HUMBLE HANDLING OF GOD’S WORD
When it comes to the handling of God’s Word, we will recall apostle Paul telling Timothy to study to show himself a good, faithful, and worthy servant of God, rightly handling or dividing the Word of God. Whether it be preaching, teaching, sharing of God’s Word, God’s servants must come with humility in dependence on God, such that the living Word can be communicated.
We must not speculate by ‘adding’ to the Word of God; we must not ‘subtract’ the Word of God based on our preferences. We note in the Gospels that the Pharisees were guilty of adding to the Word with their traditions and ‘rules; the Sadducees, on the other hand, were guilty of subtracting the Word by claiming there is no resurrection, and so forth. In our quest to be ‘original’ we may bring out issues based on our own thinking and experiences and ‘stray’ from the truth of Scriptures, and end up with communicating serious distorted teachings of God’s truth. When we note the ‘woes’ pronounced by Jesus on the teachers of the Law and the spiritual leaders of that day, we realise how serious this is, in the eyes of God. In the same vein, when feedback is given in sincerity for not distorting the Word of God, humble handling of God’s Word should imply the true willingness to ensure that God’s honour and glory are upheld in the communication of his Word.
I recall when I was a young Christian, I was so excited when I finished reading the whole Bible and I shared it with many fellow believers. Thankfully, a Christian brother reminded me that it is not so much how much you have gone through the Bible but how much the Bible has gone through you. Nonetheless, it is still essential to ‘know’ the whole ‘story’ of the Bible, not just intellectually, but also with the spiritual understanding of God’s total revelation of himself and his salvation plan to his people. To my mind, this is essential for all those who preach, teach, and communicate the truths from the Scripture. Why so? The first basic principle is that the proper, natural sense of each passage (i.e. the intended sense of the writer) is to be taken as fundamental – the meaning of texts in their own contexts, and for their original readers, is the necessary starting point for enquiry into their wider significance. Scripture statements must be interpreted in the light of the rules of grammar and discourse on the one hand, and of their own place in history on the other. We must allow Scripture to tell us its own literary character and be willing to receive it as what it claims to be.
The second basic principle of interpretation is that Scripture must interpret Scripture; the significance and scope of one passage is to be brought out by relating it to others. When there is doubt regarding the sense of one passage, it must be searched and known by other passages in Scripture that speak more clearly on the particular subject. In this light, it is important for the preacher, the teacher and the communicator to know the whole Bible in its overall story and revelation, and this cannot be known by just knowing only certain parts of the Bible, or certain books without the ‘knowledge’ of other books and total revelation of the whole Bible. Individuals may be equipped with the study of theology and certain modules in the Bible colleges, but without the knowledge and understanding of the whole Bible in depth, there is virtually no way the individuals can be truly effective in their ministry of preaching, teaching and communication of the Scripture. The ministry of the Word must be factually instructive, devotionally relational and morally transformational. Knowledge of God is as much communion with him and obedience to him as it is grasping facts about him – hence, unless these three elements are present, then the ministry of the Word cannot express itself in authentic worship and holy living, in the communicator and the receiver.
We come back to the greatest need to come humbly before God in handling his Word and ministering his Word. We have nothing and have never had anything that we have not received, nor have we done anything good apart from God who did it through us. In ourselves, we are destitute, bankrupt, and impotent, totally dependent on God in every respect. It is the Holy Spirit who uses the Word of God to change people, making them more like Christ. In this process, the Spirit operates intellectually by imparting understanding of Christ and of all the Scriptures as witness to him, and motivationally, by engendering trust in Christ and sustaining within us a purpose of cleaving to revealed truth, and in addition behaviourally, by inducing the Christlike pattern of action that flows from this state of the soul. That implies that for the one who ministers God’s Word as preacher, teacher, communicator from an older believer to a younger one, studying the Word must be complemented by prayerful dependence on the Holy Spirit as part of humble handling of God’s Word. A great deal of what is called theology today is specialist speculation and does not bear at all on the Christian’s personal life. If we aim at a life that honours God and further his kingdom, then we need to return to accept the authority of Scripture, be willing to believe what it teaches, and then to apply its teaching to ourselves for our correction and guidance. The words and lives of Christian men and women must be in continual process of reformation by the Written Word of God, taught and revealed by God through the Holy Spirit.
QUESTIONING THE IDENTITY OF JESUS: LUKE11: 14-32
On Sunday, we studied the passage from Luke 11 – specifically vv. 14 to 28 and by extension (personally) vv 29 to 32.
In this passage, Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem where the ‘cross’ awaits him and he knew that was the direction and destination that would lead to the fulfilment of his mission. Jesus drove out a demon that made a man mute. When the demon left, although the crowd was amazed, some of them said that he drove out demons by the power of Beezebul, the prince of demons; others tested him by asking for a sign from heaven.
It is helpful to note that prior to this casting out of a demon, there were many incidents and indications that point to the true identity of Jesus. Luke’s use of the Old Testament references and allusions (especially in the early chapters) does two things: it provides theological credibility for the work of Jesus, and also interpretative clarity that Jesus is accomplishing and fulfilling the long awaited and cherished promises of God (particularly the coming of the Messiah). Jesus’ arrival is not unexpected; his saving work is the fulfilment of God’s long-promised redemption plan. What is happening has been spoken of, by God himself through his prophets, over thousands of years. At the end of the Gospel of Luke, in chapter 24, Jesus made it plain to his followers that it was necessary that the Christ should suffer and then enter into his glory (24:26).
But before Luke 11, Jesus has demonstrated his power to heal, to raise various ones from the dead, to forgive sins, and even to acknowledge that he is divine (before Abraham was, he is) and that he is indeed the Messiah to his disciples.
Even Simeon, the old man who meets Jesus’ parents at the temple (Luke 2:29-32) and Anna, the widow, acknowledged the true identity of Jesus as the Saviour long awaited for. Luke also indicated that the birth of John the Baptist (the messenger sent to herald the coming of the King Jesus) and the birth of Jesus were ‘declared’ by and ‘attended to’ by angels (supernatural births in fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies).
However, throughout the Gospel of Luke the Pharisees are presented in their true light – as unreasonable enemies of the God of Abraham. Although they were supposed to be among the teachers of the Law (Torah), and although they have witnessed the miracles and healings performed by Jesus, their hearts were hardened and were filled with jealousy and unbelief.
Here in Luke 11, they even accused Jesus, the God-Man, the divine Son of God to be with the devil, and that Jesus’ healing was by the power of evil. This was perhaps the most serious accusation by them; and it deserved the most severe judgment. Jesus, on the way to Jerusalem and the cross, was still concerned for the Jews and when in Jerusalem, he lamented that he, like a mother hen, he desired to have them under his wings to protect them in love, but they were unwilling. He came as God-incarnate to fulfil God’s plan of salvation for the people, and yet they not only persist in unbelief and hardening of heart and spiritual blindness, they were intending to kill him.
In the crowd in Luke 11 were those who were non-committal, and these were among those who were amazed at the miracle of healing. There was a woman who expressed that it was a blessing to have a son like Jesus, but it was at best sentimentalism and not repentance and faith in Jesus.
Jesus’ declaration and reply in vs 28 is very significant: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it”. This certainly does not include the Pharisees who rejected him; it does not include those who are non-committal; and it even does not include those who are sentimental about him. It only refers to those who acknowledge him in repentance and faith, and follow up with a life of obedience and commitment.
What follows in the discussion of the sign of Jonah and the Queen of Sheba secures this truth. Someone greater than Jonah is here – even the Nenevites repented at the preaching of Jonah – and someone greater than Solomon is here – the Queen of Sheba will rise at the judgment with the people of that generation and condemn them for their unbelief – there is no doubt that the someone is Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world. Like the people in Luke 11, we cannot afford to reject him; we cannot afford to be non-committal and we cannot stop at just being sentimental and acknowledge that he is a great man.
The divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ is a golden thread woven through both Old and New Testaments. If we approach our Bibles in a careless, hit- or-miss fashion, we will miss a great deal of biblical truth. Jesus is God-incarnate and he came, saying, “I am the way, the truth, and the life”. Those who believe in him should not perish but have eternal life. Let us not make the same fatal mistake as the Pharisees and spend eternity regretting that we reject the only Saviour, who, in love, mercy, and grace, came to make the path back to God possible for those who believe. Let us not remain non-committal or sentimental about Jesus: even Nicodemus, the teacher of the Law, had to be told that he had to be born again to enter the kingdom of God. Jesus came to usher in the kingdom of God and those who wish to enter must experience regeneration (made spiritually alive) by the Holy Spirit; and the path to entering must include repentance and faith, humbling ourselves and acknowledging we cannot save ourselves. For by grace are we saved through faith, and by grace are we to continue the pilgrim journey here on earth to the celestial city, humbly enduring and persevering, as we encounter trials from the devil and the world, and in the process, are moulded into the image of our Master (the Lord Jesus Christ).
RELATIONAL SPIRITUALITY
The God of the Bible is infinite, personal and triune. Because God is a communion of three Persons, one of his purposes in creating us is to display the glory of his being and attributes to intelligent moral creatures who are capable of responding to his relational initiatives. In spite of human rebellion and sin against the persona and character of the Lord, Chrisst bore the awesome price of our guilt and inaugurated “a new and living way” (Hebrews 10:20) by which the barrier to personal relationship with God has been overcome. Because the infinite and personal God loves us, he wants us to grow in an intimate relationship with him; this is the purpose for which we were created – to know, love, enjoy , and honor the triune Lord of all creation.
It is sad that believers, over the years, have lost the understanding and appreciation of the Trinity (the Triune God) as well as the realisation that the Gospel is the good news of God’s initiative in bringing back fallen creatures to him and to restore the intimate relationship with him (fulfilling the purpose we are created, and also to restore and display the glory of his being and attributes to intelligent moral creatures, which include men and women, angels and servants of God in the entire cosmos and spiritual realm).
Because God is a relational being, the two great commandments of loving him and expressing this love for him by loving others are also intensely relational. We were created for fellowship and intimacy not only with God but also with each other. The relational implications of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity are profound. Since we were created in God’s image and likeness, we too are relational beings.
The better we know God, the better we know ourselves. Human nature is a web of contradictions. We are at once the grandeur and degradation of the created order; we bear the image of God,but we are ensnared in trespasses and sins. We are capable of harnessing the forces of nature but unable to rule our tongue; we are the most wonderful and creative beings on this planet but the most violent, cruel, and contemptible of earth’s inhabitants.
Even until the second decade of the twentieth century, it was thought that the Milky Way galaxy was synonymous with the universe. This alone would be awesome in its scope, since our spiral galaxy contains more than 200,000 million stars and extends to a diameter of 100,000 light years (remember that a light second is more than 186,000 miles; the 93 million miles between the sun and the earth is 8 light minutes). But more recent developments in astronomy have revealed that our galaxy is a member of a local cluster of about 20 galaxies and that this local cluster is but one member of a massive supercluster of thousands of galaxies. So many of these superclusters are known to exist that the number of galaxies is estimated at more than 100,000,000,000.
What is humanity, indeed! The God who created these stars and calls them all by name (Isaiah 40:26) is unimaginably awesome; his wisdom, beauty, power, and dominion are beyond human comprehension. And yet he has designed to seek intimacy with the people on this puny planet and has given them great dignity and destiny: “Yet You have made him a little lower than God, and You crown him with glory and majesty (Psalm 85). These words are applicable to all people, but they find their ultimate fulfilment in Jesus Christ (Hebrews 2:6-8).
As wonderful as our dominion over nature will be, our true cause of rejoicing should be in the fact that if we have placed our trust in Jesus Christ, our names are recorded in heaven (Luke 10:20). The ultimate Ruler of all creation takes thought of us and cares for us, and he has proved it by the indescribable gift of his Son (2Corinthians 9:15; 1 John 4:9-10). In the words of C.S. Lewis, glory means “good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgement, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.” Let us exult in hope of the glory of God!
This prayer by St. Richest of Chichester (1107-1253) should also be ours who know the Triune God: “Thanks be to thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits which thou hast given us; for all the pains and insults which thou hast borne for us. O most merciful Redeemer, Friend, and Brother, may we know thee more dearly, and follow thee more nearly; for thine own sake.” Loving God completely involves our whole personality – our intellect, emotion, and will. The better we come to know God, the more we will love him. And the more we love him him, the greater our willingness to trust and obey him in the things he calls u to do (individually and as a community, the church).
BUILDING LIVES AND THE CHURCH
When we speak of building a church, our thoughts are usually on the bricks and mortar out of which the new structure will be constructed – this often involves the ‘talk’ of building funds, the forming of committees, the strategies to be considered and applied in bringing in new members and drawing in the congregation to be involved in the planned activities, and to ‘serve’.
But when the Lord Jesus spoke of building his church (Matthew 16:18), he was not thinking in those terms; he was thinking, rather, of the complex process whereby the truth about himself is received, the recipients respond to it (or, better respond to him in terms of it), and the the responders are conformed increasingly to him as they share in the things that the church does in obedience to Jesus’ word, under his leadership, alnd in dependence on his power.
Christ’s building of the church is a matter of his so changing people on the inside – in their hearts – that repentance, faith, and obedience become more and more the pattern of their lives. Thus increasingly they exhibit the humility, purity, love, and zeal for God that we see in Jesus, and fulfill Jesus’ call to worship, work, and witness in his name.
And this they do not as isolated individuals, but as fellow siblings in God’s family, helping and encouraging each other in the openness and mutual care that are the hallmarks of ‘brotherly love’ (Hebrews 13:1).
Increasingly, they enter into the life that constitutes authentic Christianity, the life of fellowship with their heavenly Father, their risen Saviour and each other, and in so doing they are ‘being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer acceptable spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ (1Peter 2:5).
If we evaluate honestly, oftentimes our plan to build lives and the church centres more on the first option than on the second (the one ‘propounded’ by the Lord Jesus where the concentration is on changing lives from the inside and on ‘renovation’ of the heart).
We see a passage in 1 Corinthians 3 where the apostle Paul shared on ‘similar lines’:
“By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. For no-one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved – even though only as one escaping through the flames.”(vvs 10-15).
Here is a stern warning that on that Day, the quality of our work (in building lives and the church) would be tested and judged. Being saved like one escaping through the flames is not ‘pleasant – in fact it speaks of pain, agony, scalding, and even ‘third-degree burns’ which can be serious and need time to be healed and to recuperate.
How are we building our lives and the church? How are we building our own lives as individual believers? Nothing will be hidden on the day of judgment – everything would be seen clearly and the ‘whisper’ would be sounded out loudly on that day (as revealed in the Gospel).
LEARNING AND LIVING BY GOD’S COMMANDMENTS AND GUIDANCE
Christians are to follow and abide in the above, that is, to learn and to live by God’s commands and guidance. There is little stress on this exhortation in these days, even in the church; we need to note and acknowledge that faithful obedience to this is part and parcel of faithful obedience to God and discipleship. Perhaps this explains why Christians tend to rationalise when it comes to what they term as ‘grey areas’ and what they call as being practical and realistic – and we end up with the slow but sure eroding of Godly principles and guidance taught in the Bible and by the Spirit. Holiness and faithfulness to God are slowly ‘chipped away’ and God’s people and the church end up as ‘having a name that we are alive spiritually but in reality we are dead’, being ‘lukewarm, neither ‘hot’ nor ‘cold’ and at a point when God ‘would spit us out’ (Revelation 3:1-2;15-17).
The Bible displays God as one who commands and humans are required to practice obedience. This presentation starts in Eden, where God, having in effect established his covenant with the first humans by the words he had already spoken, commanded the man, saying he must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen.2:16-17). Later, God ‘appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you…to be God to you and to your offspring after you.. You shall keep my covenant”(Genesis 17:2,7,9). The Ten commandments given as part of the covenant confirmation at Sinai, were and are basic to biblical religion (Exodus 20:1-17); Deuteronomy 5-6; Mark 10:17-19); Romans 1:3,9).
Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 7: “neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God” is what counts (vs 19). John writes: “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3).
When, one day, we have to give an account of ourselves to God, it will be important for us to be able to say with truth that we sought to keep all his commandments throughout our Christian lives.
NO REALISTIC HOPE OF BETTER THINGS TO COME
The twentieth century began with much optimism. However, that century witnessed global barbarism in two World Wars, and in the careers of power-crazy, money-mad individuals and the genocidal doings of dictators, we see the pollution and rapid destruction of the environment, all in the name of profit and apparent progress and development. The drift from religious and moral moorings into relativism, secularism and hedonism took place insidiously and the escalations of the arms race and the ability to devastate the world with nuclear weapons become more and more a reality.
Many thoughtful people entered the twenty-first century with fear rather than in hope, wondering how far the educated, affluent, and technologically equipped decadence will go and what sort of a world awaits future generations.
As they see the politicians’ and generals’ playing of the power game and business leaders’ playing of the profit game, the hope of genuine global peace and prosperity has sunk very deep in the sands and into the mud.
Climate change has passed the stage of no-return; the prospect of nuclear war has increased dramatically, and millions of people are suffering from lack of food, poverty, lack of basic hygiene and health needs; and the disparity between the poor and the very rich has reached disproportionate levels.
Conclusion: No realistic hope of better things to come can be drawn from the ways of the modern world. Is there nothing good to hope for at all?
As God made us to fulfill a function and attain an end (for man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever), so he made us creatures for whom hope is life, and whose lives become living deaths when we have nothing good to look forward to.
As the deep hopelessness of today’s world tightens its chilly grip on us, we are made to feel this increasingly, and so can better appreciate the infinite value for life today of that exuberant, unstoppable, intoxicating, energizing hope of joy with Jesus in the Father’s presence forever, which is so pervasive a mark of New Testament Christianity.
Whereas those without Christ are without God and without hope, living already in a dusk of the spirit that is destined to grow darker and colder, Christians can endlessly rejoice in Christ Jesus our hope (1 Timothy1:1).
The inescapable alternatives are false hope, happiness through having things, endless good health, which is a delusion, the pursuit of pleasure which ends in no satisfaction at all finally – or else no hope.
The Christian hope: – the knowledge of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). The Christian life is essentially a life of hope, a life in which nothing is perfect yet, but the hope of perfection is set before us, so that we may forget what is behind and reach out to what lies ahead and press forward toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus
The whole materialistic culture of our secular world encourages us to forget that there is another world awaiting us, another life and another citizenship for the believer in Christ. Heaven really is more important than earth, for heaven’s life is the goal for which this life is preparation. The Biblical view: The church under the sovereign hand of God is the real center of what is going on and always will be.
We face a great deal of pessimistic hopelessness on the part of people who feel they have seen through the false hopes of society and now have little or no hope at all. As a medical practitioner, I encounter many lonely people, many depressed individuals and the problems in mental health to my mind are in no small way contributed by this pessimistic hopelessness that nothing can ever get better.
As Christians and disciples of Christ, we need to speak loudly of the glory of the Christian hope. It has always been God’s purpose that His people, bound to him by covenant grace, should become the light bearers of divine truth to a broken world. The unseen heavenly Father penetrates His world through the testimony and witness of the distinctly, different, holy lives of His redeemed people.
Is our testimony and witness reflecting this glorious hope in Christ? Or are we exhibiting lives that are defeated and full of pessimism, without any joy and peace that abide in Christ?