Oct 14 2009
Hello all,
Rev David has begun sharing some daily thoughts on his personal blog at Faith2Face. These reflections are from the weekly readings from the church newsletter which are also available on this website here.
If you would like to follow along with David’s reflections you can find them here at Faith2Face.
God’s Richest Blessings,
Dave Q
Oct 11 2009
This sermon was preached by Rev David de Kock at Southern Cross Uniting Church on 11/10/2009.
Texts: Isaiah 40:1-5
Its good for us to remind ourselves that all of our faith and life is, and must be, centred around Jesus.
And of course, the life of Jesus is not limited to the thirty three years of His earthly existence nor is it limited to the three years of His ministry on the earth … we remember that Jesus, who is Lord, is the same, yesterday, today, forever.
Jesus is God come to dwell amongst men … not just as a last minute arrangement to fix something gone wrong … but as part of God’s eternal purpose. It was prophesied from the beginning and continually until it was fulfilled.
It is the church’s task to make that known amongst men and to proclaim salvation and hope in His name.
This text from Isaiah .. written 700 years before Christ .. is God telling us to do just that ..
“Comfort my people” – come close to them and encourage them .. not just soppy words that come from the mouth but have no foundation in the heart ..
We often have that at funerals and tragedies ..
“Oh, I’m so sorry … if there is anything that I could do ..”
Oh yes, the intention is there … but the truth is you don’t know what you can do and in fact there is nothing you can do !
What the bereaved family really wants is to have the deceased return to life … and you can’t do that !
What the hurting person really would like you to do is to take away the pain … and you can’t do that !
So what does God intend us to do when He calls us to comfort His people?
What are we supposed to say?
Now listen to this because it is the only real comfort that you can ever offer …
“Tell them that their hard service has been completed and their sins have been paid for ….”
But that’s no real comfort you say …
That’s true if we don’t see it in the context of Jesus Christ – Lord and Saviour of our lives.
The best comfort I can have is to know that Jesus has set me free from the rewardless striving for salvation. I can never do enough to bring me even one minute fraction of hope in salvation. I have sinned – I am separated from holy God, and no amount of work and service will take away my sin.
And because of my sin I cannot ever know the comfort and healing that God brings.
Jesus has paid for my sins … Romans 6:23 says that “the wages of sin is death”. I do not have life at all until I am no longer earning the wage of my sin – until I yield to God and accept, by faith, that Jesus has fully dealt with my sinful state – that is, with my sin of the past, present and the future.
This is comfort !
No matter what my situation is: my pain, my burden, my bereavement .. I can only know the comfort of God once I understand that my hard service at earning His favour is irrelevant and that He has already paid for my sins.
I hope that you understand this – this is the crux of our faith. This is the very reason why Christ came – God amongst us – that our hope might be in Him not ourselves or in false comforters.
If God has brought light into my darkness, and healing for my pain through his incarnation and atoning work on the cross, then I have no need of other comfort.
But still you might not know the comfort, even if I tell you the words. Even when I speak of God’s promises ..
What’s missing ?
Its faith !
You and I must hear, believing.
This is often the hardest part of the ministry. I can tell you in a sermon and you can think that you believe …
But when the tragedy comes, the pain strikes .. then you don’t want to hear anymore and you know that you only thought that you believed.
Why is this? What prevents the faith, the believing?
Listen to this …
“Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.”
The problem is that our lives are filled with too many valleys,
too many mountains and hills,
too much rough ground and too many rugged places.
What are these?
The valleys are the places of shadows. The things that we want to hide from God. Its our sin, our guilt and our attempts to keep from God and His people all that we think that we can handle by ourselves.
Our lives are full of them – and as long as we keep God out of those places He will not raise them up – they will remain our places of despair and God will not be able to comfort us with the hope that is there in Jesus.
The mountains are the places of pride. They are our achievements, what we hold up to God and the world and demand that our righteousness be reckoned according to these mountains and hills in our life.
But if there is a mountain, there must be a valley. You cannot claim the mountain and try to deny the valley. The proverb says that “pride come before the fall” – its the inevitability of trying to live the counterfeit life that only has mountains in it – you ultimately have to fall over the edge into the valley whose existence you have denied.
My faith and hope in Jesus and the promises of Scripture will always be uncertain as long as I deny the Spirit access to the valleys and mountains of my life.
God’s comfort will not truly come to me until I am prepared to bow before the Lordship of Jesus and to acknowledge before Him that I have failed in my own endeavours and tried to hide these failures by building mountains alongside of them.
I have hoped that God and people would see the mountains and not the valleys … I might fool people, but I will never fool God.
And so, until I let God into the valleys and mountains of my life that he might lift the valleys and demolish the mountains, I can never really know God’s comfort in my pain, because I cannot truly acknowledge that my hard service has been completed in Him and that He has indeed dealt with all my sin.
Amen.
Oct 11 2009
This sermon was preached by Rev David de Kock at Merredin Uniting Church on 11/10/2009
Texts: Isaiah 55:6-11 and Luke 4:1-13
We have been examining some aspects of our Lord Jesus over the past number of weeks in preparation for our Strategic Planning Day on October 24th – we have looked at vision-making, at our own mission to “Live the Gospel to radiate the Love of Jesus”; we have looked at who He said He is; and at His indiscriminate love. Today we look at His flawless character, which is essential to our understanding the message of our salvation.
What does “flawless” mean?
The word is derived from the Old Norse word flaga meaning “flake” and has its origin in the value of a stone as a spear or arrow head. A “flaw” is a crack, or a blemish. It presents the possibility of future failure and therefore a reduced present day value. It is used primarily today in the valuation of gem stones.
It is vitally important for us that Jesus be flawless. Any crack or blemish in the character of Jesus would render His work of redemption on the Cross with the possibility of failure. It would mean that we might NOT be saved; it would mean that God’s love has not fully embraced us and it would mean that our life is utterly meaningless.
Above all, it would mean that Jesus is not Emmanuel – God with us; that He is not Son of God and son of man. I was looking for the Jesus All About Life website this week and forgot to type the .au after the .com and ended up on a website called Jesus All About Lies. It struck me that the campaign must be having an effect in the heavenly realm if someone goes to the trouble to set up a website like that. But of course, it is a “lie” itself. It points fingers not at Jesus but at His followers who have never claimed to be perfect, and at His church which, like everyone else struggles to find its way through this sinful world. But if Jesus is our flawless Saviour which is our focus this morning then all those who would oppose Him, in whatever manner or form, will find themselves challenged by His truth and perfect life.
There are few who do not accept the reality that Jesus did exist and also that most of the accounts of Him in the Bible and elsewhere do actually reflect his historical existence. But as Christians we have gone further – we have believed all of the accounts of Him in the Bible; from the prophecies of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and others, to the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
And every single one of these things which we believe hangs on the flawless character of Jesus because they are contained in God’s promise to us. If Jesus is not flawless; perfect in every way; wholly God, then His promise is irrelevant.
Our Gospel text today from Luke is the account of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. He stood the test and that’s important but there is much more to understanding His flawless character. We will return to that text in a while to examine our own response to temptation and sin once we have fully grasped the immense truth and consequence of Jesus’ flawless character. And our Old Testament text from Isaiah challenges us to seek the Lord while He may be found. It is a promise that God will have mercy and His purpose of salvation will prevail as we seek Him.
The Bible makes it clear that evil entered human history at a certain point in time and when it did, God made both a promise and provision for those who would face its temptation.
In Genesis 3 we read that familiar story of when sin came into the world. It was disobedience to God in the face of all His provision. When Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil, their eyes were opened and they realized that they were naked. Of course they knew before that they had no clothes, but the fall into sin made them look at themselves differently. They were not complete, they were flawed – they needed God’s grace which had come out of a relationship with Him, and now their attempt at independence had estranged them from Him.
But God made provision for the relationship to be restored.
He pronounced a curse on the tempter – not on the tempted. And God’s curse already points us towards Jesus. He speaks of enmity between the offspring of the woman and the devil. Note especially that it is not the offspring of the man. Every human being, except one, is the offspring of both a man and a woman. The single exception is Jesus – born of a virgin mother. No man was involved in His conception. He is the only one who can claim to be the offspring of a woman only. And so He fulfills the first condition of God’s promise.
And God says of this One, the One who would not have an earthly father involved in His conception – that the devil would strike His heel but that in turn He would crush the serpent’s head.
In other words He would be tempted because He was human – the offspring of a woman but He would be victor because He was the offspring of woman only and not of a man. He is the firstborn of the new creation. He is the Son of God. He is the Word made flesh – the same Word that was in the beginning with God and who was God. His mission was to restore the relationship between man and God – and He could only do this as God, flawless in every way.
In the Garden of Eden, the man and woman were naked, estranged from God. And in order to clothe them, God made garments of skin for them. An animal had to die to cover their shame. The death of an animal to cover over sin developed into the elaborate sacrificial system of the Law. Ultimately this came to an end in Jesus, when He became the final sacrifice. Hebrews 10 tells us that “when Christ came into the world, he said:
“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
but a body you prepared for me;
6 with burnt offerings and sin offerings
you were not pleased.
7 Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—
I have come to do your will, O God.’”
8 First he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them” (although the law required them to be made). 9 Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. 10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
WE – that’s you and I! – have been made holy by the obedience of Jesus. Jesus said, “Here I am, I have come to do Your will.” And so by obedience to that will He has made us holy.
Do you see now the need for Jesus to be flawless?
Unlike the pair in the Garden, He had to be completely obedient. Not one slip, not the slightest blemish or flaw. He had to be perfect in EVERY way if we were to be made holy, and thus able to enter into a relationship with God through Him.
Evil came on the scene in the Garden of Eden, and many years later in another garden—the Garden of Gethsemane—Jesus wrestled with that evil. After a time of prayer, he won an important victory—a victory that culminated in his death the next day, and his resurrection on the third day. It was a victory of obedience to the will of God.
Remember what He said in that Garden. “Father, if You be willing take this Cup from Me, but not my will but Yours be done.” It was the same evil that Adam and Eve had faced – the evil of disobedience to God’s will; the evil of selfish desire and pride; the evil of seeking power that matches God’s power.
The first pair failed but Jesus was victorious. He took the Fall, He was obedient unto death. He did not give in, He did not fail – He was flawless in His obedience to the Father’s will.
Early on in Jesus life, he’d faced the devil in the wilderness. There, he was tempted to take shortcuts to the triumph of the cross. But even at that time he steadfastly refused, knowing that the only way to the redemption of the world lay along the path carved out by sweat, tears, and the blood of the cross.
That’s the path He had to follow, the path He chose, and it is a very good thing for us. Because of Jesus’ righteousness and his goodness – His flawless character, we can be righteous and good too.
Through his voluntary, sacrificial death…the death he chose to pay our sin-debt that we could not pay ourselves…we are given new life. The devil—the serpent of old—is crushed under the heel of the “seed of the woman”, just as the Scriptures foretold. This perfect unblemished and flawless sacrifice for us is none other than Jesus of Nazareth, Messiah and King.
Jesus took no short cuts in the path to make us holy, righteous and good. He took no shorts cuts to meet our desperate need for a restored relationship with God. He came to earth, He faced the temptations, He paid the price.
Does that mean we are now free to do as we choose?
By no means! – as Paul so eloquently put it in his letter to the Romans. “In order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.”
I must recognize sin as sin because it puts death in me – and it put death in Jesus for my sake, that I might have life.
I must now live by the Spirit, in the victory of Christ’s death and resurrection. He has counted me as righteous, He has called me good – because of His death.
Can I then simply succumb again and again to temptation? No!
Daily I must take up my own cross. In Matthew 10:38, Jesus says, “anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” and in Matthew 16:24 He says, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” One of the most challenging verses in the Bible is Hebrews 12:4 – “In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” We have not!
The three temptations Jesus faced in the desert are temptations that the devil puts in our way too.
The first wasn’t food directly, though it might seem to be. Jesus was fasting to seek the Father’s will for His mission. To have accepted the food would be to seek a substitute for the Father’s will. How often do we not do that? We plunge ahead of God so many times.
The second was the temptation of unearned authority and splendor over all the kingdoms of the world that would come if Jesus submitted to Satan. It was a shortcut to glory that would have put Jesus on the throne but would have left His mission unfinished and we would be lost in a Christless eternity. There would be none saved – all would join the devil in the Lake of Fire. Don’t think that Jesus is just a shortcut to heaven, or that you can be Lord of you own life. Jesus requires us to follow Him. His flawless character was earned through much testing – Have you stood the test?
The third was the temptation to rely on His status as the Son of God and thus able to claim victory without obedience to the Cross. It would be like us claiming redemption in Jesus and reliance on His blood but without shouldering our own cross? We must struggle against our sin, we can’t just say, “Oh well, I’ll rely on Jesus”. We must fight temptation and the power of the devil in the Power of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus of Nazareth, Messiah and King is our flawless Saviour, our Lord and God and worthy of worship in every part of our lives. And I believe, no, I know to be true – that when our lives are lived in the light of the flawless victory of Christ, not only will we be victorious but we will draw others to share that victory also.
Oct 11 2009
May God bless you as we gather in worship today.
I had sad news this week that a very special person in my life (from my previous congregation) died last Sunday evening at the age of 96 years. Bunty Smith was a spinster and most generous benefactor. Amongst other significant gifts she gave to the congregation the beautiful Manse in which we lived for most of our ministry in Howick. It was a very difficult day for me when I got the news, more than I thought possible. I never knew my grandmothers – both died before I was born, but my Granddad told me many stories about Granny Gilbert, and my brother and I would often spent weekends with my Aunt Mary at Modderriver near Kimberley and she too told me the stories of her sister, my Granny Nightingale. And they showed me pictures and both had a remarkable likeness to Bunty – large, happy, content, at peace, filled with grace. When I first went to visit Douglas (Bunty’s late brother) and Bunty it was like entering another era and there was for me a real sense of déjà vu. There on the verandah with the heavy creeper keeping us cool we had tea and crumpets. I cannot adequately describe the way I seemed to be transported to a home and granny I never knew. Through the years at Upper Umgeni, this sense of Bunty as my granny never left me. I did not dare tell her that but I think that she knew. I would visit as her minister but she was the one asking questions about my work, our children, my well-being – just like I always imagined my grannies would have done. Among all the many hard things that there were in leaving Howick, I think that my last visit to Bunty was the hardest. Her only relative, a distant cousin was there and she graciously left us on our own. I was brimming with emotion at the farewell but Bunty was Granny once again, encouraging me and blessing me on my way – “You have done a good work here,” she said, “and you must do a good work there.” And she hugged me and kissed me on my lips, something she had never done before. Bunty never married and never had any children; and who is to understand God’s purpose in that, but for a while she was my Gran and I am blessed because of that. We will meet again in the resurrection and it will be a privilege to stand beside her before the Throne of the Almighty. The hardest part about death for all of us is the parting from loved ones but we can take comfort in our Saviour from whom we have the victory of the resurrection and the certainty of our meeting again.
I trust that you are continuing to reflect on the Strategic Planning Day on October 24th. Ideally we need a significant number of the congregation to be there and all of the key leaders as we consider the twelve keys which are essential for an effective church. I have listed these in the last two newsletters so I will not do that again but let me share with you how the planning will work.
First, based on several critical criteria we will determine the likely future direction of our congregation if we should do nothing. Second, we examine the Mission Potential of the Parish. My experience has been that this works out to between 10 and 20 percent of the population. From that we will decide how many people we actually want to reach. Crucial to this decision is the number of people whom we are prepared to serve in mission – these are defined as individuals (not specific people!) in the community who are not really connected to the Parish but whom we will choose to minister to in terms of their human hopes and hurts.
Then we turn to the Twelve Keys of an Effective Church to examine our own effectiveness in each of them. Afterwards we will choose just a few of those to work on in the next few years in an attempt to improve our effectiveness in reaching the people to whom we choose to minister. And finally we will throw some tentative ideas into the pot. The Council/Elders will then be tasked with taking those ideas and developing a framework for their implementation in conjunction with relevant interest groups ie musicians, Sunday School, Ladies Guild etc.
An effective church delivers effective missional outreach, shepherding of its families and friends through life’s pilgrimage, creates primary groups of sharing and caring, structures corporate and prayerful worship, and encourages a thoughtful, streamlined organizational structure – all with the intention of developing the congregation’s mission in the world, growth in grace, and understanding of everyday life in the light of the Christian faith. Decisive to the genuine effectiveness of any congregation is its capacity to share substantive mission in the world.
A church which is most effective in missional outreach has identified very specific human hopes and hurts in their community and they focus their leadership and resources to meet the objectives which they have determined eg Wesley: “the world is my parish” – his focus was on world evangelism. So too Billy Graham. Hillsongs and the Vineyard movement have drawn people to God through worship songs. Holy Trinity Brompton have used community meals and simple teaching through the Alpha Course and Marriage Course to connect to people. Willowcreek have focused on service excellence and volunteerism to “turn people far from God into committed followers of Jesus”.
Mission is not about members, mission is about a group of people living beyond their preoccupation with themselves. And large churches are not necessarily great churches; great churches are those who have learned the art of serving people and accepting “unacceptable people”. In the eyes of God all people are important – children, grannies, “black sheep”, executives, you and I. God has shown us amazing grace in the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ – He showed loving care towards the sinners, tax-collectors and prostitutes; the lepers, the insane and the rejected Samaritans. For the “holy” people like the Pharisees, He did not have much time or patience for they were pre-occupied with their own importance.
May our focus always be on God’s Mission rather than on ourselves.
Blessings for this week. Shalom.
Oct 05 2009
Hello all,
I have created a mobile friendly version of our church website for those who use their mobile to access the internet. It takes out all the formatting and images and gives a basic text version of the website.
If you click on the link below and open it in your phones browser you will be able to access it. If you bookmark the page you will be able to see all the updates as they come through.
Here’s the link – mobile friendly website
God Bless,
Dave Q