In Episode 54, we will be discussing the history and significance of a cemetery in London known as Bunhill Fields.
Link to the City of London’s official website for Bunhill Fields can be found here
Link to Christian Classics Ethereal Library for John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” can be found here
The enclosed picture is of the grave of John Bunyan at Bunhill Fields.
Player and Download Links below:
Today, the Church remembers the suffering and death of Christ on a cross outside Jerusalem about the year 33 A.D. On this Good Friday, I’ve been reflecting on what happened on that day almost 2,000 years ago.
We are told in the Gospel accounts that the Lord Jesus was crucified with two others on that day.(Matthew 27:38; Mark 15:27; Luke 23:33; John 19:18)
I think this is significant. All four Gospel writers thought it was an important enough detail to record for their written account of what happened to the Lord Jesus that day. Matthew and Luke give us a bit more information about what happened.
In Matthew’s account, we find bypassers, chief priests and elders who mocked the crucified and dying Jesus. In the text, we see also:
“The robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way.” (Matthew 27:44 ESV)
In Luke’s account, we find:
One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:39-43 ESV)
Some might look at these texts and see a contradiction. However, the same Holy Spirit who inspired Matthew to write also inspired Luke. How do we harmonize these two accounts?
I think the simplest way to harmonize them is to see that one of the robbers repented and placed his faith in Christ while on his cross and the other robber remained hostile and apart from Christ..
I think that these accounts give us a very compact picture of human destiny. We see two humans, both of whom are hostile to Christ when their time of crucifixion begins. Yet, one remains hostile to the end and refuses to allow his eternal destiny to be changed. The other comes to faith in Christ and is ultimately saved from his eternal condemnation.
What a picture of human destiny. The perfect human, Jesus Christ, is in the midst of sinful and hostile humanity. In His dying, He brings life and peace to others. His death (and also in His resurrection days later) changes the destiny of those who trust in Him, giving hope, purpose and eternal life.
One remains hostile. The other comes to faith. The ultimate paths of humanity are only two. The path of the one who fails to believe and the path of the one who does believe.
What encouragement for us to trust Christ. The thief who repented had no list of good things he did for God. His life was lived in rebellion to God and to the people around him. With only hours to live, under a sentence of death, both physical and spiritual, he brings nothing to recommend him. In the midst of his crucifixion, he changed his mind. With words of implicit trust said to Jesus, this robber’s destiny was changed. After this, he wasn’t going to have a long lifetime to do the work of Christ on Earth. But it can be truly said that he spent the remainder of his life faithful to Christ (even if that life was to be measured only in hours). No long list of good works already done to recommend him to God. No promise of a long life to do the work of the kingdom of God. Only simple trust in Christ in the midst of nothing else. Yet, such faith then and today hears the promise echo back: “Today, you will be with me in Paradise.”
The following is the fifth and final part of the article: Bricks Without Straw:
SACRIFICE
We know that the Lord guides us through our circum-stances. Yet, there is no guarantee that making the time for growth in Christ would be an easy thing. We are told in Scripture to not only lay aside sin but also “everything that hinders” (Hebrews 12:1 Emphasis added). Jude writes that we need to ‘contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3). The word translated into English as “contend” is taken from the Greek word from which we get the word “agonize.” Keeping the faith is not an easy matter. It requires diligence,patience and sacrifice. Today, many of our Christian brothers and sisters around the world are learning this lesson to the extreme. Martyrdom and persecution are the price that they pay to keep their precious faith.
I suspect that too many of us expect our life in Christ to just “click into place” without effort. Our walk of faith must never be on “auto pilot.” Despite living in a culture of easy, instant spirituality, we are presented with many opportunities to actively and purposely grow in the faith. Being made in God’s image, we are creative beings. Be creative in finding ways to “redeem the time” and keep fellowship with Jesus. Some of these ways are nothing more than points of good time management. Schedule your time of prayer, Bible study, or meditation on the Word as you would a doctor’s appointment or a business meeting. Perhaps it means waking up half an hour earlier to carve out time which you thought you did not have. Lunchtime at work might provide a time for prayer, reading, or study. It may even mean going on a fast from listening to the radio in your car or watching television. Perhaps your car act can as a portal version of an “inner room” which provides you some small level of sanctuary and solitude to read, reflect and pray.
Something that has been helpful to me is the using a smart phone. I use an app created by Olive Tree for reading several Bible translations on my iPhone. I also keep a number of e- books available to read with a Kindle app). It continues to fascinate and challenge me that the equivalent of a large library can be kept and accessed on a device which fits in my shirt pocket. When waiting in a doctor’s office or stuck in a long line in a grocery store, it is really satisfying to get out my smart phone and read from the Bible or a work of classic Christian literature. When I find myself in a long line at a grocery store, I find that being able to pick what I read from my iPhone is a better use of my time than being assaulted by magazines with images of celebrities in the tabloid racks, beckoning me to read about their latest diet or love affair. It is a wonderful way to redeem the time.
LESSONS LEARNED
I’m happy to report that Julie recovered and is doing well with no recurrence of her blood clots. My mother was able to return home and live there right up to the last week of life six years later. In the midst of some prolonged time pressures during that period in 2002, I’ve learned some very valuable lessons about my faith. You can find the time to maintain a good fellowship with God in the midst of difficult circumstances. He expects us to. The Lord has placed us in these times so that we will find Him.
We live in a society in which we face enormous time pressures. We’ve seen how this can be used as a strategy against us by the enemy of our soul (Matthew 13:39; Luke 10:19) with the goal of trying to separate us from fellowship with God. Realizing this, I am learning the value of being selective with the time and treasures that the Lord has given. Lastly, I know that none of this will happen without a struggle. It takes creativity to fight back against the time pressures we face. If you see me on the street or in a store, tell me about how your struggle is going. I’ll be the one standing in line, reading the Psalms on my smart phone.
End of Part 5
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The following is Part 4 of the article: “Bricks Without Straw“:
While the ideas for this article were being put together, my wife Julie mentioned that she thinks that people often avoid silence voluntarily because they are afraid of the sense of emptiness they will find during those times of silence. I agree. Noise and busyness are two things that can take our minds off God.
In contrast, Christian saints have cherished their times of silence and solitude. Thomas A Kempis taught his monks to find the joy of the Lord while alone and quiet in their cells. In his 15th Century work “Imitation of Christ“, he instructs us in his chapter on silence and solitude:
Remain with him in your cell for you will not find so great a peace anywhere else.
In Thomas’ time, the word “cell” did not have the meaning it does in our culture. In the 15th century , the word “cell” did not describe a place of confinement. Rather, it was a small room that served as a monk’s quarters. It took its name from the Latin word coelum, which means “heaven.” Those times of quiet and aloneness with God are not a time of confinement but rather a sampling of heaven and interacting with Our Lord Jesus who sits, at this moment, in Heaven at the right hand of His Father (Luke 22:69).
Discouragement is another way that we try to make “bricks without straw”. It will often cause us to channel our time and energies into self-pity. It can produce an inner numbness of the spirit. It deflects us away from focusing on doing the will of the Lord. The Bible offers an example of what can happen when discouragement sets in.
In the fourth chapter of the book of Ezra, we read about how the Israelites came back from exile in Babylon. They soon began to re-build the Temple. When political pressure mounted against them, the construction was forcibly stopped. The people became discouraged. The re-building of the Temple was not resumed for twenty years. The Israelites had inverted what Christ would teach centuries later:
Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these other things shall be added onto you.(Matthew 6:33)
They sought first “all these other things.” As a result, the other things failed. Keep in mind that money, food and houses are not evil. But it is evil to pursue them as a first priority.
Haggai reminded the Israelites that they needed to place God’s priorities first in their lives (See Haggai 1). What happened to those Israelites after their return from exile is a danger that we face as well. In our discouragement, we tend to take our minds away from the priority of Christ. Those other things that usurp God’s first priority in our lives will ultimately fail to satisfy us.
End of Part 4
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The following is Part 3 of the article Bricks Without Straw
SELECTIVITY
At the start of my walk with Christ, I was blessed to study Scripture with a wonderful Bible study leader named Celeste. She taught me that the choice for a Christian is not between good and evil, since that choice is already settled. Rather, the choice is between what is good and what is best. This requires being selective and living life prayerfully with a sense of discernment. The times in which we live continue to force Christians to make a choice between the good and the best. We live in a world with so many choices that we are tempted to not choose but to try to have and do it all.
While our choices of things in the Lord are increasing, such as Bible translations, books, audio and videos, the amount of hours per day allotted to us hasn’t increased. Consider how Christian literature from over twenty centuries of church history is becoming more available to the average believer. Protestants are becoming familiar with the writings of Teresa of Avila. Catholics are learning to appreciate the insights of Jonathan Edwards. Western Christians are being introduced to the works of Eastern Orthodox theologians such as Gregory of Nazianzus, Simeon the New Theologian and Bishop Kallistos Ware. Many classic Christian writings are now on the Internet or available on downloadable media.
Some simple math will show that our culture’s attitude of trying to have it all falls far short of reality, especially if Christians believe that and try to apply it to the area of devotional reading on these digital sources. The equivalent of a church library can now be stored as text on a single DVD as well as older media such as compact discs, or on more modern storage devices such as memory sticks or even large scale devices (relatively small and affordable) such as a terabyte drive (1 terabyte = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes [or characters] of information). To give you some sense of scale, a Bible with a fair amount of commentary and notes takes up about 5 megabytes (5 million characters) of information. If you put the equivalent of what a 1 terabyte drive holds into books the size of a pocket-sized version of the Bible and put those books, one next to each other, you would need one shelf just under 4 miles long to hold them.
Consider a scenario in which you purposely limited your Christian devotional reading to using a reader tied to a terabyte drive (a storage device unimaginable for everyday use only as far back as 2002 but commonly available today). This terabyte drive is filled to its maximum capacity with books, articles, etc. If your desire is to eventually read through every last piece of text on that drive, you will run into a problem, namely, with available time. If you devoted one hour to such a daily reading, it would take you a little over 39,452 years to get through everything on the terabyte drive. If you started at age 10 and read for one hour every day, for the next 80 years, you would get through only 0.2% of the readings available to you. Restricting yourself to a much smaller device such as an iPhone wouldn’t help. With the available space on an 8GB iPhone, your one hour daily readings would take 236 and a half years. Examples like these show us that with today’s choices, trying to have it all cannot happen. There is simply not enough time. You have to be selective and make a choice. Keeping this in mind allows us the freedom to know, ahead of time, that we must be selective and do so in the light of God’s priorities for our lives.
The same holds true for other aspects of our Christian walk. We can, in essence, be making bricks without straw, in areas that do not involve an oppressive schedule forced upon us by our jobs or through other life circumstances outside of our control. Strangely enough, we can engage in a self-imposed oppression. For example, we live in a culture that thrives on noise and activity. These conditions are not ideal for taking time to reflect on God and your life in Him. Yet, how often, when we are by ourselves, do we needlessly destroy the silence by turning on a television or an audio player?
End of Part 3
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