Family Worship
Andy Beard
Luke 5:1-11 Family Worship Ideas

getting ready for Sunday

Here’s an excerpt from a great prayer that can be found in the Valley of Vision (The Great God), that might be useful this week as we prepare ourselves for Sunday’s service. We’ll be looking at how the Spirit brings the presence of God to us, and brings us to God’s presence.

O Fountain of all good,

destroy in me every lofty thought;

break pride to pieces and scatter it to the wind.

Annihilate every clinging shred of self-righteousness …

open in me a fount of penitential tears.

Break me, then bind me up.

Thus will my heart be a prepared dwelling for my God;

then can the Father take up His abode in me;

then can the Blessed Jesus come with healing in His touch,

then can the Holy Spirit descend in sanctifying grace;

O Holy Trinity, three Persons, one God,

inhabit me, a temple consecrated to your glory.

Then Thou art present, evil cannot abide;

in Thy fellowship is fullness of joy;

beneath Thy smile is peace of conscience;

by Thy side no fears disturb…

Make me meet, through repentance, for Thine Divine indwelling.

What a great prayer! As an aside, I’d have never come up with a prayer like that! It’s one of the advantages of using a book of prayers as part of our habits of spiritual discipline. We end up praying for things, and in ways, that we’d never initiate left to our own devices.

One last thought on praying together...

This one comes from Basil, Bishop of Caesarea in the middle of fourth century. Even I had my breath taken away by his emphasis on our need to pray together. In the rather unimaginatively named ‘Epistle 97’, he writes (based on I Cor.12:14) about the unity and inter-dependence of the Church. In that context he drops this bombshell:

‘To sum up, in everything accomplished through natural action and by the human will, I see nothing done except by the joint working of powers in alliance. Even prayer itself, when it isn’t the prayer of believers united together, loses its proper effect; the Lord tells us that when two or three call upon Him in joint prayer that He will be in the midst … For these reasons, my prayer is that for however many days are left for me here below, I may spend them in harmonious fellowship with others…’

Amen ?

Basil of Caesarea.jpg

Is the Holy Spirit around in the Old Testament?

This is such an important question as we start to work through the question of what the Bible teaches about the life and ministry of the Holy Spirit. I might as well declare my hand right at the outset, not that you’ll be surprised! I’ve been around long enough for you to know that I think the Old Testament (OT) is an intrinsically Trinitarian book – and that those who worshiped God on the OT related to God consciously and knowingly as Trinity.  In other words: Of course the HS is present in the OT… and known. God has always revealed Himself and related to His people and His creation as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Sometimes you do come across this idea that in the OT no-one really knew the Holy Spirit, and that perhaps they didn’t even know there was a Holy Spirit.  We can fall into the trap of adopting an evolutionary model of revelation, so that in the OT everyone is basically strict monotheists, and then in the NT Jesus turns up (He is God, but prays to God); then the Holy Spirit turns up (at Pentecost, and now there’s three of them!!) – and the Church has to spend the next 3 or 4 hundred years figuring out the doctrine of the Trinity, which it finally does in the Council of Nicaea.

In a more sophisticated version of this model, we might concede that certain people in key roles – the prophets, priests and kings – somehow experienced the Spirit, though perhaps they weren’t aware of it, or weren’t entirely sure what was going on… Generally however it is thought that their experience was temporary – given for a specific task, and possibly ‘external’ (as opposed to the internal abiding of the Spirit that the NT Church experiences?). Let me just say in passing that in the NT (e.g. compare Micah 3:8 and Acts 4:8) and throughout Church history as well, people can know the Spirit’s (temporary) equipping and empowering for specific tasks; and that this doesn’t reflect at all on the indwelling of the Spirit in those people… 

My own feeling is that it is hard to reconcile this with the OT’s own testimony and testimony, and the experience and awareness of the OT saints. When you read the OT itself (and the NT reflection on the OT experience) there is a much clearer vision of God as Trinity (you might remember this from our Deep Church event in our first JCL term).

The first mention of the Holy Spirit is in Gen.1:2, the Holy Spirit is there, and is recognized as being there. The Spirit’s explicit role in Creation continues to be consciously celebrated as such throughout the OT (see e.g. Ps.104:30; 33:6; Job 34:14-15. watch out too for the link between the Spirit, the Breath of God and the wind of God). We also see the Spirit in the Garden of Eden, and then again explicitly mentioned in Gen.6 where we’re told that He will not always strive with a fallen humanity that is corrupt and that is fighting the life He longs to impart to them.

We see the HS at work in and through the people of God – Joseph; Bezalel & Oholiab; Moses and the elders of Israel; Joshua; the Judges; the schools of the prophets under Samuel (i.e. not just Samuel, or Saul); Nehemiah 9:19-20, tells us that the Spirit was with the people of God throughout the wilderness wanderings (see also Ps.106:33); Amasai… He is frequently spoken of in the devotional live of the ancient church (Ps.51:11; 139:7; 143:10). The Prophets are full of references to the Spirit, knew the Spirit’s work (e.g. II Kings 2:16), and it is clear that they are fully aware that they are being inspired by the Spirit (e.g. Num.24:2; II Chron.15:1-3; repeatedly in Ezekiel)… I could go on, but really all you need to do is search for ‘Spirit’ in Bible Gateway, or in a Concordance, and see how often and in how many contexts the Spirit of the Lord is explicitly referred to.

Those in the NT see great continuity with their OT counterpart’s experience of the Holy Spirit (Acts 6:5 cf Num.27:18; Acts 8:39 cf I Kings 18:12 / II Kings 2:16; Acts 10:44-45 cf I Sam.19:19-24; I Cor.14:20-21 cf Is.28:11-12; I Cor.14:39 cf Num.11:26-30; Eph.4:30 cf Is.63:10).

Jesus also sees Himself and His relationship with the HS prophesied in the OT (Lk.4:16-21); and the Apostles make sense of their experience of the Spirit based on the prophesies about the HS from the OT. Pentecost, far from being an unexpected event that caught the Church off guard and sent them into a tail spin for three centuries as they re-thought their entire theology of God, was in fact prophesied and anticipated.

Now, having said all that, there is an important sense in which the Church’s experience of the Holy Spirit is unprecedented after the Ascension of Jesus.  Maybe the best way into this is to tackle a passage from the teaching of Jesus that people often appeal to when they are wanting to argue that the Holy Spirit is a phenomenon the OT Church didn’t know.

John 7:37-39

Let’s look at this carefully.  In v.35, the religious leaders are concerned that Jesus is going to go and teach the Greeks. We know this will happen in due course – it’s something else that is prophesied in the OT. The Gospel will go to all the nations of the world, and the Spirit will be poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28-32 cited in Acts 2).…

But for these religious leaders this would be a negative thing (remember how the Jewish leaders react when Paul talks about the Gospel going to the Gentiles in Acts!). In response to this spiritual superiority complex and ego-centrism, Jesus says that anyone who comes to Him will receive the Spirit… Notice first of all that no-one is surprised or confused by Jesus’ mention of the Spirit (as if this was something - or Someone - they had never heard of before). Secondly, that Jesus’ declaration that Gentiles will also receive the Spirit simply enrages the Pharisees (vv.47-52). The ‘they’ in v.39 is referring to the ‘Greeks’, who have not yet become Christians. You might remember from our Deep Church last term the connection between the Ascension of Jesus, when the nations becomes His inheritance (Ps.2:8), and the subsequent globalization of the Church. And this new global mission of the Church will require a new empowering of the Holy Spirit, and a new gifting.

Insofar as the mission of the Church is new, there is a new outpouring of the Spirit, a clothing with power from on high (Lk.24:49). This will enable a new chapter in the life of the Church. But the Day of Pentecost is emphatically not the birth of the Church; nor is it unanticipated, nor is it the Church’s first experience of the Holy Spirit. But as is so often the case, the Spirit seeks to enable the Church to proclaim Christ… and now their mission extends to the ends of the earth.

He proceeds from the Father AND the Son

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting a number of videos and articles that dovetails with our JCL series on the Life and Ministry of the Holy Spirit, but which might not naturally fit into any of the sermons! Here’s one asking why we confess in our Creed that the Spirit ‘proceeds from the Father and the Son’. Does it matter? Why do we make the point, and what difference would it make if He only proceeded from the Father? A great example of how what looks like abstract theology gets real traction in our day to day discipleship…

Book Recommendations (for both sides of the debate)

We’re immersing ourselves in the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit over the next couple of months at MIE. So if you wanted to do some additional reading, here are some thoughts… and yes, I am trying to be as balanced as possible on some of the more contentious aspects of what we might believe, and where we might disagree!

There will soon be a number of books available on the MIE website. I sent the titles through a couple of weeks ago, but I guess like a number of other processes during Lockdown, things are just taking a bit longer. So in the meantime:

So here are half a dozen titles, that should prove stimulating.

On the ‘continuationist’ side of the discussion:

Surprised by the Power of the Spirit. By Dr Jack Deere.

Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology (Chap 39 & 51-53)

Both these are accessible works. if you want something a bit more meaty: Tom Smail: Reflected Glory

and something heavyweight: Max Turner, The Holy Spirit and Spiritual Gifts; or Wayne Grudem: The Gift of Prophecy (a popularized adaptation of his PhD).

Grudem & Deere can both be found on Youtube, explaining what they believe and why.

On the ‘cessationist’ side of the discussion:

Jim Packer: Keep in step with the Spirit.

R.C. Sproul, The Mystery of the Holy Spirit

For something a bit more meaty: Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spirit

And for the heavyweights: George Smeaton: The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit

On Youtube, have a look at the ‘Strange Fire Conference’; Tom Schreiner on Youtube also explains why he believes Spiritual Gifts have ceased.

Books from previous generations:

John Owen: The Spirit and the Church

Octavius Winslow: The Work of the Holy Spirit

and finally:

Tom Schreiner and Sam Storms have both published essays at The Gospel Coalition discussing whether the miraculous gifts are still in operation today. Tom Schreiner argues the cessationist position–that miraculous gifts have ceased. Storms argues the continuationist position–that prophecy, tongues, and the rest continue. Both essays have a constructive tone even as they straightfowardly disagree with one another.

That should get you started!!

Theology.jpg

Getting ready for our next JCL term...

On Sunday we will be delving into the Bible’s teaching on the life and ministry of the Holy Spirit. It will be - I hope - as challenging as it is inspiring. I have already been brought to both moments of incredible joy, and repentance a number of times as I have studied and written for this term. I think that as a Church we will have some difficult questions to navigate, but i expect that we will also find much that encourages and excites us. We may find things we disagree about, but I hope too, much that unites us. As we get ready, here is a taster from Josef Tson (you might remember him from our Lent course a couple of years ago, when we spent our time listening to what we might need to learn from the Persecuted Church).

sometimes what you read has more resonance...

The fall of humanity has created a perpetual crisis. It will last until sin has been put down and Christ reigns over a redeemed world … The fall has affected every part of our nature - moral, intellectual, psychological, spiritual, physical. Our whole being is deeply injured. The sin in our heart has overflowed into our total life… nature itself, the earth and even the astronomical universe has felt the shock of our sin…Humanity is lost but not abandoned.

Let a flood or fire hit a region, and no able bodied citizen feels they have any right to rest till they have done all they can to save as many as they can… While death stalks no-one dares relax; the critical emergency for some becomes an emergency for all. In times of extraordinary crisis, ordinary measures will not suffice. The world lives in such a time of crisis. Christians alone are in a position to rescue the perishing. We dare not settle down and try to live as if things were ‘normal’. Nothing is ‘normal’ while death roams the world…

To me it has always been difficult to understand those Christians who insist on living in the crisis as if no crisis existed … I wonder if such Christians actually believe in the fall.

taken from Tozer, Born after Midnight.

geneaolgies rock

Over the next few days in our Read Through the Bible 2020 we are confronted with one of the longest genealogy sections in the Bible (I Chron. 1-9). It can be a bit tricky to know what to do with sections like this… here is a sermon that might help us navigate these chapters…