A DEADLY FAMINE

In an effort to understand what hunger feels like some folks have committed themselves to fasting for twenty-four hours. That this is a major challenge in our affluent culture says a lot in itself! Nevertheless, we can commend the effort to try and understand “what hunger feels like,” even though the uncomfortable feeling we get from missing a couple of meals is not really hunger.

There is a much more serious famine in our land, one with much greater consequences, deadly consequences, eternal consequences. That’s the famine the Prophet Amos spoke about:

"Behold, the days are coming," declares the Lord GOD, "when I will send a famine on the land— not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it. (Amos 8:11-12)

Throughout the history of Israel and Judah, there were long periods of silence from God. Some of those periods of silence occurred during times of prosperity, as in the reign of King Uzziah of Judah. The people didn’t seem to care. They were prosperous, things were going well. As the two kingdoms sank deeper into idolatry and its consequent evil behavior, God sent prophets to call them to repentance. But time was running out for both Israel and Judah. After Amos, only one prophet, Hosea, would speak for God to the northern tribes. Then in 722 B.C. Shalmanezer, King of Assyria, would carry them away into exile. As for Judah, after the prophecy of Malachi, the people would languish over 400 years in spiritual famine until God sent John the Baptist to prepare the way for the promised Messiah.

Now we Christians live in the light of the New Covenant, with the full revelation of God in the Person of His Son (Hebrews 1:2) and the guidance of His Holy Spirit through His completed Word. So is there a famine of the Word of God today? Apparently there is. And as in ages past, it is self-induced. As the ancient Israelites rejected or carelessly neglected God’s Word, even so professing Christians today are neglecting the completed Bible.

Recent surveys have revealed that even regular church attenders spend very little time, if any, each week reading God’s Word. A small minority have actually read through the entire Bible even once. As for pastors, while most say they refer to the Bible in their sermons and include Bible reading in the worship service, it is evident that very few expound the Bible clearly in context and make practical application to their congregations. Alistair Begg gave several reasons for the decline in expository preaching:

I.                   A lack of confidence in the Bible.

II.                Fighting the wrong battles

III.             Using the wrong role models: e.g. business, psychology.

(From “What Happened to Expository Preaching?” The Pastor’s Study, Vol. II)

While few would admit it, many pastors lack faith in the Holy Spirit to change lives through God's Word. Expository preaching lets the Word of God speak for itself by drawing attention to the timeless principles God revealed and applied to His people down through the ages. The Holy Spirit uses “the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God” (Ephesians 6:17) to work where only God can work – in the heart!

F. B. Meyer (1847-1929) saw the same lack of expository preaching in his day, and he urged pastors to preach expositorily. His book Expository Preaching Plans and Methods is still well worth reading today, and it’s available in print or on Kindle.

One major reason the average Christian doesn’t read the Bible is because he or she has no idea of the richness of its progressive revelation and the practical wisdom revealed there. Creating a hunger for the Word is a large part of the pastor’s job.

 There certainly is a famine of hearing the words of the LORD today. And the effects of this famine are evident in the weakness of spiritually emaciated Christians in our churches.

A MAN NAMED CHRISTMAS

On December 25^th, 1766, a son was born to shoemaker Samuel Evans and his wife, Joanna, in Llandysul, Ceredigion. The couple named the child Christmas. That boy would grow to be a tall, husky, bushy-haired preacher who would lead the spiritual revivals in late 18^th- and early 19^th-century Wales. But he had a hard road to the ministry he would pursue from Anglesey to Cardiff for over half a century.

            Evans’ father died when the boy was only eight or nine years old, leaving the family in poverty. Living with a drunken uncle, Evans received no schooling and by age fifteen, he still could not read or write. His illiteracy grieved him, and with dogged determination he set out to teach himself, plodding through Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress with the help of friends. They also studied the Welsh Bible together: “We bought Bibles and candles, and were accustomed to meet together in the evening in the barn of Penyrallt, and thus in about one month I was able to read the Bible in my mother tongue.”

           At 18 he was converted under the influence of Presbyterian pastor David Davies, and soon began preaching in cottage meetings, having memorized published sermons. Without financial means to further his education, Christmas Evans went to England to earn money in the harvest fields. But in England he began to despair of his prospects in the ministry and nearly lost interest in spiritual matters altogether. The turning point in his life came when he was attacked by a mob, apparently provoked by Evans’ objection to their ungodly activities, and was beaten unconscious. When he regained consciousness, he found that he was blind in his right eye. This crisis awakened his faith and his determination to serve God. At age 20 he was baptized in Aberdare by Baptist pastor Timothy Thomas and joined that congregation.

            At the Baptist Association meeting in 1790, Evans accepted a call to minister in Caernarvonshire. He was ordained at Lleyn to serve five small Baptist chapels in that area. It was there that he met and married Catherine Jones, a member of one of the chapels. Though his preaching was well received, the ministry there took a toll on his health. So after some months in Caernarvonshire, Evans took a vacation to Pembrokeshire. Since he could not afford a horse, he traveled on foot, preaching in every town along the way. Crowds followed him from town to town, spreading revival throughout western Wales.

            Refreshed by his coastal tour, Evans threw himself back into the ministry in Lleyn, walking twenty miles every Sabbath to preach in various chapels and open-air meetings. Yet in spite of the many converts from his ministry, Evans was not pleased with the level of spirituality on the peninsula, and in 1792 he accepted a call to the island of Anglesey, where, for a salary of 17 pounds a year, he was to be responsible for ten chapels. On Christmas Day – his 26^th birthday – he and Catherine crossed the Menai Strait to take up residence in a dilapidated cottage with a ceiling so low the six-foot-tall preacher could not stand up in it! His ministry there prospered, however, and within two years he saw 600 converts, and the ten chapels had doubled to twenty.

            In 1823, Evans’ beloved spiritual companion Catherine died, and the same year he developed an eye problem which necessitated treatment in Aberystwyth. By 1826, the number of chapels in Anglesey had increased exponentially and Baptist preachers numbered twenty-eight. Evans then moved to Caerphilly where 140 more converts were added to the Baptist congregations. From there he ministered in Cardiff, then back to Caernarvon, “where he contended with great difficulties from church debts and dissension.” (Armitage, The History of the Baptists, 612)  On a trip to Swansea to raise funds for the Caernarvon chapels, he suddenly fell ill and died on July 19, 1838. His last message was, “I am leaving you. I have labored in the sanctuary fifty-three years, and this is my comfort, that I have never labored without blood in the basin,” a reference to Exodus 12:22. In his last breath he voiced the words to an old Welsh hymn and passed into eternity.

            Christmas Evans is reputed by some to be the most dynamic preacher of “the golden age of itinerant preachers” in Wales. Historian John Davies takes note of Evans, along with Calvinistic Methodist John Elias and Independent William Williams (William o’r Wern) as the prominent preachers in the revivals that swept Wales in the early 1800s. (The History of Wales, 359) It is estimated that between 1801 and 1851, a new chapel was built on average every eight days. Many of those chapels were the result of the tireless ministry of Christmas Evans.

           

 Copyright 2015 by Thomas L. Jones  First published in Ninnau, Nov-Dec 2015

LET THE WEAK SAY, "I AM STRONG"?

Popular choruses and church benedictions seem to be magnets for verses out of context. One of the more recent ones is the popular chorus, Give Thanks. The verse, the only verse, is a simple expression of thanks to God for having given Jesus Christ, His Son. We can all sing that with enthusiasm. It’s the refrain that gives some of us pause. It is expressed as though it were a scriptural benediction: “And now, let . . .” The first problem is there is no such benediction in Scripture.

The second problem, the more important one, is that the first part of the sung “benediction” is wrenched out of Joel 3:10 – “Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears; Let the weak say, 'I am strong.' " (NIV, NKJV, KJV, emphasis added) A cursory reading of the context of Joel 3:1-16 reveals that the above quotation is not a benediction! It is a taunt to the pagan nations to muster all their armies, all their strength, and come to the Valley of Jehoshaphat, that is, the Valley of Decision, where they will be judged.

Now I can hear the explanations and objections: Didn’t the Apostle Paul say, “God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong”? (1 Cor. 1:27) And, “We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are prudent in Christ; we are weak, but you are strong” (even less applicable!)? And there’s Paul’s own testimony, “when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10). Paul’s wish for the Corinthian Christians was that they be spiritually strong and “complete” in Christ: “For we rejoice when we ourselves are weak but you are strong; this we also pray for, that you be made complete.” (2 Cor. 13:9)

The concept of spiritual strength versus fleshly weakness is scriptural, but in the popular chorus, we sense more than a whiff of charismatic doctrine, especially when we sing on: “Let the poor say I am rich”! But that’s another issue entirely. Christians certainly do possess spiritual riches because of what Christ has done for us. But there are thousands of professing Christians who believe the atonement of Christ entitles us to all manner of physical and material blessings. But the New Testament does not support such notions. New Testament benedictions always speak of spiritual blessings, holy living, and heavenly hope.

Misquoting Scripture can be embarrassing. A beautifully carved plaque in a memorial chapel displayed this verse: “. . . absent in body but present in spirit” – 1 Corinthians 5:3. In context, the Apostle Paul was urging the church in Corinth to discipline an immoral member. Here’s the complete verse: “For I, on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present.” (1 Corinthians 5:3)

There was a time when liturgical churches closed services with the following portion of Genesis 31:49: “The LORD watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.” Eventually some ministers discovered that in the context this was a malediction, not a benediction! Jacob and Laban didn’t trust each other, so they set up a heap of stones as a witness if either passed over it to harm the other. The ignorance still prevails: I saw an ad for a necklace with that very sentiment engraved on it! You might want to consider the context before you give it to your loved one for Christmas or your anniversary.

I can’t help thinking that behind all the misuse of Scripture verses is an appalling ignorance of the Bible as a whole, and the false idea that the Bible is a collection of aphorisms and benedictions. I’ve written before about the danger of bibliomancy, taking verses out of context for guidance and decision-making. The Bible is truly God’s unfolding drama of redemption. It is meant to be read in its entirety, and each book in its context. Only then will the Scriptures transform lives.

In the meantime, my voice will drop out whenever the congregation starts to sing, “And now let . . .”