Does our preaching reveal an Over-realised Christology?

Just recently I heard my minister again refer to people who inadvertently hold to an over-realised eschatology. He made the point that this belief can often be seen in the view taken of the resurrection when preached at funerals. It seems that too often our beliefs are revealed when our humanness is laid bare.
It got me thinking that perhaps an over-realised eschatology is only a symptom of an over-realised Christology.
Now we need to tread carefully here. I am not at all minimizing or downplaying the significance and centrality of Christ. After all, 1 Peter 3 tells us to set apart Christ as Lord in every activity, whether it be in our thoughts or our speech or our behaviour. So let's carefully define the concept.
An over-realised eschatology is one where people think and believe that all the benefits and realities of heaven we have now. For example since there's no sin in heaven I am sinless now. But of course that is so obviously false. I may have positional righteousness before God now by being in Christ, but I do not have practical righteousness and that is made abundantly clear by Scripture itself, in all the commands and exhortations found throughout the New Testament.
Likewise, an over-realised Christology is one where Christ's death and resurrection are made all there is to happen in regard to Christ's work - with sometimes the added phrase that "all we do now is await the second coming." In the vernacular, it says it's all done and dusted, nothing awaits us except the return of Christ and then heaven.
But when we put it that way we start to see the inadequacy of that approach or belief or hermeneutic. Biblically we quickly get into hot water, one cannot have a over-realised Christology if only half of the prophecies regarding the Messiah have come to fulfilment so far. That itself would be a denial of the veracity of God, the God who does indeed keep His Promises.
So how does this belief work itself out in practice? Well the sermons of many Preachers today seem to assume this over-realised Christology.
It's seen when Preachers take a passage of the Word of God and see the application as a call to proclamation, to going and declaring to all people "the Gospel" namely of the death and resurrection of Jesus, totally ignoring what the point of the passage is actually about. I have witnessed Preachers do this, both Anglican brothers and Baptists and it leaves me bewildered. Jesus' ministry did not stop at his death and resurrection. He told his disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they received the Holy Spirit. There is a progression to His Ministry, His work is ongoing. This is what the book of Acts lays out for us. To imply the Gospel is all there is, is to ignore Jesus' own words and the teachings of the New Testament.
I am certain some would not deny this truth, - that there is indeed more to come in the Plan of God. The problem is that the focus of their preaching actually teaches the opposite. It misguides their hearers and leaves the hearer taking on board an over-realised Christology. To call the hearer to repent and turn to Jesus, or to rejoice in the Gospel at that point when the passage before them doesn't teach this is to not "preach the whole council of God". We must remember that 'The Plan of God' is not some reductionistic gospel!
It is pretty difficult to put the focus on the Gospel message as such when preaching on the qualifications of an elder from 1 Timothy. That however is not to deny one can call upon their unbelieving listeners to repent and believe the gospel, for we need only remind them that one cannot exhibit that kind of character and behaviour without having been transformed by God when one turns to Jesus and becomes a disciple because of His death and Resurrection.  But that is quite different to ending a sermon on such a passage by referring to the Gospel or giving the impression that this is the meaning and application of the passage.


Is this over-realised Christology what motivates people when preaching from the Old Testament to quickly jump into the New Testament without having first explained how the original hearers would have understood it and applied it? Too often preaching the Old Testament is really preaching the New under the title of the Old Testament so we might assuage ourselves as having preached to our congregations both the Old and New Testament. Are we really only giving lip service to the Old Testament? the Scripture that Jesus loved.


Let's carefully expound the Scriptures, the whole Plan of God and not merely succumb to some overarching phrase we call "the Gospel."


In Christ,
Gary

The Gospel in Jonah and why Israel should have taken notice

Many of us know the general story line of Jonah. After all it is a favorite of so many Sunday school teachers and has even made it onto the screen.

Yet how many of us have picked up on the import of the book of Jonah for the nation of Israel? We all know that Jonah was a very reluctant prophet and ran away in the opposite direction when God told him to go and deliver a message to that great wicked city of Nineveh. How many of us though have reflected on the book and noticed the really significant literary markers?


For example have you noticed that in chapter 1:1 it uses the Covenant name of God YHWH, translated Lord and it consistently uses that name for God until Jonah himself gives an account of who he is to the sailors in 1:9. Then he says "I fear the Lord, the God of Heaven." In other words, his God is both one who forms a relationship with Israel, first up through Abraham, and also the All powerful Sovereign Creator of the Universe.

In dealing with Jonah, God comes to him as the Covenant making God, the one who makes relationships with man. It is the covenant God of Israel, the Lord who made covenant promises to Abraham about his descendants being more numerous than the sands, and not just that but that their role was to be a light to the Nations. They were to "evangelise" the Nations and bring them to God. Over and over the nation Israel failed in this duty given them by God. They neglected it and as Jonah symbolises, sometimes they went to extreme lengths not to give that light to the nations of the world.

And where in the Scriptures that the Lord God gave to his people Israel do we first read of the two names of God as Elohim ( transl God ) and YHWH ( translated Lord )? It is in Genesis 1&2. Not two creation stories as such but an account of Creation by the All powerful Sovereign Creator, in Genesis 1 and then in Genesis 2 we see He is the one who makes a covenant relationship with mankind, first up in Adam and Eve.


How does this use of the name of God play out in the rest of chapter 1 and chapter 2?

The sailors could not throw Jonah into the sea to his death as they did not want to be culpable before God for that. so they tried to row to shore but couldn't. And importantly it is said of them that they called upon the Lord. And after Jonah was tossed into the sea, they offered sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.
Miraculously we read that the Lord provided a great fish so that Jonah would indeed not die, and the sailors would not then have been culpable of his death.

What we have seen is that even in Jonah's running away, gentiles, the sailors come to know the Lord God and sacrifice and make vows to Him. Exactly the duty of Israel and the Jews as we read about in Genesis 12.

We need in our study of God's Word that He is very precise in the words that He wants His prophets to write down for our benefit. And secondly we need to see thematic markers that link back to earlier doctrinal truths such as Israel's duty to being a light to the Nations as expressed in Genesis 12. This will bring God's Word to bear much more on our lives as they are illuminated by the Scriptures themselves.

Next I will look at Jonah 3. You might like to consider it with the above in mind.

God Bless.
Gary

Being on time - An African addresses this issue for us - will we listen?

I have observed that in our Australian culture it is becoming more evident that Christians don't worry at all about being late for anything.
And when it comes to Church, well it seems we ought to be grateful that they at least turned up!
Leaving aside the doctrine of Church, I recently had a discussion, very short mind you, with a friend about African time. And how many Africans they know are never on time for anything and their comments were that it was "a cultural thing". I observed that perhaps as Christians this was something that needed to be changed, and now it seems that we in Australia are also in need of that change.
I came across this blog by Pastor Conrad Mbewe where he addresses 'Africa time'. Have a read and see if you are not challenged by what he has to say.

your sometimes late, brother in Christ,
Gary

Pastors and Christians wake up call - Dr Akin's talk at BtT

Hi all,
I think we can all benefit greatly from reading and pondering Dr Akin's talk on BtT ( between the Times ) at chapel for a wake up call as it were for Southern Baptists.

So much of what he says I am in total agreement with.
I am thrilled when I hear things like his following comments:
"Russ Bush was absolutely correct when I heard him say in a seminary classroom in the early 1980’s, “the question of biblical inspiration is ultimately a question of Christological identity.” Why? Because Jesus believed the Holy Scriptures to be the completely true and trustworthy Word of God! Even Rudolf Bultmann said this, he just believes Jesus got it wrong! Well hear me, and hear me well. To deny inerrancy is to say that Jesus was wrong and that you are smarter than He. That is both heresy and blasphemy. It is spiritually suicidal!

Are you questioning inerrancy? Then repent! Do you deny inerrancy? Then go join another denomination. We will love you and pray for you, but we do not want you infecting our people with a spiritual disease that is always fatal to the Church of the Lord Jesus. Inerrancy and the sufficiency of the Bible in all matters of faith and practice is not up for debate in the Southern Baptist Convention. It alone will give us the necessary weapons to take on and take down what Newsweek (8-13-08) calls “a newly muscular secularism.” "

and his reminder:
"However, and hear me well, the “war for the Bible” is not over and it will never end until Jesus returns. Launched by Satan in the Garden of Eden, “has God said,” will continue to be under assault, and we must ever be on guard and ready to answer those who question its veracity and accuracy. "
Great sermon and a challenge to our pampering to the arrogant lost who don't want to listen to our Lord and His Word.
For those who say we just need to love Jesus then you better listen to Jesus and do what he says. You wouldn't get away with saying you love your spouse but don't listen to a thing they say!

In Christ,
Gary

Is the gospel just good news?

Currently there's a little debate on the internet about what is the gospel. You will find summaries over at imonk. However for me there are some deeper issues that need addressing. In the four gospels the gospel is usually associated or called "the gospel of the Kingdom". What did the gospel writers mean by that phrase? Is it different to how many preachers speak today using the simplified or shortened phrase “the gospel"

At least in the four gospels this shortening has serious ramifications if one ignores the full phrase “of the kingdom” for the Jews had a specific expectation of the Messiah and the Kingdom, sometimes quite at odds with the Old Testament prophecy about the kingdom and the Messiah as Luke’s gospel reveals quite clearly.

I for one believe that so many preachers have not got a good biblical grasp on what the kingdom really is. That’s a whole series in itself, but for present it has big implications for those wishing to pursue the question of what is the Gospel as some evangelicals are doing. I don’t believe that some glib response such as the kingdom being now and not yet is adequate as Biblical teaching for the flock on this mater. It needs to be clearly exegeted, not some trite phrase trottered out like some show pony.

For example, in Luke’s gospel the Jews expected that the Messiah would come and throw out the Roman’s and make Israel to rule over the Nations. They expected a political salvation whereas Jesus is at pains to point out that their problem was spiritual bondage, not political bondage, they needed to repent. This is Why so many times early on Jesus would not accept their designating him as Messiah because their concept of Messiah wasn’t the biblical one!

In light of that we need to ask ourselves whether we are not in the church in danger of likewise redefining the gospel of the kingdom to something other that what God says. Isn't that what we see already with people pushing the prosperity gospel and the social gospel? What we need is the kingdom gospel! But even a phrase like “kingdom gospel” may be a little misleading.

Isn’t it more correct to say that in the gospels the gospel of the kingdom - literally “the good news of the Kingdom” puts the focus on “the kingdom”, not the word "gospel" / "good news"?

We are to see how the four gospel writers use the term gospel and in relation to what to get a proper grasp on what’s going on. In that case is the coming of God’s Kingdom, particularly in the arrival of the Messiah Jesus, all good news? In one sense it’s good news in the after 400 years of Silence from God, God’s plan of sending the Messiah to Israel is happening, but as you see throughout the gospels, it’s not all good! The leaders and many of the people had their own expectations concerning the Messiah and what he ought to do. As a Nation they actually reject the Messiah and it ends as “God predicted” in the Messiah being the suffering servant of Isaiah 40-66. We benefit in that Jesus goes to the Cross to pay the penalty for sin, and bring redemption, however in a true sense it wasn’t just good news in that the coming of the Messiah brought judgment also. My teacher and friend D. B Knox wrote a paper years ago in which he addressed this issue of the gospel as being good news. You can read it in the Briefing #343, the magazine by Matthias Press.
He wrote that “True to Moses and all the prophets of the Old Testament, the apostolic message about Jesus was set in the context of judgement. It was a message of escape from condemnation, a fleeing from the wrath to come”. Indeed this is what John the Baptist preached, the inauguration, the imminence of the Kingdom.
Again D. B. K writes:
"The message of Jesus was identical with the message of John. Like John, Jesus proclaimed the imminence of the kingdom of God and called his hearers to repent: “Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand”. At this point, it should be noted that the translation of gospel as ‘good news’ is a mistake. In the Bible, the Greek word ευαγγελια means ‘news’. The proclamation of the coming kingdom of God was not in itself good news to every hearer. Its imminence was, however, news—startling news which called for an immediate response, the response of repentance. For the news of the kingdom was the news of the judgement of God."
As D. B. K points out even in the Sermon on the Mount in Jesus’ teaching He points to a broad way and a narrow way and the choice is crucial for one leads to destruction. That is just one indication of the kind of judgment message that comes with the Kingdom announcement.

I cannot recommend the article enough as a balance to so much emphasis on the gospel as good news.

Now in that light we need to ascertain if when Paul speaks of the gospel is it the same as in the gospels? Is it perhaps a different perspective on the same thing?

Consider the opening chapter of Roman’s Paul speaks of “the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel” There judgment is again associated with the gospel, just as mentioned in the four gospels.

Yet sometimes Paul seems to speak of the gospel as the gospel message, as that of the cross, redemption and so on. Thus he says in Galatians in the context of some preaching a salvation by legalism,

“…if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that you have received, let him be accursed” (Gal 1:9).

And this is again consistent with Peter preaching in Acts 10:36 where it is a message of the great news of peace “The gospel of peace,” as Peter described it to Cornelius.

And this concurs with Paul in 1 Cor:
“But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, which is the image of God, should shine unto them” (2 Corinthians 4:3).

So although Paul doesn’t use the phrase “the gospel of the Kingdom” that I can recollect, it doesn’t seem to contradict at all with what is found in the gospels.

Now what about the current debate by evangelicals?
Much of what the guys on the panel at the Christian book Expo in Dallas said was well worth reflecting upon. However when Richard Stearns spoke his points though supposedly justified from particular Scripture passages, revealed instead a poor understanding of those passages, especially Matt 5. Of all the speakers I found Richard the most affable, likeable and encouraging, however that does not mean he handled Matt 5 well. In the end what he said gave emphasis to what we would call a social gospel instead of the Gospel as taught in Scripture. Now he did say things that we would want to applaud, such as “Jesus’ gospel brings radical social change. It begins between us and God, but culminates in social revolution. [ A revolution] to make good news available to all people. To lift up the poor and sick and be the salt of the earth and the light” We would indeed say one of the consequences of a life transformed by God is social influence and impact, it’s just that one doesn’t get that from Matthew 5. Those that mourn are those that mourn over their sin, not because of the evils and hardships of the world. The poor in spirit are those that recognise their spiritual bankruptcy. Likewise the salt imagery has an Old Testament background, of the Jewish Sacrifice, not the “modern” notion of a preservative, but rather the salt was used up, consumed in the offering. We would certainly affirm that the gospel comes and lifts up the abused and downtrodden. It’s just that that is not what Matthew 5 is saying. Even the moderator didn’t pick up on this when he summarised their positions after 30 minutes. He gave the following summation, with his point about mission being the problem point for me.
The gospel is:-
Transactional – The Cross deals with sin and God’s wrath etc. 1 Cor 15.
Relationships – New Life / Eternal Life John 3:16; 2 Cor 5:16-20.
Mission – Where we are representing or reflecting the Gospel by what we do. Matthew 5:14-16.

Whoever we read or listen to, we need to be careful and check out whether what they say comes from the passages they assert.

In Christ,
Gary

What is the Gospel?

Over the last couple of years now I have come to wonder why so many preachers in sermons will use the phrase "the gospel" as a kind of tag summary about any passage they happen to be preaching on.
It's almost like every passage they speak on whether it be some chapter that is talking about Christian living eg life by the spirit, Galataians 5:16-26, or wives and husbands raltionships Eph 5:23-33 or speaking of the second coming from 1 Thess 4:13-18 that you hear this christian sound bite that this is "the gospel" dropped into the sermon.
Has the term "the gospel" become so widely used that it's in danger of loosing it's meaning? Indeed do we know what the Bible means when it talks of "the gospel"? When the term is used by Mark is it different to that used by Paul?
Are pastors using the term as some generalisation to gain assent from the listeners to accept what they are saying? Is it that we need to remind ourselves to be like the Bereans who in Acts 17 checked everything that the apostle Paul said against the Sciptures? And he was an apostle, not some guy who happens to be up the front preaching.
Should not pastors work harder at giving application from the text that the text itself implies, so that in the hearers life the rubber hits the road?

Just recently Darrell Bock moderated this panel on March 20, 2009, for the Christian Book Expo in Dallas. There's a video courtesy of Tangle on the Christianity Today site worth watching though it is long. The first 35 miutes give an interesting insight on what they see as the problem and how they understand the gospel.
The panelists are:
Richard Stearns, President, World Vision International and author of The Hole in Our Gospel (Nelson) •Mark D. Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels? (Crossway) •Tullian Tchividjian, Do I Know God? (Multnomah) •Justin Taylor, The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World (Crossway)

As evangelicals they are asking or addressing the question what is the gospel which is certainly a question doing the rounds at the moment. Have a listen, but be discerning, I will say somethings about what they have said next time.

For the present I want to point out something so many Christians and sometimes pastors fail to understand when looking at the four gospels.

Some pastors use parralel bibles on the Gospels incorrectly. they use them when preaching on some passage to work up a "story" on what a particular passage in one of the gospels is saying by ripping off all the bits that have apparantly the same event or parable or teaching and putting them together. This is sloppy hermeneutics.

We need to remind ourselves that each gospel has a specific teaching point as a whole. They are not mere chronological histories telling the life of Jesus, they are teaching specific doctrine, they have a particular point to teach and that is mostly guided by the specific audience they were directed at. That is why there are four gospels and not one. If they were merely chronolgical histories of the life of Jesus then you would need only one!

One of the best commentaries I have read on getting to grips with this is David Gooding's 'According to Luke' IVP 1987.
I was fortunate to have a great Old Testament lecturer at Moore Theological College whom I have come to appreciate even more after writing a series of Bible studies in Luke's Gospel. Barry Webb taught us to appreciate not just the exegetical niceties of the text but to look at the connecting literary structure and themes found throughout a particular book. It's no wonder as he did his PhD I seem to remember at sheffield in England. Thanks Barry.

Have a good read,
God bless
Gary.