Faith of Our Fathers – Part 6

The local historian G.R. Balleine was also a clergyman, and in 1940, at the outbreak of the Second World War, he penned a series of 52 lessons around the Apostle’s Creed. Balleine being first a foremost a historian, there’s a lot of history there that I’ve never come across before, and I have studied church history quite a lot.

He’s also master of the pithy anecdote or illustration to bring something to life, which is why Frank Falle says the original history, flowing freely, is a better book to read that its more worthy revisions. Joan Stevens was a fair historian, but she could not write nearly as well as Balleine, who has an almost intimate chatty style.

I’m hoping to put some or all of this book online on Sundays.

Faith of Our Fathers – Part 6
By GR Balleine

The Good News that Jesus Brought

I believe in God.

PASSAGE TO BE READ : St. Luke iv. 14-30.

TEXT TO BE LEARNT " No man hath seen God at any time. The only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him " (St. John i. 18).

Aim : To show how Jesus gave men a new conception of God.

HYMNS : " Hark ! the glad sound," and " Thou didst leave Thy throne."

APPARATUS : Pictures of our Lord teaching.

HOMEWORK : Write down seven things that show that God is love.

THOUGHT FOR TEACHERS : The supreme need of our nation at the present time is a new understanding of God's charcter.-Archbishop Davidson. The first thing that Jesus had to do as a Teacher was to induce men to rethink God. -Glover.

A NEW THEOLOGY.

(a) We have seen how mankind step by step got to know God, gradually outgrowing false ideas, gradually gaining clearer perceptions of the truth. We have seen how in this process the Jews, thanks to the teaching of their Prophets, made more rapid progress than any other nation. But, when the Old Testament closed, their knowledge of God was still very incomplete.

(b) When the New Testament opens, we find them digesting the Old Testament ideas. A class of learned men had arisen, called Scribes or Rabbis, who weighed and wrangled over every syllable of the old writings, and reduced all to an exact and elaborately detailed system, which they taught to the people in every synagogue. There was much truth in their teaching, but in their hands the passion of the Prophets became dry and unattractive, and they had no new vision to complete what the Prophets had seen.

(c) Then one day Somebody else began to teach in Galilee. He was not a Scribe nor the pupil of any famous Rabbi. He was a Poor Man, who had worked as a Carpenter in a small country town, and His name was Jesus. Sometimes, when He got an invitation, He preached in a synagogue. More often He taught by the seashore or on the mountain-side.He talked to strangers whom He met by a well or on country roads. He gathered a group of friends round Him, who lived with Him, and became His pupils.

(d) His own name for His teaching was the Good News. (Our English Bibles unfortunately disguise this beautiful name by using the terribly technical-sounding term " Gospel.") He said that He had good news to tell men about God. His preaching was not in the least like that of the Scribes. He did not deliver long learned sermons, but He told brief stories of everyday life, of a bad boy who ran away from home, of a traveller who fell among robbers, of some bridesmaids who were late for a wedding.

With a smile He used the quaintest illustrations, of a man who strained a gnat out of his wine and never noticed that he was swallowing a camel, of a man who wished to take a splinter out of his brother's eye, and never noticed that he had a whole plank in his own. " Never man spake like this Man," the people said. And His teaching had such effect, that to-day it influences the thoughts of every third man on earth.

LIBELS ON GOD.

(a) If we had lived in Galilee, I am not sure that we should at first have liked all that Jesus said. Sometimes we might have been shocked, for it would have been so different from what we had learnt in the synagogue school. Every great teacher has to sweep away ideas that are false and foolish, and Jesus had to get the people to abandon many unworthy notions about God, which they believed to be true. They thought of Him as a fierce God, a God of Vengeance, sending fire and famine, pestilence and war, on all who disobeyed His laws.

Many still think like that. Some children were asked to answer in writing, " What will God try to do with you, if you are naughty ? " The inspector hoped they would write, " Show me that I was wrong," " Make me feel sorry," " Lead me to own up and do right." But one answered, " He will try to get me run over by a bus " : another said, " He will make Mother die." Jesus did His utmost to get this idea out of people's minds. When Pilate murdered some Galilean, every one said, " God is angry for some sin," but Jesus said, Nay. When a badly built tower crushed eighteen persons, people said, " It is God's vengeance," but again Jesus said, Nay.

(b) A second mistake was that God was a fussy God, a God Who laid tremendous stress on trumpery little trifles.

For example, a wise rule of the Jewish religion ordered farmers to give one-tenth of their crops for the support of the Temple : but the Scribes made everyone who had a bed of thyme count the exact number of leaves, and send every tenth leaf to Jerusalem.

It was a wise rule that one day a week should be set apart for God's worship, but the Scribes turned the Sabbath into a perfect nuisance. Since no work must be  clone on it, if you cut your finger, you must not bind it up ; if your house caught fire, you must not extinguish it. If you had a pin in your dress, you could be stoned for bearing a burden on the Sabbath day. It was hotly debated whether a cripple might wear his wooden leg. You must not even leave vegetables to soak, for that was making the water work.

(c) A third mistake was that He was a God Who had favourites. The Jews thought that they were His favourites, and that all other nations were going to be destroyed. They thought that even among the Jews, the common people " which know not the law are accursed " (St. John vii. 49). " How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough, whose talk is of bullocks ? " (Ecclus xxxviii. 25). Only the leisured cultured people, who had time to learn and practise a very complicated religion, were God's friends.

But everyone agrees that a ruler with favourites is a bad ruler. We deposed Edward II, because he thought more of his favourites than of the mass of his subjects. And Jesus denounced this libel upon God. He spoke of the Queen of Sheba, Naaman the Syrian, the widow of Zarephath and other Gentiles whom God had blessed. So far from the poor being unsavable, He said, " Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the Kingdom of Heaven." God is a loving Father to all His children alike

GOD AS JESUS REVEALED HIM.

(a) Against these libels Jesus set His own picture of God. The first great truth He emphasized was that God loves every one, Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, good and bad. "It is not the will of your Father that one of these little ones should perish " (Matt. xviii. 14).

Let all men know that all men move

Under a canopy of love

As broad as the blue sky above.

The Middle Ages had two legends which beautifully illustrated Jesus' view of God. They said that there were no flowers till after the Fall. Then God gave the angels flower seeds to sow everywhere, to show that He still loved sinful man. They said too that once an angry unbelieving knight threw down his gauntlet before the altar, and challenged God to single combat. The only answer was a ray of sunshine which shone through the window and lighted up the text, " God is love " : and the knight owned himself vanquished, for such love is invincible.

(b) Because God loves, He gives. He sends sunshine and rain to good and bad alike. " If ye know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father in  Heaven give good things to them that ask Him " (Matt. vii. 11).

All good gifts around us

Are sent from Heaven above,

Then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord,

For all His love.

(c) And, because God loves, He wants our love in return. Jesus said that the chief thing that true religion requires is, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment " (Matt. xxii. 37). Such a conception was utterly unlike the system of the Scribes. " God's love for you," said Jesus, "provides for you and protects you. Your love for Him should keep you from everything wrong. Where real affection exists on both sides, other things will right themselves." Nothing could be simpler or less complicated.

(d) We call ourselves Christians. We claim to accept the teaching of Christ about God. We are anxious to forget all false ideas about God that other people have taught before His time and since, and to learn from him to love the Father Who loves us so dearly.

We are coming now to the second clause in the Creed, " I believe in Jesus Christ." We shall spend a good many Sundays thinking of Jesus and His work. But to-day we will just say this : " I believe that Jesus was right, when He taught that God is Love."