The Mission Man

Some pieces of news just knock the stuffing out of you.  The text from my good friend Benny Anderson on 13th February 2021 that our mutual friend Bill McGillivray was moving to a hospice just floored me. I knew Bill wasn't well but I hadn't appreciated how serious the situation was.  A wave of grief came over me as I realised that Bill was nearing the end of his earthly journey.  It was a feeling not dissimilar to the depth of grief I felt when my own father died on 1st April 2020.  In many ways Bill has been a father figure to me and to so many others.  He has always been there, always full of energy, always smiling, always so generous with his time.  The thought of a world without Bill is hard to come to terms with.  Bill finally died this morning, at 11:10, 12th March 2021.  As 2 Corinthians 5 v 6 says 'he is away from the body but present with the Lord.'  Our hearts are heavy but we do not mourn as those who have no hope.

I first met Bill when I started working for the Edinburgh City Mission in September 1990.  My family had recently moved to Edinburgh from Oban.  I was a disaster at school and was at a loss as to what to do with my life so I was a bit lost and directionless.  I wasn't smart enough for university but I loved people so a year with ECM looked like a good option.  I joined the 'Year Team' and was placed in Gorgie and then West Pilton.

The Christian Centre

I still remember the first time I walked in to the West Pilton Christian Centre.  It was basically a small ground floor flat but it was a hive of activity.  The café would churn out toasties in industrial quantities, clothes were being distributed, food would be given out, the pool table never stopped.  In the middle of it all was Bill.  West Pilton in the early 1990's was quite a place:  drugs, violence, abuse, poverty and lots of very, very lost people.  It would have overwhelmed the best of men, but not Bill.  I can still see him now in the back room holding forth on any and every subject.  Jesus seemed to pour out of every part of him.  A battered NIV Bible was never far away and he would think nothing of opening it to chat about an issue he had been asked about.  He would just bring the gospel in to conversation in the most natural way.  As a young 19 year old who could hardly string two sentences together in evangelism, I was constantly amazed at Bills natural capacity to share the gospel.

A Niddrie Boy

Born in 1942, Bill was an Edinburgh man through and through.  He grew up in Niddrie with his brother Robert and John.  Bill's mother had tragically died in 1945 when Bill was only three and his father remarried in the late 1940's.  Bill came in to contact with the Niddrie Mission then run by Alex Dunbar.  Bill came to know Christ in his early teens and 'The Mission' would never really leave Bill.  He always had a love to reach the marginalised and the poor.  After a stint as a fencer Bill started his own fruit and veg business before joining ICI in Livingston.  Bill eventually felt a call to Christian service and entered service with the Edinburgh City Mission in 1984.  Bill had married Helen in 1962 and had two daughters, Joy and Julie, but his wife tragically died of cancer in June 1979.  Little did any of us understand the deep sorrow that Bill had gone through when he breezed in and out of the mission day after day.  It can't have been easy bringing up two girls on his own but I never once heard Bill complain or question God's purposes in his life.  As his current minister once said at a service I was at in  Glasgow, 'never trust a leader who doesn't limp'.  Bill's deep sorrow gave him an incredible empathy for others and also an incredible Christ like humility that drew people around him. He was a natural leader but one with the deep imprint of sorrow.

As I look back over 30 years now, those early years of the 1990's in West Pilton were life changing.  People were being remarkably saved from addiction, violence and profound brokenness.  One of my best friends, Benny Anderson, was a violent thief but was converted through the witness of his brother who came to faith in Shotts Prison.  Benny's brother and wife attended the West Pilton Christian Centre and Bill's unashamed gospel witness had much to do with Benny's discipleship. Benny would be the first to admit that his conversion was not straightforward and Bill discipled Benny through those first rocky years.  Benny and I have remained friends.  We have one of the most unlikely friendships - a Free Church ministers son from Argyll and one of the most feared men in Edinburgh now united in the gospel.  Bill brought us and many others together and many of those friendships have lasted for decades.  

Children's Work

Children loved Bill.  He was authentic, genuine and had little sense of self.  Most of all he always had time for kids.  The children's work was vibrant in the 1990's with regular clubs, outings and the most incredible camps to locations like Glenshee.  A modern day health and safety officer would have had a hairy fit at some of the things we did but the kids loved it.  Many kids had hardly been out of West Pilton never mind Edinburgh.  My own children can hardly believe the stories of throwing live frogs in to the girls dorm at 1am and the classic felt tip doodles on  the faces of some poor sleeping kid.  It used to take them ages when they wandered down for breakfast as to why the whole camp were in stiches.  But there was also real solid Bible teaching at these camps.  I vividly remember acting out Pilgrims Progress with the kids one year as we battled Apollyon and made it to the Celestial City with my tin foil shield.  Looking back they were some of my best, most formative memories, and Bill was at the centre of it all.  No activity was too silly, no problem was too small, Bill embraced everything with an infectious enthusiasm.

Sunday Nights

I can still see Bill on those Sunday night services.  Coming from a Free Church background I was used to fairly reserved Psalm singing.  West Pilton Christian Centre used to raise the roof most Sunday evenings with the most incredible praise songs and boy could those people sing!  They came with all their brokenness, sometimes with tears streaming down their faces and they sang their lungs out:  Majesty, God Sent His Son, He has Made me Glad, How Great Thou Art, There is a Redeemer and many more.  Giles and Benny on the guitar, a couple of tambourines and that little Christian Centre would be bursting with raw, heart felt praise.  Problems were shared, prayer was real and God was present.  When you preached in Pilton, people didn't glaze over like they did in most churches, they were actually hungry for the Bible.  People told you exactly what they thought of your sermon (sometimes during the sermon).  Bill and I had many differences in our theology but he preached the good news of the gospel with more passion and reality than I will ever do. 

Highs and Lows

But there were plenty of disappointments.  Bill frequently dealt with horrific situations of abuse and many who started out well soon fell away.  Abuse and trauma were intergenerational and while the gospel would have a big impact, there were years of painstaking discipleship.  Bill was optimistic, but always realistic. He knew the dark heart of man and his ministry was often a rollercoaster of highs and lows.  The centre was a constant target for vandalism and Bill operated on a tight budget.  Bill was always very circumspect but I always had the feeling that Bill's bold vision was not always matched by others.  Bill always called a spade a spade which didn't always make him very popular.  He was a man of integrity who had no time for politics and bureaucracy.  People were literally dying in West Pilton and Bill was always more comfortable at the coal face than in committees.  He was delighted to see Benny and Amanda Anderson commissioned into work with the City Mission in 2002.  In many ways it was what the mission was all about - the transformation of a violent thief into a city missionary. Bill was was delighted when Duncan Cuthill took over the Edinburgh City Mission in 2017 and began to breath fresh vision and energy into the work.  

The Magic Man

From that first meeting in 1990, Bill went on to become a life long friend.  Sometimes we wouldn't see each other for months, but like all good friendships, when we did, we picked up where we had left off.  I often confided in Bill and never doubted that I could trust him with anything.  He was a wise councillor, always steady and measured with his advice.  He became a regular visitor to our house in Livingston at Christmas.  My five boys loved him like an uncle.  His magic tricks were legendary with the kids mesmerised by ropes, hankies and cards.  Over the last three years Bill was a regular at the Safe Families Fun Day at Arniston House.  Dozens of families would attend from a a whole range of backgrounds and Bill would entertain them and put them at ease.

Leadership and Legacy

I recently worked through the life of Joseph with my team.  I asked them to write down the three most inspirational leaders they had met.  The first name I wrote down on my list was Bill McGillivray.  It was an honour to know him.  He was humble, approachable, kind and generous.  As a young, slightly unsure 19 year old, Bill took me under his wing.  I still remember spinning around all over Edinburgh in his little Nissan Micra with Bill sharing his wisdom on anything and everything.  I wasn't aware at the time but Bill was laying the foundation of so much of what I would go on to do.  Many of the convictions I hold today were forged in those early days in West Pilton.  Here are just a few of them:

• Keep the main things, the main things.  Don't go down theological rabbit holes.  Stay gospel focussed and rooted in truth.  
• Truth and love need to be held in balance. 
• Be generous to other believers.  Bill was an Episcopalian by conviction but he worked with Christians from all sorts of backgrounds who loved the Lord.
• Love the marginalised and the broken.  
• Invest in others.  Bill inspired me to become a social worker and a leader in the Third Sector.  
• Never give up hope.  He showed me that communities and individuals could be redeemed and transformed and nobody was beyond help.
• Leadership matters.  The success of West Pilton was down to great Christ centred servant leadership.  Some of the best leaders have been broken and shaped by God through suffering.  Bill knew the deep waters of suffering and it made him uniquely vulnerable, humble and compassionate.
• A passion for souls.  Bill loved people.  He didn't run programmes he just lived out his life in a needy community and taught the Bible.
• Fruitfulness needs to be accompanied by faithfulness.  In an age when Christian leaders are regularly compromised, Bill lived a consistent, circumspect life.  
• Be bold with the gospel.  Benny told me about a meeting with Bill after he had just been stealing.  Bill had no idea what Benny had done but spoke to him about standing before the judgement seat of Christ thankful that Jesus was his Saviour.  The message impacted Benny and he remembers it 30 years later.
• Stay the course.  Bill ministered in West Pilton for 23 years.  it wasn't glamorous but Bill was faithful over a long time.  
• Know when to move on.  Bill knew when it was time to go.  He retired in 2007 and enjoyed 13 years of retirement.  He travelled, he volunteered, he invested in friends and he had the joy of seeing his grandchildren grow.

Dying Well

Bill used to tell me that he often prayed for his mother to 'die well'.  That is what I prayed for Bill in his last few weeks.  While the destination may be certain, the process of death is still painful and horrible.  Death is still the last enemy.  But like all believers Bill can now proclaim 'Death has been swallowed up in victory.  Where, death is your victory?  Where, death, is your sting?' (1 Cor 15 v 54-55). The pain is for those left behind.  We pray for comfort for his two daughters, Joy and Julie, and his 4 grandchildren in America and Australia as well as his brother and wife here in Scotland.  Bills race is now done, he has finished his course he has heard those words 'well done, good and faithful servant'.  Now it is up to us to take up his mantle and tell the next generation the good news of Jesus Christ.  

10 Takeaway's from the Life of Joseph

I've been really enjoying studying and teaching the life of Joseph recently. It is exactly the teaching I needed as I deal with the setbacks and disappointments of lockdown.  I've already written about Joseph in my article 'Leadership in Lockdown' here.  As we stand back and look at Joseph with a wide angle lens what are the big themes of his life?  Here are 10 takeaways.

1. God keeps his promises.

We see in Genesis 37 that God gives him two dreams. In Genesis 41 and 42 these dreams come true.  We see this theme in the OT – God makes a promise and then he fulfils it.  Sometimes he takes 100’s of years, sometimes he works in seconds, but his promises are always fulfilled.  God works through covenant – he shows himself again and again as a faithful God.

2. God is doing a lot more than we think.

When we look at young Joseph, he was talented but he seemed arrogant.  Then he was a slave and then a prisoner - his life seemed to be a disaster.  Yet at each twist and turn God was testing him, refining him and preparing him for greatness. God was interested in how Joseph was as a slave, how he responded to menial work, how he responded to false allegations, how he treated his fellow prisoners.

God was working all the time, maybe Joseph couldn’t see it but God was at work.

3. Great leaders always lead with a limp.

If I asked you to list your three best leaders who would they be?  Many of the best leaders have been through great suffering.  One of my inspirational leaders lost his wife when he was 35 and brought up two young girls by himself.  He ministered in one of the most difficult housing schemes in Edinburgh for 23 years before urban evangelism was trendy.  Great leadership is often coupled with great brokenness and tragedy.  Humility makes us trust in a great God, it helps us to see that any talent we have is a gift and it makes us prayerful.

4. God’s best jewels are always forged in the fire of affliction.

Affliction can lead to bitterness and cynicism but in Joseph’s case it led to selflessness and God centeredness.  Robert Murray McCheyne said that 'the sweetest flowers sometimes need to be broken before they emit a beautiful smell'.  There is a Biblical principle that when we are weak, then we are strong.  When Joseph stood before Pharaoh he had nothing and he was nothing but just at that moment he was filled with the spirit.

O God, the Eternal All, help me to know that

all things are shadows, but thou art substance,

all things are quicksand's, but thou art mountain,

all things are shifting, but thou art anchor,

all things are ignorance, but thou art wisdom

If my life is to be a crucible amid burning heat, so be it, 

but do thou sit at the furnace mouth to watch the ore 

that nothing be lost.

Purification, The Valley of Vision, Banner of Truth

5. Never despise the path of service

Joseph became a great leader through learning how to serve.  Great leaders are ultimately servants. They hold power lightly because they recognise that power and positions are gifts.  Servant leadership empowers, it cares and it embraces responsibility.

6. Don’t waste your suffering – Ephraim and Manasseh

Joseph could have made his life story into a huge story of grievance, but he didn’t.  We see this in the names of his two sons:  Ephraim – God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction and Manasseh – God has made me forget all my affliction.  After 13 years of suffering Joseph says it is all forgotten – it was all part of Gods purpose for my life.

7. God works slow and fast

When Josephs brothers appeared before him it had taken God 22 years so fulfil his dream.  Does God do the impossible? Yes.  But often God takes years, decades and centuries to work out his purposes.  That way God gets all the glory.

Deep in unfathomable mines

Of never-failing skill,

He treasures up His bright designs,

And works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;

The clouds ye so much dread

Are big with mercy, and shall break

In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,

But trust Him for His grace;

Behind a frowning providence

He hides a smiling face.

8. Never underestimate what grace can do

God works in an evil and dysfunctional family.  We read in 42 v 28 ‘What is this that God has done to us?’  It took Joseph ‘speaking roughly’ to them to awaken their consciousness and bring them back to God.

9. Forgiveness and redemption are beautiful.

We see in chapter 45 v 14, 15 a beautiful picture of redemption and reconciliation.

22 years on the brothers embrace and weep.  All the lies, the deceit, the bitterness are over. God's redemptive love wins.  ‘You planned evil against me: God planned it for good to bring about the present result – the survival of many people.’

10. Joseph points to somebody else

Every page in the life of Joseph is pointing us to the greater Joseph.  The brothers thought that Joseph had died and he almost did.  He lost everything to bring life to a hungry world.  Joseph is pointing us to Jesus who gives hope in despair, light in darkness and truth in confusion.  Joseph points us to the true bread of life.

The Bridge Battersea

Last year I caught up with Tom Dowding from The Bridge in Battersea.  Tom was interested in Thomas Guthrie and his Parochial model in Edinburgh in the 19th century.  I was so excited to hear what Tom was up to I asked him to write about his work in the blog post below.  Please pray for Tom and the team in Battersea.

I serve at The Bridge Battersea - a small church on the Surrey Lane council estate in Battersea, London. We’re in a multicultural urban community characterised by high levels of economic and social deprivation, and many of the ills that go with that: drug and alcohol abuse are rife, broken families more common than not, mental health problems affect a great proportion, and knife culture has contributed to two tragic murders in the last couple of years.

So it was with a keen interest that I listened to Andrew Murray talking about the life of Thomas Guthrie on a 20Schemes podcast earlier this year. To hear of his radical heart for the marginalised and destitute, his biblical conviction that the gospel is good news for the poor, his horror that Christianity might be kept to those with ‘respectable’ lives and his incarnational connection with the social issues of the day (even as gospel proclamation was prioritised) were music to my ears, and broadened my vision for how I’d love to pursue ministry. Guthrie’s setting up of a savings bank and a library in the parish of Arbirlot, for example, where he was brought ‘into familiar and frequent and kindly contact with my people’ is just the sort of pioneering evangelistic creativity that we need to be pursuing in a time where churches are increasingly viewed with disinterest, suspicion, or outright contempt.

When our church was planted 9 years ago one of the clear issues in our estates was absentee fathers, and the adverse effects this had on particularly young boys growing up. When Guthrie spoke in the 19th Century of a young boy in Edinburgh “launched on a sea of human passions and exposed to a thousand temptations… left by society, more criminal than he, to become a criminal, and then punished for his fate, not his fault” he could very well be describing the young lads growing up fatherless in Battersea. Without dads around their influences and role models often tend to be the ‘olders’ in local gangs, and routes from there towards teenage years of school expulsion and immersed in drugs and knife crime are sadly all too common. Into this situation the ‘RISE academy’ was launched to mentor young men, teaching them the gospel and life-skills such as cooking or computer programming. Time and funding wise it’s not as full scale as the Ragged Schools of Edinburgh, but like Guthrie the mentoring Christian men hope to give off something of what he termed the ‘almost omnipotent power of Christian kindness’.

And this era of COVID19 and lockdown is a time when we at The Bridge really want to redouble efforts to move towards those around us. We’ve recently been door-knocking on Sundays as a church, and have come across some who have had bad situations exacerbated by the pandemic (even in an area already dominated with mental health problems, it was a saddening shock to hear one local mother tell of how she’d been so anxious about the virus she was washing her hands with bleach). Others we come across profess largely to be fine, even as they remain sleepwalking in sin towards death and judgement. Not much different, then, to the crowds the Lord Jesus looked out at and felt a deep compassion for, ‘because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.’ (Matt 9:36).

It is this heart of the Lord Jesus for the lost that inspires us in thinking how we might reach out as labourers in his harvest field. I was struck and encouraged by Guthrie’s organising towards all members of the local church ‘working in harmony, like bees in a hive’ – reaching the thousands on our estate needs a whole church, not just one or two evangelists. So as a staff team we are planning to soon unveil 6 new outreach endeavours, praying that we can be a mission minded community with everyone in some way playing a part. Through these we aim to build new relationships with those around us, to love and care for those with pressing practical needs, and ultimately to share the good news of Christ.

I’d love to ask for brother and sisters reading this to pray for us as we seek to reach out to our hard pressed community this Autumn/Winter. Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers for the harvest fields! And ask that many are won by the Christ who came to bring good news to the poor, even as the good deeds of his church bring glory to his Father in heaven. When sitting in crowded flats or walking up weed-engulfed tower block staircases it is burdening to see the sights of young boys moving into gang life, men and women crushed by addictions, and Muslims hoping in a god who cannot save. But praise God that through your prayers many lives and eternities could be changed. It remains, as Thomas Chalmers might say, ‘a fine field of operation’!

Hope in the Face of Suffering

Many years ago I interviewed the late Jeremy Marshall author of a book of 20 devotions entitled 'Hope in the face of Suffering'.  You can listen to the podcast here.  Jeremy was living with incurable cancer and has since died.  Shielding was nothing new for him as any infection could have led to very serious complications for him.  I can't think of anyone more uniquely qualified to write a book of devotions about fear, suffering and death.    

If the coronavirus has taught us anything it has shown us that life is fragile.  Our society thought that science and modern medicine protected us from any nasty surprises but the last year has shown us that even they have limits.  In a chapter entitled 'All Aboard' he compares the last few months to being on a boat: 'I felt like I was being endlessly tossed around in a boat in a stormy sea, quarantined, cut off from others, fearful, lonely, wondering how long this would go on for and whether I would ever see 'dry land' again.'  I think we can all relate to that feeling.

In 20 short, simple chapters Jeremy takes the reader through Genesis, Job, the Psalms, 2 Kings, the Gospels and finally Revelation.  He reminds us that suffering and death were not part of the original plan but is a result of the fall.  Suffering can be bewildering and overwhelming but the gospel gives us hope.  it is at the cross that we see a suffering Saviour taking our punishment and we are enabled, even in a limited way, to make sense of suffering in a fallen world.  Yes the seas are choppy, but just like Noah in the ark, God has a destination for His people: 'For no one can cross the sea of this world unless carried over it on the cross of Christ.'

The book is accessible, encouraging and very, very real.  Marshall points us back again and again in the book to the ultimate answer to pain and suffering, God Himself.  In the midst of suffering God's promises become real, His word speaks to us in new ways and we look to him for grace and strength.  As Corrie Ten Boom says in 'The Hiding Place': 'I only realised that Christ was all I needed when Christ was all I had.' 

You might expect a series of devotions on suffering and death to be depressing but 'Hope in the Face of Suffering' is far from bleak.  It is filled with gospel hope and encouragement.  In his chapter entitled 'The Medicine Chest' Marshall quotes the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was jailed and ultimately executed by the Nazi's.  Shortly before his death Bonhoeffer smuggled out a scrap of paper that read 'Only a suffering God can help us.'  It is only through the suffering of God incarnate at the cross that we can make sense of suffering.  This book takes us back again and again to the cross.  God became human and suffered on a cross to reconcile sinful man to a holy God.  He came to conquer fear and death.  Yes His children face suffering in this life but we have his precious promises and we have the gospel hope of an eternity with Christ.  

The book finishes in Revelation where we are reminded that Christ holds the keys of death.  But how do we face death?  Well we have the assurance that we will not be alone.  Marshall quotes Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones when he was at the deathbed of an old man whose face shone with the glory of where he was going.  Lloyd Jones says:

We are going to be with Christ...Our greatest trouble is that we really don't believe the Bible...exactly what it says - exceeding great and precious promises.  We think we know it, but we do not really appropriate this and actually believe it is true.  Here, we have no continuing city. Our light affliction is but for a moment.  We have to take these statements literally.  They are facts, they are not merely ideas.  

This is a great little book and so appropriate for the time in which we are living.  When people are asking questions about fear, death and suffering, why not give them this little book and point them to the God who suffered and died and will one day wipe away every tear for those who are in Christ?  Why not think about buying multiple copies and sending them to family and friends?  This book has been a great help to me and I am confident that it will be a great comfort to you too.  To order the book via Free Church Books please follow this link.

Learning from Lockdown - Seaton Community Church

This week I chatted to my good friend Barry Douglas from Seaton Community Church in Aberdeen about the highs and lows of lockdown. Barry talks about the challenges of life as pastor and football chaplain particularly over the last 12 months. Despite being in lockdown Seaton Community Church have built a church building (almost from scratch) and given out 7000 lunches to local kids.   We talk about preaching and pastoral care in lockdown and some of the encouragements Barry has found even in the midst of so many setbacks.  

 

Leadership in Lockdown

In R.Kent Hughes excellent commentary on Genesis, he tells the story of Robert Dick Wilson one of the great professors of Princeton Theological Seminary.  One of Professor Wilson's students came back to Miller Chapel to preach 12 years after graduating.  The old professor, having listened intently to his former student, came forward after the service and held his hand out:

"If you come back again, I will not come to hear you preach.  I only come once.  I am glad to see that you are a big-godder.  When my boys come back, I come to see if they are big-godders or little godders, and then I know what their ministry will be."  His former student asked him to explain, and he replied, " Well, some men have a little god, and they are always in trouble with him.  He can't do any miracles.  He can't take care of the inspiration and transmission of the Scripture to us.  He doesn't intervene on behalf of his people.  They have a little god and I call them little-godders.  Then, there are those who have a great God.  He speaks and it is done. He commands and it stands fast.  He knows how to show himself strong on behalf of them that fear him.  You have a  great God; and he will bless your ministry." He paused a moment, smiled, said, "God bless you," and turned and walked out.

The last year has tested the best of us. Who hasn't struggled for energy and wisdom during lockdown? Recently I heard of a death every day for a week of people close to me. Social media has become a place of fear, discouragement and the home of every conspiracy theory imaginable. As Michael Reeves says in his new book 'Rejoice and Tremble': 'With society having lost God as the proper object of healthy fear, our culture is necessarily becoming ever more neurotic, ever more anxious about the unknown - indeed more anxious about anything and everything...In ousting God from our culture, other concerns - from personal health to the health of the planet - have assumed a divine ultimacy in our minds. Good things have become cruel and pitiless idols. And thus we feel helplessly fragile. No longer anchored, society fills with free-floating anxieties.'

So how do we respond?  Some Christian leaders seem paralysed by inertia.  It is largely business as usual.  There is no special call to prayer, there is no special love for the people in their care, they can't reach out because they seem immune to people's pain.  There is little empathy, little love and little connection.  Others have risen to the challenge.  They have found new and creative ways to express pastoral care and love.  Many people have rediscovered letter writing and many of us have found the power of a well timed text or email.   Thankfully the gospel is not in lockdown and genuine love will always find a way to express itself.  God's word has been heard and downloaded more over the last year than ever before.  Rather than the gospel being preached to dozens we are seeing millions being reached through online services and new and innovative ways of evangelism. God is at work in surprising and amazing ways.  We all hate lockdown but leadership needs to adapt in such unprecedented times. 

One of the great examples of leadership in very tough times is Joseph in the book of Genesis.  Despite being his fathers favourite son, Joseph was betrayed by his brothers and sold in to slavery in Egypt.  Little did Joseph know that this would be the start of 13 years of setbacks and discouragements.  But God was preparing Joseph for greatness.  The route to the palace was through the prison.  Joseph didn't rail against his enforced lockdown, he didn't seek to appeal against his false accusation, he accepted that God was at work and as we see in Genesis 41-50 Joseph was just as faithful in times of prosperity and power as he was in poverty and prison.

In Genesis 41 we read that Joseph is finally exalted. In this remarkable chapter we see Joseph plucked from prison and finds himself shaved and perfumed and thrust before Pharaoh to interpret his strange dreams. We see this solitary Hebrew man standing before this Egyptian deity at the zenith of his power. How does he respond? How does he show leadership in a strange and pagan land? Does he appeal to the law? Does he complain about how badly he has been treated and appeal for better human rights? No, he points to the greatness of God regardless of the consequences. Joseph gives us an example of great leadership in a pagan country during testing times. What lessons can we learn?

1. He was foundationally God-centred.

Pharaoh flatters Joseph in chapter 41 v 15 as the great interpreter of dreams.  He is dangling greatness and power in front of a powerless slave.  Who wouldn't take the bait?  Joseph responds with one word.  In our translation it reads 'I am not able to' but in the Hebrew it is one word 'not I'.  Literally it means that 'the answer lies outside of me'.  Joseph is saying 'I can't interpret your dream but the true and living God can'. The stakes are very high.  One wrong word and Joseph's head will be separated from his torso.  Who wouldn't have buckled before such raw power?  

As he stands before this Egyptian deity, Joseph points to ha Elohim - the God.  Through one word of explosive self deprecation Joseph confesses the true and living God at the epicentre of pagan power.  The arrogant, self assured teenager was gone and a more mature, deeper Joseph stands before the most powerful man on earth without fear.  Thirteen years of suffering had made him God centred instead of self centred.  As Hughes says 'Through Joseph, God was advertising and asserting himself in Egypt.'  Christians so often think they need power to exert power and influence.  What we need is trust in a great God.

2. He was fearlessly honest. 

Joseph could have softened his answer to Pharaoh but he didn't.  The prospect of power and favour didn't change Joseph.  He was the same with his fellow prisoners as he was with the most powerful leader in the world.   As Hughes says 'Joseph had not changed one whit in his trip from the pit to the palace.  This thirteen years of preparation were now paying huge dividends.'  Through setbacks and disappointments Joseph had learned a steeliness and fearless honesty all too rare in most leaders.  Most seek position and comfort but not Joseph.  He was like Daniels three friends about to be thrown in to the fiery furnace in Daniel 3 v 16-18.  The true Christian leader does the right thing and leaves the consequences to God.  

But honesty also involves vulnerability.  One of the best things I have heard in recent months was from Jonathan Lamb at Crieff who said; 'the opposite of fear is not courage, but trust'.  Many of us wake up on Monday mornings (or for preachers Sunday) and we don't feel very brave.  We often feel empty and weak.  But so often this is when God will do great things.  God emptied Joseph of himself so he could fill him with the Holy Spirit.  Isn't this what we see time and time again?  In Geneses 39 v 21 - 23 we read that 'the Lord was with Joseph and extended kindness to him.'  Its not talent and bravery we need during a national pandemic but more trust in the living God.  This is what will give us fearless honesty. 

3.  He learned to listen

When we go back to Genesis 37 we read about Joseph telling his brothers about his dreams.  There is no mention of God and we read the word 'me' and 'I' over and over again.  The great sign of immaturity is that we talk a lot about ourselves.  Our opinions are all that matter.  This is seen on social media, the most frequent contributors are often the most immature.  Everything is simple and black and white.  People post without thinking, without praying, without considering.  

As we grow and mature and go through adversity we see that life is painful, complex and often there are no easy answers.  We learn to listen more and talk less.  This is what Joseph had learned.  He lets Pharaoh speak.  He doesn't interrupt him. Pharaoh pours out his dreams from verses 17-24 of chapter 41.  Great leaders are great listeners.  They take an interest in what their team or their congregation think.  They take advice easily, they are easily entreated.  They are constantly learning and reflecting, they are enthusiastic learners.  They read widely but discerningly, they like to have their thinking challenged.  Great leaders are nearly always team players and good delegators.  They hold power lightly because it is a gift from God.

4. He was given Godly understanding 

True wisdom comes from the fear of the Lord.  It was because Joseph truly feared the Lord that he had no fear of Pharaoh and was able to interpret his dreams.  The fear of God is not a popular subject today even in Christian circles.  The Puritan William Bates said 'there is nothing more fearful than an ingenious love, and nothing more loving than a filial fear.' It is only as we fear God in a fatherly way that we are given understanding of things often hidden to the world.  Joseph's interpretation of the Pharaoh's dream was devastatingly simple but it was kept from the magicians and revealed to Joseph.  This is what we see in great leaders. God gives them supernatural understanding not because they are gifted or talented but because they are dependent on God.  They are men and women saturated in the word, humble, prayerful and filled with a spirit of worship.  We are to call out to insight and lift our voice to understanding, to seek for it like silver and search for it like hidden treasure (Proverbs 2 v 3,4).

5. He was given confidence and wise advice

Isn't it amazing after Joseph interprets Pharaoh's dream that this pagan deity recognises the spirit of God in Joseph (Genesis 41 v 38)?  Isn't that an encouragement for those of us who lead in secular environments to stand tall for God?  People may not like our Christianity but they see us as people with integrity and wisdom.

Pharaoh now turns to Joseph for wise advice.  Joseph shows one of the great traits of a great leader and encourages Pharaoh to make some very tough decisions.  One of these is to put taxes up by 20% over the next 7 years of abundance.  His other pieces of advice were to appoint a national overseer, appoint regional governors and build more storage facilities to store food in the years of plenty.  What an amazing business plan!  Save up while you can so that when famine and recession come you will have enough to feed society.  Leaders often come up with the most incredible responses to situations of crisis.  People wonder where they get their wisdom from.  How can they come up with solutions so quickly?  As Daniel would say many years later '...the people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits' (Daniel 11 v 32).  Joseph was a type of Christ who was prepared and sent to bring redemption to a starving people.  Joseph was a forerunner of the great bread of life who would come in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

We are in a new and uncertain landscape. It needs a new kind of leadership. Not the leadership of grievance and conspiracy, but the joy filled leadership that points to a great-God who is always working even in the midst of setbacks and disappointments. Most of all Joseph reminds us that God keeps his promises as we see all of Egypt bowing down to him in Genesis 41 v 43. They cried out with the word 'abreka' which means 'kneel'. Genesis 37 is fulfilled in Genesis 41 and again in Genesis 42 as his brothers kneel before him.

God is able to bring great good out of immense evil and suffering.  Joseph points us to the greater Joseph who died on a cross and accomplished the most incredible act of redemption the world has ever seen.  He too brought great good out of evil and could say with Joseph 'But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.' (Genesis 50 v 20).  

Joseph remained humble because he believed in a big God.  When God called him to lead in extraordinary times he was ready.  He remained God focussed, humble, prayerful and free from bitterness.  We see this in the names of his children: Manasseh (God has made me forget my hardship) and Ephraim (God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction).  God is calling us to lead in extraordinary times.  Leadership in lockdown has been and is very tough.  We need other leaders around us, supporting us and praying with us.  We need to be 'big-godders' like Joseph.  Lets remian faithful in tough times and rather than trying to be brave, lets trust in the God of Joseph who is doing all things well.  

For further study I have particularly enjoyed David C Searle's 'Joseph - His Arms Were Made Strong' by the Banner of Truth.  Also David Kingdon's Mysterious Ways is very helpful.  Joel Beeke's sermon series is invaluable as is Sinclair Fergusons sermons.  

Among God's Giants - Puritan Wisdom in an Age of Superficiality

When my father retired in 2002 and moved to Glasgow, his library had to squeeze into a very small third bedroom.  Many of his books had to go.  Some went to a grateful son while others found a welcome home in many other places.  After his death in April 2020 and with my mothers recent move to Edinburgh, I had to sort through my fathers library.  Much of it went to the Westminster Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Newcastle but I was keen to hold on to at least some of his books.  When my father retired, he couldn't part with the books that were in many ways the three elements of his ministry: 1. Free Church (and particularly Highland) piety - the best of the Free Church fathers - John Kennedy, Moody Stuart, Rabbi Duncan, Prof John Murray and of course Andrew Bonar and Robert Murray McCheyne. 2. The Covenanters.  My father kept a vast range of the best of covenanting history.  He loved the stories of bravery in the midst of persecution and often spoke at conventicles. 3.The Puritans.  My father kept a wide range of Puritan works.  Many were 1-200 years old and were the fruit of his early days in the Banner of Truth in the 1960's.  These books are freely available now thanks to the Banner and many other reformed publishers.  He also had many books about Puritanism and I have been enjoying reading these over the last few months.

One of these books is J.I.Packer 'Among God's Giants'.  This is now published as 'A Quest for Godliness' by Crossway.  I read this many years ago (it first came out in 1991) but I was encouraged to pick it up again after reading 'J.I. Packer: An Evangelical Life' by Leland Ryken.  It is impossible to read a life of Packer without catching something of his passion for the Puritans.  Packer's biography coincided with a very welcome Christmas present of the new set of Puritan Paperbacks from the Banner of Truth which, if you are not familiar with the Puritans, is a great place to start.  I personally think Thomas Watson's 'All things for Good' and 'The Godly Man's Picture' are worth their weight in gold.  It is hard to believe these books can be anything but encouraging and helpful to any Christian that picks them up with a prayerful spirit.  There is more depth and profundity in a page of Watson than whole books of many modern authors.  

The Puritans have been rehabilitated over the last 60 years and J.I. Packer needs to take the credit for much of this work.  Rather than being seen as peevish, censorious, conceited, hypocritical and loveless the Puritans give us a coherent and God centred vision of the Christian life.  As Packer says:

There was for them no disjunction between sacred and secular; all creation, so far as they were concerned, was sacred, and all activities, of whatever kind, must be sanctified, that is done to the glory of God. So, in their heavenly-minded ardour, the Puritans became men and women of order, matter-of- fact and down-to-earth, prayerful, purposeful, practical.  Seeing life whole, they integrated contemplation with action. worship with work, labour with rest, love of God with love of neighbour and of self, personal with social identity, and the wide spectrum of relational responsibilities with each other, in a thoroughly conscientious and thought out way.  In this thoroughness they were extreme, that is to say far more thorough than we are, but in their blending of the whole wide range of Christian duties set forth in Scripture they are eminently balanced.

This quote struck me as we seem to live in a world that is increasingly unbalanced.  Nowhere is this more apparent than social media.  The recent storming of the Congress in America was certainly inspired by a narcissistic and unstable president, but it was in many ways the natural development of the echo chamber of social media that whips people up to a frenzy and perpetuates conspiracy theories that never need to meet with truth or reality.  If there was ever a time for wise and balanced theology it is now and we have so much we can learn from the Puritans.

In his first chapter in Among God's Giants, Packer outlines three groups of evangelicals who would be helped by the example of the Puritans and I think these groups have come in to sharp focus during lockdown:

1. The Restless Experimentalists.  Packer defines these Christians as shallow and rootless.  He says: 'their outlook is one of casual haphazardness and fretful impatience, or grasping after novelties, entertainments and 'highs', and of valuing strong feelings over deep thoughts.'  He continues: 'they conceive the Christian life as one of exciting extraordinary experiences rather that of resolute rational righteousness.' These Christians, argues Packer, have turned the Christian life into a 'thrill seeking ego-trip.'  

Like a skilful surgeon Packer brings the scalpel of Biblically infused Puritan wisdom to the restless experimentalists.  He suggests that they would do well to learn from the Puritans through their:

• God centeredness - this is central to the discipline of self denial.  As Lloyd Jones used to say 'we are on too good terms with ourselves.'  If the modern church was God centred we would be more humble and more prayerfully dependent on the Lord.
• The primacy of the mind - it is impossible to obey biblical truth unless we understand it.  Experience has replaced theological understanding with so many Christians.
• The demand for humility, patience and steadfastness at all times - the Holy Spirits ministry is not to give us thrills but to make us more like Christ.
• Not relying on our feelings - our feelings go up and down and God frequently tests us by taking us 'through the wastes of emotional flatness.'
• Worship as life's primary activity.
• Regular self examination
• The Puritans believed that 'sanctified suffering bulks large in God's plan for his children's growth in grace.'  The Puritans had a well developed theology of suffering largely lacking in the modern church.

Many relentless experimentalists have struggled through lockdown as they have been forced to find God through setbacks and disappointments. Time will tell if this will lead to a refocussing of Christianity in a largely experience-led western church.

The Puritans believed that 'sanctified suffering bulks large in God's plan for his children's growth in grace.'  The Puritans had a well developed theology of suffering largely lacking in the modern church.

2. The Entrenched Intellectuals.  Packer diagnosis this group well: 'Constantly they present themselves as rigid, argumentative, critical Christians, champions of God's truth for whom Orthodoxy is all...There is little warmth about them; relationally they are remote; experiences do not mean much to them; winning the battle for mental correctness is their one great purpose.  They understand the priority of the intellect well; the trouble is that intellectualism, expressing itself in endless campaigns for their own brand of right thinking, is almost if not quite all that they can offer, for it is almost if not quite all that they have.'  We see the entrenched intellectuals on social media.  These keyboard warriors love exposing inferior Christians.  They lob grenade after grenade from their bunkers and accuse other Christians of cowardice, worldliness and compromise.  

The entrenched intellectuals is often how the Puritans are characterised but Packer helpfully show us that the Puritans lived and taught in a way that completely counters arid intellectualism in a variety of ways:

• True Christianity claims the affections as well as the mind
• Theological truth is for practice - William Perkins described theology as 'the science of living blessedly for ever.'  Some of us have attended churches where the preaching is solid and the people know and love the Lord but their brand of Christianity is not portable to the day and age we live in.  Children who grow up in these environments drift away to find a warmer and kinder Christianity or turn their back on the faith all together.
• Conceptual knowledge kills if one does not move on to the realities of which they refer.
• The gospel calls for faith and repentance issuing from a life of love and holiness, in other words gratitude expressed in goodwill and good works.
• The Spirit is given to lead us in to close companionship with others in Christ.  The Puritans fought for church reform and were eventually ejected from the Church of England.  The frosty separatism which is a badge of honour for so many entrenched evangelicals todays was alien to most of the Puritans. 
• The discipline of discursive meditation is meant to keep us in ardent and adoring in our love affair with God.
• It is ungodly and scandalous to become a firebrand and cause division in the church, and it is ordinarily nothing more reputable than spiritual pride in its intellectual form that leads men to create parties and splits. 

I'm afraid I have to confess that I can identify myself with many of the traits of the arid intellectuals.  I have gone through periods in my Christian life where I have relished reading theology rather than the Bible and my social media engagement has been more active than my prayer life.  My love for debate and controversy was greater than my love for other believers - 'winning the battle for mental correctness' as Packer says.  In his seminal book 'Knowing God' Packer teaches that while one church may have much of the truth, another church with less truth can make much better use of it and please God with their zeal for the gospel and love for Christ.  The Puritans contended for a confessionally faithful church and for Scriptural church order but this was never in isolation from spiritual renewal and revival.  Only the Holy Spirit fanning the flames of ardent love for Jesus can keep us from entrenched evangelicalism.

The Puritans contended for a concessionally faithful church and for Scriptural church order but this was never in isolation from spiritual renewal and revival.  Only the Holy Spirit fanning the flames of ardent love for Jesus can keep us from what Packer called 'entrenched evangelicalism'.

3.  The Disaffected Deviationists - I know many people in this group and I like the way that Packer deals with them in 'Among God's Giants'.  He doesn't pretend that evangelicalism doesn't have some culpability in many people turning their back on evangelical orthodoxy.  As he says: 'Modern evangelicalism has much to answer for in the number of casualties of this sort it has caused in recent years by its naivety of mind and unrealism of expectation.'  

So who are the disaffected deviationists?  Packer explains: 'They are people once saw themselves as evangelicals, either from being evangelically nurtured or from coming to profess conversion within the evangelical sphere of influence, but who have become disillusioned about the evangelical point of view and have turned their back on it, feeling that it let them down.'  Many leave for intellectual reasons, others feel betrayed having been promised a prosperity gospel that lets them down.  Packer continues: 'Hurt and angry, feeling themselves victims of a confidence trick, they now accuse the evangelicalism they knew of having failed and fooled them, and resentfully give it up; it is a mercy if they do not therewith similarly accuse and abandon God himself.'  

Again Packer points us back to an older, profounder, wiser evangelicalism of the Puritan era to help with the 'casualties of modern evangelical goofiness':

• The mystery of God - the modern evangelical God is too small.  The God of the Bible is transcendent and inscrutable.  We can never understand God's ways.  Bafflement and disappointment must be accepted as recurring themes in the life of a believer.
• The love of God - a love that redeems, converts, sanctifies and ultimately glorifies sinners.  God's love was unambiguously and gloriously displayed at the cross and nothing will ever be able to separate us from God's love.  While this comforts God's children, no situation in this world 'will ever be free from the fly in the ointment and the thorns in the bed.'
• The salvation of God - the Puritans have much to teach us how Christ has put away our sins and is now leading us through this world to a glory that is even now being prepared for us.  Christ is instilling within us a desire for and capacity to enjoy eternity.  I love Packer language here: '...holiness here, in the form of consecrated service and loving obedience through thick and thin, is the high road to happiness hereafter.'
• The reality of spiritual conflict - the life is a battle against the world, the flesh and the devil and anyone who promises a life of health, wealth and happiness is a charlatan.  
• The Puritans emphasised the protection of God - they believed that God could overrule and sanctify our sufferings. 
• The glory of God - it becomes our privilege as Christ's disciples to further his glory by celebrating his grace, by our proving of his power under perplexity and pressure, by totally resigning ourselves to his good pleasure, and by making him our joy and delight and all times.

The Puritans show us that the 17th century had its fair share of  spiritual casualties.  Then, as now, there are Christians who think simplistically and 'hoped unrealistically' and they became disappointed, disaffected, despondent and despairing.  The Puritans ministry was to seek to raise up and encourage these wounded spirits rather than driving them further away.  The way to win these disaffected prodigals is to return to the Biblical Christianity of the Puritan era with all its depth and richness.  The goofiness of modern evangelicalism may look and sound slicker but if we want to build God's kingdom we need to build it on the right foundations.  Skin tight jeans and stylised worship will only hold people until the next 'brand' comes along.  

Why do we need the Puritans?  In an age of superficiality and gimmicks the Puritans give us a an example of mature holiness and seasoned fortitude  As Packer says they 'shine before us as a kind of beacon light, overtopping the stature of Christians in most era's and certainly so in this age of crushing urban collectivism, when Western Christians sometimes feel and often look like ants in an anthill and puppets on a sting.'  Surely lockdown is a wake up call to the church that the over stylised, gimmick driven Christianity does not meet the deepest needs of our hearts and is far from the God centred, Christ exalting  Biblical gospel.  The Puritans, with all their faults and failings have much to say to us today.  They have things to say through their writings that we badly need to hear.  The 17th century Puritans was a movement for church reform and spiritual revival.  If there was ever a time when we needed a similar movement it was today.