Stuff Michael Meeks is doing

• The Corinthian's drunk deep of the Greek dichotomy between the body & the soul. Paul refutes this in 12... God loves the universe, and our bodies - had a gospel for the whole person not just the soul; healing the sick - not telling them to ignore their bodies.
• God is also interested in more than your soul, but also your body - the body is not made for immorality. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is within you, you are not your own you are bought at a price, therefore honour your body.
• Park Street committed not only to mission in a spiritual sense, but also to physical bodies; many medics are sent to heal the sick, the international justice mission - using christian criminologists, forensic specialists, lawyers, judges - honouring the God of justice.
• Christ's resurrection the prototype, we will be like him. Paul doesn't just assert that he was resurrected, but that it is knowable. Acts 1 He appeared to the apostles over the period of 40 days
• Paul gives 6 examples of his appearing; not to just some isolated individuals: some believers, others sceptics, etc. appeared to 500 at a time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep - the vocabulary of the first Christian martyr (Stephen) who as he was being stoned prayed do not hold this sin against them - and then he fell asleep. Many of these gave their lives for their testimony.
• You can have misguided religious fanatics who are willing to die for what they believe in; servicemen can similarly. Christian witnesses in contrast were persecuted for their testimony to the resurrection - that hundreds of them would be willing to go to cheerfully to their death for something they knew was false; is strange indeed.
• 3 witnesses mentioned all who didn't want to see the resurrected Jesus - hostile witnesses.
  • Peter - denied Jesus 3 times before he died to servant girls. Hours before he had sworn to die with him rather than deny him. An uncomfortable re-union with Jesus after the resurrection. What turned Peter from a weak kneed quitter to someone who would confess Christ before the Sanhedrin days later ?
  • James - disbelieved in Jesus - his half brother - considered him a mental case. Mark 3:21: no one talks like this who is sane. Yet - he was turned around, after Jesus' death; James was a leader of the Church in Jerusalem, and in AD 62 was stoned and clubbed to death for his faith.
  • Paul - like Osama Bin-Laden, any chance of him becoming a Christian ? exactly the same with Paul. He was self-satisfied, assured and self righteous. He was trying to purify the land from false prophets, not on his way to a prayer meeting in Damascus, but to kill more Christians. Jesus stopped him in his tracks, and turned him around - an example that no-one is beyond saving. What does God think of those who kill people: Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief ... is a trustworthy saying worthy of full acceptance: that Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst 1Tim1 - something we can all echo.
• The ultimate proof of the resurrection is that Jesus is alive and well, and can come into your life and change it right now. By the grace of God I am what I am and his grace to me was not without effect.
• Not making us perfect immediately, but setting us free from being a slave to sin. Christ is alive and well, he wants you because he can do with your life, more than you can do with it.

• Our testimony like that of John Newton, (Amazing Grace), from a dysfunctional home, abandoned by his father, mother died when he was 6. Went to sea, no other way to survive, a life of debauchery. Would enjoy new sailors coming aboard, making fun of their faith, and encouraging them in drunkenness and all the rest. Age 22 he had witnessed, crossing the Atlantic with slaves; with 1/4 of them dying of dysentry and malnutrition - and was untouched by it, so hardned was his heart.

  At a point age 22 on a similar voyage, in a great storm, the mast split, half the deck lifted up, the sails gone and all the sailors crying out for their lives. Newton suddenly confronting ultimate reality - had the gall to cry out May the Lord have mercy. As he said it, he began thinking of his whole life of blasphemy, that every ounce of his being was against God; didn't even know how to swim, would surely drown. 27 days later, as they were eating their last provision, drinking their last drops of fresh water, they hit land on the coast of Ireland. Newton got off that boat a new creature in Christ.

  He left the slave trade, and spent the rest of his days fighting against slavery. He became a pastor, but instead of wearing robes, always wore his sailors uniform into the pulpit so he would never forget that once I was blind, but now I see

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• Man born of woman, is of few days, and full of trouble Job 14 If a man dies, will he live again ?.
• The Corinthians didn't get it - drunk the contemporary Greek thinking. The resurrection is patterned on Christ; If Christ has not been raised our preaching is useless, and so is your faith, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins etc. ( 1 Cor 15) - the antithesis to Pascal's wager: If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men..
• The Apostles creed: I believe in the holy spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body & the life everlasting, Amen.
• Today you will be with me in paradise - yes to prefer to be away from the body and at home with Christ is good but there we get clothed with a new body.
• How are the dead raised ? With what kind of body will they come - a cynical Greek view, it's a disgusting idea - a re-animted cadaver ? - arthritic ?
• Appeal to the natural analogy of sowing a seed to create a new plant to cover 3 points:
  • The necessity of death: How foolish ! what you sow does not come to life unless it dies - Corinthian smug self satisfaction - already you have all you want (4:8) - Kingship is on the other side of the grave. To wear the crown you have to bear the cross. Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies - it remains only a single seed, but if it dies it becomes many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. - John 12.
  • Is it 'just a spiritual resurrection' ? - no. The continuity & discontinuity. While the seed doesn't really die - it seems to disintegrate; it gives an impression of dying. When you sow, you don't plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else: continuity plant an acorn - you don't get a maple tree: it's still you. Discontinuity - death; God gives it a body as he has determined
  • All flesh is not the same: Men, animals, birds, fish - God creates amazing diversity. The sun, moon, stars are all different - and radically different from us - none of us wanders around shining. God is incredibly creative and can do it.
• A huge amount we don't know - are babies ressurected as adults ? are octogenarians resurrected as 65 year old retirees, we don't know; we do know:
  • The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable - our bodies are given to decay and degeneration, death then disintegration.
  • The body that is sown in dishonor, is raised in glory - bodies a source of permanant embarassment; Death - the ultimate humiliation Sherman Newland a surgeon at - Yale Medical School in his book 'How we die' says: If peace and dignity are what we delude ourselves to expect, most of us will die wondering what we or our doctors have done wrong... By and large dying is a messy and painful business. Not a rosy picture. Paul acknowledges this - as it is sown in dishonor - but it is raised in glory and honour Well done my good and faithfull servant, because you have been faithful in little - take charge of 12 cities.
  • The body that is sown in weakness, is raised in power - Newland again: A study of those who die in old age; 84 years+ the lesson from 23 case histories - whether the cause is the anarchy of disordered bio-chemistry; or it's opposite, we die of old-age because we have been worn, torn and progammed to cave in. The very old do not surcumb to disease, they implode their way to eternity. Even if they happened to die of pneumonia autopsies reveal they could have died the next day of any of 10 other causes. The body will be raised in power though: look to Jesus, he appears through locked doors; he appears so suddenly he startles them A ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see I have Luke 24.
  • The body that is sown a natural body, it is raised as a spiritual body - not physical vs. spiritual; the resurrection in a material thing. The natural body is animated by the soul, the resurrection body is animated by the spirit. When it is sown it embodies the soul, when it's raised it embodies the spirit The holy spirit currently gives life only from the heart out, a promise of the resurrection.
• Don't sign up for a liquid nitrogen bath: Listen I tell you a mystery - we shall not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a flash - in the twinkling of an eye - fastest known unit of time then before the nanosecond, at the last trumpet
• Why sleep ? just like a body sleeping through the night, touch the person and they don't respond, they're just away for a while. Has Jesus turned your grave into a bed ? Gordon encourages people when considering funeral arrangements - to get the undertakers to dress people in their coffin in pyjamas not a suit - they're just sleeping.
• How will God wake us - with a loud command, as at creation. Blaise Pascal - What is more difficult to be born or rise again - that that which has never been to be, or that which has been, to be again ? - Teach me to live that I may dread, the grave as little as my bed, teach me to die so that I may rise glorious at the judgement day.
• The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed The Trumpet - a call to herald the presence of God as at Mount Sainai, or as in Matthew 24: to signal that the troops are on the way.
• Then death will be defeated, Then the saying that is written will come true: 'Death has been swallowed up in victory'
• Challenged to follow the example of Amy Carmichael a missionary to India: refused to be photographed ( despite being rather pretty ): why would you want to preserve your likeness now, when in just a few moments we'll be transformed into his likeness. When he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
• Not to be so heavenly minded - you're no earthly good, of course it gives us comfort in aging but Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. - living not just for now - For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.

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• The Trinity: 17 texts mentioning the Father, Son & Holy Spirit in the same breath - baptising in the name of all 3; co-equality. All Christian churches agree on the doctrine, E. Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, etc.
• The translation of the sacred name of God (Yahweh) to Greek rendered 'Lord' used in the NT applied to Jesus. cf. Acts 2 quotation of Joel 2 Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
• Stephen - as he was stoned to death [NB. fell asleep] said, Lord Jesus recieve my spirit. Remarkably parallel to Jesus's words from the cross, but to God.
• He is the image of the invisible God, the first born over all Creation ... [things] visible and invisible. EM radition yes of course, but really a grand theory of everything.
• How about Creation. With a Ptolemaic vision - the Earth the center it makes transparent sense that God was incarnate here. vs. Carl Sagan's - the pale blue dot - a thin film of life on an obscure lump of rock and metal, a lonely spec in an eveloping cosmic dark.
• several major misunderstandings:
• Facts do not speak for themselves: By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command. When we see them we think: The heavens declare the glory of God. I can't even convince you you're awake - only with your eyes open can you see the evidence that you are.
• ~200bn stars in the milky way, ~100bn galaxies. Oh Lord our Lord how majestic is your name in all the earth - When I consider the heavens the work of your fingers, the heavens that you set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him.
• Bible doesn't require a young earth, some suggest creation in 4004BC, based on genaeology in scriptures. Genaeologies are almost always selective, Matthew: Jesus is the son of David, son of Abraham. David ~1k BC, Abraham ~2k BC, Matthew knows that. Later more comprehensive: 14+14 generations mentioned, but the OT mentions at least 3 names he omits; that's standard proceedure; typical in the ancient world.
• Bible doesn't prohibit plant/animal death before the fall. More than 700 distinct species in the fossil record, when did they exist ? the dinosaur question, 2 options:
  • No death before Adam/Eve sinned, they continued to inhabit the planet with us until they were wiped out.
  • Is that likely ? Jurrassic park: in the wisdom of God, why have Tyrannosaurus Rex in the garden of Eden ?
  • God in his wisdom got rid of the dinosaurs long before we arrived - 65million years ago. Assumes death arrived before the fall.
• Every time death is mentioned with respect to the fall, the bible stresses it's human death. The animals didn't sin, humans sinned. Death enters through that act, but only to men.
• Psalm 104, talks about creation, walks through Genesis 1 verse by verse. The 4th day, darkness - The beasts of the field prowel - what are they prowling for - carrots ? the lions roar for their prey - God gave them sharp teath, excellent steroscopic vision, fleetness of foot etc.
• God clothes the man/women with animal skins - but just glosses over this - of course animals die.
• Genesis not an exhaustive or exclusive account of creation. Not exhaustive: no account of creation of air, fire, water, or angels. Not exclusive, the doctrine of concurrence:
  • Why does it rain ? a christian view of meterology ? We should have a Christian meterological society so we don't have to have pagan meterologist on TV !
  • The Lord does whatever pleases him, in the heavens and on the earth ... he makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth, he sends lighting with the rain, and brings out the wind from his storehouses. (Psalm 135).
  • Jesus said it was true too: He makes his rain fall on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5)
  • No more of these 'cold fronts' and 'isobars' - it's all God isn't it ?
  • Jeremiah goes so far as: Do any of the worthless idols of the nations bring rain ? Do the skies themselves send down showers ? No, it is you, O Lord our God. Therefore our hope is in you, for you are the one who does all this. - the sky can't do it unless God does it.
  • The laws of nature are just the customary ways in which God provides his providential care of the universe. They're his laws.
  • Elijah having prayed for rain after a prolongued drought - sends his servant to look for a cloud - God does it all, yet uses a cloud. God normally uses secondary causes - yet he does it all.
• The 7 days in Genesis 1 - need not be literal; or are literal 'heaven' days; not a new view caused by embarassment by evolution. Held by St. Augustine in 7 AD. The first fundamentalists held this view. God created the Sun for the marking of days, sun created day 4. The 7th day is still going on. God's 7th day rest is still going on Hebrews 4. Genesis 1: 'evening/morning' every day, but not on the 7th.
• What is a 'heavenly day' ? no idea. What is a doorpost and threshold in heaven ? - no idea; a useful anthropomorphism.
• A week, an unnatural measure of time; all man's 7 day cycles plaguerised from scripture. Natural: day, month, seasons, year. We get a lot of weeks; God has one. We're looking forward to the ultimate Sabbath - entering into God's rest.
• Empirical evidence - encourage us to apply what the bible says about creation. All human beings have a common ancestor - we go back to 1 ancestral pair. The Eve hypothesis - mitocondrial DNA, 100k years ago, same for Y chromosomes. A very 'fortuitous' mutation happened 100k years ago, no burial before then, not long thereafter art.
• Universality of the fall, everywhere you go - everyone is sinning. The !Kung San of the Kalahari desert - wonderfully peaceful hunter-gatherers, don't even spank their children - an anthropologists dream come true: all loving and peaceful. Problem is in further studies it was discovered they have a murder rate greater than NYC.
• Design: requires a couple of things; improbability is not enough. Throw a cork - draw a bull's eye exactly under it - not amazing. Have to design the bull's-eye first.
• You have to know God to know the evidence of his design; unity & diversity How many are your works Lord. You can't predict the Emu, you can't predict the gravitational constant - it reflects his soverign will not some necessity.
• The beauty of nature; it's just like him to make things like that. The Spirit's effort in creation - spirit breath - seen anyone die ? - an astonishing thing; all of a sudden the life goes out - and what you most notice - the stopping of breath; no more breath.
• God formed man from the dust and breathed into him life, Jesus breathed into his disciples the Holy Spirit. The world is not just a rock, but covered in life everywhere.
• How is it possible for such an enormous squandering of time: 10bn years of supernovae - millions of years of carboniferous plant growth to make the gas so you could drive to Church. Millions of species / stars dying that we might live.
• The cruciform theory of the universe: Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies it stays a single seed. All kinds of natural analogies preparing you to live a life of indebtedness.
• It's all as nothing prepared to what God was prepared to do 2000 years ago sending his Son to die for us. It was not with perishable gold/silver that you were bought - but with the precious blood of Christ. Who is worthy of these things ?

• Paul's circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, keeping God's commands is what counts (1 Cor 7:19) - clearly the civil and ceremonial law are fulfilled in Christ, no sacrificing of animals is necessary; but the moral law is binding.
• Non-Judgementalism

  The world non-judgementalism	Jesus'
  Whatever the other person has done, it cannot be wrong; No right or wrong; just different.	A genuine offence has been committed, we have to extend mercy & grace.
  Assumption that there are no absolute standards, judgementalism is imposimg my standards on others.	Assumption is that there are eternal and fixed standards; and these have already been violated - to judge not is to reach out with forgiveness and forebearance.
  Imagines it's getting an A+ in non-judgementalism	The world is getting a failing grade.

• Imagine a sin everyone agrees on eg. racism - a repugnant failure and transgression if ever there was.

  Reach for the stone pile

  reach-out with non-judgemental love, trying to restore and bring to ammendment the brother, in love.

• Real non-judgementalism as Jesus teaches - operates in the presence of offences, not in their absence.
• Keeping things in proportion: can tell a real christian - more offended by their own sin than by other people's The plank in their own eye - more upset by the mirror than the newspaper.
• How can we acquire this spirit: remember we are not God, not qualified to judge; who are you to judge another man's servant, to his own master he stands or falls (Romans 14)
• Not God - don't have the facts; don't know the struggles they face. The widow that gave her two coins gave more than all the others - from the saviors point of view; an adjustment factor.
• C.S.Lewis writes in Mere Christianity If you are a nice person, if virtue comes easy to you - you don't struggle with substance abuse, profanity, selfishness - if so, beware - much is expected from those to whom much is given. If you mistake for your own merits what God has just given to you, and if you're content with simply being nice; you're still a rebel. All those things will just make your fall more terrible, your corruption more complicated, your bad example more disastrous; the Devil was an archangle once. But if you are a poor creature, poisoned by a wretched upbringing, in some house full of vulgar jealosies and senseless quarrels, saddled by no choice of your own with some loathsome sexual perversion, nagged day in and out by some inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends - do not dispair. God knows all about it - you are one of the poor whom he has blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive; keep on; do what you can; one day perhaps in another world, and perhaps far sooner than that - he will fling it on the scrap-heap and give you a new one, and then you may astonish us all, not least yourself - for you have learned your driving in a hard school..
• Challenging stuff.