Words or pictures?

Do you think mainly in words or in pictures?

Some folk claim to be visual thinkers, while others respond better to the spoken or written word. Where religious practice is concerned, visual thinkers reckon that churches focusing mainly on words may not be for them. I once knew a man who converted to Roman Catholicism because others convinced him that he was a "visual thinker". He was led to believe that the spoken word was of little help to him. Only visual drama and imagery would touch his heart. The ancient churches have long provided this, because most of their early followers could not read. Pictures on the walls, statues, ornate clothes and moments of theatre in the liturgy spoke volumes to them. In the eyes of many, they still capture the imagination today.

Some might consider worship in our Reformed churches too wordy and intellectual. We have an answer for that. If our communication were to become all pictures without real depth, much important doctrine would be lost and Christians would fall into gross error by default. Look how the central gospel truth of Justification by Faith – that we are put right with God first and foremost not by good deeds but by faith in Christ as Saviour – was almost lost sight of by the time of the Protestant Reformation!

At the moment, much of my preaching and teaching is based on the book of the prophet Isaiah. I have tended to fight shy of him in the past. There are a lot of words in Isaiah. 66 chapters’ worth, in fact. Enough to exhaust any congregation if you present the book in the wrong way. Yet those words paint amazing pictures. How about the Song of the Vineyard in chapter 5, where God laments that His people are like a vineyard that produces only bad grapes? As the tenderly caring vineyard owner, He is heartbroken to see such a poor return for His pains. Or what of Isaiah 53 and the blow-by-blow sketch in words of the agonising death of our precious Saviour, visualised even though He would not arrive on earth for 700 more years? Or God the Judge and Saviour “treading the winepress alone” in Isaiah 63?

Significantly, the book of Isaiah starts like this: “The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem ...” (Isaiah 1:1, ESV).

Eugene Peterson, pastor, scholar, author and poet, procuced in 2002 a popular paraphrase of the Bible called The Message, which has had widespread currency and acclaim. He likes to use the word “Message” in his rendering wherever he can. But he is glad to accept that the message of Isaiah is visionary, not just verbal: “For Isaiah, words are watercolors and melodies and chisels to make truth and beauty and goodness. Or, as the case may be, hammers and swords and scalpels to unmake sin and guilt and rebellion. Isaiah does not merely convey information. He creates vision, delivers revelation, arouses belief. He is a poet in the most fundamental sense – a maker, making God present and that presence urgent. Isaiah is the supreme poet-prophet to come out of the Hebrew people.”

For Peterson, the whole book of Isaiah is a Salvation Symphony in three movements, Judgment (chapters 1-39), Comfort (chapters 40-55) and Hope (56-66), with the Saviour God transforming men and women in the furnace of Holiness. We do well not to dismiss the visual and visionary impact of the word pictures in the Bible. Furthermore, our most devout and eminent hymn writers have offered us their own powerful word pictures to sing about and to ponder:

See, from His head, His hands, His feet

sorrow and love flow mingled down;

did e’er such love and sorrow meet,

or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Isaac Watts, 1674-1748

Pictures serve to illustrate. But, for digging deeper, give me every time the sheer power of words inspired by the living God.

Learning God's language

Later on this year, I hope to pay my first ever visit to the Iberian Peninsula. I gather I'm not the only one of my acquaintance who has never yet been to Spain or Portugal. This rather surprises me as nearly every Brit seems to visit one of these countries at some point. Indeed, 1.7% of the population of Spain is reckoned to be British. Spain is a popular destination for arthritis sufferers who want to escape the damp climate of the UK.

The reason I am going, however, is not to do with bodily ailments but to find out how gospel Christianity is faring. The Spanish Gospel Mission has operated in Spain for around 100 years, evangelising and planting churches. They offer an opportunity to stay in their Bible centre south of Madrid and tour some of these churches. The buildings are hardly architectural marvels like the great cathedrals. Yet they are places of worship for many brave local men and women who have overcome prejudice to honour God in the simple way of Evangelical Christians.

The Mission promotes this experience as allowing the traveller to meet "real" Spanish people. Presumably that means people in the interior of Spain, away from the coastal areas that are so geared to tourists. For that reason I am trying to learn Spanish, in the hope of entering into the experience more fully. It is a challenge. I have now turned sixty and most of my foreign language learning was done in my teens and twenties. I found an audio-visual course on the internet that suited me (there are such courses that are worth having, if you search long enough) and I think I have made rapid progress in easy steps. As well as learning words and grammar, I am trying to pronounce the language as authentically as possible. I had training in phonetics so am well aware what a difficult task this is. Over the course of centuries, each language develops its own unique speech patterns which come naturally to native speakers but which outsiders have to acquire painfully, sound by tedious sound.

It leads me to ask: how well am I doing learning God's language? Believe it or not, God is not an English-speaking Brit. Isaiah 55:8 "'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,' declares the Lord."

However, God does not make it difficult to learn His language. True, His plan to save lost sinners took centuries to mature. Its intricacies are way beyond our feeble understanding. Yet we see the arms of the Lord Jesus Christ stretched out on the cross, open to receive us. It is a gesture that speaks volumes in any language. God simply offers it to us and asks, "Now, what part of that don't you understand?"

Grace and graciousness

When I began to go to evangelical churches, I quickly discovered that “grace” is sometimes used as a code word. Most Christians know that it is found both in the Bible and in everyday life. It comes in the benediction that many church services close with: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14 NIV). Roman Catholics encounter it in the greeting given by the angel Gabriel to the virgin Mary in Luke 1:28. Translated out of the Latin language, this begins, “Hail, Mary, full of grace”. This unusual greeting prompted German Protestant reformer Martin Luther to comment something along the lines of, “The common people understand about a bag full of gold, but what do you do with a girl full of grace?”!

“Grace”, as in-group code word, is used by some super-spiritual Christians to pass judgment on the rest. “Is this person a true believer? Is he or she in on the secret mysteries?” For them, grasping its significance is like seeing the light. The one who knows the secret of “grace” has almost become more than an ordinary mortal.

The excuse for this snobbery is that “Grace” in divine terms is vastly different from grace in human terms. My dictionary defines grace from a theological point of view as “the free and unmerited favour of God as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowing of blessings”.

Among human beings, grace means this: “The quality of pleasing, attractiveness, charm, especially that associated with elegant proportions or ease and refinement of movement, action, expression or manner.” It’s not all that often that one word can have such diverse meanings! Apart from the fact that it is no doubt “pleasing” and even possibly “charming” to be on the receiving end of God’s grace, there seems little tie-up between the human and divine meanings.

Yet to use grace to prove your superiority is tragically misguided because God’s grace is practical; it doesn’t only belong in the rarefied realm of ideas. It rubs off on human behaviour in everyday life. Grace is a way of life and not just a technical term in theology.

God sets the pattern. Human sin grieves Him, but He graciously offers free and undeserved salvation, without strings attached, to all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. How can you and I honour Him by mirroring that in our own lives?

The Lord’s Prayer talks about forgiveness. At the end of it, in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus makes a pointed comment: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (6:14-15 ESV). In other words, the person who has appreciated God’s grace in Christ will demonstrate the fact by displaying grace to others. His or her life will be one of graciousness. Let ungracious Christians take note.

Treasure in clay pots

These days, historical documentaries on television are regularly presented by people endowed with both beauty and brains. But it seems that those in Bible times with the greatest story to tell, the good news of Jesus Christ, were not much to look at.

The apostle Paul, perhaps the greatest missionary who has ever lived, is described this way in an early account: "A man small in size, bald-headed, bandy-legged, well-built, with eyebrows meeting, rather long-nosed". Yet the same writer saw that in spite of this his personality made an impact: "… full of grace. For sometimes he seemed like a man, and sometimes he had the countenance of an angel.”

Paul seems to have recognised that he did not have the appearance of a superstar. He writes in his second letter to the Christians at Corinth: "The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us" (2 Corinthians 4:4-7 NIV).

Ours is not the only day and age when people have been blinded by the cult of personality. An intriguing Jewish wisdom story tells a tale about the daughter of a Roman emperor, a woman who would have been steeped in the classical notion that beautiful people were the most wise.

"The daughter of the emperor spoke to Rabbi Joshua, the son of Hananiah: "Oh, your skill in the law is so great, and yet you are so deformed! What a huge helping of wisdom is held in such a plain-looking container!"

The rabbi answered, "Do tell me, what are the vessels you keep your wines in made of?"

She answered, "They are vessels of clay."

He replied, "How is it, seeing you are so rich, that you do not store your wine in silver vessels, to set yourself apart from the common people who store theirs in clay jars?"

She went back to her father and persuaded him to have all the wine put into silver vessels; but the wine turned sour. When the emperor heard about it he asked his daughter who had given her that advice. She told him that it was Rabbi Joshua.

The rabbi told the whole story to the emperor, and added this sentence: "The wisdom and study of the law cannot dwell in a handsome man."

Caesar objected: "There are handsome persons who have made great progress in the study of the law."

The rabbi answered, "Had they not been so handsome they would have made greater progress; for a man with a handsome physique does not have a humble mind, and therefore he soon forgets the whole law."

The truest followers of Christ today will not have been won over by slick packaging of the gospel, though there is plenty of that around. The one who wins them, under God, will more likely be an unassuming man or woman that may well have suffered hardship through being a Christian. That pressure may well show in lines of worry and care in their forehead. But there will be a beauty within that nobody can deny.

A Cloudless Sky

Some recent mornings were clear, crisp and very, very cold. On one occasion I found myself walking to church, under an apparently cloudless sky. In fact I eventually spotted a mere handful of small clouds near the horizon to the south. Yet the general impression I had walking along was that there was nothing above me but atmosphere.

What a contrast to the lowering, threatening clouds that had hung over me for most of the winter on my route to church! This new experience gave me a sense of space and freedom that was a delight to the soul.

It also brought back memories. When training for the ministry back in the 1970's, I was in a college environment in the university city of Cambridge. Life among a bunch of theological students can feel very oppressive. You sense that you are living on top of everyone else and everyone else is living on top of you. It was a state of affairs calculated to change me from a model student into a rebel one. Yet, since I am very conformist at heart, I fit most awkwardly into the role of rebel. It all made for a miserable and confined feeling.

Then one day I went for a walk in Grantchester Meadows. Again it was a clear day, this time in early summer. In the spreading fields under an open sky, I felt like a different person from the one trapped wretchedly in the rooms and corridors and lecture theatres and dining halls of the academic institution. For one precious afternoon, I was free.

It gave me a great sense of spiritual kinship with King David in Psalm 18. This was penned on an occasion where God had "delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul". I love that psalm because it portrays the lengths to which God goes to help just one individual crying out to Him in trouble:

"In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears. The earth trembled and quaked, and the foundations of the mountains shook; they trembled because he was angry. Smoke rose from his nostrils; consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it. He parted the heavens and came down; dark clouds were under his feet" (Psalm 18:6-9 NIV).

The happy result is seen in verses 16 and 19:

"He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters."
"He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me."

There is an extremely old verse version of this Psalm which I cherish. It renders this sense of freedom like this:

He brought me forth in open space,
that so I might be free;
and kept me safe, because He had
a favour unto me.

Thomas Sternhold, c. 1500-1549

In his letter to the Galatians, the apostle Paul had to reason with early Christian church members who were being influenced by misguided leaders. These men were trying to impose Jewish laws on them that they no longer needed to observe. "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free," Paul wrote (Galatians 5:1 NIV). In other words, the grace of Christ hasn't set us free from heavy burdens of law simply so we should go back to them again!

For all too many people today, though, the church has become oppressive. This may be because of various forms of abuse. It may be down to "heavy shepherding" where leaders intrude into the private lives of their members and dictate how they are to conduct their relationships or their finances. This domineering spirit is a denial of freedom in Christ.

Liberated from sin, death, hell and the fading Jewish law by the risen Christ, may we find the open spaces. By gentle, enlightened leadership, may we bring others into them too.

Darkest before the dawn

I have many memories – some happy, some annoying, some amusing – of the beginning of my ministry in Cornwall in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. There are many very real and lovely Cornish Christian folk, who have been an inspiration to me. Some of them I am still in touch with to this day. But nobody can stay in Cornwall for long without coming across the ubiquitous, heavy overlay of cultural tradition. The Cornish see themselves as a Celtic nation and feel a sense of solidarity with other nations on the Celtic fringe. They love their choirs, for example, in the same way as the Welsh. My boss in Cornwall commented, a touch acidly, “Everyone in Cornwall is a singer, or at least thinks he or she is”.

In one of my chapels there was a resident organist, a keen musician who tried to set up a children’s choir. I don’t think the children were particularly thrilled; they probably went because they were expected to. There were some good singers among them, though. He taught them various songs that he imagined would appeal to people their age. I remember one was the country and western number, “Turn your radio on”.

But the self-appointed choirmaster kept coming back to a song with the line “It’s always darkest before the dawn”. This was not the same as the current song with that line that is enjoying popularity in our day. He commented, “That’s becoming our signature tune as a choir, really”.

No doubt the man was doing sterling work in keeping children occupied and out of mischief. Even so, the whole thing struck me as being quasi-religious without ever quite giving the clear Christian message I would have liked to see and hear. But that phrase “It’s always darkest before the dawn” stuck with me somehow. It reminded me of the three hours when Jesus hung on the cross at Calvary and the sky went black.

It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said this, he breathed his last. (Luke 23:44-46 NIV)

The darkness stands powerfully for the condition of the human race. It was a very dark 24 hours when Jesus was betrayed by one of His followers, Judas Iscariot, given a sham trial and crucified. Human nature was seen at its worst in those who betrayed Him, condemned Him and called for His blood.

But Jesus was in the business of redeeming human nature – yours and mine as well as that of the baying crowds.

He died that we might be forgiven,

He died to make us good.

And then He rose from the dead the first Easter Sunday. The three-hour darkness of Calvary was replaced by eternal light and life for those who trusted their lives to the Lord Jesus Christ.

In times of deep distress we comfort each other that “It’s always darkest before the dawn”, but that was never so true as on that first Easter. And life dawns still today for those who will put their trust in the Saviour.

Talking yourself round

I am a great one for talking to myself. Most of the time there is nobody around to listen and to conclude that I am slowly going round the bend, so it can be done without fear of repercussions!

Quite often, talking to yourself is beneficial. You can sometimes tell yourself off if you are thinking gloomy thoughts: "Cheer up, Timothy, it may never happen", or "Cheer up, Timothy, thinking like that will get you nowhere." Sometimes talking to yourself helps you to solve a problem: "Now, then, what am I to do here?" Voicing a matter like that can pull together the welter of thoughts that are going round and round in your head, taking you no further forward.

But best of all is when the voice of God speaks into our souls. Recently I read a devotional by C.H. Spurgeon on Psalm 35 verse 3. In this psalm King David has his back to the wall, faced with violent enemies. He addresses God and appeals to Him to fight for him. The verse in question reads, "Say to my soul, I am your salvation" (NIV).

Spurgeon helpfully writes, "… The text informs me first of all that David had his doubts; for why should he pray, "Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation," if he were not sometimes exercised with doubts and fears? Let me, then, be of good cheer, for I am not the only saint who has to complain of weakness of faith ...

… David was not content while he had doubts and fears, but he repaired at once to the mercy-seat to pray for assurance; for he valued it as much fine gold. I too must labour after an abiding sense of my acceptance in the Beloved …

… David knew where to obtain full assurance. He went to his God in prayer, crying, "Say unto my soul I am thy salvation." I must be much alone with God if I would have a clear sense of Jesus' love. Let my prayers cease, and my eye of faith will grow dim. Much in prayer, much in heaven; slow in prayer, slow in progress.

… David would not be satisfied unless his assurance had a divine source. "Say unto my soul." Lord, do thou say it! Nothing short of a divine testimony in the soul will ever content the true Christian.

… David could not rest unless his assurance had a vivid personality about it. "Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation." Lord, if thou shouldst say this to all the saints, it were nothing, unless thou shouldst say it to me. Lord, I have sinned; I deserve not thy smile; I scarcely dare to ask it; but oh! say to my soul, even to my soul, "I am thy salvation." Let me have a present, personal, infallible, indisputable sense that I am thine, and that thou art mine."

Too many people deprive themselves of God's comfort because they do not believe He relates to us personally. It is my greatest, sometimes my only comfort, that God in Jesus Christ died for me, rose again for me and lives to bless me.