True Worship

John 4:19-26 19 "Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem." 21 Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth." 25 The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us." 26 Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."

Where?
Lots of discussions about the building. Development cttee. PCC. But is the building really that important? (The Grk word for ‘church’ means ‘gathering’). Illustration – royal wedding (Westminster Abbey wasn't really in focus, was it?).
Samaritans (N kingdom of Israel, deported to Assyria, those left behind intermarried with foreigners who had been encouraged to move there, who only had the Pentateuch, and who’s worship was focussed on Mount Gerizim – 400BC rival temple, now destroyed) were looking for ‘one like Moses’. Their word for a Messiah figure. That comes out in the woman’s dialogue. She says, ‘I can see that you are a/the prophet?’

Who
Not a place. 'Neither... nor...' v21.
Yet salvation does come through Christ, the Messiah, who was a Jew. ‘…we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews’.
He came full of grace and truth (1:14, 17). He is ‘the way, the truth and the life’ (14:6).
After the resurrection and ascension, Jesus sent his Spirit, the Holy Spirit (Spirit of truth 14:17, 15:26; 16:23). The Spirit leads us into truth.

How
The Father seeks worshippers. Normally we seek God (e.g. in Psa ‘I seek your face’). Here, and in parable of lost sheep (Mat 18:12) and in the parable of the lost coin (Luk 15:8), both showing us that ‘the Son of Man came to seek and save what was lost’ (Luk 19:10) we have God seeking us.
Sacred Romance – Brent Curtis and John Eldredge is a great book to read on this subject.
Romances are pretty up and down. Fairly unpredictable. Relationships with people in general can be unpredictable. The word for ‘Spirit’ in the NT is the same as the word for ‘wind’. When explaining how to be born again to Nicodemus, Jesus says: ‘The wind [=Spirit] blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound [=voice], but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."’. 3:8 Let’s be ready for the unpredictable!
Are places important?
That isn’t to say that places are unimportant. The place where you met your wife, or had your honeymoon. But they are places connected with a person, not a religion.
So we need to think more about our relationship with Jesus Christ. We can do that as individuals, but also as a community focussed on Him. He is our life. He, by His Holy Spirit, leads us into all truth. He shows us the way to the Father.
 
Questions:
1. How are we doing in our relationship with Jesus Christ:
a. What gets in the way?
b. What could be improved?
2. How are we doing in our relationship with each other – are we encouraging each other to follow the Lord more closely?
3. Are we ready for the unpredictable? (On Sunday, Malc was talking about our lives being more out of control, as God begins to work).

The Spirit

In the Old Testament there are at least sixteen ways of talking about the Spirit coming on people:

1. (the Spirit) rested on


2. (the Spirit) was put on


3. in whom is the Spirit


4. (the Spirit) came on


5. (the Spirit) stirred up


6. (the Spirit) clothed


7. (the Spirit) rushed upon


8. (the Spirit) carried


9. (the Spirit) caught (him) up


10. (the Spirit) lifted (me) up


11. (the Spirit) was poured on


12. full of (power and) the Spirit of the LORD


13. I have put my Spirit on


14. (the Spirit) entered into


15. (the Spirit) fell upon


16. in the Spirit

Many of these are in little-read books like Numbers, Judges, and Ezekiel! What a lot we're missing out on by neglecting these wonderful books...

Today I've been checking these in the Old Testament - if you want a list of references I can send them to you, and you can study them for yourself :)

As we translate

As we translate the Old Testament, we are not bringing a message from God for the ‘xyz’ people (contemporary people group). We are, instead, translating a message from God for the Israelite people, and allowing the ‘xyz’ people to listen into that message.

What difference does that make? A fundamental one. It means that we do not have the liberty to change that message. The message remains the same (to rephrase an old song title); it is the hearers who have changed. This can be represented diagrammatically. God (agent) inspires author (instrument) like so:

Author writes [Message A] to Israelite people:

Author =[A]=> Israelites

Translator translates [Message A] so that people group ‘xyz’ can understand it:

Translator =[A’]=> People ‘xyz’

In doing so the [Message A] becomes [Message A’] i.e. it resembles Message A but may have some subtle differences due to the fact that people ‘xyz’ live at a different time and have a varying culture (with its associated language). But, and do notice this, Message A is still fundamentally the same message. We cannot and should not change this message to make it communicate more easily. If there are things that people ‘xyz’ do not understand, because of the time and culture differences I mentioned earlier, we should explain those, but not in the text. To do so would change the message – it would no longer be message A but would be transformed into message B.

Therefore it is important that translators understand that they are not in the business of bringing a message of God for their people, as if they were some kind of prophet. The prophet lived centuries ago in Israel or Judah. The translator is a faithful witness to the oracle that the prophet delivered, they do not themselves receive a message for the people, however inspired they feel in their work and by the words they are translating. That’s why Bible translators need to know the history and culture of the books they are translating. They should be encouraged to dig deep into God’s word and books that explain it, in an effort to be able to read the Old Testament book as if they were one of the original recipients of it in Ancient Israel. Only then can they begin to think how they can express that message in their own language, and to people of their own culture. To give a concrete example, when someone in Ancient Israel received some bad news, they would take off their clothes, put on sackcloth, and sit in dust and ashes to show the fact they were mourning. The translator will realise that people of their culture do not do this, but will still want to talk about sackcloth and ashes in the translation. If necessary they will put in a footnote or write some other kind of explanatory text, saying that Israelites used to practice this when mourning. What the translator cannot do is change the expression of mourning to something from their own culture. This is because to do that would be to change history.

Broken Cisterns

(Jeremiah 2:1-13)



Have you ever tried to make a pool at the seaside? No matter how often the children bring buckets of water from the sea, the water seeps away into the sand.
Broken cisterns. They are no good. Their purpose is to hold water, yet they don’t.

The people of Israel have committed two evils (v13, cf 5, 11):

1. They have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters. It is the Lord who satisfies. We can drink our fill at the fountain He provides. In fact there is no other fountain. Our hearts are restless, till they find their rest in you. He is the centre, the sun in our planetary motion. So Q1 is ‘are you close to the LORD? Do you hear from Him, walk closely with Him?’

2. They hewed out (dug) broken cisterns for themselves. v20-25 paints a pretty vivid picture of what this means. We can’t blame anyone else. When we go away from the Lord we sin. (It’s amazing how children try and blame parents for their bad behaviour. The parents do everything they can for the children. The discipline them for their own good, but when the children are given just a little leeway they go off and do something stupid. They then come home and say, ‘You brought me up to behave like this. It’s your fault.’) No, we alone are responsible for the turning away. These cisterns cannot hold water – the very job they are designed to do, they cannot do. BTW when it rains, who provides the water? Is rain something we can control? Even if you hew out a cistern, you are relying on the Lord’s provision. Though it would be better to go to the fountain. But it’s no good building a cistern if it’s cracked, and the water seeps away.

Yet that is what we do all the time We replace the genuine (presence of the Lord) with the artificial (methods, music and other kinds of madness). No sane person would do this. If you found a source of something good you’d hang onto it. If you found a seam of gold you’d go and buy the land. You’d sell the shirt off your back to buy it, then you’d mine that seam for as long as you could. But we run away, and make something up ourselves. Like a down-and-out who, having found a soup kitchen that opens every day of the week, goes back to foraging in bins because he’s too proud, he doesn’t want to be provided for.

Q2 – is our ministry bringing others closer to Christ? If not, it’s worthless.

Q3 – is our use of time/gifts/money Christ-centred? Even business in the Lord’s work can be me-centred – I need it to feel good about myself. What about time with the Lord?

Let’s all think about our focus – is it on the Lord, or on our own needs and ministries?

Development - Cultural Sensitivity Needed!

When we were in Central Asia an advisor from the EU was posted there to advise on how to run a butcher's shop. Pretty soon a small shop appeared in the corner of the market, next to all the women's clothes shops and so on, and diagonally opposite the main butcher's area in the market where you could buy huge hunks of meat for a few thousand Manat (a few dollars). The new butcher's shop had little cuts of meat, chops and son on, with plastic signs stuck into them, just like you'd see in Dewhurst's here at home. Within six months of the EU advisor leaving, there were about half as many cuts of meat on display. Within twelve months the shop had shut down.

What lesson can we learn from this? That we need to observe the local culture, and listen carefully to folk as to what they want, before we try to 'improve' things. What we see as an improvement (no messy hacking up of carcasses in front of the customer) may seem like a retrograde step to the local people (small bits of meat they don't have a name for, costing more). This is true of any change we try to introduce. If it is top-down, initiated by Westerners, it is almost bound to fail. If it is bottom-up, initiated by the indegenious people, and owned by them, it will almost certainly succeed. This means we have to let go a bit when we sponsor projects overseas. All too often we have our own agendas, and tie funding to those agendas. Instead we should be finding out what they want, and helping them achieve it. I remember one story from Africa, where the village elders were asked what they most needed to improve their village. A well for clean water? A better road to the market? No, they wanted a football pitch. The next-door village had one, and they were feeling left out. The next-door village could host football games, they couldn't. This meant their prestige was lowered. The football pitch was constructed, the village self-esteem improved, and pretty soon they were working on a well (with outside help) and whatever else was needed to improve their lives at a practical level. Let's talk, let's listen, let's learn!

Paul in Athens

Acts 17:16-34

Introduction
Background: ‘Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.’ v21. It was, perhaps, like one of our great Universities, an intellectual ivory tower of a place where they loved talking about the latest ideas.

Epicureans: they were materialistic, doubted the existence of the ‘gods’, and believed in moderation in all things. Sensible people! They would have fitted in on QI, the TV show.

Stoics: they were pantheists (they thought the world has a soul) and believed in exercising self-control in order to overcome destructive emotions. They would have done well as monks, who deny themselves sleep and conversation in order to gain closeness with God (On this theme ‘The Big Silence’ is worth watching!).

For the Areopagus – see the picture above.

Perhaps Paul had grown up longing to see the famous Acropolis with its view of the Areopagus. But if he did, he didn’t stay in tourist mode for long:

Paul’s spirit ‘was provoked within him’ v16. The same Greek word is used in the Septuagint (OT in Greek) when the people ‘provoked’ God by grumbling or worshipping idols (Num 14:23; Deu 32:16 ). What is our reaction to the overt Atheism so popular in the media (Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Stephen Fry… )? Are we equally provoked and upset by what we hear?

So, having spent time analysing the situation, picking up the atmosphere of the place, and engaging spiritually (and emotionally) with what is going on, Paul then preaches a message that fits them in their context:

Paul’s Message
His initial attempts at communication seem to fail (v18), despite being one of those who was reputed to have ‘turned the world upside down’ (v6)! ‘It would be hard to imagine a less receptive or more scornful audience.’* So he has a rethink and comes up with a message that does get through (to those receptive of the Good News)…

1. He starts where they are: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god.’ What a brilliant introduction. He has grabbed their attention, and showed his own intellectual ability, while remaining focussed on the things of God. He also begins where they are. Like a Sat Nav. It doesn’t ever say: ‘If I were going there, I wouldn’t start from here!’ It always starts where you are.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFBxFond-vw (please ignore last word!)

2. He declares a clear message using language they will understand.

‘What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him.’

Notice too the focus on humankind. Paul’s message is written from a universal (rather than universalistic) perspective. He does bring in some good teaching – that God is creator and Sustainer, and determines where we all live on the earth i.e. He’s in control of nations (This doesn’t mean that harsh dictators have God’s support (Nebuchadnezzar was removed from office by God), rather that God is in control of the movements of nations. Cyrus, Emperor of Persia, is called ‘the LORD’s anointed’ (literally ‘Messiah’) in Isaiah 45:1 because he brought freedom for the Jews to go back to their land and rebuilt Jerusalem and the temple cf. Amos 9:7 "Are you not like the Cushites to me, O people of Israel?" declares the LORD. "Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir?). These are parts of the Good News that we often skip, assuming that people already know the basics. But in many cases they don’t. Notice that Paul doesn’t preach a message that only appeals to individuals. His gospel is always one for people groups, whether Jewish or ‘Greek’ (gentile) in orientation. One reason we only see ones and twos come to the Lord is that we pretend that the gospel is for individuals (and the ongoing effect is that many think they can be a Christian but not go to church). It isn’t! It’s for humankind! The sooner we preach that the better – the more biblical we will be, and the more true to the Good News about Jesus the Messiah.

3. He quotes their poets and philosophers (v28-30). What he doesn’t do is start quoting the Bible (Old Testament) at length, though he does allude to it frequently. There would have been no point, as the Athenians wouldn’t have known it! The quote about being God’s offspring is particularly interesting – Avatus (the poet), was referring to Zeus, not Theos (God). So in a sense Paul is acknowledging the glimmer of truth in Avatus’ saying, but at the same time gently correcting it. ‘In him we live and move and have our being’ would have appealed hugely to the Stoics. Paul takes this quote and applies it from within a biblical framework:

4. Having quoted their poets and philosophers he brings out some great theology from them:

‘Being then God's offspring (genos: offspring, descendants), we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”’

Notice how he doesn’t shrink from sharing the Good News about Jesus, but he shares it in non-technical language. The resurrection would have been a particular challenge to Greek philosophers, just as it is today for atheists and agnostics.
For those worried about Paul’s lack of explicit preaching about the cross, let me reassure you by saying that Luke’s recording of Paul’s words are probably a summary rather than a verbatim report of Paul’s speech. We can imagine that prior to speaking about a ‘resurrection’ Paul must have mentioned Jesus’ death. In any case it is implied even in the summary we have.

5. The response was varied. Some responded, others did not:

‘32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.” 33 So Paul went out from their midst. 34 But some men joined him and believed…’

Most Greeks believed in the immortality of the soul, but wouldn’t have been so receptive to Paul’s teaching about the resurrection of the body.

We should not expect everyone to respond. But if we take the attitude that it is all up to God, and not at all up to us, then we are in error. A simple comparison of Paul’s message to Jewish audiences e.g. 13:16-43; 17:3 shows that Paul did in fact adapt his message for a purely gentile or ‘Greek’ audience. But we shouldn’t be discouraged when some don’t respond. The Good News is near (as we were seeing this morning from Deuteronomy), the message is in our hearts – but not in the hearts of all. Not everyone is ready. Some, very sadly, will never be ready.
How then should we Share?

This has huge implications for us as we share the Good News with others. There are many places in the world where people already have strongly-ingrained beliefs. To ignore those is foolish. Like Paul we need to speak and live in one way for one group, and another way for another group (1Co 9:16b-23, perhaps taking on ourselves extra restrictions so as not to offend them – after all, our own culture is fairly ‘Greek’ these days i.e. laissez-faire in terms of its morality and cultural taboos, or, rather, lack of them). This is not to say that we change the Good News. Far from it! But we do try to use fewer religious or technical terms that would need explaining. One such term is Messiah – it means a lot to a Jew, and something to a Muslim, but very little to anyone from a non-Theistic background. Even those living in the post-Christian West understand little by the term. Another is the whole idea of cleansing by blood sacrifice. In Central Asia it was difficult to use language involving kings and thrones to explain the gospel – they actually preferred to talk about lambs being sacrificed – it was part of their culture. So we need to think of appropriate metaphors, ones that are current and link into people’s existing world-view.

Often we think that the more we quote scripture, the more powerful our message will be. That is true for those with church backgrounds, but for the un-churched and those from other religious backgrounds it makes little sense to do this. We may in fact be putting them off. Better to find some kind of ‘hook’. One that some folk used in about ’99 or 2000 was the sense of pointlessness of Mr. Anderson’s life in the Matrix world, and his joy at escaping (down a sort of rabbit-hole) to reality, grim though it was, to become the person he was chosen to be – Neo, ‘the One’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbYirSi08m4
followed by:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmIiT4OvDp0&feature=related.

A more current one is the film Avatar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1_JBMrrYw8,
where ‘Jake’ who is without the use of his legs, can experience the freedom of life via an avatar as a Navi, a people with stronger legs than ours, in a place called Pandora. The Navi are more in touch with their nature than we are. He eventually joins Navi of the world he is living in as an Avatar to fight his own people as they try and plunder this idyllic world for its natural resources. This raises all kinds of issues (not least the harmful power of multi-national companies who have the backing of Western governments to plunder e.g. rain forests), but one might ask the questions,

 ‘How can we be free from our restrictive and technology-focussed cultures?’
 ‘What does it mean to be truly human?’
 ‘How can we be more in touch with nature?’

Some have found that they found this world grey and flat after the watching the film. They felt depressed and wondered what the point of life was, if you can’t life in Pandora (the planet where this idyllic world is):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzk_-4Cmo_o.
This gives us an ‘in’ – a way in to share the Good News that Jesus offers life, and life in all its fullness (Psa 16:11; Jhn 10:10 ).

At the same time, as well as being culturally appropriate in the way that we share, we also need to remember that God is provoked by idolatry. Those who say, ‘I don’t make any claim to be religious’ are in fact stating their unbelief, and need to be called in no uncertain terms to change their way of thinking. As Spurgeon pointed out, no thief has ever gained points in front of a judge and jury by saying, ‘I make no claim to be an honest person.’! The court is likely to be much more lenient towards those who can show that they are usually honest, but slipped up on one occasion. The same is true with faith – let’s not reward honest fools by acknowledging their unbelief – rather let’s call all we meet to the truth about Jesus Christ as revealed by God through the Holy Spirit and in the message of the Bible.
(quotes are from the ESV)

*Stott 1990: 284

What is the Bible?

Is it a book? It’s name in Greek – ho biblios – means ‘the book’. But if it is a book, then we’re in trouble because nobody reads any more. At least young people don’t. They play computer games, watch videos, go on social-networking sites like Facebook, do anything that involves technology, but they don’t read.

In June 2002, the Office for National Statistics Omnibus survey found that:
- Nearly half of adults had read at least five books or more in the previous 12 months
- A quarter of adults had not read a book during the same period, including almost half of males aged between 16 and 24.
- 96% said they had read something in the past seven days, whether books, magazines, newspapers or text messages. Reading material varied according to age: 70% of 16 to 24-year-olds had read a magazine, compared to 59% of 55 to 64-year-olds; 33% of 16 to 24-year-olds had read fiction, compared to 43% of 55 to 64-year-olds.

The Bible Jesus Read
- What we call the OT they would have called the Bible (or Tanakh).
- Jews split it into: Torah (teaching), Prophets (inc. ‘history’), and Writings – so, roughly speaking: Teaching, Prophecy, Other.
- The book most quoted by Jesus was one of the books written by Moses, the man of God – Deuteronomy (in fact it’s an extended sermon by Moses). Deuteronomy is from the Torah, and possibly the same book found by priests and scribes in the time of Josiah (‘the book of the law’) 2Ki 22:8 cf. Deu 30:10. It is the book that not only describes how to live, but it teaches us about the LORD:
- Deu 30:19-20 19 "I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; 20 "that you may love the LORD your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them." or: ‘…for in this your life consists, and on this depends the length of time that you stay in the country’ NJB

Shiny Happy People
- What guarantee to you have that you will live a long, prosperous, and happy life? The Israelites had a covenant with the LORD. They would have Israel, the promised land, as their inheritance, and the LORD would have them as his inheritance (his possession) Deu 4:20-21 cf Psa 78, 106. What do we have? Our citizenship is in heaven (Phl 3:20), that is our inheritance – the Kingdom of God. But we have to remember that we are His inheritance – we belong to Him, we’re God’s people. And He will not forsake us:
- Psalm 94:14 For the LORD will not cast off His people, Nor will He forsake His inheritance.
- Jesus quoted the book of Deu when being tempted by Satan Mat 4:4 ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God ‘; 4:7 'You shall not tempt the LORD your God'; 4:10 'You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.' (Deu 8:3; 6:15; 6:13-14 respectively).

Conclusion
The Bible is message. It’s purpose is to bring us as God’s people into closer relationship with Him (2Ti 3:16-17). It is also powerful, and able to save those who believe it (Rom 10:17 ‘and hearing by the word of Christ’ probably means ‘hearing the Good News about Jesus Christ’).

We need to think a lot harder about the format we use to present this message to young people. Blogs are better than books. Videos, short clips on web-pages, are better still. For much of the world these clips are accessed on mobile phones rather than laptops. The sooner we move into the world of digital media the better!