Silver Street Baptist Mission

[Rev 2: 1 – 7 Peter R Green, Sunday am, 22 Jan, 2012]

I AM still talking about the idea of being a simple church, but today I want to follow on what I was saying last week about True Ministry. You might be surprised, but I am talking about apostles and the ministry of apostles.

 

There is a strong idea, particularly among Anglicans, known as cessationism. Maybe you are a cessationist yourself; maybe you argue that the spectacular spiritual gifts ceased with the apostles, because apostles themselves have ceased. Maybe you say there is no room for prophecy, for apostleship, or for speaking in tongues. Or do you say that there is no healing gift any more, no gift of deliverance any more?
Cessationists find the essential qualities of an apostle in Acts 1. You remember that Judas betrayed Jesus and then committed suicide. So the church felt a need to replace him. The cessationists pick up Peter’s comment about chosing a replacement:

Acts 1:21 …it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, 22 beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection.”

So, as far as they are concerned, an apostle can only be someone who was with Jesus and the 11 during the whole of Jesus’ ministry from his baptism to his resurrection and ascension. And that means that no one else can be an apostle.
But is that so? Consider the evidence.

There are at least three different kinds of apostle, or three different aspects of apostleship, in the Bible.
Sometimes one person combines more than one aspect of apostleship. Paul was both a missionary apostle and an apostle with authority. James was an apostle with authority and possibly an eyewitness apostle, but he wasn’t a great missionary, and so on.
So we are looking at the apostle as an eyewitness, the apostle as an authority and the apostle as a missionary.

 

The apostle as eyewitness
I’m sure you understand the idea of an apostle is being an eyewitness to all of Jesus’ ministry. It makes sense.
Luke records the appointing of the apostles:

Lk 6:12 One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. 13 When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles:

And he lists their names.

After all, Jesus did designate these 12 as apostles. He took them everywhere with him, he chose them to be closely involved in every aspect of his ministry.
There were others, both men and women, who spent a lot of time with Jesus in his ministry, but he needed to be absolutely sure that there was a clear record of his ministry so that others could follow his pattern. And these were the men he entrusted the task to.
Did Jesus aim to establish a church? He certainly set up the structures which make a church one feasible outcome. These 12 were foundations for a sound, on–going structure.

But it is one thing to say that these 12 were apostles and another to say that therefore there could be no others.
Eyewitness apostles might be the only kind, or, equally, eyewitness apostles might be a subset of apostles in general.

I am a pastor who also works for a leading Market Research company. Does that mean that the only true pastors are those who work for that company, too? There are other pastors not of the Roy Morgan flock!

However, on the evidence so far, you can’t decide one way or another about apostles.

But think about Matthias and Paul.
Could you even remember who got to replace Judas? The candidates were Joseph Justus and Matthias. But do you ever hear of either of them again?
On the other hand, Saul, later called Paul, calls himself the least of the apostles. But he never wavers from his assurance. He wasn’t with Jesus through all of his ministry. He was a witness to the resurrected Christ, but what else? Yet he was sure he, too was an apostle.
Some say the church should have left Matthias out and waited for God to appoint Saul.

Saul is a problem for cessationists, isn’t he?

I asked a preacher, “How about Paul?” He said, “He’s the exception that proves the rule.”
What nonsense! Any exception that proves a rule by breaking it shows that the rule is not a real rule. And if it doesn’t break the rule, then the exception isn’t a real exception at all.
Exceptions never validate rules. Would it prove the law of gravity if some people fell upwards instead of downwards?
In older English, to prove something is to test it. It is related to the word, probe. You prove a rule by probing it until it either breaks, or until the exceptions break.

Paul is an exception to the rule about all apostles being eyewitnesses to every part of Jesus’ ministry from his baptism to his resurrection and ascension. He probes the rule and shows that it is broken, that it isn’t a real rule. He is one apostle who doesn’t fit that mould.

And what about the many other apostles?
In today’s passage, the Lord Jesus commends the Ephesian church. He says,

Rev 2:2…I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false.

If the only apostles were the eleven plus Matthias plus Paul, anyone could pick a false apostle. If you weren’t one of those 13 people you couldn’t be an apostle. There’d be no need to test apostles! You’d know straight off.

There’d have been a booming market for fake IDs for St Peter and St John, wouldn’t there? But people could still check easily.

Even today, when someone pops up with a grand plan, don’t we check? Google is your friend! We did it with some of the difficult people we have had around our church. It’s just good sense.
Clearly enough people went around claiming to be apostles, that the church at Ephesus had to research them and see who they really were and what they had done in other places.

Every church has to test those who claim to be apostles.

But there is a truth in the idea of the apostle as eyewitness. That truth is that all who are apostles must have a testimony about their own experience of Jesus.

 

The apostle as authority
In Ephesians 4, Paul writes,

Eph 4:11 So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up…

If you think about it, Paul clearly has some kind of ongoing apostolic ministry in mind.
For the church to be built up takes apostles, prophets, evangelists and pastor–teachers.
But can anyone say that the apostles did their work in the first century, and now they are gone, that we have been left without that vital ministry for repairing saints?

What about prophets? Have they gone? Even some pretty hard–line conservatives admit to detecting was a whiff of prophecy about one or two famous preachers.

But no one ever says that God has finished with evangelists or pastor–teachers. Who wants to get rid of them? After all, most who teach against apostles are also pastors.

Isn’t it strange that Paul names the leaders necessary for ongoing results in the church, and doesn’t warn us that half of them will die out and disappear? Was he so dim that he thought the church would be gone in his own lifetime?

Jesus is certainly coming back. But Paul was building for eternity, not just for the next 10 years.

And, to do this work, an apostle needs authority, not to get his or her own way, or to lord it over anyone: they use it to build the church up. It’s an authority which comes with compassion and insight and the wisdom of Christ.
In Matthew’s gospel, we read,

Mt 10:1 Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.
2 These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John;

and he goes on to name the rest.
However, the authority of apostles didn’t stop at driving out spirits and healing diseases.
The Ephesians would have had no trouble with false apostles if all an apostle did was heal and deliver from demons. It was misuse of authority that troubled them. Apostles come with authority, and so do bad people.

In Acts 14, Paul and Barnabas reach Lycaonia and are treated like gods, because of the power and authority they displayed. We read,

Acts 14:14 But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting…

Paul also mentioned his apostolic prerogatives when he wrote to the Thessalonians:

1Thess 2:6 We were not looking for praise from any human being, not from you or anyone else, even though as apostles of Christ we could have asserted our prerogatives.

The fact is that the apostles had authority to direct and to correct; they were the ones who knew what Jesus was like, and what he would want of the church, and who were authorised to bring things into line.
We all need to be brought into line from time to time.

Wasn’t John Wesley an apostolic figure? He cut to the basics of Christian faith, and didn’t waffle around the fringes. He preached Christ crucified, and that was enough.

But these super apostles who dogged Paul’s footsteps merely wanted to force the church to serve them, and that’s not what it’s about.
A good church does serve its leaders, but truly Christian leaders — apostles or whatever — don’t exist to be served.

If you want to be great in God’s kingdom
Learn to be the servant of all.

We do need people with authority, but not people who bully or coerce. Using money or gifts or bullying to persuade others might get numbers, but it’s not apostleship. Those who follow in the footsteps of apostles see what is happening, state the case, and show us the changes to make to follow Jesus properly.

All who are apostles use their authority to build the church — and don’t forget that we all have authority.

 

Apostle as missionary
The third main kind of apostle functions as a missionary.

When the Holy Spirit told the leaders in Antioch to set aside Barnabas and Saul for the ministry to which he had appointed them, it was to start reaching out to new places, places where the gospel hadn’t gone before.

Philip and Peter had shown that Samaritans and Romans could respond to the Gospel; Barnabas and Saul went out to take the Gospel to people in Asia Minor.
This is exactly what Jesus had called them to do. And he calls you and me to take the gospel out, too.
In John 17, Jesus prays:

Jn 17:18 As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. 19 For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.
Jn 17:20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

I have pointed it out before, but I point it out again, that Jesus, in that 18th verse, uses an unusual verb. The usual Greek for send is pempo (πεμπω); in this verse, Jesus says, apostello (αποστελλω). It is the verb behind the word, apostle.

Jesus says, literally,

In the same way that you apostled me into the world, that is how I have apostled them into the world.

Just so we don’t say, “He is talking about a superior class, he is talking about the 11, and certainly not about me,” he goes on,

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message…”

It isn’t just for the few: his entire prayer is for all of us, and the reason he prays like this for all of us is to establish unity.
Some apostles are eyewitnesses, and that fact needs to be recognised. some apostles have particular authority, because they can see what is going on and know what the Lord is saying to the church, and that should be respected. But all of us are, in the final analysis, apostles. All of us are sent in the same way that Jesus was sent. All of us are here to repeat, in a small way, the life of Jesus, and all of us are here to do that in the unity of the Spirit and to the glory of God.

 

Conclusion
So this brings us to a point.
You — you and I — are apostles. Don’t let anyone talk you out of that or bring you to a lesser self–understanding.
Alright, there may be aspects of apostleship that we don’t all get. None of us is an eyewitness to everything Jesus did and said, but all of us are witnesses; none of us is an authority throughout the church, but all of us have some authority to see the truth of God and to proclaim it — inside the church as well as outside it.

But all of us are are sent in an apostolic sense; all of us are appointed and equipped, not to lord it over anyone, but to declare with confidence and the authority of informed faith that Jesus lives, that God loves, that the Spirit of God still wrestles with human hearts, convincing of sin, of righteousness and of judgment to come.

Did Peter go to the Gentiles with good news? We can go, too: go to people never before reached. Did Paul travel afar to bring in the lost sheep? What limits apply to us, then, who can travel in minutes where Paul took hours to go? Did Thomas plant churches where no one knew until hundreds of years later? Then do we need instant recognition?

Did the other apostles work miracles in the power of the Spirit? Then has the Spirit been so taken from us that we might not see some echos of those mighty deeds?

 

We had a member here many years ago who echoed what many Baptists have been taught. He said that there are two classes of Christian, the spiritual and the carnal. The spiritual are sent to do great things; the carnal are the rest. As far as he was concerned, he was among the carnal, and what could he do to change it?
What a misapplication of Scripture! But, also, what a defeating outlook! How could the church possibly carry out its mission if 80% of its members were only there to supply funds and warm pews?

 

A simple church is a church where every member has a role and a calling. A simple church is a church where the people love God, love people and preach the gospel. And in such a church, every person has a role and a function.

In the same way that you apostled me into the world,

Jesus tells his Father,

…that is how I have apostled my followers into the world.

If Jesus prayed that prayer for us, how can we possibly dare ignore or neglect it? He sends us: let’s get going!

AMEN

[Acts 8: 1 – 8  Peter R Green, Sunday am, 15 Jun, 2012]

IN THE last two weeks, we have looked at new beginnings, and we have looked at how to simplify and refocus our church. One problem with doing that is that old habits die hard.

 

Remember when I re–arranged the seating so we were closer to each other, and could actually see each other? It didn’t last long. We are so used to having the pastor do a show in front of the congregation that we struggle to interact across the room. Our model is the lecture hall, not the community meeting.

I know how difficult it is for us to rethink ministry. Yet it is vital for us to do it.

 

We Baptists talk about “every member ministry”, but we keep collapsing back into the  pre–Reformation model of the priest who does everything, and the people who watch.

 

We aren’t precisely like that. You are not inert while I do the work — far from it! I appreciate everything so many people do. Neph and John do most of the cleaning, John does most of the maintenance, Jay and Mouy organise the order of service, Divina and Mouy look after food, Mum hosts a Wednesday night a month… I could go on. Everyone, or nearly everyone, has a role and carries a burden.

We are like a well–oiled business where the boss doesn’t have to tell people what to do, because they do it. The system is well–maintained.

 

But that is not the New Testament model!

 

As we saw today, when the early church temporarily lost its leaders, it actually grew!

But there is so much to consider. We will have quite a Bible hunt this morning.

In fact, the leadership of the early church developed in several ways. For example, it developed through the emergence of natural leaders, or in response to a crisis. Sometimes it was anointed leadership, leadership that emerged through the Holy Spirit‘s direction.

 

 

Natural leaders

In Acts 1, we find the early Christians meeting in an upper room for prayer. It says,

Acts 1:15 In those days Peter stood up among the believers (a group numbering about a hundred and twenty) 16 and said, “Brothers and sisters, the Scripture had to be fulfilled in which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through David concerning Judas, who served as guide for those who arrested Jesus.

17 He was one of our number and shared in our ministry.”

Then, after quoting some scripture passages to give the church direction, Peter went on,

Acts 1:21 Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, 22 beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us…”

A couple of days later, they were meeting again in that upper room, and the Holy Spirit came on them in power, and they spoke in other languages. It was like a wild wind and flames resting on them.

Then we read,

Acts 2:14 Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. 15 These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! 16 No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

Do you see what is happening here?

 

No one said that Peter had to be the leader.

 

There was no ordination, there was no meeting with an accreditation panel.

 

The Church knew that Peter knew what he was talking about, so they followed him when he had something worthwhile to say.

 

Again, when they needed as a spokesperson, Peter stood to explain what was going on.

 

I know that some of you are quite competent to do that. I know that you can explain what you believe. I also know that

some of you may not be competent right now to do that, but that you could easily learn how.

Peter had an advantage: like nearly all Jewish men, he had been raised to know the Bible since he was a baby. Every part of Jewish life was geared to teaching the people the importance of their belief.

 

This is one thing we in the West don’t get about Muslims. It’s the same with them. Not that it touches women so much, but life is ritualised, everything has its reason and its explanation. But we get embarrassed to talk about the key aspects of our faith!

 

If you want to be equipped, you can be.

 

You can determine to learn some scriptures. You can write out how you became a Christian, and how it affects your life now — and you can learn it, so you have a ready answer.

You can talk to other Christians, and work out what is important to talk about and what isn’t. Too many Christians can tell you what day Jesus will come — they are sure they have it worked out — but they get tongue–tied about how to come to faith in him.

 

Not all of us are as bold or as ready to speak out as Peter, but that doesn’t make us second–class.

 

In the US, there is an unspoken sense that a pastor should be an extrovert, someone out there, someone always organising an activity, someone always with a project on the boil. There was even an article in the Christianity Today newsletter about how to cope if you are a pastor and an introvert.

 

Extroverted people are often natural leaders.

 

But if you are an introvert, don’t give up! An extrovert will go to people and bring them in; an introvert will be there when they want a quiet chat with someone who understands. There’s a place for both.

But what it does take is a willingness to act. One person’s kind of action is to start a ball game; another person’s kind of action is to mind the gear and see who comes by. There’s a place for both.

 

 

Crisis leadership

There came a time when Peter couldn’t be available for public ministry.

It was a time of persecution, and persecutors since the beginning of time have gone after the out–front people.

 

I read a lot of things people say about Christians, and one thing I often hear is the description of us as “sheeple.”

It is an arrogant and ill–informed slander, based on the assumption that people who have religious faith are weak–minded and lack backbone, that we are victims of people who manipulate us so they can take our money or gain power.

For centuries this has been how persecutors have attacked those they want to get rid of. “Destroy the leaders,” they say, “And you will destroy the movement.”

 

I was reading not long ago about persecution of believers — I can’t remember where — and the persecutors arrested a large part of a congregation, held them all, then let the ordinary members go, fined and imprisoned the deacons, and beat up the pastors before charging them with crimes against the State.

 

It was a quite clear and deliberate pattern. Frighten the sheep off, hurt the lay leaders, and destroy the pastors.

That’s pretty much what happened in Jerusalem after Stephen was stoned to death.

We read that,

On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.

Notice that it was “all except the apostles…”

The effect of the persecution was to separate the leadership from the members.

 

Of course, we can’t say for certain, but, if we look through Acts, we see that the Jewish leaders had arrested Peter and John earlier, and, in Chapter 16, we read that Herod had James executed and then went after Peter.

So my understanding is that the apostles didn’t scatter with the rest of the Christians because they had to lie low.

With Saul conducting house–to–house searches, they were too busy keeping a jump ahead to be able to keep among the other Christians.

But we read:

Acts 8:4 Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went. 5 Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah there.

6 When the crowds heard Philip and saw the signs he performed, they all paid close attention to what he said.

7 With shrieks, evil spirits came out of many, and many who were paralysed or lame were healed.

8 So there was great joy in that city.

Until this point, we haven’t heard of Philip as a preacher. But here he is, forced to move, so he goes to Samaria and preaches Christ.

 

Leadership often emerges when someone says, “I have had enough of this, and I have to do something about it!”

I was about 17 or 18 when I realised that a man in our church at Fairfield was doing a lot of damage, and hurting many people. I won’t name him, but he was part of a network of trouble–makers who have done enormous damage in many churches, including our own.

 

But he was an exciting preacher and a busy man who drew others with him, and not many even saw what he was doing as evil. I was one who said, “I have to stand against this!”

Leadership emerges in crises.

 

For the early church, the crisis was persecution.

 

For many churches in many places, it is also persecution.

But some churches get leaders who emerge because the pastor has had to leave.

For others, it’s because the church has to relocate. There can be all kinds of reason. But the point is that, suddenly, it is up to every member to make the church work.

The biggest problem here is if people assume that their task is to keep things going as they had been going.

 

In Fiji, the Government is making it very hard for the Methodists to function, because the Methodists have criticised the Government and become a de facto opposition.

They have to give seven days’ notice to the police of any proposed meeting, whether a worship service or a leadership meeting.

This is a crisis. But the Methodists apparently aren’t yet trying to set up an underground church. They are still trying to be traditional Methodists.

 

Here at Marrickville, we had a crisis when I stopped being full–time pastor. But I think we made the same mistake. We tried to maintain instead of trying to grow.

 

But when the church in Jerusalem was scattered and the leaders were left behind, the believers preached wherever they went.

 

I am not saying that you all should be preachers. It’s likely that most of these people were not good preachers. But you can imagine a family heading off to Beirut. The middle daughter turns out to be pretty good at preaching in the village squares as they travel north, mum has a ministry of deliverance, dad does pastoral care… and so on.

We are in a drawn–out crisis ourselves: what leadership are we letting emerge — and is it focused on growth, or on maintenance?

 

 

Anointed leadership.

Our last example is in Acts 13, where we see,

Acts 13:1 Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul.

2 While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”

3 So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.

These men haven’t always been recognised as leaders, nor are they people who emerged through any evident crisis.

The church is praying and fasting and looking for the Lord’s guidance. And the Holy Spirit directs them to set Barnabas and Saul apart for the ministry he has called them to.

 

Sometimes the Lord calls the most unlikely people.

 

In the early days of the Pentecostal movement, the Holy Spirit called the church to set a shopkeeper apart for ministry. The leaders checked him, and refused to recognise him.

But the call didn’t go and, while the leaders in the US didn’t recognise him, his church responded to what the Spirit was telling them, and his friends responded, and they sent him out — from memory, to Argentina.

A great work of God grew out of that man’s efforts, and, when the South American authorities wanted to maintain the power of the Catholic Church, the Pentecostal churches founded by this man’s work helped them see that they couldn’t keep repressing and persecuting people who had a Protestant outlook.

 

I remember a pastor in Armidale 40 or so years ago, who had few gifts, humanly speaking, but had a passion for prayer and a determination to see people grow in Christ, and did a mighty work — a man set apart by the Spirit for a ministry.

 

The Holy Spirit knows what he is doing. It is

…not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord.

 

 

Conclusion

We Evangelicals are all mixed up when it comes to ministry.

The key factors are that a person is recognised as a leader, is ministering because there was a hole where he or she fitted, or is called and appointed by the Holy Spirit, as recognised by the church.

 

But ministry, above all, is not really something for special people: ministry is something for you to do.

In the early days, just after the apostles, churches responded to false teachers by huddling closer together, by asserting that there was something special about their ministers, by setting ministers on a pedestal.

 

It corrupted ministry.

 

We imagine that something special conveyed by the prayers and the laying–on of hands in ordination. There isn’t. In fact, the word sometimes translated as “ordination” in the Bible really only means recognition. And the reason is that the closest the New Testament church had to ordination was baptism.

Any baptised believer was a minister.

Most of us here are baptised believers, and church members, so what is your ministry?

 

I am going to challenge you: look around and see who the leaders are. Not who has been appointed, but whom do you go to? What kind of leadership do they give? Who are the Peters among us? Who would stand up and explain us to people who mock? Who would be the first there if one of us flunked out of faith? Who would be able to answer a knotty question? Who are our Peters?

Who will be our Philips? Who would see a gap and fill it? Who steps in where there is a need, and what does she do?

And, above all, who is the Spirit directing us to recognise, and what are we going to do to help make that ministry happen?

 

You know that I believe strongly in training and education. But I am not one who thinks that training and education make a minister. These are the finishing touches, so that we can minister better using the gifts and calling we already have.

Churches have to change. Our church has to change.

 

Change or die; evangelise or fossilise; use our gifts, or lose them.

 

It’s that simple. The Bible shows us models for how to do it. Let’s do all we can to change this year! And God will bless us as we do.

AMEN

[Micah 6: 1–8  Peter R Green, Sunday am, 08 January, 2012]

FOR MOST of the time I have been at Marrickville — perhaps even before that time — I have struggled with the problem of what kind of church we should be. I have called for the reinvention of the Church. And now I think I see a way to go.

 

In the most recent issue of Together in Ministry, the NSW Baptist magazine, there was a brief article about the concept of the “Simple Church”. And I think it says something to our needs.

You probably recall that, on several occasions, I have preached about the things that are vital to the church. I have talked about Acts 2: 42 and the following verses, where it says,

Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.

44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

I have pointed out that this depicts a church fellowship where four basics are practised: Bible teaching, fellowship, the Lord’s Supper and prayer. And these are still basics. No concept of a simple church can be truly Biblical without these factors.

But there is another way of looking at the simple church, and that is, that it is a church which has three basic concepts:

• Loving God
• Loving people
• Preaching the gospel.

There are several passages which fit this pattern, but I just want us to see that it is taught from very early: it is not some recent Baptist innovation, but something God has planned from earliest days.

Micah wrote perhaps 750 years before Christ, and here is the plan, set out in this passage we read minutes ago.

 

Let’s understand the issue. God is angry with Israel. They think it doesn’t matter what they do, as long as they give generously. They almost imagine that God can be bribed to look the other way. But, at the same time, they complain that God demands too much.

They seem to think that God will bless them if they pay enough. But they are grumbling, they are feeling put–upon.

It’s common even today. You find someone who takes on a ministry. It may be anything: preaching, running the Bible Study or the Drop In Centre, it may be running the youth teas or the pre–church pick up. It doesn’t matter. They feel they can’t give it up, or they will lose the blessing; and they feel they can’t bear the burden of doing it, year in, year out, Sunday after Sunday.

 

God says through the prophet,

Mic 6:1 Listen to what the LORD says: “Stand up, plead my case before the mountains; let the hills hear what you have to say.

2 “Hear, you mountains, the LORD’s accusation; listen, you everlasting foundations of the earth. For the LORD has a case against his people; he is lodging a charge against Israel…”

God goes on and challenges them: “How have I wearied you? What burdens have I laid on you? Didn’t I do it for you? Didn’t I bring you out of Egypt, give you leaders to make you great, lead you all the way?

After all this discussing back and forth, God declares very clearly what he requires of his people. It is not the sacrifices that only the mega–wealthy could afford.

Mic 6:8 He has shown all you people what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

This is simple church.

 

You might ask why this is important; why do we need to discuss the kind of church we should be? Perhaps you want me to teach about healing or driving out demons, and maybe we will. But the point is that we have to become a church that will attract people not to us, but to Jesus. People come, they like us, but they go again. And, to the best of my understanding, one big factor is that we are not really functioning in a way they can relate to. They can’t see where we are going or what we can offer. They don’t know who we are, because we don’t know ourselves — or, at least, we don’t communicate it.

 

When we had the people from other churches visit on Pentecost two years ago and I told them a little about us Baptists and where we had come from, many were totally fascinated, because they knew nothing about our background and assumed, like so many, that we are a recent American sect.

 

A chap visited mum’s place several months ago — from the power company or something. He saw her sign saying she didn’t want to change her religion, and asked her about her religion. He couldn’t believe that there is a kind of church that doesn’t get orders from bishops, a church where the members come together to plan and organise instead of being told by a pastor what to do.

We are here. We are all these things and more. But we don’t have a clear picture of it in our heads, and we don’t communicate it. People could learn from us, but they don’t, because they don’t think we have much to offer.

So let’s think about this “Simple Church” model, and look at Micah. Remember that a simple church loves God, loves people and preaches the gospel.

Micah actually puts it in a different order, so we will follow his order this morning.

 

Love people

Micah begins by telling the people that God requires them to act justly.

If we don’t act justly towards people, we don’t show them love. There are fundamentalist Christians in the US, and some here in Australia, who think that getting involved in social and political issues means abandoning the gospel. Far from it! A gospel without a social and political edge is an emasculated gospel. It has had its power ripped away.

What is true is that we must never allow our commitment to doing justice to become a way of bribing people to side with us.

 

I know a pastor — an untrained man — who does it over and over. Someone comes along with a need, and he rescues the person, but there‘s a condition: come to his church.

 

Love involves listening. If you don‘t hear what people’s real needs are, you will not respond to those needs, and you will create a mess.

But love also involves understanding, including understanding the bigger issue. I knew a man who rescued a teenager from a home where he was unhappy — but didn’t stop to find out that the teenager was under an order to stay at that home. It didn’t solve the lad’s problem, it only raised his expectations and then dashed them, and it caused a backlash with the man’s church.

However, that man was right in one way: love not only involves listening and understanding the bigger issues, but it also involves action. As James said,

Faith without works is dead.

We shouldn’t think only of the big sweeping acts of justice when we consider doing justice, though. We mightn’t liberate the slaves or reform prisons, but we can speak up when someone jumps the queue at the supermarket or sign a petition to treat teenaged mothers fairly. Justice begins with fair play in the little things. If we can’t show we care at that level, we aren’t really likely to do much better at loving people when it comes to the more serious matters.

 

Preach the gospel

Next, Micah tells them to love mercy. This is one of the more difficult parts of the passage to understand, because we don’t really have a good word to translate the meaning.

Underlying the word, “Mercy” is a quite peculiar Hebrew word, hesed. The nearest word in Arabic means jealousy, and some translations use the word, love.

 

Hesed is the love to which God has bound himself through a covenant with human beings.

 

Marriage is not a bad illustration of covenant, and, in fact, the prophet Hosea uses marriage in this way. Hosea married a girl who seems to have been very emotionally unstable. She took lovers, and ended up in prostitution.

Hosea had every right to cast her out. He had every right to accuse her to the authorities, and she could have been stoned to death.

But every time she went off, Hosea’s heart went out to her, and he brought her back into the relationship with himself. His aim was for her to have a restored relationship with God.

 

I am not one to say that a couple should stay together forever, particularly if there is abuse or neglect; but I also think that sometimes people give up too easily.

 

The fact is that God doesn’t give up easily at all. We wander far from him, but he reaches out over and over, bringing us back to himself. The psalmist writes,

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
For his mercy endures forever.

The Hebrew is

Hodu l’adonai ki tov
Ki hasdo l‘olam

There’s that hesed again. God’s mercy, God’s covenant–love, endures to the era of eternity.

If we are to love mercy, we are to love it for others, not just for ourselves. If we love our neighbour, we want our neighbour to know a right relationship with God.

 

Jesus said,

Blessed are the merciful for they shall see God

It’s the merciful who are blessed, not the mercified. It’s not about our receiving God’s covenant love, but about our passing it on to others.

 

Someone described evangelism as “one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.”

Two beggars don’t have to like each other to tell each other where to find bread: if they are bound to each other by a common need, that’s enough. I have had people who could hardly bear to speak to me still tell me something for my benefit.

 

Mercy, covenant love, loving–kindness — there are many words, but the same idea. God loves us with a ferocious love, a love that fights for our good, a love that hangs on when no one else would.

And people who love that kind of love extend it towards others. The seek to communicate it. They tell others that,

God demonstrates his love in that
while we were still sinners
Christ died for us.

That‘s what preaching the gospel is about.

 

Love God

Finally, Micah tells them to walk humbly with God.

It might seem, if we think how all of these points arise from love, that it is hardly worth raising the point again. If we love God, we love people. If we love God, we preach the gospel. If we love God… well, it goes without saying, surely, that we walk with God.

 

In one sense, it does.

 

But there’s more to it. Here is where our fundamentalist friends have a point. We need to keep re–anchoring to God. It’s not true, as some would say, that we should neglect doing justice in order to love God. But we shouldn’t neglect God in order to do justice, either.

 

One of my relatives was a very justice–oriented young woman when she was in her late teens. You could almost say that she was driven. But, while she confessed Jesus as Lord and Saviour, she seemed to lose track of what that meant.

Our youth group participated in the Smith Family Food Drive. We collected non-perishable food within the community for distribution to people in need.

When we had a clash between the Food Drive and the Prayer Meeting, my partner and I agreed to collect until around 7 and go to the prayer meeting. Robyn chucked a gigantic wobbly! “You are letting the poor down: you are happy to sit on your bums when people need help, not prayers!” She went on and on!

She and the rest kept collecting until 9 pm.

My partner and I collected more than any other team: we loved our neighbours, and we loved God. God’s work, done in God’s way, doesn’t lack God’s supply.

 

We have to be careful. Let’s ensure that we make the choices of walking humbly with our God. His way doesn’t always seem quite sensible, but it works. We think force and manipulation get the results: God works by humility and compassion. We think that sparkly things will attract people: God gives us a cross.

 

It is dangerous to think it is all about loving our neighbour or all about preaching the gospel, if we forget to walk humbly with our God at all times.

Loving God is a choice; a choice to which we must constantly and repeatedly commit ourselves.

 

A Muslim challenged a missionary. “We Muslims pray five times a day: how often do you pray?”

The missionary smiled. “The Bible tells me to pray without ceasing, and I try to make that my goal every day.”

 

The humble walk with God must underlie my love of neighbour and my preaching of the gospel, or else, as Paul reminds me, I am no better than

…a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

 

Conclusion

People sometimes think that I am obsessed with structures. I don’t know: I don’t think so.

What I want is for our church to be a framework in which as many of us as desire it can be as free as possible to do as much for the Kingdom of God as we can.

 

And I think the Simple Church model has a lot to commend it. It’s minimal structure and straightforward standards.

The wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err therein.

Please think: please, please, think: how can we best operate for the greatest benefit of a needy world?

Let’s decide to love God. Let’s choose to love our neighbour. And let’s make it our great effort to preach the gospel in the power of the Spirit to the best of our ability and to the glory of Jesus our Lord!

AMEN

[Exodus 12: 1 – 30 :: Peter R Green, Sunday am, 01 Jan, 2012]

THE BIBLE is full of beginnings. Genesis 1:1 opens with “In the beginning, God.” John’s Gospel starts with “In the beginning was the Word.” And, in Acts, Paul meets with the Christians at Troas on the first day of the week, the beginning.

I am talking about beginnings today, of course, because it is the very beginning of the year, and what better day is there for us to think about beginnings?
Maybe you think it is strange that, at the beginning of my 29th year at Marrickville, I am talking about beginnings. Perhaps you think I should be talking about endings.
But, if I talk about endings, maybe I would have to talk about ending the church itself. That is our choice.

I love a poem about a man named Palmström*, who was run down by a lorry at a street corner. The poem tells about how he resolutely goes on living, though he has to be wrapped in damp cloths to help heal his injuries. It’s a lot funnier than it sounds. Really, it is.
Over the years, we have been run down repeatedly, sometimes by a double-deck bus, not just by a lorry. And we have gotten up and resolutely gone on living.
Can we do it one more time?
If we can, then every account of beginnings is important to us, because, to do it one more time, we have to begin again.

 

Our story is about the Passover, when the Israelites left Egypt and returned to Canaan, the land where they had been wandering before the great famine that drove them as refugees into Egypt.
You remember that the Israelites had been set to menial work, living as virtual slaves, making mud bricks for the building industry.
They wanted to leave the country, but Pharaoh wouldn’t let them leave.
There were all kinds of plagues: frogs, flies, blood-red water, hail: they got the lot. As the plagues got worse, the Pharaoh would decide to let them go and then change his mind.
Eventually, God told the Israelites to get rid of all the yeast in their houses: yeast that reminded them of the corruption of sin. He told them to bake flat bread to remind them of the need to be ready to get moving. He told them to sacrifice the passover lamb.
Then God told them to splash the blood over the door posts and lintel and threshhold,, making the shape of the cross, so that, when the angel of death went through the land, and killed the first–born, he would pass over their house. God promised that, in the houses covered by the blood, no first born would die.

And that is what happened. The angel went through, the first born of the Egyptians died, and the Pharaoh was glad to be rid of the Israelites.

But that’s not what I want us to focus on today. I want us to notice something else: that the Passover changed things for the Israelites, that the month of Nisan, when they fled from Egypt, that month was now to be the first month in their calendar. This month was to be the beginning of months for them.
God’s great saving deed changed everything else. God’s great salvation was the start of a new time for Israel, just like God’s great saving deed, God’s great salvation through Jesus Christ, changed time for us.
We have entered the year 2012, in theory the 2012th year since God became human, since God entered human history as a little baby destined to grow up and to die for us and for our salvation.

 

When God acts, history changes.

And that’s what we have to think about today.
Jesus has come, Jesus has lived and taught among us, declaring the Kingdom of God and demonstrating its power, and Jesus has died and risen again, and our time has changed.
Just as the month of the Passover became the first month for the Israelites, the year of God’s favour is the beginning of everything for us.
Jesus declares,

Look! I am making all things new!

And newness comes about with new beginnings.

What this means is that we Christians have to be into new beginnings.
Satan lies to us. He tells us we have missed our chance. He tells us we are condemned by our past. What you are now is what you have to be.
And so many people are trapped in that false belief.
But our God is a God of new beginnings. Every year, the Israelites began again in the month of Nisan, when they remembered God’s salvation.
We Christians go even further. We have a new beginning every week, because Jesus started the week by rising on the first day.
We are people of new beginnings.
It doesn’t matter if we think about an individual or if we think about a church or a denomination or a parachurch organisation like Scripture Union or Gideons. We are people who belong to the era of God’s new beginnings in Jesus Christ.

Here is what Israel had to do.

•  On the tenth day of the month, each man had to take a lamb for his family: the right amount for each person to eat without leftovers or anyone going short.
•  They had to take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month. Then all the members of the community of Israel had to slaughter them lambs at twilight.
•  They had to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs.
•  That same night they had to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast.
•  They were not allowed to leave any of it till morning; any left–overs had to be burnt.
•  They had to eat it with their cloak tucked into their belt, their sandals on their feet and a staff in their hand.
•  They had to eat it in a hurry.

Many of the stories and regulations in the Old Testament were designed to point towards Jesus and how to live in relationship with him.
So there are principles for us here.

First, God’s new beginning begins with sacrifice. This is not just something casual, but has to be very specifically planned for, just as God had a plan before the foundation of the world to send his one and only son as a sacrifice for our sins.

We can’t have an effective new beginning without Jesus and his death for us. People argue sometimes about the precise meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross, but that misses the point. If you see his death as a sacrifice, if you see it as a substitution, if you see it as a call for identification with him, or if you see it some other way, that’s not the main thing. If you allow the death and resurrection of Jesus to change your life, that’s what it’s all about. It’s because change is about new beginnings.

I had a friend in theological college who used to remind us that there is no theology exam to get into heaven. And he is right. But there is more to it, because there is an examination, and that is over whether or not we let the death and resurrection of Jesus work in our own lives. What I mean is that we are not tested on our theories about what Jesus has done for us, but we are tested on whether we have responded to it.

The other thing is that everyone is included in God’s plan — but only those who are covered by the blood, only those who are prepared to participate, reap the benefits. There has to be enough for everyone, but the opportunity doesn’t last forever.
You can’t pop in next morning and say, “Oh yes, I have decided to participate after all.” Now is the day of salvation…

The new beginning of Passover required the people to get rid of the yeast of sin, and to face the bitterness of repentance.
Most of us know what this means, but some have paid much higher prices than others. Some of us have made serious mistakes in our lives and had to really put them away, deal with what we have done and with the consequences. It can hurt. I have seen people in tears about this kind of change, because it really hurts.

Others of us haven’t gone much further than admitting that we are sinners and can’t do it on our own. That’s a good first step, because God usually confronts us with reality as life goes on, anyway.

They also had to eat it ready to move as soon as they got the word.
When Jesus shares a meal with his disciples in the Kingdom it will be a meal of leisure, but for now we need to be ready to go.
As a Church, we are not as go-ready as we should be. We are cooperative and we do take risks, but there is something that holds us back, and I don’t quite know what it is.

So how are we going to respond?
First, we have to decide that we are beginning again for 2012.
This will be the beginning of months for us.
I don’t mean that our past has no meaning, or that we neglect the things we have already done. What I mean is that we don’t let our past hold us back, we don’t let our past define who we are in the future, or what we will do.
And that applies to us in our individual lives or in our churches.

It’s like in Revelation, where Jesus told the Ephesian Church,

Rev 2:4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first.
5 Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.

Jesus is telling the church to go back to the beginning, to start over. They have to repent — there’s that bitter herb thing again — and they have to do the works they did at first.
And it’s like that for us, too. Go back to the beginning, admit we haven’t had it quite right.

But that beginning doesn’t mean anything without Jesus, our sacrificial lamb.

I talked with a man once who wanted to follow Jesus, and wanted me to tell him what he should do, what good deeds he needed to perform. He was like the rich man who came to Jesus. He couldn’t grasp the idea that being a Christian is about giving everything over to Jesus, not about doing some good deed.

I tried to explain that working on one thing is an easy way to neglect all the other things, that there are too many people who try to define Christian faith in terms of not smoking and drinking, or in terms of belonging to a certain denomination or church, or undergoing some ritual, but they are heartless and uncaring towards the needy or given over to all kinds of sins, as long as they are not on their list of prohibited behaviours.

We start with Jesus and his death for us all and for all we have done and all we will do, and all we are doing at this very moment.
His blood avails for me!
As a Church and as individuals within it, we start again by turning back to him, by re–affirming him as Lord and Saviour.
The final thing is about being ready to move. Paul had that great image of the Christian soldier in Ephesians 6:

Eph 6:11 Put on the full armour of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.13 Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
6:17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
6:18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.

He certainly advises us to be equipped so we are able to stand, but we also need our feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.

When King Harold Godwinsson fought against Harald Hardrada at York in 1066, the English soldiers had to be able to stand firm and hold their place against the vastly bigger Danish army, but if they hadn’t been prepared to go, they would never have made the march from London to York to get them to Stamford Bridge, where they had to make their stand.

People used to sing a parody of an old hymn. The original words were,

Like a mighty army
Moves the Church of God,
Brothers, we are treading
where the saints have trod.
We are not divided, all one body we,
One in hope and doctrine,
one in charity.

They used to sing instead,

Like a mighty tortoise
Moves the Church of God,
Brothers, we are treading
Where we’ve always trod.
We are all divided, many bodies we,
Fighting over doctrine,
Lacking charity.

And there‘s some truth in this, considering the church worldwide.
And there is some truth in it for us, too.
We are not divided or lacking in charity towards one another, but don’t we, ourselves, tend to tread where we’ve always trod?

I worry. I am someone who can forget all about something that seemed urgent last month, I can easily get tied up in something personal and neglect the Church matters.
But I worry: if I were taken out of the church suddenly, would we keep trying to reach out? Or is my presence stopping others from finding their gifts?
There’s a world out there that needs to see the reality of Jesus, yet, somehow, we fail to communicate that reality.
But it’s not yet too late to start again, it’s not to late for a new beginning.

So, my challenge this morning is to make this month, January 2012, the beginning of a new era in the life of Silver Street Mission.

Who will go with me?

Lord Jesus, I confess my sin and disobedience; I confess that I have not done the good I should have done, and have done unhelpful and destructive things.

I turn away from my sin and turn back to you. Lord Jesus, receive me and re–fill me with your Holy Spirit.
Teach me to walk in your paths, beginning from this day.
I pray this giving you thanks for the answers you have already given.
AMEN

* Die Unmögliche Tatsache, Christian von Morgenstern.

[Luke 1: 26 – 38  Peter R Green, Sunday am, 18 Dec, 2011; Based on and expanded from a sermon by Rev. Canon Frank Logue (Episcopal Diocese of Georgia); http://www.ecusa.anglican.org/sermons_that_work_130682_ENG_HTM.htm]

COULD YOU imagine a church so radical that people would riot when they heard we were meeting, that they would accuse us of anarchy, that they would say, “These people are turning the world upside down, and now they are here?”

When Paul was in Thessalonica, this happened. The rioting mob couldn’t find Paul himself, so they dragged a man named Jason and some other believers before the city officials, shouting:

“These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here, and Jason has welcomed them into his house. They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.”

In the King James Version, they call them “These men who have turned the world upside down.”

The gospel message always was, and always was intended to be, a message of revolution — not a revolution fought with guns and swords, but a revolution fought with the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, a revolution created in hearts and minds, a revolution of faith, hope, justice and peace.

But a revolution, none the less.

As Christmas is upon us, as we begin the final acts of preparation, let’s remember Mary. What an unpromising start! Another in the tens of millions of statistics of unmarried, pregnant teens. There were hundreds of them even while Herod ruled Palestine and Augustus was Emperor of Rome.

But, unlike all those others, an angel came to Mary and told her it would happen, and that it was a deed of the Holy Spirit: God merely said it, and it happened.

How did this happen? I don’t know — no more than Mary herself really knew. Poor Mary had a ghastly burden to bear. Imagine any woman who said, “I am pregnant, and the Spirit of God did it — an angel told me”. That woman would be a laughing stock, followed by a hail of stones.

But somehow Mary coped. Somehow she faced what was happening, and sang what many consider one of the most beautiful and hopeful songs of all history.

Let me read it to you. It’s often known as The Magnificat.

Lk 1:46 And Mary said:
“My soul glorifies the Lord
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
48 for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed,
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name.
50 His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation.
51 He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.  53 He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.
54 He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful 55 to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.”
“He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.”

GREAT THINGS FOR MARY

The first part of Mary’s song is about how God has done good things for her.

As I said, many would question how good it was. She bore the shame and suffering, but that is the lot of anyone who truly follows Jesus. It was Jesus’ own lot. It is how it always is.

But it is also truly good news of the Incarnation; it is good news that God’s reign is breaking in, even before Christ himself is born.

The fact that Gabriel visited this lowly girl, Mary, shows the truth of the Kingdom. Mary’s hymn of praise spells it out. God’s Kingdom is like this; it turns the world and its values upside down.

Did you notice this? Mary sings prophetically about God’s kingdom as if it is already a fact, rather than a coming reality, as though it had already broken into the here and now.

Don’t fall in with people who still only see the Kingdom as future. This song is nearly all perfect tense: God has cast down the mighty, God has helped his people, Israel. For Mary, everything is already done. If God has already looked with favour on his servant, Mary, if he has already done great things for her, surely it is a small piece of great things to come; surely it is the seed of what will grow out of these events.

Of course Mary doesn’t mean God has done enough in blessing her; her point is that the pilot project has worked, proving that the rest will work, too. She isn’t self–centred. She might still praise God for all he is doing in becoming human, but she never loses sight of the big picture; she never forgets that here God’s fresh blessings for Israel begin; and, ultimately, his blessings for all the world.

A while ago, I was talking to someone who had never seemed to gain anything from my preaching or praying. Out of the blue, this person said, “You made a major change in your life, even though you didn’t know what would come of it. The way you stepped out and took risks encourages me to take risks, too.”

So often that’s how it works. God touches one life; something from that touch passes on to someone else, and you never know where it will end up. All we can do is to act and trust.

God has blessed Mary, but she never forgets that this blessing will flow on to Israel, and, from Israel, to the entire world.

Mary takes a page from her unborn son’s ministry. She proclaims that God’s Kingdom is at hand.

And if you remember back to the covenant God cut with Abraham 2,000 years earlier, you will remember that it was always this way. God called Abraham in order to create a people of power; but through Abraham’s descendant all nations would be blessed.

Of course, looking at our world, we see that, 2,000 years after Mary, things haven’t changed all that much. She sings:

52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.  53 He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.

Kings and rulers still hold the seats of power; the lowly only rarely get lifted up; the hungry still go hungry; and those who have get more. Is Mary a fool to speak as though the lowly were already lifted up, or the hungry were already filled with good things?

Don’t be fooled yourself, either. Mary was a Jew, and no Jew living under the Romans would imagine the lowly were being lifted up. She’s no hopeless dreamer. She’s a realist.

Mary sees what what God is doing through her as a sign that all of his promises are as good as fulfilled. If he promises it, he will do it.

God is faithful to accomplish what he begins. The old things are passed away, now that God is among us through Jesus. It will take time. It will not all happen at once. But she knows it will happen, because it has begun in her. God’s kingdom is breaking into our world. It is new, it is marvelous, it is a clear, present demonstration that God is lifting up the lowly and filling the hungry with good things.

Don’t make this an excuse to neglect the needs of the poor. Never forget the hungry and oppressed: never! If God is renewing all things, then it is our role as his people to work actively alongside him to establish that renewal throughout the world.

And this is how it has worked out in history. Think of foreign aid, think of universal education — so subversive to entrenched power — think of democracy, of universal sufferage, and think how much these arose from the Christian concept that power should not be entrenched, that the poor and the outcast should not be excluded.

Mary has it right. She is totally in line with the Biblical view of how this age – the time we live in – relates to the age to come, the age of God’s Kingdom. First, we have this age, our present time. It is time that began at the creation and continues until Jesus returns as King and judge.

But the Age to Come also exists in parallel to this age. Jesus brought it with him. He will come in power and glory, and when he does, he will bring about the end of this age, and all that is left is the Kingdom age, the Age to Come. We don’t fully experience the Kingdom until that day, but we can certainly glimpse it, we can certainly hope for it, we can certainly experience little flashes of it.

As I said a week or so ago, time has a conclusion, it linear, from beginning to end. Time is pressing on toward the end of this age; time will go on until the Age to Come is ushered in. Time might just seem to be plodding along towards its conclusion, and the Age to Come might seem something entirely separate. But Mary sees the truth: she sees the reality that these two ages, in fact, intersect. The Age to Come keeps breaking into our present age. And it is most present where faith in Jesus is most present.

So it is not present in its fullness in this present age, but these glimpses foreshadow what is to come. Whenever there is healing, whenever goodness breaks out, whenever justice is done, there God’s Kingdom is present.

GREAT THINGS FOR ISRAEL

And Mary sees this. The birth of the Messiah to her, a lowly Jewish peasant, is an important sign of God’s kingdom.

The Incarnation gives us a marvellously clear picture of the Age to Come.

Humanly, we would expect a great ruler, a Caesar, an Alexander the Great, a mighty Pharaoh.

But what did God do? He took on human flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the builder, the son of a peasant girl in an occupied land.

You’d almost laugh. All these mighty people, all these self–important rulers are as good as cast from their thrones, and they don’t even notice.  It‘s as though they were robbed of their seats of power overnight, and cardboard replicas were left in their place.

If this unmarried mother, if this carpenter’s fiancée can give birth to God’s son, then the hungry are as good as having their bellies filled, because God is not only ready and willing to bring about the Age to Come; God is actually already breaking into this world with the Age to Come, he is already at work to counter the assumptions and values by which this present age operates.

If you look at the history of Israel since those days, you might think that God has cursed them rather than blessed them. Some of their troubles they have definitely brought on themselves.

Yet God has protected so many and has brought so many out of captivity.

Hitler tried to forge an alliance with the King of Morocco to destroy Morocco’s Jews. He offered to help the King with his Jews in exchange for help from the Moroccan Army.

“How many Jews do you have in Morocco?” Adolf Hitler asked.

“We have no Jews here,” said the King. “Everyone in Morocco is a Muslim.”

This Muslim ruler was determined to protect the Jews from Hitler.

But even more dramatic than this brave support for Israel is what so many ordinary brave Christians did in places like The Netherlands and Sweden and Denmark — hiding Jews and protecting them from persecution.

Few of these were powerful or important people. But they risked their lives to protect their fellow human beings.

Why would I die for someone who isn’t in my own family? It makes little sense apart from a radical upheaval of convention in favour of God’s kingdom.

Mary sings that this is not some new thing God is doing. God has promised so much to Israel, and now he is fulfilling his promises.

But never forget that the good God is doing for Israel is not just for Israel. Some people think that, because Israel is the Chosen People, this means God has no plans for the rest of the world, no interest in anyone but Jews.

What nonsense!

Israel’s God has broken into history to fulfill his promises to the Jews, but always aiming to bless all humanity through the Jews. And, in particular, to bless through one particular Jew: Jesus, the son of Mary. God is now acting in human history. His kingdom is breaking into this age for the Jews, but it is also breaking into this age for all human kind.

GREAT THINGS FOR THE WORLD

Later in Luke’s Gospel, we read about Jesus’ first sermon in the Nazareth Synagogue. He told how the Spirit of the Lord was on him to

”…proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

Isn’t Jesus affirming the very things his mother sang about, when he was still in the womb? Didn’t Jesus continually remind his disciples that the last would be first, and the first would be last? Didn’t he preach that those who exalt themselves will be humbled? The poor, the hungry, the weeping, they are the ones God blesses. God will give them the kingdom, fill them with food, and exchange their tears for laughter.

Jesus told his followers that he came to serve, and his followers must also be servants.

His whole ministry followed the pattern of the words his mother sang, and, in living it out, he shows how radically different God’s kingdom is from this present age.

In The Magnificat, we hear that God’s kingdom has broken into our present age. Yes, the world is still fallen and flawed. Yes, the powerful still crush the lowly; the rich get richer and the poor pay for it. Yes, those with food have more than enough, while others go hungry.

But here’s the point: because of the ways God has broken into human history, we are now able to glimpse a different world.

Jesus demonstrates it by his life; the great saints through the ages have let the secret be known; and we everyday Christians, when we try it instead of just talking about it; even we show it to our own surprise. The upside-down world of the gospel really can be wonderful.

No one is too lowly for God. No one is too weak for God. No one is too undesirable for God. God’s kingdom has no outcasts. All who will may come. As I pointed out last week, God does not look at appearances, he is not impressed by outward signs of status and success. God looks at what is in your heart.

CONCLUSION

This is the last week of Advent: what better time to make more room in your life for God?

The more we let God into our hearts and lives, the more we love those God loves.

The more we reach out to others to share God’s love, the more we bring the age to come to life in the here and now.

What did Mary say to the angel, Gabriel? “Here am I”

And what is required of us? How can we say less to the gospel than, “Here am I”?

It is all about living our faith, with changed hearts and lives. This is not a theory to assent to; this is a life lived in response to the gospel.

Here’s the point: when we reach out to the lost and abandoned, when we proclaim Good News in word and deed, when we side against the oppressor and speak up for the voiceless, then little by little we help turn the world upside down.  But the amazing thing is that we also make the Kingdom proclaimed by Mary real to ourselves.

I might not change the whole world, but Jesus taught us concern for the poor and the needy; and, living that out by faith, we make the coming kingdom, the reign of God, real in our hearts. Then we will see, as Mary saw, that the mighty are as good as cast down, the lowly as good as lifted up, and the hungry are as good as filled, for the Kingdom of God has come near. We will see it, and we will be driven ever more to make it real, for the world’s sake, for our own sake, and, above all, for the sake of Jesus and his kingdom.

Let’s make this our goal!

AMEN

[John 1: 6 – 24  Peter R Green, Sunday am, 11 Dec, 2011]

WHEN I went to England for the first time, we stayed in a very opulent hotel in Singapore. It would normally have cost more than we could afford, but we were fortunate to have a long break in the journey, so it was part of the deal.

I went for a walk in the morning, and was greeted at the door by the doorman, a tall, friendly Indian man, and a cab driver, a small, round faced Chinese man. We chatted for a while before I moved on.

The kinds of hotel I usually go to might have a bikie lounging near the door, and the manager might come around into the foyer to point me to the staircase, but they don’t have an imposing doorman to carry your bags or call someone to take you up in the lift.

But we all know what a doorman is like. We have seen them in movies. And, if it is a busy time, you don’t chat to the doorman, because he has a job to do. You let him do his job. You certainly don’t pester him about why he is doing what he does, or what authority he has to tell people where to go to book in.

The Priests and Levites who came to see John in the desert miss the point. John is a doorman, and they are chatting with him and quizzing him instead of letting him do his job.

When I hear John Farnham singing, You’re the voice, sometimes I think of John the Baptist. He was the voice of one crying in the wilderness. And he did it because that was how to carry out his job as a doorman to the Kingdom of God. He knew what his role was.

Those Priests and Levites didn’t get it, because they didn’t want to listen to what John the Baptist was saying. We have to listen!

And they failed to pass on what they gained from him, because they had nothing to pass on, they had gained nothing from him, and brought nothing to the interview.

And they were left on the outside while others entered and found life.

Listening

When God called Isaiah, as we saw a couple of weeks ago, it was to a thankless task. He was to be a prophet to people who would be deaf and blind when it came to spiritual issues.

God commanded Isaiah,

Isa 6:9 …“Go and tell this people:
“ ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’
10 Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

It isn’t God’s desire for them to miss his salvation: far from it!

God doesn’t desire that anyone should perish. We saw that a few weeks ago, too.

This is sarcasm, biting sarcasm. Some people think God is incapable of sarcasm, because sarcasm is often hurtful. But if God created everything, he created sarcasm, and this is a good use of the technique. He uses sarcasm to jolt people into listening.

So many people refuse to listen to what God has to say, and they miss the life he wants them so desperately to share in.

And many who came to John were equally deaf and blind, refusing to hear the truth John preached, refusing to see what he was getting at. They refused to prepare to receive Christ.

The didn’t get it, because they didn’t want it. They didn’t really want to know the way into the Kingdom of God, because they thought they already knew it.

Those doormen in big hotels are impressive. They mostly wear some kind of uniform, they are mostly a little taller than average.

But that’s not the point. He isn’t there for appearances, but to point people in the right direction.

And, in the same way, John might have dressed in camel hair and eaten locusts and wild honey, and acted like the other old–time prophets, but he wasn’t there for appearances: he was there to point people in God’s right direction, towards the coming Messiah.

He was there to hold the door open while others went in.

As Jesus said,

Mt 11:11 Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

Others go inside, while John stands outside and holds the door.

John says, “This way, Sir, this way, Madam; may I get someone to take your coat?”

And if you don’t listen when someone says that kind of thing, you won’t know what they are on about.

In the old days, this was often a good job for a retired soldier, and he would wear his uniform, and people would think how splendid he looked; and old soldiers knew how to run staff, how to give and receive orders.

John was like this. He wore the clothes that went with his work, he knew what to say and why. He heard from heaven and passed it on to the people who came.

Yet so many failed to listen, failed to understand, failed to act.

Man looks on the outside, but God looks on the heart.

These priests and teachers of the law could only see the outside of John and couldn’t see his heart, or understand what moved him.

Too many people are like this. They don’t properly comprehend the message of the gospel, because they look on the outside. They say, “This chapel is fully carpetted; that chapel has old wooden pews and a wooden floor, so this chapel is better than that one.” They compare preachers, “This preacher has a lovely accent, that one stammers or drones; this one makes us write notes on every verse he uses, that one preaches an overview. This one must be better than that one.”

Maybe they are right. But maybe they are right by accident, because they don’t discern that the difference between church A and church B is money, or the difference between preacher A and preacher B is elocution classes.

We judge by externals: people always have, and you and I do, too, even when we try not to.

God wants people who listen and see with their hearts and not just with ears and eyes.

Let’s look for the inner meaning of Christmas as it comes near.

Gaining nothing

As I said, those priests and teachers of the law received nothing from John because they brought nothing to the interview; they had nothing from John to give to others, because they were unwilling to receive from him.

When I was in theological college, I sometimes had to listen to preachers and teachers whom I didn’t like. Mainly, these were people whose ideas I disagreed with.

Let me leap to the defence of the Baptist College and say that most of these people were conservative evangelicals. But I still say I didn’t like their attitudes. They were legalistic, or they were self–important… you know the kind of thing I mean.

Like one Texan evangelist who clearly didn’t want to be with us, was downright rude when people tried to engage him in conversation, and didn’t have the respect for his audience to  give us more than a list of Bible verses and rules derived from them.

When it was question time I asked, “But what about a small, struggling church that has been beaten around so much that they have lost the courage to evangelise?”

All he could do was give me more rules and tell me to make the church feel guilty because it wasn’t doing these things.

I didn’t want to be in his lecture. I could see where he was heading before we even got to question time.

So I prayed about it. I told God that I was prepared to listen even if I didn’t like the man; and I trusted God to bring me something worthwhile from the experience.

It is amazing how often that prayer was positively answered. I think with this evangelist, it wasn’t direct. I got to talking to people who were good evangelists, and learned a lot from them. But other times it might just have been a few sentences which really made me think, or sometimes it was even that a bad teacher preached a good sermon.

But these teachers and priests came determined not to get anything good from John.

He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely. “I am not the Messiah,”

he said. Yet they still quizzed him. Surely they could see what he was. But no:

They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.”

They say that every question has an underlying statement. I am sure you can see the underlying statement when it comes to these leaders and John:

“If you are not the Messiah, they you don’t really have any authority to start preaching.”

And they were convinced, anyway, that he wasn’t the Messiah. “You are a nobody,” they say. “What makes an upstart like you make all this fuss?”

Or

They asked him… “Are you the Prophet?” He answered, “No.”

In other words, “You aren’t trying to make us believe you are the prophet Moses promised, who would be like himself.”

They are back onto the Messiah business, because, in effect, Moses had promised God would send a Messiah just like himself. They imply that John is just playing word games with them, and really does think he is the Messiah.

But John’s answers still frustrate them. They want a pigeon hole to push John into, and he won’t play their game.

Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

Once again, John isn’t going to play by their rules. These leaders are looking for a self–definition they can attack. They want him to say, “I am the Messiah,” so they can say, “No you aren’t: you are just a very naughty boy.”

But John just says,

“I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’ ”

“I am just a desert echo, someone far off, unseen by most people. All I do is point people to the coming of the King.”

He points these leaders from Jerusalem towards the coming Christ, but they aren’t interested in the message; only in the messenger.

So we find some Pharisees there who went even further, challenging him about his actions. They could handle him telling people to get ready for the Messiah, but baptising — that was different.

“Why then do you baptise if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”

To ask people to be baptised, to be washed, as though they were dirty foreigners or unwashed shepherds: that’s going too far! “You don’t have the right!” they complain. “We are children of Abraham: we don’t need to do anything. God accepts us just as we are!”

But John challenges them again:

Jn 1:26 “I baptise with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. 27 He is the one who comes after me, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”

In other words, “You don’t have a clue. You are focusing on me and what I am doing, and you can’t see the thing I am talking about. You can’t see that this is about the coming Messiah, not about me. Do you think you are equal to him? I certainly am not!”

But they don’t want to engage personally with this unkempt, disreputable desert dweller. He is probably mad, or dangerous. All they want to do is to make a report back in Jerusalem so other people won’t be taken in.

In the 1960 and early 1970s, the Pentecostal movement  had an impact on Baptists along with many other denominations.

I had and still have reservations about some aspects of what they did and taught, but they had some very good points.

• They taught that the Holy Spirit is active, that his power is present today.
• They taught an open and relaxed attitude to our faith: we didn’t all have to wear suits and be respectable.
• They taught that the age of miracles, the age of signs and wonders, was not yet past.

And we Baptists investigated them and wrote reports and held assembly meetings, but we didn’t listen to the truths they preached, and I believe we missed out on some vital opportunities.

Those who refuse to receive will never have anything to give.

What about you?

Outsiders

So the Jewish leaders became critical outsiders, judging John’s work, while the ordinary people believed and rejoiced, and received the blessing of knowing they were preparing for the coming Messiah. The Jewish leaders maintained their dignity while the ordinary folk lost all their dignity in a plunge into a dirty river.

Back in the days of Elisha, a military leader from Aram named Naaman, went to the prophet seeking healing for leprosy.

Elisha sent him a message to dip himself seven times in the Jordan River, and, at first, Naaman refused to do so.

We read that he said,

2Ki 5:12 “Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage.

I don’t suppose that the Jordan River had improved much since the 8th Century BC!

Eventually Naaman swallowed his pride and gave himself seven ducks in the muddy river, and was healed.

I think of that story when I hear about John preaching in the desert. He urged people to be ducked in the same muddy river, and be healed of the spiritual leprosy eating up their souls.

But, unlike Naaman, they would not turn and be healed.

And so many today are the same. They can stand by, stiff–necked, arms folded, critically watching, but they will not bend, they will not swallow their pride and be healed.

Following Christ will mean mixing with the wrong people and going outside your comfort zone, but it will mean life and a healthy respect for all people — because Jesus died for all, not just for special kinds of people.

So many remain on the outside while the blind, the lame, the crippled and the maimed enter the Kingdom of God before them!

Conclusion

“If I were there, I would go straight down into the Jordan,” you say — but you probably wouldn’t.

I am just saying this to be realistic, not to be critical.

We all resist change. We all hate looking different, or being outside the group.

If our group was all going down for baptism, we might be tempted to join them; but if our friends stood by with their arms folded and a critical look on their faces, would we really defy their judgment and choose the shame of being identified with the wild man of the desert?

Today we know who he was and what became of him; in those days, people were still guessing — and many guessed wrongly.

But the warning of Hebrews still stands:

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts…

It is still as good a warning today as ever.

If God is speaking to you, don’t keep asking questions you don’t really need answered; trust Jesus, and find the life he has for you.

Do it today!

AMEN

[Mark 1: 1 – 8  Peter R Green, Sunday am, 04 Dec, 2011]

THERE’S A famous philosophical question: if a tree falls in a forest, and there is no one to observe it, does it make a noise? Much of both science and philosophy have to do with the observer’s effect on events.

I won’t go into all the strange effects that observation has on the events being watched. But being observed is important. And it is important to us as humans. So what if we are out in the desert? What if we are preaching and no one hears? What if we are serving and no one wants to eat? What if we are caring and no one is there to care for?

As we approach Christmas and think about the preparation of the Gospel, here is John the Baptist, out in the desert, proclaiming his message. What does it say to us?

Maybe you want to minister, and wonder how much good you are doing. You can see a world going to hell, but you can’t get out there with an effective message, or you fall over your words, or something else goes wrong.

Sometimes we carry the desert with us. We want something to happen, but can’t seem to make it happen.

Are you discouraged?

John and I go out every fortnight and hand out tracts. People sometimes tell us we are doing a good job, but who has ever come to our church because of our literature? Or who has said, “Hey! I don’t want to come to your church, but you really gave me something to think about!”?

We do our job, we pray for the best. I don’t know about John, but I have to say that sometimes I feel like a voice shouting in the desert, with only my echo for a companion.

Well, it’s not quite so bad. I can see John over there, so I am not quite alone.

I wonder what it was like for John the Baptist? I wonder how he began his ministry?

We read in Mark’s Gospel,

Mk 1:4 And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptised by him in the Jordan River.

The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. But how long did he preach before that happened?

Do you imagine that these things were instantaneous? Most people have to persevere over and over before they see the first trickle, but then that trickle becomes a stream, and the stream becomes a flood.

I want to encourage us all to look up. I want to urge us all to keep our hope, and keep pressing forward. I want us all to recognise that God measures these things differently from how you and I measure them.

Waiting for change

The first thing I want us to see is that it is part of life to be waiting for change.

In Psalm 85, we read these words:

Ps 85:1 You, LORD, showed favour to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob.
2 You forgave the iniquity of your people and covered all their sins.
3 You set aside all your wrath and turned from your fierce anger.
4 Restore us again, God our Saviour, and put away your displeasure toward us.
5 Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger through all generations?
6 Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?
7 Show us your unfailing love, LORD, and grant us your salvation.
8 I will listen to what God the LORD says; he promises peace to his people, his faithful servants— but let them not turn to folly.
9 Surely his salvation is near those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land.

The Psalmist pleads with God  as he remembers what God has done in the past and as he anticipates what God can do again in future.

God does bless, but not always when we want it, nor in the way we imagine.

Isaiah 9 contains a prophetic word of hope:

Isa 9:2 The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.

It hadn’t yet happened; but people looked forward to it. And, in the days before Christ was born, they took up thoughts like this once more, and hoped for the return of hope.

Can God, who blessed our ancestors, bless us again? Can he use us as he used us in our youth? These are questions we all ask.

And waiting is part of it: not waiting for God to decide to act. We saw last week: God came, God comes and God will come. We don’t wait for him to act: he waits for us to be willing.

Sometimes it takes hornets to make us change our mind and be willing to receive his blessings.

But we do have to wait.

In 2 Peter we see why. It says,

2Pet 3:8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

Blessing tarries because God doesn’t want to leave anyone behind. Blessing tarries because some of us are early adopters and some wait until everything is tried and tested. God won’t leave any more behind than he has to, because it is his plan to unite all things in heaven and earth under the headship of Jesus.

When some of us went to an Easter convention at Beth Shan, and there was a marvellous outbreak of blessing which touched everyone from our church at Fairfield in some way. But we had no blessing until the very last leader was willing to receive the blessing.

God is patient with us — far more patient with us than we are with him.

However, never assume that this gives us all the time in the world. Peter also says,

2Pet 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.

When God acts, he acts. It happened when Jesus came.

He came to his own people, and his own people didn’t receive him — but to those who did receive him, who believed on his name, he gave authority to become God’s children.

Meanwhile,

People, get ready: there’s a train a–comin’…

We wait, but not forever.

Being a blessing

Henry Van Dyke wrote a story* years ago about the fourth wise man, who was delayed in setting out to follow the star. He arranged to catch up with his colleagues along the way, but they were always just ahead of him, moving on each day because they assumed he wasn’t coming.

Long after the first three had gone to see Jesus and returned home again this fourth wise man was still travelling.

The problem was not that he was a Baptist, running to Baptist time. The problem was that, yes, he did start late, but then kept meeting people who took up his time: a poor man who needed alms, a widow seeking justice, and so on. And he kept helping where he could.

The point of the story was that he may not have met the man, Jesus, but he kept meeting Jesus in these people in need.

But let’s think about a real life example.

A couple went to work in a deprived area in Brazil, as Paul Cull and Trina Simpson are doing in the poor town of Novo Friburgo.

Phil and Sarah went to Brazil as mission partners, aiming to teach at a facility that offers educational and recreational activities to Rio’s street children. **

One of their Brazilian sponsors tried to discourage any unrealistic expectations. He warned, “These kids will never amount to anything. The most you can hope for is that they will stay with you while you keep them occupied.”

They chose to try anyway. Sarah was a professional artist, and tried to teach the children how to draw; Phil, a languages professor, taught English to a small group of teens. But the group’s English language skills grew so slowly that Phil was thankful he had not invested money in textbooks!

Sarah hardly did better with the children’s self-esteem. Many were convinced they could not draw and just made trouble, like Christian, a 10 year old who refused to draw; but loved shouting and shoving in all his classes. Sarah refused to add to the lectures and punishments he’d already received. She simply stayed with him, encouraging him until one day he began to draw. By the second month of classes, he was even sometime absorbed in his work. But Sarah never knew which Christian she would face  – troublemaker or artist.

Phil and Sarah felt a bit like John the Baptist, “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness”. They tried, but how many willingly came? They spoke to those who came, but how many really heard?

Think carefully about your own experiences. Have you been in a situation where nothing seemed to work, no growth happened, the ministry you so much wanted to develop fell by the wayside or was undercut by people who lacked your vision?

In my role as a pastor, I have come to see that ministry has often just been the by–product of a plan God had to change me.

In the end, it is God who is in control: God, by the Holy Spirit, using us as representations of Jesus in the world. He will do as he plans through us, if we let him.

Remember what Paul told the Philippians:

Phil 2:13 [for] it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose

Some people who heard John repented, people who determined to live more Godly lives because of what he said and did.

Yet in the end he was imprisoned, an entertainment for Herod, and, finally, his victim.

What kind of ministry is that? He was human. He knew the human description of success. Success doesn’t end with beheading in the world of business.

But things aren’t always as they seem.

When Phil and Sarah finally left to take up a new ministry, they were stunned by the outpouring of affection and care. These children didn’t become famous artists or writers, but something mattered more to them: these two professional people had put everything aside to serve the poor and to be with them.

Never get pride–filled by your have a successes in ministry, and never accept discouragement when things don’t end with glowing references and special awards. It’s God’s Spirit who works in us and makes us Christlike: that’s the bottom line in service. Be a blessing. Be patient. Know that God is working towards a goal, even if you don’t always see it.

The most important thing is presence. It is what Jesus himself did; it is what the Spirit was doing through John the Baptist; it is what God will do with and through you.

Never giving up

If the gospel has given our world one great gift that affects everyone regardless of their beliefs, it is the idea that history progresses.

We are so used to it that we don’t realise that it wasn’t that way. People believed that life just continued in endless cycles. They measured years from when the king came to the throne, and started again when a new king was crowned. Tomorrow would be like yesterday: they thought time would never end.

But the gospel message, from Genesis to Revelation, broke radically with the past. God began it all; God intervenes in it all, God entered it all in the person of Jesus; one day, he will draw it all to an end.

Time is measured by Jesus, the King of Kings — not by the Tudors and the Stuarts and the Hanoverians, nor by any other passing rulers.

So much of what we do is based on this simple concept. Science, social theory — so much requires that one idea that history progresses.

And we Christians are definitely part of the progress of history; it is our place in life to cooperate with it and help make it happen.

When Jesus sent his disciples out two by two through the villages, he told them to preach, “The Kingdom of God is at hand!” Why? Because it meant that they were participating in the future, it meant that they were part of the glories to come.

And exactly the same applies to us. We might see even demons submitting to us, and, if we do, let’s give thanks.

But we might equally find ourselves carrying out a thankless task, like Isaiah, who heard the Lord tell him,

Isa 6:9 He said, “Go and tell this people:

“ ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’

10 Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

11 Then I said, “For how long, Lord?” And he answered:

“Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant… 12 until the LORD has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken…”

There was no human glory in this, but we remember Isaiah to this day, we remember John the Baptist, we remember so many who laboured for years in their own fields, gaining no rewards except the knowledge that they continued to press on towards the goal even at the cost of their own lives.

They hoped for change, and were about their master’s business to the end of their days.

Conclusion

I posed a question at the beginning: if a tree falls in a forest and there is no one to observe it, does it make a noise?

Bishop George Berkeley even argued that things only exist when they are observed.

Someone wrote to a university newspaper in England,

There was a young man who said “God
Must find it exceedingly odd
To think that the tree
Should continue to be
When there’s no one about in the quad.”

Msg Ronald Knox, who was at university at the time, replied:

Dear Sir: Your astonishment’s odd;
I am always about in the quad.
And that’s why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by,
Yours faithfully, God.

And there’s our answer. That work, that preparation for the coming of Christ, may seem insignificant, but it exists because God exists, and he sees it.

That preparation for the coming of Christ may seem like a lost cause, but it will bear fruit for eternity, because God commanded it.

I just can’t give up now,
I’ve come too far from where I started from
Nobody told me that the road would be easy,
But I don’t believe he’s brought me this far to leave me. (Mary Mary, I Just can’t give up now)

God will do as he promised. Be patient and never give up, because he sees what you do!

AMEN

* The Fourth Wise Man, Henry van Dyke
** told by Drs. Barbara Baumgarten and David Catron

[1 Cor 1: 1 – 9  Peter R Green, Sunday am, 27 Nov, 2011]

ONE OF MARTIN LUTHER’S most famous sermons had the title, “How can a person find a gracious God? — Wie findet man einen gnädigen Gott?” No one would preach a sermon with such a title, yet it is a question everyone asks.

I think the reason we don’t preach it is that people don’t ask the question in that form. But people still want to know.

Someone says, “I don’t know: there’s a great hole in my life, things are wrong, yet I can’t put my finger on anything.”

Another says, “I have made such a mess, and I want to clean up my life, but I don’t know where to start.”

Or a third says, “If I can just get the right mix of herbs and diet and exercise right, then my life will be right at last.”

But at the core, isn’t it the same? Something is not right, something I can’t quite put my finger on, and I want it changed.”

And, at its basis, there’s the unspoken admission: “I don’t know where to go with this.”

If there is one thing we can say about the approach of Christmas, if there is one truth we can repeat over and over, it is that God is not a God who waiting to see if we will finally work it out and find him. The core truth is that God comes to us, and believe it or not, that the seeking God has found us. You don’t have to look for something. You don’t have to find a guru who can set you right. The gospel is that God has already come in Jesus; not only has he come, but he is constantly coming to us. And, because God is the same yesterday, today and forever, he will keep coming to us.

THE GOD WHO CAME

People often think that the story of God’s coming begins with Christmas. And that is true in one sense. As we know from the Bible,

God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.

We believe that Jesus is God the Son, come as God among us — Emmanuel: God with us.

But let’s think about this. If God only came among us at a fixed point in history, if God was not manifest before Jesus was born around 4 or 5 BC, what happened to all those people who lived and died before then? Did God condemn them to hell, even though they had no chance to believe? What kind of monster would such a God be?

But think about it! Didn’t God manifest himself to Abraham? It’s in Genesis 18:

Ge 18:1 The LORD appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day.

2 Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.

There is no doubt here about who came to Abraham. It says The Lord. The underlying Hebrew is that strange, four letter word, YHWH, the personal Name of God.

These events were perhaps 2000 years before Christ. God clearly came to Abraham.

But let’s go back to Genesis 3.

Here we read,

Gen 3:8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

9 But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”

Think about what this is saying. It says that, at the dawn of human existence, God was coming to people, seeking a relationship. And here we see that it is the people who hid from God, not the other way around.

You might say, “This is a theological justification, and has no relation to real history.”

But I have a friend who was a missionary among South Indian Hindus. His point of contact with them was through their sacrifices.

Although these Hindus don’t have as many sacrifices as the ancient Jews did, what they have are very similar to the ancient Jewish sacrifices.

My friend, John, raised a Hindu and converted as a teenager, would go through the sacrifices to show the parallels with Jewish ones, and explain how Jesus died on the cross to complete what the sacrifices foreshadowed.

If my friend, John, is right, God gave Hindus their sacrifices as an interim measure until Jesus came to complete them.

It implies that 10,000 or more years ago, God came to people far away from Israel, to bring them, too, into a relationship with him.

God is a God who has always comes to us. He created us for relationship with himself; he wants us as his people and his friends.

THE GOD WHO KEEPS COMING

And that is why he is also a God who keeps coming.

Yesterday some of us watched a movie. The details don’t matter, but there was something in it which struck me. It was about a football coach and his team, and how everything was going wrong for them until first the coach, and then the team, got their lives right with God.

The coach and his wife were clearly Christians before all of this mess started catching up with them.

But we saw a night when the coach couldn’t sleep, when he was sitting up in semi–darkness, and when he was up at first light, reading his Bible outdoors and praying that the Lord Jesus would take over the mess his life had become, because he could do no more in his own strength.

I realised that this was just like conversion.

We Christians who have somehow been influenced by Calvinist traditions can get bogged down in the idea, “Once saved, always saved.”

It’s a comforting doctrine, but dangerous if it keeps us from encountering God where he is waiting to meet us.

God keeps coming, keeps looking for our willingness for fresh conversion.

There were times when I’d have washed my mouth out with soap if I caught myself saying that. But there is a real truth here: God wants to transform us, not just label us.

When I became a Christian, all I knew was that God knew what a mess I had made of life even at that tender age, and that he still wanted me to surrender to his rule. My willingness to confess Jesus as my Saviour and Lord had to be converted.

When I was walking to work and he called me into ministry, I had to come back again and be turned again. That’s what conversion means: turning with Christ.

My readiness to serve had to be converted.

When I was at Bankstown Council and told God that, if the four men who worked with me were to be my only congregation, I would serve him faithfully there, my desire for a name as a preacher had to be converted.

And so on. At each crisis, another and another part of my life needs to be converted, and God is there in Christ, waiting at those turning points.

Sometimes, as I prayed, I knew what he was saying to me in a direct way, just like when I visited the Jehovahs Witness couple and the Spirit kept giving me scriptures to answer the arguments Günther brought up. Or like when I needed guidance about our missionary giving, and he gave me a verse that spoke to that situation.

There was a time in one of the Councils I worked for when I was hurt, let down, disappointed, receiving unfair treatment compared to my fellow–workers, and I began non–cooperation with the management. A girl in one of the Government departments phoned out of the blue — as she always did when I was having a hard time — and, when she heard my story, confronted me about my attitude. It pulled me up and changed my behaviour. Jesus meets us through our fellow believers.

Many years later I was talking to this girl, and she told me she always prayed for the Council Planners she worked with each morning, and, if one of them came to mind, she would phone. Jesus came to many people through Judith, and many of them probably don’t know to this day that that was what happened.

It’s in the Bible.

In Acts 8, we read,

Acts 8:26 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.”

27 So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, 28 and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet.

29 The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”

Or in Acts 12, God communicates with the believers in Antioch:

Acts 13:1 Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul.

2 While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”

Sometimes the word comes in dreams and visions, like when Paul dreamed of a man from Macedonia, pleading with him to come and help him, and Paul knew it was a word from the Lord to take the gospel beyond Asia into Europe.

A woman who attended this church for a while was really troubled by something in her life, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She was sometimes depressed, and had difficulty in relationships.

She had had some simple counselling, and it hadn’t helped, so she asked me if I had any suggestions.

I am no counsellor. I didn’t have a clue. But I said I would pray about it, and I did.

A night or two later, I had a very vivid dream about that lady, except she wasn’t 50 or whatever, she was only a child, and she wasn’t happy. The dream was very specific about her age.

So I said, “What happened when you were that age?”

And that was when it all started unravelling. Some bad things had happened in her family and to her that year, and she had found ways of emotionally protecting herself, but the cost was great.

The Lord still uses dreams and visions. And the Lord still comes to us in the turning points of life through the written and preached Word, through other believers, and through the heart–searching actions of the Spirit of prophecy and power.

THE GOD WHO WILL COME

In Mark 13, which is the gospel reading in many churches today, Jesus tells his disciples about the destruction of the temple and the end of the age. In that passage, Jesus tells his disciples to “keep awake.”

You remember the story: we read it not long ago. Jesus and his disciples had left the temple, and he told them that someday it would be completely levelled, with not one stone left upon another. Naturally, the disciples ask for details, and Jesus responds with that long passage involving wars and famines and plagues and apocalyptic signs like the sun being darkened and the stars falling like the heaven. It does us little good to puzzle what these scenes might be, but that’s not the point. In the midst of it all, Jesus assures his disciples that, one day the Son of Man will return to set everything right.

That’s marvellous news for some, but it will always be bad news for others. Why on earth would anyone not prepare so as to be ready to receive the coming of the Lord as good news? Of course, no one knows — not even the Son — when all these things will occur. The key truth to remember is that they definitely will take place.

So Jesus warns us, Keep awake, keep alert, keep looking for the true Lord, the one who will fulfil all things. Don’t be tricked by pretenders, no matter how many, no matter how eloquent. Don’t be carried away by people saying, “Look here is the messiah” or “Look! There he is!” Never, never, never believe these pretenders. There is true religion and there is false religion, and so many are false, so many are rotten pillars who will let you down. What is Jesus’ point? Trust only in the true God, the Lord of heaven and earth, and in his only Son, our Lord. Trust in God and keep awake: someday he will come to judge the living and the dead: and look! His reward is with him!

In the closing sections of the New Testament, Jesus speaks again in the vision John had of the new Jerusalem, coming to us from heaven: God’s dwelling place coming to us as the conclusive and concluding act of coming, from which there will never be separation:

Rev 21:3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

6 He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life…”

CONCLUSION

The supreme message of Advent, as we prepare for Christmas, is that God comes to us.

Rom 10:6 …the righteousness that is by faith says: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down) 7 “or ‘Who will descend into the deep?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).

8 But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the message concerning faith that we proclaim: 9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.

11 As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.”

There are no impossible tasks, no knightly quests, for finding God. He comes to us: always has, still does, and one day will come completely and unendingly.

Don’t try to find God: he wants people who will let him find them! It’s so simple! God is there; Christ died for you and rose again to eternal life; the Holy Spirit is always ready to prompt you if you open your heart to him. All you have to do is come openly and repentantly to Jesus, and he will save you, right now — because he is here right now. As the old chorus reminds us,

Come to Jesus
Come to Jesus
Come to Jesus
Right now
Right now
He will save you
He will save you
He will save you
Right now
Right now.

It’s as true as it ever has been.

Just as I am, and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot
To you, whose blood can cleanse each spot
O, Lamb of God, I come! I come!

Come to him today — because he has come for you!

AMEN?

[Luke 22: 7 – 20  Peter R Green, Sunday am, 20 Nov, 2011]

WE HAVE looked at the threat of persecution and suffering. We have thought about the end of war and the needs of the suffering. Now get up! Shine! Our King is coming, and, as Isaiah said, the glory of the Lord is rising upon us!

In some ancient calendars of the church, the year began with Advent, so this would be the last Sunday of the year. Then, in the weeks leading to Christmas, people would reflect on the coming of Christ, on the hope of a downtrodden people, on the joy set before them.

Then came Christmas, to remember that the promised Messiah came, Epiphany to recall the presence of God in Christ, Easter to remembered Jesus’ death and resurrection, Pentecost for the coming of the Spirit, Trinity to remember that God is in three persons, and, finally, the festival of Christ the King.

Today is a day to remember Christ our coming King. It was in today’s reading. Jesus told his disciples,

(Lk22:15b) “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.”

17 After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. 18 For I tell you I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”

Twice he reminded them, twice he emphasised, that he would share with them once more when the Kingdom of God comes.

One day, the King is coming back, and, with him, he brings the fulfilment and completion of the promise he made on the Galilee shore:

The Kingdom of God is at hand: repent, and believe the good news!

IS HE COMING?

It is a clear doctrine of orthodox Christianity that Jesus will come again.

This has been a complicated doctrine. Because some Christians have over–emphasised the coming of Christ, others have recoiled away from this teaching. Some pastors, when I was a young Christian, taught that it is a neglected doctrine, hardly mentioned until it was recovered by the followers of John N Darby or the teachings of C.I Scofield.

But that’s not entirely true. People who couldn’t understand the convoluted, twisted theories of some of the more extreme teachers just kept quiet about what they believed, because no one likes getting into an argument they know will never come to an end.

But, week by week, our brothers and sisters in Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox and many other churches recite the words of the Creed,

He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father.
From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

He will come…

Or, in the Catholic Mass, they remind themselves,

Christ died,
Christ rose,
Christ shall come again.

Jesus is coming again!

But he is coming as King, not as a baby in a manger, nor as a bleeding sacrifice for our sin.

He is Lord,
He is Lord,
He is risen from the dead
and he is Lord
Every knee shall bow
Every tongue confess,
That Jesus Christ is Lord.

“Lord” is not as strong a term today as it was once. In English, it comes from an old word, hlaford, meaning, “someone who gives loaves, who gives bread.” It was a wealthy and powerful man, who could afford to give away good food.

So it came to mean someone important and powerful in society, someone who could give an order and it would be done, someone with the right and the power to force people to obey, and to punish if they didn’t.

But now it is just a title, like Mr. We say, “Lord Bill Smith,” yet his family home and property give him no more right to boss people around than any ordinary Mr Smith.

In Greek the word, kurios has undergone similar debasement.

It comes from an older Greek word meaning supreme authority or right to rule. Kurios meant someone with supreme authority.

Today, if you met John down the street in Athens, you would address him as Kurio Kassimatis. He wouldn’t ride past in a litter carried by slaves, or scatter jewels as a reward to his loyal subjects. It means the same as Mr.

But Jesus is kurios. He is Lord, and that means he has the right to rule, as the supreme authority. And as Lord he is coming back.

I can’t prove that he will return. I can infer it from Scriptural principles and declare it from Scriptural writings, but I can’t prove that I will be around tomorrow, so I certainly can’t prove that Jesus will return.

But I can tell you that the early Christians expected it. In fact, if you read Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians, you will see that some people decided that Jesus’ return was so close that they didn’t need to work — they would just visit their friends and couch surf until the weekend, when he would be sure to come.

Paul said that if anyone wouldn’t work, they shouldn’t eat. This wasn’t harshness against the unemployed. Even Jesus taught about how some people just wouldn’t get work, even if they showed up early. Paul means. don’t encourage people who use religion to excuse themselves from work so that other believers have to support them while they do nothing.

But the church certainly expected Jesus to return.

Even earlier, when Jesus and his disciples looked at the temple, Jesus told his disciples that not one stone of the temple would be left on another — it would be totally torn down.

His disciples said,

When will these things occur, and what are the signs of your return?

They knew he would be back.

But there is a reason for his return, which is that justice will never be established without a just ruler, and Jesus claimed to be the Christ, which meant he claimed to be the ruler appointed by God, the Lord appointed by God, to establish righteousness and justice and covenant love.

A dead Christ, an inaccessible Christ in heaven, can’t do that.

He will come to judge the living and the dead.

The wrong has to be righted; the evil have to be thwarted for the last time; the oppressed have to be lifted up.

Jesus will come again.

WHY WILL HE COME?

We have already seen that he comes to right wrongs and to judge misdeeds. But we need to understand the picture. This is no longer the slaughtered lamb, who now awaits the appointed time. That was when he came the first time, our great high priest.

Heb 9:11 …When Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this creation.

12 He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.

He has made atonement once for all, and now he comes, our glorious King, all his ransomed home to bring.

It is wonderful to remember the sacrifice of Jesus, who died on the cross to pay the price of all my sin.

But In ancient times, the king was always the final arbiter, who made the final decision.

When I first worked as a Town Planner, if a Council refused consent to an application, there was a steady progression of appeals through to the final step of an appeal to the Privy Council in England.

The Privy Council is made up of the law lords with the closest relationship with the King out of all the legal minds in England.

The Privy Council acts in the place of the King to decide the really difficult legal cases.

But, when Jesus comes, all appeals, all decisions, will end up with the Lord himself.

So, in Matthew 25, he talks about himself coming as the king who divides the nations into sheep and goats. On the one hand, there are those who have seen Jesus in the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the prisoners, the sick, and have served their Lord through serving the needy. On the other hand, there are those who have preached and prayed and sung and studied the Word, but have never seen Jesus in the needs around them, and have never ministered to him.

In Revelation, we see him as the king on the throne, who casts the devil and all who have sided with him, into the lake of fire, but who brings his purified bride into the New Jerusalem to be with himself forever.

When Jesus asked his disciples who they said he was, Peter said,

You are the Messiah, the son of the living God!

Messiah means the king whom God has anointed and appointed as the ruler. But the Messiah who is the son of the living God is not just Solomon, not just David, not just Saul, but the king of an everlasting Kingdom.

But moments later, we read,

Mt 16:21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”

23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!…

How can Peter say, “Lord,” yet also say, “Never… this shall never happen to you!”?

We used to sing an old chorus which ended with these words,

By and by we’ll see the king
And crown him Lord of all…
And if you do not crown him Lord of all
You do not crown him Lord at all.

It’s a great truth. Jesus will come to judge, to rule, to set all things right. But we need to decide now, not then, which side we are on.

Everybody gonna pray
On the very last day
When they hear that bell
Ring the world away;
Everybody gonna pray to God in heaven
On the judgment day. *

But for many it will be too late.

The day when Jesus comes as King and opens that Privy Council in heaven, and sits in the seat of the High Judge, that will be the day when it is too late to lodge your first application with the Council.

On the day when Jesus comes as King and sits on the judgment seat, it will not be a day to decide that we are really going to go with the sheep and not the goats.

On the day when Jesus sits on his throne, it will be the day when the martyrs for faith and the victims of injustice will no longer patiently wait for us to reach out and lift their load. On that day they will stand before the King and Judge and ask,

”Must we suffer any longer? Will there never be justice? Will the burden never be lifted?“

And he will say,

“Now I will finish making everything new. Now I will finish the judgment I began on that cross in Jerusalem.”

And there will be no more time.

My Lord,
What a mourning!

WHEN WILL HE COME?

The last question for us to think about at this point is, “When will he come?”

Jesus answered the question like this:

Mk 13:32 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33 Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come.

34 It’s like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with an assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch.
35 “Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn.
36 If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping.

37 What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’ ”

And Peter wrote,

2Pe 3:9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.

11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives

We don’t know when; we do know that he is holding off to give everyone as much time as possible to repent and find faith.

Some people have a system. They think they can see his coming clearly enough. From what I see in scripture, there are still prophecies to be fulfilled. But I will say that Jesus will return, and his rule will be a rule of righteousness and justice, a rule of love and mercy, when justice will roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! (see Amos 5:24)

What a day of rejoicing that will be!

WHAT SHOULD WE DO?

In 1954, Queen Elizabeth visited Australia for the first time. I had a work book at school, covered in brown paper, with a picture of the Queen coming up the Royal Yacht’s gangway.

I remember wondering if the Queen might visit us, and what we would do if she did.

We still had an outdoor toilet with a pan the  Council collected each week. We had a semi–outdoor shower, because the bathroom wasn’t finished. The floor wasn’t complete, because my father was still building the house.

It wasn’t really a place fit for the Queen to visit. It needed a lot of work. The Queen wouldn’t have come.

But our King will come. He doesn’t worry what the house is like. “Give it to me!” he says: “I am making all things new!”

When I applied for acceptance as a ministry candidate in 1982, I didn’t feel like I was giving anything worthwhile to God. I remembered working on cars, and sometimes having a bucket full of greasy, dirty, worn car parts, and having to soak them in kerosene before I even knew whether any parts were re–usable.

I felt like that. But I gave it all to Jesus. I said, “You have called me, and I give myself to you. Do as you want with the bucket of dirty, worn pieces that I am.”

Just as I am
Without one plea
But that thy blood was shed for me
And that thou bidd’st me come to thee,
O, Lamb of God, I come.

The lamb slain for us will be the King coming to claim us. The shed blood covers all the wreckage, as long as we are willing to surrender to his rule.

The King is coming: are we with the sheep, or with the goats?

The King is coming: are we truly ready? Are we keeping busy with the tasks we were given, until he gets here?

The King is coming: will he bring you to reign with him forever?

He will come: now is the day to get ready!

Please do it!

AMEN

[Isaiah 2:1–5  Peter R Green, Sunday am, 13 Nov, 2011]

Today is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, and Friday was Armistice Day, so let’s look beyond the tough times to the hope which is ours in Christ.

One of the biggest problems we face as Christians is the problem of violence. We see so much cruelty and evil in this violent world, that we sometimes despair.

What can we do? What should we do?

Last week we saw how rejection and persecution can work for the gospel if we don’t turn it into tit–for–tat catfighting.

We also thought about Jesus’ teaching about turning the other cheek, Jesus’ teaching about being peacemakers, Jesus’ teaching about the blessedness of those persecuted for his sake. We thought about his teachings and wondered if there are times when we have to fight despite the general aim of peace.

I mentioned Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and said,

“The first thing we should remember is that this passage doesn’t cover every possibility. When he realised that Hitler was murdering millions of Jews just because he could, that he was using terror against his own people, the Christian theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, decided that there were some instances where it is right to kill a tyrant to protect a nation. But that’s a very extreme situation to face.”

I think the world was right to tackle Hitler. I think the world was right to protect the Libyans from their own ruler, and I wonder why we don’t intervene to protect the Syrians.

But I don’t think that going to war should be the first priority of Christians.

I have a lot of sympathy with the Anabaptists, who refused point–blank to bear arms. I also agree with the Quakers, who picked up the same idea 150 years later.

But I couldn’t become one. I believe that I have the right not to fight in my own defence, but to stand by and do nothing when the defenceless perish is as unChristian as it is to attack the defenceless in the first place.

How different is standing by and doing nothing from being a perpetrator in the first place?

Today is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.

I want to begin with some stories about persecution. These are all taken from The Australian Prayer Network Newsletter.

OVER 100 CHRISTIANS KILLED IN NIGERIA

A rash of attacks by armed Muslim extremists on villages in Nigeria have left more than 100 Christians dead, including entire families.

In one attack on the Christian community of Vwang Kogot, Muslim attackers shot or hacked to death 14 Christians, including a pregnant woman. Survivors said that the assailants raided the village with the aid of men in military uniforms of the Nigerian Army. Dachung Dagai, pastor of a Church of Christ congregation in Vwang Kogot, said that the village has been attacked three times since he arrived eight months ago.

Survivors have escaped by climbing out of windows or finding hiding places in their houses while the invaders systematically murder other occupants.

Villagers are concerned that Nigerian soldiers have been involved in each attack and are asking, “What is the government doing about the soldiers?” They want Muslim soldiers withdrawn; but, while government officials reportedly promise to look into the problems, villagers complain that nothing has been done.

“This is the 5th time our people have been murdered.” a spokesman said. “We want the government to help us do something. We have told them that the Muslims in the area have lots of sophisticated weapons…  We complained to a federal government delegation that came to investigate the killing of eight family members of another family last month, but our concerns and fears have been ignored.”

Source: Compass Direct News

MUSLIM EXTREMISTS IN SUDAN THREATEN TO TARGET CHRISTIANS

Muslim extremists have sent text messages to at least 10 church leaders in Khartoum saying they plan to target Christian leaders, buildings and institutions. One text message said “We want this country to be a purely Islamic state, so we must kill the infidels and destroy their churches all over Sudan.”

Church leaders said they fear more persecution as they and their flocks become targets of local Islamists.

Christian Leaders also report an influx of Muslim extremists from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh to undergo training in secret camps before being sent around Sudan to preach Islam and demolish church buildings.

On July 18 a group of Muslim extremists attacked the home of the Anglican Bishop Andudu Elnail in an attempt to kill him and two other pastors. No one was hurt, but the assailants left a threatening letter warning them of similar attacks to come.

These attacks seem to be in retaliation against Christians after the secession of South Sudan on 9 July.

The letter left on the gate of the bishop’s house asserts that Sudan is an Islamic land, and that the authors plan to carry out a series of attacks to destroy church buildings across Sudan. “We declare Jihad against you in order to protect Muslims from your infidel influence, because you are the enemy of Islam,” it states.

Christian sources in Khartoum said they take the threats seriously.  “These people are not joking – they can kill any Christian,” said a church leader.

“The Muslims are targeting us in fear that many Muslims will leave Islam for Christianity,” says a Lutheran Evangelical Church of the Sudan letter, written in Arabic, and circulated to churches in Khartoum.

Hostility toward Christians by the Islamic government in Khartoum began to increase last year.

Rev. Ramadan Liol, general secretary of the Sudan Council of Churches, said that threats have caused Christians to stay away from church services, and some government leaders have ordered pastors to close down churches.

Source: Compass Direct News

PETTY PERSECUTIONS IN THE US

Even in America, things aren’t as they used to be. A small home Bible study group in Southern California has been fined and ordered to stop meeting unless they obtain a cost-prohibitive permit to be a church. There will be more fines if they keep meeting.

The Pacific Justice Institute has now lodged an Appeal to the California Superior Court in Orange County. The home owner says there was no undue noise, and the Christians met inside their family room and on the patio area. Many neighbours have written letters of support, denying they were disturbed by the presence of the Bible study.

Source: Charisma News

HOMOSEXUAL GROUPS PRESSURE PAY PAL

Homosexual activists are pressuring PayPal to not handle donations made to groups that promote traditional values. The homosexual activist group All Out has asked PayPal to immediately shut down the online accounts of ten groups it labels as “anti-homosexual extremist groups.” PayPal reportedly responded that it must take “the rights of free speech and freedom of religion” into account.

The homosexual activists allegedly aim to stop people supporting Christian groups, claiming that they are “hate groups.”

The issue has received little media coverage.

Source: OneNewsNow

BIBLE CD IS OFFENSIVE MATERIAL

Postal workers in Jersey (UK) refused to deliver CDs of St Mark’s Gospel, calling it “offensive material”. Several churches had clubbed together to pay for 45,000 CDs to be delivered to every household in Jersey to mark the anniversary of the King James Bible.

But Jersey Post claimed that the CDs could offend people and refused to deliver them.

Kevin Keen, Jersey Post Chief Executive, has since admitted they got it wrong. He has spoken to the person involved and has written to all his colleagues asking that they coconsult with him in future. The recordings are now being delivered by volunteers.

These are just reports from this month.

Add to this the persecution of Copts in Egypt and the worsening position of Assyrian Christians in Iraq, and you can understand why, in some countries, Christians might feel like fighting back.

We need to pray for persecuted Christians.

WAR

Last week we were also asked to pause to remember those who died in war.

As I said, there are times when we have to go to war, when war is the lesser of two evils.

When I turned 20, I had to decide what to do about the Vietnam War. All 20 year old men had to register, and some were selected on the basis of their birthday to be conscripted into the Army.

My wife, Chris, worked at the Department of the Army in the latter part of those years, and met many of the conscripts, and heard how their lives had been torn apart by this arbitrary selection process. She saw some of them when they came back, too — human wreckage spat out by the war machine.

We have Remembrance Day on 11 November at 11am to commemorate the signing of the Armistice which brought World War I to an end — the end of the “War to end wars.”

We should remember World War I. It ran from August 1914 to November 1918. After some initial skirmishes, and the famous battles in Galipoli and Egypt, the focus turned to Europe, where the Allied armies faced the German army. Nearly all the fighting took place in trenches dug from the coast of Belgium all the way to the border of Switzerland.

From 1 July 1916 until 14 November 1916, what was named the Battle of the Somme took place: the greatest battle of the war.

The Allies lost about 1,000,000 men in that stupid battle, nearly 60,000 on the first day. That’s like dropping a bomb in the middle of Marrickville and wiping out everyone except perhaps a few houses up in Petersham and over in Dulwich Hill.

Yet nothing strategic was achieved. At the end, the trenches remained where they were.

And, when the war finally ended, the Allies thought they would make things so tough for Germany that it could never again be a military power.

But Hitler found a way, and drew the starving, beaten, abused Germans with him.

We can’t understand Hitler unless we know about how France commandeered Germany’s coal supplies to the extent that Germans had nothing to heat their homes with, and thousands died. We can’t understand Hitler unless we understand that inflation had grown to where an ordinary postage stamp might be worth 30,000,000 Marks, and you would need a suitcase full of money to buy a coffee.

Don’t listen to people who have no idea about war and ramble on about how religion causes more wars than anything else.

The quest for power and for resources underlies nearly all war.

Hitler wanted to regain power and control for Germany. He gave people hope — hope for the 1000–Year Reich, when Germany would once again be rich, powerful and comfortable.

He deliberately took over Christian thought, the idea of the Millennial reign of Christ, the idea of hope, the promise of an unending Kingdom. But he made it a millennial reign of the German Chancellor, a hope of a kingdom purified not of sin, but of non–Aryans, an unending Kingdom of the Germans.

We have seen so much evil and war since then.

There was the Korean War, the Vietnam War where we went in to protect French business from the Vietnamese people, the Falklands War, the Balkans conflicts… they just go on. Now it is Iraq and Afghanistan, and all the uprisings in the Arab Middle East. Where will it end?

GOD’S PROMISE

So here is where things start getting good.

We have God’s promises. He says,

Isa 2:2 In the last days the mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it.

At last, the presence of God really exalted!

Don’t try taking this literally. There will be no great popping up of a mountain where Jerusalem currently lies. It‘s about God being where everyone can see him and be drawn to him.

It parallels what Jesus said in John’s Gospel,

I, if I am lifted up, will draw all men to me.

God, who is often looked down on by human beings, will one day soon be seen in all his splendour. And he will be attractive to all. They will really want to be intimately related to him; as Isaiah writes:

Isa 2:3 Many peoples will come and say,

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.” The law will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

Imagine if people really were to put God first, if they really were to understand that believing in God must make us more God–like.

And don’t we wish that the United Nations would do more? On that day, the UN will be no more, but Jesus himself will make righteous decisions and settle matters without the need for battle.

Isa 2:4 He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples.

And here’s the best bit.

They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.

Once, when war ended, they would store the swords and spears; but here we have an end to war, when such weapons will no longer be needed. What a great and glorious day to look forward to!

CONCLUSION

Jesus said,

How blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall see God!

Let’s work towards the future. Let’s be committed to peace in communities and between nations, because one day the whole creation will rejoice to see the revelation of the children of God, and war will be no more.

One day God will unite all things in one Head, even Jesus Christ.

The dividing wall between Jew and Gentile will finally be totally broken down.

Peace will reign at last!

How can we pray? What should be the desire of our hearts in this sad world?

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.