On Sunday evening (20th) we’re starting the first in a series of monthly ‘Men of God’ seminars.  The first is on men and marriage, at 7pm.  As a companion to that, I recommend the talks here http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/conference-messages/by-conference/2012-conference-for-pastors from a recent conference in the States.  Pick out one or two where the title grabs you, and do some up-building listening.

A stretch along one of the main roads into and out of Hinckley (Coventry Road, or Cov Rd to its friends) is shortly to be closed till November while work is carried out to renew the sewage pipes.  The water company say that this will reduce the risk of sewers in the area flooding.  During the works, trips out of town in the direction of Nuneaton and the A5 are likely to take longer, and I guess it will add to the traffic on Hollycroft and part of the Northern Perimeter Road.  I’m not giving you a public service announcement here;  I’m asking a question…  what is your first reaction when you hear this news?  Here are two possible basic reactions:
(1) “They’re ALWAYS digging the roads up.  It’ll take me AGES to get to Nuneaton.  There’ll be CHAOS.  I bet half the time I walk past there’ll be no one actually working there  -  those so-called workmen drink tea half the day and knock off by 3.30.  And it’s bound to over-run.”
(2)  “Thank God for the blessing of living in a country where the water company fixes the sewers before we get raw sewage in the streets.  It’ll take a bit longer to travel round for a few months, but that’s not exactly the end of the world.  If my commute is going to take half an hour longer I’ll go to bed half an hour earlier;  that might actually do me some good.”

Be honest.  Is your basic reaction more like (1) or (2)?  Here’s me being honest:  I hear far more of (1) coming out of people’s mouths than I do of (2), including Christians’ mouths.  Now the next step:  I suggest that behind these two different reactions lie two very different basic attitudes of heart  -  not attitudes to sewers, road-works and Severn Trent, but attitudes to myself, the world and God.  They are:
(1)  Me being inconvenienced is a MAJOR problem.  Other people who make decisions, especially public authorities, are generally stupid and useless.
(2) Me being inconvenienced isn’t a major deal;  after all, when was I made Lord of the universe?  Other people who take care of things like sewers on the whole deserve my gratitude.

Which brings me to the fruit of the Spirit, listed in Galatians 5v22-23.  I’m preparing to preach on it on Sunday.  It includes the virtues of patience, kindness and gentleness.  And every element of the full list is about putting aside self-centredness and egotism.  I think I’m concluding that your first reaction to the news that part of Coventry Road is closing for five months is a reasonable test-case of the state of your heart, and reveals quite a bit about the health or otherwise of the fruit of the Spirit in you.  Or am I over-reacting?

Here are two thoughts homing in on v.18.  (As it happens I’ll be referring to vs.13-15 in a planned sermon on temptation in a few weeks’ time)….

1.  God gave us new birth ‘through the word of truth’.  Other Bible passages we’ve seen this week have ascribed our new birth to the Spirit;  here it’s said to be down to the ‘word’, so what’s going on?  In the way God works there is a profoundly close relationship between God’s Word and the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit is the prime author of Scripture, working through the people who wrote it.  Through the Spirit God oversaw that Scripture was preserved through history and not lost or perverted.  And now the Spirit is the one who brings the words of Scripture alive to us.  So when you heard the message of Christ, and faith and love for Christ came alive in you, that was God the Holy Spirit using God’s words in you.  So our new birth can rightly be ascribed to either word or Spirit.

2.  The end of v.18 gives us God’s purpose in this  -  why he has given us this new birth:  ‘that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created’.  I’m no farmer, but apparently the ‘firstfruits’ are the first bit of the crop that shows, revealing what the rest of the much larger harvest to come is going to be like.  That’s what Christians are in relation to God’s plans for his creation.  One day God will renew his creation, and what he has done in the new birth he has given Christians is the ‘firstfruits’ that reveals a glimpse of what that will be like.  We, and especially our relationships together, are a little taste of ‘heaven on earth’  -  the future brought forward into the here-and-now.  So, a bottom-line point for today:  why strive to be godly today when maybe it’s easier not to be?  Because God has made me and us to be a sign of what one day he has in store for all creation, and why would I not give myself to being a decent, clear sign rather than an uncertain one?

Very few of us would describe ourselves as ‘born again’, probably because for us that phrase brings some cultural connotations to mind that we would rather not be associated with.  However if the concept is not part our the fundamental way in which we understand ourselves as Christians then we’re depriving ourselves of something vital.  It’s the ultimate ‘once-for-all’ description of the salvation that God as achieved for us:  it’s an entirely new transformation, and it can’t be undone.  In yesterday’s sermon I illustrated it by saying that it looks as if Nicodemus, who comes to talk to Jesus at night, is after some kind of spiritual up-grade (v.3).  Jesus, though, cuts across him and sets his own agenda:  (1) he’s come to bring us into God’s Kingdom, and (2) that only happens by a transformation that God must do for us  -  a transformation that’s so radical that Jesus likens it to being born all over again.  Jesus in effect tells him that he doesn’t need a spiritual upgrade but a spiritual cleansing and renewal (‘water and Spirit’, v.5).
We need to learn this profound truth and call it to mind at key times:
- when I think that God has given up on me and withdrawn his Spirit:  no he hasn’t, because he doesn’t give someone new birth only to abandon them (as Magnus Magnusson used to say on Mastermind, so the Spirit says, “I’ve started, so I’ll finish”).
- when I’m tired of the battle with sin:  would I rather live in ways befitting my old self, or befitting the new creation that God has made me to be?
- when I feel a failure in some part of life and of relationship with God:  did God make me his own because I seemed like a candidate with potential and I’ve now proved by my failure that he was wrong (no), or because he simply chose to give me a new belonging to him as a Spirit-filled man (yes).

If you still struggle to call yourself ‘born again’ in public because you suspect people will take it the wrong way, try calling yourself ‘a new creation’ (see 2 Cor 5.17)  -  it means basically the same thing.

If you’re looking for this week’s daily readings, I put them in a post here a few days ago.

Off we go again!  It’s a great topic to start with  -  the new life and new birth that the Holy Spirit brings about in the believer.  Here are the coming week’s readings, and I’ll start my blog comments on them on Monday.

Due to popular demand (well, sort of!) I’ll be back here in the blogosphere, every Monday and Thursday, starting Monday 14th.

Hi all
My blog is taking a break for a week or two, along with the provision of daily Bible readings.  Thanks to all who filled in their response forms about all this in church a couple of weeks ago.  I’ve asked our Administrator Sarah to crunch all the results from that together, and when I’ve seen it I’ll post the outcome here and then decide if it’s worth continuing, and if so in what form.
Tim

In a recent reply to one of my blog posts Mike King prompted me to post some thoughts I had on the recent men’s night away.  That’s a good nudge, and I’m happy to oblige.  If this starts/continues a conversation then all to the good.  So in no particular order:
- Youth hostels are nothing like I remember them from 30 years ago.  No one told me to sweep the stairs after breakfast, and I didn’t have to hide my car round the corner and walk up to the door pretending to look liked I’d hiked all the way.
- An unlimited full-fat breakfast buffet feels good for the spirits while being bad for the arteries.
- We live pretty close to some fine countryside.
- Where else in our world except in the Christian community would such a massively diverse group of men (in terms of age, interest, formal education, background, etc) find as much in common as we did in Christ, crammed into that little kitchen on the Friday night?
- It was a joy to see one man with no interest in film or sci-fi listening with delight to another man who is a total enthusiast for that stuff (Keith and Simon, you know who you are).
- I honestly think that the Sunday evening sessions we’ve planned as a follow-up could be among the most significant times that I will have had at Trinity…  men wanting to get together to do all they can to stand up as men of God in their marriages, families, homes, friendship groups, workplaces…  God can do extraordinary things through ordinary people who are all out for him.
- I think I now know who the chief snorers are, who I might want to try to avoid rooming with next time.  (I obviously don’t snore  -  no need to check this with Erica.)
- Other brothers around to encourage me in walking with Christ is one of God’s greatest gifts to me.  My particular role in church life sometimes makes me forget that.

That’ll do for now.

In v.10 Paul gives a stunning description of what it means ‘to know Christ’.  He spells it out in two brief phrases, and I will say a little about each:
- to know the power of his resurrection
How could we ‘know’ power like that now?  The answer is:  in our conversion, and in our on-going growth in godliness and in perseverance in Christ.  In you are united by faith to Christ, then you are a new creation (2 Cor 5.17).  The power from God that made that happen to you was the same power that raised Jesus from the dead doing the same kind of work, i.e. creating something new.  Our conversion is really something to marvel at.

- participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.
I have been thinking for a while about the right kind of answer to the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”.  I suspect that this is especially a problem for our techonological culture which provides more people with a high level of personal luxury, comfort and health-care than people have ever experienced.  In this environment, suffering appears to us more like an inexplicable evil since it is the one thing that we scurry around spending money trying to avoid.  Be that as it may, that question will not go away.  How would Paul have answered that question?  In light of v.10, wouldn’t he have spoken of the Son of God who himself was more perfectly innocent than any of us, and who willingly went through immense suffering?  If that was his story, who are we to expect a more comfort-filled path through life than his?  And if we want to be united with him so as to be brought back into relationship with our Father and our creator, but also treat every element of suffering as some outrageous event that calls God’s goodness into question and sends us spiralling into great angst, who (to put it not very politely) do we think we are?!  As with all seemingly philosophical questions about Christian faith, the best answers are found in deep thought about Christ himself.
So the next time someone asks you about good people suffering, try saying something like:  “Well, the most innocent person who ever lived, that’s Jesus, suffered horribly, and he trusted in God to the very end.  I want to be with him.”  At least, then, if they want to take the conversation further, there’s a decent chance it’ll be about Jesus.