Have a listen to this sermon.
It was delivered by Bishop Cei Dewar at Christopher Wickland’s church. These are two key men in the current Christian Nationalism movement. Both spoke on the platform at the Unite the Kingdom rally. I was therefore interested in the talk partly because of that but also partly because we are planning a sermon series on Exodus in the New Year. So, I was curious to see how someone else would handle Exodus 32.
The main thread of his preaching is that God had prepared Moses for leading the people in the wilderness through his own individual wilderness experience. He argues that Moses was uniquely qualified for the role, to deliver the people to the next place. Further, he argues that Moses, in Exodus 32, because of his unique qualifications and his relationship to God the Father, was able to change the Father’s mind.
Now there are a number of theological missteps already there. First of all, Deward claims that Moses is uniquely qualified to speak to Pharoah because he is his equal, he has been brought up in the royal palace. That is a misunderstanding. Moses ending up in the royal palace because God placed him there. He wasn’t chosen because he was uniquely qualified. God chose Moses and then took him through a process that would prepare him. He was qualified to speak to Pharoah even though he protested that he was not ready for it because God called him from the burning bush, commissioned him and sent him.
It is important as well to be clear that Moses did not change God’s mind. Remember that the Lord, YHWH is the one who is not like men and does not change. Remember that he is eternal, infinite, sovereign, unchanging. The bishop rather makes God sound like some grumpy and capricious creature who changes his mind on a whim. That’s a misunderstanding of what is going on. We need to understand the narratives that talk of repenting and relenting in the light of that. Finally, whilst we are dealing with the doctrinal muddle, we are told at one point that God exalts his word higher than his character. That kind of confusion owes more to Islamic theology where the Quran is an independent and exalted source. Remember that God is “simple”
However, what concerns me most about this message is the application. Having argued that Moses was the one uniquely qualified to deliver the people to where they needed to be, having said that Moses was the one who could appeal to the Father on behalf of the people, Dewar then begins to apply that. How would you expect him to apply this? Well, you might at that point think that it is obvious because it has already been done for us, so overtly in the New Testament. Jesus is the true and better Moses. It is he and he alone who delivers is. He is uniquely qualified for that. It is Jesus who can speak and does intercede for us to the Father.
Guess what though. Whilst Jesus gets two passing references, that’s not the focus. Instead, those things about Moses, about his trials and testings, about his unique qualifications to speak to the Father and to deliver and lead his people are applied by the Bishop to himself and to Christopher Wickland. Let that sink in for a moment. In a supposedly Evangelical Church, statements that belong solely to Christ alone were applied to two men. Even those mentions f Jesus are quickly turned back to being about these two church/political leaders. So, first, when Jesus broke bread, it points to how we can only know if bread is fresh or stale when it is broken and so God will anoint men when they have been broken (and here he talks about how much he and Wickland have apparently been through in private struggles). Then he mentions Christ as high priest interceding for us. So, in the same way, Wickland as a man of God stands and intercedes and the congregation are told that they are to stand unquestionably with Christopher Wickland, even when he is unpopular and even when he does things they don’t understand.
The whole point of the talk is that Dewar believes that he and Wickland, through their experience are uniquely qualified to lead not just churches but the nation through the next stage in history and deliver us.
This is serious stuff. May I repeat again. Things that apply solely and uniquely to Christ have been taken and applied to men and to their political agenda. I would add that this comes too with ladles of manipulation. We are told that this message was given directly, that the Holy Spirit had told the bishop to say those things whilst he was in his hotel room that morning.
Now, I doubt that any Faithroots readers would fall into such an overt and crass mess. However, I think there are some challenges for us. The crucial one is this. We need to be careful that we are not in such a rush to give practical application that we end up saying things about people that are about Jesus.
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I briefly touch on some issues around the Doctrine of God above. For more on this check out my E-book Who is God
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