Reflections on Hebrews with Andrew Murray (2)

 

“And the great object of the Epistle is to show us that if we will but follow the Lord fully, and yield ourselves wholly to what God in Christ is ready to do, we shall find in the gospel and in Christ everything that we need for a life of joy and strength and final victory.”

 

While I don’t know that Murray is quite on point about “the great object of the Epistle,” because the scope and grandeur of Hebrews is far beyond me, however, in Murray’s historical context I can see his emphasis. I included the above excerpt from his Preface because I am struck by the words I underlined; “fully…yield ourselves…wholly…everything…”

 

May I ask if you hear that language in preaching and teaching and in your reading? I don’t hear or read it; I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, but it isn’t a sound I often hear. I used to hear it, decades ago; when I stopped hearing it I don’t know. How is it that I don’t know? It must be because of my own self-centeredness. It is important language. It is the language of Jesus when He says, “If anyone will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me…” (Mark 8:34 – 38). 

It is the language of Paul in Romans 12:1 – 2, “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual [reasonable] service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”

 

This is the language of total and complete commitment. The language of the burnt offering. The language of counting all things as loss that we may know Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:7 – 12). This is the language of giving and not getting, of sacrificing and not sparing ourselves, of breaking the vial of precious and costly ointment and “wasting” it on our Lord Jesus Christ (Matthew 26:6 – 13). Do I consider my life too precious to “waste” on Jesus? Do you? Do our congregations?

 

Paul said, “But I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24).

 

Christ has a race for us all to run. He has a calling for each of us. Each one of us has a vital role to play in the Body of Christ and toward those who do not know Jesus. However, Christ’s call to us requires all that we have and all that we are. The Gospel is not a message of qualified commitment; we are called to surrender ourselves to Jesus Christ – and for surrender to be surrender, it must be total and complete and irrevocable.

 

Are we and our congregations having picnics on the racecourse when we should be running? I imagine that when most of us are having picnics that the occasional runner will be considered impractical and strange – well, we are called to go outside the camp, bearing the reproach of Christ (Hebrews 13:13). If we are running, our eyes will be on Jesus and He will be worth it all – whether we have much company on the race or not. Let us be assured that there are no shortcuts on this race, there can be no cheating, we must all race to, and through, and in the Cross of Jesus Christ. O the glory of seeing Christ standing and waiting for us at the finish line holding the crown of righteousness for us! (2 Timothy 4:6 – 8). Can you see Him? (Hebrews 12:1 – 3; Colossians 3:1 – 4; 1 John 3:1 – 3).

 

Are we finding our everything in the Person of Jesus Christ? I use the word “Person” because I want to distinguish between what we often call “Christian” and Jesus Christ Himself. We have baptized so many things as “Christian” that it is as if we were branding this or that as “Christian” and thereby giving it a holy sanction. We ought to be careful with this, for this is a characteristic of syncretism and pollution, we see this in the worship of Yahweh in ancient times, and we see it today. Are we propagating a lifestyle and worldview in place of calling men and women and children into an intimate relationship with the Trinity through the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ?

 

Have elements of Christianity become pawns for politics, foreign policy, economic policy, social policy, entertainment; and self-serving religious preaching, teaching, and Christian consumerism? Our preaching can only have one center, it will be either Jesus Christ our ourselves. (Yes, of course Christ and the Word should inform us in all areas of life, but when these areas become pawns in our agendas, when they displace the Cross and the Gospel, when they displace the Person of Christ – they degenerate into self-serving elements which we baptize as “Christian” in order to justify our positions.)

 

“O Lord Jesus, teach us to follow you fully, yielding ourselves to you wholly, finding in You everything we need in this life, and in the life that is to come.”

 

 

 

Reflections on Hebrews with Andrew Murray (1)

 

I’ve been rereading The Holiest of All, Andrew Murray’s exposition of the NT book of Hebrews, written in 1894. Murray, whose congregation and field of ministry spoke Dutch and English, first wrote the book in Dutch, and then in English. Murray was born to Scottish parents in South Africa in 1928, his parents having moved from Scotland to Africa to pastor and do missionary work. Andrew was sent to Scotland for his education, and then to Holland for theological studies, after which he returned to Africa for Gospel ministry.

 

Murray was a missionary, a pastor, an educator, and a prolific author. He was a man of the Kingdom of God who deeply loved Jesus Christ and who embraced all who loved Christ, both within and without his Dutch Reformed tradition. During the Boer wars, Murray ministered to both English and Boers, refusing to confine the Gospel to one side or the other, and for that he bore the brunt of much criticism (is there something Americans can learn from Murray?)

 

Some of Murray’s classics include, Abide in Christ, The Spirit of Christ, With Christ in the School of Prayer, and The Ministry of Intercession. Murray has been called The Apostle of Abiding Love, and indeed much of his focus was on our deep union with God in Jesus Christ. I was introduced to Andrew Murray by my friend George Will in the autumn of 1966; it is good to have friends and mentors like Andrew Murray.

 

Shall we begin at the beginning? In the preface Murray begins with, “When I first undertook the preparation of this exposition in Dutch for the Christian people among whom I labour, it was under a deep conviction that the Epistle just contained the instruction they needed. In reproducing it in English, this impression has been confirmed, and it is as if nothing could be written more exactly suited to the state of the whole Church of Christ in the present day.”

Murray the pastor is burdened for his people, but not just for his own people, for all the people of God, “the whole Church of Christ in the present day.” There have been times I’ve asked pastors, “What is your vision for your people? When you present them to Jesus Christ, what do you want them to look like?” Usually I’m told that they’ve never been asked that question. Sometimes the eventual answer is in the form of what we call “church growth”; seldom is the answer along the lines of Romans 8:29, Colossians 1:28, or Ephesians 4:13 – 16. What has happened to us? This should frighten us. Does it?

 

Now consider how Murray continues, “The great complaint of all who have the care of souls is the lack of whole-heartedness, of steadfastness, of perseverance and progress in the Christian life. Many, of whom one cannot but hope that they are true Christians, come to a standstill, and do not advance beyond the rudiments of Christian life and practice. And many more do not even remain stationary, but turn back to a life of worldliness, of formality, or indifference. And the question is continually being asked, What is the want in our religion that, in so many cases, it gives no power to stand, to advance, to press on unto perfection [maturity]?”

 

Do we ask these questions anymore? Or do we ignore and gloss over the realities? Have we so embraced the world, has our enculturation become so ingrained, that we no longer have a sense of the danger of worldliness? Are we ashamed to even discuss the topic less we appear “different” from the world and the pragmatism surrounding us? Are we worshipping success, and fame, and bigger is better, and more is better?

 

Murray’s response to what he sees is to point his people to Christ in the Scriptures. “In every possible way it [the Epistle to Hebrews] sets before us the truth that it is only the full and perfect [mature] knowledge of what Christ is and does for us that can bring us to a full and perfect [mature]  Christian life.”

 

What a contrast to what we often see in the Church in 2020! Let me suggest three areas of stark contrast.

Murray, and many of his pastoral colleagues, are concerned with how their people are growing in Jesus Christ. Christ is their focal point, He is the framework of their thinking. Christ is the measure of life, of all of life. Their benchmark is not money, it is not success as the world defines success, it is not getting people to feel good about themselves, it is not the pursuit of happiness, it is not religious entertainment – Murray wants his people growing in Jesus Christ – nothing else should compete for center stage – including Andrew Murray. This is not the way most of us think today, it is not the orientation of many churches today. This way of thinking is not going to sell many books or DVDs today.

The second area of contrast is that Murray is pointing his people to the Christ of the Bible and the Bible of Jesus Christ – the Word of God. Murray is saying, “Live in the book of Hebrews”! The Holiest of All has 130 meditations. Andrew Murray expects his congregation, and others, to journey through the entire book of Hebrews in prayer and reflection, covering all 130 reflections! Why? Because Murray is convinced that only an ongoing encounter with Jesus Christ, only abiding in Jesus Christ, will transform people into the image of Jesus Christ and bring them into the fulness of life in Christ.

Today we dumb down our study guides, Sunday school curriculum, and much of our preaching to the attention spans of two-year-olds. Instead of challenging people to grow, we make baby food in our religious blenders and offer our people running slop without taste and without needing to be chewed. In the most recent church I pastored, we used adult Sunday school curriculum from two different denominations, and in both cases the quality would not have received a passing grade (I trust) in my old seminary. What was much worse, is that my people could not discern the poor nature of the food they were consuming.

The third area of contrast is that while Murray points his people to Christ and His Word, we live in the Triumph of the Therapeutic. The therapeutic is our answer to pretty much everything. We force the Bible into a therapeutic mold – instead of pointing people to Christ, instead of insisting that we surrender to Christ, we center our messages on ourselves in order to make us feel better and think better thoughts about ourselves. We want people to live their “best lives now” and to feel really good about it all; rather than deny themselves, take up the Cross, and follow Jesus Christ. We are more interested in teaching people how to save their lives rather than lose them for Christ and the Gospel and the salvation of others.

God has become our Great Therapist. Are we attempting to anesthetize people before they encounter the Cross?

Yes, maybe Andrew Murray has something to say to us. Better yet, maybe Hebrews has something to say.

 

 

 

 

Encountering the Bible

I sent the following to some friends this morning...maybe there is something here for you. 

Guys…just some thoughts on reading the Bible.

 

Please take a look at 1 Corinthians 1:18 – 2:16. This is a passage that every Christian ought to be familiar with because, among other things, it teaches us the difference between God’s wisdom and man’s wisdom. It reminds us that we can’t know anything about God unless He reveals it to us. Compare this to what Jesus says to Peter in Matthew 16:17 and also what Jesus says in John 6:63. Also consider Hebrews 4:12 – is this our experience with the Word of God?

 

The Bible is God’s Word, 2 Timothy 3:14 – 17; 2 Peter 1:19 – 21. This means that it is unlike any other book or text we will ever read. This also means that if we read the Bible like it’s just another book that we won’t “see” what there is to “see”. Apart from Christ we do not have the capacity to understand the Bible. Note what Jesus says to the Pharisees, who certainly knew the “data” and “information” of the Scriptures (John 5:39).

 

If the Bible is indeed God’s Word, His self-revelation, then when we come to the Bible we are coming to God and God is coming to us (Hebrews 11:6). We are looking for Christ…the central question in experiencing the Bible is always, “Where do I see Christ?” All other questions are secondary at best, irrelevant and distracting at worst.

 

Another question is, “How do I respond in obedience to what I am reading and seeing?”

 

When I read other books or texts, I am always critiquing what I read. However, when I read and encounter the Scriptures, God’s Word is critiquing me. I do not judge the Bible, the Bible judges me. This is a fundamental difference between my encounter with the Bible and every other text in existence. Even with statutory law, I still reserve the right to judge whether that law is moral and ethical – I have no such “right” with the Bible.

 

Another thing to consider, is that we want to allow the Bible to interpret itself, as the Holy Spirit allows us to see the interconnectedness of Scripture. We want to see the whole picture of Christ as presented in the Bible. This is one reason why we need to journey and live in the entire Bible.

 

Also, we interpret obscure passages with clear passages. We focus on what we know and not on what we don’t know. We just don’t understand everything that is written anymore than we understand all there is to life. It’s better not to make things up just to have something to say, or to write. Top – notch Bible commentaries acknowledge difficult passages, give options, and often end up saying in effect, “This is obscure and this is maybe the best option, but at the end of the day we don’t know for sure.”

 

Jesus Christ wants to reveal Himself to us through the Scriptures. Our Father wants to draw us to Himself through the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit wants to give us light and life through the Scriptures. Peter goes so far as to say that it is through God’s promises [in the Scriptures] that we are “partakers of the Divine Nature "(2 Peter 1:4). That is, the Scriptures are Eucharistic, they are another Communion Table at which we eat the Body of Christ and drink the Blood of Christ – we partake of Christ.

 

When we approach the Scriptures, we approach the Table of our Lord Jesus.

 

 

 

 

Pole Beans and the Gospel

 

I just came back from our vegetable garden, having harvested cucumbers, tomatoes, okra, and pole beans (climbing green beans – easier to harvest and, I think, more yield per square foot than bush beans).

 

Pole beans are typically an easy low – maintenance crop to grow in our area; we’ve always had good success with them…until this year. Contrary to my experience, my first planting of beans did not go well. The plants did not leaf out well, the blossoms didn’t form well, and there was little fruit to harvest. It is possible that this was due to poor soil preparation, lesson learned on that front.

 

However, I decided to do something that I haven’t done before, and that is to sow additional plantings of pole beans. I sowed more beans around the existing plantings (after amending the soil), and I used some long rectangular planter boxes that we use for flowers and planted beans in them, placing them alongside the fence that surrounds our garden so that the beans could climb the fence.

 

While the first sowing of beans did poorly, the subsequent sowings have done well, giving us a crop that we would not otherwise have. Had I given up and not continued to plant seed, we would not have a crop of beans. Also, had I not tried planting seeds in flower boxes, something new for me, we wouldn’t have the crop we have.

 

“Sow your seed in the morning and do not be idle in the evening, for you do not know whether morning or evening sowing will succeed, or whether both of them alike will be good” (Ecc. 11:6).

 

“Preach the word, be ready in season and out of season…” (2 Tim. 4:2).

 

“…God causes the growth” (1 Cor. 3:7).

 

We are called to sow seed, and sow seed, and sow some more seed. It can be easy to get discouraged when we don’t see the fruit of our labors, when plants don’t produce, when disease sets in, when storms damage crops (this happened to us this year) – but we never know what will happen if we will remain faithful and continue to sow. And isn’t faithfulness what we are call to by our Lord Jesus? We are called to be faithful to Him and through Him to others – we can’t control the weather, we can’t control how people will respond, we can’t “make” seed grow or people respond in certain ways – but we can sow seed.

The Wrecking Ball

 As I pondered yesterday's post, and considered the incessant shouting and noise assaulting us from so many directions, the following came to me.

The Wrecking Ball

Robert Withers

 

The louder we shout the less we hear.

 

The louder the noise the more damage to our ears.

 

When noise is great, truth and reason are lost.

 

First we couldn’t live without simple sound – fed to us wherever we were.

 

Now we can’t live without increasing decibels.

 

Our minds are destroyed by thundering wrecking balls.

 

Rubble surrounds us.

 

Beauty is maligned. Truth is traduced. Love is turned to lust.

 

Silence frightens us.

 

Thought terrifies us.

 

Conversation unnerves us.

 

We are crazed.

 

No society can reject the image of God with impunity.

Quietness or Shouting?

 Sometimes I read something and think, "This pretty much says it all." What I mean is that what I've read aptly describes or illustrates a present condition in the church or society, or offers insight and counsel on a subject we ought to consider. 

The books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes in the Bible give me many of these moments, but I seldom write them down; I often think, "One day I'll write that down," but "one day" seldom comes. 

All of this so say that I just read something and here I am about to write it down. 

"The words of the wise heard in quietness are better than the shout of a ruler among fools." Ecc. 9:17. 

Well, what do you think? Does this have any relevance today? 

Historical Anxiety and the WORD

 

Frederick Dale Bruner On Historical Anxiety And the WORD

 

 This morning, as I was pondering a passage in Matthew Chapter 13, I referred to Frederick Dale Bruner’s Commentary on Matthew, Volume II. The passage below is one I had previously marked, and as I read it this morning it encouraged me. I hope it will also encourage you in these difficult times. Bruner’s comments are on Matthew 13:22, the seed sown among thorns in what we typically term the Parable of the Sower.

 

I have lightly edited the passage, removing some references to Greek, a Latin word or two, and to other sections of the commentary.

 

“The third or thorny soil is the person who hears the word but then, literally, “the anxiety of the age” and “the humbug of wealth” choke the Word in this hearer and the result is unfruitfulness…

 

“The “anxiety” or “the special nervousness” of the age is the dis-ease that history brings with it; “history” maybe a more contemporary translation of the Greek than “age”. And it is “the [special] anxiety” singular - and not just “some anxieties” generally - of which our text speaks. This special anxiety that is life, this special nervousness that is the craving to master life, weighs upon us, leans upon us like a heavy wind…seeking to make us practical unbelievers…

 

“ “Historical anxiety” is a tricky foe, for there is a sense in which Christians are supposed to take the world's anxieties upon themselves (compare Matthew 25:31 – 46). Christians are supposed to enter history, bear it, and take on its cares and sorrows; believers should be like their Lord, “afflicted with the afflictions of my people.” And yet if the focus of disciples’ lives becomes the reigning historical anxiety, the power of the Word is choked. If we become so absorbed by history's special nervousness that the Word is no longer the Word of God to us, but is just one important word among many other important words, then these other words will invariably push this Word off center and so push us out of fruitfulness.

 

“The frequently heard council that Christian should live with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other can be sound advice, but it can also be seductive if it suggests that historical anxiety, the real business of newspapers, should share equal time with the Word of God. As if the news was on equal footing with the News with equal right to our time and attention! As if the News wouldn't itself engage us in the news; and do so profoundly. The Word of God is the Word of God, and so towers above every other word. The newspaper may and must be read, but not with the same gravity, ultimacy, and finality as the Holy Scripture is read, or else Christians will be tossed about by every new wind of opinion and there will be little stability in believers or fruit in the church.

 

“The humbug of wealth” or, as one can render it, “the successist delusion,” is history seen from its more alluring side. Anxiety (of the age) depresses us, down, and away from the Word; delusion (with wealth) impresses us, up and away from the Word. Historical anxiety is the world's fears; successist delusion, the world's promises. The world promises salvation through success, security through wealth, happiness through beautiful things. A certain desire to make a success of one's life is as inevitable, as human, and even as right as a certain immersion in historical anxiety. 

For these reasons historical anxiety and successist delusion are real temptations and are so much more dangerous than external persecution, which is a more obvious evil. Wealth seems so good, success so noble. (For wealth, see most ads and cover stories; for success see the sports and business pages. The church must be careful about what and whom it praises, for “what is exalted by men is an abomination before God,” Luke 16:15.) The Word must reign alone. Where two thrones are set up on each side of the Word, one for life's anxieties, the other for life's ambitions, the Word is reduced to a word.”

(Italics and brackets [ ] those of the author, Frederick Dale Bruner).