Gooding, David: 13 - Contending for the Faith

First session, gentlemen, we were thinking about our Lord's words regarding our daily work, and how he exhorted us not to fall into the trap of copying the Gentile mindset and attitude to daily work, but ourselves to seek first in our daily work the rule of God and the righteous character that the seeking of the rule of God produces in a believer as he goes about his daily work. Let me say one or two more remarks, some repetitive and some additional, about this matter, in case I give the wrong impression. In the first place, let me emphasize that in teaching us this attitude to daily work, our Lord was not teaching us to despise daily work. Rather, he was raising our estimate of the importance of daily work. The great missionary Carey is reputed to have said that he cobbled shoes simply to pay expenses, and after that got on with, so to speak, the Lord's work. That is a noble attitude for a missionary to take, who is prepared to work at some secular task, like Paul worked at his tent to provide the cash that pays for the missionary work, so as to make possible all kinds of missionary work that would not be possible if the missionary refused to engage in secular work and depended simply for on grants of money from home. I have nothing to say against caring, but it might, if we took it the wrong way, lead us to a wrong concept of the value of daily work. Daily work is far from being just a means of getting the money to pay expenses. Daily work, our Lord is saying, has infinitely more in significance than that. It is the God-given practice where we take the principles of the kingdom of God and put them into practice, and thus, in our daily work, develop a righteous character. The eight, nine, ten hours a day that you must spend at daily work, uh, don't simply go down the drain when the old juice from the carrots is poured down the sink at the end of the meal. Great dividend of daily work is a character built up to the very righteous requirements of God's standards, a character that shall last eternally. Daily work is the forge where the great, uh, master forges our character for eternity. If in our daily work we seek to fulfill the principles of his kingdom and rule. That is what the Lord Jesus was saying. He was giving to daily work an exceedingly high value and decrying those that would degrade holy, uh, daily work into the mere means of getting those temporary goods, which are food and clothes. Secondly, let me point out that in passing remarks, as I did at the end of our last study, I was not wishing to impose a servitude on my fellow believers. We all know the pressure of daily work upon us because we've got to meet our bills. And our Lord is not one to inculcate an irresponsible attitude to our daily work. Very rule of God will impose a constraint. We are to owe no man anything. We are to labor with our own hands so that we might have enough to support ourselves, and in some circumstances, if we can, to support other people as well. The elders at Ephesus, mark you, were bid to look at Paul's hands and observe how Paul not only lectured every day of the week in the school of Tyrannus for two years at Ephesus, that took some doing. Not only wrote an epistle or two— that's not a bad record. Not only did visiting and what have you, praying, teaching people collectively and teaching people individually. But it says, Paul worked with my own. Can you see the hard skin? So that I might pay my own expenses, the expenses of my team, and have to give to the poor. I'm giving you an example, you elders, that's what you ought to do. Elders are not to be mere theorists, telling people the theory and letting the people do it. As part of their ministry, elders must work in such fashion as they have the cases for, to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, is more blessed to give than to receive, and to help the poor. The spiritual duties of an elder become so great that he cannot work at secular work. Then, of course, it is right that he devote himself full time to spiritual work, and right that those who benefit maintain him. But it must be work still. Secondly, let us notice that we're not a hundred percent free, are we? The early Christians were many of them slaves. They weren't free to decide how many hours a day they would put in at secular work. How does our Lord teaching apply to them? Not that they should rebel against their masters and try and play truant and, and, and sit down when they should be working. What they are taught is to get their motivations adjusted. You serve the Lord Christ in your daily work, and from the Lord you shall receive the reward of the inheritance. They had to work impossibly long hours, being slaves. The church would have arranged its meeting times in the evening, not only to cover Jewish sensibilities, but also to accommodate the slaves that could only turn up at the Lord's Supper on the evening of the first day of the week. We don't always have a free choice. The demands that we fulfill our, our, our dues and owe no debts, pay our way, may mean that we have to work long, long hours, sometimes not adequately rewarded, and therefore we have to work long hours. Gentlemen, I was a farmer's boy once. I knew what it was to have to work eleven hours a day from du- dawn till dusk, to fall into bed exhausted, and to get up at the crack of dawn the next day and carry on like that for six weeks and a year. But I was obo- observing the fact that if we make seeking the Lord's rule in our lives our prime motivation in our work, there will come occasion when seeking the Lord's rule will a- mean that we ask questions about the proportion where we are free to decide proportion. If a Christian man is seeking simply food and clothes, cars, houses, goodness knows what else, and with it a sense of power. He can work all the hours around the clock, as some executives do. He might decide that there were bigger objectives in life than food and clothes, and that is spiritual work. And in order to seek the rule of God in his life, he might decide to take a lesser post, with less demand, a lower but an adequate income, perhaps even a lower lifestyle, so that he might the more readily give himself to spiritual things. That was what I was saying. And it seems to me a pity if in our modern day, believers get caught up in the ambitions of the Gentile mind, in the rat race, in the power struggle, demand such a high standard of life. They then haven't got time to give to their spiritual duties, with abilities that could have cared for the people of God, for the spreading of the gospel, or other such things. They've allowed themselves so to be conditioned by the Gentile frame of mind, its, its structure of life, its aims, its goals, that they are exhausted in the pursuit of it and haven't the time to develop their spiritual gifts for the good of God's people. When that happens, it leads to an immense poverty and an immense slavery. I do not speak altogether nonsense, gentlemen. Even ungodly men have sometimes come to regret that they spent so much time at their business when they didn't have to, spending so much time away from their wife and children, lost the love of their children for life. And what would compensate a man for that? Not all the riches in the world. And if Christian men forfeit the love of children because of excessive ambition in material things, go without the gratitude of God's people and of God himself, when for the spiritual work they should have done but didn't. Not all eternity will compensate them for the loss. And if university professors, because it's the brilliant thing to be, are critical of the Bible when in their hearts they're supposed to believe it's the inspired word. But adopt the Gentile attitude towards divine revelation. Because it's the brilliant academic thing to do, to be critical. And they climb to great heights in the academic world by compromising with the old Gentile mindset. Who shall measure the loss? Doesn't mean that we retreat from all intellectual activities, or that we should retreat from an intellectual use of our, uh, uh, the use of our intellect in studying Holy Scripture. Let us think to the maximum. Many a man has fought a very good battle at that level and has remained, many still remain, utterly loyal to the God who has revealed himself in Scripture. Let us support them with our prayers. Let the rest of us be warned against the perils in the theological study of the Word of God and in other theolo- uh, other intellectual studies, the perils of eventually adopting the presuppositions of the Gentile world, being intellectually disloyal to the risen Lord and to his word in our daily studies. Not everyone is required to fight on those battlefields. You wouldn't send a child to fight a giant, would you? I can appreciate the anxiety of parents when they see their young people going to a secular university, fear that the experience may overwhelm the faith of their child. That doesn't mean that we should retreat. We need believers in the forefront of the intellectual world in every discipline. They're not to become an intellectual ghetto. Uh, gentlemen, I beseech you, who have seen generations of young believers come up to universities. I beseech you. Give yourselves to the exposition of God's word while they are young. Cause them to feel and to see the divine inspiration and the glory of God's word. Don't waste your time with little ditties that are poor English doggerel. Spend half your time singing doggerel. There's a battle out there. Sometimes young people come to the university wonderfully equip- uh, uh, equipped intellectually in their topic and in their subject, but when it comes to biblical knowledge, absolutely. And in the church, instead of preparing them for the battles that lie ahead, are passing their time away with simplicities as though the Bible were the little story of Red Riding Hood and the Bad Wolf. Do that with young people and then send them to a university is like sending people with bare hands to fight savages armed with knives and machine guns. Forgive those rambling remarks from a crusty old man. But now we come to the whole question of how God delivered his people. Oh, this is a triumphant story, isn't it? The enemy then, well, this technological society advanced with its nine hundred chariots of iron, with a gentile mentality, by definition gentiles, but the historian keeps reminding you every now and again they were gentiles, you see, do get the point. I do say they weren't Israelites. And the great nation that had been meant to carry the revelation of God from Sinai and onwards had now come into captivity by choosing other gods and adopting the Gentile mindset. How should they be delivered? It is interesting that here the honors go to two women and not to the man Barak, necessary though Barak was, and the dear women acknowledged it, unlike some. Uh, do we'll say, ah, I must be very careful what I say now. I, I tread on a potential minefield. But it wasn't because Deborah was a blue stocking, as we call them in Britain, a highly sophisticated intellectual, that she had the brain power to defeat even the man Cicero with his mighty great skull and brain. No. And it wasn't because Jael was a blue stocking either that could outwit the intellectuals and the technologists in the Canaanite factories, the managing directors and all the inventors and the scientists who looked after the smelting of the iron and that kind of thing to make the chariots. You can picture them, can't you, gentlemen, by knowing their present day counterparts. It wasn't because Jael was some sophisticated intellectual either. Simple mother looking after the affairs of her household in her tent. They proved the key to the undoing of these mighty Kenyanite brains. Why? Because Deborah was a prophetess in touch with the living God, able to receive his revelation, his word, in immediate contact with the divine Find wisdom. wisdom. That was why she was the key person. For it was she, as you observe from the narrative, that determined the tactics that Barak used. And those tactics, in the end, become very interesting, do they not? At her command, first Barak gathered ten thousand troops from northern part of the country and took them to Mount Tabor and up the slopes of Mount Tabor. From what little I know about army tactics, I thought that I, I should think that was a very wise move. They had a severe shortage of arms to start with. They hadn't one wheel of a chariot among them anywhere. They were all of them infantry. The army opposed to them had nine hundred chariots of iron, Josie. To have drawn up his troops on the plain, the great plain at the foot of Mount Tabor, would have given the enemy the immediate advantage, wouldn't it? By taking a lot of infantry into war, facing tanks of the most sophisticated kind. Why, if Barak had come down with his troops onto the ma- onto the plain, Sisera and his nine hundred chariots of iron would have run circles around them and, uh, cut them to mince meat. I can understand Barak taking his troops up Mount Tabor, sensible man. For now, up Mount Tabor, he had the advantage of position. It would be very difficult for the enemy to drive his tank, i- i- his chariots up the mountain, wouldn't he? So the enemy would have to dismount if he came to attack, and then Barak and his troops would have the advantage of being on top and able to hurl not only spears, but mighty great boulders down the mountain. Sensible man was Barak, you'll say. Appreciate his military tactics. All was going well. There was Barak with his ten thousand troops up the mountain. When Deborah said, up, Barak, and lead your troops down the mountain. But lead ten thousand infantry down onto the plain, where the enemy with his chariots had all the advantage. Say that was suicidal thing to do. What absurdity. Well, surely the woman Deborah didn't know anything about military tactics, that's the trouble with me, yes? Well, it would have been suicide. Hadn't, uh, Deborah been aware that the Lord had gone out before and was leading his troops still. The God who once appeared and made himself known on Sinai, the God who had marched at the head of the battalions of Israel that they had originally come into the land under Joshua to conquer the land, that same God will lose his people still, and he was descending the mountain in front of his troops, leading them to the enemy. What you couldn't have foreseen, God did. There came such a violent storm that within a comparatively short time, the whole plain was reduced to a quagmire. That has happened since, on other occasions. Other armies likewise have been caught by a sudden flash flood in that reason- in that region that turns an innocent wadi into a raging torrent, which, overflowing the land, reduces the plain to a quagmire, which then becomes the last place on earth that you would want to deploy chariots. And when the flood happened, the chariot sank down, of course, and got bogged down in in the mire, and instead of proving an advantage, proved a serious disadvantage to such extent that the commander himself got down off his chariot and had to run for his life to try and escape. How did Deborah know? By her sharp brain? No, there's something bigger than mere brains, gentlemen, and that is the wisdom of God and the prophetic word. Barak went down the mountain. He descended, and it proved to be of God. Tactics that could have been absolute folly proved to be the wisdom of God. For it's proverbial that even the folly of God is wiser than men, you know. And God's tactics, ultimately, the very tactics of the cross, are the supreme example of tactics aimed at breaking man's faith in man and in man's wisdom. Where is the scribe? Where is the wise? Where is the disputer of this world? says Paul. Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the wise? He's made it foolish by adopting tactics that, on the face of them, seem folly itself and weakness itself. The tactics of a crucified God, but prove to be the wisdom of God and the power of God. The poetry, therefore, Deborah's account fastens, among other things, on this tactic, you'll see. Verse twelve of chapter five, we've read, Awake, awake, Deborah, awake, utter a song, arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam. Commenting on verse fourteen, when Barak, Deborah's of chapter four, when Deborah said unto Barak, up, for this is the day in which the Lord has delivered Sisera into thine hand. So Barak went down from Mount Tabor. In a far later generation, a psalmist turned to musing upon this long past historical event. It is Psalm 65, and earlier we read it together. He starts like Deborah by putting the whole thing into his historical context. Psalm sixty eight, sorry, Psalm sixty eight, and refers to the appearance, the theophany at Mount Sinai, where God came down and revealed himself to Israel, and how God led his armies into the land. Having mentioned that circumstance, it comes to the story once more of Deborah, Barak, and Jael, the king's armies fleeing apiece, and she that tarieth at home dividing the spoil. And then in verse seventeen, the psalmist goes on in his poetic fashion to observe that, uh, suppose Jabin and Sisera did have nine hundred chariots of iron. So it turns out, of course, that the chariots of God are twenty thousand. Mm. Even thousands upon thousands. The Lord is among them, the very God of Sinai, with them still in their battle. Thou hast ascended on high, he says. Thou hast led captivity captive. Thou hast received gifts among men, yea, among the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell with them. Centuries again passed when the great rabbi Paul, once Saul of Tarsus, now converted and become Paul, reflected upon this psalm. And as he thought upon it, a, a, a difficulty, a problem presented itself to him. He came across the verse to say, thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive. And he said to himself, who can this possibly be talking about? God? How could God ascend in any reasonable sense whatsoever? For God is the transcendent Lord of the universe. How could he get any higher? What did the poet mean when he said, thou hast ascended up on high? How could God do any such thing? And he fell to thinking. He said, I know, I see it. If God is going to ascend, then first he'll have to descend. The wonder of the truth of the incarnation broke over his soul and mind once more. He that ascended is he that first descended into the lower parts of the earth. I know the commentators disagree on what the phrase the lower parts of the earth mean. Some take it to mean parts lower than the earth. And if you choose that, gentlemen, I shall not be able to convince you otherwise, I'm sure. Lower parts of the earth can mean the earth, the earth being lower than heaven is. Like I can speak of the city of London, meaning the city that is London. The lower parts of the earth as distinct from the heights of heaven, earth being lowly and heaven exalted. That, it seems to me, is indeed the message, perhaps even more. In another psalm, the psalmist talks of his conception in his mother's womb. He was fashioned in the lower parts of the earth. We needn't choose between those two, for now we see the mystery. God of heaven fighting the great battle. Transcendent Lord, time and space, who once came down to Mount Sinai in flame and thunder to reveal himself. But his people, who were the carriers of this great message of God's self-revelation, chose other gods, fell onto the Gent- under the Gentile mindset and came into captivity. There was more to it merely than Gentile kings oppressing Israel, for as anybody knows, and Deborah saw that the battle in her day was not limited to mere earthly kings, but when the battle was joined, the Lord came down to the help of his people. The stars in their very courses fought against Sisera. Deborah's mind, the very powers of the heavens were involved in the struggle. The time we've come to the New Testament, we perceive that Deborah was speaking more than she knew. Behind the Gentile mindset, gentlemen, is a more powerful and more sinister mind, the very God of this world, whose task it is to spread the lie, to slander and in the end deny the very existence of the Supreme Lord. He is behind the Gentile mindset. They walk according to the prince of the power of the air, says Paul in chapter two. When it comes to God's people and their need to develop and grow in the knowledge of God and to grasp the revelation of God that has been made us in Christ and to grow up into Christ, who is the head, that they no longer be intellectual and spiritual infants, tossed here, tossed there, with every wind of doctrine and the slight of men who are cunningly lying in wait to deceive. It becomes evident that it's not merely a battle of wits between one man and another. Great purposes of God in self-revelation, form the body of Christ. It's opposed at every angle, and the opposition is against God's truth. The opposition is designed to keep believing people babies in their knowledge of God. Infants. Tasked with all the current ideologies and fancies that the world invents. Faced with a world like that, how should God conquer and deliver his people? Hear the wonderful story. He that ascended. Paul, it must be this first. God, supreme, transcendent, couldn't ascend anywhere. There was no higher to go. If ever it came to be true that God ascended, it must be that first God descended. There at Calvary, there in the virgin's womb, on the fields of Palestine, northern Palestine, Galilee of the Gentiles. Oh, what a story it is. The people that sat in darkness saw a great light. Galilee of the Gentiles witnessed the descent of God to the lower parts of earth. Lo, he abhorred not the virgin's womb, gentlemen, became a man, becoming a man went lower still, and he descended. Tell me, how far did God incarnate descend when they nailed him to a cross. Battling for what? Battling for your mind. Battling for your love and loyalty that will bring your mind captive and your thoughts captive to God, breaking the tyranny of the prince of this world and the mindset that he induces among the Gentiles. God's tactics, apparent folly on the surface of them, are proving to be the very wisdom of God in the battle for the mind. And now he's risen. He that descended is ascended far above all things, that he might fill all things, and from his position in glory, carry on the battle. The Psalm, the the history noted that, uh, Sidra's mother was expecting him home, bringing home the spoil. She was disappointed. Didn't come home. The spoil went to Barak, who distributed the spoil of his enemies amongst the people. Barak took captivity captive. That is, once upon a time, the old Gentiles had held Israel captive. Now Barak reversed the tables, and the people that were once his captors, he took them captive. I suspect he made slaves of some of them and handed out the slaves to various Israelites and distributed gifts. The gifts that he had received from his defeated enemies, the conqueror gave to his own people. The Psalm noticed the thing that in ascending God has taken captivity captive and given, taken gifts from men. Paul takes it and puts it the other way round. He's led captivity captive and given gifts to men. How shall we make sense of it? Why? Because Paul is thinking still in the metaphor of a warrior, our incarnate Lord as the victorious ascended warrior, and he has taken his erstwhile enemies captive. And taking them captive, he has given them as gifts to his people. You say, wait a minute, I don't get that. What do you mean? Well, take one of the old, hoary old enemies of Christ. Take the biggest you can think of. His name was Saul of Tarsus, who chap was writing this letter. What an enemy he was in his mind against God, religious though he appeared to be. I was a persecutor. I was injurious. I attempted to blot out the very name of Jesus from the earth. I persecuted his people. I made them blaspheme. I thought I ought to do many things contrary to Jesus of Nazareth. But that great arch enemy was brought to his knees. How? Oh, he says, the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant. He discovered that the brilliant risen Lord Jesus Christ was God of glory. Learned how the God of glory had come down to capture Saul by allowing himself to be nailed to a tree. It broke the man's resistance. He became a captive to the risen Lord. Spoils of the victory of Christ. And having taken him captive, who once was the persecutor and enemy, Christ gave Saul, now Paul, to his people. Handsome gift, the benefit of Christ's own victory. As Paul put it elsewhere, thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph. Paul is thinking of an army general in Rome who comes to England and ca- captures, defeats the English, and then he gets two or three of the biggest thugs he can put his hands on. We have a lot of them in England, and he takes them home to Rome, you see. When he rides his chariot up to the Capitol Hill to give thanks to the gods for victory, he chains some of these big British thugs by the chariot wheels. And as they walk along the street by the victor's chariot, the Roman citizens look on with awe. They don't say what marvelous people these English are, how clever they are to, to have got themselves just at the point where they could be captured by the general. They say what hideous hulks they were. Our general must be a magnificent general if he conquered them. And that's what God has done with me, he says, he's conquered me and leads me in his triumphal procession to make known his knowledge and the knowledge of Christ everywhere. Paul, the once thine enemy, converted and given as the spoils of war by the risen Christ to his people. Ah, you may not be a Saul gentleman. God values you, your heart, your brain, like he values Saul. And have you not been captured? Captured by the consummate wisdom of God, who descended to Calvary to win the victory in your heart and mind. Now being subdued, the risen Christ gives you spoils of his victory to his people, be it as apostle or pastor and teacher or evangelist or prophet or what have you, gives you to his people that in the hands of the victorious Christ you may build up his people in their most holy faith. And fight still the battles of the Lord, where still the faith is being attacked on every side. And the enemy does all in his power to inculcate in the people of God the Gentile mind still. And keep them mere babes, as we said earlier, when it comes to the things of God. Telling us that the young people, no, they can't take these deep things in the Bible. Poor souls. I mean, when it comes to their daily work, they're coping with megabytes of computers and astrophysics and international finance. Poor little dears. Fancy making them learn all about computers. Poor little Johnny, he oughtn't to be doing that, ought to be on the nursery floor with his bricks, poor little Johnny of twenty years old. You, Martin, try to teach him all this deep Bible stuff, you'll put little Johnny off. Well, young gentlemen, if you allowed yourself to be slandered like that, I'm, I'm ashamed of you. Well. Woe to us if we give the impression that daily life is the big thing, and God's things are sa- are little fairy tales fit for Sunday school children, that's all. This book, gentlemen, is written by the author of the universe. To study it is on an equal par with the most abstruse physics that you could ever get at. Why should we do the revealed word of God such an insult? Just to suppose it's a little fairy tale. You can take it, young people, but it's not only i- intellectual power, it's the illumination of the Spirit of God that can teach you his word. And he's given you as gifts to the church to fight this battle and mature the believers so that they in turn can serve and grow up spiritually and intellectually unto the head, which is Jesus Christ. But it's a battle, gentlemen. I'm telling you straight, it's a battle. And it's not only a battle outside the church, it's a battle inside the church. For the pressures are colossal in many churches to get less and less Bible and more and more entertainment. So finally, let us, um, ask a few questions, like Debora did. Here were the men around Barak fighting to the death against their deadly enemies to deliver the people of God. Reuben, he sat amongst the sheep, and he had much searching of heart. He did, great exercise. Now, should he go? But on the other hand, the lambs, you see, or should he not go? In the end, he didn't go. As our brother was reminding us yesterday, he had all sorts of exercise, but he didn't actually do it. And as for Dan, now that's a question, isn't it? Why did Dan, uh, uh, uh, uh, stay in the ships? Have you any answer, gentlemen? When the young men of Israel were perishing on the battlefield fighting the enemy, uh, tell me as a matter of interest, uh, why did Dan, uh, bide in the ships? Any immediate answer to the question? Well, you say the fishing season was going very good. Oh, oh, I see. Yeah, oh, I see. That could account for it, couldn't it? And Dan's sense of comparative balance. Let it never be said of us, gentlemen, when the battle rages, that we are preoccupied with fishing or anything else. And finally, the final blow. Old Cicero ran away, and he came to Jael's tent. She received him. What could she do if she hadn't? He'd have butchered her. So she asked him into the tent. He said, Jael, you'll do me the good favor, put me in the back place, that's the woman's department, la. And he says, if anybody comes by here and says, is there a man inside here, you say no. You imagine Jael trying to do it. Presently, up comes Barak, oh, steaming, uh, in the thrust of battle, and he comes to Jael and says, is the man here? And she says no. And he says, just a minute, and goes inside and sees this lump. Well, he wouldn't only have killed Sisera, he'd have killed Jael. He had a big decision to make. He lulled him to sleep with his bread and milk. He found a tent peg and put it through his brain. He wasn't a great warrior. She was a mother in Israel, or no, in the Kenites, I mean, among the Kenites, and it was a woman's job to put the tent up. She had to know how to drive tent pegs into the ground, you see, because if you don't drive the take tent right in, the whole tent collapses in the middle of the night, and that's terribly uncomfortable, particularly if the canvas is wet, and it gets all things mixed up, we'll say. And it was the woman's job to see that the tent was properly put up and secure. Yeah. So he had a tent peg or two handy, and she put it through his brain. Good old mum. Sometimes the mums, you know, are more concerned for the security of the family than the fathers. Yes. And not merely for the security of the edifice, which is the house, but for that deeper security, which is the faith of the children. There was this old Gentile mind in her house, so she thought time had come to put an end to that, and she put a tent peg right through. Gentlemen, when you go home, just, uh, take a little room round, look around your house, won't you? And see if there's an old Gentile mind lurking anywhere, in your study or your kitchen. If you find one, for your own security's sake, gentlemen, put a tent peg through it, won't you? And there let us take a break in our studies.