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Episodes
Tuesday Oct 31, 2017
Tuesday Oct 31, 2017
Thanking God for the Reformation
Part 2 - Reformation Is Born
The Church before the Reformation G’day and welcome to our series, Thanking God for the Reformation, where we are looking at and celebrating that momentous event in history, and including in that, Church history. These are extracts from the book “Heroes And Heretics Abound” available on Amazon sites.
Change is gathering apace and we now see a great split. A split from within the Roman Catholic Church – the beginnings of the Protestant Church. Our main person we will look at is Martin Luther – one of the very giants of Church history.
Martin Luther (1483-1546)
Luther was the Professor of Biblical Studies at Wittenberg University in Germany. Luther tried to find God as an Augustinian monk but he was unable to come to terms with God's righteous demands. He eventually realised through prayer and reading the Scriptures, that he could do nothing of his own to fulfil or satisfy God’s righteous demands upon him. He came to see that justification before Almighty God was by faith alone, through grace alone, which was a gift of God.
Included in the aftermath of this discovery, were these key dates and events as the Reformation of Christianity and the Church gathered pace.
1517: Luther’s 95 Theses, statements against indulgences were nailed to the Castle Church door at Wittenberg on 31st October He rapidly gained a following in Germany, and was aided by the advent of the printing press.
1519: Luther publicly denied the supremacy and infallibility of the Pope and Church.
1520: Luther was excommunicated by Pope Leo X
1521: Diet Of Worms. Luther was outlawed by Emperor Charles V of Spain. He was hidden by friends for 8 months, during which he translated the New Testament into German.
1528: Diet Of Spruger. A change in German law allowed each German State to follow the religion of its reigning prince. Once announced, change of religion was forbidden.
1529: Diet Of Speyer. Decides the Lutheran states were to remain Lutheran and the Catholic states to remain Catholic; not allowed to change. Evangelical princes protested at the restriction and the name Protestant was given to this movement.
1530: Diet Of Augsburg. Protestants submitted a statement of belief which was rejected, but became the basis of Lutheran doctrine.
1547: war broke out between Catholic and Protestant states. This war was won by the Catholics, but Protestantism was finally recognised legally in 1552.
Core Truths
There were 3 main truths resulting from this Reformation which we hold fast today in general in large parts of the Church, particularly Protestantism:
- Final authority of God's Word
- Justification by faith, a gift of God's grace
- The priesthood of all believers.
Lutheranism spread from Germany to Denmark, Norway and Sweden. However, having said that, it should be noted that, wrongly or rightly, Luther still accepted as truth the following theological standpoints:
- Consubstantiation - a 'real presence' of Christ's body with bread and wine though not that the bread actually became His body. As opposed to transubstantiation held by the Roman Catholic Church which says the bread and wine becomes the flesh and blood of Jesus.
- Infant baptism as necessary for salvation.
We may get the idea that this man was dour and humourless. However, he maintained a sense of humour and obviously like laughing. An indication of that, is in this quote attributed to him:
“If you are not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don't want to go there.”
Tomorrow in part 3, we will look at Luther's 95 Theses...
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Monday Oct 30, 2017
Monday Oct 30, 2017
Thanking God for the Reformation
Part 1
The Church before the Reformation G’day and welcome to our series, Thanking God for the Reformation, where we are looking at and celebrating that momentous event in history, and including in that, Church history. These are extracts from the book “Heroes And Heretics Abound” available on Amazon sites.
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We start, however, in the 14th and 15th centuries where there was a great European revival of interest in the values of classical Greek and Roman literature, art, philosophy and politics. It started in Italy and spread throughout Europe. Scholars were called humanists as they moulded their life on the teachings of the great Greek and Roman classical literature. Scholastic freedom grew exponentially. There was also an increase in other areas of life: Roman morality, paganism, the Greek New Testament and the study thereof. Many new universities throughout Europe were started.
We look together at three men, albeit briefly, at what they had to do with the Church at that time:
- Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498)
- John Colet (1466-1519)
- Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (1467-1536)
Erasmus is described as the one who laid the egg which was hatched my Martin Luther...
We then conclude today with a look at the Devotional Movement and the prime architect, Thomas à Kempis...
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Saturday Oct 28, 2017
Saturday Oct 28, 2017
Part 120 - 3 John
More steps in the truth.
3 John is the shortest writing in the New Testament, which doesn’t help when trying to pick out a ‘gem’. In fact in many ways there aren’t any so I will just list verse 1 as a gem because there are some important lessons to be learnt from the situation which clearly lies behind the letter, so it would be a pity to miss it out. 4 characters appear in the story behind the writing: the elder who wrote it, Gaius who received it, a good guy, Demetrius and a bad guy, Diotrephes.
It is impossible to be sure what the argument that the elder refers to was about but there is a good chance it was the old problem which is still around: should we keep the church tightly restricted to those whose loyalty to the faith we feel we can totally rely on; and those who think the church needs to be rather freer in its approach, even including those of whom it is not possible to be totally sure of their stickability in the faith. That is as much, or more, a twenty-first century problem as a first century one.
Dotrephes was entirely for the pure church. He may not have had Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians beside him but he would thoroughly have approved of Paul’s advice to the church in 5:4-8: “when you are assembled … hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh,[ so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord. … Get rid of the old yeast … keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
Demetrius on the other hand would have been anxious to obey the words of Jesus in Matthew 13:24-30: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ ‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”
There is no clear way of resolving that dilemma. Each situation must be resolved ‘face to face’ as the elder clearly wants to do when he meets Gaius who would seem to have had some authority over the whole situation, though that authority may have been informal since there is no indication of any formal authority structure of bishops or deacons existing.
That is the first thing to be learnt from this short letter. The second is this: human nature being what it is it is all too likely that, particularly in an informal structure, those who gain power can all too easily become too conscious of it, too fond of it and too overbearing in their attempts to direct other people. And there are always people willing to be led for want of the strength of mind to understand what is happening and take appropriate action. They will often do that from a misguided feeling that it is Christian to accept the direction (or misdirection) of others.
It is a pity that we have to end these ‘gems’ on such a pair of negative notes, but that is the way it is. Note that besides these warning notes in this short letter there is much that the elder is prepared to rejoice in. He says many nice and gracious things to Gaius.
Take care. If you have been with me all, or most of the way, through this exploration of some of the lovely and encouraging things John has said - thank you. May the Lord bless you on your further journey of faith. He will be with you and bless you through thick and thin - and there will probably be both experiences on your onward journey.
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Friday Oct 27, 2017
Friday Oct 27, 2017
Partakers Friday Prayers!
27th October 2017
We pray together and when Christians pray together, including across the internet and from different times, different nations, different churches and different denominations - that reveals Church unity!
My Heavenly Father,
I thank You,
through Jesus Christ, Your beloved Son,
that You kept me safe from all evil and danger last night.
Save me, I pray, today
as well, from every evil and sin,
so that all I do and the way that I live will please you.
I put myself in your care, body and soul and all that I have.
Let Your holy Angels be with me,
so that the evil enemy will not gain power over me.
Amen
(A Morning Prayer of Martin Luther)
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Monday Oct 23, 2017
Monday Oct 23, 2017
Think Spot 23 October 2017
What we say, as well as what we don’t say, as Christians is very important. The Bible is very clear on that.
1 Peter 2:1 “Therefore rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander of every kind.”
James 4:11-12 “Brothers do not slander one another...who are you to judge your neighbour?” The definition of slander is words falsely spoken that damage the reputation of another or an abusive attack on a person's character or good name or to attack the good name and reputation of someone.So next time you go to say anything negative about someone or to criticise their actions, think again, you might be disobeying God and breaking a command.
James 3:3-8 powerfully shows how a small thing such as the tongue is able to cause much damage. He says that the tongue is a world of evil that corrupts the whole person ...and is itself set on fire by hell.
Christians are very good at gossiping but disguising it as prayerful concern. We pass on a juicy bit of information about someone and then ask the person to pray about the situation. As Christians we should not pass on any information about anyone else unless the person concerned has asked us to. It is not our place to do so even if it is for prayer.
However, sometimes it is also what we don’t say that causes problems. We stay silent when in fact we do need to give that word of love, encouragement, rebuke or kindness. Social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook can be fabulous sites if used properly. How often to we stay silent when we should say something kind? We get a message from a friend and we don't reply to it. How often do we say something when we should stay silent instead of slandering, complaining, gossiping or bickering?
Prayer
Now, a prayer to help you into this new week. Father, we thank you for words. We thank you that we can communicate words of life to other people. Help us to use words wisely as we interact, communicate and deal with other people, especially our loved ones and work colleagues. May the Holy Spirit, guide, rebuke and counsel, as we use the amazing gift of words to us, as we seeks to live a life worthy of Jesus Christ. Amen.
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Saturday Oct 21, 2017
Saturday Oct 21, 2017
Part 119 - 2 John 4
Walking in the truth
. This second epistle of John’s is seldom read but is rather lovely. It gives us a view into the very early church. We don’t know who the writer was - probably not the same John as the writer of the Gospel and the first letter since he calls himself the ‘elder’ and not the apostle as he surely would have done had he been one. It is also unclear who the ‘lady chosen by God’ was. Most probably it is a way of referring to a local church rather than a person.
We have this delightful phrase in verse 4, “walking in the truth“ as the commendation of the members of the church. All too often the various translators have in many places translated the word meaning ‘walking’ by ‘living’ because that is clearly what it is a picture of. But in doing so much is lost. One can ‘live’ sitting in a chair or lying in bed all day while walking strongly implies activity and progress.
We, my wife and I, made a conscious decision when we retired from active work that we would go for a walk every day to avoid slowly getting less and less fit. Of course, as the years have passed we have slowly got less and less fit anyway but we would have done so much quicker had we not determined to keep moving as long as possible.
What is true in the physical world is also true in the spiritual world. We need to keep moving, moving towards our ultimate goal of being with Jesus in the life of the ages. This we can do in many ways according to our abilities and gifts. You may become much more regular in the prayer meetings and other meetings of your church than you have ever been able to be as you were working fulltime (without intending to I have slipped into thinking about the situation of those entering retirement. You will need to translate what I say into a more appropriate language if you are much younger!). You may be able to help in the practical tasks involved in a church. You may be able to help with the outreach tasks as well, door to door work, visiting places with the gospel, perhaps - if you are fortunate like me with these short ‘gems’- doing something with a directly Bible teaching ministry.
An old wartime song exhorted people to ‘keep right on to the end of the road, keep right on to the end’. That is excellent advice for us all in a spiritual sense. And, of course, I don’t actually need to look for secular encouragements. 1 John 2: 6 would say “walk as he walked” if they hadn’t gone and translated the ‘walks’ as ‘liveds’ (see what I mean)!, or we can go to Isaiah 2: 3 where it says, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.”
John has said we are to walk in the way of truth. By ‘truth’ he means in the way set out by Jesus. Jesus did plenty of walking, backwards and forwards through Galilee and on frequent visits to Jerusalem.
Let us walk - easily the most enjoyable way of getting around either in the country or in the Kingdom of Jesus. The Pilgrim’s Progress (a famous old book written centuries ago) should never be restricted to one man’s story. It is to be the experience of all of us – you and me! Together – see you on the path.
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Friday Oct 20, 2017
Friday Oct 20, 2017
Partakers Friday Prayers!
We pray together and when Christians pray together, from different nations, different churches and different denominations - that reveals Church unity! Come! Let us pray together!
A prayer of John Calvin from the 16th century
Almighty God,
since under the guidance of Your Son,
I have been united together in the body of Your Church,
which has been in the past, often scattered and torn apart,
O grant that I may continue in the unity of faith,
and perseveringly fight together
against all the temptations of this world,
and never deviate from the right course,
whatever new troubles may daily arise;
let me not be seized with fear,
such as may quench every hope in my heart;
but may I, on the contrary,
learn to raise up my eyes and mind
and all my thoughts to Your great power alone,
by which You quicken the dead,
and raise from nothing things which are not,
so that, though I be daily exposed to ruin,
our souls may ever aspire to eternal salvation,
until You at length really show Yourself
to be the fountain of life,
when I shall enjoy that endless joy,
which has been obtained for me
only by the blood of Your begotten Son,
my Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen
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Monday Oct 16, 2017
Monday Oct 16, 2017
Think Spot - 16th October 2017
When we are going through a difficult time it is sometimes hard to believe that you are the apple of Gods eye.
God gave me a picture once. I asked God what I was worth. God tied a tag round my neck with a piece of string, the kind of price tag that they have in old fashioned shops. The tag read £10, then he removed the tag and replaced it with one that read £100, then he removed that one and replaced it with one that had £1000 on it. He replaced the £1000 price tag with one that read £100,000 and then replaced that one with a million pound price tag. The final price tag simply had ONE LIFE written on it. I find it mind blowing that God chose to let His Son die a hideously painful death so that I can enjoy a personal relationship with him that I am so valuable that even if I was the only human being that existed, God would have allowed Jesus to die on a cross for me.
Remind yourself of this fact frequently and you will get a glimpse of your father's heart. He loves you to bits and is proud of you no matter what you have done in the past - if you have said sorry and meant it - it is forgotten. The slate is completely clean.
2 Corinthians 5:17 says "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come."
God's love for you is unconditional. God created us with a thirst to be secure, to have self worth and to have a sense of our own significance. That thirst is intended to be quenched by God himself, by His unconditional love for us and unconditional acceptance of our work.
1 John 3:1 says "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God.! And that is what we are!"
Ephesians 2:10 says "We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepares for us in advance to do."
Unfortunately many of us try and get our security and sense of self worth from our spouses or parents. Whilst that can be okay if we have a particularly adoring spouse or an encouraging mum and dad, it goes badly wrong if we have a critical spouse or a parent that withholds praise. Our self esteem really suffers in the case of a verbally critical spouse or parent and is affected just as badly by someone who is slow to give praise.
Galatians 4:7 "Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out ‘Abba, Father.' So you are no longer a slave but a son and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir."
Our aim should be to please God and fulfil his purposes for our lives. If it is we will discover a sense of security, value and significance in God and then it will not matter if our boss does not appreciate us or if our spouse criticises us.
We should be aiming to enjoy God, to have a life of worship and to get to know God better each day. God adores us and considers us adorable. He is proud of our achievements but is so much more thrilled with our efforts to get to know Him better.
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Saturday Oct 14, 2017
Saturday Oct 14, 2017
Part 118 - 1 John 5:20
What We Should Know
What we should know. John wanted the people of his fellowship to ‘know’ 4 things.
- that they have eternal life (16);
- that those born of God do not continue to sin (18);
- that they are children of God but all the world marches to a quite different tune - that of the evil one (19);
- that by knowing Jesus they know the truth in a very special way (20);
- Then he summarizes it all by saying that they were ‘in’ Jesus.
Their job was much easier than ours. In those days there were not too many things to know. Even those who could read would not have many things to read. We, on the other hand, are deluged with things to know. The TV and the radio and a million books take care of that. So it is hard for us to really concentrate on things like these and make sure they are really deeply imbedded in our thinking. But we must make the effort to get them there and hold them there.
We have eternal life - the life of the ages. A whole new worldview opened up with the appearance of Jesus in the lanes and houses of Galilee. The Kingdom has come, with him as its Crown Prince. It is a kingdom that is unlike any other there has ever been. Not only is it a kingdom we can, and should, enjoy now but it is one that will take care of us after we have died out of this earthly life. We will be in heaven, briefly, before we are resurrected, as Jesus was, to partake in the new heaven and the new earth. What it will be like we do not know in any detail but we have his word for it and may rest in that with great confidence.
He then gives us a sharp reminder that we must not live in sinfulness by his positive statement that we do not continue to sin. What happens if we do he does not say but the prospect would not be good. We do all sin, as he said in his first chapter, but we must not live with a fixed tendency to sin. That is idolatry. Beware.
He then says that, presumably provided we do not disbar ourselves by idolatry, we are the children of God, members of the family of faith. That you will probably not fully understand until you are overseas, away from home, and have to rely on your brothers and sisters of the faith. Then you will realise what the power of a worldwide family is.
In knowing your fellows of the faith you will have some slight idea of what it means to be ‘in Jesus’, part of the body of the Messiah.. You will come to understand that much of the world is quite antagonistic to you because of your faith. Some of you who read this will understand that very much better than I, in my comfortable Western country ever can, even although I lived for a few years in a country where Christians are not very welcome.
In summary then, his 4 messages are:
We have eternal life
Continuing in sin is not possible for us
We are in the family of the Messiah
That all our thinking is to be centred on Jesus
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Friday Oct 13, 2017
Friday Oct 13, 2017
Partakers Friday Prayers!
We pray together and when Christians pray together, from different nations, different churches and different denominations - that reveals Church unity! Come! Let us pray together!
Almighty, eternal and merciful God,
whose Word is a lamp to my feet
and a light to my path,
open and illuminate our minds,
that I may purely and perfectly understand Your Word
and that my life may be conformed
to what I have rightly understood,
that in nothing I may be displeasing to Your majesty,
through Jesus Christ my Lord.
Amen
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