The Emmaus Experience

The Bible contains the greatest stories ever told. An outstanding one is found in Luke 24, the story of Cleopas and his companion on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus and their encounter with the risen Lord. We can observe three distinct phases in their experience as they discover Christ is alive. The experiences of believers today follow similar patterns. Christ is risen indeed! His bodily resurrection is an incontrovertible fact. However, our experience of the risen Christ can often bear a striking resemblance to the sequence of events described here.

 

The Downcast Heart - Wrong

This is where many believers find themselves. Like the Emmaus Two they seem oblivious to the fact Christ is risen. There is such a thing as clinical depression but with many believers it is not that. They are simply down-hearted. Note the characteristics of the downcast heart.

• It cannot be cured by company, even exalted company. We get downcast for different reasons. Often the best way to deal with it is to find company. Too much solitude can be harmful. Christian friendship and fellowship are important means of grace that we neglect at our peril. Nevertheless it is possible to be so downcast that not even the best of company delivers us. We come to church. We try to pray and praise. But if Christ is unrecognised we will remain in the dumps.
• One of the greatest problems when a Christian is in this sort of state is that he fails to recognise his blessings. The Emmaus Two were totally dejected because of the death of Christ. Yet there he was right next to them! Their lack of expectation and Jesus’ transformed appearance combined to blind them to reality. Are your low expectations driving you into dejection? Are you missing blessings right under your nose?
• It is not that the downcast Christian fails to recognise anything of the power and glory of Christ and his kingdom. The problem is that he tends to dwell on the darker side. A great pessimism seems to descend.
• When this pessimism takes a grip it can lead to reading even the most favourable circumstances in a bad light. The Emmaus Two had heard rumours of Jesus’ resurrection but pessimism blinded them.
• We must label this attitude with its proper title. Let no glamour be attached to long faced, moody Christianity. It is nothing but slowness of heart and unbelief. To behave in this way is dull-witted and foolish. It cannot be excused. It cannot be countenanced. Jesus rebukes it firmly. It must have no place in his kingdom.

We recognise that such times may come even to the best of believers but they must be fiercely resisted.

 

The Burning Heart - Better

What is the way out of the gloom?

• Having Christ present and hearing him speak. The two were downcast. Perhaps they were trying to cheer each other up. Then along comes a stranger. The natural reaction would be to let him pass by. Thankfully, they do not. It is tempting sometimes to cut ourselves off from fellowship when we are downcast. That is dangerous. It is tempting to stop reading the Bible. That is even more dangerous.
• It is particularly in the expounding of the Scriptures that Jesus draws near to these two. The cure for spiritual depression is always found in God’s Word. Counselling and conferences may help but it is the Word itself that does the business. Keep coming to the Word.
• Now you may say ‘But I’ve been pretty down at times and even though I’ve turned to the Word I’ve got nothing.’ But when Jesus explained the Scriptures he showed how they spoke about him. If you read the Bible and do not find Christ there you will remain discouraged. The great thing about God’s Word is that it reveals Jesus to us. Always read looking to see him in it.
• Does your heart burn within when you hear the Bible explained? Are you excited when you find Christ in his Word? This ‘burning’ was not just emotion. These two were transformed. At first the stranger had seemed like an intruder but now they did not want him to go. They urge him to come home with them. Once you know Christ drawing near you never want to lose his presence again.
• The burning heart is the heart that has begun to believe again. Pessimism and unbelief are vanquished. It begins again to look at Christ and trust in him.

 

The Rejoicing Heart - Best

This should be the normal state of believers - rejoicing in the risen Lord Christ. This is the capstone in the movement from depression to rejoicing. When Christ draws near, do not miss your opportunity. Seize it with both hands. Note that.

• The rejoicing heart may come in the homeliest environment. In ordinary places at ordinary times our eyes may be opened to the truth and our hearts stirred to rejoicing. It does not have to wait for a special place or occasion.
• The rejoicing heart comes when your eyes open and you recognise Christ. It is not enough to go through the motions of prayer and Bible reading, etc. Christ was present for a long time before they saw him. Pray that you will not be impervious so long when Christ draws near to you.
• The rejoicing heart is a source of energy. These two who had dragged their way the seven miles from Jerusalem thought nothing of returning there that same night. Seeing Christ produces zeal and strength even for the weakest and slowest.
• The rejoicing heart wants to speak about the risen Christ. It is eager to tell others, to share the good news. Much of our lethargy in evangelism stems from our failure to see Christ.
• The rejoicing heart is one that understands the truth and believes it. May God give you a rejoicing heart now and always.

This article first appeared in Grace Magazine

The sadness of feminism

Germaine Greer is a leading feminist. An Australian, she came to study in England in 1964 and has lived in this country ever since. An academic and a writer she shot to fame in 1970 with her best selling book The Female Eunuch, an analysis of attitudes toward women and a call for an end to what she saw as sexual repression. Her most recent book [1999], The Whole Woman, another best seller, continues in the same feminist groove but surprises other feminists at times with its conclusions.

By now in her sixties, she recently produced an article for Aura magazine that was also featured in the Daily Mail. That paper described the article as a ‘searingly honest testimony’ under the headline, ‘How one baby lit up my life in a way no lover ever could’.

Here we summarise her story as a reminder of the many people all around us who feel badly let down by lives lived according to the accepted rules of the day.

 

Babies are bad news

She begins by telling how she grew up to believe that babies were seriously bad news. Pregnancy meant ‘morning sickness, bloating and loss of looks’; babies just unleashed a whole set of other unpleasant problems. She was taught to have a ‘good time’ before facing the horrors of pregnancy and bringing up children. One of the problems with this was that a promiscuous lifestyle was considered to be essential. ‘We all lived in fear of ‘being late’’ she writes and describes some of the desperate measures contemporaries took to deal with an ‘unwanted pregnancy’.
She herself took to using a ‘Grafenburg ring’, an early form of IUD. This led to problems with her reproductive organs. During a laparotomy to investigate this, it was necessary to perform a four hour emergency operation and she was told, incorrectly as it turned out, that she would never be able to have children. This was followed, nevertheless, by two pregnancies and, sadly, two abortions. In the first case at least, it was the thought of being ‘condemned to the life of the impoverished single mother of a handicapped child’ that filled her with terror and led to the ‘termination’.

Scrumptious, delicious, adorable
In the middle of all this she describes how she helped out a pregnant student by providing her with an emergency roof over her head. She describes how, despite forebodings that ‘quality of life would take a nosedive’, she found the trials of dealing with a screaming baby a delight. In a line that will come as no surprise to most parents she says ‘I found her scrumptious, delicious, ineffable, adorable ….’ Sadly, this reaction also astonished her. Not until then had she realised the tremendous joy that only children can give.
Ms Greer continued to engage in fornication but now avoided using any contraception. However, she was apparently unable to become pregnant despite what was now a great longing. A visit to an expensive Harley Street clinic served only to worsen the situation. Another expensive gynaecologist was able to repair the damage by means of microsurgery but an apparent pregnancy turned out only to be a phantom one.

Gynaecologist
Soon she reached the age of 40 and her gynaecologist informed her that from this point on, if there was a pregnancy, he would expect her to have amniocentesis. Interestingly, she told him that by this time she had no intention of aborting a child even if it was suffering from Downs syndrome. He was shocked by this. She in turn was shocked at his opposition to her point of view, although it would perhaps be a typical one in the medical profession.
Despite great efforts to get pregnant before the onset of menopause, it never happened. Like others in her situation she has considered adoption. The fact that she was single and that in this country most children available for adoption are those with many problems precluded this. She rightly finds the idea of buying a child from poor third world parents morally repugnant. Towards the end she describes a dream in which she finds an abandoned baby girl in a rubbish skip. She takes the child to the table but finds its head crawling with ants. She has no doubts that this dream was an expression of her deep seated desire to be a mother. She still dreams that somehow one day she will be able to adopt a child.

Our response
The article is far from being a retraction of her leading ideas. Much less is Ms Greer saying ‘I repent of sin’. However, she has come to the point where she can see that despite the vaunted glories of the humanist lifestyle she, for one, is full of regret, at least as far as her never having been a mother is concerned. There are many reasons why people do not have children but in this case the problem is chiefly an unbiblical lifestyle. It is not our purpose here to gloat. The article moves one to compassion rather. Ms Greer is typical of many, no doubt, who are reluctant to abandon their anti-scriptural stances but have begun to see at least some of the limitations of their chosen road.
This article first appeared in Grace Magazine.

What's in a name? Chapel names

If your church meets in a chapel, does it have a name? I have belonged to two or three Baptist churches in my time, each named after its location. However, many chapels do have names, especially where there is more than one in a town. Some have quietly dropped these names in recent times, feeling their work is not helped by issuing invitations to ‘Come to Ebenezer’ or ‘Join us at Zion’. Most, however, continue to use these ancient, and often well loved, names. Some new churches have even incorporated a name into the title of the church itself, such as Cornerstone, Immanuel, Gateway, Grace, Lifeline, Trinity, Vineyard or Church of the Good Shepherd. Meanwhile, Rehoboths, Hopes and Providences continue to abound.

Until 1689 Baptists had no chapels as such. Before the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 they had made use of parish churches and other public buildings where possible and then, under threat of persecution, had resorted to using private homes. This arrangement created its own difficulties and so where possible, like other Nonconformists, they built or bought chapels in which to meet. Sometimes congregations would share facilities but more often each church became identified with one specific building. From the 1740s at least the practice began of identifying these buildings with names. As Nonconformity flourished in the 19th Century so each new chapel erected often bore a particular name to distinguish it from others. Soon, potentially confusing phrases such as ‘I belong to Hope’ or ‘I’m going to Emmaus’ became common place.

Parish churches have for long ages been traditionally connected with the names of saints, as in St Luke’s, St Philip and St James’s St Michael and All Angels or All Saints. At least one church in Wales bears Peter’s Aramaic name (Cephas) but most Nonconformists in England and Wales eschewed this practice and struck out on different paths. In America they, unimaginatively, speak usually of First Baptist, Second Baptist, Ninth Presbyterian, Tenth. Here names were chosen, mainly from the Bible, for usually obvious reasons. Bethel is ‘House of God’; Emmanuel, ‘God with us’. Providence acknowledges God’s provision of a meeting place; Jireh is ‘The Lord will provide’ and Ebenezer ‘Up until now the Lord has helped us’.

In some instances you learn something about a chapel from its name. Enon has to be a Baptist church. Enon you recall was where John the Baptist baptised because there was much water there. Tabernacles, like God’s house in the Old Testament, are relatively large as are the rarer Temples. Babell Apostolic in Aberdare, South Wales, gets its name from the Welsh word for tent not the place where the tower was built! Bethel means house of God and Zoar (meaning ‘Little place’) should be smaller, just as Rehoboth should be larger, or an extension work, as the name means Room. It was the name given to a well by Isaac following a time of strife. Perhaps in some instances that thought is in the background. Zoar is, of course, where Lot fled from Sodom and Gomorrah and so suggests a place of refuge from wickedness.

The idea of refuge is also there in the popular Elim, Place of rest, and the unusual Cave of Adullam, where all in distress, debt or despair resorted to David. The Ark clearly suggests a welcome for all creatures great and small. The name Lighthouse or Beacon, like The Bridge, though not directly from Scripture, make similar points. The name Hebron was probably selected with a similar thought. It was a city of refuge. City of Refuge spells out the point. Gilead, of course, is the place for soothing balm. Welsh Noddfa, like the French L’Abri (used by Francis Schaeffer), both mean shelter or refuge. The name Elim, the name of an oasis where Israel stayed in the desert, is one of many examples where biblical place names have been adopted. Use has been made of Bethany, where Jesus loved to stay; Bethlehem, perhaps with the thought of its meaning, house of bread; Calvary, Latin for the place of the skull, where Christ died; Emmaus, where after his resurrection he broke bread and Jerusalem, Caersalem (in Wales) or Salem, which means peace. Galilee and Gethsemane also exist. Gilgal, interestingly, is where the Israelites rededicated themselves to God in Joshua’s time. Peniel is where Jacob met God face to face yet lived. Nazareth and Goshen are understandable choices too, as is Eden for there Adam and Eve met with God. Why Ramah or Shiloh should be chosen is not immediately clear, though the latter was where the Tabernacle used to be.
Then there are the mountains: Ararat, Carmel, Hermon, Moriah, Nebo, Olivet, Pisgah, Tabor, Zion, even Horeb or Sinai. Bethesda and Siloam were pools in Jerusalem connected with healing miracles of Jesus. Antioch is inspired by the New Testament church of that name. Of the seven churches mentioned in Revelation, only Sardis and Smyrna are usually used, for obvious reasons. (Philadelphia is known as it means brotherly love). The story is told, however, of a church in the southern states of America that left a great deal to be desired and was a great discouragement to its faithful pastor. They decided they wanted to give a name to their chapel but could not fix on one until some mischievous or ignorant soul suggested Laodicea. When they came to the pastor for his opinion he had to admit that it was a most appropriate name for that particular church to choose! And so it was given the name Laodicea.
There is evidence that as the 19th Century wore on our Victorian fathers tired of this naming game. They would sometimes resort to the practice of calling chapels after influential figures of the near or distant past, as in Latimer Memorial, Chalmers Memorial, Martyrs Memorial, Carey Baptist or Kensit Evangelical.
Others simply looked for more unusual names. Some went to Isaiah for Hephzibah and Beulah. Galeed means ‘Heap of witness’. Lebanon looks like a topographical reference but refers more to the cedar of Lebanon, symbolic of God’s strength. Similarly, Sharon refers to the Rose of Sharon mentioned in Song of Solomon and long accepted as a title for the Lord Jesus. Some common names today among the more conservative are Grace and Christ Church. Trinity continues to be used too. Church on the rock is an attractive name. Some people can get hot under the collar on this subject but it is not really one to get het up about. Provided we remember that the church and the building are two different things and that there is nothing in the New Testament about chapels as such, we should not go too far wrong.
Meanwhile let us not forget this largely incidental but interesting part of evangelical and Nonconformist culture which has its own lessons to teach. May each of our Bethels and Zions and Temples truly be the houses of God; may the prophets of Baal be challenged at Carmel; may we not forget the Lord’s past help at Ebenezer. And if your chapel does not have a specific name remember that he who walks among the candlesticks has a white stone with a secret new name for all who come to him. The names of all his churches are indelibly written on the palms of his hands.
This article first appeared in Grace Magazine

How we lose our ministers

Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered. Zechariah 13:7 refers to the Good Shepherd and his disciples but reminds us of the vulnerability of the local church when its pastor is struck. Pastors are struck in various ways. In these dark days every loss is keenly felt. We lose pastors in different ways. In some cases we can probably do little to prevent it, in others may be we can.

We lose them,

1. Through death

Paul tells the Philippians that to go on living means fruitful labour but if he dies, he will be with Christ, which is better by far. It is more necessary for you he says that I remain. He was convinced he would remain for their progress and joy in the faith and that is what we should pray for – long, fruitful lives for ministers. What we can do practically is limited but perhaps we can do something. It is tragic when faithful ministers die short of a full threescore and ten. Whatever happens, as Paul says, we must, however, conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel, thankful for the past and looking to the Lord for the future.

2. Through illness

Some remain alive but are so incapacitated that they retire early or are away from pastoral work for extended periods. Some churches get into the situation where their minister is frequently away with ill health. It is difficult to be sure of the effect but surely we ought to encourage ministers to establish good patterns of work and rest, eat sensibly, exercise and not neglect their health. Perhaps deacons should arrange regular medical check ups. A previous generation spoke of ‘burning out for God’. By that they meant being consumed with zeal in sacrificial service not neglecting physical health. Today there is little call for even the most zealous to do anything to endanger health. In some cases the pastor’s wife is unwell. Similar points could be made in that direction.

3. Through stress

In some cases ill health is psychosomatic. Men also leave the ministry due to stress. Again, there are various factors. Perhaps things can be done to lessen stress. The rediscovery of elders has helped some but increased the stress for others! Certainly all churches should have a system of burden sharing. Obviously relieving the minister of financial worries is important, where possible. Providing a pension scheme and exercising sensitivity when discussing his stipend are important. A good family situation is vital, as is fellowship with other ministers. Good churches encourage ministers to attend at least one conference a year. Regular sabbaticals are also useful. There is no avoiding stress in the ministry but steps should be taken to relieve it where possible and to be alert to danger signals. Better to give a man a month off than lose him for good.

4. Through doctrinal error

Many ministers change their views over the years. None of us has reached maturity and so we reckon with the possibility of being wrong. In most cases these are areas where the church has never formally expressed convictions. However, it sometimes happens that a minister comes to conclusions that run counter to the church’s doctrinal standards. Where this happens there has to be a parting of ways. Sadly, what sometimes happens is that the church is almost unwittingly won over to the new doctrine. This is dishonest of preachers and naïve of members. Often the problem stems back to lack of rigour when selecting a new pastor. Pastors ought to be doing all they can to ground churches in sound doctrine.

5. Through known immorality

A sad feature of our day is the number who fall into immorality. We think chiefly of sexual immorality but there can be financial irregularity and other open sins. Perhaps the problem of teenage rebellion from pastors children comes in here. One is very slow to say this closes the door to future ministry. We do not want to make ‘Thou shalt not get caught’ the eleventh commandment or make adultery the unforgivable sin. However, once a man falls into open sin it will take a great deal to restore him if it can be done at all. How we must pray that God will preserve ministers from such open sins. What an excuse it gives to the unbeliever.

6. Through entrance to another ministry

The question of moving from one pastorate to another can be vexed. Generally speaking, long pastorates are ideal. However, not all are able to sustain a long-term pastorate and larger churches will inevitably draw pastors from smaller churches rather than thrusting men into positions of great responsibility in their youth. The needs overseas are also very great. Nevertheless, all should think long and hard before such changes. Sometimes men leave local church ministry to engage in para-church work. It would be better for both the para-church and local churches if ways could be found of allowing men to continue their pastoral work, even part-time, while also doing other work. In these days of increased tele-working this is more feasible than ever. Far better two good men doing para-church work part-time than losing one or both completely from pastoral ministry.

7. Through rejection

There are men who minister in a local church but are forced out because the doctrine they preach is unacceptable. There is no shame for a man in this but much heartache. Sometimes there has been a lack of tact and certainly one needs to have patience and wisdom in dealing with people, especially where they are ill-taught. What fearful judgement awaits those who reject faithful ministry.

8. Through lack of opportunity

There are men who feel called to the ministry but never have opportunity to exercise their gifts in a settled pastorate. We recognise that to desire to be a minister is not the only criterion for judging whether one is called. However, surely it is possible that some men looking for pastorates unsuccessfully are victims of the failure of others – failure to trust the Lord for finance, to recognise gifts that need nurturing, to accept a ministry a little less predictable than most. Food for thought.

9. Through lack of finance

Some situations are precarious and it only takes the removal of one or two wage earners to tip the balance. There are several funds able to supply short-term support. Why do churches appeal for help with bricks and mortar but not to provide ministry? It is not ideal but there is no shame in a man supporting himself for a period. What he loses in time for ministry on the one hand he may well gain as opportunities open up through his work. Where able churches deliberately fail to provide for their ministers they sin against the Lord.

10. Through pre-occupation

In thinking about this subject and in light of the fact preparing it takes time from more obvious pastoral work one has to consider the possibility that one can be in the ministry and yet not of it. There are men who spend more time on the golf course than at their desk, but this is rare among evangelicals. More common is the temptation to spend time on delegable administration, ferrying people from place to place or sitting on endless para-church committees. This is a trap to avoid. Churches must be alert to the danger. It is important, on the other hand, that ministers do not endeavour to avoid the problem by selfishly opting out of anything not directly concerned with the local church. If all pulled their weight, may be others could do less.

This article first appeared in Grace Magazine