This past Sunday evening our group helped with a church service at one of the local churches. So I found myself sitting in a pew, waiting for people to arrive. A few minutes before the service started, a man entered and put his soaked umbrella in the umbrella holder. These umbrella holders are located on the sides of the pews. Yes, there are permanent umbrella holders on each pew–this is Britain, remember. Regardless, I turned around and started talking with him. It didn’t take long before he expressed his melancholy spirit with me about various things. I began to feel myself get angry with him, as he clearly isn’t doing much to help himself. Sometime during his monologue, I felt a startling realization: I had a very wrong attitude. Here this man was, in a Church dedicated to teaching the grace of Jesus, and I wasn’t showing him any. So I had an immediate change in attitude.
As there are only a few days left before I return to the States for Christmas break, many of our studies are ending. This past Thursday was our last session on our Gospel study. I am elated to finally solve this gender-of-God issue. That’s right, I found unassailable evidence to prove once and for all that Jesus was a male. In Luke 24, if you read towards the end of the chapter where Jesus appears to his disciples after the resurrection, you can see that they had serious doubts that it was really Jesus in front of them. He shows them his wounds from the cross, and then while they are caught up in the excitement that it is really Jesus, he asks them this: “Do you have anything to eat? I’m hungry.” Only a man would have asked that question immediately after appearing to his friends, which solves the gender issue.
Speaking of Gospel studies, if you click the link to “wtsbooks.com” link at the left side of this page, you will be brought to a screen with a newly-released book titled “In Christ Alone.” This new book is by Sinclair Ferguson, a wonderful Scottish pastor-theologian whom I’ve heard speak. I didn’t need to read the first three chapters to be able to recommend it, but after reading them I can do so all the more. One of the things written in the first chapter of this aforementioned book is about the Gospel according to John, which I’ve been studying these past few months. It is as follows: “The Gospel of John has always been regarded as the most theological of the four Gospels. As John Calvin said, with some insight, ‘The first thee exhibit [Christ’s] body, if I may be permitted to put it like that,…but John shows his soul.'” I Couldn’t agree more.
