Ice-Cream at the General Assembly

I love this, coming from the Scottish tradition where Presbyteries and Assemblies are invariably rather staid and formal affairs.  The report on the 82^nd General Assembly of the OPC, contains this gem:

Break for Ice Cream

The Assembly took a break for Blue Bunny Ice Cream (which was quite tasty), supplied by Mid-America Reformed Seminary.”

I well remember my first ever OPC presbytery meeting when it was moved that we send out for pizzas; and we did. I wonder how we could adopt this in the Scottish context - sending out for Irn Bru and deep fried Mars Bars?

What Does the Bible Really Say

Tim Keller has written an extended book review, “The Bible and same sex relationships: A review article.”

Worth reading:

http://tinyurl.com/qeppz4e

Even Messier Church

The Covenant Fellowship, the Church of Scotland Evangelical Network, The Presbytery of Lewis and various individual ministers are determined to remain within an apostate denomination to reform it and win it back.

Can I suggest they might start here:

Cairns Church of Scotland, Milngavie, (Presbytery of Glasgow)

THURSDAY  11th June 2015                         

Speaker : Bishop Jack Spong

And just in case you do not know what Spong stands for here are his 12 points for a new reformation:

Twelve points for Reform

1  Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.

2  Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.

3  The Biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.

4  The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.

5  The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.

6  The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.

7  Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.

8  The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.

9  There is no external, objective, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.

10  Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.

11 The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behaviour control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behaviour.

12 All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

So here is the challenge.  Do ministers who promote and fete Spong come under the discipline of your denomination or not?  Having seen at the GA that you cannot initiate discipline for sexual immorality, does this now show that you cannot enforce discipline for doctrinal heresy?

Very Messy Church

So you have a professed evangelical group from an apostate denomination, meeting in a building forcibly removed from the largest evangelical congregation in Scotland and given to a denominationally approved group who sponsor prophetesses, new revelation and dream interpretation; and addressed by the former principal of a failed bible college.

 

Maybe “Messed Up Church” would be more appropriate!

If Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians was Published in Christianity Today

What would the readers'response be today if Galatians were published in a popular christian magazine ?

As my focus bible book this year is Galatians I was delighted with the parody of Readers’ Letters offered by the Sacred Sandwich:

http://sacredsandwich.com/archives/2781

I can envisage companion pieces on Romans, 1 Corinthians, Jude, etc.  Indeed, almost any NT epistle could be subject to this treatment.  What makes it not only humorous but deadly serious is that the parody is little removed from the reality.  If for “Readers’ Letters” we substituted “General Assembly Responses” we could almost predict how certain pseudo-christian liberals and, more tragically, doctrinally and morally confused professed evangelicals would react.

While in a light mood, here is a rejection letter sent to the Apostle Paul from an International Missions Board.  It is one of a number of such thought provoking parodies kicking around the Internet:

Apostle Paul's rejection letter from the Foreign Mission Board

Rev. Saul (Apostle) Paul

Independent Missionary

Corinth, Greece

Dear Mr. Paul:

We recently received an application from you for service under our Board. It is our policy to be as frank and open-minded as possible with all of our applicants. We have made an exhaustive survey of your case. To be plain, we are surprised that you have been able to “pass” as a bona fide missionary. We are told that you are afflicted with a severe eye trouble. This is certain to be an insuperable handicap to an effective ministry. We require 20–20 vision.

Do you think it seemly for a missionary to do part-time secular work? We heard that you are making tents on the side. In a letter to the Church at Philippi you admitted that they were the only church supporting you. We wonder why?

Is it true that you have a jail record? Certain brethren report that you did two years’ time at Caesarea, and were imprisoned at Rome.

You made so much trouble for the businessmen at Ephesus that they refer to you as “the man who turned the world upside down.” Sensationalism has no place in missions! We also deplore the lurid over-the-wall episode at Damascus. We are appalled at your obvious lack of conciliatory behaviour. Diplomatic men are not stoned and dragged out of the city gate, or assaulted by furious mobs. Have you ever suspected that gentler words might gain you more friends? I enclose a copy of Dalius Carnagus’ book, “How to Win Jews and Influence Greeks.”

In one of your letters you refer to yourself as Paul the Aged. Our new mission policies do not anticipate a surplus of elderly recipients. We understand, too, that you are given to fantasies and dreams. At Troas, you saw, “A man of Macedonia” and at another time you were “caught up into the third heaven” and even claimed that “the Lord stood by” you. We reckon that more realistic and practical minds are needed in the task of world evangelism.

You have written many letters to churches where you have formerly been pastor. In one of these letters, you accused a church member of living with his father’s wife, and you caused the whole church to feel badly and the poor fellow was expelled.

Your ministry has been far too flighty to be successful. First Asia Minor, then Macedonia, then Greece, then Italy, and now you are talking about a wild-goose chase to Spain. Concentration is more important than dissipation of one’s powers. You cannot win the whole world by yourself! You are just one little Paul. In a recent sermon you said, “God forbid that I should glory in anything save the Cross of Christ.” It seems to us that you also ought to glory in our heritage, our denominational program, the unified budget.

Your sermons are much too long for the time. At one place you talked until after midnight and a young man was so sleepy that he fell out of the window and broke his neck. Nobody is saved after the first 20 minutes. “Stand up, speak up, and shut up,” is our advice.

Dr. Luke reports that you are a thin little man, bald, frequently sick, and always so agitated over your churches that you sleep very poorly. He reports that you pad around the house, praying half the night. A healthy mind in a robust body is our ideal for all applicants. A good night’s sleep will give you zest and zip so that you wake up full of zing!

You wrote recently to Timothy that you had “fought a good fight.” Fighting is hardly a recommendation for a missionary. No fight is a good fight. Jesus came not to bring a sword, but peace. You boast that “I fought with wild beasts of Ephesus.” What on earth do you mean?

It hurts me to tell you this, brother Paul, but in all of the 25 years of my experience, I have never met a man so opposite to the requirements of the FMB. If we accepted you, we would break every rule of modern missionary practice.

Most Sincerely yours,

J. Flavius Fluffyhead, Sec.

International Mission Board

Source:  http://2alltheworldperu.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/apostle-pauls-rejection-letter-from.html

Your old men shall dream dreams…

Yesterday, on the internet I heard an old man preach.  I was listening to a series of conference addresses and clicked on the next link.  I normally only listen to those addresses, but for some reason of all the fourteen sessions this one alone had no audio only available, so I pressed on the button to start the video.

I saw an old man.  I have no idea of his age but as he referred later to being a preacher for seventy years that must sure place him in his mid to late eighties.  He did not look physically robust and I confess that initially my temptation was to click off and go on to the other speakers such as Paul Washer, Steve Lawson or Voddie Baucham,  big names that I knew, men in their prime, men who would have something solid and inspiring to say.  Perhaps the old man was only there as a polite gesture to a senior evangelical figure, “Give him a slot, it will show how broad we are and non-ageist.”

I did not recognise his name, but that is probably more due to my Scottish parochialism than his right to be recognised.

But I did not switch him off – I’m always uncomfortable with that.  I would never finish a book that I started but did not like, but I think preachers are different.  If I have started to listen, I usually, with few exceptions, persevere, for even a one talent preacher if he is faithful to the Word can be used by the Lord to bring blessing.  (Besides, we don’t do this for live preaching - walk out if it is not as celebrated a preacher as we were expecting.)

I’m glad I listened, for despite his age this was no one talent preacher but a man who had power and passion in his message. And the message itself had solid and challenging content: faith is no mere mental assent, but a heart commitment to Christ as Saviour and Lord that always exhibits its reality in subsequent obedience. I was blessed and challenged.

I happened to be speaking to a ministerial friend the day before.  He was saddened by the lack of that very power and passion in some preachers, even some of the younger generation.  It is so easy for preaching to become a pulpit essay or lecture, a presentation of the truth but without powerful persuasion.  It addresses the mind, but even though there are also words spoken to the heart it does not really touch the heart. 

How can any Reformed evangelical preach a dull and dreary message? I once heard a respected Reformed Baptist say of someone’s preaching, “He could not preach his way out of a paper bag.” He paused and then corrected himself, “No, not even out of a web paper bag!”

Now passion can be shown in different ways.  We have all heard the adage “Start low, go slow, rise high, strike fire.” I have enjoyed preachers like Lloyd Jones, Al Martin and John De Witt who exemplified this as their message moved through “logic on fire” to a crescendo of holy passion. But if there is such a thing as passionless passion, a passion that is there but exhibited in a gentle, slow and focussed manner that is almost conversational, then I have also known powerful preachers who were like that; Dick Lucas comes to mind.  The point is not how we demonstrate that passion, but the fact that it is there, that you can sense the preacher totally believes what they are proclaiming and wants you to totally believe it and act upon it.

If I have half the passion of that old man when I am his age then I would count it a blessing:

Listen: Richard Owen Roberts, Session 4

http://www.g3conference.com/?page_id=2093

New Directory for Public Worship (5)

CONFESSION OF SINS.

Editor’s comment: The New Directory is very full in detailing public confession. It does so by giving both seed thoughts and examples of prayers under three headings: our sins against God, against our fellow men, and against the Gospel and the Holy Spirit.

We today are so shallow in public confession of social sin. I have rarely heard such direct and specific confession of sins against others as are contained in the new Directory  These skeleton prayers are not only a guide to public prayer, they are a useful tool in personal examination and confession.

I will modernise as far as possible and conform scriptural quotations to the ESV.

Confession of Sins against our Fellow Men and Women

1. To equals

We have not regarded a brother's dignity, worth, interests : nor honoured or esteemed him better than ourselves : nor rejoiced in his gifts, advancement.

We have tried to undervalue him : envied his success, talents, attainments : grieved at his prosperity : resented his outstripping us in life : sacrificed his happiness to our own ends.

2. To superiors. 

[Editor: I have replaced masters / servants with employers / employees]

We have been undutiful, disobedient to those who are over us.

We mourn over our slothfulness, unfaithfulness, as employees.

We are slow to begin our work, eager to have done.

How easy for us all to be rude and grudging in our service.

How hard to be patient, unmurmuring : to be gentle to employers who wrong us :to be good to employers who are evil.

When insulted, we answer in kind.

We have flattered our superiors to serve our own purposes, and then we have dispised them.

3. To inferiors.

We have sometimes been careless to the point of cruelty towards the poor. Because they were poor, we forgot they were your children, and heirs of your Kingdom.

We have sometimes commanded things that were unjust, untrue, unseemly.

We have encouraged and favoured what was evil : discouraged what was good and worthy : left our neighbour exposed to wrong or to temptation.

5. Duties to parents, children, &c.

6. Sample Seed Prayers Confessing our Sins against Others

6.1 God of all gentleness, have mercy upon us, for being angry without a cause : our desire of revenge, when vengeance belongs to you :

our hatred against any child of yours :

our speaking words that provoked to anger :

our prejudices against a brother :

our harbouring secret grudges against another :

our being implacable towards an enemy :

our spirit of strife, quarrelling, contention :

anything we have said or done that has broken the peace of our home, our congregation.

6.2  O God, who is full of tenderness and sympathy and mercy, forgive our unforgiving words : our unkindly, unfeeling, unsympathetic conversation : our silence when others were unkind, cruel : our own cruel words — resentful, revengeful : our wounding other through scandal : our hurting a brother's feelings : our words that were meant to cut and rankle.

6.3  O  Father, whose thoughts towards us are love, forgive our lack of thought for one another : our hardness of heart : our shutting up our compassion for the needy : our indifference to them, ignorance of our quenching thoughts of kindliness, forgiveness : our lackt of quietness of mind : our uncharitable judgments of men : that we are not gentle and courteous in speech especially to those who insult us : our lack of patience with the ignorant, the slow, the wilful : that we are not ready to be reconciled to those who have wronged us or whom we have wronged.

6.4  O Lord, you are of purer eyes than to behold evil with indifference, we mourn over all our impurity of life and thought : over all impurity in affections, imagination, words, or behaviour : our lack of watchfulness over thought, heart, onduct : all lack of decency in speech and behaviour.

We lament that we have listened to corrupt conversations when we should have rebuked them : everything we have done that suggested evil to others : idleness that encourages thoughts of evil.

As a nation we mourn and lament over foolish jesting and talk that is inappropriate, giving respect to those men and women made in your image who live to debase and destroy their fellow humans.

6.5   O Lord, you alone are faithful and true, we confess all our unfaithfulness. Thou know what wrongs are done among us : what unfairness in contracts : what dishonesty in business : what oppression of the poor, what extortion : what bribery, what covetousness.

We think too much of gain and too little of men's souls.

Men add field to field and drive your people from the land :

Men increase their wealth while impoverishing others:

Strive to be rich at the cost of a brother : grow rich and despise you.

We mourn over our nation's love of luxurious living, excessive spending, wastefulness.

6.6  Idleness. 

Almighty God, who is ever working for our good, we mourn over any neglect of work of which we have been guilty : our lack of diligence in it : our lack of care in what you have given us : our distracting care about the future, what we shall eat and drink, and how shall we shall be clothed.

6.7  Our love of money.

O Lord, who possesses all things and yet made yourself poor for men, ; we mourn over our trust in money rather than in your loving protection : over our too eager desire to get it : our discontent without it.

Men keep it as if you had not made them stewards : seek it as if it would never perish.

We have not given it freely even for the preaching of your Gospel.

We have spent lavishly on our own desires and grudged your Church a little.

6.8  O God, who is light and truth, and in whom is no darkness, we mourn over our love of that which is not true : that we have too often prejudiced or perverted the truth : if we have hurt the good name of others : if we have sometimes supported an evil cause or have withstood and crushed a good cause,

6.9 We have called evil good, and good evil : sometimes praised, rewarded wickedness, excused or extenuated sin, censured righteousness.

We have been silent when we should have defended the right or withstood the wrong : or when we spoke, we spoke unreasonably, maliciously, or with a wrong intention.

6.10  .0 God, have mercy upon us if at any moment we have been guilty of slandering a brother : back-biting, diminishing others : tale-bearing, scoffing, reviling : misconstruing his words, actions, intentions : flattering him.

6.11   Have mercy upon us if we have at any time spread a false report : endeavoured or desired to impair the credit of others : rejoiced in their disgrace, loss, failure : suspected evil of those who were good : spoken against or felt contempt for any of your children : neglected to speak well of those who were wrongly reviled, or to hide the shame of a brother, or to defend the innocent.

We mourn that we are so ready to believe evil of men, so slow to believe good.

We mourn that it is hard to aim for and practise those things that are noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy

6.12  Have mercy upon us, for we are often discontented with our condition, with your dealings, discipline, corrections : envying and grieving at the good of others : vexed that others are better than we are, that they are placed in more favourable circumstances, born with fewer temptations in body and soul : uncharitable and unkindly in thought towards others : unwilling to further another's cause.