the nature of sin

Taught by Mike Reeves at UCCF South Summer School, June 2009.

What is the fundamental nature of sin?  Unbelief, pride, and incurvature.

1.  Sin = Unbelief

Popularly, the definition for sin touted today is: idolatry.  This was the answer given by Ulrich Zwingly, the Zurich reformer.  He saw his ministry as an anti-idolatry ministry; that was his problem with Roman Catholicism.  So his ministry in Zurich was: get rid of the idols.  Churches were stripped of anything – particularly images – that were considered idolatrous.  Though he played 7 instruments, he stripped organs out of churches for fear of the power of music capturing people’s hearts in an idolatrous fashion.  But the problem was that he didn’t give the gospel instead – he said instead of serving idols, serve God instead.  This doesn’t get us much further – it only leads to works.

Luther was able to go deeper.  Problem of sin for him: not treating the wrong thing as God, but treating the real God the wrong way.  Idolatry is the consequence of the real problem of sin: unbelief.  Yes, unbelief leads to idolatry – by committing unbelief you set yourself up as an idol in your own heart; but doubting God’s word was the heart of the problem.

“Whatever is not of faith is sin”

So sin is at heart unbelief, and thus essentially is a relational problem.

moses, mildew and me: how do I understand the old testament law?

Taught by Susie Leafe at UCCF South West Team Days, May 2009.

A very helpful book on this subject: ‘OT Ethics for the people of God’ by Christopher Wright.

Most of us have a bible that is dirty and well leafed in the New Testament; the Psalms are quite dirty, and maybe the beginning of Genesis.  But not the bits we try to avoid, like Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.  Yet that’s where our mates often go first in grilling a Christian!
How are we meant to understand the Old Testament law?  How does it relate to the New Testament and the overall biblical gospel of grace?
Problems start when we zoom in on the little verses and forgo the bigger picture.  See Leviticus 19:19ff – how do you deal with that?
One approach is to consider the different types of law.  The classic division of the law is between the Ceremonial (relating to sacrifices and the temple), the Civil (relating to the Israelite state), and the Moral (the only bit left).  The problem with this division is that nowhere in the Bible suggests this approach!  Yet when we look at the law, we see there are different types – but we need to let the bible explain what those types are, rather than imposing them on the bible.
Two different ways of looking at the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament:
(1) They are the old and new covenants, and a completely different world.  This is called dispensationalism.  The blank page in the middle of the Bible, separating Old Testament from New, is very important.
(2) Rip the middle page out – the bible is the same all the way.  This is called theonism, when taken to an extreme.  There is no change.  An extreme theonist might say that all the sexually immoral should be killed, because it says so in the Old Testament; it’s all one book and although we’re saved by grace, we should still consider the Old Testament law for our lives.  Some cults would embrace and exemplify a type of this.

The reality may be that we probably have bits of both in our understanding.  Many people are happily both, for example on their stance on the Sabbath.

How should we approach it?  Christopher Wright argues that as Christians, we tend to approach the Law totally differently to the rest of the bible; but we need to remember, it was given to a people, and that Jews in referring to the Law mean the first 5 books – it is not separate to the exodus etc.  So:

exodus 5-6

Taught by Philip de Grey Warter at UCCF South West Team Days, May 2009

Life can at times seem like a series of inescapable disasters.
Up to this point, it’s been preparation, and now we get to the action.  “Let my people go!”, says Moses.  Pharaoh’s response: “who is the Lord?”  Fair enough – if I walk up to you and say, ‘You must give Kenny ten quid’ – who’s Kenny that you should give him ten quid?!
This question of Pharaoh is a question that continues over the next ten chapters, in a tussle between the Lord and Pharaoh – “Let my people go”/”No I won’t”.   But it starts off badly for the people.  They are told to forget about it and get back to work, so that they’ll have no time to listen to Moses (5v9).  So, v10, the new orders are given, and much pressure (v13-14).  So in this chapter the slavery intensifies – it gets even worse.  They’re beaten for not meeting their impossible quotas, and are accused of being lazy.  Verse 19 is an understatement – they were in trouble.  At the end of chapter 4 the people were delighted to see Aaron & Moses but now they call on God to judge them.  So Aaron & Moses go back to God in v22; “Thanks a lot God – all we’ve got is more trouble and no sign of rescue.”
What are we to make of this chapter?  Why does God do things in this way?  3 things to learn here:

exodus 4

Taught by Philip de Grey Warter at UCCF South West Team Days, May 2009

The film ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ asks the question: what might happen if global warming continues?  It pictures worldwide catastrophe, flooding and the beginning of the next ice age.  The human relationship in the story is a father-son one, with the (not so) immortal line:

“Whatever happens stay put, because your father is coming to rescue you.”

Same here.  Yet Moses, known throughout his Scripture for his faith, is anything but a man of faith here.  At a recent conference, Mark Ashton looking back on his ministry felt he had been “inadequate in his task” – remarkable considering his ability!  Yet in a sense, that is the normal Christian life.

Picture a graph – with time along the bottom axis, and along the side, some measure of godliness or the Christian life.  On the graph are two lines.  One is your head knowledge of the Christian life, what you know it ought to be like.  This one is a steady trajectory.
The other = living it out.  It ought to have an upward trajectory, though a bit wobbly!
But there’s a gap. The gap between your knowledge line and your living line, and it grows as they go up.  The gap is an increasing sense of guilt, and inadequacy – what the Accuser uses to sling at us.  That feeling of inadequacy is the normal Christian life.  It is expressed in Romans 7:

“For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.”

If this is the normal Christian life, Exodus 4 is a great encouragement – God is using a tentative, uncertain man with flaws, doubts and weakness – an ordinary guy used to do extraordinary things.  The chapter is a picture of Moses’ faithlessness: his reluctance, then his disobedience.

exodus 3

Taught by Philip de Grey Warter at UCCF South West Team Days, May 2009

Joanna Lumley grew up near the equator so had never seen the Northern Lights, but saw it in a picture book as a child.  A TV programme followed her through Norway to Svalbard to try and see the Northern Lights.  One of the true natural wonders of the world , when solar wind hits the magnetic field – it’s something of that awe we need to imagine when we consider the burning bush.  It caught Moses’ eye – intriguing and captivating.
Some intriguing puzzles in 3v12.  “This” may be referring to burning bush rather than the worship – if so, God’s telling Moses not to worry, but rather, this bush is a sign of God’s great power, a guarantee therefore that what he says will happen will happen.  But it’s not the spectacle that’s the captivating point – not the attention grabbing spectacle, but the attention grabbing words.  See v6, v15, 16.  God introduces himself as a God of his people.  Here is a God who has made and who keeps promises.  It’s because of that promise that God is now acting to rescue his people.  So where politicians make promises and break them, God makes promises and keeps them.

exodus 1-2

Taught by Philip de Grey Warter at UCCF South West Team Days, May 2009

The Italian Job conundrum has been solved!  It ends with a cliffhanger.  The Royal Society of Chemistry ran a competition – what’s the most plausible idea to the cliffhanger ending? – and somebody came up with an answer.  But arguably the cliffhanger ending was better – not just for the theatre but for its reality – the big plan was left hanging in the balance.  All human ideas inevitably do.
The only perfect plan in history was given in Genesis.  In Genesis 12 we read of God’s enormous promises to Abraham that drive the rest of Scripture: promises of people, place, and blessing.  Yet when we begin Exodus, it’s a bit like the end of The Italian Job.  The plan has worked so far, but then we drive round the corner and Pharaoh is standing in middle of road; the plan swerves and is left hanging in balance – or is it?
In these opening two chapters of Exodus we learn something about God’s fulfillment of his promises through this period in Israel’s history.

reflections on world mission, pt (ii)

Taught by Lindsay Brown at UCCF South Team Days, March 2009.

11 areas worthy of consideration as we think of global mission:

1. The growth of the church.
There is no parallel with the last 20 years, apart from the early church.  In 1989 there were 100 IFES movements, with 270,000 students; now there are over 150 movements, with half a million students involved.  Key factors:

• The break up of communism and opening up of countries.  The number of baptist churches in Russia has quadrupled.  Nepal 1954 The first church in Nepal started in 1954; by 1989 the number of churches had risen to 1000 with 800,000 believers!  Key factors in this have been imprisoning of pastors, rise of charismatic movement.  It’s God’s time for Nepal!  It’s the same in Algeria and Mauritania; in Tunisia there were 25 believers in 2000, and around 4-500 today.  An official government statement 3 months ago put the number of believers in China at 120 million; there are probably 80 million evangelicals in that country alone.
• Increasing number of non-western missionaries.
• Pockets of sensational growth which were previously very closed; but at the same time increasing restrictions.
• Emergence of hostile new atheism.  9/11 was a wake up call; religion wasn’t just wrong, it was evil.

reflections on world mission, pt (i)

Taught by Lindsay Brown at UCCF South Team Days, March 09.

Why Bother With Mission?
Some say, “it’s not for me”.  Michael Griffiths in his book ‘Cinderella With Amnesia’ says that engagement with global mission is the Cinderella of the Christian culture – it’s been forgotten about.  Why should I be bothered?

Firstly let’s give a definition of mission:

Mission = the proclamation and demonstration of the truth, wonder, and power of the gospel by word and deed.

So mission involves:

• proclamation and demonstration.

Like the two wings of a bird, like the two legs of scissors, are justice and justification.

- John Stott

• the truth of the gospel, ie the defensibility of it.  There is exhaustive/sufficient knowledge for salvation

• the wonder of the gospel: what keeps people going for 30 years is not just that the gospel is true, but that it is wonderful.  It is a subjective experience as well as cerebral.

Secondly, let’s tackle 3 common reasons, among students, not to engage with cross cultural mission.

word and image pt (ii)

Part 2 of 2.  Taught by Ann Brown, at UCCF South Team Days March 09.

In the Acts 17 account of Mars Hill, Paul gives us a brilliant example of how to engage with the surrounding culture:
- He was greatly distressed by it
- He studied their culture and uses a cultural cue v23 (possibly a classical sculpture) to begin his address
- He reinforces his argument by quoting from the Stoic philosopher Aratus, v28
- He demonstrates the inadequacy of the Athenians’ polytheistic worldview – focuses on the point of tension and highlights their inconsistency.

This is what Francis Schaeffer called “taking the roof off someone’s argument”.  Every non-Christian protects themselves from the reality of life and the gospel by building a roof over themselves.  It is helpful to very gently prise the roof off, by finding the inconsistencies.  Visual art & apologetics are a brilliant bridge builder in this.

4 different ways to use visual art as such a bridge builder:

word and image pt (i)

Part 1 of 2.  Taught by Ann Brown, at UCCF South Team Days March 09.

We are people of the Word, saved by an historical Saviour and called to verbally communicate the gospel; yet we live in an image-driven culture.  And there is a long-standing suspicion of the image in our protestant church.  What are the roots of this nervousness?  How should we engage ourselves with this culture?

1. What are the roots of this nervousness?

Post-Reformation, many churches were stripped bare of any imagery, and made completely bare.  As Protestants, we are heirs to this tradition, so we do well to examine it.  During the Reformation, waves of iconoclasm (burning of images) swept across Europe.  One of the first outbreaks was in Wittenberg, shortly after Luther nailed his theses to the door in 1517.  He, however, didn’t incite the violence; in fact, he tried to stop it.  But many people emptied the churches of the visuals of the old order, perceived as the idolatry of Roman Catholicism.

Images weren’t always despised in Christendom.  Augustine of Hippo and Pope Gregory in the 7th Century gave a role to images.

Images are useful for “the illiterate, who read in them what they cannot read in books”

- Gregory 600AD.

Compare this with our culture – people can read, but don’t like it!  They prefer the visual.