Grime/Hip Hop is a world of contradictions, and Wretch 32 is no exception to this. In this song we see the transformation of Mr 32 from a London taxi’s only competition [almost as big, slick, quick, black, and upper London] to a wreck of a man, desperate to keep hold of some new love.

It’s the refrain, sung by Josh Kumra, that catches my attention in this song, however:

“I don’t know where you come from, but you’re everywhere I go.”

It has the sound almost of a Psalm, particularly Psalm 139:

Where shall I go from your Spirit?

Or where shall I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there!

If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!

Psalm 139:7-8

The difference between the song and the Psalm is found in its object; for Wretch and his pal, this is some lady he cannot be without, but whom he fears may leave at any moment; for David (who wrote the Psalm), it is the God from whom he cannot escape.

Wretch’s fears may prove true. The chorus again cries out;

 “I don’t know why you chose me … don’t go.”

In the face of being loved, perhaps it is natural to ask why. Perhaps some people (fond of their mirrors) feel no such need to ask, or perhaps they just pretend that is the case. And when we ask why, we are sure to soon find a whole host of reasons why not.

If they knew this about me, they would not love me. They would indeed ‘go’.

The relief for David is that God already knew everything about him before he was even formed in his mother’s womb. Every day of his life lay before God prior to him taking his first breath.

And God still chose him.

And God still loves him

The ‘why’ may be the biggest mystery of all, yet it is most certainly not because of anything David had done to earn God’s love. God loved him and chose him before he could do anything.

Paul writes in Romans 8:38-39 that ‘nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Jesus’. This is because that love doesn’t depend on us and our changing moods. It doesn’t depend on the world around us. It doesn’t depend on anyone else’s opinion.

It depends on God.

The unchanging and eternal One.

God chose to die to save me. I don’t know why he chose me. I know he will not go. I know that wherever I run, he will be there.

God offers this love to you. I don’t know why, except that he loves you.

The song labels this girl as ‘everything [he] needs’, yet she is temporary at best. She will either leave of her own accord, or she will one day fade away, as will anything else we could set our hopes on. The one thing, the one love, that will remain is Jesus.

Jonny Evans (web design extraordinaire) recently designed this great offering based on the series, containing a great quote from Owen’s work:

“Do you mortify; do you make it your daily work; be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.”

Feel free to download as a desktop/iPhone/iPad background from the links below:

1024×768 1280×1024 1366×768 1440×900 1680×1055 1920×1080 iPad iPhone3GS iPhone4

(Click the size that you want, then right click on the image that appears and choose ‘save as’ or ‘set as desktop background’…)

Why, oh why, did I allow myself to be drawn into such competition? And why do I still often catch myself trying to out compete others around me? In the final few chapters of Keller’s book, we get a glimpse of the reason that I and the rest of the world all fall into this trap in one way or another.

Keller describes the values of the Kingdom of God that Jesus spoke of and ushered in as the antithesis of the values of this world. He points to the Beatitudes in Luke 6:20-26, where Jesus describes everything that we so often value as most important in this world as actually being of least value in reality, in the Kingdom of God. We favour strength, power, money etc and we like to display these wherever possible (in weightlifting competitions, for example). Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of God favours weakness, poverty, and servility.

It’s something that I often find myself wrestling with when I come to tackle the subject of pacifism. Whilst I find myself moving back and forth on the issue, I cannot escape the fact that the one act that changed the world more than any other in the entire course of human history was the submission of an innocent man when a riotous crowd came with clubs and swords to arrest and kill him.

The revolution of the Kingdom of God isn’t like all the other revolutions of civilizations past, Keller says; it expands in weakness, in truly caring for others more than the self, in loving its enemies.

People may respond to this Kingdom’s ideas as unobtainable idealism at best, and masochistic madness at worst. This, says Keller is where we see the supernatural element of the Kingdom of God;

Jesus Christ as only an example will crush you; you will never live up to it. But Jesus Christ as the Lamb will save you. (p191)

The idea that Jesus was just a good teacher is horrendously flawed. He asked us to do what human history has shown to be impossible; for individuals to start living to serve everyone else ahead of themselves. Yet in his supernaturally life-changing sacrifice that brings a new heart to those that believe, living the way of this new Kingdom suddenly starts to make sense – it starts to become more natural. Reality becomes clearer.

How does this turn around of lives occur? Fittingly, Keller points to not only the Crucifixion of Christ as important to our salvation, but the resurrection also.

Today, we celebrate the day that the crucified Son of God rose from the dead, defeating death as an enemy for us. In the final chapter of the book, Keller goes to great lengths to stress the truth of the resurrection as presented in the Gospels. I thought his explanation of how the resurrection alters the life that Christians live now was great;

Why is it so hard to face suffering? Why is it so hard to face a disability and a disease? Why is it so hard to do the right thing if you know it’s going to cost you money, reputation, maybe even your life? Why is it so hard to face your own death or the death of loved ones? It’s so hard because we think that this broken world is the only world we’re ever going to have. It’s easy to feel as if this money is the only wealth we’ll ever have, as if this body is the only body we’ll ever have. But if Jesus is risen, then your future is so much more beautiful, so much more certain, than that. (p222)

The death and resurrection of Jesus not only frees us from the judgement of God that hangs over us because of sin, it frees us from being enslaved to the fear of death; the fear that death is the end of all this and so we must grab onto everything we can lay our hands on in the short time we have.

Because of the Grace of God, the death of His Son on the Cross, and the power of His Spirit which raised Jesus from the dead and works powerfully in me, I will live forever.

Christian, you will live forever.

The resurrection of Jesus that we celebrate today is the start of all that.

This truth calls me to hold less tightly onto the things that will surely pass away in this world, and hold on more tightly to the God who remains forever, and with whom I will live forever.

Keller ends the book with a short epilogue, dealing with the nature of stories with happy endings, or ‘fairy tales’. He points out that this type of story seems to have fallen out of favour in recent years, as if there is some expectation that must be fulfilled that everything around is meaningless and chaotic, and that this should be reflected in the stories we hear and watch. Keller goes on to state that whilst unfashionable, the happy ending is what everyone longs for.

Why is this? Simply, because it is the story that God is writing. He is bringing things to an end, to resolution – and all things will be renewed. Those who are his will live forever with him in a new and perfect world. He has made a way for us to be forgiven of our sins and offers out that forgiveness and new life to all who repent and believe.

This is the ultimate reality. This is the reality reflected and actioned in the the story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.

This is the story of the world.

Phill Marsh

**This post is part of a series of posts that have taken place in the run up to Easter, recording various Firwood members’ reflections as they read through Timothy Keller’s ‘King’s Cross’. Please feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments below. For more information, click here**

Andy Evans begins this new series leading up to Easter 2011 by telling of the seeming paradox of the gospel; How can this brutal murder of the Son of God, a moment of most horrendous suffering, also be a moment so full of glory? Andy speaks from Luke’s account of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearance to two disciples as they leave Jerusalem, at first unaware of who their companion actually is…

This year, we’re doing it again; with a different book, and a slightly different timescale.

Over the coming weeks (beginning this Monday) leading up to Easter, we’ll be reading through Timothy Keller’s book, ‘King’s Cross’. In this book, Keller moves through the story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection as told in the gospel of Mark.

I’d encourage you to join in! A different member of Firwood will be posting their thoughts on a few chapters at a time, and we’d love to have you add your thoughts in the comments too.

If you’d like to join in, you can purchase the book here, and get reading!

Keep an eye out over the next few days for the first post in this series.

Over the past few weeks we’ve had the joy of baptising a number of people here at Firwood Church.

It has been awesome.

One of the great things about baptism services is the opportunity to hear the stories of those being baptised. Stories of what they were like, how they became a Christian, and what has changed since that time. We call them testimonies.

I remember preparing for my baptism at the age of fifteen. I remember thinking about having to share my testimony before getting into the water. And I remember thinking that I didn’t really have anything impressive to say. I had heard stories of people saved from a life of drugs, gang life, or worse. How did my story compare to those? I remember feeling that if only I had committed more ‘big sins’ people would have been more impressed as I shared my testimony. Or perhaps I could have added a few details to make me seem worse than I was, like maybe I used to punch kittens or something*…

We are currently reading through Luke in Soul Survivor’s Bible in One Year, and the other day we arrived in chapter seven at the account of the sinful woman who is forgiven (Luke 7:36-50). Jesus enters a guy’s house, and as he sits there a woman (seemingly a woman of ‘ill-repute’), enters and begins to wash his feet with her hair and tears, annointing them with ointment. The Pharisee (Simon), is more than a little shocked by this. Why would Jesus, a prophet (in the Pharisee’s eyes), allow this woman to touch him?

Jesus, knowing what he was thinking, teaches him with a story of debt and forgiveness. His point comes in verse 47:

“He who is forgiven little, loves little”.       Luke 7:47

‘This woman loves me a lot because she has been forgiven a lot’, says Jesus. But where does this leave those of us with testimonies that don’t make for Hollywood screen adaptations? Are we destined to love God a little less than others like this woman?

This is not the point Jesus is making at all. The truth is, we are all in the same position as this woman, and each other (Romans 3:23). It’s not that we need to sin more so that we may be forgiven more and thus love more. Rather, as we understand more and more of the depth of our sin, and rid ourselves of the crazy idea that we were basically good and didn’t really need saving, or at least not as much as some people, we will understand more deeply the love that God has for us. This will also always have an effect on the love we have for others. If we know the extent to which we have been forgiven, we will be much more ready to extend that grace to others.

God describes us as living as his enemies before he saved us (Romans 5:10), a road that ultimately leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13). Yet in that state, Jesus laid his life down to save us.

Those who have been forgiven have been forgiven much. We just need to realise it.

————————–

*I have never punched a kitten. Or a cat. Or any animal. All God’s creatures have remained punch-free in my presence.

The other day, I came across this great live performance from Lisa Gungor. In it, she sings of one such individual named John (the lyrics are posted below the video).

Johnny was raised with a steeple over his head
Lived in the suburbs and memorized scripture at night before bed
And he won a prize

Preachers and teachers would tell him where all sinners go
Prayed for revival but showed him a fancy lit carnival show
Was it a lie?

John saw the lies
And he saw the steeples
And saw all the people get it wrong

Went off to college
And came home with knowledge to spare
Of crusades and slave trades and all of the blood that was spilled in God’s name
And all of the lies

But John couldn’t fight it and he just couldn’t buy it again
Church was too small so he just threw it all out to chaos and chance
And all of the lies

John saw the lies
He saw the steeples
And saw all the people get it wrong

Jesus sees John
Jesus sees steeples
He sees all His people get it wrong

Trust Jesus, John
Trust Jesus, people
For Jesus will come and save us all

Jesus said that he came for the sick and the broken (Mark 2:17). We should expect to find broken hypocrites in the Church. We are all being made holy (Hebrews 10:14), but none of us are there yet, as Paul was keen to point out (Philippians 3:12). All in the Church are moving toward the same point, but we are all at different points in that jouney. This is not to excuse wrong behaviour, but to encourage grace in how we deal with each other. How terrible a situation we would find ourselves in if Jesus, seeing our sin, had decided to leave us be, to look for nicer people to be with.

We cannot turn our back on the Church. Jesus sees all she does wrong. He loves her. He is coming for her. Trust him.

The universe speaks out the glory of God.

This crescendo of creation is, according to Paul in Romans 1:20, the clear display of the glory of God, leaving us without excuse for missing it.

But is Creation really all that glorious? Some time ago I saw an interview with David Attenborough in which he raised exactly this question:

In pointing to Creation to show God’s glory, Christians only point to the beautiful things and forget about all the ugliness in the world, Attenborough posits.

Natural disasters.

The possible ugliness of human nature.

A Creation that seems to war against itself.

What is the answer to this objection? How can we see the glory of God in the midst of such horror? In truth, it is on this very point that we see the glory of the incarnation; God becoming flesh in Jesus, whose birth we celebrate at Christmas each year.

We live in a fallen world, stained and broken under the weight of sin. We surely do catch glimpses of God’s glory here and there in the world, but it is often alongside the shadow of an ugly world; Creation groans, as Paul says (Romans 8:22).

So how does the incarnation deal with this?

Just as Creation groans in its brokeness, Christ groaned with it.

In the incarnation, Jesus the glorious Creator, took on the ingloriousness of this world. He became flesh like us. He got tired, hungry and worn out. It’s certainly not implausible to say that he must have fallen ill at times. He experienced the pain of seeing loved ones suffer and face death. He experienced the brokeness of this world first hand, even to the point of his own torture and death.

However, it’s not just  that Jesus shares in our brokeness. Through his death and resurrection the  redemption of Creation is promised with his return. Paul shows us this in Romans chapter 8:

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.                         Romans 8:20-21

There will be a day when Jesus returns to restore Creation to perfection. Now we see glimpses of his glory; then we will be dazzled.

***

To listen to or download the accompanying sermon for this post, click here. For the full series, click here.

]]> http://www.firwoodchurch.com/blog/attenborough-and-an-inglorious-creation/feed/ 0 http://www.firwoodchurch.com/blog/enough/ http://www.firwoodchurch.com/blog/enough/#comments Mon, 08 Nov 2010 07:26:01 +0000 Phill Marsh http://www.firwoodchurch.com/?p=4350 A friend recently directed my attention toward the following great video entitled ‘The Week’. It is an advert for a magazine in Brazil, but it’s one of those rare things; an advert that isn’t entirely lacking in soul:

I love the line about creation:

[7 Days]: To create the world… Enough.

I love the idea of effortlessness the word ‘enough’ gives there. It’s an important reminder of the power of the God who rules over all and orchestrates all things. Seven days (six, really) was enough for him to create all that there is. In fact, he could have easily done it in less time. Or no time.

What weighs heavy on you at the moment? What fills your world and blots out any hope of release? The God for whom seven days was enough, is not far from you. In fact, he dwells with the low and contrite (Isaiah 57:15), and he is working all things for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28).

Do you feel like there is not much time left for God to act?

There is enough.

The first song we have chosen is the quite brilliant ‘Jesus Paid it All’, originally written by E.M. Hall and recently added to by Kristian Stanfill (you can watch the video at the end of this post).

I encourage you to spend some time reading through the song and its references. Consider them deeply, and bring them to mind as we next sing and worship God together.

Let us love God with all our heart, soul, and mind (Matthew 22:37).

(Click on the image to enlarge it)