Ed Clowney on meeting Jesus

I read this gem of a quote from Ed Clowney yesterday:

The word of the Lord constantly presents the Lord of the word. Coming to the word is coming to the Lord. This central truth cuts both ways. We cannot detach the word from the Lord and, like the scribes and the Pharisees, profess to cling to the Scriptures while refusing the Lord. On the other hand, neither can we profess obedience to the Lord while rejecting his word. To separate a living Lord from a 'dead' book or a divine Lord from a merely human book is to reject the apostolic gospel....

Those who read the word of God, and surely those who teach it, must never forget why the word is given and whom it reveals. The word shows us that the Lord is good; his words are sweeter than honey to our taste because in them the Lord gives himself to us.

-- The Message of 1 Peter: The way of the cross, pages 79-81

It is a sad situation in UK evangelicalism that people often divide themselves into either 'Bible people' or 'experience people'. What Clowney says is helpful. Being a Christian is all about experience, because it is all about relating to the living Lord Jesus. But the Bible - when properly handled, and with the Spirit's help - brings us to the Lord Jesus himself, so that readers experience him, and taste and see that the Lord Jesus himself is good.

Trusting in the power of God's word

On Sunday I preached at Moorlands Evangelical Church, my church in Lancaster, on the subject of wives and husbands from 1 Peter 3:1-7.

I was fairly concerned about this task: only having been married for eight weeks myself, I didn't exactly have very much marital experience of my own to bring. Add to this phrases such as 'wives, submit to your husbands' and the wife being referred to as 'the weaker partner' and it felt like there was quite a task on my hands!

Well, praise God that he speaks through his word by his Spirit: something I was reminded of again on Sunday. I tried to let the passage speak for itself as much as possible, and was delighted to chat afterwards with an engaged couple, a woman who had been married for more than fifty years, and a divorced man, all of whom said that God had spoken to them through the passage.

Praise God that the preacher's task is not to preach himself! Thank goodness that a sermon is not for a preacher to broadcast their theories or opinions. As John Stott puts it, 'we are trustees of God's revelation, and are determined above all else to be faithful in our stewardship.'

Incidentally, if you would like to listen to the sermon, it's available online at http://www.moorlands.org.uk/sermons/mec070805.mp3.