Father, we thank you that you've given us such beautiful weather. We thank you for the glorious sunshine and the changing of beliefs for so much beauty in all you've made. We thank you too, Father, for the way you work in an equally beautiful way in our lives, in the lives of all your children, to do good things, to transform and make us new, to prune away that which is old and needs to be removed from us. We thank you, Father, for the way that when we put ourselves into your hands, you are able to prepare for us, both in this life and in the life to come eternally, a life which is full of extraordinary wonder and good things beyond our imaginations. We thank you for the first fruits of that. We already begin to experience. And as we look at this pattern of your work in one couple's life, Father, we thank you for what we can see in them of your power and ability to take two people and use them in such a wonderful way. We thank you, you can do the same with us, you already are doing the same with us. We praise you, Father, for your power, for your graciousness to us, for your ability to take earthen vessels and to use them to your glory. We thank you in Jesus' name, Amen. A last time we were continuing to think about Schafer's time in St. Louis, we were looking at the work of children for Christ. And I finished last time with the statement he made about children for Christ being one of the greatest living demonstrations of what the Holy Spirit can do. Let me just draw some conclusions from that before we move on to the next point. We can learn some lessons from what happened in the work of children for Christ. It is not necessary to have a large and complex organisation, it is not necessary to have masses of money. It is not necessary to have big advertising campaigns or to have a host of professional ministers. None of these things are necessary to build God's kingdom. Rather, what this work illustrates is the power of prayer, of dependence upon the Lord, of a real desire to be used by Him and to offer to Him a work, ask for His blessing on it. It demonstrates as well, but where you have a few Christian individuals who genuinely desire to serve God and to put themselves in His hands and depend upon Him, that He is able to accomplish an enormous amount. Those few individuals have to be prepared to work very hard. And certainly the shape is did as we look at that work of children for Christ. But God is able to take that faithfulness and multiply it tremendously. So I think there are four things, I would say, that are essential. The first was prayer, a dependence upon the Lord. The second was the hard work by the few individuals involved. The third is a faithful communication of God's word, communicating God's word as truth. Truth which we are convinced can transform people's lives. And fourthly, encouraging God's people to use their gifts to do the work of the ministry, because of course the work of children for Christ depended upon all these people being prepared to have Bible studies in their homes to work in summer camps to work in vacation, Bible schools and so on. Almost all the work was done by people without a professional training, simply by God's people who were prepared to use their gifts. I often feel that our churches are filled with people who are overflowing with gifts which need to be used and they're often not encouraged to use them. But where we do really ask people and challenge them and encourage them to believe that they are able to do the Lord's work as they depend upon him, then God is able to accomplish wonderful things. There are some lessons, I think, some important lessons that we can learn from that ministry. But I think that's particularly important in our day when there is such a stress made on the need for huge organization, if anything is going to be accomplished for the Lord. Now there's nothing wrong with organization, there's nothing wrong with advertising, there's nothing wrong of course with people giving masses of money to the Lord's work. There's nothing wrong with a professionally trained ministry, we wouldn't be here if we believed that there was. But the real issue is where do we put our trust, where do we put our confidence? Are we really offering those things that we have, whether they be little or much to God and asking Him to do His work, praying that He will take our loaves and fishes and multiply them because compared with His power no matter how much organization we have and how much money we have and how many people we have, what we have is loaves and fishes compared with what He is able to do. And I think we often get it the other way round and we think we'll get everything built and then we'll pray for a little bit of blessing by God to make this go or to put the sort of cream on top of the cake. But it's very much the other way round. It's God's power and God's ability to work in people's lives and God's ability to multiply what we do which is the central and foundational thing. What He asks is simply faithfulness on our part in terms of hard work, dependence on Him and communicating His word and then He opens the windows of heaven. That brings us to an end of that particular aspect of their work in St. Louis. So I want to move on to a third area of their time in St. Louis and manage to say a little bit about their family life. We talked about the work of the church, we talked about the work of children for Christ. And here the work of their family life. By this time there they have three children, Debbie was born in St. Louis in 1945, their youngest daughter. And of course one may ask how did a couple who were as busy as they were, managed to have time to raise their children, to keep their marriage together. And it's in this section that I want to speak a little bit about that. First of all in relationship to each other, talking to Vivian Marginal last week. She said one of the things that always impressed her, she often would babysit their children in the evenings and she was his secretary and remember I mentioned how he would dictate her sometimes to him in the morning when he came in. But she says every time she was in their home, if she was there in the evening, she said somehow always when he came back from whatever he was doing no matter how late it was, he would come in and she would have one of the rooms, the living room or the dining room, really neat and tidy and comfortable. She would always have some special treat prepared for him, always really beautifully. She's very creative and I've said that over and over again. So even if they didn't have a lot of money, she would always make something that was really nice, just tasty and appetizing and good to look at and some kind of special drink as well. And they would have their time alone every evening. This was something that Vivian commented on. She remembered that time in St. Louis, it was one of the things that had stuck in her mind from 40 years ago, how there was always this little space that Edith made for them to spend together every evening where she had done something really special for him and they could sit down and share together at the end of the day. Edith talks about this herself in the tapestry on page 237. She says, are evening alone, sometimes started at midnight or one o'clock, or whenever he got home, I would prepare some very special sandwich and a milkshake in the summer we would eat together outdoors on the bush surrounded patio and in the winter besides a fire in the fireplace. That meal was our most important because it was our time to talk about whatever was uppermost in our thoughts. And then she goes on to say this, for a growing relationship, we believe such a planned time is important at some regular moment of the day. As years have gone on, whether we are in the debris or traveling, whether the food is a dish of cereal with fruit and a glass of milk or whatever, we have always taken a period no matter how short when we have an undisturbed time of sharing food or a cup of tea before calling the day finished. If we have any secret to share, it is this, perfect, not a bit of it, but we try to keep this from being a time to have a controversy or controversy, however you have pronounced that here. We look forward to it as a time of separating ourselves from the problems and work but overwhelm us. And then she goes on to say that in more recent years, as well as having that little bite to eat together, at some point during each day when they would really sit down and just share together, they have often read a book aloud to each other, all sorts of books, novels of various different kinds and she mentions various different authors, some of which might surprise you, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Helen McKinnis, all sorts of books that they have read aloud together over the years. Now, what is important, obviously, to notice in this is no matter how busy you are, and I have never met anybody who have been more busy than they were. When I first went to work for them in Switzerland, I was 21 years old, and after three months I was destroyed, I was just absolutely wiped out. I had to go and take a week's holiday in Paris just to recover from the exhaustion of working with them. And they were so much older than I was at that time, that was in 1967, but so they worked incredibly hard, but no matter how hard they were, they always took time to do something together every day, no matter how tired they were, it was a priority in their lives. The second thing here is the time they spent with the children, and Edith speaks about this in the book as well. She talks about the things they did on their day off, which was Monday afternoon, during that time here in St. Louis. They would go to the art museum, they would go to shore gardens, to look at the different displays they have on to the jewel box. They'd go out for a picnic, if the weather was awful, she would try to do something creative and imaginative indoors. She describes a treasure hunt meal, which she often would do when the weather was bad and they couldn't get out. But again, it's worth reading because you just see the creativity that was involved in here in doing this in terms of doing something special regularly for one's children. She said we might have a treasure hunt meal, clues might lead to a piece of melon for first course to be together in the spot where the tray was found hidden, and then onto a pot of beans and hot dogs and a big salad, all in the clothes basket in the laundry or in the salad to be on the ping-pong table. Then it would be on to a bottle of ginger ale and a gingerbread and a bowl of whipped cream in a box behind the couch to be eaten while a book, and box was read. Even if daddy had a meeting to go off to, the day off had a pattern which was special. I remember he was still doing this with Frankie, who was at home some of that time when I was in Switzerland in 1967, he was 15 at that time, but always she would make time every week when they had a day off to do something special with the family. It was never we are so tired to take care of yourselves today or day. It was always we have a responsibility as parents to really do something creative which the children will enjoy so that this day will be a day for them to remember. I would say in fact that the busier you are, the more creative you have to be. The harder you have to work at having special times when a family is a closed door or when a marriage is a closed door and they are just the two of you or you are just with your family. Let's see this expression from her book, what is a family that a family needs to be an open door, having other people welcome into it, into one's home, to share one's time but it needs to be a closed door sometimes when we have special times for our marriage special times with our children. The key here of course is never taking one's relationship with one spouse or one's children for granted. Paul says that a husband is to love his wife as he loves himself. Now I think we often read a passage like that without really thinking about what it means but when I think about how I love myself, I feed myself every day or my wife feeds me actually most of the time but I feed myself, I wash myself, I close myself, I make sure that my body and my mind have rest every day. We put an enormous amount of energy and thought and time into loving ourselves actually in terms of what Paul is saying and cherishing ourselves but he says we are to love our spouse, to love our wife in the same way that we love ourselves and that means taking time, using energy, being creative, thinking about how we are going to be together, how we are going to spend time together and the same with one's children. It's so easy when one is tired just to come home and say well I am too tired. You know again go do something by yourself, go and do your homework or go and play or whatever it is, we will go and watch the television even worse. Does there anything to get out of my hair but if we constantly do that in our relationships in the family or then the family becomes something where there is nothing, nothing at all to bind us together except that we happen to share the same genes, that we are, that we have actually come from one another and share a house. So there is a tremendous need and I think the need is even greater today than it was in the 1940s and we are speaking here about the Schafer's relationship while they are in St. Louis with small children because there are so many more pressures on our life now which just fill the time. So a tremendous need to work hard at really making our families work and making our marriages work. I feel as a father that I really need to say very regularly every week how am I going to spend time this week, special time with each of my children, how am I going to spend time with them. You know most people don't ever do this either in their marriages or in their families. People wonder why when their children grow up and leave home, why husbands and wives don't know each other. The reason they don't know each other is because they haven't spent time together actually building that relationship every day, every week, month after month, year after year. And when all the busyness of one's children is gone then there is nothing left. And if there is going to be a growing relationship it can only come with that kind of time and creativity not necessarily doing the things that Edith did, that isn't the point but doing something which has time and energy and thought put into it. How can we actually do something together as a couple, as a family. I think many people grew up and they shouldn't leave home and they don't know their children either. Because again it's just been sharing a living space and when they've gone who are they? Who are they? But we can only really know them if we actually spend individual time with them and do things together with them. And that's very hard because all the pressures on us are so great. There's always this at school, there's always this friend that we have to really work at this. Okay, so just thinking about that the importance of spending time with our family and enjoying what God has made and enjoying human culture. The fourth issue I want us to turn to now in considering their time in St. Louis was to say a little bit more about separated Christianity, about separated Christianity. As we saw last time the children's work which they started started because of a desire to have a work which was separated which was doctrinally pure which only had people who were members of clearly evangelical churches and beyond that even of clearly evangelical denominations taking part in the work of children for Christ. So separated Christianity was evident in their children's work, Francis Schaeffer started a local council of Christian churches here in St. Louis. These were churches which stood fast on the essentials of the gospel. And there began to be national gatherings of this council of churches, what came to be called the American Council of Churches. What were they concerned about? They were concerned about the purity of the visible church that would be, I suppose, the formal way to express it. The necessity of standing for truth in Christ's church and having a denomination which was clearly committed to the essential and fundamental biblical doctrines. And that's what the American Council of Churches was all about. Standing over against the World Council of Churches which was ecumenism in its broadest sense of getting together all sorts of churches whether they share the same convictions about basic doctrine or not. The American Council of Christian Churches had as it's purpose to encourage denominations that attempted to be pure on essential doctrines to stand together over against that ecumenical movement. Now there are several things to say about this, both about for the Schaeffer's themselves and in terms of the issues that this raises. At this time the Schaeffer's were deeply committed to this formation of a council of separated churches. And as we saw with the children's work working with those who had the same kind of approach, there was a tremendous concern to stand against modernism, against neo-orthodoxy, against the present form of liberalism at that time, which was one of the motivating forces in this, including for the truth of God's word. You find as you read the correspondence from those years, Schaeffer having correspondence with various evangelical pastors who were still pastors of churches in liberal denominations, having correspondence with them, sympathizing them with them in the struggles that they had, encouraging them to consider leaving and joining a separated movement, a separated domination. And you see several pieces of correspondence like that. At the same time, and this was already apparent as we thought about this element a little earlier in their life in terms of the separation from the main Presbyterian denomination, then it split, they began to be a little more aware all the time of some of the negative thrust involved in that separated movement. Now there are several points that I'd like to make here in relationship to this issue of separation. Some of these don't become more evident, don't become evident until later in the Schaeffer's ministry, but there are some important issues here, issues related to truth and love. The first is a commitment to truth, a commitment to truth which stands over against false
hood. Now the New Testament clearly requires this. Paul says in Titus chapter 1 that anyone ordained as an elder in the church should be somebody who not only presents the truth but can confute those who contradict it. In other words, the gospel, if it's clearly taught, always has to have a cutting edge. It says, this is the truth and this is not what it is. And of course that cutting edge varies depending on when we live. In Paul's time, or in the New Testament time, there were various issues. You can think of in Galatians the issue of justification through faith alone, where Paul writing to the Galatian church says, anybody who preaches another gospel, even if it's an angel from heaven or even I myself let him be anathema, Paul is very clear that this gospel, this other gospel, the gospel of faith plus circumcision, faith plus obedience to the ritual elements of the Jewish law is another gospel, it isn't the Christian gospel at all and it undermines the gospel. Where you can think of John saying in 1 John 4 that we have to test the spirits to see whether they're from God. Do they acknowledge that Jesus is the Christ who came in the flesh? And if they don't, then they're not to be acknowledged. So that was another issue of the New Testament church. Was there a belief in the incarnation that the Son of God actually became man and took on flesh because that was a huge problem for people with a Greek mentality because for them God was a sort of distant rational principle rather than a personal being. And the idea of the incarnation was anathema to them that God could actually take on flesh and that's why you see so many debates about that in the early church about the person in nature of Jesus Christ because philosophically it was an unacceptable idea. And so that was an air issue we had the New Tet where the early church had to speak very clearly that Jesus is indeed the Son of God, the personal God who's existed forever, who yeses is rational, he's the logos, the creator of the universe, the upholder of the order and structure of the universe, but the same time he's personal and he has become flesh. The word became flesh and dwelt among men, a statement that no Greek could ever have made who stood in the tradition of Greek philosophy that the logos became flesh and dwelt among men. So an emphasis on speaking the truth over against falsehood. So the New Testament clearly requires this and this is one of the central elements of separation and commitment to teaching the truth clearly over against whatever the falsehoods are and confusions are of the particular day in which we live. At that time, what Schaefer calls modernism then or what was called modernism then, particularly the theology coming from Karl Barth and Bruno and Reinhold Niebuhr, but it was clarifying the truth over against that particular form of misrepresentation of the truth at that time and that little pamphlet I handled out by led Harris deals with that issue. The second issue in separation is this and this became increasingly important to the Schaefer's, but was something they always recognized as we've seen over and over again. That is, it's necessary to distinguish between central issues and non-central issues or between essentials and non-essentials. What do I mean by that? Well, the American Council of Christian churches had Presbyterian churches, reformed churches back to churches, Methodist churches, and so on in it, rather in churches, various different kinds of churches. They were all churches, though, that agreed on the essentials of the gospel, on the authority of God's Word, on the person of Christ as God and man, on the substitutionary attainment on Christ's physical historical resurrection from the dead, on his personal return, all central issues which define the Christian faith, which we need to believe. On non-essential issues, they didn't always agree about who should receive baptism or what exactly the form of church government should be, or what our views are about, the details of the second coming, or millennial views, or sorts of other issues like that, or the exact nature of the ministry. For example, there are, or the exact understanding of the Lord's supper. As you look at those various groups that belong to those churches, there was a recognition of differences on those. Now, in saying they're not central or non-essential, one doesn't say they're unimportant, because Scripture teaches about these, but they clearly don't define the Christian faith for us. And therefore, while we stand for the truth, while someone stands for the truth of God's Word over against falsehood, it is very important to recognize the genuine commitment to the gospel of any others, who are also standing in that same battle, rather than thinking, for example, that reformed or Presbyterian churches are the only church in the whole world, which God could possibly be pleased with. We must never have that mentality, no matter how much we may be convinced that the Presbyterian polity, Presbyterian church government is taught by the New Testament, and I'm convinced it is. No matter how much we may be convinced that it's right to baptize the children of believers as children of a covenant, and I'm convinced it is, no matter how strongly we think those things, we must never get to the point where we think that other people's faith or Christian commitment is suspect because they disagree with us, issues like that. That is tremendously important. We need to have the humility before God, and before our Christian brothers and sisters to recognize gladly their commitment, their spirituality, love for the Lord, and be prepared to learn from them, so that we are really learning from the whole church of Christ, not from people within our particular narrow confide, whatever that may be, but to recognize there are churches of Christ all over the world. Our remember, we've had people coming to stay with us when I worked in the English library who came from churches which were so separated that they wouldn't allow anybody who wasn't a member of their church to ever take the Lord's Supper with them, and they wouldn't allow their members to ever take the Lord's Supper in another church, so I remember a couple of young people coming from one church to stay with us, and their elders had forbade them before they came to take the Lord's Supper in our church. That was another church within the same reform tradition that we stand in, but even though we were another reformed church, we weren't sufficiently reformed for them. There were about three or four churches in the whole world which they recognized as churches, three or four tiny denominations, and I mean individual congregations, but three or four tiny denominations in the whole world that they were prepared to recognize and formally have any kind of fellowship with, and that's tremendously sad. So while we stand for the truth in terms of separation from unbelief, we need to clearly distinguish between central and non-central issues. A third point which is necessary here is a commitment to the purity of the church. People say in Acts that wolves will arise in the church to lead people astray, to draw people after them, and that's very evident as you read through the New Testament, but at the same time you see in the New Testament a commitment to discipline if possible those who teach falsehood in the church. You see this in the letters to the churches in the book of Revelation for example, and clearly in the letters to John, and in the pastoral epistles where Timothy's told to rebuke those who are teaching false doctrine and to clearly not give them the pulpit if anyone likes to use that expression. So a commitment to the purity of the church that we try to protect people against false teaching and that will mean not ordaining people to the ministry who are not agreed on the central biblical doctrines and if somebody departs from them being prepared to try to discipline them. So that's a third element of separation and we may say yes this is right, a commitment to the purity of the church and this is clearly where the shape is rat as we look at their work there in the 1940s, a commitment in a very practical way to the purity of the church making sure that only those who really hold on fast to the word of God in the central issues are teaching in the churches, but that then raises a fourth issue. How are we going to regard those who stay and mix the nominations where there might be some who are teaching liberal ideas who deny the person of God, who deny the divinity of Christ, who deny the resurrection, who deny the substitutional atonement or whatever it may be, who regard the scripture simply as a human book, how are we going to regard those who stay within mixed denominations, but who are themselves evangelical and share the essentials with us? How will we regard them? Will they be shunned and rejected as compromises, regardless of how clearly they preach the gospel themselves and declare what is true and what is false, or will we be prepared to respect, even if we disagree with, to respect their commitment, to stay within and mix the nomination and try to stand for the truth? Will we respect that choice to stay in that particular battle, even though we might feel I couldn't make that choice for myself? Now this is tremendously important, and it comes down to what Schaeffer called later speaking the truth in love. Let me give you an illustration here. David Calhoun was telling me the other day that one of the times he met Francis Schaeffer was in Switzerland at the First Lozanne Conference, I guess it was in 1972, and it was at that time that the Southern Presbyterian Church was just splitting to form the beginning of the PCA, and he said after one of the meetings a big notice appeared up on the board saying would the men in the new denomination, and the men who had stayed in the denomination, so the new church, the emerging PCA and the old Southern Presbyterian church, that they were invited to meet together to pray in such and such a room, and David thought well that's interesting, but he didn't see anything remarkable about it, but he turned around and he saw that Schaeffer was crying, and he asked him why, and he said when we came at, this was when he was a seminary student in the 1930s, he said that was him, we were not that mature, we would not talk to people who stayed in, never mind praying with them, he said well I've learned a great deal since that time, but at that time that was impossible between us, because the feelings were so hard and so bitter and so angry with each other, that those who were in didn't respect those who left, and those who left had no respect at all for those who had stayed in, but regarded them as unfaithful, unfaithful to Christ, unfaithful to his church and could never have sat down together with them and prayed together with them, in the way that these men were doing when the Southern Presbyterian church bled 35 years later, and this is a tremendously important thing, what will our mentality be? Will we be prepared to respect, Christians, whatever choice they make with regard to denominational affiliation, onto their faith, respect their choice, and support and pray with them even when we feel we couldn't make that particular choice ourselves? This is very important, I think, just recently I came across an example of this which really made me so sad of somebody saying that he felt totally unable to share the Lord's supper with a man who was a member, this particular example was a man who was a member of a denomination which had a few women elders in it, not in most of its churches, but just in a few of them, and he said, there I was, kneeling at the rail to receive the Lord's supper, and I looked up and across the rail was this man who's a member of this denomination which has a few women elders, and he said, my soul was bexed within me, and I couldn't take the Lord's supper. Now, I must say, I feel that as a really terrible thing to say, the Lord's supper is a place where we examine our own sinfulness, when we come before God, not other peoples, where we recognize that we are unworthy to take the Lord's supper, not that other people are, where we recognize that this is a place where sin is, all of us, in thought, word, and deed, in doctrine and practice, meet together to rejoice in the sufficiency of Christ's work for our salvation, we're not saved by belonging to a pure church, or anything else we're saved by the work of Christ, and it's tremendously important that we be prepared, while we speak the truth and say, this is where we stand, we don't believe in this or in that when something else to respect the faith of others, and to be prepared to have fellowship with them, to pray with them, to share the Lord's supper with them, and to know that we will be in heaven together with them, then we'll know who was right about these issues. We may think we know now, we may be sure we know, but then we will know far more clearly than we do now because all of us see through a glass darkly now, we must never become so convinced about the righteousness of our own stand that we are not prepared to respect others who share the same faith, but who have come to a different choice in some particular area. I'm a stop at that point. Is it a surprise to see them reading books like this, like Agatha Christie, like Helen McKinnis and so on, and how do they have time for such things, and did they ever get carried away by them? I don't think one should be surprised, of course they worked extremely hard at the ministry that they were doing, but the life we have as Christians is a redeemed and restored human life, and above all people as Christians we ought to be the ones who can enjoy good writing, good stories, good plays, good television, good music, good art, gardening, walking, hiking, camping, whatever sports, whatever it is. I mean we are the ones who know that our bodies and our minds and our emotions and our imaginations, our creative abilities are created for us by God, and they reflect his own personality, our creativity and our thoughtfulness and so on. And above all people we ought to be able to enjoy these things that he's given us. Of course we kind of owed our whole life to enjoying them because we were in a broken world which needs our service, but you look at Jesus in the New Testament, he often feasted with people, he was criticized by the religious people of his day because he enjoyed the good things of life. One should, so above all people I would say we ought to be those who really enjoy what God gives us, whatever it may be, so that we can read novels by Agatha Christie, by Helen McKinnis, by various people who are not believers because these people too reflect in their creativity what it means to be made in the image of God, or we can go to an art museum and we can look at a series of paintings which are by somebody who was a Christian and we can rejoice in their creative ability they have, or we can go to a concert and whoever the music is by it doesn't have to be explicitly Christian to be something which we can rejoice in which we can love which we can admire the creativity of which we can be thankful for. This is all part of God's good creation. Now of course we have to be careful. Some of us have a tendency just to submerge ourselves in the enjoyment of the good things that God has given us and forget about the needs out there, but it's a very practical question because I'd say there are several practical issues involved. We've been talking about this in one of the other classes on social responsibility where I do choose to forego my enjoyment of something. It mustn't be because I think there is a virtue in foregoing it for its own sake for self-denial as if self-denial had some value. Self-denial for going something only has value if I do it out of love for other people. The model we have before us is the incarnation where Christ enjoyed fraternity, his relationship with the Father and the Spirit and the Trinity and yet he chose to forego his heavenly glory because he wished to come and serve us because he loved us and so he became a servant because he wanted to share with us the relationship that he had with the Father so that he might descend to this earth and ascend to heaven with many brethren and sisters. Now it's the same for us so when I give myself or give my time or give my energy to serving people it must be because I love them and because I see that God calls me to love them and because I desire to share with them the good things that he has given me. So the fruitfulness of our ministry should be in people who rejoice that they are God's creatures and they now you know Paul says in Corinthians that any person who is in Christ becomes a new creation all the old is passed away and everything has become new and I when I think about it passage it always reminds me of a Canadian friend of mine who became a Christian when I was at Librean 1967. He arrived on very in Veronica's Seaguin's wedding day. I was remember him coming in he's a French Canadian and he became a Christian a few months later and he said the day he was converted he said it's he said he actually used those words there is a new creation because what he meant by that in his service was he was seeing everything as if for the first time that the whole world looked completely new but everything was made by God and was there to be enjoyed so he saw the whole actually the physical creation in a completely new way and as we grow as Christians it ought to be more and more like that that that we are able to enjoy God's gifts all of his gifts more and more and human culture is one of those gifts which we can enjoy now of course we limit our enjoyment of it because the needs are so great we have eternity to enjoy all God has created without any restraints upon our time you know in a way which is far beyond our imagining our eyes will see and our ears will hear and our imaginations will enjoy things that are beyond our conception but but even now God calls us to enjoy what he's given us and the whole scripture is affirmative like that whether you think of the song of Solomon celebrating sexuality or Psalm 104 celebrating all of God's gifts in creation Psalm 8 celebrating the glory of being a human person or first Timothy 4 saying it's a demonic doctrine to deny that we should enjoy God's gifts you know the whole scripture has this has this theme running through it of of the enjoyment of what God has made in all its goodness and for our own growth we need it as persons and the life we have to share with unbelievers is so much richer if we are enjoying the fullness of God's gifts so that people don't perceive you see I think often non-Christians perceive us as having a very narrow kind of self-denying almost ascetic view of life but if we if life is miserable somehow and we have the minimum possible then it's somehow more spiritual now you look at the shape of life and it was a very hard life in what they did in terms of the amount of time and energy they put into their work but if you went into their home it was a place to really enjoy being because they always made it beautiful no matter how little I had you know there was often good music being played which was a delight to the ear there was lots of fun and friendship and warmth and openness and as well as the enjoyment of what God has made and we ought to be perceived by non-Christians as people who are those who celebrate life who are who are the celebrants of life I think this is a tremendously important issue you can look at the the festivals in the Old Testament and one of their purposes those festivals which came at set times during each year was to remind the Israelites that everything they had was a gift from God and it was to be enjoyed and they were sort of like a camp trip really you went off and you lived in a little tent outside Jerusalem and and everybody had lots of fun and you if you read any of the rabbinica cans of those times you know they just talk about the tremendous celebration and you meet Jewish people today and most of them still have a tremendous ability to celebrate they have really drunk deeply of what of the Old Testament's mentality towards the creation of God's gift and that is a good thing that should be trouble all of us