who da king?

on a recent holiday in Geelong (about 1hr west-south-west of Melbourne) i watched Taladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, a fairly ordinary hollywood film, replete with a few guffaw-worthy scenes, my favourite was the one that was also on the ad (so just watch the trailer - no need to watch the rest of the film).there was Ricky Bobby and his wife sitting around the table, overflowing with his sponsors' food, and he starts to give thanks, saying, "Dear Lord Baby Jesus," and then proceeds to give thanks for his "hot wife", kids (Walker and Texas Ranger), as well as his sponsors for their gracious provision of food.

his wife then gets a little narky with his constant rememberance of Jesus as a baby; "he did grow up you know!"

isn't it funny how hollywood sometimes hits the nail right on the head?

he did grow up, he did die. and (perhaps surprising to those with nightmarish visions of this half-naked man eternally hanging on a cross), he did rise again from the dead.

yet, as we read from Matthew 2 this Sunday, he "was born king". He didn't become king, didn't kill off anyone and everyone who in his paranoia may have been a rival (c/f Herod, most of the successors to Jereboam's throne).

no; he was born king, with no regent, predecessor nor successor.

his life on earth was what it was, not that he might become king, but because he already was.

And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:7b-11

SMBC preaching conference

Don Carson and Dale Ralph Davis spoke to us over four days at the 2007 sydney missionary and bible college preaching conference.

Ralph Davis was really impressive, especially when we worked out he was translating on the run from the hebrew. i think most people walked out, keen to preach thru OT narratives.

Don took us thru:

1. biblical theology,
   
2. systematic theology,
   
3. historical theology and
   
4. preaching and pastoral theology

some of it i still have to process a little more, but a few highlights from his last talk, when asking how do we do pastoral theology?

cultivate compassion - how do you feel when you see sheep without a shepherd?

cultivate an understanding of people and their needs in biblical categories - if you analyse people in sociological categories, you'll start thinking of (pop)-sociological solutions

cultivate a prepared mind and heart for turning points in people's lives - be prepared to rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep, and often both on the same day! think about how you are preparing people for eternity in light of those events.

cultivate a connection between lofty thoughts of God, and people - hear hear.

cultivate a healthy independence from your congregation - fear God more than your congregation. they need you to be their pastor first, not letting your friendship get in the way of that.

cultivate your own maturation (and check your motivation) - your people need to see you being shaped and matured by the word of God

great conference, really encouraging, correcting and cautionary.

that hostile wall

writing a talk for youth group on ephesians 2:11-22, I got to thinking:
is there a point at which we may say that, although Christ lived and suffered and was tempted as a man, so in some ways he united man and God in that he himself was fully God and fully Man -
- yet it was only when he died that he was able to end the hostility?
man was hostile to God up to and including in Christ, in that this God-man was tempted in his flesh. so is the dividing wall of hostility simply that wall between jews and greeks, circumcised and uncircumcised, is that what was broken?
OR is the hostility of the law and commandments not the jew/gentile divide, but the man/God divide?

at least that’s what the 2nd half of ephesians 2 is leading me to think.
which is a different argument to the predominant line of thought going through galatians, romans...
the pre-eminence of jew over greek is something I’ve always seen as a main theme to be overcome in the fulfillment of God’s plan of unity.
is this a different theme, or one and the same? God v man, or jew v gentile?

in Christ alone

today marked the final in a series we've been doing at CBS Core* on church; what it is, what it isn't, when it is, and isn't, what it should, shouldn't be and so on.

as pontius pilate asked, the ultimate postmodern question, what is truth?**, when you think about it -

do you believe the same thing you did 10yrs ago?

will you have arrived at "the truth" by the time you die?

after my recent jude extravaganza, the question of truth - what it is and who arbitrates over the grey, fuzzy areas, came up again.

"we" would of course say that truth is what we declare it to be; what we teach, exposit, explain, live.
but we must humbly admit, as per the above questions, that even our own understandings will shift over our lives.
therefore to rule others out of God's kingdom (very risky business indeed! c/f 1Cor4) is extremely short sighted considering our own unsteadfastness.

so, for example, the lovely jehovah's witness ladies who visit me every now and then, whose hope is 100% rooted in the propitiatory act of Christ's death, whose lives speak volumes by their prayerfulness and other-person centredness - apart from continuing to try and show them how the Bible speaks of Christ's divinity, and the personhood of the Holy Spirit, what am i to say to them?

stepping back and trying to focus on what is of central importance, am I to exclude them, or anyone who believes an alternative doctrine, from God's kingdom?

* also known as i can't believe it's not SOCM
** John 8:28

the author of this blog reserves the right to make inflammatory posts, raising questions that he may or may not have completely resolved, in order to either help him or others be more sure of what they may or may not believe. ätsch!

s(un)shine

a question i've raised once before (here) has asked itself again, courtesy of a new film, sunshine.

without giving too much away, this film is set in the not too distant future, in a world where they've discovered that the sun is cooling down a little, and they need to "zap" a little more life into it!

so my question is to what extent will we (humanity, God's image bearers) be witnesses to the destruction, collapse of the physical universe?

this idea of the dying sun is not a new idea (arthur c. clarke thought of it yonks ago, and my recollection is that j.g. ballard also mooted the idea half a century ago), it is simply a device for bringing cosmic catastrophy into the present (much like that asteroid film with that guy and the girl and the father and stuff).

the waning sun postulated in the film is one thing, but:
what of the bomb-race that looks like it's getting a second-wind?
what of the disastrous state of the evironment?
what of the increased ability for those who would do great harm to many, to accomplish their desires?

at what stage is enough going to be enough? will ther ever be any of us around to see that day when evil will be completely vanquished?
OR, might there be a similar pattern to the death and resurrection of Christ?

ie, all that is evil - conquered. all that is good - gone.
then, bursting forth, the Lord, with (to quote Jude quoting Enoch) ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

that would include, i guess, doing their very best to destroy this good world that we have been given stewardship over, perverting this good creation for their own wicked ends.

but then again, i wonder, might it ever get that far?

*no points for guessing what i've just been preaching on!

theo blogs

i have no idea how this happened, but apparently, as of yesterday, YOU reckon i'm the 22nd most popular theo-blog in the universe!
that's according to unspun's top theology blogs list
however, 77 people had voted almost 900 times between them! always look at the fine print...

a blog list AND a novelty sweet! aah, the life.

guns and people

to start on a light note - have you seen the street art stating,

people don't kill forests, Gunns kill forests?

i always chuckle (and then feel sad when i look at photos of the environmental raping of old-growth forests and the incactivity of both tassie state, and aussie federal governments)

but moving into my main point, we’ve seen this week with the shocking events in Virginia in the US, listening to virginia trioli's interview on 702 ABC sydney the day afterwards with a representative from the seemingly omnipotent gun lobby, i couldn't help reflecting on the fallen state of mankind.

i heard again the same old thing dragged out – guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
The way to prevent mass shootings like this, claims the omniscient gun advocate, is to educate people - in the home, in the schools - to be nice to one another, to teach them they don’t need to kill one another, there are other ways to deal with issues.

Which is fine, is good, is a great idea – but it denies something that we’ve seen all through history, all over the world:
The state of man is fallen - we’re stumble-prone.

Jeremiah 17:9 is a top verse to remember. it says:

The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?

who can understand why the only option remaining is to shoot dozens of people, to blow up bombs in a market, to carpet-bomb a city?

the desperation and frustration we feel with injustice and insecurity is not something that can be solved with violence;

but as long as people seek for justice anywhere else but in the judge of the world, in the Only Just God, our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, maybe it's not such a great idea to supply them with semi-automatic weapons?

jude's saucy sources

anyone who may've been trying to keep up with jude, may well be asking the question, "where did he get it from?"

this table* shows us where he gets them from, the sources he's drawing on for his attacks on those who would pervert the grace of God into a license to sin.

click on picture to enlarge

now, don't go trying to find the Assumption of Moses - it isn't the Testament of Moses, nor is it the Apocalypse of Moses, fun as they are to read. it hasn't been sighted for over 1500yrs.

you can get a hold of Enoch if you want tho - enjoy the 119 chapters of hilarity, hijinks and slap-stick action, as the good angels take on the bad angels, in a do-or-die battle of cosmic proportions (the film version will be called License to Sin, or it should be. i still don't know why the makers of Bond chose against it.)

but both Enoch and Assump. Moses are typical examples of this apocalyptic, pseudepigraphical literature that was going around back in the day (ie C1 BC - C1 AD and thereabouts). Hence my attempts to contemporise his message with a previous post.

to really make sense of Jude's letter, copy it into a word document, and delete or move aside the examples, it's a really clear and easy read then, and when you put them back, Shazzam - It's super straight-forward!

big ups to mark for making that plain to me!

it's been really helpful in the way i read apocalyptic literature - thinking about the big picture, not getting ground down trying to understand the minutae - it's actually been an emancipating experience, not to put too high a note on it!

anyway, have a try, tell me what you think.

*not sure if you can make a table in blogger, hence the screen grab...

my best line

still tapping away, trying to get this sermon sorted, but i thought i'd share my best line so far:

i'm trying to explain the harshness of the examples jude uses from the OT, 1Enoch, the Assumption of Moses (a non-extant text - we have the rest), in terms that we might understand today.

... it's like saying, "these turkeys are as useless as wet toilet-paper, as destructive as the asian tsunami, as untrustworthy as paedophiles, and as mentally unstable as britney spears."

Chocolate Jesus

i was reading this post on byron's blog, as i am prone to do, and recalled one of my fave songs by tom waits.

more or less a twelve bar blues if you want to sing along:

Don't go to church on Sunday
Don't get on my knees to pray
Don't memorize the books of the Bible
I got my own special way
Bit I know Jesus loves me
Maybe just a little bit more

I fall on my knees every Sunday
At Zerelda Lee's candy store

Well it's got to be a chocolate Jesus
Make me feel good inside
Got to be a chocolate Jesus
Keep me satisfied

Well I don't want no Anna Zabba
Don't want no Almond Joy
There ain't nothing better
Suitable for this boy
Well it's the only thing
That can pick me up
Better than a cup of gold
See only a chocolate Jesus
Can satisfy my soul

When the weather gets rough
And it's whiskey in the shade
It's best to wrap your savior
Up in cellophane
He flows like the big muddy
But that's ok
Pour him over ice cream
For a nice parfait

Well it's got to be a chocolate Jesus
Good enough for me
Got to be a chocolate Jesus
Good enough for me

Well it's got to be a chocolate Jesus
Make me feel good inside
Got to be a chocolate Jesus
Keep me satisfied

this song written by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, from the albumn mule variations. if you ever get a chance to listen to it, the song eyeball kid is sublime.

jude & today

for my upcoming sermon on Jude, i'm trying to work out, who are these people today?

4 [...] certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

and what about these kids?

10 But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.

i've been listening to some sermons from the US - talk about a different world! they're talking about pastors who receive 7-figure salaries, viewing themselves as CEOs responsible for big companies, and should be rewarded as such. there are some extravagant churches around, but i think by-and-large any who have pursued such excesses are recognised as having [...] abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error [...](v11)

so can we say is it even talking about the church of today? who should we be looking out for? who is it today perverting the grace of our God?

the wolf

again exploring the relative beauty, or ugliness we find, this passage from Hermann Hesse's the wolf stood out.

we come to a point in this short story, set in a harsh winter, with very little left for the wolves to eat - they have resorted to attacking sheep, and after an intense hunt this wolf has just been spotted and shot.

Trembling, the wounded wolf climbed through the woods in the half-light, while slowly the brown blood trickled down his flank.
The cold had let up. The sky in the west was hazy, giving promise of snow.
At last the exhausted beast reached the top. He was at the edge of a large, slightly inclined snowfield not far from Mont Crosin, high above the village from which he had escaped. He felt no hunger, but a dull persistent pain from his wound. A low sick bark came from his drooping jaws, his heart beat heavily and painfully; the hand of death weighed on it like a heavy load. A lone fir tree with spreading branches lured him; there he sat down and stared forlornly into the snow-gray night. Half an hour passed. Then a red, strangely muted light fell on the snow. With a groan the wolf stood up and turned his beautiful head toward the light. It was the moon, which, gigantic and blood-red, had risen in the southeast and was slowly climbing higher in the misty sky. For many weeks it had not been so big and red. Sadly, the dying wolf's eyes clung to the hazy disk, and again a faint howl rattled painfully through the night.

[...](the men catch him, kill him; they laugh, boast, sing and curse)

None of them saw the beauty of the snow-covered forest, or the radiance of the high plateau, or the red moon which hovereed over the Chasseral, and whose faint light shimmered on their rifle barrels, on the crystalline snow, and on the blurred eyes of the dead wolf.

even this wolf, so close to death, is the only one truly able to appreciate his surrounds. the desolation, the oppressiveness, and even his looming demise, fade away when he is no longer focussed on his own survival, but gives himself over to his fate - in that stillness he can find solitude and find beauty.

WSBI 5

this is one of the many emotive pictures we were shown this morning, in a primer to the third WaSaBI, this one entitled the cross and eschatology.
i guess, in the same way as you need to understand the absence of something to grasp its true value (try this with oxygen sometime), our presenter wanted us to understand the hopelessness of this world, in order to fully grasp the hope we have in Christ.

after discussing despair, we grappled with 4 views of hope, the marxist, western hedonist, postmodern, and finally the Christian (ours and God's).

i found it a real encouragment looking at the manifold terms the new testament uses to express hope:

• hope
• expectation
• God's purpose for the world
• heaven
• inheritance
• last day
• eternal life
• plan
• predestination
• jesus

just reading through this list, thinking about the images each word or phrase speaks of the hope we have is quite powerful.

slightly off-kilter, but i have been finding more and more of late (perhaps it is sydney? or just my eyes being open a little wider?), the idea of the cross seems very much an after-thought:
the gospel, so i hear, and so the bible tells me, is the resurrection.
therefore the cross in some ways is simply the means to an end. that end being the inreaching, and eventual victory, of the resurrection age into this sin-bound age.
yes, the cross was the only way for our sins to be dealt with, but even the payment of sin is again simply a means to an end, the resurrection.

although this is perhaps a discussion for another time, for a WaSaBI on eschatolohy and the cross, the cross hardly got a leg in!


personally, the framework used to discuss all 4 views of hope, was very helpful, not to mention challenging.
diagramatically this means, the starting point, the present, and the end-point(=eschaton=hope)


so if one of our starting points is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our present is that we are resurrection living, and our end-point is our resurrection bodies, this begs the question: Do we treat one another differently to how we did beforehand? Does the present reality of our partaking NOW in the resurrection show us to be different to the days gone by?
similarly, if the starting point is the sabbath-rest, the end-point is meeting God face to face, then our present reality needs must be fellowship together in the spirit - no longer seeing one another, nor our true selves, as through a glass darkly.


as i hope you can tell, this was another great WaSaBI. top work rob.

the next WSBI will be held on 22nd april - this is a call out for any articles on atonement, of a suitable level to hand out to comers prior to the reading group WSBI. links to any articles would be greatly appreciated - or you can email them to doug at-symbol wildstreet dot org dot au (yes, the reading group is because i'm running it, failing volunteers, and due to preaching commitments am unable to write a talk - though feel free to volunteer your services to wild street bible institute!)

funny ole fred

but fred, are you for or against them? (click here if you really want to find out fred's views)
only 1 more sleep till we can vote. yay! i just need to decide, which shade of grey do i most like?

jclds iconography

for my 50th post, i thought i'd do something a little naughty:

looking at mark’s blog I was impressed to find a link to lladro, the manufacturer of boutique statuettes. to my great mirth I found that one could purchase, among other luxurious items, this beautiful icon, entitled simply, missionaries.

anyone who has seen the australian made oscar-nominated short film, the messiah, as well as rushes from john safran’s pilot extreme mormons, not to mention trey parker and matt stone's (the creators of south park) orgazmo or even cannibal (do you think they have a past history involving the mormons?), i’m sure can’t but ask themselves if members of the church* of JCLDS have found for themselves a new icon.

it’s definitely quite different to the picture I have in my head, when thinking about christian missionaries back in the day – I just hope noone starts bowling up and venerating office workers unfortunate enough to be wearing a white shirt and black tie, asking for fingernail clippings – they’ve got to be worth at least a few indulgences, surely!

* it is perhaps worth mentioning that the group referred to as “the mormons” are not able to be registered as a church in some countries, rather are officially a cult, affirming the indubitably heretical nature of this group