A lifelong learner

The apostle Paul mentored a young protege called Timothy. As he came to the close of his life, Paul saw it as an urgent matter to encourage Timothy to be a lifelong learner.

Timothy had clearly got off to a good start. Paul reminds his young reader in 2 Timothy 1:5,  

"I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well." (ESV)

In chapter 3 he goes on,  

"But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus."

In many different places, the Bible has been associated with learning. At schools in the developing world, it is often used not just as a textbook for teaching religious studies but also for teaching English (or the local language).

I think of the story of Mary Jones in Wales at the dawn of the 19th century. Christians who hear of the remarkable account of this young Welsh girl often travel to visit Bala, in central Wales, where she walked barefoot 26 miles to buy a Bible.

Mary was of humble stock and lived in a remote Welsh village. As a small child of nine years old, she had to help her mother with many of the household chores. Her father, a weaver who had previously supported the family, had died. She attended her local chapel and used to love looking at the Bible that the minister used. Being unschooled, though, she was unable to read it.

Then a schoolmaster, Mr Evans, moved into the village and she learned to read. Wouldn't it be wonderful, she thought, to have a Bible of her very own! But books were a costly item in those days. Mary saved and saved, doing odd jobs for people in the village. Finally after six years she scraped together enough money to buy a Bible.

Rev Thomas Charles was the nearest agent for the purchase of Bibles and he lived in Bala. Having progressed thus far in her quest, Mary was not to be daunted by the huge walking distance. Now aged fifteen, she set off, not daring to keep her shoes on in case they wore out.

When she arrived, Thomas Charles was not able to give her a Bible there and then, but after a couple of days he gave her not only one for herself but also two more copies for her family!

How happy Mary Jones was to have a Bible she could read and learn from! I hope she continued all her life to be just as keen to learn. Sadly I meet Christians who think they know it all. They may be willing to absorb ever more Bible facts but do not want anyone to suggest to them how they could work better and be more effective for their church.

I regard myself as a disciple, and I love to see others being disciples too, willing to learn. I think that would be the mind of my Master, because the Lord Jesus had sharp words for those who thought they knew it all. His story of the Pharisee and the tax-gatherer is familiar to many people. It tells of the Pharisee who thought he was well in with God and the tax-gatherer who simply asked God's mercy on him, a sinner. Luke tells us explicitly that Jesus  

"told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt" (Luke 18:9).

God forbid we should be found among those who reckon they have no more need to learn! Incidentally, there is a footnote to the Mary Jones story. Rev Thomas Charles was so inspired by Mary's keenness to read the Bible that in 1804 he helped set up the British and Foreign Bible Society, which still exists today as the Bible Society.

"The Size of Wales"

As I write, I am enjoying one of my frequent visits to North Wales, a delightful part of the country that I never tire of visiting.

Welsh people must think their country has somehow become the universal point of comparison. Land areas are often described as being "as big as Wales", "half the size of Wales", "double the size of Wales" or whatever. The Welsh must surely puzzle over the reasons for this.

Like most countries with a long coastline, Wales does not have a clear overall shape, but it is easy enough to size up roughly the area it covers. With the arrival of major roads where you can drive (relatively) fast, it is a measurable size. You can comfortably cover the length of it - assuming you drive parallel to it up the west of England - and the breadth of it in one day. This done, the statement that the Holy Land is "roughly the size of Wales" becomes meaningful.

This sparks off a number of points to ponder. It was a revelation to me when I realised that the events of the biblical Book of Ruth took place within a small segment of this Wales-sized country, extending a little into foreign territory, Moab, a few miles to the east. The character Ruth looms large in salvation history. This vulnerable Moabite foreigner, who needed a helping hand to gain a foothold in Israel, became the ancestor not only of the great King David but also of the Messiah Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ. Massive spiritual beginnings - in such a small slice of land!

Then the Lord Jesus also limited His earthly work mostly to this small east Mediterranean country. How true it is that Jesus was

"Our God contracted to a span,
incomprehensibly made man"

as Charles Wesley put it! We see in the Gospel record the breathtaking energy that results from the universal might of God being focused on one individual in that small patch of land.

But to return to my talk of comparisons. How boldly we boost our image in this day and age when we have achieved so much! Of course, every age has produced its mighty works. The British Isles bear witness to the gigantic construction projects even of Stone Age man. The story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11) is testament to a nation who presumed to create a city containing a structure that would end up as high as heaven. But God laughed at their puny efforts.

"Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech,” He resolved (Genesis 11:7, ESV). Then He "dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city."

The God of the universe bears no comparison.

"To whom then will you compare me,
that I should be like him?" says the Holy One.
"Lift up your eyes on high and see:
who created these?
He who brings out their host by number,
calling them all by name,
by the greatness of his might,
and because he is strong in power
not one is missing.
Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
'My way is hidden from the Lord,
and my right is disregarded by my God'?"

Isaiah 40:25-27

We can never get the measure of God. It is a sobering thought that He has got the measure of us. But it is comforting that He notices those who call on Him, pleading the merits of Jesus whom He has sent into our little space.

God's greatness in me

Where should we expect to see the greatness of God in evidence?

"Everywhere," you might instinctively reply. But isn't this too vague? By looking for it in a number of different areas we may see sides to it that we would otherwise overlook.

The magnificent nineteenth psalm shows the greatness of God in a variety of different settings. The third is less obvious than the first two.

The first six verses show forth God's glory in creation.

"The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork"

goes the first verse (ESV). The celestial bodies are pictured as chattering away to each other constantly about the majesty of God in creation, in "words" which we pick up only spiritually, not by our organs of hearing. Human beings may boast of their own or someone else's greatness, but the manner in which creation glorifies God is of a totally different order. You cannot hide from it any more than you can hide from the heat of the sun.

All of a sudden, from verse 7, the psalmist takes a different tack and praises the greatness of God in His law. Even when stressing the limitations of God's law, the apostle Paul claims that

"... the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good" (Romans 7:12).

This is despite the fact that God's commandments put us under a death sentence because we can never keep them perfectly! The law is

• perfect
• sure
• right
• pure
• clean
• true
• altogether righteous
• desired
• sweet.

It has many effects as well as qualities:

• reviving
• making wise
• causing rejoicing
• enlightening
• warning
• rewarding
• exposing secret thoughts
• vindicating

- though, as I say, Paul struggled to make spiritual progress precisely because nobody is entirely innocent before God's law. As the Law sheds light on our inmost being, so it gives us the opportunity to reform. Of course, we can only be reformed in God's strength, not our own.

For Christians, the whole of God's written word, not just the Law of Moses, shows forth His greatness. The wisdom writings are profound. The words of the prophets are majestic and challenging. They show forth God's grasp of history because He uses them both to make sense of the present and to foretell what is to come - often in astonishing detail. Then the crowning expression of the greatness of God is found in the gospels, where it is recorded how He sent His own Son, Jesus Christ, to die a cruel death and rise again to bring salvation to all who trust in Him.

The wonder of creation and God's wise and perfect written word declare His greatness in different and remarkable ways. But have we exhausted the list in Psalm 19?

No, because at the very end of the psalm comes one further verse. It is a prayer which has often been used by preachers before embarking on their sermon:

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in your sight,
O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

It says in effect, "When I think and speak, may my thoughts and words be mirrors reflecting your greatness back to you". God's greatness shown in creation; God's greatness shown in His word; God's greatness shown ... through me!

You cannot show forth God's greatness if all that God and others see is your own self-promotion. His strength is made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9), and in our life submitted to Him. Could someone else gain a glimpse of God's greatness through seeing your devoted life?

Wonderfully Made

There are many arguments in favour of the existence of God. Yet in a way we need look no further for evidence than the human body. We are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14 KJV).

Christians believe that creation was an immensely powerful and yet warmly personal act by the Creator. All of God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - was fully involved and fully committed. There was a definite end point to this glorious first phase of the divine work: we are told in Genesis 2:2

“By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work” (NIV).

The legacy of the original creation remains breathtaking to this very day.

At the beginning of each day I have a clear reminder of the differences in efficiency between humans created by God and artifacts created by man. Not everybody is instantly alert on waking up. Some are downright drowsy. They moan and groan and turn over, longing to snooze on. They resist getting up until the very last minute and take quite a while to get into the day. Others are morning people. They bounce out of bed, alert and ready for anything straight away. I am somewhere in between. When I wake up, I may not feel refreshed, but at least I still become quickly aware of myself and my surroundings.

With my mobile phone, however, it is quite different. I leave it switched off completely overnight. When I turn it back on in the morning, it takes ages to come into full operation again. Partly this is because its contents are encrypted for security’s sake. But basically, like any computer, it has to remind itself each and every time what it is, what its different parts are for, and how they all work together. Only then can it even begin to burst into life. You would think the computer marks a high point in human creative ingenuity. Yet compared to humans it is comically slow and stupid.

You will now understand why I smiled when I read this extract from an evangelistic booklet by John E. Davis:

Have you ever stopped and marvelled at the wonder of the human body? When was the last time you woke up and had to remind your heart to start beating or your wounds to start healing? The Bible says "… in him we live, and move, and have our being …" (Acts 17:28). Have you considered the workings of the human eye or the complexity of the human brain, which is far beyond the capabilities of any computer? The human body is truly amazing, beyond our comprehension, no wonder David in the Psalms wrote "I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works”.

(Remember, this is simply a comment on the first creation! It says nothing about how, in Jesus Christ, God has a long-term programme of re-creating us spiritually following the fall from grace of our first ancestors.)

Science goes on making amazing discoveries about the human body, some of which unfortunately lead a number of scientists to think they can “play God” with the physical matter that constitutes us. This has potentially disastrous consequences.

A bit of due humility is called for here. I once asked a scientist, a committed Christian  to address a church Men’s Supper Club gathering on Creation. I fear this audience was sceptical, even hostile. But what stuck with me was the faithful scientist's parting comment.

“The most we can do,” he affirmed in his closing sentence, “is think God’s thoughts after Him.”

Bible Man

Thinking back, I have always been a Bible man.

I once remember being quizzed by our church minister. I was probably not even converted by that time. “What do you believe?” he asked. “I believe in the Bible,” was my decided reply. An unmistakable frown of concern crossed his face. I have often wondered about it since. He surely wouldn’t have thought that I treated the Bible as God. Obviously, what I meant was, “My faith is based on the reliability of the Bible”.

So why would he have looked so troubled? Maybe his whole training led him to believe that there were flaws in the Bible, as in any other “human” book. He would have been warned that there were naive “fundamentalists” out there hoodwinking others into believing that the Bible was infallible. This supposed menace needed putting straight, along with the victims of such warped ideas.

This is guesswork, of course. The minister didn’t say why he looked worried. He may simply have found my prompt and clear answer to his question rather disconcerting. He would not want to let any faulty thinking I had go unchallenged. On the other hand, was it the right time to be putting roadblocks in the way of a young man starting out on Christian service? It was a dilemma for the clergyman, and no mistake.

It seems I carried on being a thorn in the side of the Bible’s liberal critics. I understand that, many years later, my old arch-liberal ex-college tutor commented ruefully, “I never was able to bring Timothy Demore round to my way of thinking”. I continue to believe today that the Bible is on a different plane from ordinary human writings.

I’ve been exposed in my time to the whole sweep of French literature. French is the language with probably the longest continuous literary output of any in the world. Yet nothing in it compares with the challenge, the riches and the truthfulness of the Bible. A single verse may say more than an entire book of secular writing. What book is there on earth that can communicate more than these twenty-four words:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 ESV)?

The work of the Gideons worldwide is greatly to be admired. This long-established organisation is named for the Biblical character Gideon, who won victory over the Midianites in Judges chapter 7. It is dedicated to distributing Bibles round the world. The count, amazingly, is now fast approaching two billion!

Sadly, this worthy cause finds itself battling opposition where there was none before. Schools, hospitals and other organisations are now frequently timid about the placing of Bibles on their premises and bold in placing obstacles in front of the Gideons. Sometimes opposition gives way in answer to much prayer and persistence, sometimes not.

The tragedy of this opposition is that lives may be lost that would otherwise have been saved! There are frequent stories of suicidal people in hotel rooms who have picked up the Gideon Bible and been transformed. One man climbed up onto the window sill in his room and prepared to leap to his death. He steadied himself by putting his hand on a wardrobe. That hand came down on a Bible which was perched up there. Reading God’s word, the man turned away from his intended self-destruction and accepted Christ.

Surely a book by which God spares even one life, for time and eternity, should be allowed into the spaces where people gather.

Trees

Somehow a number of meditations on trees have recently caught my eye. Trees are certainly important symbols in the Bible. Right at the start, God sets boundaries for our first ancestors by telling them not to eat the fruit of a certain tree.

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." Genesis 2:15-17 NIV

Another significant tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden was the tree of life. Right at the end of the Bible this tree features again:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Revelation 22:1-2

As well as picking up on Genesis 2, this echoes Ezekiel 47, where water flows from the threshold of Ezekiel’s ideal temple and trees grow on both banks of the stream. There too, the fruits give nourishment month by month and the leaves healing. There are many other Bible references to the significance of trees besides.

Perhaps the most telling is Calvary’s tree where our Saviour gave up His life. A contributor to Our Daily Bread, Dave Branon, did a spot of tree felling and then pondered this.

“I thought about the first tree - the one on which hung the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve just couldn't resist. God used that tree to test their loyalty and trust. Then there is the tree in Psalm 1 that reminds us of the fruitfulness of godly living. And in Proverbs 3:18, wisdom is personified as a tree of life.

“But it is a transplanted tree that is most important – the crude cross of Calvary that was hewn from a sturdy tree. There our Saviour hung between heaven and earth to bear every sin of every generation on his shoulders. It stands above all trees as a symbol of love, sacrifice and salvation.

“At Calvary, God’s only Son suffered a horrible death on a cross. That's the tree of life for us."

The trees of Eden and Calvary stand as a challenge to us, to our sin and rebellion against God. Calvary is also a place of hope, because the Son of God not only carried our sin there but also dealt with it for good and all. And then in many other ways trees are a comfort. A persecuted Lebanese Christian once considered the Cedar of Lebanon, the symbol of his native land. This species of tree is mentioned some twenty times in the Bible. This man was thinking of Psalm 92:12 “The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like the cedar of Lebanon."

"First, the cedar tree is ever green. It is always fresh throughout the changing seasons. And so is the believer who has received the overflowing life of Christ. His faith and joy are fresh as the Lord nurtures and looks after him.

"Second, the cedar tree grows on high altitudes and it opens its branches to the skies. So does the believer who is called to live on higher ground and who keeps his thoughts and affections in the heavenlies. He opens up his soul to heaven in worship and supplication. He generously receives grace and power. In turn, he becomes a blessing to others.

“Third, a cedar tree is deeply rooted and could live for thousands of years. So is the believer who is standing on the Rock of Ages and has received everlasting life from Christ.

"Fourth, the cedar tree spreads an elegant fragrance and its wood is very expensive. Likewise is the Christian, who was bought with an extremely precious price and was graciously brought into the family of God. Consequently, he is commissioned to spread the fragrance of Christ and to be an open letter of love, faith, and hope to all the nations of this earth.”

But perhaps we should return to Psalm 1 and let the Bible have the last word.

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.
But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers. Psalm 1:1-3

The Patience of Job

The patience of Job has long been proverbial — "You must have the patience of Job to cope with that situation". The saying goes back at least 500 years in our language!

Job, you may remember, is the (human) hero of the Bible book of the same name. Blighted with loss and disease as the result of a fiendish test by Satan, he refuses to curse God for his situation. After a series of frustrating conversations with well-meaning but unhelpful friends, Job has his health and wealth restored by God.

"The patience of Job." The expression comes from the King James Version translation of James 5:10 and 11 — 

"Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience. Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy."

Yet Job under testing is anything but "patient" in the way we understand it today! He bemoans the fact that he was ever born. He berates God for not letting him have his day in court so he can plead his innocence. So what kind of patience is really in view?

Recently in the Our Daily Bread notes I found an article by Joe Stowell which isn't about Job, yet perfectly illustrates the Bible concept of patience — or "endurance" as we would put it today. 

As a lad, Stowell had a punchball that sprang back upright when hit. However hard he hit it, he could not make it stay down. "The secret? There was a lead weight in the bottom that always kept it upright. Sailboats operate by the same principle. The lead weights in their keels provide the ballast to keep them balanced and upright in strong winds."

Stowell comments,

"It’s like that in the life of a believer in Christ. Our power to survive challenges resides not in us but with God, who dwells within us. We’re not exempt from the punches that life throws at us nor from the storms that inevitably threaten our stability. But with full confidence in His power to sustain us, we can say with Paul, 

'We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed (2 Corinthians 4:8-9)'."

God's sufficient grace, and His strength which is made perfect in our weakness, can be the ballast for our souls. Our plea is that the Lord Jesus Christ, who was hounded even to His death, rose again with power and now prepares a future reward and glory for all who believe in Him. That is the real story of Christian endurance and its outcome! Remember, as the article reminds us, 

"The power of God within you is greater than the pressure of troubles around you."