Tuesday, 28 June 2011

Humility

Qualifications - Blog.4

In my last blog I discussed the Gifts that God has bestowed upon us at Salvation. These Gifts have been given to us that we might use them for His glory rather than our own. They are tools for us to use in building God’s work, not toys for our pleasure or the entertainment of others. To reinforce this point the Apostle Paul prefaces his teaching on the Gifts, in Both Romans 12 and Ephesians 4, with teaching on humility. I quoted the relevant verse in Romans 12 at the conclusion of my last blog and here is the verse in Ephesians.

I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;’ Ephesians 4 v 1-2

God puts a great emphasis in His Word on the importance of humility. We ought always to remember that we are only sinners saved by His Grace.

God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.’ James 4 v6

Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time:’ 1 Peter 5 v6

A haughty and proud spirit can have a serious effect on our usefulness for God. If we are self reliant and self confident in our own abilities we will fail miserably in God’s service and therefore we should always remember, that in God’s work the success or failure does not depend on us but rather on God, as Paul said in 1st Corinthians 3 v6 ‘I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.’ That’s the right attitude. To think that we can achieve anything without the aid of God is to delude ourselves, as the Psalmist said ‘Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it:’ Psalm 127 v1

In my blog on ‘Physical Maturity’ a few of weeks ago I was discussing the different ages at which people embarked upon a ministry for God. I mentioned that the ministry of Moses did not really get started until he was 80 years of age. I think in part this was due to his lack of humility at 40 years of age. You will recall from the book of Exodus how Moses at the age of 40 decided to try and deliver the Children of Israel by his own hand, killing an Egyptian task master and burying him in the sand. Stephen in the book of Acts, commenting upon this story, relates how Moses ‘supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them: but they understood not.’ Acts 7 v25 Moses’ attempt failed miserably and he had to run away and hide.

Forty years later God decided that Moses’ lesson in humility was complete, and He appeared unto Moses at the Burning Bush, to commission him for the task of delivering Israel from bondage. We can see from Moses’ attitude in Exodus chapter 3 that he now had a right view of himself, saying to God ‘Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?’ Exodus 3 v8

Thankfully Moses’ right view of himself did not stop him from carrying out the task in hand, God promised that He would be with him every step of the way and He surely was. We too have the promise of God’s help as we seek to work for Him, ‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.’ Philippians 4 v13

One thing that will foster this attitude within us is an ever-closer relationship with God, as the closer that we get to God, the more sinful and weak we realise that we are. We realise that we can do nothing apart from His enablement. The prophet Isaiah had this experience, in chapter 6 of his prophecy we learn of how God revealed himself to Isaiah in a very powerful way. As Isaiah viewed God that day and then had a look at himself he concluded ‘Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.’ Isaiah 6 v5 No pride here!

The Psalmist David, who also knew a close walk with his God, understood the need for humility. In his great Psalm of confession (Psalm 51) David acknowledged that ‘the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.' V17

If we learn these lessons of humility that Moses, David and Isaiah learned in their day, then we are well on our way to being qualified for usefulness for God.

Thursday, 16 June 2011

The Gifts

Qualifications – Blog.3

I began this short series of blogs a few weeks ago asking the question ‘what qualifications do we need to serve God?’ Since that introductory blog we have considered the topics of theological training and spiritual maturity, both of which are areas where we can have some input into our own development to be good workmen for God. Today I want to consider an area where God alone does the ‘inputting’. I want to consider the gifts.

Not only do I want to think about what qualifies us to serve God but I want to think about who qualifies us to serve God? The short and simple answer to this question is, God qualifies us and he does so by imparting certain gifts to us at Salvation, ‘But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ’ Ephesians 4 v7. There are a variety of gifts that we could potentially have, some of God’s people may have several of them but all of God’s people have at least one of them. They are given to us by God so that we may function profitably within the local church, for it’s good, for the extension of His kingdom and for the glory of His name, as Paul expanded in Ephesians 4 v 12 ‘For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:’

The gifts can loosely be broken into three categories, the speaking gifts, the serving gifts and the sign gifts, although some of the gifts could belong technically to more than one category. One example of this would be the gift of prophecy which was clearly a speaking gift as the prophet spoke as God led him; however, the gift of prophecy was also a sign gift.

Speaking Gifts

Ephesians 4 v 11 lists some of the speaking gifts ‘And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers.’ The first two in this list, Apostles and Prophets, were also sign gifts which have passed away, but the remaining three are all important gifts that need to be exercised within the Church today. We need evangelists to reach out with the gospel message. In fact even if we do not possess this gift we should still do the work of an evangelist anyway (2 Tim 4 v5). We also need Pastors and Teachers to shepherd and edify the flock of God. Do you posses any of these gifts? The only way to find out is to do the work, try to reach the lost, try to shepherd your Christian friends who are going astray and try to teach young Christians coming behind you what God has already taught you. If you do, these things it will soon become apparent if God has given you any of these gifts or not.

Serving Gifts

And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.’ Verse 28 of 1st Corinthians bring before us two gifts that fall into the category of serving gifts, these are ‘governments’ and ‘helps’. The gift of government is the ability to administrate and organise within the church. It’s always a good thing to have well organised people to make sure things run well in the church, simple things like paying the electric bills and making sure the heating is turned on. These gifts although less eye catching perhaps than the speaking gifts, are vital in the church and should not be despised. The gift of helps is simply the fact that some people just seem to be very good at getting down and helping out a brother or sister in the Lord who needed help, simple as that, once again it might not be glamorous, it might not attract much attention but it’s vital that people exercise this gift. In this same passage of 1st Corinthians 12 Paul compares the body of Christ to the physical body saying things like ‘If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? V17’ The point is we can’t all be the face of the Church, or the strong arm of the Church. Some people have to be the big toe of the Church, not too pretty but vital for balance.

Sign Gifts

The sign gifts were gifts given to the early church in the time of the Apostles to authenticate God’s servants and His message. This was a time of transition from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant. It was going to be difficult for Jews to accept this new message, so God gave these gifts as signs to the Jewish nation primarily to help them accept the message of the Apostles.

Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds.’ 2nd Corinthians 12 v12

And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.’ Verse 28 of 1st Corinthians is worth quoting again for it lists some of these sign gifts such as Apostles, Prophets, Miracles, Gifts of Healings and Tongues. All of these sign gifts were temporary and have now passed away as Paul said in 1st Corinthians 13 ‘Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease;’ Consider for a moment the gift of prophecy, why did it exist? In the time of the early Church the people did not have a complete Bible like we have today, the scriptures were incomplete, so in order to know God’s will God gave a message to a prophet. However, we now live in a day when the Bible is complete, all the guidance that we need for every decision in life can be found in the pages of a completed Bible, we don’t need a prophet any longer. There are many today who claim to be prophets but oftentimes their counsel goes against the revealed Word of God. The sign gifts are certainly not for today.

So having identified what the gifts are and which ones are relevant for today we need to think about which ones God has imparted to us. Sadly many Christians never seek to find out which gift or gifts they have. Have you? Many young students will graduate from university over the next few weeks with degrees in a particular field, the sad reality is many of them will never pursue a career related to the subject they studied at university. Sadly many Christians don’t know what God has qualified them to do as they have never exercised their gifts. Again, have you? God has qualified you to something for Him and you need to identify what that is.

It would be wrong to conclude a study on the gifts without emphasising some areas that the Holy Spirit has emphasised in the major Bible passages relating to the gifts and they are humility and love. As he introduces the topic of gifts in Romans 12 the Apostle Paul prefaces his remarks by stating ‘For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. (v3) After discussing the gifts he concludes by admonishing us to love our brothers and sisters in Christ ‘Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another;’ v9-10 We see the same pattern in 1st Corinthians for after teaching on gifts in chapter 12 Paul goes on to give that famous 13th Chapter on love. Paul well knew the danger that lies in the human heart for someone to look at their gifts and think very highly of themselves and then look down their nose at others less gifted than they. This lack of humility can be a dangerous disqualifier for the service of God and it is to this subject that we will turn in the final blog of this series.

Tuesday, 14 June 2011

The Sewer Keeps Pumping

The multi-billion dollar music industry continues to pump out filth from the pit of Hell to rob the innocence of Children. The latest thing to catch my attention was Nicole Scherzinger’s latest single ‘Right There’.

I came across this song for the first time when I was in the home of a friend recently and the ‘Britains Got Talent’ grand final happened to be on the television. I thought when I saw the song being performed that I should blog about it but not being familiar with the artist I was unable to find out who had performed it until a couple of weeks later when I saw her on TV again. This time I took a note of her name and googled the lyrics of ther latest single.

At the time I was quite shocked that such an overtly sexual performance should be tranmistted as part of a ‘family show’. I know the regulators will probably argue that the performance was after the 9 O’Clock water shed but you can be sure thousands of young kids around the nation were allowed to sit up late to see who won. This show normally transmits in the early part of the evening over a period of weeks building up an army of young fans, do you not think that many of these kids pleaded with their parents to be allowed to stay up late to see who won, after all it wasn’t a school night.

The performance itself was extremely sensual with Ms Scherzinger leaving little to the imagination in terms of her clothing and dancing about in a provocative manner. Her performance teaches little girls all over the nation how to tease little red blooded males and in the process robs them both of their childhood and purity.

The lyrics of the song were little more than a veiled lists of sexual inuendos.
It is to the lyrics now that I want to turn. I do this very reluctantly in one sense as I am reproducing filth but I feel that people need to be warned about what is going on. Your children may be listening to this garbage and you don’t even realise what they are listening to! I have blogged on this type of thing in the past with blogs called ‘More Filth from Rihanna’ Nov 2010 and ‘Eating Rubbish’ June 2010. They are worth a read if you want to be more informed about the filth that’s influencing your kids.

Ms Scherzingers song as I have already said is called ‘Right There’ just have a look at some of these lyrics, very little comment is needed as they speak for themselves.

Opening Refrain:

Come here baby and be my baby
And be my baby oh oh oh
Come here baby put your hands on my body
Hands on my body oh oh oh
Right there keep it right there
I love when you put it right there yeah yeah yeah
oh oh oh yeah yeah yeah oh oh oh Yeah

It’s already clear that the songs about sex, if your not convinced read the first verse.

Me like the way that you hold my body
Me like the way that you touch my body
Me like the way that you kiss my yeah yeah yeah yeah me like it
Me like the way that he put it on me
Me like the way that he push up on me
Me like the way that he goin' down down down down down


The three lines emboldened above should convince any doubters as to the subject matter of the song. If your still not convinced what about verse 2.

I like the way that you talk dirty
Don't wash your mouth out I like it dirty
You like to please yeah I like that yeah yeah yeah yeah me like it
I like the way that you keep me coming
That yeah you so good you had me running
Me like the way that he goin' down down down down down

I rest my case. Filth from the pit of Hell performed on national TV to an audience including many thousands of Children. Never mind ‘Britain’s got Talent’, ’Britain’s ripe for Judgement’.

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.’ 1 John 2 v15

Wednesday, 1 June 2011

Physical Maturity

Qualifications – Blog.2

I have been thinking recently about what qualifies someone to serve God. I introduced the topic a couple of weeks ago discussing the obvious qualification of ones salvation, and then last week had a look at the subject of formal theological training. This week I want to ask the question, does physical maturity bear any relation to spiritual maturity?

Logically you might think it does, if someone is constantly walking with the Lord then they should develop spiritually as they do physically, however, this is not always the case. Spiritual maturity in many cases can be stunted or even regress, due to the believer’s lack of prayer and Bible study. I think this was the case with the Christians to whom Paul wrote in 1st Corinthians when he said, ‘And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.’ In this letter Paul is highlighting to the believers at Corinth their lack of spiritual development; they were saved for quite some time and should have developed ‘an adult spiritual diet’. However, they were still on the ‘baby food’, they still needed to be fed milk like un-weaned children. What a sad state of affairs!

I’m sure we have all seen examples of this in the Church that we attend. There are believers who have been saved for many years but they have never really developed very much, they still get on like babies. On the other hand there are young people that I have met in my own sphere of ministry who demonstrate tremendous spiritual maturity and show evidence of a close walk with God. So does age factor into when someone is qualified to serve God?

In the Old Testament economy, the priests who served in the Tabernacle and then the Temple were not to commence their ministry until they were 30 years of age.

Take the sum of the sons of Kohath from among the sons of Levi, after their families, by the house of their fathers, From thirty years old and upward even until fifty years old, all that enter into the host, to do the work in the tabernacle of the congregation. This shall be the service of the sons of Kohath in the tabernacle of the congregation, about the most holy things:’ Numbers Chp 4 v 2 - 4

Interestingly both the Lord Jesus Christ and John the Baptist commenced their public ministry at the age of 30. However, there are many examples that fall outside of that pattern. Moses did not really get going in his ministry until he was 80 years of age whereas Samuel was in the service of the Lord from his childhood.

In Paul’s Pastoral Epistle to young (yes young) Timothy he gave him some instruction on the selection of Elders for the Church. As part of the various pieces of advice he said that the one to be chosen ought not to be ‘a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil.’ It is interesting that it does not say that it should not be someone young but that it should not be a novice.
νεόφυτος = neophytes = novice. The Greek word, here translated novice, has the idea of ‘newly planted’, it’s really speaking of a new convert. Timothy of course, despite being a young pastor was not a brand new convert. Timothy proves the point that one can be spiritually mature at a young age and find oneself in a position of responsibility and leadership.

Church history has many examples of men who served the Lord from a very early age. Examples include CH Spurgeon who was called to be the Pastor of New Park Street Baptist Chapel when only 19 years of age and the Scottish Presbyterian Robert Murray McCheyne who died at the early age of 29 totally ‘burnt out’ in his service for the Lord having only begun his ministry at the age of 21. Mr McCheyne was attributed to have said 'I know Jesus Christ better than any earthly man.' I think this is the key to where we find the true qualification. He knew his God.

the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits.’ Daniel 11 v32

It does not matter whether we are 20, 40 or 60 the question is, how well do we know God? An honest answer to this question will tell us a whole lot about our level of spiritual maturity. It is possible to know a lot about God and yet not have a close personal walk with Him day by day.

Sadly in the Church there are some who look down their noses at younger brothers and sisters in Christ. They somehow think that their lack of physical maturity equates to a lack of spiritual maturity. This is wrong thinking and could result in gifted and spiritual people being overlooked or worse still, discouraged from any service for the Master.

I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake. I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one. I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father. I have written unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one.' 1 John 2 v 12-14