49:
Light & Darkness
A
friend from Zimbabwe once told me this illustration of Jesus' words
“Light has come into the world but people preferred darkness”.
He
said: Back home in Zimbabwe I would sometimes go to the kitchen in
the darkness to get a midnight snack. When I reached out in the dark
for the light switch and flicked it on there was an instant flurry of
activity. Two sorts of activity. From the floor came the sounds and
sight of furious scuttling as the cockroaches raced across the floor
to find dark crevices to hide in. In the air moths fluttered
frantically as they headed towards the light bulb and crowded around
it.
My
“meat and three vegetable” sermons were shining the light of the
scriptures into the congregation at St. Luke's. Of course they had
heard sermons before, probably more polished ones at that. But my
early diagnosis of this church had been as the spiritual equivalent
of kids on a perpetual sugar high. Hence the nutritious if
unexciting diet of biblical exposition. And it was working.
One
could see that the bulk of the congregation, from the very mature
Christians through to the “attenders” were growing real
spiritual muscle.
But
… the self-styled leadership group who thought that they were more
spiritual than every one else began to hate my sermons with a
passion.
My
early diagnosis of them had been as fake “Charismatics”. They
wanted spiritual power, they wanted spiritual “show” but they did
not want the real Holy Spirit to train and transform them into people
who lived like Jesus and lived for Jesus. As I said earlier,
they had fallen for a false gospel:
Real
Gospel: Jesus loves me so much that he died for me: so He
must be the most wonderful person and I want to die to sin and live
for him.
False
Gospel: Jesus loves me so much that he died for me: so I
must be the most wonderful person and I want to go on living
for me.
So
near and yet so far!
Once
one has spotted their false gospel and its logical flaw (and yes it
did take me a long time to spot!) then the behaviour of this
group all becomes explicable. Wrong, but explicable!
Let
me give you some examples of the effects of preaching.
I
said earlier that God offered me a really wonderful gift where my
preaching could be like speaking in tongues in English. I have heard
of some preachers who had the same experience but it seems to be a
very rare gift. But just to set the record straight: No, it is not
in-errant! I have been painfully aware of times when I put my own
spin on things! But it is a million percent better than anything I
could do on my own.
As
with all God's gifts, it goes hand in hand with sanctification.
Before I got
to preach on an aspect of
Christian living The Holy Spirit
made me
deal with it in my own life! Sometimes we had sorted it
out in the past. Other times I had only given in to the convicting
voice of the Holy Spirit, confessed my own sins in this area and
handed that aspect of my life over to the Lordship of the Spirit a
day or two before the sermon!
One
great advantage of this gift was that while God only took the things
I said from the database I had acquired through study or experience,
he did control (when I let him!) the selection and presentation. So I
could preach on problems in proper innocence – I did not know if a
particular member of the congregation had exactly that problem, or if
my illustration exactly fitted their case. Obviously if any human
knew those things they could not honestly preach. Yet looking around
the congregation as I preached I frequently saw on people's faces
that the Holy Spirit had got me to say words, and applied them to
bring conviction to that person. It was scary, and to use a hackneyed
word, humbling! But to be used in any degree by God in his work of
carrying out his saving purposes is an immense satisfaction and joy.
One
time I was walking across from the vicarage to the church for the
second morning service. I said in a playful sort of way “well Lord,
what are we going to preach on today.” I believe God answered in my
mind: “You don't want to know!”. I thought that was strange, but
carried on. I was sitting listening to one of the set Bible readings
being read out by the person rostered for that service when one one
verse hit me like a sledgehammer – I suddenly realised the
implications if I expounded that verse. I said to God:
“Oh no! I'm not preaching on that!” Again I truly believe God
answered in my mind: “It's that or nothing. Take your pick.”. I
preached on that verse!
Going
back to the light and darkness theme, here is an example.
I
think I only preached once in all my time at St. Luke's on the topic
of abortion. Since I took the historic Christian line rather than the
“Progressive” line of modern society so enthusiastically endorsed
by many church leaders, this resulted in many letters of complaint to
the Archbishop!
But
the example I want to give is about two women:
Mrs
A came to me for prayer after the service (we offered prayer after
the services and had a prayer-counselling team with members on a
roster) She wanted me
to pray with her. She told me that as a young woman she had got
pregnant but
for economic reasons she had an abortion. My sermon had convicted her
that she had killed her baby and she sought confession and
absolution. That day she found a peace with God that had eluded her
for decades. Mrs A continued as a committed member of the
congregation, and as an example of faithfulness to Christ all the
time we were there.
Mrs.
X assailed me at a church meeting during the week. She was furious
that I had dared to preach on abortion. She, as she loudly
proclaimed, had in her youth (she was an older woman) been forced to
have an abortion to save her life! I pointed out to her that I had
very carefully and clearly spelt out in my sermon that an abortion to
save the mother's life was a case of “justifiable homicide” and
no guild whatsoever attached to it. Her rage was undiminished.
Although she had previously been at odds with both Shirley and Nick,
from that moment she joined them in lobbying to have me sacked.
Interestingly I met her again some years after my time at Vermont. In
place of the strident powerful and implacable figure of the past was
a hollow deflated old woman actually trying to be friendly! It struck
me forcefully then how if we let the devil use us, the power and
passion with which he infuses us is both destructive and transient.
When we are of no further use we are discarded like an old snakeskin!
So different from the results of serving God in the power of the Holy
Spirit!
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