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In our last two classic Briefing snippets, we’ve looked at how Christianity is essential a word-centred faith, and also at how that focus relates to the Spirit. In this third and final snippet (from the third and final article in the series), we turn to this question: When we talk about the centrality and importance of the ‘Word of God’ are we simply talking about the Bible, or something different or more than that?

Here’s John Woodhouse’s conclusion:

The word of God once received, and written down, continues to be the living word of the living God—thanks to the work of the Holy Spirit. This is a thoroughly familiar idea in the Bible itself.

The Bible exists precisely because there were those who heeded the apostolic injunction to guard what had been entrusted to them by the Holy Spirit. As we have seen, in the Bible the phrase ‘the Word of God’ does not always mean ‘the Bible’. But the Bible is the Word of God. And it is complete.

To suggest that there is more to the Word of God than the Bible is to suggest that there is more to the Word of God than that which was entrusted to the apostles (an idea contrary to the New Testament) or that they failed to pass on adequately their trust (which is contrary to the evidence).

The question “Is there more to the word of God than the Bible?” can now be seen in a proper light: Is there more to Christ than the apostolic gospel which has been delivered to us in the Bible?

Do we really have all of Christianity where there is only the word of the Bible and the faith in God that it brings about? You might as well ask: Do we really have all of Christianity when we have all of Christ?

(From Briefing #12, Oct 1988.)

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Apologies for all the server troubles. We are now back online and have fixed the problem with the redirect to Ben's blog.

Normal Sola Panel goodness will resume shortly!

Edit: I spoke too soon! We're still having trouble with our individual post pages. Please be patient while we try and sort it out.

Edit: Thanks to my very clever husband (seriously, if you need a web developer, you really should contact him; he taught me everything I know about web geekery!), all is well again. As I said above, normal Sola Panel goodness will resume shortly.

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Here is a quote from what I was reading on the bus yesterday.

I’m going to get straight to the point: YOU NEED MORE MONEY!

You may think this provocative, presumptuous, or prophetic coming from a pastor but the fact is that it is true. Whoever you are, you need more money.

I know that money is a highly sensitive subject ... for anyone, but in this book I am going to tell you WHY you need more money and secondly HOW you can get more money (even if you won’t admit it, I bet you are interested in the latter). I don’t believe that we should be uncomfortable talking about something that plays such an enormous role in our day-to-day lives.

People love to quote the Bible when it comes to money, wealth and riches (and will sometimes do so out of context), but there is a fascinating verse in the book of Ecclesiastes that says it all:

A feast is made for laughter, and wine makes merry; but money answers everything(Ecclesiastes 10:19).

If that’s a shock to see a statement like that in the Bible—check it out for yourself. That is exactly what it says: MONEY ANSWERS EVERYTHING!

Now I believe the Bible has all the answers to life. It contains the wisdom of the ages, eternal principles and practical counsel for any situation. In fact, the more you read the Bible, the more truths you keeep discovering. It is a book that I have been reading continually over four decades now ... and there is always something fresh and relevant to find every day.

MONEY ANSWERS EVERYTHING

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the person who wrote these words is a false teacher. He remains influential in churches in Sydney; the book from which the quote was taken is out of print but has never been retracted or apologized for.

The sin he represents—greed—is popular but still not respectable. That may be why our younger and brighter theologians devote almost no attention to his teaching—that and the fact that he uses capital letters and appears to contradict himself not only from chapter to chapter, but page to page.

But give the man an extra 60 points of IQ, provide him with a doctorate, make him Archbishop of Canterbury and replace the somewhat embarrassing sin of greed with the infinitely more respectable sin of homosexuality, and it becomes a matter of serious academic and personal malpractice to label such a man a false teacher and a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

In the last month or so, Rowan Williams has again been exposed as a false teacher in the matter of what the Bible teaches about homosexual practice. His defenders have, predictably, labelled this as old news. But should he be treated with any more respect than the one who claims that the Bible’s teaching on wealth can be summarized with the capital letters “YOU NEED MORE MONEY”? Or does our deference to Rowan William’s undoubted genius and institutional authority mean that we won’t clearly label him for what he is?

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Apologies for posing what, at first glance, may seem an obvious and even silly question, but it's one I've pondering lately: is evangelism a key purpose of Christian assemblies (or ‘churches’)?

Now, at the very least, we would have to say, “Yes, evangelism should and will happen in Christian assemblies, because of their very nature as places where the word of God is prayerfully proclaimed”. In any true Christian gathering, the gospel will be taught and heard, and since outsiders or non-Christians will often be present (by invitation or otherwise), evangelism, by definition, will take place.

There's another sense in which the answer is yes: the Christian assembly functions as a testimony to Christ by its very existence. This is Paul's point in Ephesians 3. In the assembly, God's manifold wisdom is on display as he brings together Jew and Gentile in one new humanity. Mind you, in Ephesians 3, it's the powers in the heavenly places who receive this testimony, so maybe it doesn't really qualify as ‘evangelism’ in the normal sense.

However, even if we acknowledge that there will be ‘gospel’ things happening all over the place in church, it is also important to say that evangelism is not the purpose of Christian assemblies. It is certainly not their focus. In the New Testament, churches are characteristically the fruit of evangelism, not its agent. Evangelism usually takes place outside the assembly—in the marketplace, the synagogue, the prison, and in daily gospel conversation.

More to the point, theologically, the Christian assembly is a fellowship of the redeemed. It is a manifestation, as well as an anticipation or foretaste, of the great assembly that Christ is building—the assembly of the firstborn in heaven that will be revealed on the last Day (Heb 12:22-24). The purpose of our earthly assemblies, therefore, is to fellowship together in what we already share—our union with Christ—as we listen to and respond to him together, and build his assembly by the words we speak.

This runs counter to the common (although often unspoken) assumption that one of the main aims of a church gathering is to be attractive to non-Christians—to draw them in, to intrigue them, and to evangelize them. Perhaps it's a legacy of the parish model, where those attending the Sunday assembly were often not Christians at all, and evangelism consisted of preaching the gospel to them. Or perhaps it is the influence of the seeker-service model, where the main aim is to attract and win over unchurched Harry. Or maybe it's a bit of both.

There is an important difference, it seems to me, between running a Christian gathering whose focus is on evangelizing the outsider, and running a Christian gathering that is welcoming and intelligible for the outsider, but where the focus is on fellowship with Christ, in speaking, hearing and responding to his word.

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“The numbers all go to 11. Look, right across the board, 11, 11, 11 and ...” Nigel Tufnel, the lead guitarist for the fictional rock band Spinal Tap, is explaining to the reporter that unlike other rock bands who only have amps that go to 10, theirs go all the way to 11. When the reporter stops and asks, “Why don't you just make 10 louder and make 10 be the top number and make that a little louder?” there is a long pause followed by “These go to 11”.

If you've never seen the movie, you really haven't missed much (with appropriate apologies to the devotees). But that quote has become for me, over time, a kind of metaphor for life. Quite apart from the fact that it describes what happens in the back seat of our car on any long family trip (I am sure that all children go to 11), it seems to capture my experience of everyday existence in 21st-century Australia.

When you've only got 10 seconds or half a paragraph to make your point, you've got to SHOUT. Everywhere I go, people seem to be shouting. They shout by being a bit more risqué than everyone else. They shout by making more outrageous claims than everyone else. They shout by dismissing out of hand the arguments of everyone else. In a world where publicity is everything, if you don't shout louder, you don't get heard.

It's all caused me to stop and reflect on whether we do any Christian shouting. I think that it is a particular temptation for preachers. For those who have to get up week by week and say something that makes it through the sleep-deprived stupor that is Sunday morning, you have to shout to be heard. You have to be outrageous. You need to make stark claims. You need to present the black and white, while leaving people no room to move.

It has been exacerbated, I think, by the trend towards globalization. When I get up to preach, I am not the most interesting preacher they have heard this week. Many people sitting there listening have heard Mark Driscoll, John Piper, Don Carson, Phillip Jensen and Willie Taylor this week already. So the pressure is on. I need to be engaging. I need to be socially aware. I need to be hard-hitting. I need to grab people and shake people and make them listen (or is this temptation only mine?).

So how does the challenge to go all the way to 11 affect me? Well I see it in a number of ways. Firstly, it comes as the temptation to present every idea as the most important idea in the Bible. Whether I am preaching on the sweet, sweet love of God displayed in the death of his one and only Son on the cross, or whether I am discussing the merits of a premillennial versus amillennial view of Revelation 20, I want to present it as the most important thing in the world.

Secondly, I experience the desire to present every idea that I have as the right one, and others as wrong. I am not saying here that there is no right and wrong that must be clearly defended. There is right and wrong, and I give great thanks for men and women around the world who cling to and proclaim uncomfortable truth. However, I know that the principle of going all the way to 11 means that if I acknowledge that I am not completely certain, or that there are merits to someone else's argument, then I have lost the day. And so I too readily dismiss other ideas.

Thirdly, and most insidiously I think, I end up wanting to do the work of the Holy Spirit. I want to take the principles and write the applications on the hearts of hearers. Instead of teaching the truth and trusting that God will challenge people in the details of their lives, I want to control how people respond. And so I make my applications the only applications. I want to tell people exactly what they must do with the truth. (Now, here, like almost everywhere else, there is the opposite problem of never acknowledging that the Scriptures have concrete things to say about the nitty-gritty of life, but I'll leave that for another day.) I see this particularly as I present my programmes, my training courses, my goals as the biblically sanctioned appropriate life for all the believers hearing my preaching!

I am sure this isn't just me. So I'd love to hear from you. Where are some other places that we experience the temptation to go all the way to 11?

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