I’ve enjoyed getting stuck into Obadiah (my next short book study project for 2016) with a view to teaching it at Cornhill in June. Jonathan Gibson, in The Proclamation Bible, is characteristically helpful:
“For the expositor, the pitfall of preaching moralistically (e.g. against pride) is avoided by connecting Obadiah with key biblical trajectories that find their fulfilment in the gospel of Jesus Christ. As with Jacob-Judah, God’s Chosen One (Jesus) is insulted, attacked and deceived by those closest to him, but in the end he is rescued, restored and vindicated, being given possession and rule. (Note that King Herod was an Edomite.) Application may be drawn out to those who are now united to Jesus, with the assurance that ‘whoever curses you I will curse’ (Gen 12:3, 2 Thess. 1:5-10). Christians can also be encouraged that, despite opposition, the Lord’s kingdom will advance and take over the world. For the international community, hope lies in blessing God’s Chosen One and his people; just retribution awaits those who do not.”
Quite.

Many of the churches we serve (and indeed, some of the para-church organisations we make use of) are registered charities. As such, recent events at some Christian and secular charities should make us sit up and take notice. This recent article in Evangelicals Now is essential reading for any charity trustee. I commend it strongly to you. I’m guessing that in the milieu of church life some of these issues are far removed from your personal radar, but if we are thinking wisely and clearly about our ministries, that should not be the case.

https://www.e-n.org.uk/2016/04/uk-news/kids-company-lessons-to-avoid-learning-the-hard-way/9fcfb/

Incidentially, this is one of the great values of a Christian newspaper. Not only does it help with Christian news (of course!) it can also add value in some of these other important areas that most of us would not have any expertise to grasp, nor know where to start even if we were able to identity issues. We’ve just done a recruitment exercise in church for EN, getting an additional 30 new subscribers. Well worth doing yourself, I would imagine!

We had a really good Cornhill+ study day with Garry Williams the other week and I’ve been meaning to post something that I found partiucularly helpful. He’s always good value – and he was very helpful on the constant need to let Scripture interpret Scripture.

He took as an example the biblical imagery of “God as a rock.” Imagine, he said, that a slip of paper had fallen from the sky simply saying “God is my rock” (Psalm 28). As a standalone statement it is open to extreme misinterpretation. We might deduce God has no life in him, for example, or that he gets in the way of things and so on.

Of course, we don’t do this because we understand that metaphors or statements about God tells us some things and not others. The richness of imagery is intended to create a complete set of self-interpreting set of images which need to be – at one level – taken in the round. One can only be understood in the light of all of the rest.

This has two implications for preaching. First, we have to know the Scriptures ourselves. We cannnot hope to interpret wisely and well unless we know the Scriptures to interpret the Scriptures. There is perhaps something here to convict us for Bible knowledge amongst Christians (and therefore, probably, among preachers) is in serious decline.

Second, perhaps this is more of what it means to preach the whole counsel of God: not primarily that we must tackle all the Bible in a systematic way not repeating anything until we have finally got around to Obadiah. Rather, we preach the Bible passage in front of us interpreted by the whole counsel of God.

And on that basis, God is my rock.

It’s time to start planning to come to the EMA this year. Over the last few years, we’ve tried to focus on topics that we think are essential for evangelical preachers. We’ve dealt with the work of the Spirit, engagement, the heart, Christian identity. This year’s topic is probably the least glamorous of them all but the most important: perseverance.
Too many preachers think they will simply keep going. The reality is very different. The dropout rate from ministry is as high as it has ever been. We set ourselves (and churches set us) unrealistic targets and working expectations. We get caught up in the worldly way of thinking about career. We indulge in a spot of Messiah-complex and convince ourselves we are out to save our world/nation/city/locality (delete as applicable) single-handedly.
What is going to stop you from falling away? Unless you have your head in the sand, you need to realise that this is a real and tangible risk – a statistical reality. We’ve planned this year’s programme to address precisely this issue.
And it’s teaching that everyone needs to hear. Those nearing the finish line need help to make it over: one final push. Those in the middle years need help to lift their heads and keep the pace. Those near the start need a dose of reality and an understanding that only in setting realistic patterns will they endure the next 50 years.
And of course all of this is done by fixing our eyes on the author and perfecter of our faith. So, above all, it is a conference about looking to Jesus. And that is certainly something we all need. Book now.

I’ve had the delight this week of preaching at my daughter’s wedding. Song of Songs, thanks for asking. It’s not an easy preaching gig, a wedding, though it is, of course, a delight. Part of the complexity comes from trying to do lots of things at the same time.
First, I’m wanting to bring a specific word to the couple in question. Second, I want to encourage other believers, whether married or not (if married, perhaps about their own marriages, if not, then about how they can support and pray for married couples). Third, I want to speak a word to unbelievers. And all of this in about a third of the time I would normally preach for and with a need to provide more “breathing space” than a regular sermon.
As I say, a tough gig, made more difficult by the fact that there are a lot of distractions. Most people are thinking about the happy couple and you’re just a blip on the landscape until the reception. It’s one of the reasons that I pass onto grooms some advice I first heard from the man Johnny Prime up at Enfield. He tells grooms that the talk their guests will really listen to is his, not the preachers. And so, although the preacher prepares assuming people will listen, it’s the groom’s speech where the gospel work can really be done.
I love this advice and use it liberally myself. But of course we still preach all out. And my 20 minute sermon (“at most,” says Mrs R) needs to do all I’ve described above whilst still being – at heart – a rigorous exposition. That means that prep time is about the same as for a longer more complex passage. It means more illustrations than usual. It means drawing sharp and clear lines of application, even more so than normal. It is a sermon on steroids in other words.

In the last week there have been two notable bits of media coverage of evangelicals in the UK. The first was a late night BBC documentary, the Battle for Christianity. It presented Christianity as battling to stay alive, but flourishing in some areas. Notably, these were all evangelical. The presenter, a now slightly liberal Pentecostal professor, Robert Beckford, did his best to present the hope for Christianity in its broadest terms, but it was a hopeless case. He pointed out that the only parts of the church flourishing were those that held often unacceptable moral views in our liberal society. He failed to join the dots on this connection and expressed a vain hope that evangelicalism might continue to grow, but his form of it, i.e. with a slightly more liberal approach to issues such as gay marriage – he quoted the now discredited research which shows that a large proportion of under 30s Anglicans supporting same sex marriage.
But, despite the Professor’s best efforts, the reality was there for all to see. The only full and growing churches were evangelicals (of various hues, it must be admitted) which took a conservative line on these moral issues. Join the dots!
The second piece of coverage was more broadly about Christianity. It was the annual survey in The Times on registered places of worship. Now, such a survey is almost completely meaningless for three key reasons. First, Anglicans are excluded from the survey. Second, it is only concerned with registered places of worship and many meeting halls and church buildings are not registered. Third, and perhaps most importantly, no distinction is drawn between the size of occupancy and the building. It could be 4,000 Christians in one place, it could be 4.
In other words, we must not draw too many conclusions from it (unlike The Times!). Nevertheless, there is one clear message because it gives a scale of churches closing (Methodist, Baptist, URC, even Catholic), Mosques growing, but Evangelical/Pentecostal churches also growing. In other words, it is clear where our Christian hope lies. Don’t give up.
Denomination/Buildings/Growth since 2010
Scientologist (11/100%)
Pentecostal (2,012/39%)
Hindu (213/30%)
Muslim (1,263/26%)
Buddhist (87/24%)
Evangelical (607/17%)
Sikh (256/7%)
Jewish (366/2%)
Other Christian (7,629/1.5%)
JWs (923/-1.5%)
Baptist (3,224/-1.8%)
Roman Catholic (3,558/-2.5%)
Friends (362/-3%)
Salvation Army (830/-3.2%)
Methodist (7,267/-6.3%)
URC (1,530/-8.4%)

I’ve just finished reading John Piper’s new book with The Good Book Company: Money, sex and power – living in the light. I’m always slightly sceptical about Piper books – I remember him being interviewed by Willie Philip once and saying “If you’ve read one of my books you’ve read them all.” There is some truth in that – but this one is different as it applies more rigorously. Perhaps it’s the focus of having three subjects to work with, but I appreciated the way he worked through each one.
They started as talks at the Co-Mission conference in 2015 and it’s quite possible to appreciate the sermonic and pastoral intent behind each subject. But just because they work as talks does not guarantee they work on paper, as anyone who has tried to make the transition knows. I’m very grateful then for those who helped make this happen.
There are three substantial sections on (no surprises) money, sex and power that we Western Christians need to hear. There is a useful closing chapter on realigning our focus back to Christ. All good. Solid, more than solid, in fact.

The talks from our recent Spring Wives conference are now online in both audio and video form. We had Rupert Bentley Taylor on Judges and Liz Cox on Hebrews. If you want a flavour of the main teaching at our conferences, this is a great place to start. Our summer wives conference is filling up, but there’s still some space (4-7 July). It’s for those whose husbands are just starting out in ministry. Next year’s spring wives conference runs from 6-9 March 2017 and there’s already been a flurry of bookings. It’s never too early to book, especially because planning to come is almost never straightforward but almost always worthwhile.

There is a sense in which the world is unambiguous in its hostility to Christ. We should not be surprised at this, nor clutch at straws when people say that they do things out of some kind of loyalty to “god” (whoever he may be for them). No, confronted with Christ, he becomes a stumbling block to those refuse to believe.
Nevertheless, we also believe in common grace so that the world is not as bad as it could be and individuals, though steeped in sin which affects every part of them, sometimes do good things. God is good. Dealing with this ambiguity – seeing God working good in those who are not good in relation to them – is not always straightforward.
Broadly speaking, some of us are far too accommodating of such moral “niceness”. Others (and perhaps this is more likely to be an evangelical trait) are far too critical and dismissive. We struggle to hold, in other words, the tension between common grace and saving grace.
I was thinking about this as I watched the BBC adaptation of The Night Manager. It was a very classy affair, and at £3m an episode, deserved to be. But what struck me most was the happy ending – everything resolved cleanly. I like John le Carre books (from which this is adapted). And one of the things I like most is he manages to maintain something of this ambiguity – his books are very thoughtful. The original ending to The Night Manager was much less clean (and, ironically, more redemptive, as one person sacrificed career to save another’s life).
Perhaps it’s because evangelicals live in Hollywood land that we expect everything to be so black and white. At one (spiritual) level they are. You are saved or you are not. But at the moral level at which the world operates, because of common grace, things are a lot greyer. That may make you frustrated, but in the end it is a good thing, for a world without common grace would be desperate indeed.

I mentioned yesterday that Naselli’s conclusion to the Perspectives book on the extent of the atonement is first class. That warrants a bit more explanation. He tries to summarise the argument whilst clearly holding one of the views strongly himself. He has a list of ten warnings which are worth repeating. Some obviously require further explanation, but you’ll have to buy the book for that! These are listed as ten ways to create unhealthy schism over the extent of the atonement.
1. Uncharitably denigrating other positions
2. Setting up and tearing down straw men
3. Viewing other evangelical views as heresy
4. Insufficiently defining a personal position
5. Claiming that a personal view is the result of exegesis and biblical theology but not systematic theology (this one perhaps warrants further explanation; everyone, says Naselli, has a structure of systematic theology)
6. Overemphasising the importance of the atonement’s extent
7. Assuming that only non Calvinists can tell a non-Christian “Jesus died for you”
8. Requiring that others adhere to a particular view when flexibility is appropriate
9. Giving the impression that complete understanding is possible regarding the extent of the atonement.
10. Holding a personal position with sinful pride.
Many of these could equally be applied to some other secondary discussions!