There seems to be a sense, then, in which we are all like the younger brother. We are all exiles, always longing for home. We are all travelling, never arriving. The houses and families we acually inhabit are only inns along the way, but they aren’t home. Home continues to evade us…
…The Bible says that we have been wandering as spiritual exiles ever since. That is, we have been living in a world that no longer fits our deepest longings. Though we long for bodies that “run and are not weary,” we have become subject to disease, aging, and death. Though we need love that lasts, all our relationships are subject to the inevitable entropy of time, and they crumble in our hands. Even people who stay true to us die and leave us, or we die and leave them. Though we long to make a difference in the world through our work, we experience endless frustration. We never fully realise our hopes and dreams. We may work hard to re-create the home that we have lost, but, says the Bible, it only exists in the presence of the heavenly father from which we have fled.
Tim Keller, The Prodigal God [pg 95-96]
All posts tagged Luke
Hopes and Dreams
What is Forgiveness?
Forgiveness isn’t easy, it’s not free or even cheap, it shouldn’t be assumed, or taken for granted, it’s not about forgetting, or ignoring, or pretending things don’t matter, that they don’t hurt.
Forgiveness is hard, it’s costly, it’s a choice… what does it look like Biblically?
The master is within his rights to enslave the servant, that servant is within his rights to throw the other servant into prison because both are creditors (owed money). The master chooses to give up that right and forgives his servant – it is not free, the master bears the debt of the servant himself. That servant chooses not to give up his rights against the other servant, he chooses not to forgive.
This is what the elder brother in the parable should have done; this is what a true elder brother should have done. He would have said, “Father, my younger brother has been a fool, and now his life is in ruins. But I will go and look for him and bring him home. And if the inheritance is gone – as I suspect – I’ll bring him back into the family at my expense.”
……Mercy and forgiveness must be free and unmerited to the wrongdoer. If the wrongdoer has to do something to merit it, then it isn’t mercy, but forgiveness always comes at a cost to the one granting forgiveness.
Tim Keller, The Prodigal God (pg. 82-83)
“…without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
God’s forgiveness of us is not free, there is a heavy cost, the greatest debt to pay, the greatest sacrifice made, His Son.
Grace from Glen
The first time I met Glen Scrivener he encouraged me with the gospel. He still does it, though I haven’t seen him in person for a while…
I remember speaking with a Christian man about his extra-marital affair from years earlier. As he spoke about the pain of those memories I said to him You realise that in the midst of the very worst of that, Jesus was rejoicing over you as a Bridegroom rejoices over His bride. He paused for a long time and said “That makes it a hundred times worse!” I said Yes it does. A thousand times worse. We think that we manage to sin away in a corner somewhere. No, no, no. Just read 1 Corinthians 6:15-20 to see that we are very much united to Christ in our sin!
We stink of pig in the Father’s arms. That’s a thousand times worse than stinking in the sty. But it’s a milliontimes better too.
The above from a post on the Prodigal Son, and the follow up post – Sinning really isn’t the worst thing
If you’ve never read is blog, you should.
If you live near Eastbourne, go and meet the man.
A love that won’t let go
The father patiently endures the loss of honour and the pain of rejected love. Ordinarilary when our love is rejected we get angry, retaliate, and do what we can to diminish our affection for the rejecting person, so we won’t hurt so much. But this father maintains his affection for his son and bears the agony.
Tim Keller, The Prodigal God [p20]
On Church
Had the privilege of listening to John Chapman (Chappo) today on personal evangelism for church leaders.
He said this…
“Without good preaching, the wheels fall off a church”
I also picked up my copy of ‘The Prodigal God‘ today – £10 from GBC. At the end of the first chapter [p16] Tim Keller makes this observation about our churches…
“If our churches aren’t appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think”
Driscoll: Spirit led Missions
There are admittedly very few preachers who would have made me come to the New Frontiers conference – perhaps Piper or Mahaney might, but Driscoll certainly sold it for me.
Driscoll opened up with his customary auto-biographical sketch along with some of the background to Mars Hill. The Catholic jokes were particularly good in speaking of his conception (‘Papal Roulette’) and his mother’s experience of Charismatic Catholicism – praying in tongues to Mary!
He went on to praise the work of the New Frontiers movement saying that he had lots to learn, but also to say that he wanted to serve by where necessary correcting. So he began by giving 5 traps which those who hold to Charismatic theology can fall into – he thought New Froniters may be falling into the 5th trap (not the others though):
- Too heavy a focus on the person of the Spirit rather than on the One to whom He points, the person of Jesus
- Pentecost becomes the main event at the expense of the Cross and the Resurrection
- Health and Wealth become focuses
- Leaders are held up as examples of being Spirit-filled and led as opposed to Jesus the best example
- Mission is not viewed correctly (can’t remember his exact explanation)
So from there Driscoll went on to talk about what Spirit-filled mission is all about. He took us through loads of verses in the first few chapters of Luke’s gospel about the Spirit (1:15, 1:35, 1:41, 1:67, 2:11, 2:25, 3:16, 3:22… and more). He then talked about Jesus’ Baptism, why he had to be annointed by the Holy Spirit, he got into a big theological tangent explaining the Trinity, the 1 Person and 2 Natures of Jesus, the Hypostatic Union…
He came back to the question – How did Jesus live his life? – answer, By the Power of the Holy Spirit. He described Jesus as a missionary, leaving the ‘culture’ of Heaven to come to a sinful world… so the Spirit empowers missionaries. He spoke of two empowering ministries of the Holy Spirit – an active one for service, and a contemplative one for solitude, study and prayer – the active service is preceeded by time for contemplation.
By this point we’d moved from Luke to Acts, picking up on Pentecost and the Spirit empowering the Church as with Christ. He highlighted repentence as the first mark of the Spirit-filled believer (Acts 2:38) and then picked out 3 points of what the Spirit-filled life looks like from Acts 2:42-47:
- Devotion to apostles’ teaching
- Love for one another
- Awe at the Gospel
Driscoll then concluded with his definition of what a church is, stressing that it was important for movements like New Frontiers to keep these definitions to stay on mission. There were 8 points, he only made it to the first:
- Regeneration - he stated that often we fight too much to defend the doctrine of Justification at the neglect of the place of regeneration in the believer and in the church community
I presume he will pick up the next 7 points tomorrow – maybe. As well as this I will be reporting from a Mark Driscoll seminar on Planting Radical Churches and on a main session talk by David Stroud.
Chandler: Core Values
Matt Chandler from the Village Church is currently on sabbatical, but I need to let you know about some recent good sermons. He’s got to about chapter 9 of a big series on Luke (20 sermons so far), it’s awesome stuff!
Back in May, Matt finished a 5-part topical series on the church core-values which is well worth a listen to:
What is Christian Spirituality? – really good, what true Spirit-filled churches should be like!
These sermons and others will go into my good sermons database page – it’s just a bit of fun for me but hopefully as I keep updating it, it will be a great resource to find good sermons in one place!
Also, Matt Chandler’s church, The Village are doing a building project and have launched a new website for that including some video testimonies from some members – here’s an example…
Hugh: AJW... I agree. Although I'm not sure Welsh counts as a real language!...
AJW Smith: It is important to realise that BSL is as real a language as English o...
Tom B: Hey Hugh,
You may well have seen this already but I found this article...
Maxime Soumagnas: By the way, I'm pretty sure we'll speak French in heaven, so your bett...
