Go easy on the Springboks

It seems a lifetime since Brand SA brought us its stirring “Alive with Possibility” PSA.  The ad built a reasonably convincing and emotive case for why South Africans should believe in the future.   And even though one prominent economist told me at the time that he was only “cautiously optimistic” about our chances  – the ad persuaded me.

Fast forward to September 2016.  South Africa had just lost to Australia in a terrible display of rugby in Brisbane and there was much gnashing of teeth.  In particular, Twitter seethed with vitriol.  “What's the big deal?” an American friend said to me with a shrug, “where I come from it’s rare to see your team win as often as people expect the Springboks to win”.  I could have slapped him but thought better of it – we were, after all, preparing to go into a meeting.  Perhaps another day.

But that’s just the point.  The Springboks ARE expected to win every game even though the stats suggest that despite two World Cups and a sprinkling of Tri Nations titles, they are likely to win less than 7 games out of 10 – a lot less in fact.  There's no logic to it.

It’s a bizarre fixation when you consider that while our great rugby crisis is unfolding, our universities are burning (and may never recover) and that as many as 5 million children will go to bed hungry tonight – many within a 10km radius of where you live.  To say nothing of Nkandla, the EFF and the NPA.  We are becoming, it would seem, the land of impossibility yet the state of a national sports team ranks right up there with other national emergencies.

 4 Weeks ago, I set out to investigate why.  Over 20 focus groups in 5 major cities and 15 interviews with prominent rugby personalities took me down the rabbit hole that is rugby in South Africa

 At first there were no surprises.  Rugby is a type of social currency.  Even 50 000 fans at Kings Park could not be deterred from having a good afternoon last Saturday despite one of the most humiliating losses in Springbok history.  Rugby is beer, braai and boerewors.  Rugby is a story to tell and a tale to share.  Rugby is our big day out and an excuse to wear an ill-fitting green jersey.  “It is a pretext to stay in touch with one another” – said a young white man from Randburg.  “Win or lose we come together”.  When we invite a foreign friend to our local Currie Cup fixture what we are really doing is giving them a window on our world.

 Then things got a little deeper.  I found that Rugby puts us on the map, provides the perfect canvas to show the world what we’re made of.  And I don’t mean hard tackles and the odd bout of fisticuffs.  Those much-televised Mandela/Pienaar moments were so special because there was the perfect distillation of our national soul – muddied though it may be by recent events.  (By the way, if you were wondering what Mandela said to Rugby’s bad boy James Small moments before the kick-off the answer lies in a book by Dan Retief called “The Springboks and the Holy Grail”.  He said: “my son has a picture of you on his wall James.  He tells me you have a tough fight today against Lomu – he said that if anyone can stop him it’s you”.  I mean – how could we NOT have won?)

 And then things got dark.

 We are a frightened people.  I knew it before setting out but I had no real grasp of the scale of it.  We fear Jacob Zuma, Julius Malema, the #feesmustfall movement, the falling Rand…we fear what may happen to Pravin Gordhan and much more besides.  But these pale into insignificance next to our greatest fear – that we might one day become a nation of nobodies - a junk bond nation.  Comic relief for our friends who have emigrated.  It’s a deeply existential problem actually.  As one depressed fiftysomething resident of Fish Hoek put it, “I’m at the bottom of the food chain and there’s no way out”. 

This is not uncharted territory for us.  In the grim twilight of apartheid, we were literally an obscure nation – known only for the wrong things.  But no matter.   We had a legendary rugby team and test matches were our middle finger to the world.  “Slap all the sanctions you want on us but we will prevail – and should you be so unfortunate as to meet us on the Rugby field we will crush you”.  In this sense, rugby (more precisely winning test rugby) was, in the words of Von Clausewitz, a continuation of politics by other means.

But that was then – what about now?  We are no longer the pariah state we once were.  There’s been a reasonably satisfying flow of success on the rugby field since readmission.  So why do we spend sleepless nights excruciating about the recent developments in rugby?  “It’s like they’ve taken something away from us,” lamented one fan at my local country club after the Wallabies won in Brisbane.  Who he meant by “they” I can only guess but he resembled someone who had just lost something of great importance. 

 It’s simple really.   We behave, for the most part, like a helpless people.  The forces that threaten to tear our nation apart represent too big a fight for Joe Public.   At best we resort to slacktivism on Facebook or spoil a vote or two in the local elections. Those macro forces from which we cower are alive and well in our beloved pastime too:  mismanagement, high-level race politics and a maze of other leadership issues. 

Enter the Springboks.

A test win – no matter how ground out – is the middle finger to “them” – who are doing all “they” can to blot out the future – to hijack our way of life.  For many whites the Springboks are, quite literally, the “Thin Green Line” that patrols and defends the meniscus of hope that remains in our land.  About the only force that comes closer to defending the pride and hope of a nation would be the Marines or the Navy Seals.

In Greek mythology there is a tale of one Sisyphus who, punished by the Gods for his self aggrandisement and deceitfulness was forced to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it come back and hit him, repeating this action for eternity.  Nothing describes the burden our national team better.  

There’s a picture I really enjoy, taken moments after Japan beat South Africa in the 2015 World Cup opening rounds.  It presents a very different supporters mindset.  One that is as secure in the destiny of his country as he is in the destiny of his team - though he loves rugby, he seems to see the bigger picture.  That guy really has it.   If only I could be like that guy.  

The Great Exchange

Isaiah 53: 2-10

Of the two main Christian Holidays, I enjoy Easter the most.  This is partly because I prefer Hot Cross Buns to Christmas cake.  It’s partly because Easter is far less commercialized than Christmas. Mainly however, I like Easter because of the Easter story.  The Easter Story is an Epic!   By any standards it is crammed with all the ingredients of an epic drama.  It’s got friendship, betrayal, sacrifice, cowardice yet ultimately redemption.  Today however, I’m not assuming you see Easter the same way as me.  You may not even be a follower of Jesus Christ – you may be wondering why Christians make such a big fuss of Easter.  If that’s you I hope that what follows might change not just your view of Easter but of Jesus himself.

*

All great epics have a “backstory”.  To enjoy the Lord of the Rings, it helps to have read The Hobbit.  To enjoy the Return of the Jedi, you have to have seen Star Wars.   The Easter Story also has a backstory only many don’t appreciate it because they find the Bible quite a daunting read.  So let me simplify it for you:

I’ve heard it said that the Bible is nothing more than an account of God’s rescue mission for the lost soul of humanity. Of course, many people today reject the notion that we need rescuing at all! Yet the story of Adam and Eve (Genesis 2 and 3) explains why this “rescue mission” was necessary in the first place. On the one hand we get a picture of what life looks like when people are living in right relationship with God. On the other, we get a picture of what life looks like when people seek to control their destiny apart from God. Their Sin literally separates them from the God who created them.

Centuries later, an apostle named Paul wrote to the church in Rome stressing how Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God didn't just affect them but the entire bloodline of humanity as well.  He explains that:

Romans 5: 12 Sin came into the world because of what one man did.

Paul goes on to write that because of this:

“There is no one who is righteous (by righteous he means acceptable to God), not even one.  All have turned away from God…

Paul then talks about the consequences of this sin as well:

And with sin came death. OR PUT ANOTHER WAY (Eternal separation from the God who created them)

So to summarise - every human, belonging as he or she does to the bloodline of Adam, has been corrupted by Adam’s rebellion.  This corruption means that everyone has sinned which means – as Paul reminds us - that everyone must die – face an eternity separated from God.  This is all pretty gloomy isn’t it? – But it does help explain why God has a rescue mission. 

It also explains why this rescue mission involved sending his only Son.  I mean, can you think of a better way of getting someone to trust you?!  A story by author Phillip Yancey really sheds light on this.  As a boy, Yancey used to maintain a tropical fish tank: 

Maintaining this tank was no easy task.  I had to run a portable chemical laboratory to monitor the chemical levels.  I had to pour vitamins and other goodies into the water to make sure that the coral would grow and that the fish would be healthy.  I filtered the water regularly and exposed the whole tank to ultraviolet light to kill any germs that might breed there.

You would think, in view of all the energy I put into my tank on behalf of those fishes that they would be at least a little bit grateful!  Not So! Every time my shadow loomed above the tank they dived for cover into the nearest shell.  They showed me only one “emotion” – FEAR.  Although I opened the lid and dropped in food three times a day, they responded to each visit as a sure sign of my designs to torture them.  I had no way of convincing them of my true concern for them!!

I suppose in a way, to these fish, I was like a God.  I was way too large for them; my actions – all meant for their benefit - were too difficult for them to understand.  It’s no wonder they kept diving for cover!  I began thinking about what I would have to do to change their perceptions or experience of me.  I realized that there was only one thing I could do – though it was actually impossible.   If I were truly to reach out to my fish I realized that some sort of incarnation was needed – If I was to convince my fish of my good intentions, I would actually have to become a fish myself – be able to “speak” and relate to them in a way that they could understand 

So this is the backstory of Easter.  God is on a mission to rescue humanity.  This mission first begins with His “connecting” with us through his son Jesus - speaking our language – walking in our shoes – facing all the temptations, struggles and trials that we humans face.  But most importantly, doing all this without sinning the way we do

Hebrews 4: For we do not have a saviour who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are

 … yet he did not sin. 

*

Now let’s return to the Easter story.   Having found a way of bringing us into His confidence, God’s plan now addresses that stubborn problem of sin – the one thing that threatens to separate us from God for eternity.  And so…that same son who came to live amongst us must now die for us.  Many people however – even many Christians – battle to understand just how the cross could have dealt with our sin. 

On the face of it, there was nothing that special about crucifixion - it was a common (if gruesome) method of execution in those days.  It was barbaric in the extreme, designed to inflict as much pain and humiliation on the victim.   But to understand how it dealt with our sin we have to look beyond all the blood and gore.  This was no-ordinary death. 

If you read the Gospels, particularly the Gospel of John, you will see that Jesus is sometimes referred to as “The Lamb of God”.  In fact when John the Baptist first sees Jesus, he says “Behold – the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the World”.  What is going on here?

Up to this point, there was a way the Jews would deal with their sins.  It involved confessing their transgressions over a spotless lamb and then geting a priest to sacrifice it on their behalf to make them righteous before God.  This was never a once off event – it had to be done regularly if a person was to maintain his relationship with God. But now Jesus arrives and what John the Baptist is essentially doing is likening him to the same sacrificial lamb of the Jewish tradition.  With one important difference:  this lamb will now take on the sin of the whole world, not just the sin of those who happen to be Jewish. This is a very important thing to understand because while many will concede that Jesus was a great moral teacher – they fail to recognize him as the Saviour of the World. So how did his death save us? 

2 Cor 5: 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 

The great German reformer Martin Luther called this “The Great Exchange” and here's what it involves: 

• My Sin went to Jesus, His perfection went to me
• My unrighteousness went to Jesus, His righteousness came to me
• My condemnation went to Jesus, His Salvation came to me
• My separation from God the Father went to Jesus, Jesus’ reconciliation with the father came to me
• My death went to Jesus, His life came to me

 But Easter doesn’t end with the Cross.  Easter Sunday is only two days away and with it the incredible news that Jesus is risen from the grave!  The significance of the resurrection is a whole sermon in itself so I’ll hope you’ll come and hear more about it on Sunday

The only thing I’ll say about the resurrection is actually something said by Chinese evangelist Watchman Nee:

“Good Friday and the Cross of Jesus put an end to my old history.  The resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday marks the beginning of my new history”

And so this Easter Sunday, when we celebrate Christ’s victory over death – we are also celebrating our victory over death!  (My death went to Jesus his life came to me)

“Where Death where is your victory?  Where o grave is your sting?” – 1 Cor 15

Let’s spend a few moments contemplating the benefits of this incredible rescue mission.  I can think of no better way to do this than by quoting the words of one of the great heroes of the faith – a German named Dietrich Bonhoeffer who openly criticized Hitler’s treatment of the Jews and who paid the ultimate price for doing so

  

“Why are we so afraid when we think about death?  The resurrection has transformed death.  For all we know, we may be shivering at the most glorious, heavenly, blessed event in the world…He who truly understands the resurrection will be homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward to being released from this bodily existence.  He understands that life only really begins when it ends here on earth, that all that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up. Death is the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in him.  It is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of joy, and the everlasting kingdom of peace.

Just months after writing these lines, Bonhoeffer faced a Nazi executioner at Flossenburg Prison.  That day, April 8, 1945 he said to a fellow inmate:  “This is the end – for me the beginning of life”. 

*

We’ve been reflecting on God’s rescue mission.  But there’s a sober footnote to it all.  God will only rescue those who believe in his name and who treat him as Lord of their lives.  By believing, I mean a state of dependence in which we cling to, adhere to, trust in and rely totally upon Jesus for everything. 

This carries huge implications as we examine our hearts before Christ this morning. 

Adventure waits for no one

We men were made for adventure.  That's because, according to John Eldredge (author of the bestseller "Wild at Heart"), Adam was created in the wilderness beyond Eden - while Eve was created inside the Garden where things were beautiful and serene.  Says Eldredge:

"Every man was once a young boy.  And every little boy has dreams, big dreams:  dreams of being a hero, of beating the bad guys, of doing daring feats and rescuing the damsel in distress"

Eldredge has been pilloried from some quarters for his views on masculinity but, at least for me, the fact remains.  We men are made for adventure. 

The reminder came from an unlikely source -  Ben Stiller's 2013 re-make of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty".  Mitty is Eldredge's "little boy", albeit in a grown man's body.  His dead end job as a "negative assets manager" (photo archivist) for Life Magazine is punctuated by fantastical flights of fancy that make him the butt end of everyone's jokes.    

Then one day he receives a mysterious gift from Life Magazine's maverick photographer Sean O'Connell - a gift that will propel him on an epic journey of his own.  His lurid fantasies will soon pale against real life backdrops of erupting volcanoes and towering mountain ranges, drama on the high seas and encounters with Afghan warlords.

I wouldn't know where to start describing all that this movie stirred up in me so I won't even try.  But one scene in particular stands out.  After a long and dangerous search, Mitty finally locates O'Connell on a remote ridge in the Himalayas.  The latter has finally tracked an elusive Snow Leopard to its lair and is about to capture the picture of a lifetime.  When the creature finally reveals itself, Mitty is astonished to see that O'Connell delays the shot long enough to allow the animal to disappears unphotographed.  "Sometimes I just like to savour the moment without the distractions of the camera and lenses" says O'Connell.

That for me is the essence of adventure.  Savouring and acting on the moments that present themselves rather than trying to stress one's way into some hyper-adrenalised sweet spot.  I witnessed this first hand on my 2012 visit to Nepal.  As we acclimatised for our ascent of the Thorung La Pass, most of us fretted and fussed over our readiness for life at altitude.  The fear wasn't that of not summiting, it was the prospect of succumbing to altitude sickness and having to retrace our footsteps to Katmandu.  We'd come to do the Annapurna Circuit and by golly we'd settle for nothing less!  Two Israeli travellers however saw things quite differently.  While our "rest" days were spent humping up and down mountains to acclimatise, their's were spent reclining in the sun, brewing coffee, twanging on a guitar and smoking the hubbly-bubbly.  When asked about their happy-go-lucky dispositions they said: "We may summit, we may not.  But who cares?  We're on holiday. Anything's better than being in Israel at the moment".  

"No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living in the now", said someone on Pinterest.   Go ahead and live for adventure.  But make sure you don't miss it in the moment.

The stench of me

Every once in a while I encounter circumstances that, in cricket terms, feel totally unplayable.  I'm in that place now.  It's a contract deadlock which, while not totally insoluble, involves a scrap over clauses that seem to cheapen the trust and respect built up with the client over the past 5 or so years.  Call me a drama queen but it feels like I'm being treated as a criminal having to prove his innocence in a corporate court of law.  In fact I feel like Jack Bauer, the un-killable CTU agent from the TV series 24.  Jack is a noble warrior, a patriot, the original boy scout - but because of his unorthodox methods he's perennially distrusted by almost everyone from the President of the United States down...even though he's saving the world.   It's a new feeling for me and not a welcome one.  A more streetwise person might keep his perspective and stick to the basics.  That person would say:  "come on man, this is business - what do you expect?"  Me?  I'm still muddling along like a schoolboy.  A schoolboy who just feels like lashing out.

It's at times like this that I realise how utterly bankrupt I am.  What's served me this far fails to stand its ground against a new type of adversity.

What would the apostle Paul say at a time like this?  Firstly I guess he'd say "hold true to what you have already attained and walk and order your life by that" (Phil 3:16).  "You growing in truth and revelation is directly linked to you practicing the truth and revelation that you have already received"

He'd also say this - (OK, the Amplified quoting him would say):  "Cultivate and fully complete your salvation with reverence and awe and trembling.   Distrust yourself, exercise serious caution and tenderness of conscience. Watch against temptation, timidly shrinking from whatever might offend God and discredit the name of Christ".

Whew.  That's a lot to take on board isn't it?  But it does remind me that on the whole, my well-meaning flesh has nothing good to bring to the party.  Part of this is what Hollywood's favourite prodigal Mel Gibson referred to as "hugging the cactus" - realising that on your own you are nothing. You have nothing. Certainly nothing that is going to make it's way through Heaven's Gates.

Paul was keenly aware of this.  Reflecting on his once "spotless" Jewish reputation compared to the incorruptible spirit imparted to him on the Road to Damascus he wrote to the Philippians: (3: 17ff) 

“But whatever was to my profit I now consider a loss for the sake of Christ.  What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.  I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the Law but that comes through faith in Christ – the righteousness than comes from God and is by faith”

"Rubbish".  "Skubalon".  The greek word used there was the one commonly used to connote human excrement.  Worthless.  Detestable.  It's like he was saying:  "When I consider the things I thought were pretty cool and commendable about me, I feel like a child who has just emptied his bowels and is holding up his potty saying “look what I’ve done God” 

Lots to think about.

The Divine Relay Part II

Have you ever walked into a film 20 or 30 minutes late?  I’m sure you have.  Have you noticed how bewildering it is, how tough it can be to try and work out what’s going on?  Who are the main protagonists?  Who are the good guys?  Who are the bad guys?  Etc. etc.  Consider the following:

 “A young girl left home, rushing as quickly as her legs would carry her.  After running for a short distance, she turned left, waving her arms wildly.  She turned sharply to the left and then dodged left again.  Approaching home, her eyes grew big as she came face to face with a man wearing a black mask”

I’m sure you’ll agree that – while there is nothing wrong with the vocabulary or grammar used – because you don’t know the context, that story is highly confusing and even a bit freaky.  Would it help you if I told you that this is a description of a young girl scoring her first home run in a kiddies softball game?  Of course it would.  For some of us, living life might be a lot like that.  We are “in the moment” but we aren’t really sure what’s going on.  For some of us, our Christian walk is like that.  We may have received salvation.  We may attend a meeting on Sunday.  But frankly, we aren’t always too sure what’s going on or why we do some of the things we do.

If we fall into those two categories, it could be because our experience of the Bible is like that too. That’s why an understanding of the Bible is absolutely vital:

• To the unbeliever and believer it contains the core/indispensable tenets of the Gospel
• To the believer in particular, it contains an understanding of his role in God’s broader plan  

However, at this point, we must concede that to the untrained eye, the Bible is a complicated read, a significant barrier when you consider that some of us don’t like reading.  Some of us may be flowing mightily in the Holy Spirit but may be puzzled by the constant encouragement to study the word of God.  Some may be uncomfortable with the perceived over-intellectualisation that comes with that study.  Indeed, I’ve spoken in recent months to people who are cautious or fearful about high-sounding words such as “Doctrine” and “Theology”.   

But we must be careful here.  I believe that these objections may be some of the main reasons why many modern day Christians are focusing less and less on the “Big Story” of the Bible and instead cherry picking at the “small stories” which are part of it.  There’s nothing really wrong about this but it is a little bit like settling for a picture of your favourite movie character when you could own the entire movie that tells his story.

A few thoughts on why we need Doctrine and why we need the Big Idea

Firstly we must be clear - doctrine is not God – it is not even an experience of God.  So what is it?  In short, doctrine is a bit like a map that shows how we may go deeper into God.  The Christian church has historically placed a very high premium on good doctrine because it has been generated and verified by the study and experience of generations of respected Christians who themselves have had profound experiences of God.  Now that we have access to their thinking, we are able to stand upon their shoulders and in so doing deepen our own experiences of God

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” – Isaac Newton

When it comes to studying the Bible, what these so-called “doctrines” or “maps” do is they help us enter the story with the proper context and bearings.  They are like the astronomer who comes alongside as we are gazing helplessly up at the Milky Way and who helps us identify the shapes, patterns, constellations etc.  Without acknowledging the importance of doctrine, reading the Bible is a lot like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box. 

The purpose of today is to get a snapshot of that “Big Picture”.  I'll do this in 3 parts

• What sort of Book the bible?
• The story in a nutshell
• The story’s key highlights

What sort of book is the Bible? 

The Bible is not so much a book as it is a library of books.  Not only does it contain many books, it contains many kinds (genres) of books – history books, law books, songs, proverbs, poetry anthologies as well as collections of letters which impart a variety of instructions to different individuals and groups of people.  Students of history show us that the writing of it took place over more than a thousand years (circa 1500 BC to Circa 100 A.D.) by many people on at least three different continents.  These people were shepherds, kings, prophets, warriors, doctors, tax collectors, fishermen not to mention religious leaders

If you are not yet a Christian, you may be wondering why we believers hold the Bible sacred.  Very simply, we believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God - quickened, as it were, by the Holy Spirit to the human agents in space and time who wrote it.  Writer Liam Goligher says this:

“When we say we believe in the authority of scripture we are making more than simply a theological affirmation.  We are affirming that we recognize that it has authority over us both as individuals and communities.  It has the ultimate authority over what we believe and over how we behave, it governs our convictions and our conduct.  The scriptures are the necessary control and corrective of all human thought about God”

The Story in a nutshell

Have you ever noticed how we humans like to complicate things?  It seems to be human nature. Complexity is rife in business and at times it’s rife in the church.  A couple of years ago a management consultant by the name of Marcus Buckingham wrote a book entitled “The one thing you need to know” – in it he says that: 

At the heart of all complex issues there is a single controlling insight that everyone needs to know.  Lose sight of this one thing and all your best efforts at managing, leading or individual leadership will be diminished.  But keep mindful of the one thing, understand all its ramifications, orient your decisions around it and you will act with far greater power and effectiveness.

So what is the one “Big Thing” about the Bible?  In a nutshell the Bible is about God’s love affair with humanity, his sorrow at man’s sins and his rescue plan to restore man back to right relationship with him.  Seriously:  it’s that simple.  No matter which of the 66 books you are reading, you can be absolutely certain that it will be contributing to this story in some way.

Let me unpack this a little further:  Why did God create the world?  

Many respected theologians agree that the main reason was to see a reflection of his Glory somewhere other than in heaven.  The prime vehicle of this Glory – other than earth itself – was to be man and woman.  These beings and their descendants were to be the image bearers – the baton carriers – of his glory and splendour throughout the ages.

However, something went very wrong with these image bearers – a single act of defiance in the haunting beauty of Eden sent violent shockwaves throughout all of History contaminating the glorious purpose that God had in mind for man.   In response to this, God initiated a rescue plan – to restore man to right relationship with him so that one day – “the knowledge of the glory of the Lord would one day cover the Earth as the water covers the seas”

So that is the plot.  That’s the tension in the story.  It’s the one thing you need to know as you set out to understand the Bible.  Based on this “one Big Thing”, there are 3 notable things the Bible does

1. The Bible points to Jesus - We’ve spoken about a rescue plan.  Because Jesus is so central to that rescue plan, we must therefore accept that all scripture – regardless of how obscure it looks – regardless of which testament it appears in – tells a small piece of the Jesus story.  This is an absolutely essential insight we must internalize if we are to understand the Bible.  In the case of the Old Testament, it either foretells his coming or builds the case for why we need him.  In the case of the New Testament, it describes the legacy he left behind through his ministry and death and what we (the church) is to do with this legacy.  
2. The Bible defines our mission with Crystal clarity.  While Christ’s role in the rescue operation was to destroy the power of the Devil, the role of Christians (the Church) down through the ages – including today – is to enforce that victory, to take part in a “mopping up” operation so that the Kingdom of heaven might be seen and known on earth.  In this sense, the Bible is like a mission brief for the church, showing her what she needs to do
3. The Bible helps prepare each individual for his/her unique role in this mission.  As P.J. Smyth recently wrote on Facebook – 

“I must have a grasp of the Big Story of Salvation through the ages (so that I may understand my role in it).  Indeed, His Story must become my story”

According to John Eldredge, (author of Epic) the Bible holds the answers to 4 crucial questions:

• Who am I?

• Why am I here?

• Where will I find life?

• What does God want of me?

“Christianity in its true form tells us that there is an Author and that he is good, the essence of all that is good and beautiful and true, for he is the source of all these things.  It tells us that he has set our hearts’ longings within us, for he has made us to live in an Epic.  It warns that the truth is always in danger of being twisted and corrupted and stolen from us because there is a Villain in the story who hates our hearts and wants to destroy us.  It calls us up into a Story that is truer and deeper than any other, and assures us that there we will find the meaning of our lives”

If you are a someone who is still trying to decide what to make of Christianity – I trust that this very brief summary will move you a little bit further towards a decision to follow Christ.  I believe the story that God is telling in scripture is by far the best and most compelling one in the marketplace of religions. I believe it satisfactorily answers questions you might have about the origin of life, the meaning of life, about morality and about destiny.  And while you may still have lingering questions I hope things are now a little clearer for you.

How does the Bible tell this story?

So we’ve looked at what sort of book the Bible is and we’ve looked at the sort of story that the Bible contains.  But more importantly – how does the Bible tell that story?  I’d like highlight 4 major parts or meta-chapters to this story.

• Part 1 - The creation of the earth and the baton handed to Adam and Eve - and fall of man – (Genesis 1 to 11). A poignant contrast of life in perfect harmony with God with life where free will is abused.  It is the start of all our problems and as such, the mother of all tragedies.

• Part 2 - God chooses and raises a NATION – first through Abraham, then out of slavery through Moses and ultimately to a powerful kingdom under David. It also looks at how this Kingdom falls out of obedience to God.  This nation - Israel - is a signpost not only to the nature of God but also to the Messiah who is yet to come.  Israel also acts as a sort of mid-wife or surrogate mother for the Messiah who is Jesus.

• Part 3 - Whereas in part 2 the baton is carried by a NATION, in part 3 it is carried by a MAN. Here we see God’s comprehensive victory over sin through Christ’s birth, ministry and death.  Jesus – the fulfillment of prophecy.  Jesus - The Son of God.  Jesus - The new Covenant.  Jesus - The one who modeled what any other believer could do in right relationship with God.  Jesus - the man who laid aside his majesty but who tapped back into it as a spirit-filled man to show that we too could have the keys to the Kingdom.  Jesus the perfect sacrifice.  Jesus - whose single act on Calvary defeated the power of sin once and for all.  Jesus – whose impact on human history has been un-paralleled.

• Part 4 - the baton changes hands once again – small movement of fanatical followers named the church.  A period of Revival and Reformation as the Church, empowered Christ’s victory over death as well as the Holy Spirit -  sets out on its mission to reflect God’s Kingdom here on earth.  Yet Part 4 is the beginning of (believe it or not) the high water mark of History because the race does not end there.   Indeed, neither does the story.  Someone once described the Bible as a story looking for an ending.  And here we must deal with a mystery.  Despite the fact that the Bible is a complete and finished document in some amazing way, the testimony and essence of scripture is still being written – maybe not for our eyes just yet – recording the final battle between good and evil which will usher in the end of the age.  This is where you come in.  With every Christian act that reflects and reinstates the Glory of God to the fallen, un-redeemed world.  Every time you carry the baton of the Redemption into your home, your art, your business, into the realms of education, politics, medicine and the legal world – the story continues.  

“As his Body we are sculpting a prophetic and sanctifying presence in the wilderness of profane history.  Every word, every prayer, every song of praise and worship, ever deed is playing a role in creating God’s Cathedral of wisdom and purpose on the yet uncreated future of the globe.  And YOU are part of that as you engage yourself intimately and personally in fulfilling the word of God.  You the church are of Godmost importance, impregnating time with eternity” - Anon

The Divine Relay - Part I

At the beginning of 2013, I asked my lead elder if I might fulfil a longstanding vision to preach a coherent series on the central message of the Bible.  He graciously agreed to my idea.  The process of packaging a fairly complex message over a 5 week period was an amazing blessing and step-changed my appreciation for God's Holy word.  Over the next couple of days I will be sharing the 5 instalments for your reading pleasure

When I was a kid, my dad had an ashtray made from a real hand grenade – the sort shaped like a pineapple.  Some ingenious and very brave craftsman had removed both detonator and pin, emptied the explosive powder and cut a neat aperture for the ash.  He had also mounted the whole thing on a beautifully machined wooden disc. 

My brother and I loved it and used to unscrew it from its stand whenever we played war games in the garden. 

The other day I was trying to motivate myself to kick-start my bible reading plan for 2013.  I wondered how I had let this discipline slip so much in the past few months – how could I have taken my Bible so for granted?…After all, there are people in China who would pay a lot of money – who would even risk their lives – to get their hands on just a single book of the New Testament. 

A sudden memory of that hand grenade was a perfect reminder of how many of us tend to treat the Bible.  We have taken something of momentous significance – incendiary, explosive and in the right hands life changing – but we’ve removed the detonator and in the process rendered it harmless.  We pick it up and put it down as we please – often to glean some words of encouragement and perhaps a little more – but for the most part, it sits mutely in our homes and our lives.

In spite of this sad reality, the Bible remains a dangerous document that provides a type of information that must not only be considered but be constantly and systematically applied as we navigate our way through life.  To build on this point, I’d like to watch a short trailer from a movie that hit the circuit back in 2010.

I suspect, if you haven’t seen the movie, you might have found that trailer a bit violent, confusing and a little bit disturbing.  But bear with me as I give you a synopsis of the story. 

The setting is America 30 years after a nuclear war.  A lone and mysterious figure named Eli is slowly walking westwards on a mission to deliver the world’s last remaining Bible to a place of safekeeping.  As he carries this burden however, he is continually threatened by a variety of diabolical characters that would like to get their hands on it.  These men understand its true power and would seek to control it so they can limit access to it…

Eli, arrives in a small town in which a few survivors are trying to start over.  There he meets an evil man called Carnegie who is hell bent on getting his hands on the Bible so he might control who does and who doesn’t get to see it: 

“this is a small town – we’re just beginning – all we need to make this work is that book – I know it’s power – It’s not a book - it’s a weapon”

The book of Eli is a thought provoking film.  It is also pretty violent so I don’t recommend you watch it unless you have the stomach for that sort of action.  The movie nonetheless helps us reconsider the absolute primacy of this document.

The bible is, quite simply, the world’s greatest bestseller.  It has always been.  It contains some of the most sweeping epics known to man, some of his most beautiful poetry, excerpts of History’s most profound wisdom – to say nothing of its power to breath life into fallen-ness.

Charles Colson – Adviser to Nixon, implicated in Watergate

"The BIBLE -- banned, burned, beloved.  More widely read, more frequently attacked than any other book in history.  Generations of intellectuals have attempted to discredit it; dictators of every age have outlawed it and executed those who read it.  Yet soldiers carry it into battle believing it more powerful than their weapons.  Fragments of it smuggled into solitary prison cells have transformed ruthless killers into gentle saints"

John Quincy Adams – 6^th president of the USA

"So great is my veneration for the BIBLE that the earlier my children begin to read it, the more confident will be my hope that they will prove useful citizens to their country and respectable members of society"

Thomas Jefferson – one of the founding fathers of the US constitution

"A studious persual of the sacred volume will make better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands"

However, just as we see in the book of Eli – The truth of scripture is up for grabs – and it runs the risk of being overwhelmed in the hostile marketplace of renegade philosophies.  Powerful and influential atheists are hell-bent on suppressing and discrediting the word of God so as to peddle their own philosophies

Richard Dawkins - Scientist/Atheist

“It is a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents”

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

It is time – as Christians - that we began defending and incarnating the word of God as the one true life giving resource that it is.  Indeed, we need a reformation in our own thinking about this incredible handbook that God has left us.

2 Reasons

There are, I believe, two reasons why we don’t treat this handbook with the reverence, fear and level of application it deserves.

The first is that, to the untrained eye, it is a confusing book – full of stories accounts of how strange serpent convincing a naked lady to eat a piece of forbidden fruit, instructions carved into tablets of stone, strange vagrants in the desert and seismic military encounters between warring factions.  Somehow, amidst all of this, we are required to make sense of the teachings of a man called Jesus who proclaimed to be the Son of God - and perhaps trickier still, to make sense of a compendium of letters written by a man called Paul which sometimes don’t make sense even after the tenth reading of them. 

In short, the bible looms before people like a brick wall or perhaps a brilliant night sky.  We can see the stars but without any frame of reference it all just looks like a big jumble of lunar waste and planets.

In the case of the night sky, the good news is that we don’t have to be an astronomer to make sense of it.  Even an amateur with a simple handbook and a pair of binoculars can begin to identify the Universe’s intriguing patterns and constellations.  Moreover, he is soon able to distinguish between a comet, a falling star and a satellite. 

And so it is with scripture.  As we embark on our journey through scripture, it’s almost as though we need some sort of GPS system to help us not only chart our way but to give us a guided tour at the same time.

The second reason scripture seems so impenetrable is the fact that we are so distracted by our modern lifestyles.  The journalist Lee Strobel once remarked that the average American is exposed to more information in the daily edition of the New York Times than the great 18^th century evangelist and Bible teacher Jonathan Edwards was exposed to in his entire lifetime.  This is to say nothing of clutter posed by Facebook, twitter, satellite TV etc. 

In short, our frequencies have become horribly polluted and we have to actively make space for the word of God if it is to gain any traction in our lives.  Let me go back to my analogy of the night sky – not only do we need something or someone to help us pick out the patterns – we also need to address the issue of pollution.  Seriously, when did you last really see the milky way?  We are quite fortunate out here in Ballito but it will only be a matter of time before we lose our night sky to light pollution. 

In October 2008, my wife and I passed through the town of Flagstaff Arizona on a road trip through the South Western United States.  Flagstaff is home to the Lowell Observatory, on of the world’s most important centres for the study of the Universe.  Light pollution has long been a threat to this status so some time back the town fathers got together and declared Flagstaff to be the world’s first International Dark Sky City.  This was not wishful thinking.  To ensure this reputation would be preserved, the town council went to the extent of identifying maximum levels of lighting for all residents – businesses included.  You can get a fine for exceeding this level.  And it works.

Similarly, we have to actively limit the pollutive distractions in our lives to make space for the word of God.  I’m not just talking about making time for church and cell group.  I’m talking about making time for reading the word.  For understanding the word.  Being committed to reading and understanding scripture in its totality – the unity of scripture. 

Ironically, with the Internet, this task is now more within our reach than ever before!

Solution

What are we going to do about these two factors?

Firstly, we’ve created a list of resources that might help you to re-engage with your bible in 2013.  In fact, a list was given to each of you when you entered the Church today.

Some of the plans we have included there include:

• A plan to read the bible in 1 year – it may not be as daunting as it sounds – I did some calculations using a device on the net and at the average pace of 200 words per minute, you could get through your bible comfortably on between 12 and 20 minutes of reading per day.

• A two year bible reading plan

•  A plan to read the bible Chronologically – for reasons we won’t go into now, the bible most of us own has not been compiled in the order in which it was written. Reading the bible Chronologically can help you really get an understanding of how the whole story comes together through time.

•  A plan for Slackers and Shirkers – the beauty of this plan is that it does not hold you down to a daily reading.  It merely segments the bible into 7 key themes – 1 of each being assigned to a specific day of the week. 

·      Believe it or not, there is also a service called “Bible Summary” which prepares a daily 140 character summary of a bible chapter – which you can pick up either on Twitter, on Facebook or on YouTube.  For tech gurus, this could be a really fun way of keeping you on track or augmenting another plan you are doing.

Secondly, I am daunted but excited to announce the launch of a new series called “The Divine Relay”.  This series launches off the premise that the Bible is not actually the fragmented and confused compendium of historical manuscripts which some people seem to think it is - but rather a coherent and unified story which operates not only as a constitutional handbook for Christians but which becomes the touchstone for the understanding of all of History.

“The bible is a unique interpretation of universal history, the history of the whole creation and the history of the human race.  And therefore it is a unique interpretation of the human person as a responsible actor in history”

Hindu Scholar Quoted in “A short walk through the Bible”

In this series, we will look at how the baton of God’s purpose for mankind has been handed down through history – first through the patriarchs, and then through the nation of Israel – its Kings and its prophets.

·     We will look at how his rescue plan for all humanity has been relayed not just throughthe Old and New Testaments but how it will be carried into the future by the Church. 

We will look at how the church – in spite of all her lamentable weaknesses, appalling failures, indefensible shortcomings – still remains God’s ultimate force not just for revival and reformation but for civilization and enlightened social consciousness in the world today.

A while ago at a leaders training time, we watched an excellent talk by a thinker called Simon Sinek – it was simply called “Why?”  In it, Sinek identified something he called the Golden Circle to explain the various ways in which people make sense of what they do.  The Golden Circle consists of three levels – What, How and Why.

Applying this to daily life:

Many people can easily tell you what they are doing with their lives…the jobs they do, the routines they keep, and the people they are friends with

Some people can tell you how they are going about things – how they balance work with family – how they actively pursue hobbies – how they make time for holidays and so on…

Almost no-one can tell you why they are doing what they do – where it is all going and to what end.  What legacy do they hope to leave?  What is the higher purpose of the things they do?

This is equally true of how we relate to our faith.  We often get stuck in the “what” and the “how” – the Sunday morning meeting, the Tuesday night at cell – going to prayer meeting on a Thursday and possibly a church braai once a quarter.  But how close are we to the ultimate “why” behind the things we do as Christians?

I want to say that unless we keep this in our sights, our faith will become meaningless and empty.  It will be religion in the true sense of the word, trying to get close to God by adhering to a system of activities.

It is the “Why” which I hope our series on the Divine Relay will address.  I hope it will help you not only re-engage with the word of God but with the mission of the church.  I hope it will help you to activate your faith.