ignorance on their part or punishment or judgment on God’s part is to ignore much of what is written in Holy Scripture. We have to remember that the Israelites were slaves in Egypt for four hundred years for no other reason than because of a drought and famine in Canaan. How many generations past away without seeing the deliverance they longed for? They were exiled in Babylon for 60 odd years…true, for many of them this was due to God’s displeasure, but what about Daniel or Jeremiah? Some righteous people died without ever seeing the fulfillment of God’s promise to bring them back to the land. How many God fearing Jews died longing to see the Messiah? We simply cannot dismiss the fact that many of the dear saints of God have had long periods of darkness with little or no relief at all.
The problem with our society is that we want to fix everything and if we can’t fix it then there must be a problem with whatever or whomever we cannot fix, right? But that ain’t necessarily so, beloved brethren…there’s Job, but then there’s Lazarus. There’s the ruler whose daughter was restored to life and then there are countless parents throughout the ages who had to live with the agony of having lost their child or children. There are those Christians who have an answer for everything and who seem to face life without much struggle at all and then there are those dear, dear souls who simply cling to Jesus even though, for all intents and purposes, it appears that He is absent from their lives. If we do not allow for the legitimacy of darkness then we will be of no use or comfort to those who live their lives in the shadows, so to speak.
There are many who by sheer blind faith, steadfastly hold onto the belief that Jesus is leading them, even though they cannot see where to place their next proverbial step. For them there seems to be no light at the end of their tunnel…and there may never be until they see the beatific vision. All too often, modern Christians walk by sight and not by faith and therefore to them any form of suffering is a sign of God’s displeasure, not of His design to draw us closer to Him or to wean us from the many transitory crutches we hold onto in this life. A failure to see the net as part of God’s wise will is to deny His sovereignty. Even the Psalmist points out that it was God who tested and tried them, Who refined them as silver is refined, Who brought them into the net, Who laid affliction on their backs, who caused men to ride over their heads, Who led them into the flames and down into the depths…it was God! But no, we see darkness as something from the other side, as something birthed in sulfurous fumes. Seriously, brethren, is God the God of the hurricanes and the Sunamis or just the breezes and the splash pools? And is He an evil vindictive God Who is out to get even the best of us to show Who is actually in charge, or is He a loving Father Who works all things together for our good…even when those things are hard to bear?
Isn’t this the lesson we learn from my favorite Old Testament Prophet, Habakkuk? To praise God even in the midst of total calamity and disaster? God knows what He’s doing…if I don’t believe that, why am I here? What’s the point of my faith? My darkness is not darkness to Him…just because I cannot see my way forward, doesn’t mean He can’t. He Who knew me before I was conceived, also knows each and every single day of my life until my very last breath. Besides, faith has nothing to do with my seeing or my knowing or my understanding. My faith is in Him…in His seeing – in His knowing – in His understanding…or at least it ought to be. Also, a faith that remains untried is not faith at all; it is mere presumption. Is His power not made evident in my weakness? Then why do Christians all try so hard to be strong and frown on those who are not?
Did God abandon Mother Teresa? Did God abandon Teresa of Avila, Bonaventure, Job, David, Habakkuk, Jeremiah, Paul, Peter, St. John of the Cross, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Betsy Ten Boom or C.S. Lewis? Or does He use their dark night of the soul to expose our shallowness due to our abandonment of the biblical God? Are we not drawn to the likes of these saints of God because of their sufferings? Would their witness have been so powerful had they not suffered? “Despite her feelings of emptiness, Mother Teresa was full. Despite her feelings of darkness, she radiated the light of Christ.” (Poplin 106) And that is true of every suffering child of God…their emptiness is our fullness…their darkness is our light…their loss is our gain…their blindness is our sight.
But is this not simply an extension of our One Lord? Is His suffering not our deliverance? Is His death not our life? Is this not perhaps what the Apostle Paul meant when he said “I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His Body, which is the church?” Is the suffering of the followers of Christ not in some way part of His redemptive suffering? Are our afflictions not for the consolation of those who endure the same trials and tribulations? Isn’t that where our hope lies, that as we share in His sufferings we shall also share in His vindication? Isn’t that what it means to partake of His Body broken and His blood shed for us?
This life may be no more than a net to some…but the One Who brings them into the net is also the One Who brings them out to rich fulfillment in Him. Therein lies our faith…therein lies our hope…therein lies our peace.
It seems only right that as I began with a quote from Mother Teresa, that I should close with a quote from her as well. Mother once wrote to the sisters:
“Be careful of all that can block that personal contact with the living Jesus. The devil may try to use the hurts of life, and sometimes your own mistakes to make you feel it is impossible that Jesus really loves you, is really cleaving to you. This is a danger for all of us. And so sad, because it is completely the opposite of what Jesus is really wanting, waiting to tell you. Not only that He loves you, but even more – He longs for you. He misses you when you don’t come close. He thirsts for you. He loves you always, even when you don’t feel worthy. When not accepted by others – even by yourself sometimes – He is the One Who always accepts you. My children, you don’t have to be different for Jesus to love you. Only believe – you are precious to Him. Bring all your sufferings to His feet – only open your heart to be loved by Him as you are. He will do the rest.”
© Johann W. Vanderbijl III 2009
There is a lot to think about in this sermon. I do believe the Lord uses these times in the lives of His saints to teach both them and us; after all, a number of the Psalms would not have been written otherwise!
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From the Rev. Charles Camlin of Holy Trinity REC in Virginia comes another excellent sermon, Exiles in Babylon. This sermon is based on Jeremiah 29:4-14, where the Lord tells the Jews who were carried into Babylon, in verses 4-7:
“Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
Fr. Camlin ties this in very well with the Gospel and Epistle readings for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity, for he relates it both to the famous passage on “Render unto Caesar…” and the Apostle Paul’s teaching on our citizenship being in heaven. As he points out, we are called as Christians to be good citizens of our earthly countries:
Therefore, the same commands which were given to the exiles in Babylon are given to the exiles in Fairfax. We are called to live our lives here—by working at our jobs, caring for our homes, building our families, and building our Churches. We do all of this because we have hope for the future. Notice that this flies in the face of those who say that we have no hope. Perhaps you have heard someone say that they would not have any children because they would not want to bring them into this fallen world. That is completely contrary to Christian teaching. We believe that we do have a future and because of that, we have children and build homes. We believe that God does bless His people in this fallen world.
But as Christians, not only are we to care for ourselves and our families, we are also to be concerned with the welfare of the city, state and country in which we live. We believe that God wants to use us as a channel of His blessing to those we live among. Look at verse 7 once again: “And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive,and pray to the LORD for it; for in its peace you will have peace.” We Christians ought to be the very best citizens of Fairfax or Manassas or Clifton or Fredericksburg.
We have a responsibility to seek the welfare of the place where we live. Our lives and wellbeing are bound up with it. That does not mean that we have to be pleased with everything that happens in Babylon! No, we should seek to influence our neighbors to live according to God’s standards. And that begins by exemplifying those standards in our own lives. But we need to understand that these folks where we live are Babylonians. Many of them do not know our God. We should seek to make Him known in word and deed. And beyond that, we ought to be involved in our communities—whether that means volunteering at the hospital, serving in political office, helping out at our schools, and so forth.
Furthermore, we are commanded to pray for our city. This idea is also found in St. Paul’s 1st letter to Timothy: “Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
Our Prayer Book has prayers for those in authority at every public service. And it also has numerous prayers which can be used in our family and private devotions that can be offered on behalf of the city, state and nation as well. We have a responsibility to serve and pray for the place where we live.
Today, we have been reminded of an important biblical concept. We who are Christians have a dual citizenship. Our true home is with God and He has promised to one day, bring us to that place. But in the present, we are forced to live in exile from our true home. We are in a foreign land. But God cares about us and He cares about the foreign land and the people among whom we live. Let us seek to faithfully serve Him here and now through service to our neighbors and through praying for all men—especially those in authority. And let us look forward in anticipation to that great day—when the kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ and we shall reign forever with Him. Amen.
In being a good citizen, we can make Him known in both word and deed. There is a lot to think about here – please read it all.
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From the Rev. Roger Salter of St. Matthew’s Anglican Church near Birmingham, here is a meditation titled “Warmly Evangelical” which talks about the mode and mood of Bible reading:
Moods are transient and triggered by so many factors. Our thought and behaviour are not to be determined by their rapid fluctuations. One of the disciplines of life is to endeavour to maintain a consistency of attitude and action in spite of our feelings and the way we are affected by circumstances. Our relationship with others can be easily upset by erratic, uneven, unpredictable approaches or responses. Self control has to pay heed to the way our emotions influence other persons. Being even-keeled in a steady, dependable way that does not cause apprehension is not an easy exercise given human vulnerability of temperament and our sensitivity to ever changing conditions especially when they are adverse. Nonetheless mood matters in communication and it is important in our reading of reality. Our subjective state radically determines our appraisal of all that we observe or receive and our opinions vary accordingly. Mood changes minds and they can be altered not only by information but by our prevailing disposition at any given time. In matters of human judgment, for example, love can make us lenient and hostility can make us harsh. We are creatures of predisposition and bias, rationalizing our viewpoints long after they have been formed at a deeper level than our consciousness recognizes. This accounts for the complexity of human nature and all our dealings. We all come from different vantage points and espouse different aims and it is all determined by a heart that is too deep for us to comprehend and exceedingly more sinful (deceitful) than we can ever know (Jeremiah 17:9). The cultivation of consistency and objectivity can only come from the mind of the One who is the source and interpreter of reality, God himself (John 14:6), and our minds are guided and matured by dual exposure to his word and the illumination of the Holy Spirit. The truth of God is to govern our unruly moods, and flawed perceptions, train them in our difficulties, purify them so that they are not illusory like dirty lenses, and ennoble them so that our all our faculties are in tune with things as they are when we encounter them. Our outlook is distorted by bad temper, negativity, and fear. If things are not well within our outlook is gravely warped. People suffer when we are unbalanced by any unpleasantness. It is the unchangeable, ever-reliable word of God (Psalm 119) addressing us in all situations and through all events that delivers us from mood swings and gives us stability. The mind finds a repose in the sovereign purposes and omnipresence of God.
Our mode of Bible reading is meant to determine the mood in which the truth of Scripture is received and then maintain the mood in which we continue after our moments of conscious communion with God has come to its necessary conclusion. We are to ascertain God’s perspective, gain his guidance, and receive his resources and resilience for all that providence will bring.
How we regard and open the Bible will affect its influence upon us. Our commencing suppositions need to be supplanted by the sanctifying starting exercises and expectations of the Holy Spirit. It is his book and it is presumptuous to open it without the preparation of his assistance, illumination, and insight. Reading the Bible begins with deliberate reliance upon the author, prayer for purification, the plea for a tender and teachable heart. Our hubris of intellect and hasty confidence of prior opinion are to be replaced by humility and the willingness to be led wherever the teaching of the Lord takes us. So often we are not reading the Bible at all but looking for a reflection of our own ideas so that they become imbued with “divine authority” as far as others are concerned. The Bible will not endorse our pre-held preferences and prejudices; it is not an instrument for out-arguing others or demonstrating our acumen and acquired knowledge of divinity. To use it for our power or to our own advantage is to abuse Scripture (just as to use a library in ill-tempered disputation with others is an abuse of it). The Bible enables us to listen to God, think his thoughts after him, shape our conversation with him, and, as its sublime truth seeps its way to the centre of our beings, it miraculously fashions us into beings like him, ultimately speaking his words and working his works through all our speech and action. The Bible is a source of information, influence, and impartation that produces imitation. God makes us new through his word (James 1:18).
In this sense it is not a book of law but the wellspring of spontaneous holy life. Our self-righteous nature produces a legalistic interpretation of Scripture, and legalism is adept at using the Bible, and even surviving from it in parasitical and pharisaical fashion. Legalism employs the word with the precision of the letter but without the life and leaning of the Spirit. It encourages the effort of moral obligation without the sense of personal helplessness and consequent personal enabling of grace. It harps on responsibility without the acknowledgement of culpable inability and contrite dependence on God in everything. Legalism hears the commands in death-dealing tones for our infraction (meant to render us helpless), but has no appreciation of the divine compassion (meant to draw the guilty helpless to the Saviour). Legalism pronounces “must” without mercy. Legalism negates the gospel. It can criticise and condemn the sinner but not lead him to restoration through the Redeemer. It has a head for what is right but no heart to understand the mercy of the One who puts us right. Mercy does not sit light to the law but it lifts us beyond its condemnation and grants increasing delight in the law as a way of life through love of God, not attainment of credit or human acclaim.
Our mood in reading the Bible is to be created by a personal encounter with Jesus. It is to be warmly evangelical through a close intimacy with his tender heart. The Holy Scriptures not only afford truth about the Saviour, they extend his touch upon the heart of the humble sinner. Through the witness of Scripture the Saviour speaks – directly, authoritatively, earnestly, appealingly, invitingly, correctingly, and warningly, but always with concern and pity for the one he is addressing. The term warmly evangelical is meant to suggest that the mood of God in the message of the Bible is merciful. His righteousness is revealed with clarity. His hatred of sin is unmistakeable. His wrath against it is real and ultimately devastating. All these things he forthrightly teaches us for our warning and wellbeing. But the crowning feature and glory of Scripture is the grace of God toward the unworthy and undeserving who find neither help nor hope in anything they can do or become. At every point in Scripture we are faced with our iniquity and inability, but simultaneously we observe the approach of the Saviour towards us and cast ourselves into his outstretched arms for safety.
Our mood becomes one of confidence in the Saviour and of compassion to those in need of salvation – and that means all without exception. We may discern the faults of others and detest their sin along with our own, but our plight is common to everyone and universal among all men. For all that we might deplore in others, if we have that right, we hardly differ. Evil is our common plague, the infection of every heart, the pandemic that threatens every soul with eternal death. The world moans, groans, and writhes in the agony of our fatal disease, and as we read Scripture we descry the features of our Physician come to help us (Matt 9:12-13), read his prescription for our healing in his message of atonement wrought on our behalf (Isa 53: 5), and are medicated and nursed by the Spirit who applies the gospel to us. The Bible is warm with the love of God and his ardour for restored fellowship with man. The Bible is evangelical in its intense desire for our return. The mood of mercy in God is a firm and unchangeable resolve which is meant to engender our mood of grateful trust in his goodness and form our firm resolve to run to him as our reliable refuge.
Truth is unchangeable. As it fills the mind and penetrates to the heart in good time, it becomes mood-changing and stimulates and stabilizes right feeling. Instead of being “moody” in a capricious and unpredictable manner we are moved towards maturity in outlook and consistency of conduct. Word and Spirit make us steady in character and steadfast in endurance of all things. The process is not fast or without its pain. But if we are sensitive to the warmth and intent of the Saviour’s speech in Scripture, lose our suspicion of God or misunderstanding of his Person and purpose, we will sense his kindness in its sifting and severe aspects and be more kindly to others, less cold and critical towards them, more expectant of their sharing in mercy along with us. Our aim, by grace, should be to experience the spiritual power of the word as well as grasp its truth.
One thing I got out of this sermon is that we must strive to let the Word speak to us rather than simply reflect our own ideas. As Rev. Salter says, our aim should be to experience the Word’s spiritual power as well as grasp its truth.
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In the sermon Speaking of Tongues, the Rev. William Klock of Living Word REC in British Columbia gives us an exposition of 1 Corinthians 14:1-19 that gives us some very good insights into the spiritual gift of tongues. But Fr. Bill also addresses further the theme of unity in the Body that we have seen throughout much of this sermon series, and I’d like to call attention to this portion:
Paul’s conclusion here is extremely forceful. Look at verses 18 to 19.
I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue.
He drops back into the first person and thanks God that he speaks in tongues more than any of them did. His point all along has been to correct the people in Corinth who were misusing their gift of tongues and so he very pastorally identifies himself with them. “I’m one of you, folks. I speak in tongues too – in fact more than you do – so don’t think I don’t understand you or that I don’t understand the gift. I speak in tongues and I speak in tongues a lot.” But then we get this amazing insight into Paul the Christian – something we’d never know if it hadn’t been for him needing to offer this correction. He speaks in tongues a lot, and yet he tells them, “Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct other, than ten thousand words in a tongue.”
This totally crushes the view that to use tongues in private is to abuse the gift. Consider, Paul says that he speaks in tongues more than all the Corinthians. But he also says that he’d rather speak five intelligible words in church than ten thousand in a tongue. Five versus ten thousand. It’s a bit of hyperbole, but it effective in making the point that what we share with each other has to be intelligible in order to build up our brothers and sisters. That if you use this gift in the church, it must be interpreted. So if tongues is not a gift mainly intended for public consumption and yet Paul used it more than all of the Corinthians, the only thing we can conclude is that he exercised his remarkable gift of tongues almost entirely in private.
Now, what does this mean for us aside from the practical advise on the use of these gifts? The last few chapters should teach us two things. The first is that true worship and service are motivated by the knowledge of God’s love for us, the mercy he has shown to us, and the grace he has given us. And the second is that none of us is a spiritual island. Christ knits us together into one body, and that means that worship and service are, at their very core, things we do as one – things we do together.
We need to remember that our faith, and therefore our worship, is rooted in something objective. Our God is a thinking and speaking God and he talks to us so that our knowledge of him will grow – and so that as our knowledge of him grows, our love for him will grow too. That means that the most valuable gifts in the assembly are the gifts that intelligibly communicate to us the knowledge of God and of his saving works. If you want to experience richer worship and service, you first need to experience a deeper and richer love for God – and that will only come as you grow to know and understand him better. This is why the centres of our worship of God are his Word and the Sacrament in which we commemorate his saving work on the cross.
But the cross drives us to the other side of worship – to the fact that we worship together as one body. Like the Corinthians, we often forget this side of it and we come to worship focused on self. One of the problems with a lot of modern forms of worship is that we end up coming to assemble together, and yet we each do our own thing. Our focus is on “me” as we sing songs about “me” and my feelings and my experience. We each come to have “my” needs met and ultimately what we end up doing is having our own personal devotional time in a corporate setting. Friends, that’s not right, because if my focus is on “me”, it means it’s not on “us”, and in the end it means that my focus is on building up myself, not building up the body. Remember, Paul calls us to pursue love first and foremost. That means that as we each come in the door, we set aside self so that we can join with each other and exhort, teach, and build up the whole body in our knowledge of the love of God. That, friends, is what true worship is all about.
I think this sermon series has been most helpful both in the understanding of true worship, and also the fact that the spiritual gifts are to be used to edify the Body of Christ as a whole, promoting the unity of believers in their Lord. Thanks to Fr. Bill for making this clearer and clearer.
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Tonight I came across an interesting publication titled The Old Believer, which (although the name sounds Eastern Orthodox to me) is a Forward in Faith UK-aligned publication, and has some thoughts on the Continuing Anglican movement. I do not know how old it is, but there are a total of five PDF issues on the site so far; any readers who follow the TAC or Forward in Faith might find it of interest.
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Here is a new sermon by the Ven. Dr. James T. Payne of St. Thomas of Canterbury REC in Texas, which I am calling Rendering unto Caesar. In this sermon for the Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity, based on Matthew 18:35, Dr. Payne gives us some insights into the Christian’s responsibility to the government and to God. I believe he has the proper perspective on this:
Once, long, long ago as a man, God held me responsible to obey His law, but like all men, from my birth, I failed. I sinned, I fell short of the goal that God had intended for me to achieve, but out of the abundant grace and mercy of His heart God sent a sinless Savior, by whom and through whom, all my past ignorance and negligence, the things not done and left undone, have been forgiven. All these blessings I receive from God. I do not receive them from the federal government. And for the federal government to take upon itself what does not rightfully belong to it is to not only violate the Constitution which limits its reach into my private affairs, but is to usurp the authority that rightfully belongs to God alone.
If I am to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, I will pay my taxes and support the authority of the state in all things which are lawful to its authority. If I am to render unto God the things that are God’s I will worship Him and serve Him with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my mind. My money may bear the image of Caesar — it may used for taxes, for buying, and for selling — but my soul has the image of God stamped upon it — I was created in the image and likeness of God and my life eternally belongs to Him.
Elsewhere in the sermon Fr. Payne makes the point that disciples of Christ have citizenship in two kingdoms – one earthly, the other heavenly – and that their duties to each of these kingdoms should be complementary rather than mutually exclusive. (Obviously, when and if these duties begin to conflict, that is when we have to decide which kingdom has the higher authority.) There is a lot to think about in this message – see what you think.
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Thanks to the author of the “Alcibiades’ Bane” blog, here is a word of warning from Charles Colson about the situation facing freedom in the United States. Colson quotes Hannah Arendt regarding what happens to freedom when there is in reality only one level of government, and all the intermediate structures have been rendered powerless or non-existent. I can imagine the Founding Fathers nodding their heads in agreement, and I urge you to watch this video and think about it.
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Via the Anglican Church League of Australia website, I came across an audio sermon by the Rev. Hugh Palmer of All Souls Langham Place in the United Kingdom, titled Judged by Truth. This sermon is based on Romans 1:18-3:20 – quite a sweeping passage of Scripture – but Rev. Palmer makes his point well: without God’s grace we truly are trapped in the “downward spiral” of Romans 1, and “as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.’” (Romans 3:10-11)
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From the Church of the Good Shepherd in North Carolina we have another audio sermon on Psalm 23 by the Rev. Kyle Wallace, titled I fear no evil, for You are with me. Rev. Wallace in this sermon talks about the various things we as human beings fear (death, illness, loneliness, rejection and so forth) and as he points out, the message of this statement in Psalm 23 is basically “Be not afraid, for I am with you.” We can live life without fear, and that is what God wants for us. This is not a bad message for our times – please give it a try, for it is a heartening sermon.
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