Author: Steven J. Lawson

Publication details: Moody Publishers, Chicago, 2003

“We cannot play at preaching.
We preach for eternity.”
C.H. Spurgeon
 

Famine in the Land strikes a strong note. It is not an unfamiliar one, and has been heard enough times in its passionate (re-)call to the people of God back to the fundamental things that matter. But it is a needed cry in that its repeated declamations often go unheard in our ears. For all the noise that noisome prophets make, we seem unusually, in this age of super-technology, incapable of processing anything that seems remotely unfriendly to our convenient lives and therapeutic spirituality. Famine in the Land is not a feel-good book. It will not make you over. It really is too old-fashioned for that. What it does is to offer a strong voice for what Steven Lawson and others like him consider a neglected work: biblical preaching. Like hammer on anvil, the book hits out on a single note, reminding pastors and preachers alike of the one holy thing God has called them to do above all else: in season and out of season, preach the Word!
 

Steven Lawson takes a hard stand; it is probably not one everyone would agree with, but it is a stand worth thinking hard about. In a day when the evangelical movement seems to be making inroads into broader society and culture (theatre, literature, music, recording and broadcasting, business etc), it appears as if contemporary Christianity is riding on the crest of a very good wave indeed. And yet … And yet it is apparent too that at the same time, there is an uncomfortable realization that evangelical Christianity resembles so much of the culture around that the vigour and depth of an earlier faith is missing. Lawson puts it down to a spiritual famine in the land, occasioned by a terrible neglect of “true preaching, biblical preaching, expository preaching” of God’s Word from the sacred pulpit. Amos 8: 11 is the verse he draws upon, and suggests that it is this spiritual famine of an understanding of God, and a knowledge of the glory of the Lord that has left the contemporary evangelical movement weak and shallow.

In an age where bigger is deemed better, and the Christian message is designed in such a way as to be friendly and relevant to the world, Lawson’s call to return to a proper diet of biblical exposition as the main course of the church’s meal seems outdated—but refreshingly so. It is almost a relief to be reminded that the apostles focused on preaching and teaching, fellowship, worship, prayer, service, and evangelism. It is almost a relief to be further told that these essential components of dynamic spiritual life can take place without media gimmicks, musicals, pageants, skits and sketches, Christmas extravaganzas and other novelties “enhancing” the message of the gospel for the consumption of a world waiting to be entertained. As Lawson informs us, the simple bare facts of the bible message, preached with passion and conviction, stirred and moved in the power of the Spirit of truth, are all that is necessary to bring about repentance, growth and renewal: “Biblical preaching must always occupy the leading place of influence in the life of any church. At the core of any healthy congregation is a vibrant exposition of God’s Word.”

The alternative is pabulum in the pulpit. Congregations focused on anything less than a steady diet of biblical exposition open themselves to spiritual malnutrition that leaves individuals stunted and incapable of appreciating the whole counsel of God. Spiritual motivational pep talks and other junk food take the place of compelling, soul-searching sermons; and congregations starve as they are lulled into a languorous stupor.

If preachers would “focus on filling the pulpit” with the beef and steak of Scripture instead of worrying about filling the building, they would rediscover the spiritual potency of the inspired Word, breathed out by God for the admonishment, encouragement, growth and strengthening of the believers. What would be the consequences of returning bible exposition to the core of Christian gatherings? Lawson contends that the primitive church grew in the truth and in numbers as they devoted themselves to the teachings of the apostles. A Word-fed church is a fellowshipping church, is a worshipping church, is a praying church, is a serving church, is a joyful church, is a witnessing church. That being so, the priority of the pastor-preacher must return to the primacy of the Word and away from marketing, canvassing, fundraising and even administration. Great spiritual change cannot be effected in any other way than through the passionate proclamation of the Word that gives rise to faith in those who hear. Repentant streams and revival fires cannot begin without the heart desiring first of all to be filled with the prophetic proclamation of the will of God.

The preoccupation of biblical preaching is never without its application. For the first church believers, theory without practice would have been quite unthinkable. Exposition and exhortation were always for the purpose of application and practice. Lawson points out that the preacher must firstly frequently and scrupulously examine his personal life as well as his teaching. Paul, for instance, tells Timothy: “Pay close attention to yourself and your teaching; persevere in these things; for as you do this you will insure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you” (1 Timothy 4: 16).  Timothy’s faithfulness to his teaching would produce the same commitment in his hearers, as Paul well knew. Puritan Thomas Manton put it thus: “The hearer’s life is the preacher’s best commendation.”

Lawson draws upon many such witnesses from the annals of Christian history to speak his case. Scripture itself is replete with such fiery pulpit men as Ezra and Jonah, Amos and Paul. More recent church history further fills its pages of character and experience with the Spurgeons, Wesleys, Mantons, Lloyd Joneses and so on, that marked periods of revival and growth in the church. The point is clear: without faithful exposition and teaching and preaching, there can be no truly healthy, vibrant, growing church. For all our desire to be relevant to the world at difficult and challenging times, what we really need to recover is the simplicity and power of the proclamation of God’s Word. When all else is swept away by time’s awful tide, this skein of worthy gold will remain as the enduring work we offer God.       

Author: Dallas Willard
Publication Details: New York, HarperSanFrancisco, 1998

This is a book that Richard Foster says gives him a weltenschauung, a worldview.  It is easy to see why. The Divine Conspiracy is a masterly piece of writing, comprehensive and wide, and designed to draw its readers to a breathtaking view of God from a most hopeful vantage point which begins by proposing what we all know but often fail to practise: that the new life in God Jesus came to talk about and initiate is not only a remote possibility but an immediate and lively reality into which we can enter.  Willard provides a timely call back to Christian discipleship, and argues from the viewpoint that discipleship to Christ is the most profoundly satisfying life for human beings.
 

In point of fact, Willard’s subject is not new; he deals with the preoccupation of generations of Christians for whom discipleship to the Master created a revolutionary way to live and consider life, and who strove to pass on some of the astounding spiritual insights they had garnered to seekers of God around them. On reading Willard, we are drawn back to and reminded of these previous apprentices of Jesus Christ from diverse traditions, such as Augustine, Thomas a Kempis, Brother Lawrence, John Cotton, William Law, Dietrich Bonhoeffer … It is an impressive list comprising human lives made unique and beautiful by the inspiriting of the Master’s life. But Willard demonstrates how this list does not end merely with chance individuals breaking up the dull stretch of human history with momentary remembrances of the transcendent. The Divine Conspiracy opens up the sustained hopefulness and challenges of kingdom life lived by every disciple of Jesus Christ who undertakes seriously the call to obedience and apprenticeship. He returns us to what Jesus taught about the kingdom: “When Jesus directs us to pray, ‘Thy kingdom come,’ he does not mean we should pray for it to come into existence. Rather, we pray for it to take over at all points in the personal, social, and political order where it is now excluded. ‘On earth as it is in heaven.’ With this prayer we are invoking it, as in faith we are acting it, into the real world of our daily existence.” Willard’s focus centres on Jesus’ emphasis on kingdom life and offers a penetrating reading of the present realities of this life which corrects our distorted imaginings of it.
 

What makes Willard’s tour de force different from other books, and other contemporary calls to discipleship, is that he presents both philosophy and a practical programme through which discipleship is framed and worked out in the everyday. Theory and practice in one breath, reflecting thoroughly and ably Willard’s own pastoral experience and  philosophical convictions.  I might also add that he convinces because of his argument for the simplicity and reasonableness of kingdom life—its essence is reflected too in engaging and accessible prose  which neither befuddles nor gushes. 

The Divine Conspiracy suggests that life lived in imitation of Christ  is one that is irresistibly joyful and appealing. It is life at its most intense, deepest and fullest because it both follows and shares in the spontaneous and original source of joy, which is God. The immediacy of Godlife in our worlds and contexts is often not apparent to us.  Discipleship is, in Willard’s words, “no longer thought of as in any way essential to faith in him. It is regarded as a costly option, a spiritual luxury, or possibly even as an evasion.” What is the obvious and necessary life seems far away and impossible for us: “The most telling thing about the contemporary Christian is that he or she has no compelling sense that understanding of and conformity with the clear teachings of Christ is of any vital importance to [their] life, and certainly not that it is in any way essential  … Such obedience is regarded as just out of the question or impossible.” Becoming Christ-like, however, is the demand and reward of the disciple of Jesus—that is the heart of his celebratory gospel declaration that the “kingdom of God is at hand!”

In contrast to this vigorous, demanding and therefore infinitely satisfying challenge to godly and God-filled living is the insipidity of contemporary understandings of the Christian life. A faith that Willard describes as “the gospel of sin management” and “bar code Christianity” guarantees a ticket to a comfortable afterlife, but has no impact on the here and now. “Consumer Christianity” and “bumper-sticker faith” diminish unforgivably the seriousness and nobleness involved in our setting our treasures in heaven, and investing in eternity.  The sugared pieties of such “Christianity” cast the call of Jesus Christ against the pressures of an overwhelming secularity in society that views the spiritual in terms of its irrelevancies to life today. Willard demonstrates with directness how, in fact, “the fault lies not in the stars but in ourselves” that we are regarded in such dismal ways.  His springcleaning of our mental drawers is girded by his incisive and refreshing insights into Scripture—we emerge straightened  with an appreciation for the things of God that makes  The Divine Conspiracy truly redemptive in its purpose.  God conspires indeed for the good of the souls of men.

Life in Christ is not futile. Discipleship is not a luxury or optional extra that we can choose or ignore. Taste and see! That is Willard’s clarion call. Jesus’ challenge to his hearers to count the cost remains as valid and true today as in his time. But we misunderstand his meaning if we think he refers merely to the difficulties of the climb. Jesus saw fully the incredible life he was offering his hearers. He meant that we could not possibly not count the cost of rejecting such an apprenticeship, and settle instead for the appalling smallness and meanness of life without him.  
 

This review was first published in a Kairos monograph, Understanding the Modern World Through Christian Eyes: Transforming Truth, June 2001, pp. 18-19.

Author: John Schneider

Publisher: Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press, 1994
 

Christians labour under the weight of their own possessions, it seems, often swinging from extremes of sheer indulgence to guilt-stricken remorse at owning more than the absolute necessities of life. John Schneider observed the same unease and guilt in his middle-class seminary students, who struggled to reconcile worldly success and sacrificial discipleship. In Godly Materialism, he offers a refreshing look at the Christian possession of wealth, contending that the Bible neither denigrates nor praises either poverty or wealth as the ideal state of the faithful disciple. By drawing from both the Old and New Testaments, Schneider provides grist for the argument in support of a responsible and proper Christian attitude towards money and possessions.
 

He attempts to prove that the identity crisis facing rich Christians is derived from our incapacity to marry both enjoyment and use in our regard of material possessions, or see that God, at one and the same time, has made bedmates of privilege and responsibility. Writing most particularly for an American audience, Schneider traces the roots behind the sharp line now drawn between a utilitarian view of goods and possessions, and the use (or abuse) of material possessions for one’s own enjoyment. He suggests that neither extreme position is the proper position to take, and views the whole troubled issue of material gain from the perspective of an embracing godliness which he calls a “godly materialism.” Scripture, then, as he demonstrates, does not “pit material delight against the radical pursuit of social justice,” but offers instead an unblinkered view of ownership and material muchness which is girded by the spirit of justice and compassion, of responsibility and redemptiveness.
 

It is clear, from his tracing the relationship between Christians and money down the ages, that we have plenty to do with Mammon. Our faith is an embodied faith, and our sure calling is one which is worked out in the materiality of mortal, earthly life. If Jesus is indeed God enfleshed, then Christians need to tackle God’s instruction to Adam to have dominion over the earth.
 

Dominion, which is expressed in terms of productive labour, “abundance, flourishing and delight,” excludes any suspicious taints of leftover Gnosticism which might make of Christians “haters of the body” and “the great despisers of the earth,” as Schneider pertinently points out in his references to the modern film, Babette’s Feast. Schneider’s argument is simple and straightforward: we live in a material world which God made. Our human complexity complicates the ways in which we work out our stewardship of God’s good earth because of our early brush with the “serpent’s tongue.” Therein lies all our sorrow and pain in regard to the things that we are given; there too must begin our slow crawl through the craggy pass to learn again how freedom and delight must embrace love and justice before we can rediscover any authentic position of true stewardship. We are not to be too otherworldly because “the God of the Bible wants to be known as the liberator of the oppressed.” In our involvement with Mammon, we are to act out an understanding of true stewardship that allows for our enjoyment of our possessions as well as fostering a healthy detachment from them that originates from a powerful impulse to compassionate giving.
 

The prophets’ oracular calls to repentance centred on compassion for the poor, implying God’s special concern for the underprivileged of the world. Schneider reminds us, however, that being poor is of no greater intrinsic value than being rich. God’s care is for the “righteous poor,” suggesting therefore that there is such a thing as the “unrighteous poor.” In truth, God’s great concern is for the anawim (righteous poor) who, because of their integrity, suffer poverty and deprivation, and not because they are poor. Likewise, there are such persons as the “righteous rich” who, because they “[empower] the poor through the use of financial leverage,” are fulfilling their proper roles as true stewards of God.
 

Schneider spends significant time discussing Old Testament ideas of ownership and personal property by drawing from Exodus, Leviticus, the Prophets and the Wisdom books, particularly Proverbs. His examination of land ownership in ancient Israel presents an interesting picture of God’s economic vision for a previously powerless people. He moves on to the New Testament in similar ways, examining the social and economic world that Jesus came from, and proposes that Jesus and his disciples occupied what is comparable to the middle class stratum of society today. However, it is this same Jesus who, in a spirit of abandonment, lives out a life of itinerant poverty, and announces to would-be acolytes that “foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Property-less, it would seem, he encourages his disciples to the same foolhardiness: they “left everything, and followed him.” How does this square with the Jesus of whom the Pharisees said came eating and drinking like a glutton, and who hung out with tax collectors and prostitutes? Schneider connects the extremes of “sacrifice and flourishing, weakness and power,” suggesting that Jesus’ radical call was to both, and not one or the other. Jesus’ call to denial certainly reached further into the human heart than merely giving up property and ownership. Similarly, his call to celebration reached deeper into the life of the personality than merely eating and drinking. His call was a call to the startlingly new “kingdom of God” which was “at hand,” a kingdom which overthrew the skewered reign of sin and ushered in wholeness and healing to human life. This perspective is certainly embracing of life itself, and Schneider’s development of the gospel of grace is never apart from the fact of its operating within our material lives.

Godly Materialism affirms the goodness of the material world in that it comes from God, as all good things do. Schneider admittedly offers a kindlier view of material possessions and wealthy Christians than some writers of more extreme and uncompromising positions do. Some readers may find him too indulgently encouraging because of this. But the really good thing about this book is that it allows the debate to continue in a context which is non-threatening and without the guilt-ridden remorsefulness that prevents healthy and vigorous questioning from both sides of the equation: to have or have not.
 

This review was first published in a Kairos monograph, Understanding the Modern World through Christian Eyes: Culture, February 2002, pp. 20-21.