Prayer, Praise and Promises

The apostle Paul writes, "But to each one of us grace was given, according to the measure of Christ's gift." (Ephesians 4:7)

William Farel became a true follower of Christ in the early 1520's, during the time the Reformation, under the leadership of Martin Luther, was raging like a wild-fire throughout Europe. Farel had a burning zeal to preach Christ to whomever would listen and he travelled incessantly and tirelessly throughout eastern France, Switzerland, and southern Germany preaching Christ and denouncing the Pope and the excesses of Roman Catholicism.

Farel, a bachelor until he was sixty-nine, was a short, gaunt man with an unkempt red beard who was fiery, forceful, and belligerent in his sermon delivery. He always preached extemporaneously without sermon preparation and thus none of his sermons have been handed down to us. He was a lightning rod for controversy. He would enter a town and people immediately were opposed to him. On the other hand, many admired and loved him, hanging on his every word, coming to Christ in the thousands. An observer said that one could not listen to Farel without trembling at his thunder, or listen to his fervent prayers without being almost carried to heaven. On one occasion he was attacked and beaten by a host of women who objected to his preaching against the worship of the Virgin Mary. When he entered Basel, Farel called the well known humanist, Erasmus, with whom Luther had much controversy, Balaam. Predictably Erasmus did not take kindly to his accusation and had the authorities run him out of town for sedition. When Farel entered Geneva in 1532, just as Reformation teaching was taking hold of the city, he faced a riot, was beaten, and run out of town by his adversaries.

...by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, Ephesians 3:3.

Pearl S. Buck, the great novelist, who won the Pulitzer prize in 1932 and the Nobel prize for literature in 1938, grew up on the mission field. In her memoirs, she took up the question, 'Do we need missionaries to go to foreign countries?' She had this to say, 'Let us face ourselves clearly. Some of us believe in Christ as our fathers did; to some of us he is still the divine son of God, born of the virgin Mary, conceived by the Holy Spirit. But to many of us he has ceased to be that. Some of us do not know what he is, some of us care less. In the world of our life it does not matter perhaps what he is. If we are asked we will say, "I admire him of course. He was perhaps the best man who ever lived." But that is all he is. To you who are young, the sons and daughters of this generation, who must carry on foreign missions after the older ones are gone, it is probable that Christ is no longer a cause...Let us face the fact that the old reasons for foreign missions are gone from the minds and hearts of many of us, certainly from those of us who are young.

Sunday, March 4, 1739 - Age 24

Rose much refreshed in spirit and gave my early attendants a warm exhortation as usual. Went to Newgate and preached with power to an exceedingly thronged congregation. Then hastened to Hanham Mount, three miles from the city, where the miners live altogether. God favoured us in the weather. Over four thousand were ready to hear me and God enabled me to preach with the demonstration of the Spirit.

The ground not being high enough, I stood upon a table and the sight of the people covering the green fields, and their deep attention, please me much. I hope that same Lord, who fed so many thousands with bodily bread, will feed all their souls with the Bread which cometh down from Heaven, for many came from far.

At four in the afternoon, I went to the mount on Rose Green and preached to over fourteen thousand souls. God was so good to allow all to be able to hear me. I think it was worth while to come many miles to see such a sight. I spoke with great freedom, but thought all the while, as I do continually, when I ascend the mount, that hereafter I shall suffer, as well as speak, for my Master's sake. Lord, strengthen me for that hour. Lord, I believe (O help my unbelief!) that Thy grace will be more sufficient for me.

In the evening I expounded at Baldwin Street Society, but could not get up to the room without the utmost difficulty, as the entry and court were much filled with people. Blessed be God, the number of hearers much increases and as my day is, so is my strength. Tonight I returned home much more refreshed in joy and longed to be dissolved and to be with Jesus Christ. This has been a sabbath indeed to my soul!




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SUMMIT, N.J. (AP) _ Fountain Baptist Church has made good on its promise to help Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts by raising $1 million, an amount that’s considered one of the largest ever donated by a single church.

It’s a pledge the Summit church made in May 2006 and completed a few weeks ago, six months before its self-imposed two-year pledge timetable. The feat was celebrated at the church’s annual Thanksgiving service last Sunday.
“Anytime you help someone and know they’re going to be blessed by your effort, there’s no better feeling,” Michael Williams, a trustee of the church, told The Star-Ledger of Newark for Thursday editions.

The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University says it’s aware of only one other donation from a single church that is larger: the Los Angeles Oriental Mission Church’s $3 million donation to earthquake victims in El Salvador in 2001.

Rev. J. Michael Sanders told the Star-Ledger that $400,000 has gone toward job and life-skills training for 200 families in Louisiana and Mississippi, $300,000 has gone to churches impacted by the storm, $200,000 has paid for housing and community building projects, and $100,000 had paid for general and administrative costs.

“After a while, people often forget certain things and people lose their commitment, their excitement or concern,” Sanders said, speaking of how proud he is that his church kept giving after attention faded away from the 2005 disaster.

Church officials said about 1,200 of the church’s 1,900 members gave an average of $833 to raise the money, with two donors who wished to remain anonymous donating $33,000 and $15,000.

And some members don’t think the giving is about to stop.
“I don’t think the efforts are going to be over,” Patrice Edwards, a church member for 17 years, said. “There’s still a lot of work that has to be done in that area. It’s not like we met a goal and that’s it.”

Fountain Baptist Church _ which started in 1897 when a group of black workers, mostly gardeners and domestic workers, started praying together _ is known to make charitable donations, including hundreds of thousands of dollars that went to the United Negro College Fund and to the Baptist Convention Headquarters building in South Africa.

The church also donates thousands annually to help 850 students in Kenya.

Eph 2:19 - 19 - Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God;
Eph 2:20 - And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone;
20. Eph 2:21 - In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord:
21. Eph 2:22 - In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

Paul uses two illuminating pictures.  He says that the Gentiles are no longer foreigners but full members of the family of God.

Paul uses the word xenos for foreigner.  In every Greek city there were xenoi and their life was not easy.   One wrote home:    "It is better for you to be in your own homes, whatever they may be like, than to be in a strange land."  The foreigner was always regarded with suspicion and dislike.  Paul uses the word aroikos for sojourner.  The paroikos was one step further on.  He was a resident alien, a man who had taken up residence in a place but who had never become a naturalized citizen; he paid a tax for the privilege of existing in a land which was not his own.  Both the xenos and the paroikos were always on the fringe.

So Paul says to the gentiles:  "You are no longer among God's people on sufferance.  You are full members of the family of God."  We may put this very simply; it is through Jesus that we are at home with God.

The Bible teaches us to expect mental jolts when we think about God. It teaches us that our familiar ways of seeing things may be replaced. For example, it says, "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!" (Romans 11:33). Or again, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:9).

One of the reasons (not the only one) that some people reject the biblical teaching of unconditional election is that it seems and feels to them out of sync with other teachings in the Bible - like the compassion of God for people or the moral accountability of people before God. It seems to many that God can't choose unconditionally to save some and not others and then also feel compassion for those he does not choose and hold them accountable for their sin.

The problem here is that our instinct or intuition for what is right or possible for God does not fit Scripture. And the danger is that we shape Scripture to fit our feelings.

Interpreting the Bible - New and Old

There's a lot of talk in the Christian world concerning humility and the handling of God's Word. Prominent in this discussion are some of the statements emanating from America's branch of the Emerging Church. According to this school of thought, humility as applied to Scripture entails a sense of uncertainty about Scripture's meaning, message, or authority. Kristen Bell's now famous statement in the November 2004 edition of Christianity Today is fairly representative of this new brand of 'humility':

'I grew up thinking that we've figured out the Bible, that we knew what it means. Now I have no idea what most of it means. And yet I feel like life is big again - like life used to be black and white, and now it's in color'.[1]

So Paul goes on to say that in Christ these barriers are down.  How did Christ destroy them?

Paul says of Jesus, "He is our Peace."  What did he mean by that? 

Let us use a human analogy.  Suppose two people have a difference and go to law about it; and the experts in law draw up a document, which states the rights of the case, and ask the two conflicting parties to come together on the basis of that document.  All the chances are that the breach will remain unhealed, for peace is seldom made on the basis of that document.  But suppose that someone whom both of these conflicting parties love comes and talks to them, there is every chance that peace will be made.  When two parties are at variance, the surest way to bring them together is through someone whom they both love.

13	But now you belong to Christ Jesus. At one time you were far away from God. Now you have been brought close to Him. Christ did this for you when He gave His blood on the cross.
14	We have peace because of Christ. He has made the Jews and those who are not Jews one people. He broke down the wall that divided them.
15	He stopped the fighting between them by His death on the cross. He put an end to the Law. Then He made of the two people one new kind of people like Himself. In this way, He made peace.
16	He brought both groups together to God. Christ finished the fighting between them by His death on the cross.
17	Then Christ came and preached the Good News of peace to you who were far away from God. And He preached it to us who were near God.
18	Now all of us can go to the Father through Christ by way of the one Holy Spirit.

The End Of Barriers

We were once so despised by the Jews, we were considered unclean, far away from Christ.  Isaiah had heard God say: "Peace, peace to the far, and to the near" (Isaiah 57:19).   When the Rabbis spoke about accepting a convert into Judaism, they said  that they had been brought near.  For instance, the Jewish Rabbinic writers tell how a Gentiles woman came to Rabbi Eliezer.   She confessed that she was a sinner and asked to be admitted to the Jewish Faith.  "Rabbi," she said, "bring me near.  "the Rabbi refused.  The door was shut in her face; but now the door was open.  Those who had been far from God were brought near, and the door was shut to no one. 

 

Alexander Whyte, an eminent Scottish minister in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, wrote of Christians who lived as if sanctification were by vinegar. I was reminded of this when preparing recently to preach on Philip's encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. As Luke concludes his account of this eunuch's conversion, he tells us, 'he went on his way rejoicing.' The gospel of God’s great grace in Christ had not only brought him into a right, restored relationship with God, it had filled his heart with joy.

It can hardly be denied that some Christians live as if sanctification were by vinegar. There is little evident joy in their lives. Their response (as I once, sadly, said to a friend at university) is that their joy lies deep in their hearts. But is the believer's joy to be buried so deeply in his/her heart that its presence never breaks the surface and radiates on their face and in their general demeanour? Surely not.