Introduction
As
a boy, I spent most of my weekends with my younger brother racing sailboats on
the Thames estuary, crewing for my dad. My role was to hang out of the boat in
an attempt to keep it upright, pull the jib in and let it out.
My
reward was to be constantly sprayed by cold, grey seawater every time the bow
powered into a wave, which was about every 5 seconds. O how I loved that icy
seawater trickling down my back, inside my wetsuit. And, as a special bonus, we
hardly ever won any races.
One
of the things I learned pretty early as sailing crew was to quickly duck and
immediately scramble over to the other side of the boat whenever I heard dad
shout the word “Jibe!”
That
basically means, “Watch out!” It signals that the boom (which is the horizontal
pole at the bottom of the main sail) was about to swing at great speed from one
side of the boat to the other. “Jibe” is a warning to avoid getting clattered
round the head and - worst case scenario - knocked unconscious into the sea.
But,
being at times a bit dreamy and vacant (no doubt wondering how much longer this
purgatory was to last until we got back onto dry land!) I did get a whack on the
side of my head on several occasions by a jibing boom, though it never quite
knocked me out. Yeah, I really loved sailing…
Watch Out
I
mention this not to evoke your pity but because we’re now at the end of our
series on Romans, and the dominant note in this last little section comes in v17
with an identical warning to the one my dad yelled out to me when we were
tacking against the wind; the key words are: “Watch out!” and “Avoid!”
What
do you think a young, growing Christian community would need to watch out for? Maybe persecution? Or could it be
about spiritual warfare; principalities and powers, strongholds and footholds?
The
sobering thing about today’s reading from God’s word is that the fiercest
battles are not “out there” but “in here”.
One
of the features of the conflict in Afghanistan – and this is why it was so challenging
and difficult – was the regularity with which insurgents infiltrated the local
police or armed forces. Then, once armed and on the inside, they would turn on
their colleagues and allies with a devastating attack.
And
the enemy that Paul warns about in Romans 16, before he signs off, is the one
that slips into the church like a wolf in sheep’s clothing to disrupt God’s
work. We have to constantly be on alert to a potential enemy within – which is that’s the deadliest type
of all.
Truth or Love?
We’ll
unpack all this in a moment, but first, let me tell you about two friends of
mine; Margaret and Patrick. They are real people and neither is from here.
Margaret
(from London) is just lovely. So positive. She’s gentle and affirming; if
you’ve got any kind of problem, she’ll love you through it. And she once said
to me something like this; “What we need more than anything in the church is
unity and love. People go on and on about doctrine. Truth has its place, don’t
get me wrong, but if I had to choose between love and truth, I’d take love
every time.”
Patrick
(from Paris) is nothing like Margaret. He’s austere and a bit abrasive. He’s
strict and particular. Newcomers take a while to work him out, and some never
really feel at ease when he’s around.
Patrick
says, “Peace, love and understanding, yeah, yeah, yeah. But this is not a hippy
colony! Look, only one thing has ultimate
value; the truth that Jesus died for your sins on the cross, there making
atonement for sin, without which we are eternally separated from God and damned
in hell – everything else is basically cosmetic.” You wouldn’t really call
Patrick ‘easy going.’
They
sound like caricatures – but, as I said, they are real people.
Well,
who’s right? Love or truth? Which of them do you incline towards the most? Is
it Margaret, where keeping
everyone together as a loving, united family is the number one priority, even at
the expense of an emphasis on truth?
Or is it Patrick, where the preciousness of sound,
apostolic teaching must come first, even at the expense of loving, affectionate
relationships?
What
does God say? Verse 17-18: “I urge you, brothers and sisters, to watch out
for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary
to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. For such people are
not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and
flattery, they deceive the minds of naive people.”
Margaret
would emphasise, “watch out for those who cause
divisions,” because what we need is unity.
Patrick would emphasise, “watch out for those
who put obstacles against the teaching you have learned” because what we
need is right teaching.
And,
of course, we want both, don’t we? It’s not a binary choice of one over the
other. It’s both/and which is actually
a difficult tension to hold. It always has been. People and churches tend to
lean one way or the other but God’s design for his church is that we are united
in love and unshakable in truth.
Just to say, we’re not talking about
disagreement about side issues. A few weeks back we saw, didn’t we, that God
wants us to really stretch ourselves and be tolerant of diversity on disputable
matters.
You can become so obsessed with detecting
doctrinal error that you lose your joy in biblical truth.
The American pastor and theologian John Piper
talks about “dogs that are trained so completely to sniff out drugs at the
airport, that even when they’re off duty they greet everybody that way. It
doesn’t make for a very welcoming atmosphere.” That’s my friend Patrick right
there.
The Truth and Nothing but the Truth
So lets’ really push the boat out to
accommodate different views on non-essentials. But when it comes to fundamentals,
right throughout the New Testament there is warning after warning to be very
cautious about theological novelty, new fads, fresh ways of looking at things that
don’t quite fit what God has already revealed.
We’re rooted in scripture, not whatever the
latest spiritual craze is. Our instinct has to be “What does God say?” In fact,
“What has God said?”
In Hebrews 13 it says, “Remember your leaders
who taught the word of God to you.” They didn’t make stuff up that they
thought you would like, or go along with whatever was fashionable; no, they
spoke from God because they were immersed in scripture.
That’s our authority, that’s our foundation;
it’s the word of God that is more powerful than any two-edged sword. It’s not
the opinions of men and women, however attractive they seem.
I heard this week about a man out walking
with this massive Doberman in the park. This animal looks like it hasn’t been
out for weeks and it’s straining at the leash, almost pulling its master’s arms
out of his sockets.
Someone passes him and says, “Where are you
taking that dog?” And the bloke shouts back, “Wherever it wants to go!” That’s
what happens to a church that is no longer anchored in biblical truth. You
don’t walk the dog anymore; the dog walks you.
And Paul wants to end his letter with this
warning; don’t let the dog take you wherever it wants to go.
What were the issues that Paul is alluding to
here? What’s he talking about? Who are these people to watch out for?
Verse 17: They cause schism and unrest. They
create obstacles. They promote ideas that are different to what the Bible
teaches.
There is such a thing as a doctrinal gold
standard, a faithful summary of biblical essentials. In 2 Timothy 1 Paul calls
it “the pattern of sound teaching” and “the good deposit that was entrusted to
you.” And it’s possible to depart from it – with disastrous consequences.
That brings us the two reasons Paul gives for
why doctrinal vigilance is so important. Verse 18: “For such people do not
serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and
flattery, they deceive the minds of naïve people.”
Bad teaching is not just unbiblical ideas
about God. Behind serious false teachers there is so often an craving for power
or luxury or sex or approval.
The letter of Jude shows this was a constant
battle in the early church. It says,
“Dear
friends… I felt compelled to… urge you to contend for the faith that the Lord
has once for all entrusted to us, his people. For certain individuals… have
secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace
of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign
and Lord.”
Some Issues
What was the kind of thing at stake here? There
were two issues in particular and they are exactly the same for us in Britain
today.
Firstly, the earliest Christians were hated
because they insisted that only Jesus was Lord. No one else. Whatever other
religious customs you observed before you came to faith in Christ had to go.
But that set them on a collision course with
the government and the general population. Because to be a good citizen, you
had to bow down to the Roman gods who were believed to keep the empire
prosperous. Christians said, “No, we cannot do that.” So, they were loathed and
called disloyal citizens.
In our day, to claim that Jesus is Lord, and
that he is the only way to the Father - as he himself claimed - will not win
you friends.
Many churchy people want to pick and mix. They like
buzz words like “inclusive” and “progressive.” They want “affirming.” They
don’t want “challenging” and they certainly don’t want “deny yourself, take up
your cross and follow me.”
They don’t want the Holy Spirit, they just want spirituality.
Keep it vague; a bit of mindfulness here, a few unicorns there, throw in some divine
consciousness and reiki and don’t forget green crystals.
That won’t wash. Where’s the cross? It is Christ or
nothing; it’s all of Christ or forget it. And that is not popular today.
Two years ago, the provost of Glasgow
cathedral allowed a Muslim woman to read from the Qur’an in the middle of a Holy
Communion service, something she would not generally be allowed to do in a
mosque. The verses that were read contained the assertion that Jesus is not the
Son of God, but merely a human prophet.
The newspapers that reported this tended to
criticise those who protested rather than those who allowed it.
In the USA many young Christians wear purity
rings (which go with a promise to practice abstinence until marriage). There’s
a Lutheran pastor there who swears a lot and calls Christians to discard these
rings so they can be melted down to form a giant genitalia sculpture. She’s
been invited as a main stage speaker at Greenbelt and in Southwark cathedral.
I say this because the earliest Christians also
stood out from the world because of their counter-cultural sexual ethics. Roman citizens commonly
had multiple sexual partners, including temple prostitutes, and wife swapping was
just routine. As Romans 1 shows, what Paul calls shameful lusts and unnatural
relationships were widely promoted and embraced. But Christian communities did
not live that way - and they were hated for it and suffered greatly.
The cultural values and pressures around us have
so much in common with those surrounding the first century church.
That’s why I’m full with hope actually. Why am
I hopeful? Because that small, marginalised, persecuted church not only survived,
it prevailed. And, in the end, it subdued the empire that had attacked it so
ruthlessly.
That didn’t happen because the early
Christians decided it would be better to blend in and avoid offence. The church
emerged victorious in the end because they refused to bow the knee to idols.
They refused to tolerate
strange new ideas and unbiblical fads that went against to the apostolic teaching they had received.
They said, Jesus is Lord, to the exclusion of all others. And they refused to
compromise on sexual purity.
How
to Resist
Paul
goes on to explain, “I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent
about what is evil.” In other words, keep your brain switched on, be
level-headed, check stuff out, don’t just swallow what someone says because
they’re on TV or write books. The Message translates it, “I want you to be
smart, making sure every ‘good’ thing is the real thing.”
What
about “Be innocent about what is evil?” It means, “Don’t fall for the sucker punch.
Don’t be easy to fool. Again, the Message translates it well; “Don't be
gullible in regard to smooth-talking evil.”
And,
v20, “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.” Do you need to
claim that today? Our spiritual enemy is getting beaten back every day by
Christ through believers like you and me wearing the full armour of God and declaring
the word of truth.
Ending
Well,
as I end, I was listening to a podcast with Kathie in the car this week, produced
by the church where Erin is doing her gap year. And the speaker was talking
about a married couple, whom he knows personally, and who minister to the
underground church in Iran.
They
take biblical literature in Farsi to believers who must meet secretly. They
daily risk their lives because if you get caught with a stash of Bibles in Iran,
you're in real trouble.
Anyway,
they’re driving along in their car with a boot full of Bibles, and they pull into
a petrol station to buy some bottled water. And waiting there by the door is a
mujahidin fighter, all dressed up in his combat gear.
The
woman says to her husband, “You’ve got to give that man one of our Bibles.” Well,
he stops the car, goes in, buys some water, gets back in the car and drives
off. She says, “Oi, what are you doing, driving off? You didn’t give that man a
Bible, did you?”
He
says, “Oh, it’s all right, don’t worry about it.” She says, “No, it’s not all
right; God has spoken to me and if you don’t go back and give that man a Bible,
his blood is on your hands.”
You’d
better not argue with a feisty, prophetic wife like that so, he does a three-point
turn, heads back to the petrol station, and says to his wife, “If this goes
badly, goodbye; I’ll see you in heaven.” Then he goes up to this guy, this fighting
man, armed with his Kalashnikov and says, “I have a gift for you. I want you to
have this Bible.”
As
he turns away, his heart in his mouth, he hears a sudden noise and, in that
fraction of a second, he thinks he’s been shot in the back. But once he realises
he is okay, he turns around and he sees this warrior has fallen to his knees, sobbing
as he clutches this Bible. Then he looks up and sees the man’s puzzled look and
says, “Three days ago, I had a dream, and in this dream a voice told me to come
here and wait and I would receive the words of eternal life.”
Watch
out for anyone who would seek to replace this with fine-sounding human wisdom
which cannot save. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.
Let’s
pray…
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 22 September 2019
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