When "sermon thoughts" Ruin the Sermon

"Feel I failed the Lord in too much digging for sermon thoughts, and not enough time letting the Scripture speak to me." (Jim Elliot)

I'm currently reading through missionary martyr Jim Elliot's edited journal - 'Shadow of the Almighty' with a good friend. I've come to both appreciate and be intimidated by Elliot's consuming passion for the gospel, as well as wincing occasionally at his struggles to comprehend a high view of marriage (reference for example his lighthearted comment, "...with a wife comes Peter the Pumpkin Eater's

Jim Elliot, missionary martyr

proverbial dilemma - he must find a place to keep her").

A number of musings on his own heart have given me pause however, and the quote at the top of this post is high on that list. It's painfully self-aware, and cuts to the heart of a delicate balancing act in sermon preparation.

Some preaching feels a little like - as my grandfather put it - serving raw meat for dinner. There's goodness in there, but it's hard to extract and may make you sick in the process. That is to say, what is delivered is less of a sermon and more of a brain dump of everything the preacher learnt about the text during his time studying it. This may spring from, among other things, a lack of appreciation for the fact that the preacher is not there to simply describe and paraphrase the texts, but to explain, illustrate, and apply them to his hearers.

Then there are the sermons that belong in a technical commentary not a church - linguistically complex exposes of the Hebrew/Greek with a quirky new take on a verb that no-one else had spotted before. An opening gambit in a theological chess game to which the congregation is not invited.

At the other end of the scale is preaching that's more akin to a half-time pep talk during a game of football. Maybe the team is losing and the manager comes in to encourage them to work hard, keep trying, play as a team, never give up, be patient and it'll all work out well in the end...because they deserve it.

It's very hard to get the balance right - after all, to err is human, and to be human is to err... For me, I probably err in the way Jim Elliot did (which of course makes me look not-that-bad, claiming to get it wrong in the same way as a legendary missionary martyr...but there you go...). I really want to be faithful to the text, and I really want to communicate something useful in a useful way, whilst having to work hard to stay out of the way of what God is saying.

So, knowing that understanding Scripture and communicating it to people are complementary and not competing aims, why does it sometimes go wrong? Why do I sometimes find myself "digging for sermon thoughts" to the exclusion of "letting the Scripture speak to me"?

There are several reasons this can happen during a given sermon preparation time, including:

1.) Complacency about the text
"Yep, I know what that means. Right...how do I preach it?" This isn't usually a problem when I'm preaching the prophets or the Psalms for example, but can become an issue with some of the more famous texts, such as events of Jesus life in the gospels, or his parables. It can be tempting to think that I can cut short my satellite pictures and forensic examinations of the text and skip straight on to making it sound good for the listeners.

2.) Self-consciousness
A perpetual enemy of mine, this is a tendency to worry more about what people think of me than how faithful I'm being to my God-given task of preaching. In fact, second only to asking God to help me with the preparation itself, my biggest and most frequent prayer in the week before a sermon is that God would rid me of self-absorbed self-consciousness.

3.) Bewilderment about the text
This might either be because the text is home to a long-standing Christian debate (e.g. Revelation 20), or bland moralisms jump out of the text inviting you to end your study right now and just go with them. Or because you really don't know what the prophet/apostle/poet is trying to get across. So with less to say about the text that you don't really understand, you fill up the gaps in your sermon plan with your own thoughts.

Actually, it involves more preparation than that...

4.) Lack of time to prepare
Preaching Scripture is much more demanding of time than talking about Scripture. I've been in church all my life and I can talk about Scripture all you like and plenty more besides without having to put much time into it. Trying to faithfully communicate God's Word however requires a much greater investment of time in prayer, Bible reading, background reading and meditation.

5.) A hectic mind
My mind doesn't have an off button. That doesn't make me more thoughtful than the next person, or more intelligent. It's simply the case that I always seem to have a bunch of things ricocheting around up there, which makes it very difficult to clear enough room to have thoughts slowly make their way in.

6.) Ungodly ambition
A close relative of self-consciousness, this is the part of me that wants to be a good speaker. Not that there's any part of me that doesn't want to be a good speaker, or that being a bad speaker is a good thing for a preacher. But there's a difference between wanting to communicate well, and wanting people to think I'm a good communicator, and it makes all the difference in the world when I'm studying. For example, when I've thought of a great illustration, does that illustration help me to drive home the main point of the message? And if not, why am I thinking of including it, knowing that a great illustration of a sub-sub-point will almost always obscure the main point itself?

While I battle in prayer against these pitfalls I am greatly helped, and not just by folks from whom I receive direct feedback on my sermons. I also know that when I preach at my home church, I am talking to many, many people who have no interest whatsoever in Paul Reynolds' thoughts about the passage, but have a burning desire to hear God speak to them through His Word. And for that I thank God.

Children Desiring God Conference - Day 2 Review

The theme is the Splendor of Holiness and the approach is relentless. Which is a good thing.

My abiding impression...as in 'imprint' rather than 'vague idea', is the centrality of God's holiness to everything we should be doing as we train our children. Jason Meyer, pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church here in Minneapolis, rammed that home with passion and clarity in this evening's keynote. Meyer has the awesome task of following in the tiny-massive footsteps of John Piper, and there were

several times during his sermon when protege was more than a little reminiscent of mentor. The gestures, inflections, vocal style and searing intent were all very familiar to Piper-appreciators, but I digress...

"Real holiness is either a terror or a treasure, but it cannot be a trifle." (Meyer)

That was pretty much the sermon right there, as he circled around his theme with intent, holding Revelation 4 up to the light and turning it this way and that, challenging us about how gripped are WE about the holiness of God, never mind trying to teach it to children. Are we inoculating children AGAINST an appreciation for the holiness of God with our blase attitudes, or does our passion for the theme transmit itself to children with their "unique" ability to sniff out fakes?

The day was kicked off by Bruce Ware, who noted that "Most [people] go to love as God's central attribute, yet holiness may be more central", pointing out that love seems to be an outworking of holiness, and is not equally distributed to all (e.g. "I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated" - Mal 1:2-3).

"Tell children", he concluded, "they must be holy to be in the presence of God. Help them understand their desperate need of God".

One of my big takeaways from the conference was a renewed confidence and desire about getting the children into Scripture. It's too easy to take perfect Scripture, turn it into something imperfect, and then feed it to our children. There's plenty to think about regarding to how to present truths to children, but all in the context of knowing that there is no minimum age on truth.

The rest of the day was optional seminars:

'Encouraging your teams' with Aaron Davitch was as challenging as it was encouraging. He pointed

out that, "Most volunteers will veer towards discouragement" due to lack of visible fruit from the work, lack of recognition and a self-critical nature. That leads to discouragement, which leads to lack of joy, which leads to people stopping serving. This is typically coupled with "a gravitational pull to insufficient affirmation". We were encouraged to both encourage (looking forward) and affirm (looking at what's already been done).

Fellow-Englishman Ian Fry spoke about 'The Realities of Ministering to Youth & Children'. He urged us to take 2 Timothy 4:2 as our foundational text for ministry: "Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage –with great patience and careful instruction".

Parents of teens, he pointed out, desperately want their children to keep coming to church, so there is a tendency to pressure youth teams to be hip, trendy, more fun, and to tone down Bible teaching. Books have been written by the dozen claiming that youth work is ALL about relationships (not merely built on them, not merely saying that they're very important, but suggesting they're pretty much all there is to it). But God speaks through his Word. "And if they are saved with such a thin diet of Bible, what happens when they come into the church?"

We should be encouraging parents not to be thinking so much, "How can I make my child a Christian?", but "How can I be a godly parent?".

Connie Oman shared about 'Involving Parents in the Classroom' in the third seminar, which included the point that "We can't correct a child we haven't built a relationship with", pointing out that that relationship doesn't need to have been a long-standing one, but does need to have been intentional on the part of the teacher.

As with day 1: more inspiration about the holiness of God, more challenge to communicate it with greater passion and effectiveness, and more desire to be getting on with it.

Encouragement about '66 Books - One Story'

Being at the Children Desiring God conference, and hearing David & Sally Michael and John Piper talk to us about the challenge, responsibility and joy of teaching God's truths to children, has me more keen than ever to translate that into how I parent, and how I oversee Children's Ministries at First Baptist Church of Grand Cayman.

It also has me grateful and excited about the opportunity of '66 Books - One Story', and how God will use it to make his Word known, drawing people to love him and to love him more.

So yes, I was delighted when I came to the book stand and saw this:

And all the more encouragement when the nice big pile of books didn't stay as a nice big pile of books...

Sally Michael is a co-founder of Children Desiring God ministries and it's reassuring to know that someone who has lived, breathed and taught the goal of glorifying God in the lives of children for 30+ years, sees benefit in this book. 

Meanwhile I'm trying to work out how many books I can fit in my bags while still being able to lift them without injuring myself...

Children Desiring God Conference - Day 1 review

"You've got a skirt hanging on your brain - it's making you dumb."

Not the abiding memory of John Piper's keynote, but definitely a memorable phrase. He was referencing the metaphor about girding one's loins - hitching up the ancient near-eastern 'skirt' worn by men and women so that they could run, likening it to 1 Peter 1:13 - "Therefore, with minds that are alert

and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming". 

The message focused on the three commands of 1 Peter 1:13-17: 

1.) Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought you when Christ is revealed

2.) Be holy because God is holy

3.) Conduct yourself with fear

Noting that the chapter is "overwhelmingly about hope", he examined for us the conundrum of a certain hope that leads to a godly fear. Holiness, he points out, is not a willpower thing but a new birth leading to a new knowledge leading to new desires leading to new behaviours. 

And that fear should be driven by an acute awareness of what Christ has done for us, what our salvation cost him (i.e. everything), such that we tremble at the idea of bringing shame on the sacrifice our Saviour made. The point of that fear, though, is that it does not drive us away from God but TOWARDS him, into his arms, feeding our certain hope in him. 

The challenge issued to us as children's ministry workers is to communicate that to the children, Piper said, even if we need to "marinade in it...for about a year" to get our heads around it!

The afternoon leading up to that was a series of three talks by David & Sally Michaels - co-founders of Children Desiring God Ministries, introducing us to the foundational principles of their work. 

Some of the many points to be processed and acted on: 

1.) Every follower of Jesus Christ has a calling to fully declare what we've heard and known of God to the next generations (e.g. Joshua 4:21-24)

2.) Activity-oriented ministries emphasise what we are DOING; vision-orientation emphasises where we are GOING. The former falls victim to the need to do 'something' to keep and retain bodies in our churches, versus really making disciples, with a vision for raising children who will love and glorify God in their lives.

3.) The Bible is first and foremost about God...not us (e.g. Colossians 1:15-18)

4.) We are called to intentional, thoughtful and planned ministry (1 Cor 3:10-11)

5.) Use the Bible in Bible teaching.

Are we teaching the Bible...or just lessons? Are we raising children to look to the Bible for answers to life's questions? It's too quickly assumed that the Bible is beyond our children (Isaiah 55:11).

6.) Teach the whole counsel of God (2 Timothy 3:15-17)

Children need to understand that the truth of the Bible is not "what it means to them", but what God means it to mean.

7.) The importance of Scripture memorisation - what is learned in childhood is often remembered for a lifetime. 

8.) Children need to know the hard truths (presented in an age-approapriate way) about sin so that they can delight in redemption. 

"Give our children big truths to grow into rather than light explanations they will grow out of" (Ted Tripp). 

9.) Activity is not the same as active learning. We should encourage interaction with the Bible. 

Knowledge alone creates Pharisees. Lead children to the point where they can see what Scripture requires of them. 

Ask questions leading to Biblical conclusions, giving rise to practical applications...

10.) Teaching the heart involves preparing your own heart - the first way to encourage their response to the word is to live that response yourself. 

Volley after volley of helpful material from the Michaels - nothing to rival Piper's admonition of headskirts making us dumb, but no less valuable...

The Community Mandate 2: Encouraging

"I'm sending you love."

As an alternative to, "I'm repossessing the love", or wilfully ignoring people, it's clearly a good thing, but I don't know that it goes much further. Which isn't a criticism of anyone who's written that phrase in a Facebook comments field - after all, my ability to meaningfully encourage my 578 Facebook "friends" is extremely limited given I have very little idea about what's really going on in the lives of the many of them.

So if "I'm sending you love" falls short (at least on its own), what does it really mean to "encourage one another daily" (Hebrews 3:13)?

First, the limitations of a Facebook comment illustrates the same point I tried to make in the post on Accountability, which is that the only way to be faithful to God in "doing community" is to have meaningful relationships with people so that our encouragements are specifically tailored to them. That, in fact, is how God does much of his work among us, by using us jars of clay in our relationships with people to take God to people and people to God in ways that are pertinent to people's situations.

If you saw someone walking up and down with a sandwich board having the words, "Be encouraged in God" written on it, how encouraged would you be? You might think "OK, I will", or "OK, I guess I should", and make a brief effort of will to feel differently to how you feel. And then it would pass. If 100 people marched up and down in front of you with that same board, the pressure to make yourself feel better would go up a notch, and would be equally transient.

encourage = "give support, confidence, or hope to (someone) / persuade (someone) to do or continue to do something by giving support and advice" [Oxford English Dictionary]

As you would expect, there are many examples of and instructions for this in the Bible, which give us some principles about what Christian encouragement can look like:

1.) Point people to God

For example, in 1 Samuel 23:16-17 we are told that, "Jonathan went to David at Horesh and helped him to find strength in God. ‘Don’t’ be afraid,’ he said. ‘My father Saul will not lay a hand on you. You will be king over Israel, and I will be second to you. Even my father Saul knows this’”.

Two things struck me about those verses: a.) Jonathan clearly and self-consciously relegates his natural position in light of the words of God, and b.) unambiguously points to God as the source of the strength needed by his friend David. Saul was trying to kill David and the time and David may not have been feeling God's promises to him. When someone feels the absence of God in their life, it may be tempting to encourage them to look to us ("I'll be there for you"), or to find untapped reserves of strength in themselves ("You can do this"), rather than do what Jonathan does, and point them right back to God. 

2.) Use the Bible

Jonathan was effectively doing just that, when he used the words of God to sustain his friend. It's also the apostle Paul's explicit desire when he tells the Thessalonians to "encourage one another with these [Scriptural] words" (1 Thess 4:18). 

When Paul is telling Titus what kind of man should be an Elder in the church, he gave the following requirement: "He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it" (Titus 1:9). Again, it is the truths of Scripture themselves that are to be the encouragement to God's people.

3.) Connect with the local church

"Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another –and all the more as you see the Day approaching" (Hebrews 10:25).

 

Showing up might not be half the battle, but it's at least an essential recon mission in the communal fight against falling away from God - a fight in which we are side by side in the infantry, not lone snipers...

4.) Shepherding people away from (the smell of) sin

"See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sins deceitfulness." (Hebrews 3:12-13)

Here is a key area where the difference between personal engagement and the 'sandwich-board' approach of blanket, distant communication is most important. I can say to someone, "Don't sin", "Trust God", "Persevere" etc. But if that person doesn't think I understand them, or if I haven't taken the time to really understand where they're at, those words just come across as pompous and self-righteous, like I regard myself as already doing those things and they just need to shape up and be more like me.

When I encourage someone to persevere in resisting a temptation for...let's say...drunkenness, it carries a lot more weight when they know that I know how keenly they feel the temptation. It may help them also when they know that although I rarely drink, I have struggled with an addiction to food most of my life that has manifested itself regularly in the sin of greed. What does NOT qualify as an encouragement, is a bland restatement of what they already know (if they already know it!), that drunkenness is a sin.

 5.) Shepherding people into godliness

"encourage the young men to be self- controlled" (Titus 2:6)

Sure, there are times when people need to be merely instructed to keep their self-control, and there are times when they should be warned against losing their self-control - particularly when they look like they're about to lose it, but Paul isn't talking about that. Paul is talking about positively shepherding people towards a self-controlled way of life.

I can do that in part by reminding people how such behaviour glorifies and pleases God, by helping to see how sharing the gospel with non-believers is powerfully reinforced by a life that is consistent with their words. I can give them examples of other people (like the apostle Paul's protege Timothy) who showed self-control, and by praising God for how they themselves may have shown self-control.

Sure, we can "send" people love, but it's far better to find out what kind they need and take it to them. And for most of us, for most of our friends, most of the time, that's just what we should be doing to fulfil the community mandate of encouragement.

The Community Mandate 1: Accountability

Do it.

Do. It. 

Because God says so.

Christian Community, that is.

I tried to write this post a couple of days ago but got myself sidetracked by notions of obligation and the word "mandate" and wrote this instead. As Christians we all want to please our Heavenly Father, right? Well, "doing" community is one thing that He tells us to  do with our lives.

“…so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” (Romans 12:5, NIV)

I've put that verse in here just to reinforce the overall Biblical mandate for Christian community, but as I do so I'm struck by the force of the word "belongs". "Members one of another", as the more literal ESV puts it, is even stronger. The point is the intrinsic indivisibility of the body of Christ, which makes division in practice, or lack of togetherness, no less tragic than the ripping apart of limbs. When we have a better grasp of the depth of meaning to just this one verse, most everything else Jesus and Paul say on the subject will fall easily and naturally into place. 

There's no definitive guide for exactly what "community" will look like in practice, but there is plenty in Scripture that tells us it must happen. I'm going to take a brief look (based on the sermon I preached last month), at eight aspects of that required community living that we see in the Bible. 

We'll kick off with accountability. 

This may be the least popular element of Christian community - it reeks of Big Brotherism, of judgemental attitudes, of prying, of being a busybody, bossing people about, snooping, tattle-tales and whole bunch else that we should avoid. In avoiding the notion of being accountable to other believers, many will say something, "I'm only accountable to God". When such attitudes are held with Bible texts in mind, the resort will sometimes be to 1 Corinthians 2:15 where Paul says, "The spiritual man makes judgements about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgement: 'For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?' But we have the mind of Christ.". It's even used as a double-edged sword to say on the one hand, YOU can't tell me what I can and can't do, and on the other hand, that no-one can even speculate on what GOD thinks is OK for me to do or not do. 

This of course flies in the face of everything else Scripture says which leads us to one of the basic rules of how to interpret Scripture: take note of context, especially when one piece of Scripture seems at face value to be contradicting another part. Usually we don't need to read more than a few verses or a couple of chapters either side of the cherry-picked verse in order to make sense of it, and this is no exception. In 1 Corinthians 2 Paul is encouraging the believers that they do not need to worry about what non-Christians say about God, or about worldly wisdom that ignores God. After all, those who do not know God themselves cannot hope to understand what God says. It is God's standards we are being held to, not man's. 

In 1 Corinthians 5 (just two chapters later!) Paul expressly commands that unrepentantly immoral Church members must be put out of the church. Clearly a judgement has been made there that one of God's objective, unchanging commands has been broken, and a further judgement has been made that the Church member doing so refuses to repent of that sin, and must be removed for their sake and for the sake of the Church itself. 

Ultimately therefore it's clear that as members of one body we are all accountable to each other, and that we are all expected to be able to discern from the Bible what is sin and what is not sin. 

But the mandate for mutual accountability goes beyond merely calling each other out on gross immorality: “confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (James 5:16). James doesn't say, "Some of you like to share, and wear your heart on your sleeve - feel free to confess to each other if you're like that". Rather, the command is for all of us, regardless of whether or not that comes easily or naturally to us. It's not to say, of course, that we must all write down a list of everything we do wrong and tell every fellow-member about it. If that were the case then we'd spend most of our lives doing it. But rather, confession and prayer for those who confess to us, should be a regular and established part of doing life together.

Practically speaking, how do we do that? We could of course approach any brother or sister in Christ, confess something to them and ask for prayer - nothing wrong with that. We could do it during worship services on Sundays, although that perhaps makes our corporate gathering less of a corporate gathering.  It's also not very conducive to openness, honesty, and mutual vulnerability.

So here are a three suggestions:

1.) Join a small group 

In our Growth Groups (small groups for church members) here at First Baptist in Grand Cayman, we aim to commit to each other in a way that makes trust, vulnerability and accountability, if not easy then certainly easiER! Getting to know a small number of people very well, investing in each others lives in the good times and in the bad, makes it natural that when one person is struggling through hardship or sin, that the others gather round in love to challenge and encourage. 

"Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses." (Proverbs 27:6)

2.) Make real friends

Are our friends really friends, or simply people whose company we find amusing and inoffensive? Do we make friends with people largely because they entertain us, or are we also looking for people in whose company we find ourselves pointed to Christ? Friends are a big influence on each of us, so it makes sense that we should be more intentional about making them, whereas most of us tend to talk about friendships as if they are things that happen to us. 

"Do not envy wicked men, do not desire their company" (Proverbs 24:1)
"He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm." (Proverbs 13:20)

3.) Make friends real

Some of the people we already know are probably quite capable and willing to be good accountability partners for us, it's just that our relationship up to this point has existed purely at the level of the superficial - whether that's superficial emotions, hobbies, the weather...whatever. This happens easily and naturally - maybe we've bonded over a shared hobby, or from being at the same life stage (e.g. just had kids/'kids' gone to college), working at the same place, so that conversation tends to revolve largely around that thing we first had in common. As Christians we're called on to go a lot further than that, because the most fundamental connection between any two Christians is always the fact that they are both children of God. 

Do we seek out those more mature than us in the faith to help us?

Are we actively looking for people with whom we can be team-mates in the faith? (as we heard tell in last week's 'Authentic Manhood' class at FBC)
And are we searching for and offering help to those who look as if they could use some Christian friendship?

The funny thing is, most of us gravitate to superficial friendships because they seem the most immediately satisfying and least like hard work. And of course there's nothing wrong with having a whole bunch of superficial acquaintances - we're not called to be the blood brother of everyone we meet.

But it's also true that some of the loneliest people in the world have the most acquaintances, and true friendship - which will always have accountability at its core - is not only a Biblical mandate, but also a more rewarding, challenging, peace-filled way of living your life with God.

When God Says 'No'

Most Christians I know - myself included - are not afraid that there are divine laws that they have missed, or failed to notice.

Rather, our more prevailing concern tends to be avoiding legalism: that idea that we are imposing regulations on ourselves or others that either exist not at all in Scripture, or exist in merely the form of advice, or strong recommendations.

Thus it was once expressed by someone in authority over me that for a Christian to marry a non-Christian was not sinful - merely not recommended, despite such passages as 1 Corinthians 7:39 and 2 Corinthians 7:14. That directive - Christians to marry only other Christians - is often interpreted in largely utopian terms, i.e. God is telling us what he'd ideally like, and what would be perfect, but if we find someone we are drawn to who is not a Christian, and we can't find a more suitable Christian partner at that time, we should feel free to go ahead and marry that person.

"Hey God, is it OK if I marry this person?"
"Well, y'know, they're not a great choice, but...well, whatever makes you happy..."

This is of course makes God very much a creature of the 21st century - a very 'in-the-moment', 'follow-your-heart' kinda guy who prizes enjoyment and personal fulfilment above all else, and who has no real plans for the future.

Really?

The quasi-theological blanket for that thinking is, "God wants me to be happy", where happiness is defined as what I would like (right now). God wants me to be happy...I know best what that is...this thing is what would make me happy...and therefore this thing is OK with God. I've heard it countless times from others, and it's what my sinful heart often tells me. We are pretty good at keeping in touch with our own wants, and our godliness may sometimes extend only so far as trying to massage what we want sufficiently so that it looks to us like something God wants - or even prioritises - for us.

One thing that tends to get missed is that with most of God's commands, it is overwhelmingly obvious that his laws are designed for our own benefit. And for those laws that always or occasionally seem not to be what we want, it surely shouldn't be too hard to take a look at the one who made those laws and trust that he knows best. After all, God is the one who made the universe, the one who sent his Son to die for me to save me from my sin, and from whom I have received everything that is good...perhaps I can take his word for it on this one.

Is it really so hard to understand, for example, that God's command to avoid drunkenness is not an example of the divine killjoy but a restraint that will save us from many things we may regret, and an openness to all kinds of other temptations?

Bottom line is that God does say no. He does have commands and laws. They are an objective reality and therefore not subject to the feelings, wants, desires or opinions of any individual or society. Nothing that anyone can say will change the reality of God and what he has said.

Not everything that he commanded was merely for the Israelites pre-Jesus death. Not everything he instructed through Paul the Apostle was just for the early church. We do ourselves and others the worst kind of harm when we treat God as nothing more than an adviser whose main weakness is to not know us as well as we know ourselves.

Christ's death was not in order to free us from moral inhibition, or to give us room to idolise ourselves. Rather, it freed us from the consequences of all the self-idolatry we were born with. As Paul the Apostle put it with such incredulity and horror, "We died to sin [on the cross]; how can we live in it any longer?" (Romans 6:2).

Having been freed from the desire to put other things before God, we are given the tremendous gift of a desire to love and serve God and glorify him in our lives, which in turn serves as evidence that the change in us is real:

"We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands." (1 John 2:3)

May we be able to say with the psalmist, "Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long...I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path." (Psalm 119:97, 104)