EARLY in His ministry the Lord had used this phrase about being "lifted up" (3:14) and now He uses it again. In both cases the reference is to the prospect of His being lifted up on the cross to die. It is true that John gives a secondary meaning to what he records and that the verb 'lifted up' can also mean 'exalted', so that we are justified in looking beyond the cross to His exaltation in the glory, "high and lifted up". What is not a true application, although it is often employed in this way, is the argument that if a preacher exalts Christ in his preaching, then hearers will be drawn to the Saviour. This is true enough, and it is certainly the business of every preacher to make much of Christ, but it was not what the Lord was thinking about when He made His declaration. He referred to the manner of death He should die.

Everything in the Christian life finds its origin at the cross. In chapter 3 the Lord was talking of rescue; perishing sinners can only be saved from spiritual death by looking in faith to their Sin-Bearer nailed to the cross. This further reference, however, deals with a feature of redemption which is equally important, namely transformation. Full salvation means a revolutionary change of life. It was to this complete newness that Jesus alluded when He spoke of men being drawn to Himself. Obviously the "all men" does not imply universal salvation, but it does most emphatically signify that all believers, all forgiven sinners, are called to experience union with Christ. They are to be drawn up and into Him.

The words represent a firm prophecy by the Lord Jesus and the context shows that they provide a striking and unexpected reaction to what was taking place, for the whole atmosphere was charged with popular enthusiasm for Him. He had met fierce hostility with calm purpose of heart, but now for the moment He has to meet almost overwhelming popularity. Many servants of God triumph in adversity but are defeated by popularity. Christ, however, was not moved by either. The crowds were enthusiastic (vv.12-18), the rulers dismally complained to one another that "the world is gone after him" (v.19). And now there were Greeks, representatives of the wider world, begging to be introduced to Him -- "Sir, we would see Jesus" (v.21). It was a significant moment: the hour had come. Yes, but not the hour for interviews and acclamation, but the hour for crucifixion. The Lord Jesus was quite unmoved. He did not want popularity. He did not welcome sightseers, however sincere they might be. Rather did He turn away from the prospect of having followers who would only be adherents of His cause and concentrate all His efforts on producing followers who would bear His likeness. This alone could bring true glory to the Father and to Him.

His purpose was to have 'grains of wheat' in vital relationship to the original Seed. To be content with acceptance or admiration would still leave Him a single Seed, abiding by itself alone, whereas the divine purpose was a harvest of "much fruit" (v.24). Such vital transformations could only be brought about by the cross. No amount of teaching or example could work in men's lives that radical revolution which would make them like Him. There was no hope for the Greeks or for anybody else in just seeing Him. They needed, and we need, something much more radical than that. The Twelve provide us with ample evidence of this fact. At the end of three years of the advantages and privileges of proximity to Jesus, they were as unlike Him as ever, quarrelling amongst themselves (Luke 22:24) and refusing to serve one another (John 13:14), even on the very eve of the Saviour's passion. [61/62]

What could God do with them? What can He do with any of us? It is not just instruction and effort that we need, but an inward revolutionary power. Pride has to be slain; self has to be repudiated; unbelief has to be crushed. All this must be done to make a way for the Christlike virtues of humility, love and faith. How can it be done? Only by the cross. It was for this purpose, then, that Jesus allowed Himself to be lifted up from the earth. There is in us all an 'old man' who cannot be reformed but has to be crucified. There needs to be an experience of the 'new man' which is "created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness" (Ephesians 4:24). It was for this that our Saviour died.

Jesus is not only our Substitute -- He is that -- but He is also our Standard. The Bible makes it very plain that God will not accept any lower standard than the perfection of Christ, and Jesus made it plain that He would provide such a divine demand by drawing every true believer to Himself. Not just to be near to Him. Not just to benefit from Him. He draws into complete and vital union with Himself, for only so can the Father glorify Himself again in the Church as He has already done in the Son. It was in response to the prayer which Jesus made on this occasion that the voice came from heaven which spoke both of the past and of the future glorifying of His name (v.28). A father's name is best glorified when he has a perfect son. God assures us that He has such a Son in the person of Jesus Christ. On that occasion, His voice, according to Jesus (v.30) came, not for the Son's sake, but for our sakes who are called to be sons in Him. We understand, then, that this verse affirms that, as in Gospel days the Father had been glorified in His only Son, now in the future days, He will again get the same glory for His name in the redeemed sons who constitute the Church. "Whom he justified, them he also glorified" (Romans 8:30). Surely 'revolution' is not too strong a word for such a transformation!

I have already indicated three virtues of Christ which must be found in His people, namely humility, faith and love. I give priority to humility because it is the rarest, being "of great worth in the sight of God" (1 Peter 3:4), and because the Lord Jesus disclosed that this is what He is like in His inmost being -- "for I am gentle and humble in heart" (Matthew 11:29). We who have found rest from our sins will never find that deeper rest which we long for without a yoke partnership with Him. The poison which contaminated the human race at the Fall is labelled 'Pride'. It is the unavoidable entail of the first Adam. In the Last Adam there is no pride at all, and He accepted the death of the cross that we might inherit the entail of perfect humility, being called to the kingdom of "the poor in spirit" (Matthew 5:3).

It may help us if we consider an example of how far short even the most devoted apostle came when compared with Christ. When Jesus was struck in the face before the high priest, His only response was to say: "If I said something wrong, testify as to what is wrong. But if I spoke the truth, why did you strike me?" (John 18:23). It so happened that the apostle Paul had a similar experience but, when he was struck on the mouth, his hot retort to the high priest was: "God will strike you, you whitewashed wall!" (Acts 23:3). Need I say more? Paul's reaction was natural enough to us fallen men; that is what we are like. Christ's answer was true to His character of perfect Man. Paul had to make some sort of apology. Christ never apologised. He never needed to.

I could go on to enlarge on the humility of Jesus. I could deal at some length with the faith always displayed in the life of Jesus. I might begin to describe the love which made the life of Jesus so beautiful, though I could only begin, for it is quite beyond my inadequate understanding. The point is, though, that new birth has destined us to be like Him. For God it is not enough that we should see Jesus and be only superficially affected: He wants us to be drawn into vital union with. His Son.

The ugly fact is that we are not like Him. No, even though we have had privileges much greater than those of the men who saw Him here on earth. Pride, unbelief and lovelessness are second nature to us. Yet we long to be like Him. However hard we try, though, and however much we pray, we cannot change our old fallen nature. Will it surprise you if I say that God cannot change it either? Perhaps if He could have done, there might have been some way of sparing His beloved Son from [62/63] being lifted up. But He cannot. He does not try. Through Jeremiah He informs us that our hearts are deceitful above all things and "beyond cure" (Jeremiah 17:9 N.I.V.). He has gone well into the matter and tells us that "I, the Lord, search the heart and examine the mind ...". He knows all that there is to be known about us and pronounces this old humanity of ours quite hopeless. His wisdom decrees that the essential means of revolutionizing our lives is to draw us right up into union with Christ in the total judgment of the cross. Does this sound mystical and negative? There was nothing mystical about the actual cross; it was real enough for Jesus and it was certainly not negative in His case.

The cross is never the end: it is the gateway to life. It is the way of newness and of increase. That divine 'grain of wheat' did not remain a single Seed; it fell into the ground and died (which is only another way of saying that He was lifted up), and by His death He has produced a united Church of many seeds (v.24). He has not just drawn us to His cross, He has drawn us to Himself. There is, of course, a whole realm of evil which was brought to its end at the cross. "Now is the judgement of this world", the Lord Jesus prophesied, "and now shall the prince of this world be cast out" (v.31). Satan became the ruler of this world when the human race went over to his side and turned against God. Jesus Himself, though truly human, never belonged to that dark kingdom but, in His substitutionary death, He took it with Him to the cross so that it could receive its judgement under the wrath of God. So far as God is concerned, the sentence was executed; the world is crucified to me and I am crucified to the world.

Thank God that for believers there is a happy sequel to this judgement crisis. In His resurrection, the Lord Jesus provides a new kind of life over which Satan has no power. However little this may seem to work out in their daily experience, all believers are assured that they are united with Christ in His death, and when they are baptized they give testimony to this fact (Romans 6:4-5). We have been crucified with Christ. This is the basis of our being made Christlike. We are all too conscious of the hindrances to holiness which work in our corrupt natures, but we are encouraged to claim and prove deliverance from them by realising that Christ has drawn us up into union with Himself in His death. My tempted brother! Jesus said that when He was lifted up on the cross He lifted you up to share in the power of His death! My disheartened sister! He offers you, too, the marvellous lifting power of His cross! Remember again His triumphant cry from that very cross: "It is finished!"

The cross is not only the end of the old fallen kingdom. It has its resurrection aspect. It is the gateway into the new kingdom of holy living for the glory of God. He has been 'lifted up' to the highest heights, and He has promised to draw us to Himself there. God graciously allows us to have a preview of our ultimate destiny when He inspired John to declare that when Christ appears, "we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2). In a sense that will be the ultimate fulfilment of the words of the Lord Jesus about His being lifted up and drawing us all to Himself. He has already ascended to the glory, but we have to await the Day of His coming again before we will literally be drawn up to Him. But that Day will surely come. It may come very soon.

Meanwhile, however, there is a practical and very powerful sense in which He calls us to share His resurrection now. The same apostle who wrote about the Day when we will see Christ and be like Him, assures us that "as He is, even so are we in this world " (1 John 4:17). Note that the Scriptures say, "as He is", and not "as He was". We are on the resurrection side of the cross. The N.I.V. renders this statement: "In this world we are like Him". This brings the power of His being lifted up right down to us in our present life. Even now, then, the sowing of His "grain of wheat" at the cross is bringing the harvest of a united body of people who share His life. Incidentally, they can only be truly united as they know union with the Lord in His death and resurrection.

This matter of being raised together with Christ is a fact to be laid hold of by faith. "We walk by faith and not by appearance" (2 Corinthians 5:7). Watchman Nee liked to use the illustration of Fact, Faith and Feeling walking on top of a wall. Fact walked steadily on, turning neither to the right nor left and never looking behind. Faith followed with his [63/64] hands upon Fact's shoulders and his eyes focused upon him, Feeling followed, resting on Faith as they went. All went well until Faith became concerned about Feeling, took his hands off Fact and turned to see how Feeling was getting on. As soon as he did this, he lost his balance and tumbled off the wall, and poor old Feeling fell down after him. Fact, of course, was quite unmoved: it was Feeling who was let down.

The cross is an abiding fact. By means of it our Lord draws us to Himself. The measure in which we respond is the measure in which the Holy Spirit will have liberty to transform us into the image of Christ -- "from glory to glory" (2 Corinthians 3:18).

DEAR Friends,

A sentence which my wife and I have often heard and which applies to our home life as well as to various aspects of the work is: 'It's impossible! It just can't be done!' Here are a few examples:

1. 'It's impossible to get your children to be nicely dressed on Sundays. It simply cannot be done nowadays. You just wait and see!'

2. 'It is impossible to hold young people's attention with simple Bible teaching. You ought to know that. You must appreciate that you cannot turn the clock back twenty years.'

3. 'It is impossible to carry on work for God and publish a monthly magazine without appealing to people for financial help. Those days are past. You'll soon find that out. It just cannot be done.'

4. 'It is foolish to maintain your standards, which are only a matter of your taste and background. You ate stubborn: it is simply impossible; you must move with the times.'

5. 'It is impossible to work together without some written rules. It's really impossible. It simply can't be done!'

These are a few examples of the short but emphatic phrase: 'It can't be done!' and they are far from covering every area in which they are used. If I were to record all the occasions when I have been faced by it, the result would fill a book.

It is impossible to cross the Red Sea. It is impossible to feed a whole nation in the wilderness. It is impossible to go over Jordan. It is impossible to conquer the giants in the land and to capture their fenced cities. It is impossible to slay Goliath. One can only do as much as one can. Surely God does not demand what is superhuman and impossible! It is impossible to stand firm in the face of Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace and Darius' den of lions. It is impossible to return from Babylon and rebuild the temple. How much more sensible to wait for better days to come!

It is impossible to go forward when there are mountains in the way. It is impossible to give if you are poor. It is impossible to rejoice when you are sad. It is impossible to be content when life goes against you. It is impossible for wives to submit to their husbands; anyone who expects that is absurdly out of step with the times.

However I must quote the whole phrase as it is generally used and include the customary 'unfortunately'. People say that they are sorry it can't be done. Folk usually correct me quite politely with the words, 'Unfortunately it is impossible', making it sound as though they heartily wished that somehow it might be otherwise. They express their regret as what appears so obvious, using that little word 'unfortunately' [64/65] to add a note of charming piety to their rebuke. They smile so sympathetically as they say 'unfortunately', that I feel myself to be an object of their pity. It is as if they are surprised that I do not realise that the full-orbed Christian life is quite impossible, and that I ought to reduce my expectations to what is practicable. As though they were suggesting that the Lord is so loving that He will fully understand that it was impossible for us to obey His Word, and that if we were to stand before Him on that great Day and say, 'Unfortunately, Lord, it couldn't be done', He would be kind enough still to greet us with the Scriptural welcome: "Well done, thou good and faithful servant". Put like that we may see the hollowness of our position, but yet we go on hoping, while year after year of wasted time passes by.

After I have listened to all these opinions I remember that in every generation -- even in ours -- there are some who are governed by an entirely different spirit. I think especially of the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11. These were men and women who did not shrink back from the demands and challenges of the life of faith. Their generation owed everything to them. Without them everything would have declined into spiritual ruin, but they maintained the standard of God's Word. Their greatest burdens were often not the enormous difficulties they faced but the unbelief and non-commitment of their fellow believers which dragged at their movement like lumps of lead. They continually heard the refrain: 'Unfortunately it can't be done', but their greatness showed itself in the fact that nevertheless it was done. Sometimes they even managed to carry others with them, though usually with complaining warnings and dragging feet.

This kind of language effectively kills enterprises which might otherwise have been carried through for God. Not seldom does it spring from those who have themselves given up and therefore nurse a secret hope that others will not even try. When other Christians tell you what unfortunately cannot be done, never attach much weight to their words. They may well be afraid that what could not be done in their case may regrettably be possible in yours. They judge that it is better for us all to be mediocre. How do they know what can be done? Surely anything can be done provided it is the will of God. Our business is not to argue but to discover the will of God and do it, even if someone is sorry that it cannot be done! We will soon discover that the will of God is not limited to what we regard as feasible. Where does God come in, if we only move within what man calls possible and impracticable? To the disciples with a few loaves and fishes, Jesus said: "Give the five thousand men with the women and children something to eat!" The disciples were ready enough to answer: "Sorry. It can't be done!", but in the end they did it. So it appeared that after all it could be done. It is not for us to tell the Lord what can or cannot be done. He knows better than any of us, and with Him there is never any need for the polite 'unfortunately'!

A cunning lie is hidden in that beautifully modest sentence: "It cannot be done'. If we analyse it in detail, we find that it evades personal responsibility. There is no actual person to shoulder the responsibility. Certainly the words are spoken by some man or woman but, by using the expression 'it', they evade anything personal. If the one concerned had said: 'I cannot do it' he would be faced with the challenge as to whether he had ever really tried. This he neatly avoids by affirming that it cannot be done. And in any case, what right has such an individual to speak on behalf of the rest of us? He presumes to speak for everybody else with his 'it', as though he represented the sum of human wisdom. 'Unfortunately' his polite little preliminary of 'unfortunately' does not lessen the presumption. I say, therefore, that the whole sentence is unacceptable, even when it is preceded by the apologetic 'Sorry'. It represents to me a mixture of lies, unbelief and non-committedness. My Bible tells me that there is nothing impossible to the man of faith. It says that everything is possible to those who believe. The will of God can always be done -- and that applies to every area of family, occupational and church life.

Nobody knows whether the decade we have just entered will be the last in the dispensation of grace. If the Lord hurries things up it may well be so. In any case it seems clear that the Church is in for a sifting time. Disintegrating tendencies are appearing almost everywhere, being expressed either as a direct rejection of God's Word or as a deviation from it. Even where the faith is not questioned, there is an ominous tendency to Laodicean lukewarmness. [65/66] Real church life grows increasingly difficult, especially in the matter of strong and persistent prayer. The demands which the church as the body of Christ makes may well be harder to meet and the polite excuse: 'Sorry! It can't be done' will sound growingly convincing. If Inflation gets even worse, if the struggle to exist becomes so intense that every man is forced to look to his own interests and then give what is over (if anything) to the interests of God, what will become of our assemblies? Will they degenerate into Emergency Stations for times of special need? Who will seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness? I am myself a weak person, and cannot answer such questions lightly, for I know how difficult it can be in practice to seek first the kingdom when you have a wife and child whom you love and would in no circumstances fail. It was no easy thing to seek first the kingdom by giving ourselves wholeheartedly to the life of the Church, the body of Christ. It is going to get harder as the fight for existence becomes ever fiercer.

I would like to remind you that in all areas of life the Lord's words still apply: "He who saveth his life shall lose it, but he who loses it for my sake and the gospel's, he shall find it". This is a saying which the majority either reject or ignore, for it fits into the phrase: 'It cannot be done', so far as they are concerned. I can assure you, though, that anyone who has tried a little of it knows by happy experience how true it is. Of course it is quite true that it is impossible if less vital things are given pride of place. When I enquire about the reasons behind excuses from people who found it is impossible to gather for prayer, I often find that what unfortunately prevented them from coming was the fact that there were more personal matters to which they gave priority. I know how very pressing business affairs can be but, if a conflict arises between the lesser (business) and the greater (God's kingdom), then the Word applies in all its force: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God". Is it too much for you? Well, most of God's calls to us are beyond our powers. The Bible, however, does not say, 'As your strength is, so shall your days be', but just the opposite, namely, "As thy days, so shall thy strength be!" The question therefore is not whether I have strength for the task which presents itself, but whether I have faith to accept responsibility for it.

Of all the dangers of the Christian life, stagnation is in my judgement the most dangerous. Stagnation leads to death, but risk and difficulties lead to life. If we would walk by faith, we must not fix our gaze on what can be done or what cannot be done, but must expose ourselves, as Paul did, to the risk which is always bound up with serving the risen Lord and doing His will. Paul never stood still, but right to the end he went forward, insisting that he could do all things in the strength of Christ (Philippians 4:13). This was no presumption. He was equally emphatic in affirming that he himself was not sufficient for anything. He who was not able for anything without Christ was able for everything in Christ. And he called us to be imitators of him. It is not a matter of trying to do what he did, but of proving for ourselves that we can accomplish every task which God Himself apportions to us.

As we move into this new decade, it is my prayer that none of us may succumb to that unfortunate 'It-can't-be-done' attitude but that we may be imitators of Paul in following Christ -- even in the things which would be quite impossible without Him. Greetings in His name

from POUL MADSEN.

ALL three of the above Scriptures refer to conditions of chaos. Having spent the last two years in the troubled land of Iran, I feel entitled to say something about the subject of chaos. I am often questioned about conditions there, and most of the questions have to do with physical dangers. To me, however, these are not the important questions; far greater are the spiritual problems of how to relate what is happening to the purposes of God. [66/67]

When I arrived in Teheran two years ago it was on a Friday. This corresponds to Sunday in a Muslim land, so I found myself in a church service, as a member of a congregation of about a thousand Westerners. Many of these were in the country by reason of a genuine sense of call from Christ. They had left all to serve God in Iran. Some had left good jobs and opportunities in secular callings at home to pursue those same callings for Christ's sake in that land. For us all it constituted a great problem to see all our expectations collapsing in the chaotic conditions which were overtaking the country. The shootings and mob violence, the burning down of buildings, constituted problems for the moment, but the far greater questions concerned the meaning of it all. When it became increasingly clear that the Shah's regime was about to fall and Khomeini's rule to take over, those of us who had prayed for years about the spread of the gospel in Iran were bewildered. Where was God? Was the Devil wresting power from the hands of the Almighty? These were the kind of questions which had to be faced by so many Christian workers, questions which posed a bigger danger than all the bullets and bombs.

We sat through last Winter in shivering cold because of the fuel shortage, and were almost numbed with the question: Where is God in all this? When things became impossible in Teheran we moved on into Pakistan, only to find there believers who have to live constantly under the acute tension of Islam. They could not leave the country, as we could. They have no alternative than to live on in that atmosphere of extreme pressure. What could we say to them? No escapist theories could be of any help. They needed encouragement; they needed positive reassurance concerning the purposes of God. This is the context of my message now. It relates to the faithfulness of God amid the chaos of our world.

The three Old Testament passages cited above introduce to us this theme of chaos. It is the common feature of all three. First there is natural chaos -- "The earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the waters" (Genesis 1:2). Secondly there is man-made chaos -- "The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth" (Genesis 6:13). In those days it was fallen men who caused the chaos -- a condition which is all too familiar to us today. Thirdly, there was divinely-created chaos, the kind of thing which rocked Egypt to its foundations when God acted in judgement, saying: "I will go through the land of Egypt in that night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt ... and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgement" (Exodus 12:12).

The question which we must all face concerns our own attitude at such times. Many Christians opt out of such situations; they abdicate to the Devil. We in Teheran had to meet this challenge when chaos came into our situation. To many it was difficult to see anything but the power of evil. It seemed that there were no restraints upon anarchy and no possibility of the chaos giving place to order. The only remedy for despair was to go back to the Bible, and there find that in all the three varieties of chaos, God was present, and God was at work.

In every such situation it is never easy to say that God was right there. We may have to face a grim personal tragedy in which it seems impossible to reconcile His presence with the apparent catastrophe of it all. No, it is not easy to discern God in the chaos. On the other hand, it is no easier to leave God out of it and to suggest that the Devil was in the happening and had it all his own way. Thus we have to recognize that, whichever way we take it, there is no easy answer to these chaotic situations.

If, however, we look beyond them to God's Word, we find reassurance that, despite all the perplexing elements, we do right to maintain that God is right there, moving and working in His own way, even if we cannot understand what that way is. This is the right attitude, to have faith in what God has said. It is much better than getting out into an area of speculation where we are forced to rely on human understanding -- our own or someone else's.

We face the natural chaos, the man-made chaos and the divinely initiated chaos, and we note that in the three instances we are now considering, God was always there. He moved on the face of the waters. He grieved over the [67/68] inevitability of the Flood; He made it clear that it was He who was visiting Egypt in judgement. He was never absent or distant, but was right there, on the spot!

The next point to which I would draw your attention is that everyone of these chaotic situations proved to have a creative aspect. In the first God said: "Let there be light": and there was light. At the very beginning of the Bible we are confronted with the resurrection aspect of creation. Every experience of chaos gives us a new prospect of the reality of resurrection.

When I was on furlough in Canada, I found the dead months of Winter very trying, for there seemed no life anywhere. Suddenly, however, the crocuses began to come up through the snow, first with living shoots of fresh green and then with their own bright colours. The deadness of Winter was being conquered by the new life of Spring. So it was that out of the original chaos, God's Word brought form and beauty. In spite of the harm that men have introduced and the acute modern problems of ecology, nothing can obscure the wonder of God's creation. Again, although it must have seemed hopeless that anything fine could have come out of the chaotic waters of Noah's Flood, we know that the Scriptures point to it as presenting a pattern and picture of redemption in Christ. This is even more so when we consider the chaos in Egypt, for the sequel was the glorious liberation of God's redeemed people.

Into chaos, then, came God's creative Word. "God said, Let there be light" (Genesis 1:3); "God said unto Noah ... Make thee an ark" (Genesis 6:13); "The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt: This month shall be unto you the beginning of months" (Exodus 12:2). We need to remember this for, as we look out on to our world, we see an approaching chaos which none of us can escape. The threatening problems which seem remote today, including the oil crisis, can be on our doorstep tomorrow. Chaos is abroad, and we in the West cannot expect to escape it. Students of history remind us that the relative stability of the nineteenth century was really a kind of Indian Summer in a world which has always been chaotic. While the Rapture is a Scriptural hope, there is no guarantee at all that when things get too hot for us, God will suddenly lift His people out of it all. We have got to face squarely the prospect of chaos.

Will we abdicate, saying that the power of evil is so great that God cannot handle it? In a spirit of escapism will we focus on the Rapture as a mere salvage operation by which God rescues what He can? Will we muddle along, vaguely drifting with the tide? Or will we be among those who hear God's creative Word? Noah, who found grace with God, heeded His word, obediently building the ark and faithfully preaching righteousness (Hebrews 11:7). He ignored the chaos and became part of God's new creative activities. We, too, should listen to God's creative Word and become part of what He is doing. No chaos, no creation! No flood, no rainbow! No Passover judgement, no liberation of a people of God's building.

Is it not a basis of all faith that the greatest chaos of all history, the cross of Christ, brought God's supreme creative act of redemption? The disciples were ready to run away because all their hopes seemed to be crashing into ruins, but they found in the resurrection that God had been sovereignly acting in it all.

The more you read your newspapers, the more you will be depressed at the inevitable chaos of man's world. The more attention you pay to the media, the more you will be preoccupied with the fantastic succession of troubles and disasters which seem to cry out: 'There is no hope. There is no future. We are going no place.' Why not pay more attention to God's creative Word in Christ, and link up with Him in the redemptive work which He is doing?

I close with an illustration from Pakistan. In a certain town there, I found a group of Christians worshipping in a modest building in one of the back slums of the town. They told me the history of their humble chapel. A group of men and women who had found Christ were meeting in the house of one of the brothers. This house was in the middle of a Moslem district, with a Koranic school just opposite and a mosque. The Christians tried to meet on the roof of the house, singing and worshipping the Lord, but although their praises were doubtless [68/69] acceptable to heaven, they were unacceptable to the Moslems all around, who especially resented their singing. These neighbours threatened and harassed the Christians in every possible way, including hurling bricks and rubbish into their meeting.

In the end a member of the police force intervened, and told the troublemakers that they must stop their violence, since Pakistani laws guaranteed to the Christians the right to worship in their own way and according to their traditions. Having rebuked the neighbours, the policeman then turned to the Christian leaders and said: 'I cannot guarantee your security unless you build for yourselves a place of worship. When you do this, then we guarantee you a hundred per cent security from molestation. That is what you must do.'

Now those Christians were very, very poor; their combined gross income would never have been sufficient to pay for such a chapel, let alone their tithes and offerings. But so far as they were concerned, God had spoken. True the actual voice was that of a Muslim policeman, but to them it became God's creative word in their chaotic circumstances. So they got to work and brick by brick, they built themselves their simple place of worship. As they proudly showed it to me, I realised that its drab simplicity was beautiful to them. And when foreign type church buildings were being destroyed by angry mobs, this humble edifice was respected as a legitimate Pakistani house of worship. So much so that when a decree was made for the destruction of that slum area, the local inhabitants risked the danger of an appeal to the Martial Law authorities and included the Christians in their protest. 'You have put out an order to bulldoze and demolish our area because it has never been recognised by planners', the objectors complained, 'but we will lie down in front of your machines and force you to crush us into the ground before you can destroy our sacred mosque'. And then, on their own initiative, they added: 'And these Christians will also do the same. They will give their blood rather than let you destroy their house of worship.'

Happily it never came to that. But my point is that in the chaos of having their meetings broken up by violence, those believers heard God's creative voice -- even through a Moslem -- and they sacrificially gave and worked for the honour of Christ's name. They proved, as we all must, that God is faithful in the midst of the chaotic conditions of our modern world.