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The Back Page contains articles from Pastor Bob Burnett and others on a wide range of topics... more to be added soon.
God does care for Kilkivan
August 14th 2009
Be careful what you say (or think), God might hear it. Well, of course, he does; we know that from Doctrine of God 101. But it's a lesson we keep having to learn.
A few months ago in one of my talks at GCC I said, tongue in cheek: "How come I often meet pastors who say God 'told them' to plant a new church on the Sunshine Coast? God seems to have a thing about the Coast; what about Kilkivan, how come he never seems to tell anyone to go to Kilkivan and start a church? Doesn't God care for Kilkivan?" (Kilkivan is a small town west of Gympie.)
During the recent Bible convention at USC, I was speaking to a friend from Murgon, a lucerne grower who is an occasional visitor to our night church. He told me he sometimes preaches at his church in Murgon, also at nearby Goomeri and, yes, at Kilkivan. My curiosity was aroused, and from him I learned lots about God’s church in Kilkivan.
So during our holidays, Wendy and I went to Kilkivan on a Sunday so God could put me straight on how he feels about the town. We attended the Union Church, a small independent evangelical church. I'd offered to preach for them, but they already had guest speakers lined up for the two Sundays I was available.
The pillar of the church is Dawn, who organises the preaching roster, opens up, tidies up and plays tape music and leads prayer if there is no speaker available. On our Sunday, the guest speaker was Norm from Gympie Union Church, whose wife Jean played the organ. At first, the congregation comprised Dawn, Wendy and me, but a couple of other locals drifted in part-way through the meeting.
Despite suffering "the flu", Norm preached a good message on the conversion of the Apostle Paul. I assisted with the readings and helped serve the Lord's Supper.
The service was followed by a sumptuous country morning tea (supplied by Dawn), which would pass as a sumptuous Sunshine Coast lunch. God is alive and well in Kilkivan. Certainly his people there could use a little encouragement. Most of the town's young people leave to pursue tertiary studies. Do pray for Kilkivan Union Church, that God would bless and multiply them, and that he might provide some nice retired (semi-retired) pastor who would like to settle in Kilkivan and make the church his project.
Pr Bob Burnett
Jesus and The Missing Body
Where is the body of Jesus? Where is the ossuary (bone box) inscribed “Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph”? For surely someone of the significance of Jesus would have received a decent Jewish burial, and his tomb be honoured (see Luke 11:48).
The reason the ossuary has never been found, despite a search lasting a couple of millennia, is that it doesn’t exist; there is no body on earth. Oh yes, Jesus existed; the historic literary evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable. The biblical account is that he was the Son of God, i.e. God the Creator as a man, in a real body.
The eyewitnesses all testify that he was executed (crucified) near Jerusalem on a Friday at the Passover Feast (full moon) in around AD30, and his body buried in a tomb before nightfall.
But by Sunday morning, despite there having been a Roman guard on the tomb, the body was gone. What are the possibilities?
As some sceptics have suggested, did the women who found the empty tomb go to the wrong tomb? Hardly; it was the women who stuck by Jesus through the trial and crucifixion. They witnessed the burial; they’re unlikely to make such a mistake.
Besides, having reported their find to the disciples, if they’d made a mistake someone would have put them straight, especially Joseph or Nicodemus who buried the body. The disciples were not expecting a resurrection. Their first response to the women’s report was disbelief. They would have made sure the women had the right tomb.
Did Jesus merely “faint” on the cross, revive in the tomb and later break out? Hardly; he’d hung lifeless on the cross for three hours, been speared in the chest by Roman soldiers (probably piercing his heart) to ensure he was dead and been handled by Joseph and Nicodemus. Are we to believe these people didn’t recognise a dead body?
Are we to believe that someone with his wounds could roll away the huge stone that sealed the tomb and overpower several Roman legionaries and make good his escape? I think not.
Did the Romans or the Jewish religious leaders steal the body? They could have; they had the opportunity. But both these groups wanted to stop this “Jesus movement”, not encourage its spread. If they’d taken the body, once word of a resurrection (coming back to life in an imperishable body) began to circulate they’d have produced the body, if they could, to show Jesus’ followers they were deluded.
Did Jesus’ disciples steal the body? After all, Jesus had said, several times, he would be resurrected from the grave. Did the disciples fake a resurrection by hiding the body and spreading a lie. That’s certainly what the Jewish religious leaders said happened (Matt. 28:12-15).
But it beggars belief that the disciples, who’d fled terrified from Jesus’ arrest and who hid in Jerusalem after the crucifixion, should suddenly find the courage to overpower Roman soldiers and steal the body.
Besides, almost all the close disciples of Jesus (The Twelve) were executed because of their testimony “Jesus is risen”. As the Roman executioner asked them one last time, just before the sword fell, “Do you still say Jesus rose from the dead?”, surely one of them at least would crack and say “No, it’s all a lie”. Good men might be prepared to die for the truth, but they wouldn’t all die for a lie.
Then there are the accounts of the appearance of the resurrected Jesus to individuals, groups, The Twelve and to a group of several hundred. Would they all have colluded in a lie, and stuck to their story throughout their lives, even when written accounts of Jesus’ resurrection began to appear? I doubt it.
The only plausible conclusion is that Jesus was truly resurrected sometime between sundown Friday and sun-up Sunday. His earthly body was metamorphosed into an eternal form (see I Corinthians 15 for an explanation of ‘resurrection’). Having been seen again and again, about six weeks later Jesus was taken up bodily into Heaven, where he exists today in the same bodily form.
But what does the resurrection mean for us, Jesus’ followers? I Corinthians 15:20 says that Jesus was resurrected as the “first-fruits” of all who die his followers. Just as he died, was buried and rose in an imperishable form, so we will die, our bodies be buried (our spirit is immediately with God) and later raised imperishable so that we might live forever in God’s Kingdom. Our final state is that we receive renewed bodies to enjoy eternal life on a renewed earth. That is the central message of Easter.
If you’d like help to understand more about Jesus and the Bible, please speak to one of the staff this morning, or phone us on the church number. Have a happy Easter.
Pr Bob Burnett
Flood, Fires and Billows of Smoke
February 15th 2009
Who of us today doesn't feel a little guilty today – guilty that we still have homes, guilty that we're still alive – knowing that in the past week almost 200 people have died in the Victorian bushfires, hundreds are injured, and thousands more have lost their homes, or had them damaged, in fire and flood.
During the week this question was posed to me: “Is God punishing Australia?” A little soul-searching is not a bad thing in times of national calamity, but the Bible nowhere gives us permission to say that the cataclysmic fires and floods are a direct divine judgment.
There will be some who'll use their pulpits to link these events with divine wrath, especially since Victoria recently introduced the most liberal abortion laws in all of Australia, but we must be careful not to go beyond what Scripture says. It is the innocents, not the legislators, who have suffered in the fires.
From an earthly vantage, the fires came about through a confluence of extreme temperatures, high winds and low humidity, along with a spark or two from natural causes and the odd arsonist. The floods came about through an intense monsoon trough sitting over North Queensland. These things are not out of God's control, and we do believe that God works all things (even bad things, like bushfire and flood) for the good of his people and kingdom plan. However, in terms of his purpose, we are given no more than a peek in his door.
We learn from Rev. 8:6-11, which describes disasters of the flood and fire variety, that such events are general warnings. To what purpose? So that people will be persuaded that this world is not all there is, that the earth itself is not to be worshiped (Romans 1:22-23) nor to be ultimately trusted, and that we are not to live like there is no accountability.
Rather, we are to repent of all idolatries and worship the Living God. Will such things turn people to God? Probably not; the Revelation paints a gloomy picture of humanity's response. These disasters are trumpets, and trumpets warn of an even greater approaching judgment. They're meant to convey that all is not right with this age, to alert people and encourage them to return to God. This week, God has been shouting to Australia, but are we listening.
Do remember that disasters are also opportunity for us, Jesus' people, to demonstrate love for our neighbour. You can donate to the fire appeal at www.redcross.org.au, or phone 1800 811 700.
Pr Bob Burnett
Love Jesus and Live Longer
February 1st 2009
During a recent SBS documentary on human longevity, a medical researcher said “it's an established fact that people who go to church live longer (than the population average)”. That's reassuring, because the Bible always sees long life on this earth as a blessing from God.
The documentary, at the time, was examining a Seventh Day Adventist population, but the principle apparently applies across denominations, and would be in line with God's proverbial promises, such as (Deut. 6:1-2) “These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, so that you, your children and their children may fear the Lord your God ... (and) enjoy long life.”
In case you should think that this promise applies only to Israel, we find similar written to a Gentile church (Eph. 6:2-3): “Honour your father and mother – which is the first commandment with a promise – that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth”.
We need not necessarily assume that God supernaturally visits long life on church-goers as reward for going to church. In fact, other (non-Christian) people groups who live by a similar philosophy to that of Christians seem also to enjoy longer life. Researchers attribute our general longevity to our ability not to over-stress, but to trust God with the present and future. It's well-documented that stressors are deleterious to health.
However, what this does show is this: To be a follower of Jesus, trusting him in every situation, is what we've been created to be – it is more in sync with what we are as humans, made in God's image.
So, when God says that if we love and obey him we will (as a general rule) enjoy long life, he is saying: “To love and obey me is what you've been created to do. So come into sync with reality, enjoy my fellowship and my lordship, and you'll enjoy long life”. It means your body and mind are going with the flow of reality, rather than against it, and anyone who rows a boat knows that the former is much easier on the body than the latter.
Pr Bob Burnett
Barack-ing For a New World
January 25th 2009
The free world (though it’s a little harder these days to distinguish where the free world ends and the not-so-free-world begins) has a new leader, with the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the U.S.
I believe the U.S. was ripe for change, and only time will tell which direction the change goes – for better or for worse.
The election of the U.S.’ first black president has the end-times pundits diving for their concordances to see if Barack rates a mention in The Revelation, Daniel, anywhere. He doesn’t, except in the most generic of terms (“be subject to the governing authorities” – Rom. 13:1). The 44th President of the United States was of no interest to the persecuted Christians of First Century Asia Minor. They were the original recipients of The Revelation, and they were far too occupied with Rome and its emperors.
But I predict someone will say they’ve found direct reference to President Obama somewhere in Scripture. Prophets-of-alarm who in the past found Henry Kissinger, Saddam Hussein, Nikita Kruschev and Mao Tse Tung in the Scriptures can find anyone there, if they massage the text hard enough. Give poor Barack a break; he has a tough enough job as it is, what with two un-winnable wars and a global financial meltdown on his hands, without having to fight off the apocalyptic doomsayers.
I am, however, a little concerned about the messianic expectations with which his presidency has been greeted by some. Don’t expect him, single-handedly, to fix the U.S., or the world. Do pray for him (I Tim. 2:1-2) but do remember that even the best of men are men at best.
Psalm 146:3 reminds us “Do not put your trust in princes (rulers/politicians), in human beings who cannot save”. But the psalm further says (Psa. 146:5) “Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is the Lord their God”.
Pr Bob Burnett