- Steve Richards
- Dec 2, 2016
It’s Christmas, so guess whom I am going to speak about? Right first time - Moses.
Moses should not have survived babyhood. At that time, the King of the land required that all baby boys be put to death, but the wit of his mother saved him. Actually it was God’s providence that saved him because God had a mission for him. As a full-grown man, Moses was divinely commissioned to bring God’s own people out of a land of slavery and into the Promised Land. This Promised Land was their true home, it was to be a place of freedom, abundance and blessing.
Fast forward around 1400 years to another new-born baby who the king of the land wanted to kill. As with Moses, this boy’s parents, whose names were Mary and Joseph, managed, in the providence of God, to keep the infant from King Herod’s clutches. The name of the child in question was of course Jesus and, as with Moses, he was born to fulfil a divine mission. At first hearing, the mission sounds the same as the one given to Moses: to save God’s people from their slavery and bring them to a place of blessing.
In the nativity plays and carol services during the coming weeks, we will hear the words spoken to Joseph, ‘You will give him the name Jesus because he will save his people…’ (Jesus means Saviour). What sort of ‘saving’ is this? In the time of Moses it was very much a temporal salvation; the deliverance of the enslaved Hebrew people from the tyranny of the Egyptian Pharaoh. Jesus made it very clear however, that the salvation he had come to bring was in the realm of the spiritual. His mission was, and is, to free men and women from the shackles which prevent them from experiencing God’s many faceted blessings both in this life and the age to come.
The mission of Moses (to rescue the Hebrews out of Egypt and lead them to the Promised Land), is a foreshadowing of what God has planned for people like you and me. Bringing people from one geographical location to another is one thing. Freeing men’s souls is far more demanding and something which Moses, a mere man, couldn’t do. God had to send his one and only Son, and it is this that we remember at Christmas time.
Slaves don’t need too much persuasion to accept freedom when it is offered to them. Jesus tells us that we are all slaves in one way or another. He offers himself as our deliverer, to undo our shackles and bring us home to God.
- Steve Richards
- Nov 1, 2016
I have just watched Newsnight (BBC2, 25th October), the main feature being Russia’s own view of her current relationship with the rest of the world. They interviewed Aleksandr Dugin, who is known as a political scientist and has the ear of both the Kremlin and President Putin. He is zealous for the uniting of Russian-speaking states and their dominance on the world stage. Newsnight commented that in Russia truth is subordinate to political expediency. Dugin says, ‘Every so-called truth is the matter of belief. So, we believe in what we do, we believe in what we say and that is the only way to define truth. So, we have our own, special Russian truth that you need to accept as something that may not be your truth…’
Truth, when all it means is what we want it to mean, becomes a recipe for chaos. It is where a godless worldview ends up. As a Christian, I maintain that Truth is an absolute and, as such, is inseparable from God himself.
The question ‘what is truth?’ is an age-old question and one that was asked by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate when Jesus said to him, ‘For this reason I was born and for this I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.’ Here, Jesus is stating that ultimate Truth lies with him. It is a bold statement: he is claiming to be God. Can we fault Jesus at any point and thereby invalidate his claim? The four Gospel accounts are available for us to consider what he has said, taught and done.
So what are we faced with here? Do we accept the concept of Absolute Truth, no ambiguity, no shades of grey? If we don’t, then I suggest that we are travellers on the same road as comrade Aleksandr Dugin. If we do believe that Absolute Truth is for real, then according to the words of Jesus as related above, we can test the sincerity of our profession by asking whether we embrace what he says.
Winston Churchill once made the observation, ‘Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.’ May we not catch sight of Truth and turn away because we don’t like the implications.
- Steve Richards
- Oct 1, 2016
With my interest in modern history, whenever we reach the early part of October, my mind goes back to October 1973. It was at the time of the most important Jewish Sabbath, Yom Kippur. Egypt and Syria chose the moment to make a surprise attack upon Israel. Because of the special holiday, the Arab nations hoped to catch Israel on the back foot. This conflict is known as the Yom Kippur War.
So why is Yom Kippur - the Jewish phrase means Day of Atonement - a big deal? We read about it in the Old Testament. Christians realise that through the pages of the Jewish Scriptures, God was laying out principles, plans and illustrations in a similar way to an architect who provides drawings and even scale models to get across what he has in mind. The plans and scale models are not the real thing, only shadows of what is to come. The annual Day of Atonement is such a shadow.
This is what took place on the Day of Atonement in keeping with God’s directions: two goats, of impeccable quality, were selected and one of them was slaughtered. This goat was a sacrifice; its life taken in lieu of the Israelite people who, God declared, deserved to die because of their sins. Having had their misdeeds atoned for, the second goat was brought into the ceremony to play its part. The priest laid his hands upon the goat’s head and confessed the sins of the people. The animal was then led into the wilderness, to the back of beyond as we might say, and released after which it wandered off into the sunset, never to be seen again. This second goat was a great comfort to the people; it signified the fact that God had accepted the life of the first goat as an atonement and that the people’s sins had been taken far away ‘as far as the east is from the west’.
That was the shadow or the thumbnail sketch. The whole process was pointing to the real deal, namely Jesus. Unlike the first goat which had no say in the matter, Jesus willingly gave his perfect life over to death as a sacrifice for people; people who recognise that they are accountable to God but are incapable of making amends for their wrongdoings. The Christian message calls such people to metaphorically place their hands on Jesus and confess their sins. In this way, like the second goat, Jesus becomes their scapegoat, removing their wrongdoings from God’s presence and comforting them with a clean conscience.
If we want him, Jesus is willing to be our scapegoat even now.