Walked up to school with two of the three girls.
Taught Scripture, or helped anyway.
The message was about the Lord Jesus. He has the power even to give sight to someone who is blind from birth. (John 9) (more…)
Archives: gordon-cheng
Preaching the gospel from Ruth
Pastoral Ministry
Five Festal Garments: Christian Reflections on the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther
Barry Webb
Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, 2000, pp. 192.
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Fiery and sharp images of hell
Life
The Bible is full of horrifying and lurid images of what divine judgement will be like. So Psalm 21, for example, begins innocuously enough. If, like me, you are a Psalm skimmer-overer, you will have skimmed this one many times without noticing it properly, lying as it does in the rainshadow of the majestic Psalm 22 and the world-famous Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my Shepherd”). The Psalmist writes:
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Fallen short
Thought
Psalm 19 is famous and rightly so:
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
Outdoing one another
In the old days when Al Stewart used to be fit and I used to run ahead of him, he used to say how competitive I was. Or it may be that I used to complain how competitive he was; I can’t remember now. All we were doing was going for our daily 12 km run, and he hated losing. Me, I didn’t mind losing. But I didn’t enjoy coming second, and there were only two of us.
Hallelujah—judgement!
I’ve been reading and enjoying David Ould’s series of posts on Handel’s oratorio ‘Messiah’ (David’s got plenty to say on the subject; make sure you check his archives.) If you get the chance to hear it this Christmas—better, to sing it—grab it with both hands. Even if you’re not a classical music buff, it is one of the most stirring introductions to biblical theology you are likely to come across in this present evil age.
Playing the man and not the ball
From time to time I’ve been on the receiving end of criticism about ‘playing the man and not the ball’—that is, for raising questions about the character of a speaker, rather than majoring on the content of their teaching. So people have wanted to say, for example, that it is impolite, rude and even ungodly behaviour to label a Brian Houston or a Rowan Williams as a false teacher in danger of hell, and to suggest, furthermore, that they are making their followers twice as fit for hell as they are themselves. (Oops, did it again! Let’s move right along; nothing more to see in this paragraph …)
You must read this book
I am struggling to find reasons to avoid reading a few things, including a small pile next to the bed, and a larger pile shoved inside a cupboard next to the bed, and a pile on the desk at work.
Engaging with Barth
Many years ago (correction: many, many years ago), I thought it would do my soul some good to enrol in a Masters degree in theology. Whether or not this was a good idea is something that I will leave for discussion between God, my wife and a succession of long-suffering employers who are convinced to this day that it was worth their time to push me on in that direction. (more…)
Gospel ministry: How to blunt the edge
Last millennium, I got ordained as an Anglican minister, and Jean Penman, wife of Archbishop David Penman of Melbourne, presented each of my group of candidates for ordination with a copy of John Stott’s excellent book I Believe in Preaching. David had died suddenly, but the note from Jean said that David had originally intended to present this book himself. It was a great idea to have a book entitled I Believe in Preaching, especially as, quite frankly, most of us didn’t—including the leaders of the silent retreat that all the ordination candidates were invited to attend.
Why pray?
Bus evangelism
Up front
I couldn’t help but eavesdrop. The speaker was a tall, retired man in a suit, addressing a younger bearded man who may or may not have had some religious interest, but who had a great deal to say about the Pope, the Roman Catholic church, and the recent Roman Catholic World Youth Day (WYD). They were talking about the re-enactment of the route to Jesus’ crucifixion that happened as part of the WYD celebrations. The older man, who spoke broken English with a heavy Armenian accent, had this to say about it: “Jesus say after he die, three days later he wake up. I say, ‘Why you no show the wake-up?’” (more…)
Spurgeon for the sick and afflicted
Up front
I’ve appreciated reading the sermons of 19th-century Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon over the years, and have quoted him on my blog a number of times. So when I came down with the flu and found myself in bed for three days straight, I thought it would be encouraging to pick up Arnold Dallimore’s short, well-researched biography of the man. Sick Calvinists of the world, unite! Spurgeon, so it happens, was a lot sicker than me for most of his life. He was seriously, often cripplingly ill—both mentally (with depression) and physically—from his mid-30s until his death at age 57. His wife Susannah also suffered from chronic illness which meant she was unable to attend meetings where he preached.
However, despite many ailments, Spurgeon’s life was full of the service of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here are a few examples.
• He was known in London for his pastoral visits to the houses of people dying during the cholera epidemic of the 1850s (cholera being, at the time, untreatable, and of unknown cause).
• He had a weekly time set aside to meet individually with people who wanted to become church members because they had become Christians. In this way, he came to know at least 6000 church members by name, as well as how they were converted.
• He began and ran a pastor’s college offering a two-year course. (For a sample of what he taught them, see Lectures to My Students.)
• By 1866, his trainees had begun 18 new churches in London alone.
• He began a door-to-door book-and-tract-sellers (colporteurs) organization to sell Bibles, as well as books, magazines and tracts produced by him. In the year 1878 alone, 94 colporteurs made 926,290 home visits. Their aim was not merely to sell books, but to talk about spiritual questions with the people they met.
Most weeks, Spurgeon wrote, delivered and published a weekly sermon; looked after an orphanage, a pastor’s college and an almshouse; read and responded personally to 500 letters; and preached up to 10 times in churches that he had started.
• Spurgeon began and maintained 65 different institutions, ranging from welfare organizations through to mission organizations, preacher training colleges, and organizations for the distribution of literature.
Contrary to appearances however, Dallimore’s biography is not a hagiography: it records with disappointment Spurgeon’s moderate drinking, smoking, and use of a church fete to raise money for the completion (debt free) of the Metropolitan Tabernacle.
I trust that, in God’s providence, this was the right book for me to read while I was sick in bed. But let me say that Spurgeon’s attitude to his own labours do not fit easily with our recommendations in Going the Distance, which is aimed at helping those in long-term ministry. Spurgeon wrote in 1876,
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Lookin’ good, Dave
I had lunch with Alex again, and we read the Bible and prayed. Thankfully he appears to blog in German. (I say ‘appears’ because ich sprechen nur wenig Deutsch, so, for all I know, he could be writing Polish and discussing the latest fabbo shopping bargains at the Birkenstock shop. I say ‘thankfully’ because whatever language it is, it means we are reaching different audiences, and not competing with each other to blog first.)