Temptation Works for Good When......

Temptation is a universal experience. If Jesus himself did not escape it, we can be certain that we will not either. It can be difficult to see any good in temptation, yet we know that God has promised to work all things for our good—even temptation. Thomas Watson addresses this in his book All Things for Good, and offers nine ways that temptation works for our good.

Temptation works for good when it sends the soul to prayer. Quite simply, temptation motivates us to pray to God against that temptation. Not only that, but more temptation generates more prayer. “The more furiously Satan tempts, the more fervently the saint prays.” Without temptation we might not express our reliance upon God through prayer.

Temptation works for good when it motivates us to battle sin. As we are tempted, we battle hard against the temptation and the sin behind it. In this way God works the good of sanctification through temptation, not apart from it. “That temptation which the devil uses as a spur to sin, God makes a bridle to keep back a Christian from it.”

Temptation works for good when it promotes humility. This was Paul’s experience as he battled his “thorn in the flesh.” He knew that this difficulty had been given to prevent him from growing in pride. “Better is that temptation which humbles me, than that duty which makes me proud.”

Temptation works for good when it tries and proves our faith. Some immediately crumble under the devil’s attacks, but others bear up, thus proving the existence and strength of their faith. “The devil tempts, that he may deceive; but God suffers us to be tempted, to try us. Temptation is a trial of our sincerity. It argues that our heart is chaste and loyal to Christ, when we can look a temptation in the face, and turn our back upon it.”

Temptation works for good when it equips us to comfort those who are being tempted. Once we have been tempted in a certain way, we acquire a qualification to better comfort those who are tempted in the same way. In this way we can more effectively minister to them. “He that has felt the claws of the roaring lion, and has lain bleeding under those wounds, is the fittest man to deal with one that is tempted.”

Temptation works for good when it stirs up God’s fatherly heart toward us. What is true of any father—he has compassion on the child who is hurt and grieving—is true of God. God has a special heart of compassion toward those of us who are suffering under temptation. “When a saint lies under the bruising of temptations, Christ prays, and God the Father pities.”

Temptation works for good when it make us long for heaven. Temptation makes us long for the place where all temptations have ceased. We know that in this life we will face unending waves of temptation, but in the life to come, we will be free! “This is to make God’s people wish for death to sound a retreat, and call them off the field where the bullets fly so quick, to receive a victorious crown, where not the drum or cannon, but the harp and viol, shall be ever sounding.”

Temptation works for good when it engages Christ’s strength. When we battle temptation, we have the assurance that we do not battle alone. Rather, we have a friend who fights with us and for us, and in our temptation we get to see him in action. “Christ is our Friend, and when we are tempted, He sets all His power working for us.”

Watson concludes, “Surely if the devil knew how much benefit accrues to the saints by temptation, he would forbear to tempt.” He closes with this comparison: “St. Paul, in his voyage to Rome, met with a contrary wind (Acts xxvii. 4). So the wind of temptation is a contrary wind to that of the Spirit; but God makes use of this cross-wind, to blow the saints to heaven.”

The Climatic Part of Abraham's Story (part two)

Abraham was asked to do something that no one else was ever asked to do, precisely in order to demonstrate to the whole world what hope in God really means. We look upon Abraham's three-day journey with solemn awe. We are amazed by his faith in the God whose promise he had trusted for decades, his obedience to the God with whom he had walked --- the God whose gifts and promises are manifestations of pure grace, to be received from his hand in total submission to the One whose will, whether in light or in shadow, is always perfect.

And so, the very moment that we avert our eyes in unspeakable horror, God acts;

Abraham put forth his hand, and took the knife, to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said (again), "Here I am." He said, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him: for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me."

And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns, and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place "the Lord will provide." (22:10-14)

So Abraham received this son back again from the dead. To "believe in" God, to "fear" God, is to trust him totally and to put oneself in his hands totally, even when the road leads out into God-forsakenness, even when the fulfilment of God's promises seem to have receded into impossibility. Our father Abraham, through his three days agony, has taught us how to be believers. God knew that Abraham would be faithful; the purpose of the "test" was not for God to gain new knowledge, but for Abraham to bequeath to his posterity a heroic, unparalleled example of steadfast loyalty to God throughout the journey into apparently hopeless night.

Unparalleled, that is, until the day when God's own Son, His only Son, whom God loved, cried out on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" For Isaac, there was a substitute --- Abraham found a ram in the bush. "God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." But when Jesus was brought to the cross--- the Lamb of God who would bear the sin of the world into fathomless darkness, God did not withhold his Son, His only Son, whom He loved. It is no accident that this story is read during Lent, and also on Good Friday. God the Father and God the Son together, with a single will, offered the perfect sacrifice once for all. What Abraham at the last moment did not have to do, God did.

And what this means for you and for me is that there is nothing so unspeakable that God has not already thought of, and nothing so evil that God is not victorious over it, however long the journey may be, however indefinitely the fulfilment of the promises may seem to be postponed. What this means is that you and I, as children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, have received our lives from God as pure gift, sustained by his hand, according to his purpose, destined for the completion of his plan, living solely by his grace, and that is the impetus for all resistance ---  All resistance to the use of nuclear arms and every other form of evil. In the life of faith lived by Christians, we bear witness to the biblical testimony that nothing  --- nothing at all --- can destroy the promised future, because the promised future belongs to our God.

Quoted from the book "And God spoke to Abraham" by Fleming Rutledge.

Not Ashamed

The Climatic Part of Abraham's Story (to kill his own son).

In chapter 12, Abraham is asked to cut himself off from the past; in chapter 22, he is asked to cut himself off from the future.

What sort of God would do such a thing? That is the question we ask. But apparently, according to the story the answer to the question is that it is the same God that Abraham has known and believed and obeyed from the beginning. This seems incredible to us, but it is a feature of the story that Abraham seems to believe that God is entirely within his rights to demand this of him.

The most dreadful part of the story, of course, is that Abraham is supposed to do the deed himself. God doesn't ask Abraham to send Isaac out to play in the street so God can come along in a truck and mow him down; that would have been bad enough. What is infinitely worse is that Abraham personally is supposed to slit the boy's throat. The writer does not altogether suppress the human side of this, but the restraint shown in the telling is a clue to us that the meaning of the story lies on the theological plane. Isaac does not function in the story as though he was just a boy; his primary role in the story is as the embodiment of God's promise this should not lessen the peculiar horror of the situation, however, for the narrator allows us to feel it fully as Abraham makes his three days' journey.

Three days! Conceivably one might carry out an unthinkable order on impulse, in a moment's blind recklessness; but God sends Abraham on a three-day journey to a distant spot so that he will have plenty of time to think about what he has been asked to do. Even Martin Luther quailed at the prospect; he said we could view the journey to Mount Moriah only from a distance, and that he himself could not have been a spectator, let alone a participant or the executioner --- in fact, he compares himself and us to the donkeys that were left behind at the foot of the mountain. Again, we emphasise the uniqueness of the story: God asked Abraham to do something that he would never again ask anyone to do. And, be it noted, the hearer of the story is told something that Abraham does not know --- namely, that God never had any intention of going through with the killing; he did it to "test" Abraham.

Is this some kind of cruel joke? God already knows everything; why then does he put Abraham to the test? A clue is found in Romans when Paul calls Abraham "the father of us all." The Christian tradition has always known Abraham to be the "father of believers." It is Abraham's faith, the meaning of it, the depth of it, the application of it, and above all the source of it that is central to the story of the sacrifice of Isaac.

The depth of Abraham's faith is suggested by the degree of anguish which afflicts him. Typically, the narrator does not describe this directly. Rather, it is implied, hinted at, evoked in the twice-repeated statement that, after the servants were told to stay behind with the donkeys, "the two of them went on together." Some of the greatest imaginations in the world have been applied to the matter of what Abraham and Isaac said to each other as they were "going on together." But once again, the singular artistry of our storyteller defeats all such attempts:

As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to Abraham, "Father?"
"Yes, my son?" Abraham replied.
"The fire in the wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"
Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together. (21:7-8)

The reticence and economy with which the journey is described contrasts with the detailed account of the preparation of the sacrifice. The narrative pace slows to an excruciating crawl:

Abraham built an altar there,
and arranged the wood on it;
he bound his son Isaac,
and laid him on the altar,
on top of the wood.
Then he reached out his hand,
and took the knife
to slay his son (11:9-10)

And we are to understand, make no mistake, that for Abraham this does not mean the death of his personal hopes only. For Abraham, and therefore for us, the hearers of the story, the end of Isaac means the end of hope for the salvation and blessing of the entire world. It means the end of the purposes of God.

When I went to see my mentor with my fears about nuclear annihilation and the end of civilization, my question was really whether I could go on believing in God in view of what I had seen in my mind's eye when I looked out over the Statue of Liberty. I remember in particular the thought that if there was an all-out nuclear exchange, the survivors would not even be able to find bread or water --- let alone wine --- to have the Lord's supper. This seemed to me to be the ultimate in the destruction of a human future.

I am sure my professor had many things to say that day, but I remember only one. He said, gently, "Fleming, did you think that God had not thought of that?"

I don't know if this works for you. All I can say is that with those simple words my hope in God was restored to me. I realised that, as Paul writes, the God in whom Abraham believed is able to raise the dead and to call into existence the things that do not exist.

Quoted from Fleming Rutledge's book, "And God Spoke to Abraham"

to be continued .......

God's Wrath against SIN not US

SIN not sins Explained by the Apostle Paul

We can read the Gospels from year to year and not understand what sin is unless we have Paul to explain it to us. In the Gospels, it is easy to think of sinning as cheating taxpayers, adultery, stealing, abandoning one's sheep, withholding money from God, being critical, and various other discrete acts which can be defined as "sins".  We read that Jesus eats with sinners, and we assume that this means people who have been condemned by society for their specific sinful actions. When the Lord says "I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners" (Matthew 9:13), we naturally assume that he divides up the world into two categories that way, so we do the same. It comes as a surprise to us therefore, in Romans 3, when we hear Paul say,

All human beings, both Jews and Gentiles, are under the power of SIN ..... None is righteous, no, not one .... There is no distinction ..... All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God .....

"Under the power of Sin." That is the clue. Sin (with a capital letter) is not the same thing as sins. Sins are individual misdeeds that you can tot up at the end of the day, or that God will add up at the end of your life. You can make a list of sins and then congratulate yourself because you haven't committed very many of them. If we think of Sin in this way we will never understand what the Son of God came to do.

Sin is not the sum total of a bunch of individual transgressions. Sin is the fundamental condition of man, the disease that we have all got, "a deep interior dislocation in the very centre of human personality." The human race is enmeshed in the consequences of a vast primordial catastrophe, as John Cardinal Newman put it. The world has been thrown blatantly off course by an alien power hostile to God, and paradoxically, each of us is responsible for his own part in the resulting mess. According to Paul, Sin is both "and enslaving power" external to man, and "man's own culpable act" for which each human being singly and all human beings collectively deserve the judgement of God. This is true whether we know it or not, whether we feel it or not. Paul does not begin his discussion of Sin with subjective feelings of guilt, which his hearers may or may not have; he begins with our objective situation before God as fallen creatures in bondage to a Power far greater then we are. The tragedies and follies and depredations that we see all around us in our world are signs that "the Wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of human beings" (Romans 1:18).

So, to recap what we've said, the prologue to Paul's story (and it is a story, even though it might not look like one) is his declaration of God's mighty acts of redemption: "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation" (Romans 1:16). Only when he has made this clear does he embark upon his long passage about the Wrath of God against Sin, which goes on for two chapters and a half in the course of this passage he is counting on us to understand that God's wrath is against Sin not against us.

Quoted from Fleming Rutledge's book, "Not Ashamed of the Gospel"

Fear

Focus

Christ's Likeness

Upon a Life

Resurrection of Christ

Face to Face (Part Three)

St Paul is no fool. He always anticipates objections. He goes on (v. 35): "but someone will ask, how are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" And Paul's answer is, basically, "that's a stupid question. He's annoyed that the Corinthians are so literal minded. He wants them to understand that the Resurrection body, though it is recognisably the same person, is of another order of reality altogether: "you foolish man! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body which is to be .... God gives it a body as he has chosen." At this point Paul finds himself in a difficulty, and he is not altogether successful in getting himself out of it. He is trying to explain how the Resurrection body is different from an earthly body, so he starts talking about seeds and plants, birds and fish, stars and suns. The preacher is sympathetic to Paul's predicament here. It is always tempting at Easter to talk about how the ugly brown bulb is transformed into a gorgeous, colourful tulip or daffodil. The analogy doesn't really work, however, because flowers come up every spring and we expect them to, whereas the Resurrection was totally unexpected and explosively new. Paul, as he dictates, seems to sense that these illustrations from the natural world are not working so he abandons them and goes on to a much more arresting set of biblical images.

The first man (Adam) was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man (Christ) is from heaven ... Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

Here Paul has more success as he begins to show how Christ is from another world order altogether. Together with us, Christ has borne the image of "the man of dust"; indeed he has borne it to its bitter and shameful end at Golgotha; but because he is "the man of heaven," his death and Resurrection are the evidence planted within human history that God has broken through from beyond human history, from beyond human imagining, from beyond human capacity. That is what Paul means when he says crisply, "I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable." The Gospel of John says the same thing in a different way: "to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God .... Born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of human beings, but of God" (John 1:12-13).

Just as the crucifixion has always been problematic, so too has the doctrine of the Resurrection of the body. We don't seem to want to believe in resurrected bodies. We want to be "spiritual." But bodies are important. When Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, the whole world was touched by the grief of his young granddaughter who wept that she would never feel his warm hands again. I'm sure that you remember the famous photograph taken at the scene of the Oklahoma City bombing ---- the big husky fireman cradling the tiny dead toddler. The impact of the picture, reproduced around the globe, came from the site of the bloodied little live body cradle in the huge arms of the fireman with the compassionate face. Bodies matter. Faces matter. We want to hold a warm hand, we want to see a beloved smile. I remember when I was young in Virginia and a wise older person said, "Virginians think they love Robert E Lee. They don't love Robert E Lee; they love their image of Robert E Lee. In order to love someone you have to have them right their."

Jesus is right here. He is right here in a way that no one else has ever been. Even now there is a real sense in which you can, as the song says, "put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee." It is very difficult to describe how this can be, but just as the beloved disciple grasped by faith that Jesus's body had passed through the grave clothes, so also we today may grasp by faith that he has risen and alive. Let us return to Paul's words;

If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied.
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

Can you imagine anything more wonderful than this? On the contrary, we can scarcely begin to imagine it, for it does not come from human imagination but from God. All our sins wiped away, all evil done to death for ever, the devil and his hosts destroyed, our loved ones restored to us, all the injustices and wrongs of human history made right in a new heaven and a new earth.

These things are neither humanly possible nor religiously possible. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. But as Jesus himself said, "all things are possible with God" (Mark 10:27) Paul continues this letter in a sort of rapture:

Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

Changed! Our sinfulness exchange for his righteousness, our mortality for his immortality, our sorrow for his joy, our bondage for his freedom, and our deteriorating human body for an altogether transformed one that will nevertheless be our very own and no one else's, a body with which to love others and be loved in return with all the love of Christ himself. "So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, "death is swallowed up in victory" (1st Corinthians 15:54).

Quoted from Fleming Rutledge's book, (The Undoing of Death)

Face to Face (Part Two)

Entering the tomb (for the stone had been removed), they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, "do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him" . . . And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. (Mark 16:5-8)

This is a very peculiar way to end the gospel. Some additional verses were added later, but most interpreters now believe that Mark meant to conclude this way. The news of the Resurrection caused the women to run headlong from the scene. Maybe this image would convey the message better than the usual one of the women kneeling reverently and peacefully, based on the rays of sunrise. Maybe the best Easter card would show the women hurtling pell-mell out of the empty tomb, terrified. Indeed, I found a card this year that conveyed something of this. The painting on the card was done by a Guatemaian artist in a primitive style. It showed the women reacting to the angels message in vivid action. The hair of one standing straight up as though she had received an electric shock. Another was throwing her pottery jar into the air as though it had suddenly become radioactive. Yet another woman was shown with her legs and arms splayed out as if she were leaping like a Cossack dancer. The Gospel of Matthew also convey something of the sense that something truly staggering has taken place. "And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men" (Matthew 28:2-4). This is not a story about the immortality of the soul.

The tomb was empty; the body was gone all four Gospels report this. Yet in a certain sense, the Easter Day sermon is the most difficult of the year because it is impossible to talk directly about the Resurrection. It is often noted that the various accounts in the Gospels do not agree. Most of us who are believers think that these discrepancies simply reflect the ineffable nature of the Resurrection, an event so transcendent as to belong to another order of meaning altogether. Yet in spite of the differences about the numbers and names of angels and witnesses, all evangelists agree that the tomb was empty. The body was nowhere to be found. Only the grave clothes were left behind. "And the disciples saw, and believed."

All the Gospel accounts of the Resurrection convey a sense of something completely un-looked for that has happened, something altogether without precedent, something that stuns and astonishes with this inexplicable power. Yet this event is revealed -- as being the Resurrection of Jesus to a bodily existence. To be sure, it is a different body, which passes through doors, isn't always recognised, it appears only to a chosen few; yet it is a real body that eats fish (Luke 24:42-43), cooks breakfast (John 21:12), and bears the marks of the nail wounds (John 20:27). The risen Lord was not a disembodied spirit, but a real body with whom the disciples had a continuing face-to-face relationship, as in his dialogue with Peter: "Jesus said to him, Simon (Peter), son of John, do you love me? (Peter) said to him, Yes, Lord; you know that I love you. (Jesus) said to him, "tend my sheep" (John 21:15-16). This exchange, repeated three times, corresponds to the three times that Peter denied the Lord before his crucifixion. This kind of intimate human encounter, with all that it conveys of forgiveness, repentance, and restitution, cannot take place without bodily presence.

Paul writes quite sharply to the Corinthian church: "if the dead are not raised then Christ has not been raised." If immortality is what we are talking about, then everything we apostles have told you about what happened to Jesus Christ is a lie: "if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain," Paul says. Furthermore, if you want to just go back to some kind of general belief in a soul that lives on after death, all the benefits of Christ's Cross are lost to you: "if Christ has not been raised your faith is futile and you are still in your sins." Not only that, Paul continues, you need to know that if Christ is not been raised, your eternal future is at stake also. If there is no Resurrection, then "those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished." Thus in various ways Paul seeks to remind the Corinthians that the Resurrection is a completely new happening in the world: the single, definitive, and unique action of God to vindicate and enthrone the crucified Messiah.

Quoted from Fleming Rutledge's book, (The Undoing of Death)

Face to Face (Part One)

The first man (Adam) was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man (Christ) is from heaven ..... Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (First Corinthians 15:47, 49)

The Archbishop of Canterbury was quoted recently on the subject of e-Mail and the Internet. He acknowledged the power and usefulness of the Net, but observed that a lot of people thought they were having real relationships by email when in fact there can be no relationship without face-to-face contact. I know two couples who met on the Internet, and they have given me permission to say that that is the absolute truth!

"I believe in the resurrection of the body." That's what we say when we recite the Apostles Creed. The Apostles Creed is what we say at morning and evening prayer. Many of us have been saying "resurrection of the dead" in the Nicene Creed for so long that we have forgotten the phrase "resurrection of the body". "resurrection of the dead" is itself a unique affirmation, but it doesn't make the point as explicitly as "resurrection of the body." St Paul's letter to the church in Corinth addresses this issue head-on. In his famous chapter on love, he speaks of the future day when we will know the Lord and one another, not "through a glass, darkly" ("in a mirror dimly" -- RSV) but "face to face." He goes on, "now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I also am known" (First Corinthians 13:12).

The Corinthian congregation that Paul had founded and nurtured was turning away from the revolutionary Christian proclamation of the resurrection of the body. They were returning to the much more familiar religious idea of the immortality of the soul. In fact the Corinthians thought that they had already gained immortality. They had a "spiritualised" idea of the resurrection that bypasses the body. Paul writes to them, explaining that if they are going to go that way, they are going to be giving up the foundation of the Christian faith: "how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? . . . If there is no resurrection of the dead, that Christ has not been raised; (and) if Christ has not been raised, . . . Your faith is futile and you are still in your sins" (1 Corinthians 15:13-17).

Immortality of the soul was such a commonplace belief in the Hellenistic world of Jesus and the apostles that, even though it was not a Jewish idea, no one would have been surprised to hear it. Similarity, we today hear people talk of rebirth, life after death, personal immortality, reincarnation, and all kinds of other generic religious beliefs almost as a matter of course. Only Christianity speaks of the resurrection of the body. Suppose for a moment that the angel in Mark's story had stood outside the still-closed tomb and said to the woman, "The spirit of your Master lives on," or "the immortal soul of Jesus has gone into heaven." Maybe this would have comforted the women. Maybe it would have encouraged them to pick up their lives, warm them with a religious glow and a sense of possibility. Maybe. In view of what they had witnessed at Golgotha, I doubt it. In any case, this is not at all what Mark describes. His gospel ends like this:

Entering the tomb (for the stone had been removed), they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, "do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him" . . . And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. (Mark 16:5-8)

Quoted from Fleming Rutledge's book, (The Undoing of Death)

For Resurrection Sunday

Righteousness

Abundant Life

For Good Friday

In the midst of all the controversy and Jesus-bashing of recent times, we can confidently say one thing. No other human being has ever commanded such attention over a period of 2000 years. It is unavoidable, given human nature, that there will be varying interpretations of the meaning of his life. Yet the new Testament insists on these basic points;

1. In the Crucifixion of Jesus the Scriptures are fulfilled, that is to say, it was according to the plan and purpose of God from the beginning.
2. The Cross was for sin, that is, the atonement for sin and the overcoming of sin.
3. The Cross was for us -- that is, on our behalf, in our place, and for our transformation.

"According to the Scriptures," "for sin," and "for us". These phrases hold the key to the meaning of the Cross. Why should we believe the latest here-today-and-gone-tomorrow academic theory? These media-pleasing ideas are dressed up as though they were something new, but all of them have been sent around the ring before and have become tired and stale, whereas millions of people for 2000 years have put their trust in the Biblical witness and found it full of new life and new promise for every generation. Your presence here today attests -- for those who have ears to hear -- that Christ's Crucifixion was indeed the central event in the history of the world, unveiling as it does the very nature of the God who stands at the beginning and at the end, the Alpha and Omega, who is and who was and who is to come (Revelation 1:8).

As the gospel and Epistles of John emphasise, what our God accomplished for us in the Cross of Christ was the consummation of love. But this is not the soft, fuzzy sort of love that predominates in our sentimental culture ("Love is a warm puppy"). This is the love that goes to war. We understand from the New Testament that there is a war to be fought-- a war against sin, a war against evil, a war against Satan, a war against death. The war is fought by the love of God at work in the Crucifixion of Jesus. There has never been such a radical disclosure of anything whatsoever as what we see revealed at Golgotha. It seemed that day that there was an obliteration of love, an annihilation of love, and extermination of goodness, a total eclipse of God. In order to understand what Jesus has done, we really must try to put ourselves back into the place of those first disciples. No one anywhere at any time had ever put forth the idea that the Messiah of God would be put to death in a shameful fashion that was guaranteed to degrade, to disgust, and permanently to discredit. Even though Jesus himself had tried many times to warn them, they were totally unprepared, just as you and I would have been, to cope with the utter collapse of their masters mission. God himself appeared to have withdrawn from the battlefield.

The ways of God are indeed strange. Listen to the words of the prophet Isaiah: "the Lord will rise up .... to do his deed -- strange as his deed! And to do his work -- alien is his work?" (Isaiah 28:21). Martin Luther called this God's Opus Alienum: his alien work. The greatest challenges to Christian faith of those times when God seems to be either absent or, even worse, actively malevolent, sending one affliction after another to people and families without any apparent reason, piling on trouble where trouble has already made a seemingly permanent dwelling. The Old Testament is full of complaints about this. "Oh Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and thou wilt not hear?" (Habakkuk 1:2). There are no satisfactory answers to these questions about God's apparent failure to act. We do not offer "answers" today. God will not give us an "answer"; he gave his only Son. What we offer today is the divine drama: the king must die. All our stories are gathered up into the story of the humiliation of the Son of God. The paradox of the Crucifixion is the enactment of the abandonment of God by God in the person of God himself -- "the Crucified God." This makes no earthly sense, but it is this "strange work" which enables us to hold on in the dark. In the darkness at noon that descended on Calvary, God's hand was visibly at work. This action of God is not made known in the blaze of light so that the whole world will be stunned into submission. It is made known in the darkness of the grave.

Here is the Lord's word for all who are gathered at the foot of the Cross today. If you know what it is like to feel abandoned by God, if you have wondered if Christian faith is in fact a hoax and a sham, if you feel that pain and loneliness are a cruel joke on people who are fool enough to trust a God who willdoesn't appear to be around when you need him, Good Friday is for you. In this inconceivable action of submission to the very worst that "the world, the flesh and the Devil" can do, the Father and the Son together, in the power of the Holy Spirit, have completed the work of salvation. "It is finished" (John 19:30). Blessed are those who have eyes to see and ears to hear that Christ's completed work is accomplished precisely in the moment of seeming defeat. The weapon is his own body. The signs of victory are his wounds. "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain" (Revelation 5:12). In the darkness of the night of human pain, we are joined to him in his promise of everlasting day. "From henceforth," wrote St Paul, "let no one make trouble for me; for I bear on my body the marks of the Lord Jesus" (Galatians 6:17). Amen.

The Law

True to Self

Dying Well