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The sermon on Sunday at Covenant Presbyterian in Oviedo will swirl around the issue articulated so well in the quote below. What distinguished Judas and Peter from each other, and from us?

Both had associated with Jesus across the previous years. Both had seen his signs and heard his truth. To both he gave his love and extended his appeal.

In the final hours of Jesus’ mission both abysmally failed him, and abandoned him in the hour of his greatest need. Both grieved Jesus’ heart and added to his pain. The failure of both was spectacularly public. Both are known today around he world for the failures they perpetrated.

One, however, was lost and the other saved. One repented, sought Christ’s mercy, and went to heaven. One, overwhelmed with remorse, turned upon himself, took his own life, and went unforgiven to hell.

The seeds of the failure of both Peter and Judas lie embedded in each of our hearts. We know what it is both to deny Jesus and to betray him. We can only cast ourselves daily on his limitless mercy, knowing that he will not cast away even one of all who come to him, and that not one will be lost of all that the Father has given him (6:37-39).

Bruce Milne, The Message of John, (pages 207, 208)

What distinguishes them is grace alone.

Earlier today we posted this quote from John Stott’s book Christian Mission in the Modern World.

If we do nothing but proclaim the gospel to people from a distance, our personal authenticity is bound to be suspect. Who are we? Those listening to us do not know. For we are playing a role (that of the preacher) and for all they know may be wearing a mask. Besides, we are so far away from them, they cannot even see us properly. But when we sit down alongside them like Philip in the Ethiopian’s chariot, or encounter them face to face, a personal relationship is established. Our defenses come down. (71)

The lack of such authenticity is why I’m generally critical of ‘guerilla’ techniques in evangelism (raiding the world from our safe strongholds) and of the various methods of street preaching. But to every principle there is an exception. There is a man in the church I pastor, let’s call him John (for the simple reason that that is his name) who, finding himself out of a job this time last year, believed God was calling him to preach at an Orlando abortion clinic six mornings each week. He has been doing that for a year, and has seen a number of people come to Christ and a number of women decide to keep their babies.

Most remarkable to me, though, is this. Recently, John was laid up with surgery and a heart condition and was unable to make his daily trip to the clinic. When he was finally able to return, two of the nurses who work at the clinic, whom he has urged to repent and seek other work, came to him and told him that they were worried when they did not see him. They were genuinely concerned that something had happened to him. His message is dismissed by them, but he has established a personal bond with them.

John is unique. You cannot talk to him without knowing that you are loved. Even though he has been preaching a strong message of sin and repentance for a year, these women, while opposed to what he does, have been captured by his faithful earnestness. He has with these women established the kind of personal authenticity that is normally not at all possible for one doing what he is doing.

And so we pray for these two nurses, not only that they would turn from the awful work they are doing, but that they would respond to John all the way, not only to his love, but to the love of the One whom he represents.

[We are clipping quotes from John Stott’s Christian Mission in the Modern World. When Stott wrote the book, the idea of ‘dialogue’ with other religions was a very hot topic. He differed with the concept, seeing proper dialogue being a part of our proclamation itself. Nevertheless, the idea of a loving conversation and interaction with adherents of other faiths was a type of dialogue he embraced.]

Paul seems to have expected all the disciples of Jesus to be involved in continuous dialogue with the world, for he urged the Colossians: ‘Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer every one’ (Colossians 4.6). Here are Christians in such close contact with ‘outsiders’ (v. 5) that they are able both to speak to them (with gracious and salty speech) and to answer their questions. (63)

(Here quoting J. H. Bavinck) So, ‘in practice I am never concerned with Buddhism, but with a living person and his Buddhism, I am never in contact with Islam but with a Moslem and his Mohammedanism’ (240). Further, this living contact must also be a loving contact. (70)

If we do nothing but proclaim the gospel to people from a distance, our personal authenticity is bound to be suspect. Who are we? Those listening to us do not know. For we are playing a role (that of the preacher) and for all they know may be wearing a mask. Besides, we are so far away from them, they cannot even see us properly. But when we sit down alongside them like Philip in the Ethiopian’s chariot, or encounter them face to face, a personal relationship is established. Our defenses come down. (71)

It is impossible to evangelize by fixed formulae. To force a conversation along predetermined lines in order to reach a predetermined destination is to show oneself grievously lacking in sensitivity both to the actual needs of our friend and to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Such insensitivity is therefore a failure in both faith and love. (73)

[We are clipping quotes from John Stott’s Christian Mission in the Modern World. These come from his second chapter where he wrestles with the nature of evangelism itself.]

Evangelism is the announcement of the good news, irrespective of the results. (38)

Now it is comparatively easy to be faithful if we do not care about being contemporary, and easy also to be contemporary if we do not bother to be faithful. It is the search for a combination of truth and relevance which is exacting. (43)

But Christ offers more than the forgiveness of our past. He offers too a new life in the present through the regeneration and indwelling of the Holy Spirit, who is also the guarantee of our future inheritance in heaven. We must not separate the two gospel promises which God has joined together, forgiveness and the Spirit. (52)

There can be no evangelism without the church. The message comes from a community which embodies it and which welcomes into its fellowship those who receive it. (56)

[We are clipping quotes from John Stott’s Christian Mission in the Modern World, these from his first chapter on how the mission of the church is to be defined, particularly whether evangelism or mercy should be at the center.]

Yet it seems that it is in our servant role that we can find the right synthesis of evangelism and social action. For both should be for us, as they undoubtedly were for Christ, authentic expressions of the love that serves. (25)

It comes more natural to us to shout the gospel at people from a distance than to involve ourselves deeply in their lives, to think ourselves into their culture and their problems, and to feel with them in their pains. (25)

To see need and to possess the remedy compels love to act, and whether the action will be evangelistic or social, or indeed political, depends on what we ‘see’ and what we ‘have’. (28)

I venture to say that sometimes, perhaps because it was the last instruction Jesus gave us before returning to the Father, we give the Great Commission too prominent a place in our Christian thinking. Please do not misunderstand me. I firmly believe that the whole church is under obligation to obey its Lord’s commission to take the gospel to all nations. But I am also concern that we should not regard this as the only instruction which Jesus left us. (29)

How clear, helpful, and relevant was and is John Stott. The ‘Modern World’ for which Stott wrote Christian Mission in the Modern World was 1975, but it still feels relevant to the world I inhabit.

When I read the book first in 1978, I was young and ministry naïve. That has changed, on both accounts. Now I better understand the questions that Stott was answering, and I find that his answers continue to be fresh and biblical (and fair, as mentioned yesterday).

Over the next several posts, I’d like to offer a selection of quotes, some with, but most without comment. You may find that you will want to add this short but helpful book to your stack ($8 at Amazon, and only $5.12 for the Kindle).

From J. P. Hickinbotham’s forward to John Stott’s Christian Mission in the Modern World in which he seeks to elucidate four of the qualities of the work which make it useful.

“Thirdly, fair. He does not hesitate to criticize what is unbiblical in modern radical theology, but neither does he spare the unbiblical attitudes which sometimes lurk among the presuppositions and attitudes of evangelicals. He always qualifies his criticisms so as to avoid any injustice to those whom he criticizes and he balances criticism by generous recognition of the true and good things which those with whom he disagrees are saying and standing for.” (page 8)

Sunday and Monday gave us a rare opportunity to re-visit the city we lived in for 25 years. It was a delightful visit giving our son his longed-for opportunity to spend some time with the friends he has missed so much, and Barb and I to see a few (only time for a few!) of our own.

Returning to a place where I lived for so long made me notice things I took for granted while living there. As I drove around town, I noticed trailer park after trailer park, as common in Bradenton as palm trees and people who come to a dead stop to turn right. It struck me that I can’t recall seeing any where I now live.

That says something, but I’m not sure what.

Some background is necessary to understanding this post.

First, we have been traveling on a difficult journey with the family of a seven year old boy, a close friend of my son, who is, to all appearances, losing his battle against leukemia. His name is Joseph and he has spent the better part of the past two months in the hospital. Today is Joseph’s birthday, and that he lives to celebrate it with his family and friends is a wonderful thing. We will help him celebrate.

Secondly, my son and I have become enamored with an odd British sci-fi series called Dr. Who. (Watch the 2005 episode 1 and you’ll be hooked, too.) Dr. Who is a time traveler who travels in what looks like a phone booth but which is really a time-traveling spaceship called a ‘TARDIS‘.

Yesterday, he and I went to the hospital to see Joseph. In the hospital elevator, I said to him, “Hey, this is like a TARDIS. So, where do you want to go?”

Without a pause or a moment’s reflection, he said, “To a dimension where Joseph is not sick.”

A child’s longing is our own.

A longing fulfilled by our gospel hope.

Come, Lord Jesus.

I once had a conversation with a seller of Christian books and Bibles who had tried to explain to a publisher why he thought the publisher should publish less ‘red letter’ editions of the Bible. The publisher was so puzzled by this sentiment that it seemed to him my friend had come from Mars.

I’m not certain of the history of the practice of highlighting the ‘words of Christ in red’ in our Bibles, but I have for some time been troubled by the practice. If Jesus is fully God (which he is), and if the whole Bible is the Word of God (which it is), then if we really wanted to put Christ’s words in red we should just highlight the whole thing. To do otherwise suggests that the words which Jesus spoke on earth were just somehow more important and weightier than those which he spoke through David or Moses. That is dangerous.

It’s an impossible task anyway. Unfortunately for modern publishers, the Greek of the New Testament did not come with quotation marks. We will never in this life know for certain whether Jesus or John was responsible for saying, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son….’ but that does not stop publishers from printing the whole in red.

The practice, though, is most odd when the words of Christ back up against the words of his heavenly Father as illustrated here.

The words of the incarnate Son, I suppose we are to understand, are of greater value than those of the non-incarnate Father. Very odd.

I’m not suggesting we toss our red letter bibles. I would, though, be delighted to see the demand for them diminish. That would be a message even publishers could understand.