The Lords Supper

We had a great talk in our house group last night about the Lord's Supper.

One member of our group pointed out that the typical British Baptist way in which we 'do' it was really quite, well, orchestrated. We have plates of bread and little individual glass cups of juice (the wine).

Whoever leads communion talks a little about what it is all about and invites believers only to take part. The leader then leaves a couple of minutes for confession and contemplation. Just when you're getting into this, before the Lord you are interrupted by the bread coming around. This can get complex with some confusion over where the plates of bread go next.

We then pass the little individual glasses of wine around. When everybody is served, we drink it together.

All this is, of course, fine. But it seems that this is all carefully orchestrated, organised to fit into the service schedule.

So I am wondering, how do you do the Lords Supper? Does anybody have any ideas about changing this?

I think it would be nice to make something more of this celebration of Christ, without making it contemporary or anything like that.

The rise of theophobia

With all this talk of homophobes and islamophobes, I have found a new word. I googled for it and it seems ot have been used a little before.

The word is..

Theophobe.

I object to the rise of theophobia!

Ideas have consequences

I just saw this video on another blog:

It is a great example of how atheistic ideas have real life consequences, as do all ideas.

Atheists may say that their atheism is neutral, that their world view does not point anybody in any directions. But in fact, like any other idea, it most certainly does. The problem is that it points to pointlessness, the atheist has no basis for their rationality or for their morality.

Indeed, you could argue that atheism leads to fatalism. Lets try this now..

The universe just happened, we do not know why, it just did.
The universe is comprised of particles, atoms, molecules, energy.
These components of the universe interact in what, according to the atheist, should be deterministic ways.

So lets say that you could know the current state of the whole universe, in the way that you can know the state of a domino layout. If you had this knowledge then you should be able to predict the outcome of the universe, in the same way that you can predict that if you start the domino layout falling at one end, it will eventually reach the other end.

This is fatalism.

Now the more scientifically inclined atheist will say that Quantum Randomness can add some uncertainty to this. OK, so lets say that it does. If you have uncertainty then the universe is chaotic and random.

So then the universe is capricious.

Either way, be the universe fatalistic or capricious, the atheist has no basis for condoning or condemning anything as it was either bound to happen or it just happened randomly.

Hope you enjoyed the video!

Who works it all for good?

I was greatly blessed last Sunday to preach on Romans 8:28-30 at Twynholm. Here it is.

Further to what I spoke on, I thought I would add the following thoughts:

After much thought on the whole issue, I find it difficult to comprehend a notion of God without complete sovereignty.

God's providence includes the sustaining of the whole Universe. Without God's continual work, the Universe would not be. We know that prophecy comes to pass, that God had a plan of redemption before time, that He can ordain events to come to pass as He wishes. I do not see how this can be so without Romans 8:28 talking about God's complete sovereignty over all things.

How can we have confidence in prayer, confidence in salvation, or confidence that we will be be in heaven without a Sovereign God who holds all of these things in His hands?

Have you heard of the butterfly effect? It is the idea that a butterfly flapping it's wings in Peru can cause a storm in London. The premise is that even tiny changes can have massive effects. Lets say that a moth landed on lamp of the Virgin Mary's Gandmother's lamp, it caught light, fell on the floor and burnt the house down, resulting in her death. This would mean that Jesus would not be born to Mary. What if the birth went wrong? What if Mary didn't want a child and decided to have an abortion? Or if a robber killed the teenage Jesus for money?

If you look at the whole string of things that must have been exactly so for Christ to be born, for the prophecy to be fulfilled, you will get an idea of just how much does have to be exactly right for things to come to pass as prophesied. If God were not in control of the will of Mary, causing her to want to carry the child, if He were not in control of the moth that thankfully did not land on Mary's Grandmother's lamp, then the only alternative is that the Universe is subject to Quantum Randomness (google for it!)

Our sovereign God is in the driving seat of life, he is in control of Quantum Randomness, and on this solid rock I can have my faith in Him, in Jesus Christ and his work on the cross.