Why I am a Christian (20)

Christian Fellowship Offers a Depth of Relationship I Have Not Enjoyed Elsewhere

In 2012 I jotted down all the reasons I could think of why I am a Christian. I found 26 so I decided to serialise them in a blog every fortnight for a year.

I have so far covered themes from the realms of science, philosophy and theology before looking at five different facets of Jesus (I could have explored many more). Then I looked at the inspiration, invincibility and influence of the Bible. This is the third of the last nine posts which are more personal and are based more on my experiences.

Every summer Kathie and I head off on holiday somewhere and we never fail to check out the nearest lively church to visit while we are away.

I suppose, being a church leader, I rarely get the opportunity to sit in the congregation and enjoy the service without feeling responsible if the preacher is a bit long (I always keep to time, believe me), or if the guitar is slightly out of tune (that could be mine to be fair) or if the projection of words onto the screen is distractingly slow. Or whatever... It’s a pleasant change when all that is someone else’s problem.

But what I love most about visiting other churches is that, wherever it might be on God’s Earth, and even though I probably don’t know a soul, I always feel like I am with my real family.

It doesn’t even matter if I can’t fully understand the language. I have worshipped with Japanese, Moroccan, Tamil, French and Filipino congregations and in each case I’ve barely understood a word. (I picked up French in the end but when we first moved to France, I was lost). 

No matter what the language might be, it hardly matters that the words are foreign to me. There is a language of heaven where mere vocabulary is secondary. There is a human connectedness in worship that goes deeper than the mind and the heart; it touches the soul of anyone who is alive to God through Jesus.

We used to sing a simple and delightful song when I was a church leader in France by Mady Ramos. I would love singing it because it articulates so guilelessly and so accurately what worshiping with other Christians feels like for me.

Moi, je suis dans la joie	I am so glad
Quand on me dit :	When people say to me:
‘Allons, allons à la maison de l'Éternel.’	‘Come on, let’s go to the house of the Lord.’
Là, sont réunis mes frères et mes amis,	This is where I find brothers, sisters, friends,
Tous les gens que j'aime,	All the people I love
Ceux qui me comprennent,	And who understand where I’m coming from.
C'est ici que je suis bien.	This is where I feel right.

I would sometimes look round at other members of the church as we sang it and the smiles on people’s faces assured me that I wasn’t alone in feeling that this is family. It’s where we can let the masks down, be ourselves and make mistakes in an atmosphere of love and acceptance. 

But I wonder. Isn’t this just a social phenomenon that works the same way in secular contexts? I know that people feel gladness and belonging when they meet up with friends in pubs and clubs. I do. I love the feeling of seeing people with whom I have a common interest.

Whenever I go to football matches it feels great to be part of a crowd cheering on my team and winding up the opposing fans. I love celebrating a goal or a penalty save – the feeling of elation, of solidarity, is thrilling. I love the banter with the opposing supporters as well. Singing “Is there a fire drill?” when my team go 4-0 up and they desert the stadium in disgust is a lot of fun.

But nothing compares with the strength of solidarity, the depth of friendship, the familial affection I have when I am with fellow believers. Everything else seems like a pale imitation.

I love it when someone becomes a Christian, or is baptized as an adult. In fact, few things bring me greater happiness. It is very similar of the birth of a baby. In a sense, that’s what it is. This is why Jesus described beginning a new life of Christian faith as being “born again.”

When people come to Christ, they are born into a family of brothers and sisters. Any church anywhere in the world is a gathering of spiritual siblings. You can travel to any part of the world and there you will find believers in Jesus Christ who know what you mean when you celebrate his greatness or lament over the things that grieve him. There is an amazing connection between Christians even before meeting up.

Of course, brothers and sisters sometimes fall out. Church members fall out as well sometimes. But they remain brothers and sisters. That’s one of the reasons Christians celebrate Holy Communion. When I partake of the Lord’s Supper, it is a reminder of the essential unity before God with my brothers and sisters. This is where we bury our pride, forgive one another, renew our love for each other and for Christ. There is a bond, a connection, a unity which transcends language, culture, tradition and experience.

We, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf (1 Corinthians 10.17).

I used to think that Christians were weird. When I was at Sixth Form College, I thought they were way too intense. I couldn’t understand why they would enjoy meeting together as a Christian Union and do boring things like study the Bible and sing songs seated in a circle. I felt a bit sorry for them, like they were a self-help group for born losers.

But after I became a Christian, I went to one of their meetings. I discovered that they were all quite normal. In fact, I found mostly that they were wonderful people with amazing stories to tell. I found that I could completely relate to them. I began to look forward to Christian Union meetings more than anything else in the week.

The New Testament has a word for the kind of close friendship that Christians live out and enjoy.

It’s usually translated “fellowship” or “life together.” In fact, the word is translated from the Greek koinonia which has many meanings and no single English word adequately express its range or depth. It comes from a word meaning “mutual” but it carries the sense of relationship, of joint participation in something with someone, of community, of sharing and even intimacy.

In Acts 2.44 and 45 it says: “All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.”

John Stott in his commentary on Acts describes these verses as “disturbing.” Maybe they are but I think there’s something about the renunciation of possessiveness that is liberating and exhilarating.

When I was at Bible College in 1988 we gave away our much loved Citroen 2CV to a poor and hungry fellow student. His need was greater than ours and God had already provided us with the funds for the larger model we needed for our expanding family.

In 2008, about 6 months before we left Paris, a member in my church came up to me and said, “We’re getting a new car. Would you like our old Mercedes!? You can sell it when you leave for England. We want to bless you.” So you plant a Deux Chevaux and 20 years later you reap a Merc! It was not a brand new model but we felt like royalty driving around in it!

I mention this just to make the point that they are not isolated incidents. Because of the love there is between believers in Christ I have discovered that it is not all that rare for Christians to voluntarily give away books, washing machines, furniture, cars, even property – you name it – when they could have sold them and kept the money. I find that many Christians are incredibly generous.

I’ve known Christians struggling to pay their bills checking the mail and finding anonymously posted envelopes full of banknotes. And, given the nature of the thing, I’m sure there’s a lot that goes on that no one ever hears about. I just love being a member of God's people.

No wonder pagan observers of the first Christians are recorded to have said, “Look, how they love one another and how they are ready to die for each other.”

Especially in the West, people can sometimes fall into the trap of imagining that being a Christian is just “me and Jesus.” But there are 44 different “one another’s” in the New Testament. The church is a group of people who are commanded to love one other, forgive one another, mutually encourage one another, spur one another on, carry each other’s burdens, accept one another, hold one another accountable, admonish one another, build one another up, bear with each other and so on.

There is virtually nothing in the New Testament about self-fulfilment. Christians are not voluntary members of a special interest club, still less a motley aggregate of individuals with private beliefs. Christians are citizens of a new community.

The Christian community is one in which my fellow believers and I can talk about things that really matter in our lives. When Christian community works like it is designed to – koinonia – people get real. That’s when people can ask me and I them “How are you really?”

It is a depth of authentic friendship I have not experienced anywhere else – even amongst my own family members who are not Christians. 

That’s the 20^th reason I am a Christian. It’s special belonging to the biggest, happiest, craziest, most diverse family in the world. It’s my real family and the key to my true identity; a child of God with brothers and sisters as numerous as the grains of sand on the shore and the stars in the sky.

Why I am a Christian (19)

Revivals Around the World Attest to the Continuing Power of the Gospel

In 2012 I jotted down all the reasons I could think of why I am a Christian. I found 26 so I decided to serialise them in a blog every fortnight for a year.

I have so far covered themes from the realms of science, philosophy and theology before looking at five different facets of Jesus (I could have explored many more). Then I looked at the inspiration, invincibility and influence of the Bible. This is the second of the last nine posts which are more personal and are based more on my experiences.

One of my favourite subjects is revival.

In April this year, reports started circulating about some unusual and exciting goings-on in a Pentecostal fellowship called Victory Church in Cwmbran, South Wales. In one of their midweek prayer meetings (10th April) a man called Paul, who had been wheelchair-bound and in constant pain for ten years following a road traffic accident, was suddenly and dramatically healed, following prayer for his condition. The 70 or so people who were there looked on startled before bursting into spontaneous applause and cheering as Paul picked up his wheelchair, held it high above his head and began to walk around the church.

On 15th May I made the four-hour journey down to Cwmbran with a couple of friends to experience for myself the ongoing excitement in that place. For over a month they had been seeing dozens of people converted to Christ every night, often with an accompanying and immediate release from depression, self-harm, addictions and so on. It is still continuing at the time of writing this in late August.

When I got there half an hour before the meeting started, I was surprised to see that a long queue had formed. I had never before seen a crowd of people queuing for up to an hour to get into church. There were enthusiastic cheers and a gentle, orderly surge to get in to the auditorium as soon as the doors opened. It felt a bit like the January sales!

Inside, there was nothing particularly lovely about the building - rather the opposite; it is a functional, modern, converted retail outlet. There was nothing especially amazing about the band and nothing out of the ordinary about the presentation and preaching. They were good, and I appreciated them, but it was honestly nothing exceptional. So I was impressed when a short, simple, unadorned, almost restrained presentation of the Gospel was met immediately by about twenty people leaving their seats to go forward and commit their lives to following Christ.

I have to say that the atmosphere was passionate and intense but there was no crowd manipulation, no theatrics, no pressure and certainly no big appeal for money. I want to insist that what I experienced was nothing to do with hype or a worked-up atmosphere.

The basic difference between what I experienced there and what I usually experience in church was an increased awareness of God’s presence. It’s very difficult to explain or describe. The presence of God is something you encounter on a deeper level than thoughts and feelings.

Later in the meeting, another decent but unremarkable talk, without notes, from Leviticus 14 brought a conviction of sin upon virtually everyone there, including me. At the invitation, hundreds came forward seeking cleansing from God through the blood of Christ. I suppose it was the vividness of knowing I needed forgiveness from God and should eagerly ask for it that was most unusual. It was one of those few times in life when, in trying to put something into words for someone, I’d say “To be honest, you’d really have to be there to understand what I’m talking about.”

Every six weeks or so at Victory Church they baptize a group of 50-100 new believers. There have been further reports of remarkable, unexplained healings as the thing they call “The Welsh Outpouring” continues to roll on. Their church website claims “Hundreds have come in as atheists, backslidden, lost, addicted, rich, poor, confused, self-harming etc and gone out loving Jesus as He has reached them.”

What they are experiencing in Cwmbran is not a movement on the scale of a great revival or awakening, and they acknowledge this openly. But being there gave me an idea of what a full-scale revival - an amplified version of the outpouring in Cwmbran - must be like.

The Baptist theologian John Piper in his book A Godward Life wrote about revival, defining it as “The sovereign work of God to awaken his people with fresh intensity to the truth and glory of God, the ugliness of sin, the horror of hell, the preciousness of Christ's atoning work, the wonder of salvation by grace through faith, the urgency of holiness and witness, and the sweetness of worship with God's people.”

That’s quite an event! And every now and again, quite unpredictably, though usually after a season of sustained intercessory prayer, revival breaks out somewhere on Earth. Here are some examples:

- In the 16th Century, the Reformation spread like a wildfire throughout Europe as thousands became alive to God through discovering the magnificent doctrine of justification by faith.

- The brutally persecuted Camisards in 17th Century France grew exponentially; from nowhere, they rapidly accounted for 10% of the population of France. They rediscovered spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues and healing; some of their infants would prophesy while they could barely walk.

- The Great Awakening associated with Jonathan Edwards in New England (1730s and 1740s) was an important movement in which people en masse cried out to God, begging for mercy such was their heightened awareness of the immediate danger of hell and the urgent necessity of being saved through faith in Jesus.

- The Methodist Revival, marked by John Wesley’s inspirational preaching and Charles Wesley’s rousing hymns, changed the face of 18th Century Britain. It has often been said that this revival, accompanied by the sweeping social reforms of Christian visionaries like Lord Shaftesbury and William Wilberforce, saved Britain from the kind of political turmoil that resulted in the blood-soaked, anti-theist French Revolution across the channel.  

- The 1905 Welsh Revival, (some date it to 1904) associated with former collier Evan Roberts, was a sweeping movement in which the pubs emptied and the chapels swelled in a matter of months. 100, 000 people were converted in less than a year. Crime came to a virtual standstill. Councils held emergency meetings to discuss what to do with the police who had nothing to do all day. The number of children born outside of marriage dropped 44% within a year of the beginning of the revival. It is said that the ponies that worked down the mines were confused and didn’t know what to do as they were used to responding to daily physical brutality and hearing orders in foul language. Both fell into rapid disuse as miners were converted in droves.

The Azusa Street Church at the centre of the 20th Century Pentecostal Movement

- The Azusa Street Outpouring in April 1906 grew rapidly into the fastest growing religious movement on Earth; Pentecostalism. Thousands of church leaders from all over the world visited Azusa Street between 1906 and 1908 and exported this fiery, passionate expression of Christianity everywhere they went. There are over 500 million Pentecostals and Charismatics today and the movement is still growing fast.

- The East African Revival of the 1920s and 30’s which dramatically altered the spiritual landscape of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania and Congo, and the Argentinian revival in the 1970s which transformed sections of society, starting with the prisons are two other well-documented examples. There are dozens more.

- A friend of mine from the Church Mission Society recently visited Nepal and reported that the church is doubling in size in that country every two and a half years. It has gone from practically nobody to over one million people in just sixty years.

- Then what about South Korea? After years of bloody persecution, the church grew sharply post Second World War as this BBC report shows. According to the Korean Overseas Information Service, before 1945 approximately 2% of the Korean population was Christian. By 1991, less than half a century later, the figure had ballooned to 45%.

- China too has experienced extraordinary revival, with reports of amazing healings, even resurrections, since the outlawing of Christianity by the Communists. Brother Yun’s book The Heavenly Man documents the cruel suffering of some Chinese Christians and the spectacular growth of the underground church there. According to Brook Lee writing in the World Policy Journal in 2012, the Chinese government acknowledges the existence of 14 million Christians in China, but it is widely believed that there are at least 70 million more than that. In fact, there are more disciples of Jesus Christ in Communist China today than there are members of the Communist Party.

What all this says to me is that the gospel is still just as potent as it ever was when, in the first three centuries A.D., it took on the mighty Roman Empire, got absolutely battered with wave after wave of oppression and persecution - and then came out on top.

The gospel has extraordinary power to turn society’s greatest ills on their head by changing lives. And sometimes, this occurs in a sweeping movement that not even the hardest opponent, the most defiant society or the most resistant government can suppress. The gospel is unstoppable, especially so in times of revival.

There is no way in my mind that, during these revivals, the numerous conversions are just the result of heightened emotions and mass manipulation, and that the healings associated are just psychosomatic, and that the resulting impact on society is just lots of people trying hard to be nice at the same time.

It seems to me that revivals are a sovereign work of God that demonstrate his supremacy and amazing grace, affording the world a temporary glimpse of both. In a sense, revivals are a foretaste of heaven.

This is the nineteenth reason I am a Christian. 

And I think it’s telling that you never really hear sceptics bothering to research this amazing phenomenon, still less venturing to offer an explanation for it. I seem to read scoffing remarks every week about "no evidence." Well, here's exhibit (a).

All my Christian life I have prayed for renewal and revival; renewal for the church and revival for the world. I have probably heard hundreds of prayers for this in every church I have belonged to. It remains a deep yearning in my soul.

Lord, I have heard of your fame;
I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord.
Repeat them in our day,
in our time make them known;
in wrath remember mercy.

(Habakkuk 3.2)

Oh, that the church would wake up! And oh, that the world would taste and see how good the Lord is!

Why I am a Christian (18)

Watching Christians Die Confident and Unafraid Is Inspirational

In 2012 I jotted down all the reasons I could think of why I am a Christian. I found 26 so I decided to serialise them in a blog every fortnight for a year.

I have so far covered themes linked with science, philosophy and theology before looking at five different facets of Jesus (I could have explored many more). Then I looked at the inspiration, invincibility and influence of the Bible.

These last nine posts are more personal and are based on my experience. As I’ve said before, my conversion was experiential - emotional even - and I only came to think through the logic of my faith afterwards. I would have said when I was 17 that I am a Christian because I have experienced something like nothing else I have ever known. That hasn’t changed. But I say now that I am a Christian first of all because I think Christianity is true, and I think that there is good circumstantial evidence to support it. Only secondly do I say that I’m a Christian because it works for me.

But work for me it certainly does. My experience of Christ is real. He is not like an imaginary friend (though I struggled to make friends as a child I never invented one) nor is it like Father Christmas or the tooth fairy or anything of the sort. I worked out that these were fictitious at the age of about 6 and Kathie and I resolved never to mislead our children by encouraging them to believe they were real. 

The first thing from my personal experience that inclines me to being a Christian comes from accompanying Christians in their final days and being involved in their funerals.

The Baptist preacher David Pawson sometimes speaks about a man he knew in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire who was told that he had only a few weeks to live. He took the news calmly, thanked the doctor and returned home. He then sent out invitations to all his non-Christian friends. The invitations read “Come and stay with me. Come and see how a Christian dies!”

I have had the privilege of visiting Christians who know that their battle with serious illness is going to result in death. Generally, they don’t feel that “beating cancer” means staying alive. As John Piper puts it in his little booklet Don’t Waste Your Cancer “Satan designs to destroy our love for Christ. God designs to deepen our love for Christ. Cancer does not win if we die. It wins if we fail to cherish Christ.”

I remember vividly one woman smiling gently and saying to me: “I don’t much care for leaving my friends just now but I’m not afraid at all. I know I’m going to a wonderful place.” I would travel to see her wondering what I might say that might be of any comfort. I would come home feeling that the visit had been more beneficial to me than to her.

Her funeral was a tremendous celebration of her life but it contained an appropriate expression of our grief at parting. The abiding memory for me was a rousing “There is a Redeemer” – a song she had specifically requested.

When I stand in glory

I shall see His face

And there I’ll serve my King forever

In that holy place

Christian funerals have a quality about them that is unique. What I mean here is funerals arranged for committed Christians rather than funerals with Christian elements for people who have only the vaguest notions of the Gospel and probably haven’t been near a church since their wedding or baptism. In genuine Christian funerals - yes, there are tears but they are usually a release of emotion and gratitude, not bitterness and not anger. Overwhelmingly there is a sense of victory, of triumph, of homecoming.

And in Christian writing, death is often referred to as sleep – something to wake up from refreshed in the light of a brand new day.

“Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.”

(I Thessalonians 4.13-14)

Another beautiful death happened about a year earlier; another woman with a strong and radiant faith. On her death bed, she gathered friends round and lifted her voice in praise with them in the week she died. I’m told they exhausted the entire hymn book and felt uplifted, grateful and full of joy as they sung happily of Christ’s incomparable glories and grace.

Strangely enough, about halfway between those two deaths, I was asked to visit a man who was not a Christian but who wished to see a priest before dying. He was quite frail when I saw him. He had been a critic of Christianity and had evidently made decisions in his life that he now regretted. I noticed Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion in his bookshelf; though it was full of books, the spine of that book caught my eye among the other volumes.

He was resigned to the inevitability of death, somewhat forlorn and manifestly not at peace. That’s why he had asked to see me. We talked for about an hour, mostly about matters personal to him, and he accepted my offer to pray with him at the end. Though he was evidently wealthy, it was quite pathetic that he had only recently seemed to realise that he wasn’t able to take anything with him. As they say, there’s no prize for being the richest man in the cemetery. It was remarkable how a sense of stillness and grace settled in the room as we prayed. I think he felt it too but I do not know whether he made his peace with God before he died. I hope so.

In the Anglican Service of Ordination, the Bishop reads a list of things that newly ordained ministers are expected to do and it includes “they are to minister to the sick and prepare the dying for their death.” I have found it a great honour to accompany people at the end of life and I am rarely unmoved by the experience. It is, in short, an inspiration to my faith in Christ and it affirms his authority over death in my experience.

I am in good company. The British historian and author A. N. Wilson became a cause celebre amongst sceptics when his withering attacks on Christianity followed his embracing of atheism. But around April 2009, Wilson stunned his readers by returning to Christianity, celebrating Easter at his local church. He wrote about his U-turn in the Daily Mail and I understand exactly where he is coming from:

“My own return to faith has surprised none more than myself… my belief has come about in large measure because of the lives and examples of people I have known, not the famous, not saints but friends and relations who have lived and faced death in light of the resurrection story, or in the quiet acceptance that they have a future after they die.”

This summer, I read Simon Guillebaud's book Dangerously Alive. It's a collection of diary entries and newsletters from his time as a frontier missionary in genocidal Burundi, at that time (1998-2009) the most dangerous place to live on Earth. The scale of human depravity recorded in that book makes for sobering reading. But Guillebaud, along with other Christian ministries like Scripture Union, Tearfund, Youth for Christ and Partners Trust International, made a huge humanitarian and spiritual impact on that country, most of the time in peril of his own life. Here's one passage that is typical:

"I sped around the bend in the road on my motorbike, but quickly scrambled to a stop, surprised to see a figure in the middle of the road, just ahead of me. He was holding a grenade in his hand, ready to blow me up. I knew this for a fact - he had made his intentions clear two days before when he'd written saying he was going to cut out my eyes. I'd had sleepless nights over the threat, of course, but I'd gone to stay at someone else's place for a while and was varying my routes around town so that he wouldn't know where to lie in wait for me. My guard waved at me - a pre-arranged sign not to approach. This was both surreal and yet chillingly real. God, what on earth shall I do? If it has to be, I'm ready to die. Let's go..."

For me, to live is Christ; to die is gain. (Philippians 1.21).

Put alongside the vacuous nihilism expressed by Bertrand Russell before his death, it is no surprise which philosophy draws me and which one leaves me cold. Russell said: "There is darkness without and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendour, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment, and then nothing."

Oh wow…

In a recent book, leading atheist French philosopher Luc Ferry reflects on what death means.

“The truth is, when we admit the difficulty common to all philosophies, that none of them really have an answer to the question of death... On the other hand, the Christian religion really does have an answer to this question. Without hesitation, it promises the resurrection of our soul and our body, so that we will meet our loved ones again after death. The philosopher does what he can but it’s only a stop gap measure, making the best of a bad job by talking about the beauty of renouncing immortality, of being part of the cosmos so that our atoms will continue to exist... The originality of the Christian message is that individuals are no longer mortal. It is not just the fear of death which has been defeated but death itself.”

Well, yes. Christians do not hope against hope when it comes to death. The Bible teaches that people are saved from hell and eternal death not on the basis of what they have done but on the basis of what Christ has done.

As John Wesley said of his conversion experience: “I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” (My emphasis).

That’s why Christians have assurance of salvation and perfect peace in death.

That’s why a young, pretty mother-of-two Rachel Barkey was able to speak so confidently just four months before her untimely death from cancer at the age of 37 in 2009. Here is a video link to her final speech. As you can see in the video, she is not in denial; she is clearly emotional about having to leave her husband and children so soon. But the overwhelming theme of her address is gratitude. 

This is the way I want to die whenever the time comes. And that’s the 18^th reason I am a Christian.

How do you want to die? Please don’t live in denial by constantly putting the question to the back of your mind. And where's the wisdom in putting off thinking about all this until old age sets in?

None of us knows for sure when our life will end. If yesterday was an average day, 150,000 people died. I'm guessing most of them had plans for the following week...

Unwavering on Priorities for Life (Nehemiah 13.1-31)

Introduction

And so, as we approach the completion of the renovation work on the roof, we reach the end of the book of Nehemiah. After all the opposition Nehemiah faced, the wall was built and the people recommitted themselves to the Lord.

All that remains now in the final chapter is to hear about how they all lived happily ever after. But that’s not what we find when we read it. We find compromise. We find disobedience. We find backsliding.

When I was putting this teaching series together, I was tempted at first to stop at chapter 12. I wanted to end on a high. But I felt the Lord rebuke me. Chapter 13 is there for a reason and it contains a serious warning we need to hear.

Raymond Brown puts it well in his commentary when he writes this; “Nehemiah’s closing chapter shows how easily the most spiritual community can find its standards subtly eroded as it gradually accommodates to the pressures of contemporary worldliness.”

Yes, the roof is as good as done, the money has come in and we’re going to recommit ourselves to the Lord and celebrate a month from now. There’s a feel good factor to that – but we are still in a spiritual battle and the fight will go on until the Lord returns.

Did you know that flat tyres on your car are rarely due to a sudden puncture? Most tyres lose one or two pounds of air a month in cold weather, and slightly more in warmer weather, due to a process called permeation, which is when air escapes through tiny openings in the valves and by the wheel rim. So you’ve got to keep inflating your tyres.

Similarly, spiritual decline is rarely due to some big crisis. It’s what happens when the Church gradually becomes complacent.

In chapter 10, you’ll remember, the people had made four promises. They pledged to submit to God’s Word, they vowed to shun spiritual compromise, they agreed to support God’s work and they promised to keep the Sabbath special.

And after that, Nehemiah returned to his home in Persia. We don’t know how long it was before he came back to Jerusalem again but sadly, by the time he did in chapter 13, each one of those four promises had been broken and things were in disarray.

Now, as it happens, each one of these four areas threatens to shift us too into spiritual decline like a slowly deflating tyre. These are warnings for us. So let’s look at them in turn.

1) Obeying God’s Word (v1-3 and v23-28)

The first concern is obedience to God’s word and it comes up at the beginning of the chapter and at the end of it.

The specific issue here was that members of God’s people were intermarrying with foreigners.

Let me say right away that this has nothing to do with ethnic prejudice. In Deuteronomy 10.18 it says “God defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.” 

God loves the foreigner.

The first three verses of Nehemiah 13 are a reference to Deuteronomy 23.3-5. It is not a blanket ban on marrying foreigners but refers only to the Moabites and Ammonites; two nations who were bitter enemies of Israel. It’s a specific warning to stay away from particular people who are bent on evil.

It isn’t even a blanket ban on intermarrying with them. You’ll remember that Ruth was from Moab and she did marry into the people of God and even became an ancestor of the Lord Jesus. But, crucially, she had said to Naomi, her mother-in-law “Your God shall be my God.” She ditched her Moabite idols and became a member, by faith, of God’s covenant community.

The problem in Nehemiah is that the opposite was happening. God’s people were inviting cultures that are adamantly opposed to the things of God into their community. The children born to these mixed marriages were growing up more at home with pagan ideas than with the ways of God’s chosen people.

Do we want our children to be more at home with the values of the world than with those of the kingdom, having never tasted the goodness of the Lord? Those of you who are parents; your children will never have a heart for God if they don’t see that you have.

But the community in Nehemiah 13 started to say “We don’t need to obey the word of God. It's too strict. It's harsh. Let’s supplement it with our good ideas and human wisdom.” And so they went into spiritual decline.

Whenever I see Christians indulge in doctrinal compromise, as sure as eggs is eggs, it’s only a matter of time that they’ll slide into moral indifference and end up spiritually lukewarm.

Whenever churches downgrade the Bible they head towards decay and irrelevance.

All the great revivals - from the mighty 16^th Century Reformation to the Great Awakening in New England, to the Methodism that changed the face of 18th Century Britain, to the 1905 Welsh revival and Azusa Street Pentecostal outpouring to the East African revival of the 1920s and 30’s - all of them held to the inspiration and authority of Scripture.

You see, Hosea 14.9 says “the ways of the Lord are right.” They’re right. So the Holy Spirit always blesses obedience to the right Word he inspired and he is always grieved when it is resisted.

Incidentally, if anyone asks you the difference between Ezra and Nehemiah, it’s that Ezra pulled out his own hair when his people intermarried with pagan nations (Ezra 9.3) and Nehemiah pulled out other people’s (Nehemiah 13.25). The Bible tells you the truth - some leaders pull their own hair out and some leaders, sadly, pull out other people’s. I think you can tell what kind of leader I am just by looking at me!

2) Refusing Compromise in the Church (v4-9)

If the first issue was disobedience to God’s word in the home, the second is spiritual compromise in the church.

Nehemiah returns from Persia to find that a large temple storeroom has been emptied of its supplies and one of the enemies who had given God’s people so much grief in chapters 2-6 has moved in. This man Tobiah, let me remind you, had been a constant thorn in Nehemiah’s side and now he is lounging around in the temple making himself at home.

Now obviously, we’re not going to shift the communion table and Bibles and band instruments into the garage to make space for the nearest pagan druid to move in. But don’t be deceived. There are clear parallels for us.

This is like what happens when the church begins to gradually accommodate things it would have once found totally unacceptable. Before you know it, the standards of the world get a stronghold on our thinking and decision making.

This is like what happens when legalism begins to take the place of grace in the life of the church. All these regulations and procedures, making religious accessories central instead of decorative, wearing the right clothes and observing certain rules to try an appease God instead of coming to Christ and living in him. God forbid that we should ever prefer the religion of the Pharisees to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is like when we allow impurity and worldliness to stifle the joy and the freedom of the Holy Spirit out of our lives.

What did Nehemiah do? He did what Jesus did to the money changers in the temple courts. He started throwing furniture around. In v8-9 Nehemiah showed Tobiah the door, threw his sofa, his pots and pans and his TV set into the street. He had the room disinfected so that no one could even smell his after-shave after he left. Then he had everything put back in its proper place.

We’ve got to make sure that the enemy of the gospel is just as unwelcome here. Everything that is not life-giving and that undermines the work of the Holy Spirit has got to be shown the door. And everything that properly belongs to God’s house has to be restored to its rightful place. This is a house of prayer, a place of healing not a centre for accusation and condemnation.

3) Giving for God’s Work (v10-14)

The third issue Nehemiah had to sort out was giving.

With £60,000 of our total for the roof project coming from the pockets of this congregation – on top of regular giving to finance the work of this church (not to mention support for the mission trips to Chester and Tijuana Mexico last year) I hardly need labour the theme of generosity. When we give to God, we are just taking our hands off what already belongs to Him. Most people here understand that.

But in my pastoral work, including here, I’ve often heard tales of woe from people who are struggling with debt and financial strain. In not one case, not one, has someone told me it’s because they overextended themselves in charitable giving.

Over and over again, and I’ve found this in my own life, and I have no idea how it works, but the more people give gladly to the Lord’s work, the more they find themselves blessed and the less they find themselves wondering how they’re going to get to the end of the month.

We need to give to God what's right - not what's left. This generation in Nehemiah 13 were giving God what was left, if anything was left.

And here's what was happening: the Levites were temple servants and they had no source of income except the tithes from the eleven other tribes. But things had drifted. Verses 10-14 show us that when Nehemiah got back he found half the Levites, away from the temple, out on the farm, making ends meet. The Lord’s work wasn’t getting done because the people were neglecting to support the Levites with their tithes.

In Christ we are under grace, not law. Giving is not a heavy obligation, it’s a holy opportunity. We are free to give more. The New Testament teaching is that those who serve in the church deserve a respectable wage and it ought to be enough to supply their needs. They shouldn’t have to struggle or consider leaving just because fellow believers who benefit from their ministry don’t adequately assess and meet their needs.

Now I know we live in the real world and since the banking crisis the world’s economy has stagnated - but our paid staff here have had one, modest, under-inflation pay rise in four years (and I am not talking about myself as my remuneration is handled nationally).

With the roof project now almost behind us, I think we should look at this area as a church in the light of what God says to us in this chapter.

Our financial giving often reflects our wholeheartedness – or our half-heartedness. Or even our hard-heartedness. Our giving authenticates our devotion to Christ – or it contradicts it. Let me encourage you to look realistically and radically at your giving again as I promise you I will.

As the New Testament says, “Just as you excel in everything, see that you excel in this grace of giving.”

4) Honouring the Sabbath (v15-22)

The last issue Nehemiah had to deal with was the violation of the Sabbath. Instead of setting aside Saturday as a day for rest and worship, as God had commanded, people were living as on any other day, producing, manufacturing, travelling, buying and selling.

Now, again, we are not under the Law of Moses. Christ has fulfilled that for us. He castigated the Pharisees for their burdensome, nit-picking attitude to the Sabbath. If your donkey falls into a pit, for goodness’ sake pull it out!

It’s not a sin to nip into the shop on the way home and get a bottle of wine to go with lunch. If the Lord has called you to work in the emergency services or caring professions it’s not wrong to take your turn and work your share of Sunday shifts.

But on this day I believe every Christian should want to gather together with other believers and worship Christ and make every reasonable effort to do so. And not out of grim obligation but because you love Jesus and want to honour him above everything and everyone else that competes for your affections.

If you are spiritually healthy, gathering with other believers for worship will be a no-brainer top priority for you. If you’re really converted to Christ and serious about making him Lord of your life, it will be the first thing in your diary. And if you have children, training them to put Christ before everything else will be great investment in their future.

Sunday is the weekly anniversary of Christ rising from the dead: the New Testament says “set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth.”

Ending (v29-31)

And so we reach the last verses of Nehemiah. And what a strange way to end!

“I also made provision for contributions of wood at designated times, and for the first fruits. Remember me with favour, my God” (v31).

And that’s it. It’s abrupt. It doesn’t even say they all lived happily ever after. It’s hardly what you’d call ending with a flourish is it?

So let me finish by saying this; we are moving towards a moment when history will suddenly end. The New Testament tells us that we shall be working, like Nehemiah was making provision for contributions of wood, and suddenly the Lord Jesus will be here. Finished!

Jesus said it will be like in the days of Noah; people will be marrying, buying, selling, working and then suddenly that will be it! It will all be over. You might say “Well, can’t I just finish the extension on the house? Don't we get to see who wins the FA Cup or Strictly Come Dancing?" No we don't. "Or does that mean my holiday is cancelled next week?” Yes it does.

It won’t be at the climax of some vast international conference. His return won't be announced by a vast choir who will have been rehearsing for weeks.

No! There will be no more time to change your mind. Jesus will be back.

“Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done… Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! (Revelation 22.12 and 20).

Let’s pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 25th August 2013

Why I am a Christian (17)

The Message of the Bible Touches and Changes Lives

In 2012 I jotted down all the reasons I could think of why I am a Christian. I found 26 so I decided to serialise them in a blog every fortnight for a year.

I have so far covered themes linked with science, philosophy and theology before looking at five different facets of Jesus (I could have explored many more). Now I am looking at the Bible.

Having marvelled at the extraordinary unity of its message and its impressive resilience, the thing that most stands out for me about the Bible – and the seventeenth reason I am a Christian – is its power to change the lives for the better of people who read it with an open mind.

I once knew an old American man called Frank who married and settled in France after serving in the U.S. Army in the Normandy landings. If you’ve seen the film Saving Private Ryan, you’ll have a graphic idea of the carnage he survived as he made his way up Omaha Beach on 6th June 1944. Each soldier in that operation had been issued a pocket New Testament. Frank tucked his into the breast pocket of his shirt and forgot about it.  

As a young man, by his own admission, Frank was a fairly cynical, hard swearing, heavy drinking kind of guy with no time for spiritual things. But shortly after that harrowing battle to breach the Nazi defences just north of Colleville-sur-Mer everything changed.

Frank still had that same New Testament some sixty years after D-Day; it was just about intact but was badly damaged. It had in fact been the shield that stood between an enemy bullet hitting him straight through the heart. Between assault battles Frank began to read the damaged pages of his little pocket New Testament and it started a surprising journey of faith for him.

Why does the Bible change lives? Over the years, people have found that it confronts, provokes and convicts them. It soothes, assures and consoles troubled hearts. It brings guidance, wisdom, light and peace of mind to enquiring minds. It fires up the spiritual side of people in gratitude and joy, nourishing faith and bringing health to the soul.

I’ve found that so many of those who read it often and take heed of what it says are people who “have it together.” As Charles H. Spurgeon once put it “A Bible that’s falling apart usually belongs to someone who isn’t.”

There are many people I could write about whose lives have been totally turned round just by reading the Bible and believing its message but I am going to have to be savagely selective.

I love the story of Elliott Osowitt. Born into a liberal Jewish family, Elliott worked in the tourism industry and his frequent travels away from home led him to years of what he calls “loose living and immorality.” Things unravelled in his domestic life until he lost control. One of his two daughters started to get into trouble and ended up in prison during that time. On Christmas Eve 1996 his wife Polly, fed up with the impact her husband’s lifestyle was having on their children, threw him out of the house.

Elliott, depressed and disconsolate as he reflected on the mess his life had become, was going to turn a gun on himself in his motel room that night. Before he did though, he noticed an open Gideons Bible laying on the television set.

"When I looked at it,” he says, “I thought who needs that and I threw it on the floor. It fell on the floor and it still stayed open, like it was beckoning me. It really made me mad, so I kicked it, but it hit this wooden box frame under the bed and popped back on the floor."

So he picked the book up and was about to hurl it at the wall when he glanced down and saw a verse from the Gospel of John. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid (John 14.27).

Inexplicably, Elliott stopped and welled up. That night began a long process of change and healing that eventually led to reconciliation with his entire family and his life getting back on track. “Although God is still doing a work in my family and me, we are now a recovering, reconciled, restored, and most of all, a resurrected family” he says. Elliott Osowitt now leads a church called Faith Fellowship in Jefferson, North Carolina. That’s what I mean when I say that the message of the Bible touches and changes lives.

Then consider Richard Taylor. There are remarkable parallels between his and Elliott’s stories though they come from very different backgrounds. As a teenager growing up without a father figure in his life, Richard lived an existence of crime and drug addiction in South Wales for which he served several sentences in H.M. Prison Swansea. One night, in jail awaiting trial, he picked up the Gideons Bible that had been placed in his cell and tore out a page to roll a cigarette. This is how he explains what happened next:

“I opened the Bible randomly and tore out a page and made myself a roll-up. I struck the match, but suddenly, I found that I had an inner voice that I wasn’t used to hearing. It said ‘This is all wrong, I should be reading this, not putting a match to it.’ I blew the match out, unrolled the page, and began to read it. It was the Gospel of John chapter 1. I read the page and then read most of that Gospel, about twenty chapters, before I put it down. I found it captivating. I was lying on my bunk with the Bible resting on my chest and fell asleep. Sleeping in prison is not easy because of the noise and I wasn’t on any drugs – my usual way of drifting off to sleep. Nevertheless, I slept the deepest and most peaceful sleep that I could remember. From early afternoon, right through to the next morning, I slept. It was as if the weariness of years of turmoil, crime, drugs, aggression and fighting was being rolled away through peaceful sleep. My subconscious mind was being cleared of the nightmares of my life up to now. The Bible talks about the peace of God that passes anyone’s understanding and perhaps this was my first experience of it.” (Extract from Taylor’s autobiography To Catch a Thief)

Richard was then inexplicably spared a heavy sentence on condition that he spent some time in a Christian rehabilitation centre which he agreed to. By then his life had already been turned around and he is now one of the country’s most dynamic and influential church leaders.

The Police Chief who had no control over Taylor in his days of spiralling crime can only admit that he is a reformed man and happily wrote an endorsement on the cover of the book. Taylor’s church has many ex-lap dancers, reformed criminals, drug addicts, recovering alcoholics and the like.

Two examples of lives turned around by the message of the Bible. Oh, the folly of those who want to outlaw the distribution of Gideons Bibles in schools and prisons either for fear of offending people of other faiths or because of some pipedream of a secular utopia.

The Bible is immensely valued by those for whom the government suppresses its distribution.

Nicky Gumbel (the man behind the Alpha Course) once travelled to Communist Russia when he was 21, at a time when the Bible was forbidden there. He visited a church in Samarkand, central Asia, wondering who he might give his Russian Bibles to. It was a risk because such churches were often infiltrated by KGB agents. He saw a man who was about 65 years old and who had a radiant expression on his face. Gumbel thought he looked full of the Holy Spirit so he followed him out of the church, touched him on the shoulder and handed one of his Bibles to him. 

When the old man saw a whole Russian Bible, he was elated. He took out of his pocket a thread-bare New Testament.  It had been read over and over until it was completely worn out. Now he had a whole Bible in his own language.  He didn’t speak a word of English and Gumbel didn’t speak a word of Russian but they hugged each other with overflowing joy. This book would help sustain the old man’s faith in the most hostile circumstances. 

The organisation Open Doors has thousands of similar stories after years of smuggling Bibles into Marxist and Islamic states. The Bible sustains joyful faith that violent and oppressive regimes can’t extinguish.

But the Bible’s impact on people’s lives isn’t limited to just personal salvation or private encouragement. It also makes a difference to the way ordinary people lead their lives and, directly and indirectly, has a huge effect on society.

It’s when the Church shakes off its pompous traditions and gets back to the simplicity of the Bible’s message that it becomes truly transformative. Just today (I am writing this in late July 2013) the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is in the news for saying that local churches, facilitating not-for-profit Credit Unions, will aim to put payday loan companies that take advantage of the poor out of business. Where does that come from? It comes from Old Testament prophets like Isaiah:

The Lord takes his place in court; he rises to judge the people.
The Lord enters into judgment against the elders and leaders of his people:
‘It is you who have ruined my vineyard; the plunder from the poor is in your houses.
What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor?’
declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty.

(Isaiah 3.13-15)

And it comes from the New Testament as well with Jesus saying things like this:

When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbours; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.

(Luke 14.12-14)

Isn’t this announcement by the Archbishop just a one off? Not really.

An article in the Daily Telegraph (February 2013) found that 6,500 Church of England parishes now provide special services for elderly people, schoolchildren, parents and new immigrants. 8 out of 10 individual parishioners give up their spare time to provide informal help to people struggling with issues such as isolation, family breakdown, drug abuse, domestic violence or spiralling debt. And that’s just the Church of England, not including other churches.

According to the National Church and Social Action Survey 2012 Christians offer 98 million hours of unpaid volunteer work on social projects every year - and that’s outside of church based activities like lunch clubs and youth groups. There seems to be something about the message of grace that motivates Bible-reading Christians to serve others and make the world a better place.

In one of the two churches I lead, I once conducted a survey amongst the non-churchgoing parents who brought their children to a holiday club the church organised. One of the questions was “Should All Saints’ be doing more in the community?” 80% answered along the lines of, “it already does an awful lot.”16% confessed they didn’t know.

4% felt the church should do more. Of these, one person thought we use the building too much for church programmes and not enough for non-church activities. I wondered if that was like saying that Old Trafford should be used for rock concerts, instead of football matches. Someone else confessed to be an atheist and said we should be tidying elderly people’s gardens. On reflection, I wish I had had the presence of mind to reply “Oh, there’s no need for that; there are volunteers from the British Atheist Association already doing that all over the country when they’re not running events like this.” But I don't think sarcasm helps.

I am not claiming that people don’t make a difference in society without the Bible as their inspiration. That is obviously untrue. I am just saying that, overwhelmingly, the message of the Bible touches and changes lives for the better.

And that’s the 17^th reason I am a Christian. I want the world to be a better place and the book that Christians believe to be inspired has a proven track record of transforming those who read it with an open mind.

If you’re not one of them I hope you at least you will agree with me that the Bible is good for society. And the next time you open the Bible, why not ask God to speak to you through it – if you dare?