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TruthTalks: Theology is Important

Leave a Comment / Admin Posts, Blog, Home Bulletin, My Blog, Podcast, TruthTalks / TITW Admin

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What we believe, largely determines how we live.

Have you ever wondered:

What exactly theology is, and
Why it’s so important?

If you have, then you will enjoy this TruthTalks podcast episode where Dr. Christopher Peppler addresses these and many other issues around theology. Based on his article written HERE you may come to appreciate why theology is so important to us all – theologians and non-theologians alike. Press the play button to listen now, or download this episode and please support us on whatever channels you have access to.

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Until next time, admin

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Jesus and Pentecost

1 Comment / Articles, Blog, Home Bulletin, My Blog / Christopher Peppler

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Pentecost Sunday is the day when we celebrate the birth of the church and the coming of the Holy Spirit into the world. I have always strongly advocated that we should be Jesus-centred because he is the fullness of God in bodily form and thus the member of the Triune Godhead to whom we can best relate. However, with such focus on the Lord Jesus, we could neglect God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Pentecost is a time when we can rectify this tendency and so in this article I want to connect the Holy Spirit of Pentecost to Jesus.

The Pilgrim Feasts

The Day of Pentecost was one of the three pilgrim feasts of ancient Israel. By ‘Pilgrim’ I mean that these were the three feasts that all Jewish men were required by the Law of God to travel up to Jerusalem to attend. The three feasts were

Passover,
Tabernacles, and
Pentecost

and the Gospels record how Jesus attended Passover and Tabernacles; but what about Pentecost?

Pentecost marked the annual wheat harvest and Jesus must have celebrated at least two of these feasts in Jerusalem during his public ministry, so why is there no mention of this?

Jesus at the Feast of Pentecost

Well, perhaps the Gospels are not totally silent on Jesus’ attending the Feast of Pentecost. John 5:1 records that Jesus ‘went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews’. Could this have been the Feast of Pentecost? The passage goes on to describe how he healed a lame man at the pool of Bethesda. The Pharisees wanted to kill him over what he said and did on this occasion. To start with, he healed the man on the Sabbath and, in their opinion, this was breaking their holy law. Then to make things intolerably worse for them, Jesus called God his father, thus making himself equal to God.

In responding to the Pharisees, Jesus included something that, by implication, connected his baptism by John the Baptist to the Day of Pentecost he was in Jerusalem to celebrate. He told them that if they were not prepared to take what he said about himself as true, then they should rather accept John’s testimony about him. Then he went further and said that if even that was not good enough for them, then they should accept the fact that God himself had attested to his status. When did these two testimonials occur? They happened on the day that Jesus was baptised in the Jordan river at the beginning of his 3 years of public ministry. Matthew 3:11 records John’s words: “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire”. Matthew then recounts what happened when John baptised Jesus, the one he had foretold would come. He wrote: ‘As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

Now it seems significant to me that Jesus connected what he was doing on the Day of Pentecost with his water baptism sometime before.

John baptised Jesus in water and said that he, Jesus, would baptise not with water, but with fire. Jesus spoke about this baptism of fire when he told his disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they had received power from on high. He said, “John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 1:5). And when did that happen? Just ten days later on the Day of Pentecost. And what did this baptism look like? Fire! Fire from heaven.

The Empowering Spirit

When John baptised Jesus in water, the Holy Spirit came down upon him and filled him with power. After his baptism, the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness and Luke recorded that at the end of that time of testing ‘Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit’ (Luke 4:14).

It seems to me that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Jesus’ baptism occurred around the Day of Pentecost as he was on his way up to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast.

However, what is certain is that Jesus’ ministry started with a mighty empowerment of the Holy Spirit and the church’s ministry started the same way, on the Day of Pentecost. You see, on that day a group of 120 frightened but expectant disciples were baptised into the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. On that day the church was born, drew its first breath of the Spirit and rushed out into the streets to testify to the glory of God in Christ Jesus. On that great and wonderful day, the new Body of Christ on earth came into being. A body empowered by the same Holy Spirit that empowered Jesus for ministry. A continuation of the Lord’s earthly ministry and the ongoing place of his presence on earth.

Jesus’ Public Ministry

If Jesus’ public ministry perhaps started on the Day of Pentecost, when do you think it ended? When he died on the cross? No, because he rose again and continued ministering for another 40 days. Did it end when he ascended into heaven? No, because just 10 days later, possibly three years to the day, after his ministry started, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to raise up a body for him to continue his ministry on earth; the church.

Jesus’ earthly ministry has not ended. We, the Body of Christ, the church, continue it and will do so until he comes again in glory.

The Day of Pentecost is Important

The Day of Pentecost should be a very important memorial for all Christians because:

It is the birthday of the church, the Body of Christ on earth, the ongoing representation of his presence and ministry. Everyone born again of the Spirit is baptised into this glorious body… and that means you and me.
It is the celebration of the time when God the Holy Spirit took up residence in the church, of which we are part. When Jesus walked this earth, God was present with us in human form. Now he is with us in the person of the Holy Spirit in and through the church.
The Day of Pentecost is also important in that it reminds us that we, like Jesus and the very first church members, need to be empowered from on high. We need this to BE the effective, powerful, glorious church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Being born again is not an optional extra to being a Christian and being filled with the Spirit is not an optional extra either. Holy Spirit empowerment is essential for without it we can only function as part of a religious school or a social agency. But we cannot be part of the supernatural, world-changing, church of the Living God. Without the enabling of the Holy Spirit, we are little better than that poor man at the pool of Bethesda, lame, useless, and without hope.

So, dear disciples of Jesus, come to church every Sunday as though it were Pentecost Sunday. Come in desperate expectation, knowing that unless the Holy Spirit empowers us, we cannot hope to live and minister as Jesus’ representatives here and now. If you are able, spend time with God before you come to the church service. Prepare your spirit and cry out to him to fill you with power from on high and then come expecting this to happen. Come in full anticipation that the Holy Spirit will reveal Jesus more clearly to you and then send you out into your world to reveal Jesus and make him known.

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The best laid plans

Leave a Comment / Blog, Home Bulletin, My Blog / Christopher Peppler

I am sure that all preachers go through phases when they experiment with their sermons to try to make them more engaging. I have done this a number of times. I have experimented with preaching in tandem with a colleague – a sort of churchy Mutt and Jeff show. I have gone through seasons of preaching entirely without notes. I have tried drawing the congregation into participating. But the experiment I remember most vividly was when I set up someone in the congregation to object to something I said during the sermon. This is how it went down.

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My text concerned water baptism and because I had preached into this subject several times before, I wanted to take a novel approach. A particular couple had started attending the Sunday services recently and so were not yet known to most people in the congregation. I drew the husband aside before the service started and solicited his cooperation. His task was to wait until I made a particular point and then to jump up and challenge me. I would then answer him brilliantly and everyone would be greatly impressed.

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At exactly the right moment he leaped up from his chair and took issue with me in a loud voice. I responded with the preplanned rejoinder and after I had done so I said; “Please don’t think he was being rude. Actually, I asked him to interject because I thought it would liven things up a bit.” The concerned looks disappeared from most faces and a gentle corporate chuckle swept the hall. However, one dear lady was hard of hearing and although she had followed the exchange well enough she had not caught my explanation of how it had been a set up.

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She was an elderly lady who had spent many years in a church group that had a particular view of baptism. She believed that if one had been baptized in the Holy Spirit then water baptism by immersion was redundant. I suspect that the doctrine had been devised to solve the problem that some denominations have with baptizing adults who have been previously ‘christened’ as babies. In any event, this dear lady, and she was a very dear lady, had also only been attending our services for a few Sundays, and so she took the man’s earlier interjection as acceptable common practice. So, rising to her feet she stopped my sermon in midflight to politely explain her doctrine of baptism.

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The earlier planned attempt to shoot down my sermon had supported the case I was making for water baptism, but this second interruption threw me seriously off course. All I could do was to gently disagree, smile a lot, and then quickly ‘land the plane’ with an early conclusion.

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The best laid plans of mice and men go oft astray – yes they sure do. But, I still think preachers should mix things up from time to time. The Word of God needs to be presented with living freshness and within the context of real life. Why should a preacher be above contradiction? Why can’t genuine believers be given the opportunity of asking questions during a service? But I need to remind myself that lurking in the congregation will always be a dear old lady with a theological ground-to-air missile pointed at the preacher.

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Anointing – who needs it?

1 Comment / Articles, Published Articles / Christopher Peppler

The Pentecostal Movement of the late seventeen hundreds caused a stir in the mainline churches – or should I call it a Tsunami? It introduced the doctrine that believers need a second experience, baptism in the Holy Spirit, and that speaking in tongues was the evidence of this experience. In the nineteen sixties the Charismatic Movement embraced a similar doctrine but, unlike the Pentecostal Movement which resulted in new church denominations, the Charismatic Movement impacted all the traditional church groups. Whilst it had a profoundly positive influence on the life of many churches, it did stir up a lot of contention. Many traditional Christians saw the ‘second blessing’, evidenced by tongues, as a challenge to their status as saved followers of Jesus Christ. Many felt like second class citizens in the Kingdom of God.

What a terrible shame, and I mean that literally, that Christians should contend with one another over something profoundly fundamental to Christian Life. The issue is not so much how, when, and with what evidence do we receive ‘power from on high’, but that we all need to receive it.

The terminology has become confused – baptism by, with, in the Holy Spirit, and so on – so I will use the word ‘anointing’. I have taken this from 1 John 2 verses 20 and 27 where the Greek word Chrisma is translated as ‘anointing’. Anointing with oil was often used as an external evidence of a changed status. However, 1 John uses the word anointing to indicate an inner condition, the special endowment of the Holy Spirit. This is the meaning that I have applied to the word ‘anointing’.

At the most basic level this ‘special endowment’ is the empowerment given by the Holy Spirit. Surely all Christians need supernatural empowerment? How else are we to live above sin, to witness, and to minister life to others? Jesus said “…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Most of us accept that this statement applies to all believers, and not just to the first disciples. Jesus links power and witness; we are to be His witnesses but we need anointing in order to be effective witnesses.

Luke 11:13 records Jesus’ assurance that the Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask. So, instead of arguing about second blessings, baptism by, and so forth, we should be asking God the Father to anoint us with Holy Spirit power so that we can be effective disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 5:18 reads, ‘Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.’ The words ‘be filled’ translate the Greek present tense which indicates that this ‘filling’ is not a one-time past experience. We are to be continually filled with power from on high, for this anointing leads to effective Christian living as surely as drunkenness leads to debauchery.

I remember, as a new Christian, how I argued with my mother about the need to be filled with Holy Spirit power. She was an old-school Methodist, suspicious of Pentecostals and Charismatics. After a while I gave up and instead asked her when she had become a disciple of Jesus. She told me that she had been born again at a very early age. Then she paused reflectively and said, “but it was much later, when I was about eighteen, that I realised that I needed the power of the Holy Spirit in my life.” I had been pontificating about baptism in the Holy Spirit, tongues, gifts of the Spirit, and all that. She had been resisting because of the terminology and all the theological baggage the words carry. In essence though, we were in agreement – we need the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Anointing – who needs it? We all do.

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Stillborn Souls

1 Comment / Articles, Published Articles / Christopher Peppler

Published in SATS ‘Pastor to Pastor’

Anyone who has been a pastor for more than a decade will most likely have some of the following concerns:
• That, irrespective of the average wealth of the congregation, one third of the income earners supply two thirds of the church’s income.
• That no matter how often or enthusiastically the pastor calls the people to weekly corporate prayer, only a handful of people respond.
• That, even in a church that teaches believers baptism by immersion in water, so many folk who have transferred in have not been baptized and are reluctant to do so.
• That, despite the fact that the exercise of spiritual gifts is welcomed in the assembled church, so few people are prepared to minister in the power of the Holy Spirit.
• That, even after years of exposure to consistent biblical teaching, a distressingly large proportion of the people have an essentially consumerist attitude towards the church.
I love my local church and I am so grateful to God that He has allowed me to pastor it, yet I have to confess that all five of the above concerns continue to trouble me. Perhaps this is not your experience and these are not your concerns, but I suspect they are.
In this article I am not presuming to lecture or criticise. That would be unhelpful and hypocritical, seeing as how I have already admitted that these concerns apply to my local church. Rather, I am attempting to expose some possible underlying issues so that we can reason together and perhaps, with God’s help, find some solutions.
But first I need to make one disclaimer. I do not believe that everything we do has been preordained by God. I do not hold that those who are saved are favoured because God has decided beforehand that they are the select subjects of His irresistible grace. If you have an essentially Calvinistic theology then you might well have different concerns to mine and alternative ways of looking at things.
As a pastor, it would be easy to blame a perceived ‘Laodicean’ condition of the church on the world system or the devil. I am sure both of these have something to do with things, but perhaps it would be better to start with ourselves as pastors. How have we structured the church – have we set it up to produce exactly what now concerns us? How do we preach – ear-tickling topical sermons or passionate expositions of the written Word of God? I intend addressing these two subjects in later articles, but right now I want to respond to a third question; how do we evangelize? I have chosen to formulate my response under three headings; Doctrine of Salvation, Priority of Rebirth, and Altar-call Midwifery.

Doctrine of Salvation

Most modern theologians take a holistic view of human nature, or distinguish only between a material and immaterial component. I, on the other hand, believe that a functional trichotomy is more helpful in understanding human makeup. Of course, while on earth, we cannot reasonably separate our material being from our immaterial being. I also acknowledge that ‘spirit’ and ‘soul’ are interchangeable biblical words and conflated concepts. However, I firmly believe that the essential thing that separates human beings from all other creatures is not ‘mind’ but ‘spirit’. God created us in His image as triune beings – body, mind, and spirit.
I am starting the discussion at this point because I suspect that the modern (and postmodern) tendency to merge mind and spirit into one undifferentiated immaterial constituent is perhaps at the heart of the malaise we observe in so much of the church. Some of the almost inevitable results of this thinking are:
• Presenting Christianity as a knowledge-based religion rather than a living relationship with God and His children.
• The resultant focus on learning and the acquisition of biblical and theological knowledge.
• Emphasis on the human will and the need to commit to activities and causes.
• The programmatic approach to church and private life, including the areas of sanctification and evangelism.

Most pastors and theologians acknowledge that what we term ‘salvation’ is a process that extends through on-going sanctification to ultimate glorification (resurrection of the body). It could be argued that the concerns I have listed are evidences of lack of personal sanctification. In other words, the church people are just not growing into the likeness of Jesus as they should. Perhaps this is true of some, but I suspect that there is another reason. How can people grow spiritually if they are not born again spiritually? A still-born baby cannot grow, can it?
I am painfully aware that at this point I am running the risk of appearing judgemental. However, if many of my people are in effect still-born souls, this is probably more my fault than theirs. And if it isn’t my fault, then the blame lies with some other pastor. So, believe me, I realise that the finger curls back and points inwards. This article is an attempt to wrestle with these realities and to invite you into the ring with me.
The best place to begin is usually at the beginning, and the beginning of salvation is rebirth of the spirit.

Priority of Rebirth

Think for a minute about the terminology we use when explaining salvation. Typically, we speak about how Jesus paid the price on our behalf on the cross of Calvary, about being justified by faith, and about committing our lives to Jesus. When we wish to enquire about a person’s spiritual status we often ask, ‘When did you commit your life to Jesus?’ Even when we ask, ‘When were you born again?’ our expectation is that they will recount the time they said the ‘sinner’s prayer’ or responded to an altar-call, or made some form of commitment.
Of course commitment is an important part of salvation, but is it the first and primary element? When Jesus was discussing entry in the Kingdom of God with the learned Nicodemus, He said, ‘You must be born again’ (John 3:7). He then explained that He was describing a metaphysical reality, not a mental acceptance of a philosophy or teaching (John 3:5-8). If you think about it, Jesus taught only three things concerning the start of salvation – repent and believe (Mark 16:16), believe and be baptised (Mark 1:15), and be born again from above. (I regard baptism as the physical witness to repentance and belief, so I won’t deal with it further in this article.)

To repent is surely more than just changing our minds about our own sinful condition and about what Jesus has done for us. It must include a deeply heart-felt sorrow for our personal rebellion against God and the hopelessness of our lost condition. When Peter preached his first evangelistic sermon on the day of Pentecost the people were ‘cut to the heart’ (Acts 2:37). The accounts of the great revivals of the early twentieth century all recount how people responded to the proclamation of the Gospel with deep groans, crying, and palpable emotional discomfort – they were cut to the heart. This is the work of the Holy Spirit in convicting of sin, but also the experience and evidence of deep heart-felt mortification and shame before a holy yet loving saviour. I must ask the question, if there is no evidence of this sort of ‘repentance’, then is the rebirth of the spirit not aborted?
Similarly, to believe must surely mean more than just mental assent; it must also encompass a whole-hearted trust and abandonment of life to Jesus. ‘Save me Lord!’ is the cry of a desperate soul who has realised that true life is just not possible without the grace of God. It is the cry of someone who has realised the deadness of their spirit and their total dependence on the Holy Spirit to give them a spirit that is alive to God and His kingdom. All of this is summed up by the little word ‘belief’, but it is the result of a dynamic interaction between God and a repentant person – it is something in which both we and God are involved. Rebirth, on the other hand, is all of God. We cannot will our spirit alive and we cannot recreate it by force of our imagination. Only God can give the gift of a new spirit; only God can create life from death.
What a far cry all of this is from the mumbled ‘sinners prayer’ uttered when ‘all heads are bowed and all eyes closed’.

Altar-call Midwifery

Perhaps you disagree with much of what I have written so far, but if you have found yourself nodding in agreement, then it is time for us to consider how we as pastors might be aiding in the production of still-born souls. My contention is that unless people are genuinely born again of the Spirit, they cannot function as devoted disciples of the Lord Jesus, no matter how much they try to commit to this noble endeavour. Jesus put it this way; ‘I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again’ (John 3:3).
Jesus taught the thousands, but He called individuals to follow Him. Right from the start, salvation is presented in scripture as relational and personal. We come into a personal relationship with Jesus and on the basis of this we enter into relationships with His people, the church. Mass evangelism is a relatively recent development, and even more recent is the use of ‘the altar-call’. Before the early eighteen hundreds, evangelists sometimes called enquirers to stay behind, or to gather together so that others could pray with them. However, it was Charles Finney who popularised the practice we refer to as the altar-call. After him, men like Moody, Sankey, and more recently Billy Graham, perfected the practice. Today it is to be found in almost all Evangelical evangelistic settings and in many Pentecostal churches it is a standard addendum to every sermon.
Here is the thing though – it is not to be found, either in principle or precedent, anywhere in the New Testament. When he preached at Pentecost, Peter did not use any form of altar-call, nor did Stephen, or Phillip, or Paul. Unsurprisingly then, we do not find the altar-call as we know it in the first eighteen hundred years of church life.
Not only does it lack biblical and historic support, but consider how it is usually conducted. An aspect of the Gospel is preached and then the invitation is given. Come to Jesus; let Him into your heart; while all heads are bowed slip up your hand; repeat a short prayer; come to the front; allow someone to pray with you … and you are saved. Where is the cut-to-the-heart repentance? Where is the desperate cry for help and total surrender of life into the hands of the saviour? Where is the bold confession before men and angels that Jesus is the only hope for eternal life? In my opinion, the whole altar-call process just does not fit with these deep spiritual realities.
I am not claiming that people cannot be genuinely born again through the mechanism of an altar-call. With God all things are possible (Mark 10:27). However, I am asking the question, ‘does the altar-call not generally lend itself to easy-believerism and aborted spiritual rebirth?’

Conclusion

I started by describing some of the things that concern me as a local church pastor. Many of the folk in my church are born again disciples of Jesus who love Him and His church. They are wonderful pillars of the faith and I thank God for them constantly. Others are surely born again, yet their focus on themselves and the pressures of their circumstances hold them back from growth into the image of Jesus. However, alongside these folk are others whom I suspect are just not born again, so how can I expect them to grow? Through my fault, or the fault of other church leaders, they are still-born souls. Perhaps the use of the altar call is partly to blame, or perhaps an inadequate theology of salvation is to blame. Whatever the cause, the effect deeply concerns me, and I am currently giving it a lot of thought and prayer.

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