When God is with us, it changes our lives fairly dramatically. First, as we have seen in the case of the Philippian jailer, it creates the situation that people want to be with us. They want what we’ve got. They are attracted to who we are when God is with us.
Then we saw that His Presence with us is a covenant promise – a promise that God will never break. Moses held God to this promise when the Lord was angry with the people in the Exodus, after they had made the golden calf. Jesus also confirmed that promise by saying that He would never leave us nor forsake us. God’s Presence with us is the mark of our identity.
Last week, as we examined the meaning of “David’s fallen tent” first mentioned b y the prophet Amos and to which James referred in the Council of Jerusalem, we saw that God really wants to be with us. His heart is that there be no barriers, no walls, no special “holy places” – where ever we are, and He is, will be the holy place.

So today I want to ask the question.
Can we simply presume upon the presence of God with us?
No, we can’t.
Yes, it is true that God wants to be present with everybody but He is holy and He cannot entertain any unrighteousness in His Presence. And because of original sin – the sin of Adam; because of the invasion of sin into every aspect of life; because of the ongoing temptation of the devil (and our easy submission to that temptation) – we find ourselves separated from God.
God cannot be with us in this state of our being. The world, the flesh and the devil conspire to keep us separated from God.
But God Himself, made it possible for us to return to righteousness through the atoning death of Jesus. He paid the price for our sin, by His blood, we are forgiven and healed. We can contribute nothing to what Jesus has done other than acceptance of that redemption.
And herein lies a big problem.
We say: Jesus died for my sins, therefore I am saved, and then we go on to live our lives just as we please.

We cannot do that if we have accepted the atoning sacrifice of Christ. We have been bought at a price, we have been ransomed and my full and undiluted acceptance of my hard bought freedom is crucial to the Presence of God in my life.

Just listen to God’s response to Solomon’s prayer for the blessing of the Temple … it’s the second part of the response (the one we don’t read). The first part is really good – God says that if we pray then he will hear us and respond from heaven. Wonderful good news but now listen to the second part….
2 Chronicles 7:19-22
“But if you turn away and forsake the decrees and commands I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them, 20 then I will uproot Israel from my land, which I have given them, and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my Name. I will make it a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples. 21 And though this temple is now so imposing, all who pass by will be appalled and say, ‘Why has the LORD done such a thing to this land and to this temple?’ 22 People will answer, ‘Because they have forsaken the LORD, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshiping and serving them—that is why he brought all this disaster on them.’”

Solomon had prayed only for blessings, he had not included in his prayer any consequences for when Israel failed to live up to God’s requirement.
But for God there is always a consequence for disobedience – and that consequence is separation. “I will uproot Israel from my land; I will reject the Temple” (and that, by the way, was the mark of God’s Presence).

There are conditions for God’s Presence with us. Its not a set of rules but a way of life. Or perhaps I should say, a new way of life.

Within all the Sunday School stories that we remember from our childhood; in our daily reading of God’s Word, this is the base line message. God wants to bring us to a new way of life – He wants us to begin again.
We can’t just change our lives, give up bad habits or follow New Year resolutions. We have to start all over – from a new beginning.
Jesus made that so clear to Nicodemus in John 3 and yet, even as a Bible Scholar, he struggled at first to understand it. We have to be born again, we have to have a fresh start.
Jesus spoke about being born of water and the Spirit – born of water is not baptism, it is birth into this world. We are all born of water (except I suppose, if you have a caesarian birth). The waters break and the baby is born into this world, but to enter into God’s Kingdom, into the place of God’s Presence we must be born again – of the Spirit.
John 3:5-7
Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’

Flesh gives birth to flesh – the first birth, the birth by water; but Spirit gives birth to spirit – born again of the Spirit of God.

Our struggle is, that after being born of water (into this world) we end up finding ourselves contaminated by the sin which is inherent in it. In order to find ourselves in God’s Presence we must be born again of the Spirit (as Jesus puts it) or filled with the Spirit (as Luke describes it) or we must receive the gift of the Spirit (as Peter says in his sermon on the day of Pentecost.)

After preaching that sermon, which simply told the story of God’s love revealed in Jesus Christ and which ended by saying that Jesus was both Lord and Christ, the people were cut to the heart and wanted to know what they should do.
Acts 2:37-47
37 When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”
38 Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”
40 With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” 41 Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.
42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he 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 favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Verse 38 – Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

At the heart of our response to God’s love must be repentance, and with it comes salvation and the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is the born-again life which Jesus spoke about to Nicodemus; it is the life in which we know the Presence of God with us because we are forgiven.

So what is repentance? I described it just a few weeks ago – it is a realization that I am on the wrong road: That the path which I am following is leading to destruction. I have to get back on the right road. I have to follow the way of Jesus. And its more than just a direction, it’s a way of life – its no wonder that the earliest followers of Jesus called themselves “the Way”. They were following a new way, they were headed in a new direction.

When I come to repentance, I must strip off my fancy clothes which are hiding my reality. Underneath my “Superman” outfit is the real me. I desperately need God in my life, I need Him to be near me, I need Him to give me life and purpose. I need Him to help me understand, I need His Presence, or I am lost.
And every time I kneel humbled before God in repentance
(for it needs to happen often), He puts His arms around me and hugs me. Like the father of the Prodigal Son, He already has a new robe for me, a ring for my finger and a fatted calf to celebrate.
And then He brings me into community of forgiven sinners and we break bread together and we share our stories and our blessings.

When the Spirit comes it is not only a spiritual and emotional high – this can happen: the Presence of God with us will bring what Martin Lloyd Jones called “An unspeakable joy”. We may even speak in tongues, because we need another language to express our praise, and we may be so overwhelmed by the Presence of God that we can no longer stand up. These experiences are all described in the Bible as associated with the infilling of the Spirit.
But something else also happens when the Presence of God comes upon us. And this is of more long lasting tenure. In the Old Testament, and even in the Gospels, we read of the Spirit coming only upon certain people and/or for a limited purpose, but from Pentecost on we have something entirely different. Each person coming to God in repentance is filled with the Spirit and the Presence of the Lord remains as long as they maintain the relationship and keep their lives pure.
The very first Christian believers called this “The Way” – they were living in the Way of Christ, following Him and trusting Him in every aspect of life and faith. And it was not kept up by following the ritual of the Jews – it really was a new way of living.

When the Spirit came they found themselves in community – a group of forgiven sinners – filled with awe at the Presence of God with them.
They met together and shared together, they broke bread together and they all had glad and sincere hearts. And they enjoyed the favor of the people.

Something dramatic happened!
Old grievances fell away, hurt feelings were mended, a new life began as they repented before the Lord and forgiveness was given by God and from each other.
Their lives began to bear the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

When the Spirit comes our lives are changed.
In the Presence of God we cannot harbor grievances and selfish ambition. Our attention is to the Lord and our love is for each other. Pettiness, strife and dissension falls away in the wake of this newfound purpose.

I believe that one of reasons why this sense of new life and new community seems to fail continuously is because we have tried to make it a once-off event in our life.
If I have been filled with the Spirit, how could I fall away?
The truth is that we are constantly bombarded by “the world, the flesh, and the devil” and our choices are sometimes not good. I am tempted by what the world has to offer, I give in to the desires of the flesh and the devil is forever at my heels.

But confession, repentance, renewal and the infilling of the Spirit are ongoing features of the Christian life. Peter was filled with the Spirit several times in the Book of Acts. These things are intended to be ongoing features of our walk with Jesus.

If sin has a foothold in your life, if you have a grievance, or are harbouring a hurt, if you are at odds with God or another person, confess it to God – ask for forgiveness and don’t walk that way again.

When the early church was faced with a problem, they met together to seek answers in the Scriptures, in discussion and in prayer.
Here in Acts 15 we have one of the early problems in the church. It’s the question about who can be saved.

Salvation, in those days, as it still is today, was much more than just the fact that you will be “saved” from judgment (by the atoning death of Jesus). Salvation means that you are saved from the inevitability of the direction of your life. Because of sin, inherited, imputed and real, each person born into his world is headed for destruction.
Although God initiated this destruction because of original sin, it has never been what He really wants. In 2 Peter 3:9 we read that “God does not want anyone to perish, but rather that everyone would come to repentance.”
Repentance is about “turning around”; it is about recognizing that the path ahead is fraught with danger. It is about finding Jesus as the Way of salvation.

So here at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, we are witnesses to a debate. There are those who think that the way of salvation is found only through God’s promise to Abraham and through the customs taught by Moses.
And then there are those who think that salvation is for those to whom God has given the Holy Spirit.
At this time, James, the brother of Jesus, is the leader of the Church. He listens to the various arguments and then he turns to the Scriptures and quotes a fairly obscure Scripture from the prophet Amos about God rebuilding David’s fallen tent and rules, on the basis of this, that God has decided to save the Gentiles too, and that would be wrong to force them to comply with all the rules and customs of Moses.

We so often read things in the Bible without thinking about what they mean – that’s why Bible Study is more important that Bible reading.

So what is David’s fallen tent and why do James and the Council of Jerusalem use this argument to justify God’s wider grace.

To understand we must go back to 2 Samuel 6.
2 Samuel 6:1-17
David again brought together out of Israel chosen men, thirty thousand in all. 2 He and all his men set out from Baalah of Judah to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the Name, the name of the LORD Almighty, who is enthroned between the cherubim that are on the ark. 3 They set the ark of God on a new cart and brought it from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab, were guiding the new cart 4 with the ark of God on it, and Ahio was walking in front of it. 5 David and the whole house of Israel were celebrating with all their might before the LORD, with songs and with harps, lyres, tambourines, sistrums and cymbals.
6 When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God, because the oxen stumbled. 7 The LORD’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down and he died there beside the ark of God.
8 Then David was angry because the LORD’s wrath had broken out against Uzzah, and to this day that place is called Perez Uzzah.
9 David was afraid of the LORD that day and said, “How can the ark of the LORD ever come to me?” 10 He was not willing to take the ark of the LORD to be with him in the City of David. Instead, he took it aside to the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite. 11 The ark of the LORD remained in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite for three months, and the LORD blessed him and his entire household.
12 Now King David was told, “The LORD has blessed the household of Obed-Edom and everything he has, because of the ark of God.” So David went down and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the City of David with rejoicing. 13 When those who were carrying the ark of the LORD had taken six steps, he sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf. 14 David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the LORD with all his might, 15 while he and the entire house of Israel brought up the ark of the LORD with shouts and the sound of trumpets.
16 As the ark of the LORD was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD, she despised him in her heart.
17 They brought the ark of the LORD and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it, and David sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings before the LORD.

Saul, the first king of Israel is dead, David has conquered Jerusalem and his desire is to bring the Ark back to the city.
The Ark was the sign of God’s Presence – God had a place above the Mercy Seat (the lid of the Ark), between the Cherubim. It was God’s symbolic throne, even more than that. It was where the Moses and the High Priest met with God on the journey from Egypt in the Exodus.
After the arrival in the Promised Land, the Ark had been somewhat neglected during Joshua’s Campaign to occupy the land. Through the period of the Judges, it was not treated with much significance. It did however have a place at Shiloh, which was where the most senior of the Judges resided. The most notable of these was Samuel.
During this time, it seems that the enemies of Israel attached more significance to the Ark than did Israel itself. They captured it several times, convinced that it had some kind of magic which would give them victory. However, every time they captured it, that “magic” brought problems and the Ark would end up in Israel’s hands again.
Finally, the Ark found a home at Abinadab’s home. He became the keeper of the Ark and he prospered greatly – his fields were lush, his cattle were fat and his sheep were plentiful. Clearly the Presence of the Lord brought great blessing to Him.

And so David wanted to bring the Ark to Jerusalem, the new capital city of the Promised Land. He set out with thirty thousand chosen men to fetch it and a new cart to carry it. (2 Samuel 6:1)There were musicians aplenty and David and the whole house of Israel were celebrating with all their might – until they reached the threshing floor of Nacon.
The oxen stumbled, Uzzah reached out to steady the Ark and suddenly he was struck down dead. David was confused and angry and afraid – He left the Ark right there at the home of Obed-Edom and went home.
Then he heard that Obed-Edom was being blessed by the Presence of the Ark. And no doubt David did a bit of research about the Ark because when he went back to fetch it three months later he didn’t bring a new cart but the Levitical Priests, who were the only ones authorized to carry the Ark.
They heaved it onto their shoulders and set out – six steps and they stopped to make a sacrifice. David wanted to make sure that everything was right. The Bible doesn’t exactly say that they made more than one sacrifice but the implication is that they made a sacrifice after every six steps (2 Samuel 6:13 says “When those who were carrying the ark of the LORD had taken six steps, he sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf”) – if that’s the case it would have taken a long time to get to Jerusalem. David certainly wanted to do it right!

And then at last we get to Jerusalem and the Ark is placed inside the tent which David had pitched for it.
Aha! Here is David’s tent at last. The one which James referred to at the Council of Jerusalem which extended God’s grace to the Gentiles.
And its not like the Tabernacle at all. The Hebrew word for the Tabernacle is “mishkan” but this tent is an “a-el”. This kind of tent is simply a shelter – a roof whose walls were only lowered for protection. It was like a Bedouin tent.

David has read the Pentateuch – he knows how the Ark is to be treated. He knows who is to carry it and how it is to be treated. He has, perhaps gone a bit overboard in the number of sacrifices and extent of praise which he offers, but he’s done everything right – except for one thing, and its crucial. The Ark is to be kept in a special kind of tent – an enclosed tent, a “mishkan”.
Instead, he puts it into an “a-el”. David’s tent has no sides to it, no barriers – just a roof. Its open to the world, and the Ark is put there. God’s Presence is placed right in the midst of the people. There’s no walls like the Tabernacle would have had – no inner chamber, into which only the High Priest could enter. Its not like the Temple which David’s son, Solomon was to build – there’s only a roof over the Ark. Anyone who wants to come to God has complete freedom.

And that’s what James and the council at Jerusalem realized.
In Jesus and by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, God had come amongst His people. There were now no more barriers. God had started a new initiative – He had come to us. And anyone who turned to God would find Him.
There were no constraints, no barriers, no limitations. There was no particular door you had to pass through, no special title or privilege you needed in order to find yourself in the Presence of God.

God was now with us.
Acts 15:8 tells us that “God, who knows the heart, has given the Holy Spirit to everyone who turns to Him”.

As I have been saying through this series, it is the Presence of God with us which sets us apart – which makes us God’s own. And the Holy Spirit within us is the mark of that Presence.
On the day of Pentecost, after Peter had preached, the people cried out ,”What must we do?” And Peter responded, repent and be baptized and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

God has taken away the barriers – all He wants is for us to come to Him. In repentance we leave behind all the things which we have created as barriers – our sin, our pride, our self-centeredness – and we come to God “within the veil, into that Holy Place” of His Presence.

Turn with me to Matthew 5:13….

This is part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. He says of those who follow Him – You are ‘the salt of the earth’ and you are ‘the light of the world’.

That means something ……. it is our identity as followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In verse 16, Jesus says, ‘let you light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.’

Now ‘good deeds’ is not really a good translation here … it makes us think of acts of charity, or acts of kindness only. The words “kala erga” could be better translated as “ideal acts” – “that men may see your ideal acts and praise your Father.”

“Ideal acts” means not only our behaviour but the very ethos, or heart of our being, which identifies us for who we are.

We have an identity as followers of Christ – it is the way in which the world is able to separate us from all others.

How many of you have seen the movie “We are Marshall”?

I haven’t seen it myself but I was listening to a sermon by Louis Giglio recently and he mentioned the movie. I googled it and you can do that too when you get home from church.

It’s a true story about the football team from Marshall University who were all killed in a plane crash in the 1970’s. The campus and the town were devastated by the loss, it felt like their life and purpose had come to an end. The university wants to close down the football program but one young man believes that they can rise from the ashes. He starts training a new team and the town begins to rally around. At the end of the movie there is a hugely emotional moment when all the townspeople gather together and begin to chant, “We are Marshall, we are Marshall”. It’s a new beginning, they have rediscovered their identity.

I often feel that the church of Jesus Christ has lost its identity. We get caught up in the ordinary and the mundane. We begin to do things by rote, we dislike change because somehow we are clinging on to the few little things which seem to identify us as Christ followers.

But we have a much greater identity than that. We are not marked by the way our buildings are designed, the songs we sing, the clothes we wear, or by our charitable acts – though these are part of what we do.

We are actually marked by the fact that God is with us. This has been the mark of God’s people from the beginning and it will be the means by which we will be identified at the end when the Son of Man separates the sheep from the goats. (Matthew 25)

When God is with us we live in another dimension, on another plane – we are running with horses not with men. (see Jeremiah 12, and my comments in the newsletter).

As part of my devotional reading this week, I was meditating on Habakkuk. The prophet is questioning God about why He lets the guilty go unpunished and why He lets the wicked prosper. God answers by saying that they will be punished – the ruthless Babylonians are going to mete out God’s justice. Habakkuk is appalled … but, he says, the Babylonians are even worse culprits, how could God use them?

God responds with a whole chapter which lists the ways of the wicked but states clearly – in just six words the way that God-followers are to live in this world, – “the righteous shall live by faith” (Habakkuk 2:4).

Habukkuk is suddenly overwhelmed by a surge of understanding: God is with His people and “though the fig tree does not blossom and there be no fruit on the vine, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet, he will rejoice in the Lord, the God of his salvation.”

God is with us. We are His. We have an identity in Christ and the Lord knows each of us by name.

If He is not with us, then we are not different to anyone else. It is His Presence which creates our identity, marks us as holy and which guides us on our journey from bondage to the Promised Land. We have not yet arrived – we are still struggling through the desert but our goal is certain and our God knows how to lead us – a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire at night.

Now turn to Exodus 33:12-23

God is fed up with the people He has rescued from bondage in Egypt – he calls them “stiff-necked”. Their offence is that they are proud and haughty. They are self-satisfied. They believe that they don’t need God with them. They have created their own god of gold shaped into a calf – let their golden calf go with them.

He tells Moses that they can go on up to the land of milk and honey but He will not go with them. (Ex 33:3)

I love Moses’ response. (verse 12)

“You keep telling me to ‘lead these people’ but you have not told me who is going with me.

You said that you ‘know me by name and that I have found favour with you’ but you have not taught me your ways.

In other words …. “Lord, here are one million of Your people at the foot of this mountain that you want me to lead. I can’t do it on my own; you need to be with me and you need to be showing me how to do it because they are Your people and this journey is a fulfilment of a promise You made to Abraham. If you are not with us, then nothing will distinguish us from all the other people on the earth.”

Your Presence with us is our identity. Without You we are nothing, we have no name, we are just like all the rest.

Moses realised that God’s Presence is a crucial aspect of our identity as God’s people. Not that we do, or don’t do the things that we are supposed to do but that we are who we are meant to be. We are salt and light – if we lose our saltiness, or hide our light, it might as well be that God is not with us. He is the One who creates our identity. Without Him, we are ordinary; wandering aimlessly through the desert trying to find our way home.

Moses is holding God to His covenant promise – In Genesis 17 God had told Abraham, “I make an everlasting covenant with you, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.” It was God’s promise to always be with His people and to always be their God. And even if they chose to go their own way, He would still mark them as His people by His Presence with them. The reminder to the Jewish people was to be circumcision and for us who have found our faith and salvation in Christ, it is baptism.

Our identity is marked by God’s Presence with us. It is ritualised in our baptism – I die to self and I rise in Christ. We forget that sometimes.

I am who I am in Christ because God is with me. I can face uncertain tomorrow’s because God is with me. I can face opposition, trouble and death because God is with me. But if God is not with me I cannot face anything – my identity is uncertain, my purpose is unclear and I fear what tomorrow holds.

Moses knew the significance of this and He knew also that it was significant for God because He is the One of certain promises. I suspect that God might not have left Israel in the lurch but He needed to be sure that Moses had crystallised in his own mind the significance of this aspect of the identity of the people of God – that God is with them.

Moses’ challenge proved that and so God says (v 17) “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.”

I am pleased with you – Good answer, Moses!

I know you by name – I am with you, we are community!

And then look at this (v 18), Moses asks to see God’s glory. That’s a pretty audacious request.

The word “Glory” has changed its meaning over time and we often now take it to mean “honor” or “praise” but you can see that it could possibly mean that in this instance. The Hebrew word “kabod” means heavy, or laden with riches; Moses is asking to see a manifestation, or exhibition, of God’s divine attributes. He wants to see this God who will be with them.

God denies this to Moses, saying that no-one can see the face of God and live. Instead he must hide in a cleft in the rock and God will pass by and Moses will be able to see God’s back. (v 21,22)

The significance here is that Moses can see where God has been but not where He is going. In retrospect, Moses can look and see that God has been with Him – like the “Footprints” poem. In the everyday however, Moses must live by faith in God’s promise.

His identity is not found in the visible Presence of God but in the faith which believes that God is with him even though he does not see Him.

And this is true for us also today. We do not see God with us but by faith we believe that He is with us. The consequence of this is dramatic – it means, as I said last week, that we have peace in our situation and hope in our future. It means that people will seek to have that which we have, and it means, as Moses indicated, that we will be distinguished from all other people on the earth.

We do however have an advantage over Moses, for we live this side of the Cross. We are a people who have witnesses through the ages who can testify to seeing God’s glory. We might not “see” God but we can know God through their testimony.

Turn to John 1:14-18

Do you get it?

The Word who was in the beginning and who was with God and who is God, became flesh. People have seen His glory – face to face. Not just the trail of where He has been, but they were actually with Him when He was with them.

He has been made known.

He is our identity because He is Emmanuel – God with us!

The people of Marshall could shout “We are Marshall! to affirm their identity – but our cry is “God is with us!” “God is with us!” “God is with us!”

Amen

John introduces us here to an understanding of the intimacy of the Trinity …
In the beginning, when there was still nothing … even before the so-called “Big Bang”, or whatever you would like to call the official start of the universe … there was God.
We call Him “Father”.
And there was the Word, Logos – John’s rich description of God who came amongst us and who revealed Himself as “Son”.
We call Him “Jesus”.
And there was the Spirit of God hovering over the waters in the beginning at the time of primal chaos.
We call Him “Holy Spirit”.

They were together and they are one.
One God in three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit; they were in perfect unity. They are not three gods for there is only one God, but in a way that is a mystery to us, God, the Creator of all things, the Founder of all that is, has revealed Himself to us in three persons.
These three persons exist in the intimate unity of the one Godhead.

They are always “with” each other.

Today I want to explore the idea of us also being “with” God and God being “with” us.
The Bible is full of descriptions of this..
Gen 5:22 – (Before the Flood) Enoch walked “with” God.
Gen 39:21 – Joseph (of Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat fame) was in prison but the Lord was “with” him.
Ex 3:12 – Moses is at the burning bush. He asks questions about God and God says to him, “I will be “with” you.”
Ex 33:14 – Moses is again questioning God, and ends by asking God to teach him His ways. God says to him, “My Presence will go “with” you, and I will give you peace.”
Joshua 1:5 – When God calls Joshua to lead the people into the new land, He says, “No-one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was “with” Moses, so I will be “with” you. Be strong and courageous.”

A constant theme runs through this idea of God being “with” us. The promise of God’s presence brings confidence when we are unsure, it brings peace when we are in turmoil … and it gives us courage to undertake endeavours which are far beyond our human capability. It means that we are “safe” where we are – wherever we are – when God is with us.
And, in fact, it might even be foolish to want to be anywhere else.

I want us to ponder a story this morning … it’s the account of Paul and Silas in prison in the town of Philippi.
Let me give you some background first …
While Paul & Silas were visiting the town during their first venture into Europe, they were followed by a slave girl who was possessed by an evil spirit. By this spirit she was able to tell fortunes and she was shouting out that these men were “servants of the Most High God who are telling the way to be saved.”
All this was true but – I guess, Paul and Silas were still under cover, their mission to Europe was still in the exploratory stages. And the evil spirit was messing things up. They then spoke to the spirit and exorcised it. This meant that the spirit was cast out and she was no longer able to predict the future and her masters had thus lost a means of income.
And so they had Paul & Silas arrested and thrown into prison.

READING – Acts 16:22-40
The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everybody’s chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!”
The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.” Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his family were baptized. The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole family.

Paul and Silas are in the inner cell of a dungeon. Its dark and damp. There’s no electricity, no beds, no toilets and no air-conditioning. But there are rats and spiders.
Their legs are fastened in the stocks.
They have been there since the time of prayer, which was about 3pm. Its now midnight and they are singing hymns and praying. The other prisoners are listening to them.
Suddenly there is an earthquake –the doors fly open and everybody’s chains come loose.

Now a normal person would say that this was a miracle, an answer to prayer – they can all escape.
The jailer, who is a normal person, wakes up. He rushes from his bed and he finds the doors open. Oh no! They’ve escaped. He doesn’t even look. He grabs his sword and is about to commit suicide.

But, hang on a minute. The prisoners haven’t escaped. They are all still inside.
As the jailer points the sword towards his heart, he hears a voice from inside the dungeon, “Don’t harm yourself! We’re all here.”
And the jailer calls for lights, he rushes in and falls before Paul & Silas … “What must I do to be saved?” he asks.

I’ve read this passage many times. I always figured that the jailer was converted because of the earthquake – you know, the power of God displayed and all that stuff.
But do you see this?
His conversion happened not because the earthquake opened the doors but because despite the fact that the doors were open and the chains had fallen off – the prisoners chose to stay inside!
Why?
What was it about them?
What did they have that the jailer did not have?

I say, that it was because God was “with” them in the jail.
Remember the story of Daniel and his two mates in the fiery furnace. When Nebuchadnessar looked he saw four people in the fire completely unharmed. And the fourth looked like the Son of God. God with “with” them in the fire, just as He was “with” Paul and Silas in the dungeon.

When God is with you then your circumstances are circumstantial – they are not very important.
We can be strong, secure, confident! As the psalmist says, “We can scale a wall, advance against a troop…”
And God is always with us. Jesus said, “I will always be with you, I will never leave you or forsake you.” He is with us in the ordinary things of life. And He is not just with the Christians – He is with everybody, for He is the God who created each one of us.

Brother Lawrence, a monk who lived in the Middle Ages wrote a series of letters about his life “with” God. They have been put together in a book called “Practicing the Presence of God”. He was not a great or important man – he worked his whole life in the kitchen of the monastery but he wrote of how he found deep fulfillment in what he was doing because God was “with” him.
He never got to the chapel with the other monks, there were no solemn rituals or sacred communions for him – he was always elbow deep in dough or dirty dishes, but he had God “with” him.
Its not the circumstances that matter but whether God is in the circumstances.

The jailer thought that in the circumstances of an open jail, his prisoners would have taken the opportunity to escape and so thought that he had failed his earthly masters and so he thought that his best option was suicide.
When he realized that his prisoners had not escaped their circumstances he wanted to know what it was that kept them there – because whatever it was, it was more than he had. They found joy in the dungeon, he had been looking at death.
His prisoners had been praying and singing hymns to Go – they were “with” God – and so they saw no need to escape. God was “with” them and they didn’t want to leave Him.

How many have there been who have found God “with” them in the crisis of cancer, in a life turned suddenly around, in the circumstances of chaos.
They knew or have come to know a peace, through the Presence of God with them.

And how many, like the jailer, who, without knowing that Hod was with them, wanted to end their life or run away from their circumstances.

When we know that we have God “with” us, something different happens in our life. We find a peace and a joy that is not at all dependent on our circumstances. And it is attractive for those who are still struggling to see God. They see the potential of an answer to the meaning of their life.
And it is far more compelling than standing on their doorstep with a big black Bible in your hand. It is through our peace with God and our situation that people begin to see that God does actually make a difference in your life.

READING – Philippians 1:27-2:5
Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved—and that by God. For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him, since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have. If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

How do we know what God wants us as individuals to do in this world? The short answer to that is, I don’t know.  For some people it is easy there calling is obvious, but I would hazard to guess that for most of us our callings are not quite so easy.

For me I think it has taken 50 years for me to work out what it is God wants me to do with my life. I must be slow learner because it has taken that long for the penny to drop. But then again I’m a firm believer in that God uses all things in our lives to his glory if we just open the doors a little. I think Gods glory is shown not because of just what we do, but sometimes in spite of what we do.

This sermon is more in the shape of a testimony. As the start of Ride for life approaches I thought I’d take this opportunity to explain how I think God has worked in my life to get me to the point where we are now. Seeing as how this church, has given this project so much amazing support.

It was only a couple of years ago that I discovered that God had already moved in my life in huge ways before I was 4 months old, but that’s another story I’m not ready to tell yet. I will start with when I was 3 years old. Mum and Dad sent me to a riding school (2) near where we lived in the UK.  Between then and 15 I rode when I could until I was able to buy my own horse when we came to Merredin.

I will come back to that in a minute, we moved from the UK to Australia in 1967 when I was 9 (3) I had a pretty good time until I went to High school, where I was bullied quite badly it was then I started to learn Judo which I became fairly proficient at (4) in 1972 we moved to Merredin and as there wasn’t a Judo club here, I started one and started teaching (5) this was my first foray into teaching kids.

It was around this time that I started learning about Horses. Doing pony club in particular the prince Philip games, training and driving pacers, polocrosse, and about 20 something years as clerk of the course/catcher at the trots.(6)

Some where in amongst those years I taught swimming interm and vacation for a bit over 10 years. (7)

I also joined Rostrum later to become Speakers Forum where I learnt public speaking and chairmanship.(8)

As a Christian I have often wondered what it was that God wanted me to do? I have often felt that I should be doing something for God but had no idea what, I’m not a great singer(just ask those who sit in front of me) I am no theologian and therefore am quite fearful when preaching Gods word.

So what I have often asked myself does God want me to do, now this is where I’ll admit to being a bit of a slow learner. I did not take into account of how great God is and how much work he does in our lives without us realizing it.

It took quite a while for me to realize that all three of the jobs I have at the moment are working with kids or even that it was significant for what was to come.

A bit over a year ago Jeff Hughes joined us at DCP as the youth worker (9) and I was telling him some of the things I had done in the past working with kids. And he said why aren’t you doing anything now? That pulled me up quick smart because I didn’t know how to answer that. It was one of those times when you get an epiphany.

And so the first beginnings of Ride for Life were born. The more I thought about it the more convinced it was the answer I have unknowingly being looking forward to for 50+ years.

In the 12 months since the idea of RfL was first manifested I have been continuously amazed at how god has moved in people. Rarely have I heard a word against the idea. On the contrary people Christian and non Christian alike have been exceedingly generous with there time, money, equipment and horses. I won’t mention them all here but if you look up our website or Facebook page you will see who they are.

Around the same time Jeff came to Merredin and set me alight David also joined us as our minister,(10)who when I tentatively mentioned the idea was so encouraging which gave me the courage to string things together.

I gave myself 12 months to get it up and Running and then I called for people to help and join the committee  mainly to keep me on track and in line and not go off half cocked, because if I have learnt one thing in my life it is that I do tend to rush in where angels fear to tread.

But the way the committee has got behind RfL has been very humbling and I know that with out them RfL wouldn’t be starting in a week.

On searching the internet for similar programmes I came across one called Crystal peaks Ranch take a few minutes to see how God can work when his servants listen to him.

This is not to say how good I am but how great God is and if we open the doors to him a little, then great things can happen for his glory.

We are having our opening day this afternoon between 1-3 and you are invited to come and see for yourselves what it’s all about and why your prayers are needed.

AMEN

This is the last sermon in our series on the Letter to the Philippians, and we deal primarily with the subject of generosity.

I don’t know about you but whenever the issue of money and giving in the church is raised I get the picture of the American TV evangelists who seem always to be asking for money.

I laugh at the story (probably not true!) of one such evangelist who had electric wires connected to every seat in the church.

“All those who are willing to give one hundred dollars to God,” he shouted, “stand up!”

And then he pressed the button which sent a shot of electricity through each seat. There was a tremendous response but after the service they found three dead Scotsmen still clinging to their seats.

Another story is told of the beautiful silver collection plates being passed around for the offering. Everyone desperately dug in their pockets for loose change and the plates were finally returned, almost empty, to the minister. He took one look at them and then raised them up to heaven and prayed, “Lord, we thank you for the safe return of these plates…”

The picture Paul paints in our text today is quite different however. He writes to thank the Christians at Philippi who have sent him money via Epaphroditus. And he gives them two of the most wonderful promises of Scripture:

¹³ I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

and

My God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.

He also outlines the threefold blessing of generous giving –

• It blesses others
• It blesses us, and
• It blesses God.

First then, the blessing to others

Paul responds to the gift that he has received by saying, “I rejoice greatly in the Lord that at last you have renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you have been concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it.”

He is exceedingly grateful for the gift.

Nonetheless he shows clearly that it is not so much about the money for which he is grateful but for the opportunity that they have taken to bless him.

Paul’s attitude to money is far exceeded by the completeness that he finds in his relationship with the Lord. He intimates that he has known what it is to be in need, though he might not be at this time. He has, he says, found the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether in plenty or in want. He has found, in his relationship with the Lord, that whatever the circumstances “he can do everything through Him who gives him strength.”

Yet he is blessed by the gift – “it was good of you to share in my troubles” and he thanks them for coming to his aid time and again in the past.

You see, it is not the gift so much that counts as the fact that the people at Philippi, more than the other churches, were concerned enough about him and his ministry in service of Jesus, to send the gift. Perhaps this is where we get the saying that “it’s the thought that counts” –though we often mean that when we would like to have given or received more than we did. For Paul, it really was the thought that counted –they were really thinking about him and his ministry and they really wanted to support him in a very practical way.

One gets the impression that even if they had sent no money, any other expression of their concern would have been a gift enough. The bottom line is that Paul had moved away from concern about money, he had found his contentment in the Lord –that wonderful promise: “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”

What is the secret of contentment?

Well, it is not to have everything you want. John D Rockefeller, a multi billionaire, was once asked how much money it takes to make a man happy. He replied, “Just a little more.” Contentment does not come from wealth, for this only creates a desire for more. Contentment finds its satisfaction in the transforming friendship of Jesus Christ.

Paul discovered this –he learned how to live not on outer resources but on the inner strength which comes from Jesus Christ. And so he writes to the Philippians that in some ways he did not need their gift.

However, in some ways he did need the money that they sent and he commends them for continually coming to his aid. They had shared his troubles and had sent him money again and again. He appreciated it immensely and it blessed him.

When we first went to Howick I set out to visit everyone in the congregation. In one home that I visited I found that the husband was a member of the congregation but his wife was not. The reason was that though she was a believer, she had not been baptized, and had been made to feel embarrassed about it. She never came to church because of that and so her husband had to retell the sermon to her each Sunday morning.

I spoke to her about it, and about the misconceptions she had received from the church. The following week I baptized her in her swimming pool. She only came to church once after that and then the family emigrated to England. After they had left, I received a letter from her with a substantial amount of money –the note on the card said simply, “I got some bonus and I want to share it with you.”

The word “share” is a word that Paul also uses in relation to the Philippian church’s gift to him. It is the word “koinonia” which means fellowship, communion or close relationship. The church were in close relationship with him in his ministry and they showed it by blessing him with gifts. The lady who shared her bonus with me, did so, she wrote later, because I had helped to bring her into a close relationship not only with Jesus, but also with her family, particularly her husband. They now worship regularly together in a church on the Isle of Man and are very involved with their fellowship as a family.

And I was blessed by the gift, not of the money, but by the thought that was expressed in the gift.

Generous giving also blesses the giver

I love to give gifts. And I especially love to give gifts anonymously and as surprises. This is often true also of God’s people everywhere. I have seen it in this congregation. In my previous congregation most preferred not to have their gifts to the church made public and so we had no credits to anyone for their giving to build and equip the church – no public thank you’s, no brass plaques, nothing. Even the Foundation Stone at the entrance to the church said “Not to us, not to us, but to Your Name be the glory.” – Ps 115:1. And yet there were many who gave sacrificially and some very substantially –how else did we pay out more than a million rand over our normal income in such a short period….

Why is this? Why the desire to have no accolades? I think it is because God’s people have found a blessing that is far more than the acknowledgement of men.

And Paul tells us this too by using technical banking and accounting terms throughout this passage as he details how the church at Philippi will be blessed for their gift.

In verse 15 he speaks of “giving and receiving” or more correctly translated, of debits and credits –the two sides of an accountant’s ledger.

In verse 17, he uses a word, translated as “credited”. He says, “Not that I am looking for a gift, but I am looking for what may be credited to your account.” The word would normally be used to speak of growth in interest income on a capital amount invested.

And then in verse 18, he says “I have received full payment” –which is a commercial term meaning “to receive a sum in full and to give a receipt for it.”

In a sense, by the use of this commercial language, Paul is saying the giving is an investment of capital, and that there will be a return on the investment which will be worth far more than a name on a foundation stone or a silver plaque. In 2 Corinthians 9:6, he again stresses this point –“Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.” Giving is like planting seed. A farmer is investing for the future and he knows that he will reap far more than he sows.

Hudson Taylor, the Founder of the China Inland Mission and who it is said laid the foundation for the present revival now taking place there, was preparing to go to China in 1853. He lived a very frugal life, eating only a bowl of porridge in the morning and a bowl of gruel on alternate nights. One day he was asked to go and pray for a very poor man and his wife. The only money he possessed was his week’s wages of half-a-crown. When he saw their poverty he thought that he should give them a shilling. When the five children came out he decided to give one and six. Then he spoke to them of the love of the heavenly Father and decided to give two shillings. Eventually, as he closed off with the Lord’s prayer he knew that he had to give them everything he had. Joy flooded his heart and he sang all the way home. As he ate his bowl of gruel that night he was reminded that “he that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord” and so he asked the Lord that the loan not be a long one. He slept peacefully and the next morning he received an unexpected letter. Inside was a pair of gloves and half a sovereign. He had received back 400% in just 12 hours. The incident became a turning point in his life and he came back to it time and again as he faced even more serious trials in his life.

That spiritual principle applies to everything in life. Whatever we give to the Lord he multiplies, whether it is our time, home, gifts, ambitions or our money. Our return is not necessarily financial though, because we are investing in people. We see lives changed, the hungry fed, the naked clothed, addicts set free, marriages restored and the sick made well again.

The New Testament principle is that if we want treasure in heaven, we have to send it on ahead –we can’t take it behind the hearse in a trailer!

What will our reward be? I don’t know but I suspect that we will see those we have unknowingly helped –someone who says, “I am here partly because of your gift” or “my marriage was restored” or “I was healed”.

We get a foretaste of this now by giving generously –for it is not only the recipients who are blessed: we are also blessed through our giving.

But more than anything generous giving is blessing to God

From verse 18, Paul moves to the language of the Temple. He says that our giving is “a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God.”

Our giving blesses God because we are fulfilling His desire for us. In Malachi 3, the prophet tells us that the withholding of our offering is like robbing God. The Lord wants us to support His mission in the world, bringing the good news about Jesus into the hearts and lives of people, making disciples of them and teaching them to obey all that He has commanded.

And throughout the New Testament we are encouraged to give generously –regularly (“on the first day of the week” it says in 1 Corinthians 16:2) and proportionately (“a sum of money in keeping with your income” it says in the same verse).

Some people believe we should give a tenth accordingly to the Old Testament guidelines, but the only New Testament rule is generosity. Jacob the swindler gave a tenth, but then he was Old Testament. Zaccheus, after meeting Jesus, gave half of all he owned.

If we give generously, Paul says, “My God will meet all your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus.” Ultimately then, we can never out-give God.

Our generosity must stem from the generosity of God’s grace to us.

Perhaps then it’s not surprising that this letter begins and ends with “Grace”. At the beginning Paul says, “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” and he ends with “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.” The central theme of the letter has been God’s love and generosity and indeed that’s the central theme of the New Testament and of the Bible as a whole.

Jesus taught that our highest duty is to love God with all our heart and soul and mind. After that our duty is to love our neighbour as ourselves and indeed, that’s how Paul closes the letter. “To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” And then “Greet all the saints in Christ Jesus.”

Then he closes by asking that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with them –for Jesus is the channel of all the good gifts which come to us. It is His love which enables us to love Him and His love which enables us to love others.

I think that if we had to ask Paul for a two-word answer to the question, “Why is this life worth living?” he would say simply, “Jesus Christ” and he would explain that He supplies all our needs and strengthens us to do everything.

To Him be glory in the Church for ever and ever. Amen

As we continue in this series on Paul’s letter to the Church in Philippi, we come today to reflect on the resources which we have which will enable us to stand firm in this life in Christ. We need a good foundation from which we can draw our steadfastness.

When I left school I was done with church. For 10 years I had been to church every day – twice on Wednesdays and Thursdays, three times on Sundays and sometimes twice on Saturdays. It was enough, so I didn’t go to church for a long time after that – for a further ten years in fact, except for the time when Margie and I were married.

When I came to the Lord in 1977, I looked back on those years of going to church and I realized just how important they were in building a Christian foundation in my life. I didn’t know it at the time – I thought I was just there for the money (as a choir boy and altar boy we were paid a tickey for going to church and two shillings for singing at weddings).

I also looked back on the ten years that I didn’t go to church and regretted that it took me so long to find my way back. I had been sidetracked by peer pressure, a life of trying to have fun and sheer laziness.

I realized the importance of laying a firm foundation as early as possible in life – if my foundation during my school years had been better, more focussed on Jesus, I possibly would not have even have wasted the subsequent ten years. I give thanks to God for the past thirty or so years and I had a little private celebration with God in 2004 when I crossed the line to become one who had followed of Jesus for more years than I had not.

Over the past couple of weeks the significance of laying a good and early Christian foundation in our lives, and the lives of our children has been strong in my mind. I shared a little of this with the elders on Thursday evening and I am going to devote a lot of my holiday to thinking out the relevance of this in our situation here in this Parish.

Back to our text. Paul tells us that we must “stand firm in the Lord”. And then he tells us how!

The word that he uses for “stand firm” is the same as that of a soldier in the middle of a battle, or of a gladiator in the Roman arena. Standing poised against the enemy, firm and resolute, pumped with adrenalin, positive of victory!

He shows how we can not only hold off the enemy but come through victorious, full of joy, peace and a sense of the presence of God. And this is so vitally important for us today.

The first thing is the need for us to watch our relationships with each other. “Standing firm”, as we have seen is used in the context of battle – it describes a phalanx, soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder. When they stood like that they were virtually invincible –provided they did not break rank. In a modern context we could use the term to describe a scrum in rugby union.

The enemy is always looking for cracks and divisions to exploit in the church. When the church breaks ranks, when the soldiers of Christ’s army are no longer shoulder to shoulder, the Evil One has a field day.

In our text we see a personality clash between two women, Euodia and Syntyche. In dealing with them, Paul does not take sides; rather he urges both of them to take the initiative in order to reach agreement and he appeals to others to help bring them together.

He doesn’t criticise them; rather he concentrates on their good points to build them up –they have contended by his side, and their names are written in the book of life.

Even trivial personality clashes can lead people away from the Lord. I once read a story of a woman who despite having been a faithful Christian and churchgoer stopped going to church for over 15 years. The reason –at a church fete she bought a cake at the cake stall. Seeing another cake she wanted, she said, “I’ll have that one as well”. The woman behind the stall said, “Oh no, you can’t have two”. Deeply offended by the remark, the woman concluded that the church was full of hypocrites and never went back.

It was silly, and we can laugh at it, but the example may not be far from us all. We must watch our relationships with other Christians. Disagreements, disunity, unnecessary remarks and unforgiveness can weaken then church and destroy our faith. One of the vital secrets of standing firm in the Lord is to work at our Christian friendships in the church.

From taking care about our relationships with each other, Paul now tells us that we can “stand firm in the Lord” by watching our relationship with the Lord, and he gives us three invaluable tips.

First, Enjoy the Lord

Sixteen times in Philippians, Paul tells us to “rejoice in the Lord”. However bad our circumstances, we need to find our joy in the Lord. The Westminster Confession tells us that “the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever”. John Piper, one of my favourite authors and pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, calls himself a Christian hedonist –almost a contradiction in terms if we look at many Christians today. He finds absolute pleasure and delight in the Lord –not one sermon is preached, not one word is written without calling people to enjoy God. He was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer –it has not changed his joyful outlook because he is standing firm in the Lord.

Second, Expect the Lord

Immediately following the call to “rejoice in the Lord”, Paul says, “Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near”.

Because the Lord is near –near to those who walk with Him, and because it is near to the Day when He shall return –we can, and must be gentle people. We don’t need to be contentious, abrasive and driven by self-seeking desires. Retaliation is not part of our vocabulary because we are abiding in His presence.

We can “stand firm in the Lord” because it is the Lord who is near who will vindicate us. We have no need to stand up to fight for our own position –God has it all in the palm  of His hand.

Third, Entreat the Lord

He says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God”.

Prayer and worry are not easy bedfellows. And living a life weighed down with worries is not really living. Prayer takes care of worries –a sign outside a church read “Why pray, when you can worry and take tranquilizers?”

If we want to lift ourselves above the troubles which threaten to pull us down, then we need to be a people of prayer, bringing our prayers, petitions and requests to God. It helps us to keep a journal or prayer diary so that when prayers are answered we can pray with thanksgiving. This is another matter which has been on my mind and when we return from our holidays, I want to focus on prayer as the primary foundation of our relationship with God.

The extraordinary and wonderful promise is that when we pray out our worries and anxieties, “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus.”

Peace for the Christian means far more than the absence of hostility –The word Paul uses is “shalom”: it means wholeness, soundness, well-being, oneness with God, every kind of blessing and good. It surpasses all our hopes and expectations and it transcends the understanding of others because they do not understand how we can be so peaceful in the face of major worries and anxieties.

Back to the focus on how we stand firm in the Lord. First, he said that we must watch our relationships with each other. Then he said that we must watch our relationship with the Lord. Paul now goes on to tell us that “standing firm in the Lord” needs us to be thinking right thoughts – He tells us to think about whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—the excellent and praiseworthy things.

It has been said that “a man is not what he thinks he is, but what he thinks, he is.”

And Jesus said that the things that enter our body through our mouth are not to be worried over because will eventually they leave our bodies. However that which comes out of our mouth is important because it comes from the heart and “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony and slander. It is these things, Jesus says, which make a man unclean.

These are the thoughts of our mind and so we need to be careful about what we think about.

In today’s world its hard to do this because we are surrounded by images and words from television, newspapers, movies and so on which easily lead us in a wrong direction. Our thoughts are then not on true and pure things. We are angered by the politicians on the news, we are sidetracked by the easy sex in the movies, we are misled by false advertising claims.

But, while we may be tempted daily by wrong thoughts we don’t have to succumb to them. Martin Luther said that you can’t stop a bird from flying over your head but you can stop it nesting in your hair.

The way to get wrong thoughts out is to put right thoughts in –occupy your mind with good thoughts and the enemy will find no place to put any bad ones!

One way to do this is to start first thing in the morning with prayer and Bible reading. Memorising scripture verses is a great exercise, as does reading Christian books.

What we think about is not something which can be seen by others. It is part of our secret life but it is vital to standing firm in the Lord. Our unseen life is like the roots of a tree or the foundation of a building –our ability to withstand the storms of life depends on the strength of the unseen parts.

And then finally, Paul says, “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice.” It’s a challenge for us to build our Christian stability by following the example of the lives of outstanding Christians.

Paul is not afraid to put himself forward as an example of the life to be followed – he has no fear of the “tall poppy” syndrome. He encourages his readers not only to follow his teaching but also his lifestyle –his words and his actions!

In Robert Anderson’s book, “The Effective Pastor” he makes the telling point that the pastor needs to be an outstanding example to the congregation of how to know Jesus, how to pray and how to live. He has little time for professional pastors and those who just want to be “one of the boys”.

And let me tell you that the world watches the Christians. They expect us to be above the things of the world, and we are, and we must be.

It is not so easy however to do all these things. Paul encourages his readers to put into practice what he has taught them –practice is the only way.

We must practice avoiding quarrels.

We must practice being united with other Christians.

We must practice avoiding worry and anxiety by bringing it to the Lord in prayer.

We must practice thinking about good things.

We must practice what we see in the lives of godly men and women.

And remember ….

Unforgiveness cuts us off from God.

Quarreling cuts us off from God.

Sinful thoughts cut us off from God.

Following bad examples cuts us off from God.

But forgiveness, unity, prayer, thankfulness, right thinking and following good examples keep us close to the God of peace.

And then we can stand firm in the Lord, not be sidetracked and so rejoice in living the life that is worthy.

Should Christians be ambitious –striving for success?

Some would say not, that we should rather go through life taking whatever comes as “God’s Will”.

This is a foolish thought –it makes this life irrelevant, a mere waiting room for that which is still to come. This life that God gave us has a purpose, otherwise we might just as well have been born straight into heaven instead of in a nursing home on this planet.

From the Book of Acts and from his letters we know that Paul was a fiercely ambitious man –he had an immense desire to succeed. Before he was a Christian this drive was directed at the persecution of the church which he saw as opposed to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. After his conversion, he remained just as ambitious but the direction was changed. Suddenly, on the road to Damascus, when he came face to face with the resurrected Jesus, he realised that Jesus was the One of whom the prophets had spoken. This was God made flesh and come to save the world. In a moment his ambition changed –now he was suddenly the most ardent supporter of the Christian faith. He realised that the Christian faith was not to be opposed but to be seen as the fulfilment of everything that God had promised.

John Stott said that, “ultimately there are only two controlling ambitions … one is our own glory, and the other is God’s”. Paul always sought God’s glory but on that desert road he realised that in opposing Christ, his ambition was misdirected.

We saw in the previous sermon in this series that Paul’s new confidence had come from knowing Christ and having His righteousness. Now, right in mid-sentence, he moves from the ground, or basis of his confidence to the focus of his ambitions.

He says that his ambition is “to know Christ”. This is much more than knowing about Christ –he wants to know Christ as a person. The new and central focus of his life is to have a personal relationship with Him -an exhilarating and intimate union with the Lord who had personally come to earth.

He gives three descriptions of how this ambition is to be realised – in the power of the resurrection, in the fellowship of Christ’s suffering and in his own expected resurrection from the dead.

First, he wants to know Christ in “the power of his resurrection.” He is not simply looking to acknowledge a historical event but to see this “power” as dynamically at work in his own life. In Romans 8 he says, “if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies, through His Spirit, who lives in you.”

The Spirit of God brings this resurrection power to our lives –yours and mine. By the power of His death and resurrection Jesus disarmed Satan, broke the hold of sin and defeated death. This power is available to all to enable us to live holy lives and to minister to others with resurrection power.

With all his heart, Paul wants to know this power in his own life.

If you want victory over sin and evil in your life and in your world, if you want to live a holy life, then you too must long to know Christ and the power of his resurrection with all your heart.

Second, Paul wants to know Christ and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings. He does not seek suffering, but he knows that it is inevitable –it is not a penalty but a privilege. We will never suffer in exactly the way that Jesus did but we will face sufferings as the practical result of our Christian life.

For some, this will mean severe persecution, but for most of us it will be the pain and struggle against sin. Ask a drug addict or an alcoholic or even a cigarette smoker if it is easy to kick the habit of the old life. You will then hear something of the kind of struggle and suffering that we have to endure in order to be rid of our sinful nature and so to know Christ more fully.

God does not take away our sin, we have to give it to Him in confession and repentance –our bad attitudes and habits, our hateful speech, our lack of love. Few of us are murderers or adulterers or blasphemers –if we were we would readily seek forgiveness. Our struggle is with the “little sins” that we don’t care to admit. And it is these that are likely to cause most suffering as we offer them to the God who came, suffered and died for us because they demand a radical lifestyle change if we are to truly know Christ.

It is in these moments of suffering that we experience “fellowship” with Christ, and it is that fellowship which Paul wants –no matter the cost.

Third, knowing Christ means sharing His destiny, “somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” When Paul says “somehow” he is not expressing doubt or uncertainty –he had no doubt about his eternal life. In Romans 8 he says, “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” He is telling us that while he is not there yet, it is his primary aim and ambition. In verse 13, he says “the one thing I do” –he is absolutely single-minded about his ambition to know Christ, and he will allow nothing in his life to conflict with that ambition.

This does not mean for us, that we should put aside any ambitions for our marriage, family life, career, work or ministry. Instead all of these things must be drawn into our central ambition –this is why we seek Christian marriage, and the strongest argument for baptising infants must be that we want to draw them into the centrality of our own faith and overriding ambition to know Christ. If we marry in church just for the atmosphere or bring our children just to have them “done” then we have utterly missed the point. The primary objective must be to have “knowing Christ” as the central ambition of our life and all that surrounds us in that life.

In the desire to fulfil this ambition, Paul paints a picture of himself as an athlete. Like a runner, he does not look back but strains for that which lies ahead. Like a man climbing a ladder, he looks up to his goal, concentrating on the next rung and forgetting those that he has left behind. In our desire to know Christ we cannot live on past successes or be bogged down by past failures, despair over past sins or bitterness over past wrongs done to us –instead we must “press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus”.

And Paul makes the point that this is not a solitary pursuit. In Christ we are not alone in our ambitions. He says, “Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you.” There are very few who have come to really know Christ by being alone in their journey –we need the company of others who are going in the same direction. We need our church fellowship, we need our friends.

Today is the KEP Ultra-marathon – a 100km race from the Mundaring Weir to Northam. I can imagine that it would be much harder to run that route on any other day than today. There would be none of the camaraderie to spur each other on, none of the organization to keep the traffic out of your way, no support tables offering water, Mars bars and bananas and no-one to massage aching muscles. If our ambition is to know Christ, we need to join with others and follow the pattern of those who lead the way for us and who will support us on our journey.

Next, in verse 18, Paul turns to those who have rejected this ambition of knowing Christ and who live as enemies of the Cross of Christ. Does he reject them, make them his enemies? No! He weeps for them. He sheds tears of anguish and despair. He sees that they are missing out on “the resurrection of the dead”, and their terrible end is “destruction”.

No doubt they are unaware of where they are heading. The devil never tells us our destination as he leads us along his path.

Unlike Paul’s great and overriding ambition to know Christ, these have other ambitions –we could call them man-centred ambitions.

First, their appetites dictate their lives. Paul says, “their god is their stomach”. No doubt there are some who lives revolve around their eating and drinking habits but Paul has something more in mind. He is referring to those whose god is personal satisfaction and sensuality –literally the satisfaction of our senses: feel, touch, taste, smell and so on. Even a brief excursion through a lifestyle magazine will confirm this. Advertisements for clothes, perfume and alcohol dominate everything and they all offer sensual pleasures.

Many people are driven by the satisfaction of their bodily desires, for others it is in fame or money or power. But such ambitions always lead to dissatisfaction. Even when attained they still leave an emptiness, and often a despair. The lives of the rich and famous might well be filled with glitter and glam as we watch their exploits on the television or in the magazines but when their guard is down they are mostly unhappy and dissatisfied.

This leads us to the second thing about “the enemies of the cross”. They boast when they should blush –Paul says “their glory is in their shame”. They are like robbers who boast about their ill-gotten gains, or criminals who must always return to the scene of the crime. Or like the man who must talk about his sexual conquests or how much he drank the night before. The glory is in the event, the so-called success –but isn’t it strange that it is always the boasting that becomes their downfall. They have built their life out of a pack of cards –they must keep adding to it because what they have is not yet enough. And the more they add, the greater the danger of collapse and ruin. This is quite unlike the Christian ambition to know Christ, which builds one up, gives satisfaction and ensures success.

Thirdly, their minds are locked into this planet. Paul says that “their minds are on earthly things”. Elsewhere, Jesus says, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

The Christian is a citizen of heaven, not of this planet. This planet, like our earthly bodies is wearing out. The things of the earth that we seek for satisfaction only temporarily meet our needs. Our eyesight fails, we often experience humiliating illness, we must constantly battle to control our tongues and our appetites. It is absurd to make a god out of these things.

If however we seek God’s glory, Jesus will transform these bodies which are subject to decay and sin to be like His glorious body which will never age or decay or be subject to sinful desires.

In this passage Paul tells us that everyone is on one of two paths. There are two destinations: one is headed for heaven, the other is headed for destruction. There are two powers at work: the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit and the power of bodily appetites. There are two possible lifestyles: those who are willing to share in His sufferings and those who want a lifestyle of ease and comfort. There are two possible gods: our Lord Jesus Christ or our stomachs. There are two possible attitudes to Jesus: either friendship at the most intimate level or enemies of the cross. Ultimately there are only two ambitions: either His glory, Christ-centred ambition; or our own glory, self-centred ambition. Paul says in effect: “I have changed my ambitions. Now I am Christ-centred. Will you join me?”

So what is my ambition? Since becoming a Christ follower my ambition has changed radically. To that point my ambition was worldly success – to be rich and famous. I was the International Economist of a major banking group, travelling the world, speaking at conferences. I was comfortably well off with a string of degrees, including an MBA from a prestigious university and I was about to launch a unique concept for dealing in foreign currencies. When I met Jesus, my ambitions changed – since then and even more so now, my ambition is to help people by word and action to become joyful followers of Jesus in a life which is completely satisfied, having left behind their past and seeing clearly what God has promised for them. I don’t want to be any different to the person that I am now.

Let’s pray …

Lord God Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth and all that is in them. It is not my desire to worship created things nor to be caught up with the gods of this world. I do not want to be an enemy of the Cross. I want to live my life for Your glory. I want to know You and the power of the resurrection, I am prepared to share in the fellowship of Your sufferings and I want to attain the resurrection of the dead. By the power of Your Name I would count everything as loss for the sake of knowing You.

Grant to me the wisdom and power of the Holy Spirit to have but one ambition for my life –to know You deeply and personally as my Lord and Saviour.

Amen

“To God’s elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by His blood.”

The whole basis for our salvation is identified in this one sentence, the most condensed outline of the process of salvation in all of Scripture. Peter also reveals here the complex and multi-faceted nature of God.

Peter is writing to scattered followers of Christ, believers who’ve been dispersed due to persecution under the Roman Emperor Nero. He writes to encourage the afflicted and he begins by announcing that all three Persons of the Godhead are responding to their suffering. Father, Son, and Spirit are involved in the reasons behind their hardship, and stand ready to provide relief and an everlasting inheritance.

Even today believers face misunderstanding, ridicule and harassment by unbelieving friends, employers, teachers, and family members. In some countries, converting to Christ is punishable by death. Peter shows us the attitude we should have when facing this kind of opposition. When people oppose us, we are reminded that we belong to the Triune God and not to this world. Our hope is found in our thrice-holy God. We may be mocked and looked down upon in the eyes of secular society, but our true status is that we’ve been chosen as God’s elect. God has initiated our calling, which means our real home, our true citizenship is in heaven and this makes us strangers in a hostile, foreign land.
According to Peter, all three members of the Trinity work to bring us new life and provide us assurance of our salvation. All Three are involved in our daily lives. Yet we do not worship three Gods. We are not polytheists. The Trinity is a complicated yet essential Christian teaching.

Defining “Trinity”

The doctrine of the Trinity is that we worship One God, Who is manifest in three distinct Persons. In the Tri-unity of the Godhead there are Three-in-One, of the same substance: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. They are equally God in their being, power, holiness and eternality. God is one in essence and three in Person. Scripture affirms both the oneness of God and the deity of the Father, Son and Spirit. The Father is our Creator, the Son our Redeemer, and the Spirit our Sanctifier. The word “Trinity” comes from the Latin word “Tri-unitos”, which means “three in the unity of one.” They are distinct, yet not solitary. And while the word Trinity is not found in the Bible, it is a Biblical concept: One-in-Three; Three-in-One.

The Trinity is somewhat of a mystery—the teaching is difficult to grasp, because it is so unique. Theologians have tried to explain the nature of God, but God is beyond human comprehension. We understand part of Who God is, but not the whole.

He is Father – Our loving Father chose us before we chose Him (Eph 1:4). From eternity past, the Father planned our salvation, so there is no room to doubt our future in heaven. Nothing that happens can change the Father’s sovereign promises to us. We are His elect, chosen people, adopted into His family.

He is Son – Jesus, the Son died for us while we were sinners, purchasing our salvation through the shedding of His blood (Rom 5:6-10). The “sprinkling by His blood” refers back to the sacrifices in the Jewish Temple, where the blood of the animal sacrifice would be sprinkled on the altar and on the mercy seat above the Ark of the Covenant, to cover or atone for sin. Jesus has always been God and He became a man without ceasing to be God. He is 100% God and 100% man at the same time.

He is Spirit – The Spirit seals and applies Christ’s sacrifice to our lives, bringing us the benefits of salvation. The Spirit cleanses and prepares us for God’s use (II Thes 2:13). Peter says that the Spirit “sanctifies” us. This means He makes us holy and sets us apart. The Spirit begins a gradual process of growth within us. Our old way of life is passing away, and all things are being made new (II Cor 5:17). The Spirit also enables us to discern and understand Scripture. Paul writes that without enlightenment from the Spirit, the Bible appears to be foolishness. The Spirit inspired the writers of Scripture and for us makes understandable the word of God.

Their Roles – The Father is the Originator, the Son is the Agent, and the Holy Spirit is the Administrator. Jonathan Edwards described the Trinity as “sharing in divine love.” Self-giving love is our Triune God’s signature. God is not self-contained or self-absorbed; He reaches out to His Creation, revealing Himself to us. Gregory (of Zazianzus, a 4th Century Bishop), and early church leader said: “I cannot think of the One without immediately being surrounded by the radiance of the Three; nor can I discern the Three without being carried back to the One.”

The Baptismal formula – After Jesus died and rose from the grave, He appeared to His disciples and commissioned them to go into all the world, preaching the Gospel to every creature. They were to baptize new believers, “In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). Significantly, Jesus did not say “in the names” but “in the name”. The three “persons”, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, have one name – God – and one eternal Being.

It is important that we understand the Father, Son and Spirit are revealed as God in Scripture…and yet the Bible says that there is only “one” God. Confusion with this comes because we don’t grasp the meaning of the word “one”.
There are two Hebrew words for “one”: yachid, which means “absolute mathematical oneness;” and echad, meaning a “composite unity” or a “united one.” Here are some examples of echad–

In Genesis 1:5 we’re told, “…there was evening and there was morning, one (echad) day.” (It does not, in fact, say the “first” day). In Genesis 2:24 we read that, “a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one (echad) flesh.” Num. 13:23 in summarizing the account of the visit of the spies into the Promised Land describes one (echad) cluster of grapes. (^?When they reached the Valley of Eshcol, they cut off a branch bearing a single cluster of grapes).

And in Deut. 6:4 Jehovah our God is described as one (echad) God. (Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one).  A popular Hebrew Name of God, elohim, has a plural ending, because God is a unified plurality.

Because our Triune God is a composite unity, we can correctly say 1 + 1 + 1 = 1. This “Trinitarian arithmetic” may seem puzzling, but it’s accurate.

St Patrick, the missionary to Ireland, used a shamrock to explain the concept of the Trinity. This image has three parts but is one harmonious whole/entirety. The triangle is also used as a Trinitarian symbol because it has 3 sides, yet is one object.

A young woman reflected on her journey of faith. She stated: “I got to know God through the three Persons of the Trinity. I first encountered God as Father in church, where I learned that God is holy, deserving of my worship. Later, as a teenager, I became acquainted with Jesus, a man I wanted to follow for the rest of my life. And then—it was almost like a second conversion—I became aware of the power of the Spirit, of God living inside me.”

God the Father revealed Himself to the Jewish nation. Jesus revealed the completion of God’s plan for salvation, and then promised the Comforter to indwell and guide us. Our devotion to God includes all three Persons–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: The God above us, the God before us, and the God within us.

In the Luke reading Val read today, all parents can share the agony of Mary and Joseph when they couldn’t find Jesus in the company.  (I think George and Val can relate to this when Kevin went missing on the boat coming to Australia.)  I can just imagine myself reacting if any of my children should answer me when Jesus said to Mary and Joseph that they should have known He was busy with the things of His Father.  You know the “Listen mister, don’t be smart with me – get yourself in the car NOW!!”  But we don’t read that – the last few verses say that Mary “treasured all these things in her heart”.

Then we jump to the John reading where Mary witnessed the crucifixion from the foot of the cross.  Can you even imagine how she must’ve felt?

Jesus turns to John and says, take care of her, and looks at his mother and says, let him stand in my place as your son.  John lived a very long life, and I believe he took care of Mary until she went to heaven.

Jesus is on the cross, bearing the weight of the sins of the whole world on His shoulders, yet He sees to it to make sure His mother is taken care of after He is gone!  As God, Jesus is dealing with eternal matters, but as a man, He’s showing all of us today how important it is to take care and love our mothers!

You cannot be willfully wrong with your mother and be right with God.  If your mother is still alive, regardless of your and her ages, you can love her in these 7 ways:

1.     Love her verbally.

Especially men have the philosophy—I don’t have to say I love you, you already know it.  I have told you before, if I change my mind I’ll let you know!  Or, I SHOW love, not just say it…and that may be true, but a woman needs to hear those words, “I Love You!”

Children need to hear it…and saying it makes you more of a man, not less!  And spouses need to hear it too…

DEAR ABBY: I enlisted shortly after Pearl Harbor. Thirty-six days later, I was on my way to the Philippines. En route, the Philippines fell to the Japanese, and we were routed to Australia. Eleven days after we landed, I met the most beautiful girl in the world.

On our first date, I told her I was going to marry her. I did, 18 months later, while on a 10-day R-and-R leave from New Guinea.

After more than 57 years of marriage and two children, my beloved “Mary” died five days before Christmas. Although we agreed that our ashes were to be scattered over the mountains, I found I could not part with hers.

While Mary was alive, she would frequently say, “You don’t know how much I love you.” I’d reply, “Likewise.” I never said, “I love you.” Now her ashes are on my dresser, where I tell her several times a day how much I love her, but it’s too late. Although I wrote poetry to her, I could not bring myself to say the three words I knew she wanted most to hear.

As my dearest was dying and we thought she was comatose, I told her, “There aren’t enough words to tell you how much I love you.” A few hours later, she whispered, “Not enough words” and died.

The reason I’m writing is to urge men to express their feelings while their loved ones are alive. I don’t know why, but many men are reluctant to express the depth of their feelings. — MISSING MARY IN COLORADO

Our spouses need to hear it, our children…our mothers also!

        Some men would say, I’m just not turned that way…then turn around!  “I’m just not comfortable”…then be uncomfortable!

Verbally…

2.     Love her physically.

When’s the last time you gave her a big hug without her asking for it…or a kiss on the cheek, or a neck rub, or just sat on the couch and held her for a change?

        She’s the first person who ever touched you…she wrapped you up in her womb for months, and you came out and first priority was to hold you, and she cuddled you, stroked your head, rubbed your feet, held your little cheeks against her, gave you a finger to grasp…in love she did all these things, including grooming you with a licked thumb!

        When you were little she could say, “give me sugar”, and you’d pucker up and she’d accept your wet, sloppy kiss and even say thank you!  You give her bear hugs so tight she didn’t have to hold on to you…you’d just cling to her as she walked around!

        She changed your diapers, potty trained you, and held the Kleenex for you to blow your nose!  She wiped food off of your face years longer than she should have had to! 

She constantly touched you!  And she may have to hand you off to another, and her life may endure some heavy changes, but she deserves your touch and should never have to give that up completely!

It would mean more to her than flowers or candy, or eating out, or a diamond necklace [well, let’s not go too far!]

Physically, verbally…

3.     Love her patiently.

Mothers have an incredible job w/ no pay.  No position in the business world compares to the physical, emotional, and spiritual commitment she has in motherhood.

No Occupation

She rises up at break of day and through her tasks she races.

She cooks the meals as best she may and scrubs the children’s faces

While schoolbooks, lunches, homework too, all need consideration…

And yet the census man insists

She has— “No Occupation”

When breakfast dishes all are done

She bakes a pudding, maybe.

She cleans the rooms up, one by one,

With one eye watching baby.

The mending pile she then attacks

by way of variation.

And yet the census man insists

She has — “No Occupation.”

She irons for a little while, then presses pants for Daddy.

She welcomes with a cheery smile returning lass and laddie.

A hearty dinner next she cooks (no time for relaxation),

And yet the census man insists

She has—“No Occupation.”

Don’t ever make the mistake of asking a lady, Do you work, or stay at home?  The only thing worse you can ask is when she’s due if you’re not 100% sure she’s expecting!  And many ladies today have to work on top of the full time job they already have.

Here’s the point, in spite of all she does for us, we often become impatient with her…we get so used to her taking care of things we come to expect it and are outraged that “those clothes are still dirty?” / that’s not ironed? / you’re out of my favorite cookies? / you know I like that over rice, where is it?

She’s picking you up at school because you don’t like to ride the bus, but she’s scolded for being 5 minutes late!

Love her patiently.  Because she’s tender to your needs is no reason to take advantage of her, it’s reason to be patient and to love her all the more!

Teenagers:  it is unfair for you to be more kind, considerate, patient with your friends and your friend’s mothers than your own mother!

        If you treated your friends like you treat your mom you wouldn’t have friends, and if you treated their mom like you do yours their mom wouldn’t let their kid have anything to do with you!  Your mom deserves better…she’s not a rug to wipe every negative thought on!

For us adults with living mothers:  Love her patiently.

Dobson read on Focus on Family Radio—letter from 80 yr. old woman on her birthday:

To all my children:
I suppose my upcoming birthday started my thoughts along these lines…This is a good time to tell you that what I truly want are things I can never get enough of, yet they are free. I want the intangibles.
I would like for you to come and sit with me, and for you to be relaxed. We can talk, or we can be silent. I would just like for us to be together.
I need your patience when I don’t hear what you say the first time. I know how tiresome it is to always be repeating, but sometimes I must ask you to repeat. I need your patience when I think too much about the past, with my slowness and my set ways. I want you to be tolerant with what the years have done to me physically.
Please be understanding about my personal care habits. I spill things. I lose things. I get unduly excited when I try to figure out my bank statements. I can’t remember what time to take my medication, or if I took it already. I take too many naps. Sometimes sleep helps to pass the day.
Well, there you have it: Time, Patience, and Understanding. Those are priceless gifts that I want.  Finally, in his letter, the Apostle Paul wrote, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” I know I can, too! It’s a wonderful feeling to know His eye is on the sparrow and I know He cares for me. I guess being old isn’t so bad after all!
Love,
Mom

Patiently…

4.     Love her attentively.

Mothers listen as you pour out your heart…she has a sympathetic ear, and always has…and even as an adult you’ve gone to her when you want someone who will really listen and understand…and she’ll always be on your side.

It’s no wonder we like to talk to mom…she listens…but now she has issues, and now it’s your turn to be her “rock”…and take time to listen…it’s payback time!

“But, she’s always complaining”…yes, just like you did!

Talks about herself / asks same question over and over…

In their older days, our parents have many fears / anxieties…may we treat them as we’d hope to be treated when we are in their shoes!

Attentively, patiently…

5.     Love her gratefully.

Ill.—An elementary science class had been studying magnets, and how metal objects are attracted to them.  At the end of the semester the teacher put on exam this question:  6 letters, starts w/ “M”, picks up things, what am I?  Over half the children wrote [say it together...] “Mother”!

She needs a sincere thank you, and not just today, but from a genuinely thankful heart when least expected!

If you who are sitting here are as blessed as I am, because we have our children and our parents.”  May it cause us to realize 2 truths:  one about our parents:, and how we won’t always have them.  And another about our children:…let’s be the kind of parents we ought to be!

6.     Love her generously.

There’s nothing too good for her, we could never repay her, but we ought to die trying before she does!  She didn’t spend on herself unless all your needs were met…she could easily do without, and now it’s time for her to have something she wants!

        She clears her schedule so she can run you around…she gives up opportunities so you can have more opportunities!

In a maths exam there was the following question, state your answer as a fraction:  If there’s 10 at the table and one apple pie, how much does each one get?  One ninth! /  “Don’t you know your fractions?”/ “Do you know my mother?  If there’s that many at the table and only one pie, she won’t want any!”

Love her generously…

7.     Love her honorably.

Exodus 20:12

    Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

This is binding as long as your mother lives.  Another command says children, obey…non-binding when you leave home, but “honor” is different!  If the husband is the head of the home, then the mother is the heart…don’t break her heart!

“Yeah, but my mother wasn’t honorable!”  Well, the Bible says nothing about that qualification…it only asks, is she your mother!

        By the way, it’s the only one of the 10 commandments which includes a built-in promise of blessing!

When God created mothers

When the good Lord created mothers, He was into His sixth day of overtime, when an angel appeared and said,

“You’re doing a lot of fiddling around on this one.”

The Lord replied, “have you seen the specs on this order? She has to be completely washable, but not plastic; Have 180 moveable parts … all replaceable; Run on black coffee and leftovers; Have a lap that disappears when she stands up; A kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointing love affair; And six pair of hands.”

The angel shook her head slowly and said, “Six pair of hands? No way!”

“It’s not the hands that are causing me problems,” said the Lord. “It’s the three pair of eyes that mothers have to have.

“One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks ‘What are you kids doing in there?’ when she already knows. Another in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn’t, but what she needs to know, and of course the ones in front that look at a child when he goofs up and say, ‘I understand and I love you,’ Without so much as uttering a word. “I’m so close to creating something so close to myself. Already, I have one who heals herself when she is sick …can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger …and get a nine year old to stand under a shower. Not only can she think, she can reason and compromise.”

Finally, the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek of the mother. “There’s a leak,” she pronounced, “I told you that you were trying to put too much in this model.”

“That’s not a leak,” said the Lord, “it’s a tear.”

“What is it for?” asked the angel.

The Lord replied, “It’s for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness and pride.”

“You’re a genius!” shouted the angel.

With a somber look on his face, the Lord said, “I didn’t put it there.”

How about a hand now for the crowning jewel of God’s creation:  our mothers!

Lord, help us never to be too busy for mom…if you could take time and great effort for her on the cross in your death, help us to love her while we have her in our life!

Where do you find your confidence?

Confidence is an important thing in life. It makes us able to step out of our comfort zone, to experiment, to try new things, meet new people and so on. It helps us also to find meaning in life.

Sometimes however people are a bit over-confident. George Bernard Shaw once said, “My speciality is being right when other people are wrong.”

The atheist philosopher, Friedrich Nietsche said, “There cannot be a God because, if there were one, I would not believe that I were not he.”

On the other hand there are those who have no confidence. They are inwardly afraid, feeling inadequate, insecure and worthless.

James Dobson points out that 80% of teenagers don’t like the way they look, and often this carries on into adulthood.

For example, Michele Pheiffer, the movie star who most people regard as stunningly beautiful says, “I’ve got small boobs, big lips and a bent nose. My face is completely wrecked. I have never been confident about my looks.”

The greatest demand for plastic surgery is in Hollywood –the place of beautiful people!

But its not just about looks –often the lack of confidence goes much deeper. Madonna, who has recently been in the news for ending her latest show by singing while standing crucified against a lighted cross, says, “All of my will has been to conquer some horrible feeling of inadequacy. I am always struggling with that fear. I push past one spell of it and discover myself as a special human being and then I get to another stage and I think I’m mediocre and uninteresting. And I find a way to get out of that. Again and again. My drive in life is from this horrible fear of being mediocre, and that’s always pushing me, pushing me. Because even though I have become Somebody, I still have to prove that I’m Somebody. My struggle has never ended and it probably never will.”

We do need to be confident in life but there is a huge difference between false confidence and true confidence. And this difference, as we shall see, has to do with faith –it has a significant spiritual aspect.

FALSE CONFIDENCE

In our text from Philippians, Paul warns the Philippian Christians to wach out for those whom he describes as “dogs” –referring to the wild dogs which roamed the streets of Philippi scavenging and fighting.

He is referring to a group who had infiltrated the church and are insisting that the new Christians at Philippi should be circumcised, forcing a Jewish rite on Gentile Christians in order to make the “real” Christians. For them faith in Jesus was not enough. Paul describes them as “those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh.” He ridicules their false confidence in circumcision and insists that it is not necessary.

Christians are already circumcised for in their hearts they are set apart for God. In Romans 2:29 we read that true circumcision is “circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit”. It is not the outward form that matters.

By insisting on circumcision, this group is suggesting that faith in Jesus Christ is not enough to be confident before God. But maintains there is nothing which we can add to that which Jesus has already done for us on the Cross.

Indeed, if it were possible to have other things which could enhance one’s standing before God, Paul declares that he has them, “If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more”. He then lists seven areas which might have given him confidence, but which actually only gave false confidence. The first four come by birth and the last three by voluntary choice.

First, he had all the outward marks of religion. He had been circumcised on the 8^th day after his birth. As a baby he had received the outwards mark of being a member of God’s family. Although baptism is not the exact equivalent of circumcision, it is nevertheless true for us, that baptism on its own is not enough. There also needs to be faith. This is true of both infant and adult baptism. Churches which practice infant baptism follow that with confirmation, or profession of faith at a later stage. Those which practice adult baptism have done so because they believe that faith must come before baptism. In the Uniting Church we accept both forms of baptism on the basis that both faith and baptism are necessary and that the sequence and interlude between the events is not defined for us in the Bible with accounts of people being baptized both before and after coming to faith.

Paul does not count his circumcision as sufficient grounds for confidence before God and nor can we count our baptism as sufficient. There must also be faith.

The second reason that Paul could claim was his national privilege. He was of the people of Israel and thus of the chosen people. Today many have a false confidence because of pride in their nationality, because they are Australian, or British or American.

The third possible basis for Paul’s confidence was his family background. He was of the tribe of Benjamin –Benjamin, the youngest son of Jacob, was the only one of the 12 patriarchs was born in the land of promise. From this tribe came Israel’s first King and Paul, who was previously known as Saul, probably was names after King Saul.

Today many people seek to derive their confidence from their background –their ancestry, their schooling, their class or even their name but none of these things can give us confidence before God.

The fourth reason was his racial purity. He was a Hebrews of the Hebrews –not only was he born of Hebrew parents but he lived and practiced the Hebrew way of life. Again there are those who pride themselves on their racial purity –an Englishman, a Scot, a Zulu, a German or an Italian. National customs, language, manners and etiquette are good things but they are not grounds for confidence before God.

On personal grounds, Paul could also claim that

Fifth, he had been religious. He was a Pharisee, belonging to the strictest sect in Judaism and was scrupulous in keeping every law and every rule.

Today there are people who say, “I have never done anyone any harm” or “I have always been religious” or “I go to church each Sunday”. Not one of these things can give us confidence before God.

He had also been sincere in his beliefs and energetic in carrying out what he believed to be God’s will in persecuting the church. No-one could doubt Paul’s zeal or sincerity. But sincerity is not enough –it is possible to be sincerely wrong and Paul recognized that he had been sincerely wrong in persecuting the Christian church.

The last reason which Paul could have claimed as a reason for confidence was the fact that he had lived a good life. He  had considered himself as faultless, he had no bad conscience and compared himself well with those around him. Today there are many people who have great problems with the idea that they need forgiveness. They feel that they have led a good life, that they are not sinners and that they therefore have every reason to be confident before God.

But Paul realizes that none of the achievements of the secular world could bring true confidence –as his eye travels down the list that he had just made and which we have just reviewed, he says that he had previously counted these are profit but now he considers them a loss –rubbish, compared to what he has now found as basis for his confidence –the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus.

This is where his new confidence comes from. One day he encountered Jesus on the Road to Damascus and from then on he had lived a vital, lively, continuing relationship with Jesus Christ.

It IS possible to know Jesus, the man we read about in the Bible. We do not see Him physically but we can talk to Him and listen to Him speaking to us. We can spend time in His presence, experience His love and we can know Him as Paul knew Him.

This new relationship stems from a new righteousness. Paul says that he considers all his previous accomplishments as, “rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own but the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.”

He had found another righteousness, quite unlike what he had previously. He sees now that he had no righteousness of his own.

To be right before God means to be in right relationship with God. This is something which we cannot be achieved on our own, it can only be received as a gift from God. We do not deserve it and we cannot earn it. But Jesus made it possible by what He did on the Cross.

John Calvin said, “The Son of God, utterly clean of all fault, nevertheless took upon himself the shame and reproach of our iniquities, and in return clothed us with his purity.”

Because of what Jesus has done, we can have confidence for the judgement day, for in Christ we will not be judged on our achievements or even our sin but on the righteousness which comes from Christ. And because of that we can have confidence for today also, and tomorrow and for everyday until Kingdom come.

The way this righteousness is achieved is not by anything which we do, but “through faith in Christ”. Faith is, however, not the way of earning the gift –rather it is the way we receive the gift. If someone gives us a gift, we cannot suggest that we have earned it, but we do receive it, unwrap it and enjoy it. By faith we receive God’s gift of righteousness and we can enjoy it.

Despite our messed up lives, notwithstanding the fact that we are much less than we think God wants us to be –He has made us righteous … and we receive that gift by faith. And because we weak humans have had nothing to do with it, we can stand confident in the righteousness of God.

Paul has a confidence before God and men so that he could say in 2 Corinthians 5:6 “we are always confident”. His confidence came from knowing that he is forgiven and that God sees him as righteous through Christ.

This is the great difference between false and true confidence.

Someone once said – “Secular self-esteem involves valuing oneself over and against God. Christian self-esteem involves valuing oneself in and through Christ.”

As a person whose life is centered on Christ you can go through life with growing confidence as you realize – meaning, receive for yourself what is already yours in Christ.

When we walk in the steps of the Master we can be steady and bold in our walk; when we trust in His unfailing love we can be firm and committed in our relationships; when our hope is in Him we are already winners.

Praise God. Amen.

Julian Krieg from Wheatbelt Mens’ Health recently told us to “talk to a mate” and challenged us, for our own physical, emotional and spiritual health, to have three kinds of relationships:

1. A partner, who is your intimate friend,
2. A mentor, who can give advice for the journey on which he has already travelled, and,
3. A mate, who is someone who thinks like you, has the same fears as you do and dreams the same dreams as you do.

A major problem in the world today is that friendship does not have the same high value which it once had. CS Lewis wrote that “To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves. The modern world though, ignores it … it has become something quite marginal, a diversion, something that only fills up chinks of one’s time.”

Yet, friendship is an essential human need. It is the core of Biblical Christianity and it should be at the heart of church life. We were made to live in relationship with God and with each other. In Genesis 3 we see God’s desire to walk with Adam and Eve on the cool of the day. And just one chapter before that God says that “it is not good for man to be alone” – we need to have relationships!

And isn’t it interesting that it was the sin of Adam and Eve which not only caused the breakdown of their relationship with God, but also with each other. From that moment on men and women have lived in the tension between both desiring and needing human friendships (because that is how we were created); and yet finding those friendships hard (because of the inherent sin in us and in the world around us.)

The good news though, is that on the cross Jesus not only destroyed the barrier between us and God but also the barrier between people by “destroying the wall of hostility” as Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:14. One of the essential aspects of Jesus’ redemptive work was the restoration of friendships.

He also set us an example of friendship. He was not only fully God, but He was fully human, and, like us, He needed friends. He constantly describes His disciples as “friends” and within that larger group of men and women was a small group of just three special friends (Peter, James and John), one of whom was His closest friend.

And then, in our text from Philippians today, we get a fascinating insight into two of Paul’s special friendships and we see four marks of what it means to be a Christian friend.

The first is Genuine Love.

Timothy was from Derbe or Lystra. His mother was Jewish, while his father was Greek. While he was brought up as a Greek it was through his mother Eunice, his grandmother Lois, and Paul that Timothy became a Christian. Paul, being older describes their friendship as being like that of father and son and he describes him as “my son whom I love”.

They became very close friends and went through a great deal together because Timothy often accompanied Paul on his travels. They had been imprisoned for their faith and Timothy was often associated with Paul in his letters. Paul also used him as a messenger to carry information, advice or encouragement to various churches.

Here, in this text, Paul pays special tribute to his friend, saying, “I have no one else like him, who takes a genuine interest in your welfare.” And he makes the comment. “For everyone (else) looks out for his own interests.” Paul loved Timothy because he took a genuine interest in others.

He also loved Epaphroditus and says of this friend that his death would have caused him great sorrow. He is ungrudging in his praise for him and shows a genuine concern for his safety.

Epaphroditus himself was a loyal friend to both Paul and the Philippians. When he was seriously ill, almost to the point of death, he is troubled, not about dying but that the church in Philippi might have been upset about his illness.

We see the first mark of Christian friendship in these two men – a genuine love and concern for other people.

Those who care only for themselves seldom make many friends and those who want friends for selfish reasons never really make them. Friendship comes through a genuine interest in other people.

Dale Carnegie said that you can make more friends in two months by being interested in them than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.

And genuine love should never be confined only to fellow Christians. It is only by true friendships which show genuine love to others that we are able to successfully pass on the good news of Jesus Christ to them.

The second mark of a true Christian friend is the common interest which they share. Yes of course, friendships are almost always made by people with interests in common, but, as CS Lewis points out, “we picture friends as side by side, looking ahead, at the same thing but not at each other, whereas lovers are invariably face to face.” And, as Christians, we are called to love one another.

Christian friendship is of a totally different nature to ordinary friendships; it goes beyond interests in outside things to interest in each other. And from that common interest comes trust, security and openness which flows from a common focus in Jesus Christ.

Paul, in his various letters, refers to both Timothy and Epaphroditus as “brothers” for there was something in their relationship which brings them into fellowship with each other in a unique way – they are together of the family of God.

And just like Jesus accepted everyone but chose just a small group of friends, so did Paul, and so must we. We need to have those with whom our trust runs deep, who encourage us and who pray regularly for us.

The third mark of Christian friendship is the common vision in which we serve together in the work of the gospel. In our passage, Paul refers to Timothy as a “co-slave” (for that is what the words “he has served with me” mean) and he refers to Epaphroditus as a fellow worker. There was no sense of one being superior to the other, they had a common vision and they worked together to achieve it.

When we have no vision beyond ourselves we tend to be inward looking and friendships in such groups will often shrivel up and die. Conversely, when we work together – as we are beginning to see in the Men’s Group, then friendships blossom and flourish.

Finally, we see that Paul refers to Epaphroditus in three ways – “my brother, fellow-worker and fellow-soldier.” There is a sense of an ascending scale – common sympathy, common work and common danger. As friends we face the risks and dangers of the common life together.

The Christian life is not easy. We are as much fellow-soldiers as those who fought at Gallipoli and on other battle fronts. Our battles may not be physical but they are just as severe. The opposition we face may not be that faced by the early church of prison, torture and death, but the challenge from the world, the flesh and the devil is just as hard – we need Christian friendships to support one another in the battles of life.

We don’t have the full story of Epaphroditus’ situation but it seems from our text that when the Philippian Church could not help in Paul’s situation, this man stepped in “risking his life” for the work of Christ. It may well be that the “illness” to which Paul refers may have arisen from beating and torture which Epaphroditus endured in order to step in to help Paul. Whatever the full story was, it is clear that Epaphroditus showed reckless courage to help –that is the mark of true friendship.

In talking about this kind of friendship with His disciples, Jesus said, “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” He was, of course, speaking of Himself but it is a divine description of true friendship which we have even applied to those who have given their lives in just wars.

All friendship involves taking risks, even with one another. Jesus made Himself vulnerable to His friends – He said to them once, “I call you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you” and yet, in the end, He was betrayed by one of them and deserted by the others. Real friendship will always involve the risk of rejection, hurt and being let down but that in no way means that we should not seek genuine friendships.

It is in giving that we receive. It is in risking our lives for others that we find life and friendship.

True joy – the ongoing feature of this life in Christ is to be found, not in seeking our own interests, but in seeking the good of our Lord and of others.

You might remember that definition of joy, which most of us learned in Sunday School – Jesus, Others, Yourself – in that order.

Epaphroditus had that order right, so Paul says, “Welcome him in the Lord with great joy, and honor men like him, ^?because he almost died for the work of Christ, risking his life to make up for the help you could not give me.”

First the work of Christ, then helping others, before having concern for his own life.

True friendships are vital to making our life worth living, and such friendships are found in genuine love for one another, a common interest in Jesus Christ, a common vision for Gospel outreach and risking all for the sake of Christ and one’s friends.

We have seen in this series the challenge to live Christlike lives – “have the same attitude in you that was in Christ Jesus”.

Now in our text Paul sets the challenge for us to take up responsibility for our lives … “therefore” he says.

And someone once said that every time you see the word “therefore” in the Bible, you should ask what its there for.

“Therefore” because Jesus was obedient to His responsibility..

“Therefore” because Christ has been exalted, you must work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

In our society today, there are few people who want to take responsibility for their actions. Most want to shift the blame – it’s the government’s fault, or the economy, or the environment, or the employers, doctors, parents, husbands or wives.

This refusal to take responsibility goes right back to the time when Adam sinned – he refused to take responsibility for his actions. He blamed Eve. She blamed the snake.

And as the wit said, the snake didn’t have a leg to stand on!

Ultimately however, whatever the mitigating circumstances, we are all accountable for our actions and for our lives.

Verses 12 and 13 of our text deals with our responsibility for our own lives. “¹² Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,  ¹³ for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”

Paul is saying that firstly, because Jesus was obedient to His responsibility and secondly, because He is exalted as Lord –we have an obligation to work out our salvation. Indeed it is the only appropriate response on our behalf.

Salvation is undoubtedly the most important word in the New Testament, but it is often misunderstood. Perhaps we would understand the word better if we say “freedom”. To be saved by Jesus is to be set free.

Set free from the burden of our sin, our guilt, our addictions and our fear of death.

He sets us free to know God, to love others and to be our true selves, as God made us and meant us to be.

Freedom and responsibility go hand in hand. Thus Paul tells us to work out our freedom. This is not the same as working for our freedom –it is not an objective to be reached but rather a benefit to be explored and to be enjoyed more fully.

In a way, its like marriage –once possessed it must be worked out in order to enjoy in full the merits of a lifetime together.

Working out our salvation is just like that. Its dealing with the questions, “Why are we saved? For what purpose?”

In particular we need to work out the path along which we are to walk in response to God’s call. Each person has a different calling. For some it may be ministry to the poor, or evangelism, or healing, or a prophetic ministry. Whatever it is, its our responsibility to discover our gifts and to use them.

Such is the importance of this that Paul says that we are to “work out our freedom with fear and trembling”. We cannot take it lightly, or risk offending God, nor can we waste our lives.

Strangely enough, it is possible to have a saved soul and yet have a wasted life.

A man once heard this statement in a sermon –he had given his life to God, but he still had other gods. He went to church, but his faith was just one compartment of his life. He tried to brush off this idea that while he was saved his life was wasted but the words kept coming back to him like a stuck record –“saved soul, wasted life”. Every song on the radio seemed to have the same beat, when he traveled to work on the train he heard it from the wheels –“saved soul, wasted life, saved soul, wasted life, saved soul, wasted life”. Eventually he gave into the Lord and said, in effect, “You can have the whole of my life”. He went into the ministry and through him many people came into a relationship with Jesus. He needed, and God needed, for him to do something with his salvation.

We are called to work out our freedom wherever we might find ourselves –not only in the church, but also in our home, at work and at play. It is a gift that we dare not leave wrapped up.

Paul uses very careful wording in the sentence –we are to work out our freedom because it is “God who works in us”. Even in working it out we need God’s help. No sin can be conquered, nor can we accomplish anything of any lasting value without His help. We have to co-operate with the Spirit of God with our whole heart.

God’s work in us also includes our wills –He works in us “to will and to act according to His good purpose”. We thus don’t have to fear about trusting God. He has a good purpose for us. And if our will is surrendered to His will, God will give us the desire to do whatever He is calling us to do. What God wants for our lives is good –it may not always be easy but it is always the best.

Working out our salvation then means fulfilling our potential as the whole person we were meant to be since we have been set free to do so through the death of Christ on the cross.

From verse 14, Paul begins to speak of our responsibility to society. “Do everything without complaining or arguing,  ¹⁵ so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe  ¹⁶ as you hold out the word of life.”

We live in a crooked and depraved generation –“crooked” means warped in its activities and “depraved” means that it is distorted in its values. And that’s a good description of our society isn’t it –warped activities and distorted values.

But that doesn’t just apply to society today -Just listen to this quote: “I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly they are reckless beyond words…When I was young we were taught to be discreet and respectful of our elders, but the present youth are exceedingly impatient of restraint.”

And this one: “Children are tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when their elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company and gobble up dainties at the table.”

You would expect that these were written for the young people of today –in fact the first is from the 8^th century BC (2700 years ago) and the second from Socrates in 450BC (2500 years ago).

Not much has changed.

In a society which is warped and distorted due to its rebellion against God, Christians are called to live lives that are noticeably different from those around them. We are to do everything “without complaining or arguing”.

And interestingly, the word for “argue” originally meant an “intellectual rebellion against God” while the word for “complaining” originally referred to a “moral rebellion against God”.

Complaining and arguing are attitudes which are the exact opposite of “praise” which is the “fruit of the lips” that confess the name of Jesus as the Bible tells us in Hebrews 13:15. Praise of God, and living in obedience to His Word, rather than complaining and arguing should characterize the lives of Christians so that we “may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault.”

If we live like this we will be in sharp contrast with the world around us. We will “shine like stars in the universe”. A friend of mine, Erica Britz, who was severely injured in a terrorist bomb blast in 1994, and who spent nearly a year in hospital, said to me while she was there –“I have come to realize that I have to be the Bible to people who don’t know Jesus”.

Shining like stars we become a testimony and example to a dark world. We are surrounded by people who are dissatisfied because they have never found the relationship with God for which they were made. The good news of Jesus Christ not only tells of life, it also imparts life to those who hear and who respond in faith.

We have both a responsibility and a privilege to hold out this message to the society in which we live.

The third point which Paul addresses is our responsibility to the Church. “in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing.  ¹⁷ But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you.  ¹⁸ So you too should be glad and rejoice with me.”

Paul takes his own responsibility seriously. His care and concern for the Christians at Philippi are an example to us of how we are to view our responsibilities towards the church and our Christian friends.

He uses two illustrations –the first from the world of athletics and the second is of sacrifice.

He says that he wants to be able to boast “on the Day of Christ” that he “did not run or labour for nothing.” The word “labour” is probably a continuation of the metaphor of running and thus refers to the training required by an athlete. The Greek Games required rigorous training and Paul saw the need to be in peak condition spiritually. He needed “to run” and “to labour” on their behalf as he did not want his efforts to be wasted.

He gave greatly to the church –as much as possible, in order that they would have every opportunity to stand with him before God at the last –as co-victors before the throne.

The second image is even stronger: it is one of sacrifice. He speaks of being “poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith”. The background refers to the sacrifice in which a cup was poured out as an accompaniment to a larger sacrifice. He saw that which he did as a small sacrifice bringing their larger sacrifice to completion.

He obviously regarded the faith and priestly service of the Philippians as a sacrifice offered to God. In the New Testament every believer is a priest –it is no longer confined to a select group. All the Christians at Philippi (and at Upper Umgeni) are priests. Their faith, and the good deeds which spring out of such faith, are the sacrifice they make.

Such is his love and sense of responsibility for them that he is willing to pour out his life before God for their sake, even if it means his own death.

The ministry which we offer to one another is pouring out ourselves for others. Often it is draining, spiritually, emotionally and physically.

Paul is in prison as he writes this letter –he has only himself to give, and we see that his attitude is the opposite of grasping or grabbing for himself. He is following the example of Jesus Christ.

 We too have the responsibility to work out what that means for us –how following the example of Jesus Christ creates a responsibility for our lives, for our society and for other Christians.

(Audio message at www.sermon.net/daviddekock)

The Christian faith begins in the resurrection of our Lord.

The resurrection exhausts our capacity to imagine and it pushes our reasoning ability to the breaking point.

But we don’t have to explain the resurrection.

Rather it explains us, it establishes who we are and why we are here today.

Because Easter happened, because the resurrection happened, the church happened.

The story of Easter is so familiar that we sometimes fail to hear some of the details of the account.

Today I want us to look at three of those details as they are found in Matthew’s account of the first Easter morning.

First, the stone was rolled away – not to let Jesus out – but to let us in.

I say this because the idea that God rolled the stone away from the door to let Jesus escape is inconsistent with the resurrection appearances of Jesus recorded elsewhere in the scriptures.

- appearances in which he suddenly appeared in the midst of the disciples, even when they were behind closed doors.

Closed doors never kept Jesus in or out.

Matthew makes this clear in today’s gospel reading.

In his account of the resurrection it was only after Mary Magdalene and the other Mary had come to the tomb that “there was a great earthquake, and an angel of the Lord rolled away the stone and sat upon it.” The Tomb was already empty by the time the two Mary’s got there …

For centuries the curious have always wanted to look into the dark depths of death, but the grave has been sealed with secrecy.

The grave has always mocked us.

It has always stood as the “dead end” of all our efforts to peer beyond this life into the life to come.

Now on this Resurrection Day the angel invites the two women on the first Easter morning to look inside the tomb, saying to them: “do not be afraid, I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here ; for he has been raised — as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.”

Easter rolls away the door of the tomb for us so that we might penetrate the mystery of death.

It turns the tomb from a “dead end” into a tunnel – a tunnel into the heart of eternity and shows us that the holy heart of God is love and life.

The door of the tomb is rolled away not to let Jesus out – but to let us in – to allow us to see that Christ’s promises are true.

Second – the tomb is not completely empty -

Yes, Christ’s body is not there, but the place is filled with the words of the angel,

the words we just heard,

the words that say, “Look, he is not here, he is risen.”

The words that continue on saying: “Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples – he has been raised from the dead and is going ahead of you to Galilee, and there you will see him.”

If the women on that first Easter morning had looked into an empty and silent tomb, then our resurrection faith would be a belief based on human speculation, an assumption of the moment, an argument based on negative evidence.

But no! Our faith is based on a word spoken to us by God. It is based on God’s holy promise, spoken by Christ before he died, and upon God’s holy assurance – spoken by the angel on the first Easter Sunday. That same word that echoed and re-echoed in that Easter tomb still fills the emptiness of world today. “He is risen”.

The tomb has become a trumpet proclaiming the victory of life over death, and the continuation of Christ’s presence and mission in this world – first in Galilee, and ultimately to the ends of the earth.

To say that “The Lord has risen” is not just to proclaim victory over the grave.

It is to say that God loves us with an everlasting love.

It is to say that He will build us up again.

It is to call us to take up our tambourines and to dance with joy.

The third detail is this – because of Easter we can turn our backs on the grave. Matthew tells us that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, having heard the angelic assurance, “He is risen”, turned their backs on the grave and ran “with great joy” to tell the disciples.

Joy is the key word here.

Christ was buried, but he wouldn’t stay dead.

The tomb could not hold him – and because of him – the tomb cannot hold us either.

This is what Jesus promised to us before he died,

a promise that seemed at the time totally incredible,

a matter, at best, of metaphor, and hyperbole,

but which – because of the first Easter morning, we now know to be a matter of fact and substance.

The stone of was rolled away from the tomb, not to let Jesus out, but to let us in, to show us that death is not the end – but rather a new beginning.

A beginning that proclaims the victory of life over death, and which allows us to turn our backs on the grave and face our future with faith and hope, confident that all of God’s promises will indeed bear fruit

I once read that the most important words that any one might ever say are the ones spoken just before one’s death … they are words for eternity because they are the last … they must have significance and power because no further explanation can be given.

On the other hand, perhaps the most important instructions that can be given are the first ones  … they must have an immediacy and urgency that a repetition will not need…..

The first orders are for NOW … because of THIS … I have no time for explanation : JUST DO IT !!!

Ponder a moment the last words of Jesus :

“Today you will be with me in paradise” ; “Father into Your hands I commit my Spirit” ; and “It is finished”.

They speak of a work done and complete …

“It is over,” He said. “I have achieved  what I set out to do … and because of this the sinner can be with Me in paradise.”

This was our focus on Good Friday as we gathered at the foot of the Cross. We chose to believe those last words for ourselves …

Today we gather outside the tomb …

What crucial orders do we receive ?

The angel speaks ….

“Come and see where He lay … you will find that He is not here. Then  go quickly and tell …”

The words speak of an absence of death and an urgency to get the message out … “Don’t delay, go quickly and tell that Christ has risen from the dead !”

The words are full of pregnant significance.

He did not die – He rose from the dead – this is what He said would happen – He is Master over death – we need to fear anymore – all His promises have moved from possibility into reality.

“Go quickly and tell ….”

Say…… “The Lord has risen.”

Say…… “He loves us with an everlasting love”

Say…… “He will build us up again.”

Call the people to take up their tambourines and to dance with joy !                       

This is the Easter message !!

It is the message of the Risen Lord : Come and dance, come and sing. Let’s rejoice for every promise of God is revealed, every comfort a reality, every joy a hope.

Let us go quickly and tell a struggling world lest it forget ..

Christ has risen – let us dance and sing for joy in the fullness of our salvation.

Prayer of Response

O Lord our God

You are our everpresent hope and refuge

The source of our salvation and the sustenance of our hope

May we who have stood at the empty tomb and marvelled at its message today, make haste to share this good news with the world rapidly losing is vision of hope and redemption.

May we stand one alongside another and declare the goods news of Christ died and risen.

May we reach out in your love and with our hope in You to all those who struggle along the way.

Let not our eyes be unfocussed nor our hearts careless

For You have declared that You will love us with an everlasting love and that You will build us up when we are fallen.

Bless You, our Lord and God.

Amen.

CALL TO WORSHIP :

Praise be to the Lord,

for He showed His wonderful love to me when I was in a besieged city.

In my alarm I said, “I am cut off from Your sight !”

Yet You heard my cry for mercy when I called to You for help.

Love the Lord, all His saints !

Psalm 31:21-23

Prayer of Approach

Dare we come to You, O Lord ?

Dare we come near the Cross … to the Mount of Golgotha ?

You who came from Eternity to dwell in our humanity … Dare we come ?

But yes, Your invitation stands … You who wash our feet, You who suffered to give us life ..

We come to You, O Lord .. to bow down and worship … for You are our God.

You have heard our cry for mercy, You have heard our alarm, our call for help

And on the mountain of the Lord You have provided …

Blessed is Your Name.

You have been lifted up that we might have eternal life.

You did not come to condemn but to save ..

Rejoice, O Lord, as Your people come to worship You.

SCRIPTURE READING :            John 3:14-17    

SCRIPTURE READING :            Romans 3:21-26 ; 5:1-8

Prayer of Praise

O Lord … on the Mount of Crucifixion, You shed Your precious blood

You opened Your floodgates of mercy and kissed a guilty world with love

Can our praise ever cease, will our hearts ever be still ..

Great and mighty God – who called the world into being and blessed man with Your image

You have showered undeserved grace upon Your people

You have given righteousness where it was not

You have called us to faith in Your Son

We lift our hearts to You, our Lord

We stand in wonder and amazement at Your abundant love

We remember this day and call to mind Your provision of salvation

You have redeemed the guilty, You have forgiven the sinners

We worship You. We exalt Your Holy Name

El Shaddai, El-Shaddai

El-Elyon na Adonai

Age to age You’re still the same

By the power of Your name

El-Shaddai, El-Shaddai

Erkamka na Adonai

We will praise You and lift You high …

Through Your love, and through the ram, You saved the son of Abraham

But Your most awesome work was done through the frailty of Your Son ..

El-Shaddai, El-Shaddai

Erkamka na Adonai

We will praise You and lift You high …

Help us, O Lord to see Your love

To understand it and receive it

The Love of God has paid my debt and died my death

Your blood, shed for me ..

We bless You Lord, Great and Mighty God

We bless You Lord, Lover of our soul

We bless You Lord, who died that we might have life.

To You Lord Jesus, be praise, honour and glory

forever and ever. Amen                                     

SCRIPTURE READING :            Genesis 22:1-14

SCRIPTURE READING :            Luke 23:26-47

SERMON :        “On the Mountain of the Lord it will be provided”

God watched a man take his son to Moriah.

How far would the man go … would he really offer his only son as a burnt offering ?

He watched the boy … He listened to his question, “We have the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb ?”

He waited for the father’s reply … would he hesitate, would he draw back ?

He was only a man, he had failed before. He had doubted his God in the past.

Did He really understand the promise that God’s redemption would flow through this son ?

Had He grasped the fact that this child’s death would put paid to that promise ?

How would he respond ?

He listened to the father speak to his son …

“God will provide the lamb, my son … we only need bring the wood and the fire …”

A Father watched the soldiers lead His Son away.

His heart was broken … His only begotten couldn’t even carry the wood anymore : they made someone else do it.

He saw the women of Jerusalem weeping as His son passed by ..

He saw the nails hammered into His Son’s hands …

He saw Him lifted up to die …

He waited to hear what His Son would say … would He call for help, would He draw back from death?

Would He hesitate to bring the redemption that only He could bring ?

Would He call upon the angels standing by and so put an end to the promise ?

He listened …

“Father,” He said, “forgiven them for they do not know what they are doing.”

One of those who were to die with Him sneered .. and those who were to kill Him mocked ..

The Father looked away … the pain was too much to bear.

Would this death accomplish its purpose ? Would the people put their faith in His Son ?

And then He heard the voice of one of the dying …

“Jesus, remember me when You come into Your Kingdom.”

ONE BELIEVED !!

ONE WOULD COME TO PARADISE !!

A thief and a sinner would be first into the kingdom because he believed.

God had provided on the Mountain of the Lord and one had been saved … would there be others ?

My friends, this is God’s question to you and I today …

Will you join the thief in paradise ?

Will you believe ?

On Mount Moriah God provided the ram for the sacrifice and Abraham’s son was saved.

On Mount Calvary God provided the lamb for the sacrifice and His only begotten Son died.

Will you believe that He died for you ?

Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness …

In Romans 4:20 reads, “Without weakening in his faith, Abraham faced the fact that his body was as good as dead, and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what He had promised.”

God’s promise has been provided on the Mountain of the Lord.

There is a righteousness from God that comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. It comes on Mount Calvary.

It comes for sinners.

It comes for those who know that they are powerless in the face of eternity.

It comes for you …

Perhaps you have never been sure about what will happen when you die .. perhaps eternity has seemed too far away.

If your life seems unfulfilled, an endless drudgery ..

If there seems no hope in your situation ..

If you have thought yourself unworthy of God’s love …

If your sin has bound you so fast that there seems to be no way out ..

Then look again to the mountain, to the Cross.

God has provided the lamb ..

You need only bring the wood and the fire …

The wood is your own cross … For God’s joy and salvation to prevail in you – for Christ’s life to live in you : the self life must die.

You cannot hope to save yourself … and perhaps your experience so far is proof enough.

God alone can give you true life – be like Abraham, “fully persuaded that God has the power to do what He has promised.”

He has promised abundant life to those who come in faith to the Cross of Christ.

The fire is your sin … it is consuming you, it is burning you up inside.

But it is needed at the Cross.

Unless you come with your sin, you have no place on Calvary.

There is only room enough for sinners – the self-righteous must find their own way home.

So come today to the Mountain where the Lord has provided.

Bring your cross and bring your sin …

Let us die so that we may live …

If you today, want to receive the salvation of Christ ..

the forgiveness of your sin and life everlasting …

If you today, want to confirm your faith in Christ ..

to say one again that your only hope is in Him …

Then I ask you to stand with me and pray this prayer aloud with me.

Prayer of Response

Lord Jesus, I am a sinner

I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me.

Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight.

I come to You today confessing my sin …

Cleanse me with hyssop and I will be clean,

wash me and I will be whiter than snow.

I believe that You have provided salvation for me on the Mountain of the Lord …

That Your death is my redemption …

And that You died because of my sin ..

Forgive me ..

Create in me a pure heart, O God

and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Keep me in Your presence and pour out Your Holy Spirit on me.

Restore to me the joy of my salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.

Lord, You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it ;

You do not take pleasure in burnt offerings ..

The true sacrifice is a broken spirit and a contrite heart and I bring these to You this day.

Today, O Lord, do I receive Your love and commit myself to you. 

Benediction

We have added a page to our website that contains the audio of our weekly sermons. You can find it by visiting our “Audio” page here.

The text of the messages will still continue to be found on the front page as they are available.

God Bless,

Dave Q

(Audio Version: http://sermon.net/daviddekock)

This morning I want us to look at the scriptural standard of giving – what exactly does God expect of us? This is not the church’s or the congregation’s expectation based on a budget but God’s standard as determined through His Word.

It is sad that the Biblical basis of giving is seldom taught from the pulpit and perhaps its because the one who does the preaching is the one who receives the greater portion of the income. And yet it is God’s standard and not that of the preacher, whether he receives from that income or not.

I have certainly made every effort to distance myself from the financial decisions of any church of which I am the pastor and I encourage every minister to do the same.

This might seem strange in my case because my background before coming into the ministry was in finance. I have managed companies with budgets running into millions and I have two degrees in the finance field including a Masters in Business Administration. But my call is not to be the financial manager of the church but to be its pastor. That means I must teach about what the Bible says about all kinds of things, including our finances but always from the Biblical perspective rather than what the accountants and professors have to say.

So what does the Bible say about our giving.

The very first standard that we find is that we are called to give a tithe to the Lord. That is one tenth of our income.

In Leviticus 27:30 we read that, “A tithe of everything belongs to the Lord; it is holy to the Lord.” In effect this is saying that the first tenth of our income belongs to God and not to us.

It is holy … separated to God’s purpose. So when we tithe, we are merely returning to God the seed of the harvest … …… if a farmer were to consume his whole harvest he would have no seed to plant for the next season.

Paul uses this analogy in our text today … He (GOD!) who supplies seed to the sower (US!!!) will also increase your store of seed (THAT WHICH IS GIVEN TO BE THE SEED OF THE NEXT HARVEST) and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.

Very clearly Paul is addressing this situation in the context of giving … He says, “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.”

But we don’t give for a reward … in fact it is not even part of the equation. We give because God first gave to us.

In the apparently incongruous way of Christ in which we go down to be up and die to live, the reward of giving is in fact in the giving itself rather than that God will do something good for us because we have given. Actually, God is not going to do anything for us at all … the seed that we return to Him will yield a different harvest.

We were the harvest of someone else’s giving, and ultimately we are the harvest of God’s self-giving on the Cross and so the seed we sow, the tithes we bring, will yield a different harvest of souls. Perhaps from another town or another generation … God knows.

And so, does God then not reward us for our giving … well, the Scripture does say that in respect of giving that by “the measure that we use will it be measured unto us”  but it seems that God does not so much reward our giving, as our obedience to His word.

In 1 Samuel 15:22, the Lord says that “to obey is better than sacrifice” and time and again He says “I require mercy, not sacrifice.” God’s call to us is a call to obedience not to make sacrifices in search of rewards and in that obedience, according to God’s strange economics is found the true blessing of God.

Still on the subject of the tithe, we turn to Malachi 3:6-10. Here we have a sharp exchange between Israel and God.

“Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD Almighty.

“But you ask, ‘How are we to return?’

 “Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me.

“But you ask, ‘How do we rob you?’

“In tithes and offerings.  ⁹ You are under a curse—the whole nation of you—because you are robbing me.  ¹⁰ Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.”

You see, God expects our obedience to the tithe … indeed lack of obedience in this, or any other area for that matter, can lead to a separation between God and us. But the Lord does not just expect the obedience and that’s that … He does also honour the obedience that comes through the giving of the tithe.

“Bring the whole tithe …. and see if I will not open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have enough room for it.”

In the Letter to the Ephesians, Paul addresses God as the One who “can do exceedingly, abundantly more than we can ever ask or imagine.” We must not have a low view of God. He invites us to test His greatness and His exceeding generosity to those who believe.

Some argue that the tithe is Law and therefore belongs to the Old Testament and so is not an obligation for us today. But against this view we must say, we worship the God who never changes. He is the Same, yesterday, today and forever. Tithing did not come with the Law at Mount Sinai … even Abraham gave a tithe to Melchizedek, the King and Priest of Jerusalem and who is, according to Hebrews 7, the antetype of Jesus.

“You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.”

In effect, Abraham was giving the tithe to the pre-existent Jesus …

Is tithing then still required in the New Testament Church?

First, we need to take note of the fact that it was never stopped. In the earliest days of the New Testament church the people gave much more than just a tithe. However, in our text we do see that Paul does say that a man must give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion. Some have suggested that this means that we give as we can, rather than to give a tenth of our income.

Without doubt, this is not true. Paul is, in the first instance speaking about a specific collection – money to be raised for famine relief in Israel … this is not the tithe. It is over an above the tithe. Second, he is talking about offerings … again, this is that which we give sacrificially over and above our tithe.

The tithe then, is the first part of our income and it belongs to God as the first standard of Biblical giving. We give our tithe – one tenth of our income – to God’s work through the Church … for the prime purpose of our tithe, must be seed for the next harvest of souls !

The second standard of Biblical giving is our voluntary giving. The Bible refers to this as offerings and collections.

This is what we give to the work of the Lord over and above our tithe – in a sense, this is the “secret” part of our giving where, as the Bible says, the “left hand does not know what the right hand does.” Offerings are what we choose to give out of our own volition, the collection is our response to a specific appeal. Both of these are included in our charitable giving ie giving to charity work outside of the church’s specific mission but the tithe is not.

Offerings and collections are, in the expectation of scripture, to be sacrificial because the implication is that we do without in order to make the gift. The tithe, by the way, is never referred to in Scripture as a sacrifice. 

There is a difference between “tithes” and “offerings” since the Bible often refers to both in the same sentence. And often when we read about “giving” in the Bible it is a reference to an offering … in the strictest Biblical sense, the tithe is not “giving” … it is returning “stock seed” to the Lord. It is giving back to God that which is already His.

The Lord loves us to make offerings … in 2 Corinthians 9:7 we read that “the Lord loves a cheerful (or hilarious) giver.

And He always rewards the giver’s obedience … in Luke 6:38, Jesus says, “Give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Why don’t you test the Lord in this, as Malachi says. The Bible instructs us to tithe. Margaret and I have tithed for almost the whole of our Christian walk and we have seen it as an essential expression of our trust in our God who has given much, much more than we could ever ask or imagine.

Official offerings are taken by the church from time to time – but it is my understanding from Scripture that these are to be limited to special situations. If the congregation is tithing then there is usually no need to take up special offerings – there is always enough in the storehouse to meet these situations.

I do however believe that we should have a regular opportunity to take a collection to give support to needy individuals – often in churches today, this takes the form of a Retiring Offering. In the past it was often a box at the door of the church called the “poor box”. In my previous congregation my son-in-law made four wooden boxes that were permanently in place for anyone to make contributions.

The elders have felt that as a church we also tithe, that we should give one tenth of all our income for work outside the church. This is an excellent way of providing mission support and of assisting people who are out in the field with God’s work.

Finally, remember whatever you give to the Lord’s work is between you and Him. Please don’t think that I am trying to pressurise you, or attempting to do anything other than give you the scriptural basis of giving. Rather, go down on your knees and ask the Lord what you should give.

The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ began long before Jesus actually arrived on the scene. It began even before John the Baptist, And before the prophets.. and Moses, and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. The Good News began already on the Day of the Fall .. immediately after man first sinned and brought separation between him and God ..

But John was the announcer of the Good News….

John came to prepare the way for the Messiah and this message was received with the same great joy with which the message of Jesus was received.

John, you see,  was the one spoken of by Isaiah … He was the voice crying in the wilderness “prepare the way of the Lord! Make his paths straight!”

And people who heard John saw him as the one promised by the prophets,

- the one who was to come before the Messiah … and so they went out to him in the wilderness

- out to him from Jerusalem, and Judea and from all the region around the Jordan … and they listened to his message

- and they responded to his call

- and in their thousands they were baptized for the forgiveness of sins.

“I tell you”, said Jesus later on, “I tell you that among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist…”

Why is this? Why did Jesus give John this high praise?

I think we often see John as a strange character….

We have this image of him with his camel hair clothing and leather belt, and his long hair and his diet of locusts and wild honey, He reminds us of the cartoons we have seen of a strange looking character who stands on the street corner waving a sign that says – “repent, the end is near.” John seems scary – frightening almost: – telling people that they are a brood of vipers, and that the axe of judgement is even now being laid to the roots of their lives,

And yet …… Thousands heard his message that the kingdom of God was near

- and thousands responded to his call to repent of their sins

- and thousands were baptized and made ready to welcome Christ into their lives.

What’s wrong with the picture we have of John?

I think that we are missing the marvel of what John called the people of Israel to receive as they came out to him at the Jordan……

John called people to be ready for the coming of Christ, by letting go of their burdens and receiving the forgiveness of God.

John said to all who came near to him that they could get a fresh start in life;

that they could begin again as newly washed individuals

- pure and holy in God’ eyes;

and that God would visit them and redeem them as promised by all the prophets of old.

John proclaimed the love of God,

the forgiveness God,

and the day of God’s coming,

…. and he made this personal and particular, by giving that love and forgiveness to all those who came to him and entered the river with him.

Today Matthew and Beth have brought their daughter to join them in that river. Abigail is too little to understand what took place in her life today .. but their parents … Matthew & Beth  … have heard and know the message of God’s love, and forgiveness, and they want their child to know and receive this message also.

The symbol of baptism is not specifically important but its message is profoundly significant ..

it tells that we can be ready for the coming of Christ ..

that we can let go of our burdens

and receive the forgiveness of God

Does this infant have burdens?

Does this little girl need forgiveness?

Perhaps not yet, certainly it does not seem so

but the time will come…

And she will realise, as we all have, that we are born into original sin … we are all sinners

And then the message that her parents, and we as a church, have proclaimed to her will find its merit in this baptism today.

As parents and congregation we have vowed today that we will bring the message to her as John did …

She are forgiven … she can let go of her burdens,

she can be ready for Christ ..

Today, through baptism, the path has been cleared before this little girl, it is still the task of Matthew and Beth, and us as congregation, to keep it clear and to set Abigail’s feet firmly upon it. And even if we fail, God will not, for His grace has reached into her heart in a way that is beyond our understanding.

You see, what John proclaimed and gave was hope,

the hope that peace in our lives is possible,

that the past can be forgotten,

that it can be washed away,

and that when the new comes, when God comes, we can meet him and stand before him without fear.

The call of John for us to repent is not a word of criticism nor a word that claims that somehow he is better than we.

No, on his lips the call to repentance is a word of opportunity

- it is a way into the future with God,

- it is a renewal our relationship with the Lord.

- it is a new beginning in our relationships with each other.

It is a foreshadowing of the message of the one to whom he pointed,

the one who preached peace to those who were far off, and to those who were near.

Peace in forgiveness,

Peace in the Spirit,

Peace in a new life,

Peace in a new heaven and a new earth.

Despite how John railed against the sins of those who thought they had none, his message was that of the one who followed him:

There is none so lost, that they cannot be found,

none so bad, that God still will not seek them out to save them, none so hopeless, that their life cannot be changed.

It is important for us to have this vision of God and to hold onto his promises.

It is important that we open our hearts to God, to admit to him what is wrong in our lives to ask for his forgiveness and to vow each day to live as he has shown us.

It is important, not only to have a vision of what God has done, is doing, and will do;

it is important that we be willing to confess our need for him and to accept from his hands the forgiveness he offers, the new life he gives

- the life which leads us to his Son.

It is what, in the end, we all need, and it is what God offers to us, it is what John pointed to as he spoke in the wilderness of the one who was to come after him.

God, who formed us in His image, and breathed His life within us, has a passion for us. He loves us so much, that He gave His Son, so that we would not be lost, but would come to everlasting life – which is an old-fashioned way of saying that our lives would be made wholly new and that we would, in this new life, be freed of the burden and struggles of the old life.

The invitation is to you, as much as it is to Abigail.

The world today looks for happiness in all kinds of wrong places – in money, sex, relationships and worldly success.

In Paul’s letter to the Philippians he tells us that he had found true happiness and strangely enough it is in none of these things. He is in prison, chained to a Roman soldier, unjustly accused and facing an early death and yet he tells us in verse 2 of our text that his joy is almost complete.

The only thing he needs to make his joy fully complete is for the church at Philippi to find a unity in Christ.

It seems that there was a minor disagreement between two women – Euodia and Syntyche. This is not earth shattering stuff but Paul could see the danger signs and so he appeals for unity with all the passion and arguments that he can muster – it is the one thing keeping him from complete joy.

First, he appeals to their unity in Christ (If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ).

Second, he uses the argument of God’s love (if any comfort from His love)

Third, he points to the unity which the Holy Spirit brings (if any fellowship with the Spirit),

and finally, he appeals to the tenderness and compassion of Christian love.

We started this series with a view on joy – we said that this life would be truly worth living only when it was lived in the kind of joy which Paul experienced. A joy which was uninfluenced by circumstances but which found itself utterly influenced by the goodness of God in bringing hope, salvation and love into our lives.

But one more thing is needed – it is the joy of unity in relationships with other people. As Paul begins to see warning signs in the relationship between Euodia and Syntyche he addresses this issue of unity in a most unique way.

Have you ever been in a strained relationship with someone? Did you see how it drained your joy? Not just in the relationship but gradually, steadily in every aspect of your life.

This is the danger of disunity. Paul saw it – and he also knew the answer to it. He knew that unless the issue was resolved, this life would not be worth living, and his joy would not be complete.

He urges them to a unity of mind (be like-minded), to a unity of emotions (have the same love) and a unity of wills (be of one spirit and purpose).

- A unity of mind does not imply that we must agree on every issue, but that we should have the same approach and attitude.

- A unity of emotions does not mean that we must love the same things but that we should have the same attitude of love.

- A unity of wills, means that we should have the same goal even if we do not entirely agree on how we get there.

The thing that destroys unity is wrong attitude. Paul speaks, in this context, of selfish ambition, of vain conceit and of looking only to yourselves (self-centredness).

Selfish ambition is not ambition, per se. There is nothing wrong with desiring to better oneself. The Greek word used here is in fact more correctly translated as rivalry. It suggests a competitive spirit in which one must fail for the other to succeed – it is dog eat dog. This is one of the most horrible aspects of our sinful nature, that we seek to win by destroying the other person.

Vain conceit, or vainglory, if we were to use the Authorised translation, is what William Barclay describes as “the desire for personal prestige”. Often this is an even greater temptation than wealth. To be admired and respected is fine, but to seek flattery and to puff oneself up is a disdainful thing.

I just love that advert where this bombastic idiot come up to the airline check-in and when he doesn’t get the recognition that he thinks he deserves he says to the attendant, “Do you know who I am?” She ponders him briefly and then speaks into the microphone, “Ladies and Gentlemen, here is a man who doesn’t know who he is.” Smart lady!

The opposite of such pomposity is the humility to which Paul calls us saying, “Consider others better than yourselves”. That doesn’t mean that you consider everyone else to be more gifted than you. Tiger Woods would never have to consider me a better golfer than him – that would be false humility!

And we need not consider everyone else as morally better than us – it would require considerable mental gymnastics for Mother Teresa to have thought that Adolf Hitler was better than her.

We are simply to consider others as more important than ourselves – this is the opposite of self-importance.

And then the third wrong attitude which Paul warns about is self-centredness. Martin Luther said that self-centredness was the heart of the human problem – “fallen humanity is,” he said, “man curved in on himself.” Someone else called it “the tiny dark dungeon of the ego”.

Instead we are urged to look to the interests of others. It is about how we treat our family, our neighbours, our work colleagues and members of the church. It is about what is central to our conversation, our concerns, our thoughts, our giving and our prayers.

What is the right attitude for us to have?

It is the attitude which is the same as that of Christ Jesus. He had no selfish ambition or self-importance or self-centredeness.

In verses 5-11 of our text – which was probably an early Christian hymn, we see the attitude of Jesus which should be ours as well.

First, Jesus let go of his natural status – He was in very nature God, and yet He did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped. Instead of climbing up the ladder of achievement, Jesus climbed down – He became a man. He started at the top but went down to the bottom because he was ambitious, but not for Himself, but for God and for us.

Second, we see that Jesus let go of His social status. He could not have started at a higher position – He was equal with God. He was King of kings and Lord of lords, but He made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant. Mark tells us in his gospel account that “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.”

Thirdly, Jesus let go of His legal status. He gave us His right to life, and “became obedient unto death –even death on a cross.”

Had Jesus been self-centred and looking after His own interests He would never have died. Instead He chose to die as a criminal. He gave His life as a ransom for many. He became like us so that we might become like Him; He became a slave so that we might go free; He died so that we might have life. He went from the Light of God to the darkness of death; from the highest height to the deepest depth.

Paul says that our attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus – or, if we were to directly translate it, “This thinking is in you which was also in Christ Jesus”.

The implication is that we already have this attitude of Christ. Alec Motyer, former Principal at London Bible College says that the greatest glory of Christian ethics is that it calls us to be what we already are.

Think of it like this – Shaun Pollock inherited the cricketing skills of his father Peter. In other words, he always had it in him to be a great cricketer like his dad. But he had to work at it – he had to practice, he had to work his way into the South African squad just like everyone else, but he had an advantage – he already had it in him.

So also with us. We have inherited God’s blessing as co-heirs with Christ, and we have the example of Jesus to follow, yet it still takes a lifetime to approximate the standard which Jesus set for us.

This is the attitude which we are called to have. We are called to follow the example of Jesus Christ: to demote ourselves, to be downwardly mobile, to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, to serve others and to look to their interests.

As we do this, God promises to exalt us. We cannot exalt ourselves. If we try to, God promises to humble us. This is the extraordinary paradox of the Christian life.

This is why Paul could say that he was almost completely happy. He had given up his selfish ambitions; he had given up his self-importance and he had given up his self-centredness.

All he now needed to make his joy complete was for the church in Philippi to achieve unity by applying these things to their own lives.

And in the end, Christian unity is only achieved when Jesus has become our centre and our purpose – when we are beginning to turn our attitudes around so that they become like that of Jesus.

Last Sunday’s sermon on unity and having a new attitude (based on Philippians 2:1-11) has been posted.

Last week, we saw that we should have –

• A heart of confidence in God (believing that He can fulfil His promises)

• A heart of compassion for people (believing that God loves them as much as He loves us), and

• A heart of concern for the growth of the Kingdom of God (believing that God’s intention is that none should perish but that all should come to faith in Him).

Today we are going to look at the great Possibilities which the Gospel gives us when we commit to its Priority and see it as the Purpose and Pattern for our life.

In Philippians 1:12, Paul tells us that “what has happened to him has really served to advance the gospel”.

Oh Yes? Listen to what happened to him … (2 Corinthians 12:23-27)

He was imprisoned, flogged, exposed to death.
Five times he received forty lashes minus one.
Three times he was beaten with rods,
Three times shipwrecked, a day and a night on the open sea.
Constantly on the move,
In danger from rivers, bandits and his own countrymen.
In danger from the Gentiles,
in danger in the city,
in danger at sea, and in danger from false brothers.
He laboured and toiled, went without sleep, went hungry and thirsty, and was cold and naked.

And he says, “I want you to know that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel….

And indeed, the advancement of the gospel is our purpose too … it is God’s commission to us – Follow me and make disciples.

The Gospel offers us the great Possibility to do this in any and every circumstance. Follow me and make disciples…

In verse 14, Paul say, “Because of my chains” – because of, not despite: There is a huge difference.

“Despite my chains” implies that I am not constrained by them. I am bound up but despite that I pushed ahead. It is by sheer human effort that I can achieve in my circumstances.

“Because of my chains” tells us that the chains are the very reason why Paul and his colleagues “have been encouraged to speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly.” Paul used his circumstances to share the gospel – he made the most of every opportunity!

I believe that this means that we can find great possibilities for the Gospel just where we are. Paul was in chains and in prison but he saw that as opportunity to speak the word even more courageously. He did not think that he had to get out of the situation before he could do that! There was no “if only” or “when I” in his planning. He did what he could, right where he was.

We must speak and live the Gospel right where we are, in our situation.

“Where you are” is not a hindrance, but an opportunity.

Your unchurched friends are not a liability but an opportunity. Your family who have drifted away from Jesus are not to be mourned over, but to be prayed over. Your difficult circumstances are a challenge to live in faith.

The power of the gospel flows out of our confidence in God and our love for His people – as we heard last week.

We hesitate because we often fear ridicule, unpopularity, and social isolation if we are too vocal or demonstrative about our trust in God. But if we really trust God then the place we are is the place where God wants us to be and we must use the possibilities in that place to share faith and the good news. God has put us there for that very reason.

One of our goals this year, indeed, our primary goal is to serve 42 (10) people outside the congregation this year for the sake of the gospel. I believe that each of us can use our situation to do that quite easily. A friend, a neighbour, a colleague – we are connected to them in our life and we are, in a sense, therefore also obligated to share our faith with them – just as Paul was able to use his far more complicated situation of being chained to the guards in the dungeon.

How do we do this?

Well, we need first of all to recognize the Priority of the Gospel message. Paul says, “The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached.”

The priority is that Christ is preached. In Paul’s case he sometimes saw the gospel preached out of envy and rivalry, even selfish ambition; he said that the motive did not matter.

In our case we might feel inadequate to share our faith, we might be hesitant because we fear stumbling over the sharing of our faith despite its roots deep within us, but all that matters is that Christ is preached.

It is better to do the right thing even if it is done badly. It is better to do the right thing than to do nothing at all. It is better to do the right thing even if the motives are mixed or wrong. And the right thing is that Christ is preached.

Our priority is to be so convinced of our salvation in Christ that we are no longer hesitant to share our own hope with others, especially the ones we love.

When we preach Christ we are not simply preaching values, or another good way to live, we are preaching the very essence of life …

– God made us to live in relationship with Him, Adam sinned and we became separated from Him by default, our life lost its purpose and meaning – then Christ came, and through His atoning death, He gave us our life back, in all its fullness, with all its promise and potential.

And so Paul says in verse 21, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” He did not fear death and neither should we – death is not a threat but the culmination of life, and it bring us into the presence of the One who desires that we can see Him and know Him and walk with Him in glory.

But Paul did see Purpose in life, specifically, in his case, that his readers’ joy in Christ Jesus would overflow on account of him.

And I do not think that our purpose is much different. Because of our faith and hope in Christ Jesus, joy should be our benchmark. Our spirits must be lifted up. Our hope is sure, our destiny is secure.

As Paul tells us in Romans 8 – “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We are safe in God’s love for us, nothing can ever threaten that, nothing at all! And that is cause for joy.

The purpose of our life is to live in this joy, and to be absolutely content, fearing no threat nor disaster.

The Westminister Cathechism has, as its first statement of our faith, “The chief end of man is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.” This is our chief purpose, to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.

And that must affect the Pattern of our life.

Not just to speak the gospel, or even just to believe it, but to live it.

If we believe it, it must shape our lives.

And to be quite blunt, if you believe the extraordinary claims of the gospel then you have no option but to live according to its extraordinary promise – that the God who spoke the universe into being is madly in love with you, and has shaped a destiny for you which involves a personal relationship with Him within the community of His people.

So, says Paul, “Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ … stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel without being frightened in any way.”

The great Possibility of the Gospel is realized when we, BECAUSE of our situation and circumstances are able to preach Christ as a Priority, to make the joy of Christ the Purpose of our life and to Pattern our lives so that we conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of the Gospel.

And the outcome will be that not only will our own lives be content, but others will know that contentedness themselves.

May the joy of the Lord be your strength.

Rev David de Kock

1. They are rooted in a relationship with God

2. They outline human response to the grace of God

3. They move faith from the abstract to the actual by specifying behaviour

TEN IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

1. Do you honor anything or anyone above the one true God?
2. Has God been replaced by something physical or material in your life?
3. Have you dishonored God’s name by using it in a frivolous manner?
4. Is your work more important than your relationship with God?
5. Do you honor your father and mother?
6. Do you value human life?
7. Have you kept your marriage vows?
8. Do you respect other’s rights of ownership?
9. Do you tell the truth?
10. 10. Are you content with what you have or do you covet the possessions, relationships and successes of others?”

4. They require personal responsibility for the well being of the community

5. They illustrate the connection between our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationships with each other

In the introduction to her book, The Ten Commandments, Dr. Laura Schlessinger writes; “Each day we make many, seemingly minute decisions about things that don’t really seem earth shattering. So what if we broke a promise? So what if we find passion in another bed while we or they are still married? So what if we are too focused on work, TV, or clubs to spend time with our family? So what if religion is not a big deal in our lives? When one adds up all the so-what’s,” one ends up with a life without direction, meaning, purpose, value, integrity, or long-range joy.”

I doubt that you can find another passage in the Bible that so concisely, clearly and compassionately outlines the grace of God and the response to that grace human beings are called to make than the Ten Commandments.

So lets turn to Exodus 20 and read verses 1-17.
And God spoke all these words:

^?2? “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. ^?3? “You shall have no other gods before me.

^?4? “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. ^?5? You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, ^?6? but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

^?7? “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

^?8? “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. ^?9? Six days you shall labor and do all your work, ^?10? but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. ^?11? For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

^?12? “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you. ^?13? “You shall not murder. ^?14? “You shall not commit adultery. ^?15? “You shall not steal. ^?16? “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

^?17? “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

I want to about why the Ten Commandments are so important. Any document that has lasted as long and has exerted as much influence on humanity as this one must have something going for it.
1. They are rooted in a relationship.
Look at Exodus 19:4 – 6.
^?4? ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. ^?5? Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, ^?6? you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.”

These are not arbitrary laws that require blind obedience to an invisible authoritarian. Vs.5 says, “If you keep my covenant.” A covenant is a sacred promise between two parties. You can have a contract without having a relationship. But you can’t have a covenant without one. The Ten Commandments are like a wedding vow in many ways.
God pledges his power and love and promises and presence to Israel. In turn, God expects Israel’s loyalty to himself and compassion toward others. God didn’t jot down the Ten Commandments then answer Israel’s question, “Why should we do this?” by saying, “Because I told you so.” Often, God does tell his people to obey because, “I am the Lord.” But even then his commands are predicated on this relationship. The Ten Commandments are built on responsibility. God is as bound by them as we are.

That’s why, in part, the Ten Commandments don’t work with people who don’t have a relationship with God. Why should a person avoid stealing if he or she doesn’t acknowledge the God who said, “Thou shalt not steal.”? Why should a person honor their marriage commitments if they haven’t already made a commitment to the God who said, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”?

The power of the Ten Commandments lies not in the fact that they are laws, but in that they are descriptions of how people live in relationship with God. It is true that they are law. But more than that, they are words that describe a relationship.

2. The Ten Commandments outline human response to the grace of God.
Exodus 19:1- 2 uses the word ” After” twice. In the third month after the Israelites left Egypt—on the very day—they came to the Desert of Sinai. ^?2? After they set out from Rephidim, they entered the Desert of Sinai, and Israel camped there in the desert in front of the mountain.

After what? Vs. 4 answers that question. “After I carried you on eagle’s wings and brought you to myself.”

And Exodus 20:2 says “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”

Before God ever commands them to do anything or to refrain from doing anything, he saves them. Moses did not show up in Egypt with two stone tablets and say, “If you guys will agree to obey all these commands, God will deliver you from Egyptian slavery.” He showed up and said, “God has heard your cry and has sent me to deliver you.” Then, and only then, did God outline the response Israel was to make.

Exodus 19:4- 5 outline this order perfectly. Vs. 4 says, “You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagle’s wings and brought you to myself.”
Vs. 5 says, “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.” Deliverance first. Commandment second.

And you remember what happened just 40 days after they first received the commands? They decided to violate at least the first two of them by building the golden calf and having a pagan party. And what did God do? He forgave them and reissued the commands. That’s grace.

One objection we sometimes make about studying the Ten Commandments is that the law was nailed to the cross. We are saved by grace, not law, so why are we having a sermon on the ultimate example of law?
Well, even Paul in Romans, said that the law is good. But the law doesn’t save us, it does however describe how saved people respond to the grace that saved them.

3. The Ten Commandments move faith from the abstract to the actual by specifying behavior.
If you were to do a nationwide survey and ask people, “Do you believe in God?” I’ll bet the numbers would surprise you. A huge percentage would say, “Yes, absolutely, I believe in God.” But then if you examined their lives you’d find that what they profess to believe and how they live show very little correlation. I can say to Margie, “I love you.” But if I never act out that love in specific, concrete behavior, my words are empty.
Faith, like love, is too easily kept in the realm of theory. The Ten Commandments don’t allow us to claim belief in God without demonstrating that belief in concrete actions and behaviors. They require us to affirm our faith in the daily grind of living.

So instead of, “Do you believe in God?” the Ten Commandments ask us ten questions,

1. Do you honor anything or anyone above the one true God?

2. Has God been replaced by something physical or material in your life?

3. Have you dishonored God’s name by using it in a frivolous manner?

4. Is your work more important than your relationship with God?

5. Do you honor your father and mother?

6. Do you value human life?

7. Have you kept your marriage vows?

8. Do you respect other’s rights of ownership?

9. Do you tell the truth?

10. Are you content with what you have or do you covet the possessions, relationships and successes of others?”

To God, our answers to those specific questions about behavior and morality demonstrate our belief.

4. They require personal responsibility for the well being of the community.

The “you” in all these commands is singular. One of the reasons, maybe one of the top three reasons, our world is in such a moral mess right now, can be summed up in these words; “It’s not my problem.” Really, it doesn’t make a big impact on my life if someone in Perth covets his neighbor’s way of life. If someone in Kalgoorlie lies about a business investment, big deal. If someone murders an Indian in Melbourne, that’s just too bad. Those sins don’t affect me; it’s not my problem. The problem is, though, that almost everybody feels that way. And sooner or later you are going to be lied to, or robbed.
When God came down to the mountain, hundreds of thousands of people were gathered around its base. He didn’t address the crowd, though. He addressed each and every individual. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt. You shall have no other gods before me. You, standing there by that rock, and you over by that cedar tree, and you too, the one in the red turban who is thinking in his heart how glad he is all these other people are hearing all these commands. I’m talking to you!” There is a connection between personal responsibility and the well fare of the community. The Ten Commandments shout at the top of God’s voice, “It is your problem!”

Every lie you tell or tolerate, every covetous thought you allow to live longer than a flash, every secret lust, every act of dishonesty, all of them matter. And the only way we will see our world healed is if we take the personal responsibility to make it holier and healthier beginning with ourselves.

5. They illustrate the connection between our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationships with each other.

The first four commands describe our relationship with God. The last 6 describe our relationships with each other.

In Mark 12 Jesus answered a question about which was the greatest command. He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this; Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.” What Jesus did was summarize the Ten Commandments. Love God. Love your neighbor.

These days in our culture we’ve edited Jesus’ summation of the Ten Commandments from two down to one. As long as people love each other we’re happy. You can keep God, thanks. All you need is love. The problem is we can’t get everyone to love each other. You see God is love. You get rid of God, you lose love.

What sounds like a thoroughly New Testament teaching had its origin in the Ten Commandments. You can’t have a healthy, holy relationship with humans without having a healthy, holy relationship with God.

Texts: Leviticus 8:1-9, 1 Peter 2:4-12 & Mark 1:1-8

‘The Franklin Expedition to the North Pole in 1845, with 138 officers and men, carried a “1200 volume library, a hand organ playing fifty tunes, china place settings for officers and men, cutglass wine goblets, sterling silver flatware, and no special clothing for the Arctic, only the uniforms of Her Majesty’s Navy.” It was a noble enterprise, and they were nobly dressed for it. They all died. Their corpses were found with pieces of backgammon board and a great deal of table silver engraved with officer’s initials and family crests. Dignity was all.’ So writes Annie Dillard in her masterpiece of reflection on human expeditions and encounters with God, called “Teaching a Stone to Talk.”

Her experiences in the church’s worship are interweaved with commentary on polar explorations. She finds the amateurism distressing: “A high school stage play is more polished than this service we have been rehearsing since the year one. “In two thousand years”, she says, “we have not yet worked out the kinks.”

The attempts to be relevant are laughable: I have overcome a fiercely anti-Catholic upbringing”, she says, “in order to attend Mass, simply and solely to escape Protestant guitars.”

And though she says that “people in churches are like cheerful, brainless tourists on a tour of the Absolute” she cannot keep herself away, for this is the only bus heading that way. So she discards her dignity and throws in her lot with random people, joining the motley sublime, ludicrous people who show up in polar expeditions and church congregations.

But listen to this comment … “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?

The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. The ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares as we come in the door; they should lash us to the pews. For one day the sleeping God may awake and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.”

“Week after week we witness the same miracle: that God, for reasons unfathomable, refrains from blowing our dancing bear act to smithereens. Week after week, Christ washes our dirty feet, handles our stinky toes, and repeats, ‘It is all right, believe it or not, to be people.’”

In the great mystery of our faith, God calls us into relationship with Him – into covenant. He knows exactly what it is that we are supposed to be and to do; we, for the most part, stumble along in the dark. We pore over the Bible to find the answers. Like a proud daughter after her first ballet lesson we do our worship pirouettes before our doting Father – its clumsy and graceless, but He smiles lovingly at us, as if we had rendered a world class performance of Swan Lake. We trip over our feet and our tongues, and despite it all, we are okay.

When God calls us, we have absolutely no idea of what it means and where it is going to lead us. We think we do, but for the most part, we are like a man lost, who refuses to ask directions. We go round and round, seeing the same landmarks and then at some point, we turn right, instead of left, and behold, there is our destination. Its never been far away at all.

The beginning of the Gospel is about John baptizing in the desert. All the people went out to him, for he was preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. They came because here was a man who seemed to know where he was going, and they were lost. Thousands were baptized by him but he always said that there would be one who would come after who would baptize with the Holy Spirit. While wholly within the mission of God, John was still playing with a chemistry set on the church floor – but he was warning the people to don their hard hats: the dynamite was about to explode.

And it exploded when Jesus preached his first sermon in Nazareth – “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor; he has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

This was turnaround time, the stone was laid in Zion – the chosen and precious cornerstone. He called us out of darkness into His glorious light – He issued us with crash helmets and life preserving jackets, He lashed us to the pews.

And He called us … listen carefully to what He called us, “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God.” We are set apart from our fate, we are rescued from our destiny, we are set on a new course – indeed we are given new life.

Peter, in describing God’s turnaround of our destiny through the ministry of Jesus borrows the words from Hosea the prophet and turns them around. Hosea was instructed to take for himself an unfaithful wife. She bore two children and Hosea was instructed to name them Lo-Ammi (meaning “not my people”) and Lo-Ruhamah (meaning “not loved”, or “not having mercy”). They were symbolic of the destiny of God’s divided people: The Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah – people who were respectively “rejected” and “shown no mercy”.

Peter now says to us, once you were not a people (Lo-Ammi) now you are the people of God (Ammi-El); once you were not shown mercy (Lo-Ruhamah) now you have received mercy.

In Christ, Jesus has turned the tables on our destiny. In His death, He has given us life. By His stripes, we are healed.

We plod along on our journey, often not seeing its purpose and embarrassed about our worn clothes. But that’s not right. We are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. It might not seem like it to us, but our garments are of splendour – sparkling white, washed in the blood of the Lamb. We are robed in glory, we are headed, with the heavenly throng, to take our place before the Throne – to cry out Holiness and Glory to our magnificent God.

And it begins with our baptism. The first record of a ceremonial washing in the Bible comes with the preparation of Aaron and his sons to be ordained as priests of the Most High God.

The Lord said to Moses, “Bring Aaron and his sons.” Moses washed them and then dressed them in magnificent robes. They were a chosen people, a royal priesthood for a holy nation.

When we are baptized, we too become a chosen nation, a royal priesthood and a holy nation. It might not seem like that to us, but nothing in God’s economy is as it seems. We pray poorly worded prayers, we sing songs out of tunes, we miss God’s cues in the events of life – but it changes nothing.

In faith, we have come; in grace we are blessed.

We play games with God but He takes us seriously, because that is His promise, His covenant. He does not doubt us, He will not forsake us.

We are adorned in royal robes, we stand at the foot of the Throne, God bends forward to hear our whispered prayers – and we are playing with dynamite. Not because it is dangerous to do what we do, but because God takes us seriously. He has made a promise which He will not break, not even bend.

Paul says to Timothy …

If we died with Him, we will also live with Him,

If we endure, we will also reign with Him.

If we disown Him, He will disown us;

If we are faithless, He will remain faithful, for He cannot disown Himself.

God’s promise is certain and true, He will cleanse us, He will determine a new destiny for us.

If we reject His promise, He will allow Himself to be rejected, but He will remain faithful to His promise to us, because He has made Himself one with us in Christ.

Texts: Ecclesiastes 5:8-20 & Isaiah 40:28-31

Learn Something New

Well here we are one month down, or a twelth of a year gone already. why is it that the older one gets the quicker the years flash past at several times the speed of light? ( well it seems like it does)

I wonder, is it Gods sense of Humour? or is it us getting wiser and realising finally that our sojourn here is a brief one indeed?

Some of you might have read the my say colum in the Mercury the week before last, where I spoke about New Years resolutions and why do we make them? why do we set our selves up for failure? why do we make a resolution that we can’t or maybe won’t keep?

And why can’t or won’t we keep them?

As I said in the paper it’s Possibly because we ( when I say we I’m talking rehtorically) tend to make these resolutions when we are at our most vulnerable.  just after midnight when one may be anebriated or the next day when the same one may be suffering a hangover. I can remember back to my youth hearing people say that they will never drink again after a heavy night on New Years Eve.( funny that?)

New Year’s Eve has always been a time for looking back to the past, and more importantly, forward to the coming year. It’s a time to reflect on the changes we want (or need) to make and resolve to follow through on those changes. Did your New Year resolutions make the top ten list.

This list and comentary’s was taken from the NYE website Australia.  I ‘m slightly gobsmacked that there was a website dedicated to NYE and frivolous resolutions which I’m sure the vast majority have no intention of keeping.

If you have a look at the Celebrity Resolutions it is enough to make your mind like mine, boggle at the inane and down right stupid things people make resolutions about. ( why I ask after reading this drivell are celebrities put up on pedastals?)

Anyway I digress here is the list of The Top Ten New Years Resolutions  for 2010 made by every day Australians like you and I.

1. Spend More Time with Family & Friends

Recent polls conducted by General Nutrition Centers, Quicken, and others show that more than 50% of Australians vow to appreciate loved ones and spend more time with family and friends this year.

2. Fit in Fitness

The evidence is in for fitness. Regular exercise has been associated with more health benefits than anything else known to man. Studies show that it reduces the risk of some cancers, increases longevity, helps achieve and maintain weight loss, enhances mood, lowers blood pressure, and even improves arthritis. In short, exercise keeps you healthy and makes you look and feel better.

3. Tame the Bulge

Fifty-five percent of adults in Australia are overweight, so it is not surprising to find that weight loss is one of the most popular New Year’s resolutions. Setting reasonable goals and staying focused are the two most important factors in sticking with a weight loss program, and the key to success for those millions of Australians who made a New Year’s commitment to shed extra pounds.

4. Quit Smoking

If you have resolved to make this the year that you stamp out your smoking habit, over-the-counter availability of nicotine replacement therapy now provides easier access to proven quit-smoking aids. Even if you’ve tried to quit before and failed, don’t let it get you down. On average, smokers try about four times before they quit for good. Start enjoying the rest of your smoke-free life!

5. Enjoy Life More

Given the hectic, stressful lifestyles of millions of Australians, it is no wonder that “enjoying life more” has become a popular resolution in recent years.

6. Quit Drinking

While many people use the New Year as an incentive to finally stop drinking, most are not equipped to make such a drastic lifestyle change all at once. Many heavy drinkers fail to quit cold turkey but do much better when they taper gradually, or even learn to moderate their drinking. If you have decided that you want to stop drinking, there is a world of help and support available.

7. Get Out of Debt

Was money a big source of stress in your life last year? Join the millions of Australians who have resolved to spend this year getting a handle on their finances. It’s a promise that will repay itself many times over in the year ahead.

8. Learn Something New

Have you vowed to make this year the year to learn something new? Perhaps you are considering a career change, want to learn a new language, or just how to fix your computer? Whether you take a course or read a book, you’ll find education to be one of the easiest, most motivating New Year’s resolutions to keep. Challenge your mind in the coming year, and your horizons will expand.

9. Help Others

A popular, non-selfish New Year’s resolution, volunteerism can take many forms. Whether you choose to spend time helping out at your local library, mentoring a child, or building a house, these nonprofit volunteer organizations could really use your help.

10. Get Organized

On just about every New Year resolution top ten list, organization can be a very reasonable goal. Whether you want your home organized enough that you can invite someone over on a whim, or your office organized enough that you can find the stapler when you need it, these tips and links should get you started on the way to a more organized life.

All these are well worthwhile resolutions, has anyone one here made one of these resolutions? And have you so far kept them?

A New Year resolution is a commitment that an individual makes to a project or a habit, often a lifestyle change that is generally interpreted as advantageous. The name comes from the fact that these commitments normally go into effect on New Year’s Day and remain until the set goal has been achieved, although many resolutions go unachieved & are often broken fairly shortly after they are set.

All this got me to thinking that as Chritians we well know, or should know, that trying to do things in our own strength is usually a recipe for disaster.

For instance how does one forgive ones nieghbour? When we’d much rather hold a grudge, thereby feeling superior in our self-righteousness. How do we  love our enemies? etc. the answer,we know, is that alone  we can’t. but if we ask God and trust in him then all things are possible. in   Matthew 19:26 also Mark 10:27 Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible. ( the camel through the eye of a needle quote)

So? Should we make New Years Resolutions? I believe so. If we have things in our lives that are not glorifying to God then it probably is a good idea to change that which is holding us back.

Although I generally don’t make resolutions, New Years or otherwise I think there are probably quite a few times when a New Resolution may be just the thing I need to keep me on track with God. How about you?

I found this Quote on a website called Clarity in God which sums up what I’m trying to say…

ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE

It is not God that you must convince…. It I is you that you must convince. God knows He loves you. You must know and believe He loves you. God knows health and healing is already paid for and settled. You must know that as well. God has done His part in all areas. And we must do our part.

So if you happen to be someone who makes New Years resolutions or even if you don’t. It really is important to Know that all things ARE possible in Christ Jesus Our Lord and Saviour. AMEN