Sermon: The Bible's Big Picture: New Testament

Sermon 2: The New Testament

Good morning again. Last week, I started this two talk series about the whole Bible, looking at the Bible's major themes, and focusing on the Old Testament. I started off saying that obviously in only two sermons, there is a lot of detail of the Bible that I am going to miss, and giving four reasons why we should read the whole Bible and not just rely on big picture sermons like this one - because it is a collection of reliable and accurate historical documents that claims a divine heritage; it is the primary source material for knowing about God; it is the history of the people of God (that's us!); and it is a fundamental way of God speaking to us.

Today, we will be looking at the major themes of the New Testament. But I have a secret for you. Do you remember the six main themes of the Old Testament that I gave you last week, three about God, and three about humanity? Here they are again: God is powerful over everything, not just Israel; People are sinful, rebelling against God; God wants a people for himself, and wants a relationship with his people; People are to be holy, because God is holy; God's ultimate goal is to free people from sin, and exalt the righteous, and punish the wicked; People have a choice to make about where they stand with God. Well, when we come to the New Testament, surprise surprise, the themes are the same! It shouldn't really be that surprising – if we are going to treat the Bible as one complete book, and not a collection of disparate historical writings, then we should expect that it contains the same major themes throughout its pages, from Genesis all the way to Revelation.

And yet there is a reason we separate the Old Testament from the New Testament, because they are not exactly the same. And again, it is easiest to see this from our big picture view of the Bible. Like I said last week, if we hold the Bible at arm's length, we can tell that the two big topics of the Bible are God and humanity. We come to the Bible for what it tells us about God, and what it tells us about people. Now, in the Old Testament, those two elements are very strictly delineated – God is up there being powerful, and humanity are down here being sinful. God calls to people through prophets and leaders and kings, and people are to respond by being holy and doing what they're told. And God informs them of his great plans to get rid of sin, and to exalt the righteous and punish the wicked, meaning people need to make a choice about where they stand with God. The Old Testament covers about 1500 years of human history, following the story of the nation of Israel through its creation, its freedom from slavery, its journey into the promised land, the rule of its kings, its separation, its decline into exile, and its return to the promised land.

The New Testament is half as long as the Old Testament, but it covers much less time - a period of about 90 years – it is the product of one generation of people. The reason for that is rather than covering the history of a people group, it instead focuses on the life of just one man. But in the New Testament the big picture gets more complex, because there is a blurring of the line between God and humanity. How can this happen? Well, it certainly doesn't happen because humans somehow work out how to be God. It happens because God comes to the world as a human being. Jesus Christ, God coming to earth in the flesh as a human being, is the complete focus of the New Testament.

In the Old Testament we had these three nice, neat points about God, and these three nice, neat points about humanity, and there was a nice, neat dividing line between them. God coming as Jesus, as a human, serves to bring these points into startling and beautiful clarity, like the blossoming of a flower that has grown up from its roots in the Old Testament soil, but it also some blurring between God and humans when God appears on the scene as a human.

Look at the first point - God's power being over every person and thing is not just obvious in the New Testament, it is absolutely fundamental to our understanding of the message. When God enters the world as a human being, Jesus Christ, we see he has power over sickness, over storms, over demons, and even over death. Universal problems, not just tied to Israel's land and people – and Jesus shows his power over them all. Furthermore, God is not just the God of the Jews, he is God over the Romans who have conquered Judea, he is God over their next door neighbours in Samaria, and he is God over the rest of the world and its people. But now, this is not shown through invasions or plagues or fiery acts of judgment. Instead, it is shown through the miracles Jesus performed in his ministry on earth, through his resurrection from the dead, and through the spreading of the Holy Spirit from Jerusalem into Judea, Samaria, and all the world.

The next theme is that people are sinful, and boy, does the New Testament make this clear. You need not turn any further than the gospels – who crucifies Jesus Christ, the Son of God entered into the world? It is people. It is Jews, and it is Roman authorities – no-one has clean hands. The great King of Kings enters the world, and humanity rises up in rebellion and attempts a coup, killing God. Surely I need go no further. But if we flip through the New Testament letters to churches, what do we find – groups of people who are well-grounded, highly spiritual and driven to serve God? Sometimes. But we also find these letters are written to lustful adulterers, prideful idolators, and greedy legalists, people who slip back into sin, or who cannot handle the freedom God offers, and rush back to throw themselves under the Law instead of rely on God's grace. Why is it we find the New Testament so useful? Well, partly it's written to people who are more like us, who even though they lived nearly 2,000 years ago, still thought in a very similar way to the way we do today. But it's also because we still struggle with the same problems of sin they did back then.

And yet, the coming of Jesus also brings our sin into stark contrast by the simple fact that Jesus is the exception to the rule. Here we see a human being, just like we are, but who is absolutely without sin. As a human who actually lives completely and totally for God, entirely in line with what God wants, because Jesus is God, he serves as a mirror to us where we can look at him, and see ourselves as sinful, and see how humanity is meant to be.

God still wants a people for himself, and this is assured to us by the fact that God chose to come to earth, to take on a human form and be just like us, to become one of us, so that he could reach out to us. He came to seek and save the lost, and I think sometimes we lose sight of that picture. God, the most powerful and important being in the universe, came to earth and held a little girl's hand, telling her to wake up from death. He came to earth and had dinner with prostitutes. That is how much God wants to be in relationship with people.

The fact that this extends beyond Jews becomes startlingly clear in the New Testament. The apostles begin to travel the world, planting churches, spreading the good news about Jesus Christ to everyone and anyone who will listen. The Jewish authorities try and stamp it out, going so far as to kill Christians like Stephen – but all that happens is one of the persecutors, Paul, gets converted, and the church grows even more. The Romans soon get sick of these people going around helping the sick and the orphaned and the widowed, and telling people that the only true God is the God of Israel and not the latest Roman emperor, so they start cracking down on Christians across their empire – and yet the church continues to grow even more. The book of Acts maps out this spread of the Spirit of God onto people of different nationalities – not just Jews.

Now this seems non-controversial to us as Christians – of course God's spirit rests on non-Jewish people. After all, in this church, and in most of the church across the world, Jews are a small minority of Christians. Clearly God's spirit can rest on us. But in the first century AD, this was a massive revelation – unbelievable for some. A good chunk of the New Testament letters to churches are devoted to this very subject – that God is the God of all people, not just Israel, and we don't all have to be born Jewish, or even live like Jews, to live as Christians. Something to be thankful for every time you have a piece of bacon. And we still see this church growth loud and clear today. In fact, the church is growing much faster in Africa and Asia than it is anywhere in the western world.

The fourth main theme is that people must be holy, because God is holy. The words of the Old Testament were exactly that – we looked at it last week repeated over and over in Leviticus, “Be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am holy.” The New Testament's message can be summed up in a similarly short message, coming from the lips of Jesus himself, “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” Matthew, Mark and Luke are full of this call to repentance. Turn away from your sin, and accept the good news that God comes seeking to save the lost. That is the message God brings to the world, and the one which is spread to the ends of the earth.

Quite often we focus on the 'believe' aspect, and that's not surprising, given that at the moment the most vocal opponent to Christianity in the west is Atheism, whose major argument with Christianity is the 'believe' step – they don't believe God exists, let alone that Jesus is God incarnate as a man. Moreover, most people today think that 'sin' is a relative term – that there is no inherent right or wrong, but it is a mixture of what culture says and what society says, and what you want to think. Many people care more about how much carbon dioxide is produced by the food they are eating than they do about what happens to people when they die and face eternity. More and more we are becoming a culture fixated on science as the only truth, and if something can't be scientifically proven, then people say there is no proof!

But that is a very convenient myth, and it can be dispelled just by looking at how you treat truth in your own life. You tend to trust your senses for those things you interact with yourself, but anyone who has seen a magic trick knows that your senses can be deceived, so you also rely on your own experience to give you caution. But for all those things you think to be true that aren't in your immediate experience – things that happen on the other side of the world, things that happened in the past, or things that you just can't verify for yourself because you don't own an electron microscope and you don't know particle physics or carbon chemistry or you don't have access to see what's inside Fort Knox or you can't go on the space station or whatever – you have to trust other people for their expertise in an area, their ability to accurately remember and record, and their willingness to tell the truth and not trick you.

The message of Christianity is fundamentally a trustworthy and reliable historical message. The New Testament that we are talking about today, that reports to us all about the events of Jesus' life, death and resurrection, that point to his being God in the form of a man, exists in over 5,000 existing ancient copies, many dating right back to the end of the first century – 30 or so years from when they were written. Just to put that in perspective, the next most widely attested ancient document is Homer's Illiad, written around 800BC. There are less than 650 copies available, and the earliest ones date from the 2^nd or 3^rd century AD – that's 1,000 years after it was written. Professional historians attest to the Bible's historical legitimacy and reliability. There is an unbroken chain of witnesses from Jesus' time to today – the church was started by eyewitnesses! The bottom line is that if you believe Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great or Aristotle existed and did what is reported about them, then you believe it based on less evidence than what is available for Jesus.

But as I say, that only relates to half of what Jesus says. The call Jesus makes to people has both a 'believe' and a 'repent' aspect. Repent means you have to put your sinful ways behind you, and face towards God and live a holy life of loving God and loving others – the same message of the Old Testament. Again, this focus is obvious in the New Testament letters. Taken as one unit, all the letters are a mix of theological thought on how to interpret the promises of the Old Testament through the words and actions of Jesus, and the practical realities of living these out as Christians in fellowship with each other, and living in a world that is essentially against God and his message - how to be holy, because our God is holy – and we actually now can see what a holy life looks like, because we can look at God living it in Jesus' life.

In the Old Testament, the last point about God, that God will free people from sin, exalt the righteous and punish the wicked, is described in vague and uncertain terms, described as the 'Day of the Lord' by the prophets, and usually using descriptive metaphors about war and destructive calamity upon the land. However, this too is brought into a much sharper focus in the New Testament. By the time of the first century, a far more developed theology about the end times and heaven and hell has arisen, and Jesus himself makes it clear that he has not come to be a king of some earthly realm - many were expecting the Messiah would come and defeat the Romans and start a new kingdom of Judah in accordance with the promises God made to David in the Old Testament – but rather, his throne is in heaven, and he will rule over God's people forever in a new heaven and a new earth. The rest of the New Testament picks this up as a strong and regular theme, and it is a major theme of the book of Revelation, which has a great deal to say about the glorious eternity awaiting God's people, and the fiery punishment set aside for those who remain enemies of God.

But by far and away the biggest focus is on that first part, God dealing with sin. Not only do we read in the New Testament that God, as Jesus, demonstrates his power, provides a counterpoint to human sinfulness, calls people to come into relationship with him, and gives us a clear example of what human holiness should look like, but Jesus on earth actually decisively and finally deals with sin. He does this by dying on a cross, suffering the penalty for sin that is due to all humanity – a feat that only he can achieve, we are told in the New Testament, because he has no sin to be punished for himself. This way, Jesus can offer anyone and everyone a repaired relationship with God, and a place in his people and in his heavenly kingdom. This free offer of grace becomes the crux of how God deals with people in the last days – those exalted by God are righteous because Jesus has dealt with their sins and taken them away, and those who are punished by God as wicked are those who have turned their back on the gracious gift. No longer is your membership of God's people measured by your birth into a specific national group, or your love of God based on adherence to Old Testament laws – it is now based upon your acceptance of the grace of God in forgiving your sin through Jesus Christ. And we are reminded that if you fall into sin again, you can confess that sin to God and repent of it, and he promises you forgiveness.

Now, I say that Jesus has dealt finally with sin – but when we look around, we see that sin is still in the world. We see people still being selfish, we see people doing bad things to each other, we see evil remain in the world. More importantly, we can still sin – we still do those things against God every day, still think selfish and disobedient thoughts every day, even if we are Christian and want to serve God. So has Jesus actually dealt with sin, if it's still all around us? The answer is yes: he has dealt with the most important part of sin – the punishment that follows for it. He does not stop the consequences that flow from doing sinful things – if you shoot someone, they still die. If you cheat on your taxes, you still get the dishonest gain in money. If you abuse your parents, you still hurt your relationship with them. But that is because God gives us all a choice in how we live our lives. He does not stop us from making those choices, even if they hurt us, even if they hurt others. We still have to live with the consequences of our actions, for good or for bad. But when the time comes, when God decides enough is enough, and he makes his final move to punish the wicked for all they have done, he has given us a choice to accept his forgiveness, and so to be free from the punishment that we deserve for our rebellion and disobedience. That punishment still takes effect – but not on us. If we accept God's forgiveness, then the punishment Jesus took for our sins is sufficient for us – it is sufficient for everyone, if only they will accept the free gift of forgiveness that he offers.

This focus on our individual sinful state, and the forgiveness offered to us by God, makes the last point about people very clear indeed. Humanity, humans as individuals, have a choice to make about God – whether to accept his gracious gift of forgiveness of their sin, and become one of his people, living holy lives and being exalted in the end of days to a place with him in a new heaven and a new earth; or to reject God's offer, deny either his existence or his right to choose how things get done, and so set ourselves up as an enemy of his kingdom and his purposes, and then be punished for our wickedness, and left to suffer an eternity without God in hell. This is a message that falls directly from the lips of Jesus, such as in John 3:36, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.” It is taken up by the gospel writers themselves, and is repeated throughout the entire New Testament again and again, all the way through to Revelation at the end of the Bible. Of course, mostly that message is being written to churches and believers, and it takes the form of an encouragement – spurring them on to remember the truth they have believed, and to stick to their faith, and find strength in God to continue with their holy lives, especially in the face of persecution and mistreatment.

And that message extends ever forward, remaining for us as God's people today, so we can read it, and take it to heart. Because the Christian life is hard. Christians are being persecuted for our beliefs by non-believing family or friends, or strangers that wish to attack our beliefs. British Parliament was recently told in a debate about worldwide Christian persecution that a Christian dies every 11 minutes for their faith (if everyone who lives in Hornsby was killed now, that would equal five months of worldwide Christian persecution). But even if we just have a pretty easy life, like we do here in Waitara, we still struggle against the temptation to think first about our own comfort and happiness, to do things our own way, enjoy our life as we please, and forget about living a holy life pleasing to God. For us as Christians, we have a collection of books in the New Testament that talk directly to our situation. We can read about churches just like ours, who struggle with sin like the Corinthian church, who puzzle through theological questions like the Roman church, who try to do their best to serve God and see Jesus' name be proclaimed throughout the world, like the Philippian church. We can read the message written to the seven churches in Revelation – a message that says do not forget Jesus, do not be afraid, do not be tempted by the lives of those around you, but rather hold on to the truth you have been given, work hard to be holy, loving and righteous, stick to what you have accepted as true, and accept the rebuke and correction of God so that you become holy and righteous.

But the New Testament is not just focused on existing churches, and those who already believe. You see, the gospel writers are somewhat unique in that they wrote their accounts not just for the edification and assistance of the church, but actually to reach people with the message of Jesus in a written form. We read in the gospel of John 20:31, “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” Luke tells us at the beginning of his gospel that he writes so that his readers might have certainty in the things they were taught about Jesus. These gospel authors were writing so that the message and meaning of Jesus' life could be preserved, and passed on through future generations - and now we have it today.

The message of the Bible comes to a sharp point in the New Testament – and it speaks to those who would not call themselves one of God's people. You have a choice to make. You can live your life the way you want to, but make sure you know what that life is - the life society tells you to live, the way your culture tells you, the way your wallet tells you, the way TV tells you. The life the rest of the world offers is a selfish life. Oh, don't be mistaken when I say selfish. You might help other people when you can, you might think that supporting your family is the most important thing, you might be doing your best to protect the environment. It's not a selfish life because you're stacking up a big pile of money to sleep on every night, or because you punch random strangers as you walk down the street or you steal candy from babies. It's selfish because it's focused on you - you want the power to decide what's good and what's bad, what's right and what's wrong for yourself, you want to make sure your life and the lives of people that you think are important are comfortable and secure. And the rest of the world tells you that's great! Do that! Be comfortable, enjoy life, squeeze every drop out of it, because when you die, that's it. There's no God, there's no heaven, there's no hell, so there is no repercussions for what you do. There is no ultimate importance to whether you live or die, so you might as well be happy while you can.

You can choose that life. God lets people choose that life. But it's the wrong choice. It's the wrong choice because God really does exist. Jesus really existed, not just as a man, but as God. God really walked around on this earth and revealed himself to people. He really died on a cross. He really was resurrected three days later. Hundreds of people saw him, and they started churches and spread the word and wrote books to make sure the truth would be passed on from generation to generation. And they didn't do it for glory, and they didn't do it for money – they were beaten and tortured and killed for doing this, but they went to their own crosses and beheadings and stonings knowing that they were speaking the truth they had seen and heard for themselves. We have that truth today, passed on by eyewitnesses, passed on to us. We really can live a life for God, we really can be exalted as his people, we really can live with him forever when that last day comes – and that last day is really coming.

You can choose to believe this truth, that God has made sure to pass from generation to generation, to end up here today in this church, in this sermon, for you to hear. It is the right choice. Don't just trust me. Don't just trust the other people who come to this church. Don't just trust the billions of people across the world who call Jesus God and Lord over their own lives. Trust God. He's the one who speaks to you today. Now if you've heard everything I've had to say, and you think I'm just lying, or I'm mistaken, or I've got my facts wrong, then that's fine – come tell me so afterwards, I'd love to hear your point of view. If you've heard what I've said today and you just aren't sure, and you have questions, because there are things you didn't quite understand or things you disagree with, that's fine – come tell me so afterwards, and we can talk about it. There's lunch after this talk, come and eat and have a chat, tell me your point of view or ask me your questions.

But if you have heard today the message of God from his Bible, and it has struck you, and it has convicted you, and you know that it is true, then I urge you, don't just sit there in silence and pretend you haven't heard it. If you have been touched by this message of truth, if you want to make that choice that God has given you to follow him, then I would ask you to do two things. First, when I pray to God at the end of this talk, pray along with me, silently in your mind. Then, after the talk, come up and talk to me here at the front of the church. Or if you'd rather talk to someone else at this church because you know them and you're more comfortable with that, then do that. But talk to somebody, tell them that you have made that decision, and you can find out more about what it means to decide to live your life for God. It's not easy, but it is right.

So let's pray together:

God, heavenly Father,

You are the only all-powerful God. Your power stretches over the whole world, over all peoples, kings, nations and things. You made it clear when you came to earth as Jesus that you have power over nature, over people, over sin, and over death. You have also made it clear that you want all people to treat you as their God, for them to be your people. You want to have a relationship with us on your terms. You have a plan to deal with sin, to exalt the those who do right in your eyes, and to punish those who do wrong in your eyes. I believe and accept your nature as revealed in the Bible.

I accept that I am a sinful human being. It is in my nature to want to rebel against your leadership, and to want to do things my own way. I know that you want me to live a holy life. You made that clear in Jesus' words, “Repent and believe the good news.” You have given me a choice to make, and I want to make that choice to be one of your people. I repent of my selfish life – I want to put my sinful ways behind me, and face towards you, God, and live a holy life of loving you and loving others. I know that's not always easy, but I also trust you when you say you will forgive me for my sins. I choose to follow your ways for my life, and to look to Jesus' life as an example for my own. I put my trust in you today.

By the authority and power of Jesus I pray these things, Amen.

Thank you for listening, and I hope you've enjoyed my two talks. There is coffee and tea and lunch to be served out the back. Remember, if you were convinced of the need to devote your life to God today, come up and tell me so.

Sermon: The Bible's Big Picture: The Old Testament

Sermon 1: The Old Testament

Good morning. I was asked to come and speak for two weeks about the Bible. No big surprise there, I'm sure there are talks every week at this church that come from the Bible. The difference about my talks is they will not be focusing on a specific book or chapter of the Bible. Instead, I will be seeking to cover the Bible as one whole book. Now clearly, I will not be covering it in detail. There are 66 books of the Bible, and I will have about 66 minutes if I go a few minutes over time each week. That means I could spend a minute on each book of the Bible, and that would be next to useless. What is helpful, though, is to get an understanding of the big, important, recurring themes of the Bible, those ideas that pop up again and again, the main message the Bible as a whole book is seeking to tell us. That is actually more easily followed in one or two sermons on the whole Bible, instead of picking it out piecemeal from every verse and every chapter of every book separately.

Of course, I will be leaving a lot of stuff aside. But that doesn't mean that stuff is not important! The entire Bible is important, even if some parts of it are difficult, some might even say perplexing or impossible, to understand fully. And so, before we begin on the Bible's main message, I want to give you a few quick reasons why we need to read and understand the Bible ourselves. That way, you will understand the value of the message we will be looking at over the next two weeks. These are in a particular order, not of importance per se, but of understanding. The first builds a foundation for the next, and so on. You need to get the first one before you move onto the next.

Number 1, the Bible is a collection of reliable and accurate historical documents that claim a divine heritage. That is, the Bible itself claims that God guided the authors to write what they wrote, so that the Bible is not just a collection of historical documents, but it is given to us by God.

Number 2, the Bible is the primary source material for learning about God. I say primary, because it is the best, most detailed source for information about God. It's not the only source, but the Bible is the number one place to turn when you want to know more about God. The Bible does not record every single thing God has done – that would likely be impossible for us to read. Rather, it is an edited collection of information about God that he chooses for us to have.

Number 3, the Bible is the history of the people of God – and the people of God includes us! When we become Christians, we join the family of God, and we inherit all of this as our history. Having a history is very important, because it tells you who you are, it gives you an identity.

Finally, the Bible is a fundamental way God speaks to us. The Bible is not just a book we come to to find answers and information about God. It is a place where God comes to us, and speaks to us, and tells us what he wants us to hear from him today. It is the way he has chosen.

Those four reasons are worth keeping in mind, both as you read the Bible, and as you listen this morning. If we have a focus on what we can expect the Bible to give us, then we can look out for it and recognise it more easily when it comes. That is a fine platform for us to jump from as we start to fly over the Bible, getting a bird's eye view and being able to see the largest and most important themes it contains.

Let's start from as far away as possible, where we can only see the one big thing the Bible is about. From all the way over here, looking at the Bible as one whole book, we can see that its main character is God, and that its main topic is also God. This book is about God. It tells us who God is, what God thinks and does. But the other main character in this book is humanity, people. People feature in this book almost as much as God does. It tells us who humanity is in relation to God, what we are like, what we do. So fundamentally, the Bible is about God and people. Now, once we open up the Bible, things get a lot more complicated. But let's just keep a broad view for now. The Bible is split into the Old and New Testament, and since I have two weeks to preach, I will follow the same divide. Today, we will look at the Old Testament and what it has to say, and then next week we will look at the New Testament, an see that its themes and message are fundamentally the same – they form the one book, so that should not surprise us.

Turning to the Old Testament, then, we can look at it through the broad themes we have already seen the Bible covers – we can look at what it says about God, and what it says about humanity. I am going to suggest three things the Old Testament focuses on as key things it tells us about God, and three key things it tells us about humanity. These are big, important ideas – the vast majority of what the Old Testament says fits under one or more of these six headings. I put them here in steps, so we can see the link between what we learn about God, and what we learn about people. As might be expected, everything flows from God. Again, these are in a distinct order – each one builds on the last to give us a more complete picture of God and humanity. I think you will see that while these major themes may be more focused on in one part of the story than another, they remain important themes all the way through the Old Testament.

The first big theme of the Old Testament, the first thing it tells us about God, is that God is powerful over everything, not just Israel. This is something I think we just accept these days – the ideas of God being all powerful and all knowing and everywhere are commonplace now, and in fact the philosophical debate about God in the modern world usually assumes that whatever 'god' someone is talking about has these attributes. But once upon a time – and in some places in the world, even still today – people believed in gods that were tied to specific regions, things or people, and outside those regions, things or people, these gods had no power to act. This was the case in the ancient middle east – throughout the Bible we read of these local gods, like Amon in Egypt; Ashera, Ashtoreth, Baal of Caanan; Baal-Zebub and Dagon of the Philistines; Bel and Tammuz of Babylon; and Chemosh of Moab.

And you might think that the God of the Bible is the same, because isn't he just Yahweh of Israel? But Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, is different. When Yahweh first starts to make promises to his chosen people, they are not a people, they are only one man, who is too old to have children – his name is Abraham. Yahweh claims to rule over the whole earth, and over all people, and so he can make promises to Abraham about giving him a land somewhere else, somewhere that other gods claim right over. Yahweh can claim that all people will be blessed through his people, because Yahweh is the God of all people, not just Abraham. When Yahweh comes to the aid of his early nation Israel, they are slaves in a foreign land, in Egypt. Yet he can save them from that slavery, he can defeat the Egyptian armies and their pharoahs and their magicians and their gods. When his people march through the wilderness to get to the land he has promised to them, they defeat the peoples of Edom and Moab whose land they have to cross – because Yahweh has power over them and their gods. The promised land itself is held by the Caananites, but their people and their gods are no match for Yahweh – he empowers his people to push them out of the land he had promised – land that once belonged to other people with their own gods, whose detestable practices led to Yahweh judging them – because Yahweh stands in power over all people!

But the Old Testament makes it even more clear that God is the God of everything. In Genesis, we are told that it is through his power that all things are made – everything belongs to him, because he created it! All the earth, all the animals, all the plants, all the people. And that claim gets repeated in the psalms and the prophets and other places. The book of Job, which recounts the suffering of a man under God's will, shows that God has power over some man who lives in Uz – nowhere near Israel. It describes how God has power over this man's property, his family, his health. It also tells us God has power over Satan, that angelic accuser who points to our sin and says we should be judged and punished. When the prophet Jonah is told by God to go to Israel's enemy, Nineveh, to preach to them about God, Jonah tries to run – he takes a boat in the opposite direction, and heads for Europe. But Yahweh's power stretches even into the sea – which in ancient times was the embodiment of chaos and unruliness, which defied order – and so when God sends a storm, the sailors ask Jonah what's going on, and he says in Jonah 1:9, “I am a Hebrew and I worship Yahweh, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” In verse 10 it says “This terrified them,” and for good reason – this was a God that was powerful over the land and the sea!

In the prophets, God uses plagues, swarms of locusts, storms, droughts, fire from heaven, talking donkeys, children, oil, bears and foreign armies to provide warnings and blessings and judgment to his people – nothing is outside his power. God's people are threatened by foreign armies of huge nations – it would be like if China and Russia and America all attacked Australia with their combined military might – God still protects his people. But he also punishes them with foreign armies, so when God's people Israel are taken into captivity once more by Babylon, even when their temple is destroyed, and their holy city Jerusalem is sacked and its walls torn down, God does not leave them, and God is not powerless. When they are in Babylon, Daniel is protected in the lion's den, and is given dreams and visions. God has power over foreign kings, turning Nebuchadnezzar into a howling crazy man, using King Xerxes of the Medes and Persians to protect the Jews, using King Cyrus of Persia to rebuild Jerusalem and God's temple. God's power stretches across the world, across all peoples, kings, nations, and things. That is the God of the Bible.

Now in the face of this mighty God, what are people like? Well, the Old Testament tells us many things about people, but the major, important theme, the foundational thing about people, is that they are sinful. What does it mean to be sinful? I think the psalms give us a good definition, “The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.” Those are the words of both Psalm 14 and Psalm 53 – so important it is repeated! The book of Ecclesiastes, a book of God-given wisdom, tells us in 7:20, “Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins.” From the very beginning, when God creates humanity, they turn away from him and do their own thing – and it never stops from there! Even some of God's greatest heroes of the Old Testament are sinful: Noah gets drunk and falls asleep naked; Abraham pimps his wife off to foreign kings; Jacob is a thief and a scoundrel; Moses is a murderer with anger problems; David is a murderer and an adulterer; Solomon has 700 wives and 300 concubines and worships false gods. And the people of Israel are no better! When Moses is on Mount Sinai with God getting the 10 commandments, Israel are cavorting and making false gods! When they get to the promised land, instead of worshipping God and following his laws, they worship the local gods! Again and again through the prophets God warns them, but they do not listen, and eventually he punishes them for it. In the face of an all-powerful God who rules over all things, we learn that people are sinful, disobedient, and selfish. That is human nature.

Which might make our next point about God rather strange, but it is true nonetheless: the next major theme about God is that he seeks to have a relationship with humanity. He wants to make for himself a people, and to relate to those people as their God. Right from the beginning, God shows kindness to people. Humanity is created in God's image, likely why he cares so much about us. He clothes the naked Adam and Eve after kicking them out of the garden for their sin. He chooses Noah, a righteous man and his family, to save from the flood. He blesses Abraham, and promises to turn him into a nation that God will further bless. He saves Israel from slavery in Egypt. He gives them a rich promised land, and he also gives them his holy law to follow, so they are not just a richly blessed people, but they are his richly blessed people. When Israel turns its back on God and worships other gods, he sends them warnings, he sends them prophets to do crazy things to get the people's attention, like marry a prostitute, or lie on one side and cook their food over manure - he makes it clear he will not put up with their sin and he will punish them. And like a loving father with a child running riot, he does punish them, but he never leaves them - even when they are robbed of their holy land and their temple, God does not leave them. The psalms are full of songs and poems written by people about God, about this relationship they have with God, about the relationship God wants from them. Song of Songs is a love song between a husband and a wife, that represents the love between God and his people. He calls his people ever back to him, giving them so many chances, he exceeds the patience and forgiveness of even the most devoted parent.

But God does not just want a single race to be his. No, God wants to call a people for himself made up of all the nations of the world. God's promise to Abraham is that through him all nations will be blessed. When God saves Israel out of slavery in Egypt, he says to them at Mount Sinai, in Exodus 19:5, “Although the whole earth is mine” - claiming his vast power - “you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” He wants Israel to act as his priests to the rest of the world, to stand out as mediators between God and the nations. In the laws, God makes it clear that someone who follows the laws is part of his people, even if they are not born an Israelite. God adopts Rahab the prostitute into Israel when she helps the spies who cross into Jericho. He adopts Ruth into Israel through Boaz, even though she is foreign, and even though Israelite men were not meant to marry foreign women, because she wants to be righteous. The prophets have repeated references to Jerusalem, and its spiritual version, Zion, being a place where all the nations come to worship and honour God.

The prophets also have repeated calls to God's people, and through them to all people, to be holy, and be that light to the nations, to show them what God wants of them. And this is the next point that the Old Testament tells us about humanity. Humanity needs to be holy, because God is holy. It says exactly that in the book of Leviticus, repeated over and over, “Be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am holy.” Now, holiness is a hard concept to get your head around. We had a sermon series on Leviticus recently at Waitara Anglican, and Mark, who spoke on this, put it pretty succinctly – the things that make God the most different from other gods, and God's people the most different from other people, are love and righteousness.

And that's what the law is essentially all about. Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbour as yourself. That is true holiness. And that means being different from other people without being isolated from them, because you cannot show true, godly love to other people from a distance. You have to be fair with them in your business dealings, you have to show compassion on their poor, you have to welcome them into God's people. You have to be loving and righteous, just as God is loving and righteous. You may have heard the current pope, Pope Francis, call out for a global economic system that puts people at its heart, and not “an idol called money”, because he says the current system does not show love to people – it is built on greed and selfishness, which is why it works, because people are sinful! But just because it works doesn't make it right. When you worship money and let it do what it wants, it destroys people. Money worshipped is an idol of greed. How different is Yahweh's love for people, and so how different should God's people be from the norm!

The third big point about God in the Old Testament is God's ultimate goal – he wants to free people from their sin, he wants to exalt the righteous and punish the wicked. The Old Testament makes it clear that this has not yet happened. Ecclesiastes 8:14 tells us to look around, and we will see “the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve.” God makes a lot of promises in the Old Testament, but every time you think he has fulfilled them, it turns out there is still more to be done. After they sin, God promises Adam and Eve that their children will crush sin – but their son Cain kills their other son Abel, so clearly that promise awaits fulfilment. God promises Noah after the flood that he will not destroy the world with a flood again to punish sin – but sin does not disappear. God tells the people of Israel that in the promised land, they will receive rest, and that he will live with them there, and that he will send them a prophet even greater than Moses to lead them. But they continue to sin, and even at the end of Deuteronomy it says that there has never since been a prophet so great as Moses. When they settle in the promised land and the people ask for a king, God not only gives them King David, but he also makes great promises to David – that one of his descendants will sit on the throne over God's people forever. David's son Solomon sits on the throne, and he is a man of great wisdom and he builds the temple for God in Jerusalem – but he is also an idolater and greedy, and rather than sitting on the throne forever, he in fact starts the beginning of the end of Israel's golden days.

God makes this clear, by sending prophets with the message that his plan is still to free people from sin, to punish the wicked and to exalt the righteous – it is still coming. He says things like Jeremiah 31:33, “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbour, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” In Isaiah 13:11, “I will punish the world for its evil, the wicked for their sins. I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty and will humble the pride of the ruthless.” In Zephaniah 2:3 he says, “Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, you who do what he commands. Seek righteousness, seek humility; perhaps you will be sheltered on the day of the Lord’s anger.”

And this leads us to our last major point about the Old Testament, our last big theme about people: people have a choice to make about where they stand with God. Throughout this whole story, and at every stage, one thing that is startlingly clear about people is God always gives them a choice about where they stand with him. Adam and Eve have a choice about whether to eat the fruit. Israel's people are given the choice again and again as to whether they want to follow God and his commands, and be his people, or not. Job has the choice of whether to praise God in his suffering, or to curse God. When the Jews are freed from Persia to return home to Jerusalem, they do not have to return, they can stay in Persia. It's true, the choice is often between a good and a bad option – between a blessing and a curse from God, a forgiveness and a punishment. But given how many times people seem to choose the curse and the punishment – or say they will choose the blessing, but then in their actions choose the curse – it seems only having to choose between a good and a bad option doesn't stop people from choosing the bad option – what with people being sinful and all. But God does not force the issue – he allows a choice, and allows people plenty of chances to change their mind and make the right choice when they go wrong.

Those are the main themes of the Old Testament – God is all powerful, people are sinful; God wants a relationship with people anyway; people need to be holy because God is holy; God will deal with sin, exalt the righteous and punish the wicked; and people have a choice about how they relate to God. In all this, I haven't mentioned the New Testament or Jesus at all. That's for next week. But during the early church time, the only Scriptures they had were the Old Testament. When they talk about the gospel as it appears in the Scriptures, they are talking about the Old Testament – they are talking about these themes! It was clear to them what God is like, and what people are like. It should be clear to us too. The Old Testament is the foundation of our faith – not the Jewish faith, not the Christian faith in some esoteric, remote sense – this is the foundation of our faith! What we believe about God and the world and each other hinges on the Old Testament.

Read the Old Testament for yourself, and you will see it all fits quite neatly into one or more of these six big themes. And the question then becomes, what do we do with this message? Well, really, it should be obvious. God tells us he is powerful, not just in the Middle East, not just over Jews, but over all people everywhere. That includes us. He wants a relationship with humans, and humans includes us. Yes, we're sinful, but he says he has a plan for that. He will take care of it – what he wants from us is to take his offer seriously, and to be holy – to love God and to love each other. And we have to realise that what we choose to do has consequences , because God is going to exalt those who do what is right, but he is going to punish the wicked. The Bible does not argue about these first five points. It just states they are what they are. The only one we get a say in is our choice, how we respond to it all. Have you chosen to ignore God, to not take him seriously, to just not think seriously about God? Then the Bible says that is your choice. It's the wrong choice, but it's a choice God allows you to make. However, it also says that you have another chance, you can change your choice – God is very patient, very forgiving, and he actually wants to have a relationship with you, on his terms.

Have you made that choice to follow God, to be one of his people, but found it's really hard, and that living as if you had chosen the other option is much easier, or sometimes very tempting? If so, then this is your history - you fit right in with the rest of the people of God! The Old Testament tells us that God's people made the wrong decision again and again, even though they knew it was wrong. We are talking about people who saw God's fire descend on a mountain, and then instantly turned around and started forging false idols. That is human nature. But God drives us to keep choosing him, over and over to keep coming to him, to keep being his people, to keep making the right decision. That is God's nature. So don't give up. Let's pray.

Sermon: Isaiah 9-12: God's Salvation

Isaiah 9-12: God's Salvation

Today we wrap up our seven week series on Isaiah. I get the unenviable job of preaching on four chapters of Isaiah - 9, 10, 11 and 12 - to bring us to a close of the first section of this large and important Old Testament book. These first 12 chapters of Isaiah focus on the sins of God's people, at that time being Judah, the southern kingdom of Israel, and the punishment they are facing for turning their backs on God as his people. The northern kingdom, called Israel, has already been chosen to be swept away by the armies of Assyria. Judah, the southern kingdom, think they will be safe, because they have treaties with Assyria. Plus, they are Jerusalem, the city of God, which contains the temple of God, and God wouldn't let a foreign army take his own city. Isaiah's message is that they are wrong. The northern kingdom won't be swept away because they are against Assyria, but because they are against God. Judah doesn't need protection from Assyria or Samaria or Damascus. Assyria itself will be swept away! What they need is protection from God's judgment on their sin. That is their impending doom. Their enemy is their own wickedness, their own rebellion against God.

Salvation has always been

God's plan for his people is not just to save them from the expansive armies of foreign empires. His plan has always been bigger than that - he is going to save his people from all injustice, oppression, evil, war, wickedness, foolishness, and destruction. And that, honestly, is why we still care about what Isaiah has to say. He's talking about God as a saving God, saving his people from all bad things, and giving them all good things. God doesn't just say to his people, “I'll save you from your enemies and their armies if you turn back to me from your sinful, idolatrous ways.” Instead, he reminds them, “I will save you from all your real enemies – injustice, foolishness and wickedness – even your own!” That's been God's promise all along. Isaiah is just one scene in the long story of God's promise. It's not a new story for us, it wasn't a new story back then, even when Isaiah gave it the first time. God saved his people from slavery in Egypt 800 years before. He would send his perfect saviour, Jesus, 700 years later. It's one big story that stretches back to the beginning of time, and will stretch forward, through today, into eternity. We are part of this story. This is important to us.

What will this grand salvation plan of God be like? Look at the way Isaiah paints his picture of God's salvation for his readers and listeners. Just from the readings we had today, we can see a few things to look out for. There will be joy. There will be freedom from oppression. There will be peace, no need to fight any more. Linked to peace is that lovely passage in chapter 11 describing wolves and lambs lying together, calves and lions and cows and bears and snakes and children all living together in harmony – there will be no death, or even danger.

In amongst all this, there is a person who will take charge of the world. This powerful figure is called God, and has the Spirit of God, the wisdom of God, the power of God, and his reign lasts forever. And this powerful figure brings judgment.

Importantly for us, this salvation comes not only to Judah and the Jews, but it comes to all nations – it is a worldwide thing.

So these are the things that make up salvation – salvation is a worldwide event where the people of God find joy, peace, freedom from oppression, freedom from their enemies, freedom from all death and danger. A powerful, righteous figure from God, who is God, is in charge, and brings justice for the poor, and judges and slays the wicked. And it lasts forever. That's salvation. Doesn't it sound wonderful? Don't you want that?

And if you weren't wondering where it is before, surely you are now! You might think, “Okay, that's great, but it sounds like this salvation isn't coming till the very end of time.” Or perhaps you're sitting here saying, “I'm a Christian, Jesus died for my sins, so I am saved. Hasn't salvation already come?” If God was talking about saving Israel back when they were slaves in Egypt, if he's talking about saving his people here in Isaiah hundreds of years after that, if Jesus comes and is still talking about salvation hundreds of years after that, and we're here still talking about salvation thousands of years after all that... well, the question is, when does God's salvation kick in? How long do we have to wait? Is it already here?

Salvation is coming

For anyone who lives in the world, though perhaps some more than others, it is clear that it hasn't come yet. There are still wars – Wikipedia says fighting continues in Syria, in Afghanistan, in Burma, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, India, Mexico, Sudan, Iraq and Mali – and that is only a list of conflicts where 1,000 or more people are dying every year. It doesn't even include attacks like the Boston marathon bombing. God's people still have enemies too: churches are still getting bombed, pastoral workers are being beaten, arrested, and buried alive, believers being persecuted, discriminated against, harassed, attacked. The enemies of God have not been judged. The wicked can still oppress the poor. People still die. There are still dangers. Go and stick your finger in a funnel-web spider's hole, and it might bite you, and you might die. Finally, people can still sin, and be wicked and foolish, and rebel against God ,and so attract his punishment.

Salvation is obviously still coming. Things are not much different today as they were in Isaiah's time, in that respect. They looked forward to salvation, and so do we.

Salvation has come

But there is a difference. As Christians, we read these chapters and we can point to a few key verses and say, “Look, that's Jesus in those verses. So salvation has already come!” After all, the people in darkness have seen a great light – Jesus is the light of the world. A child is born, a son is given, he is called Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Jesus was born as a human child into the world, we know him to be God incarnate. We understand him to be born in the line of David, a branch from the root of Jesse (King David's father). The Spirit of God is certainly upon him, in wisdom and understanding and counsel and might and knowledge and fear of God – all this we can see reflected in Jesus when we read about him in the gospels.

Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the promised one of God, who has been talked about ever since Genesis, when the descendant of Adam would strike down the serpent; ever since Moses and Egypt, when he spoke of a leader even greater than Moses; ever since King David, when he was told that one of his descendants would sit upon the throne forever. Ever since Isaiah spoke these words promising a saviour whom we could call God With Us. When Jesus was born 2000 years ago, he changed the way the clock runs on salvation. Salvation begins with Jesus. Jesus is that promised one. Jesus is our salvation, and so our salvation has come.

Salvation is here

But here's the thing. Back in Isaiah's time, God is calling on his people to respond to this news of salvation straightaway. He doesn't say, “Wait for Jesus to be born, then you can spring into action.” He wants action from his people because it's going to happen. Because when God makes a promise, it's as good as true. It's like when you take a cheque from the Reserve Bank to a normal bank, they don't have a waiting period, they just cash it, because it's guaranteed the Reserve Bank will have the money. God's promises are guaranteed to come true because it's God who makes the promise. God's people didn't need to wait for Jesus, they could act on God's salvation right then. We have Jesus, but we don't have the final promises of salvation – those come at the end. But God has promised them, so we can be sure they will come, which means we can act on them now.

Salvation is right now when you are with God. Look with me here at chapter 12. Chapter 12 is two songs that God's people should sing to God because of his salvation. The first one is a song of praise, starting at vs 1, “In that day you will say: 'I will praise you, Lord. Although you were angry with me, your anger has turned away and you have comforted me. 2 Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The Lord, the Lord himself, is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation.'” And then it says in verse 3 “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.”

We are saved by God from his own wrath, his punishment on us for our sin – and in that we can find comfort, right now. We might not have global peace, we might not have freedom from all oppression. Those are coming. But right now we can find a personal peace, we can be free from the fear of death, of the unknown future and what it might hold. We drink from the water of salvation with joy, a joy that can't be taken away from us by what happens in the world, because God's salvation is guaranteed. No wonder these words are in a song of praise – those truths are phenomenal. That's what salvation looks like right now.

The second song goes like this, starting at vs 4, “In that day you will say: 'Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done, and proclaim that his name is exalted. 5 Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world.'”

Whereas the first song we sing to God, thanking him for his salvation promise, this second song we sing to each other. We are saying to each other, “God is so great, you should go and tell everyone about him!” This song obviously needs to be sung before salvation is finished, because it is about proclaiming God's glory to the nations, all the great things he has done.

Often we focus on what we are doing to bring that message about God's glory to people. But in the light of this second song, singing to each other about God's greatness, think for a moment about what we do in life to encourage each other to glorify God and proclaim his name. Maybe we support people financially to go and proclaim God's greatness, like missionaries. Maybe we equip people with the training they need to share their testimony. Maybe we share with others stories of our own experiences in the faith, and what God has done in other people's lives through us. Maybe we organise a situation that allows others to meet with people who need to hear, befriend them and be a part of their lives. Maybe we see someone doing one of these things, and we offer to help, or even just take an interest, ask them how it's going, and pray for them.

There are lots of things we can do, but the foundation of them all will be the same: we expect salvation, both now and in the future, because it's guaranteed by God; we value salvation, because really, what is more valuable than an enduring peace and joy, an eternity without war, death and danger, and freedom from oppression; and because we let it seep into our lives now – we let it bring us comfort, let it bring us joy, let it bring us peace, let it free us from fear right now. Salvation isn't just something that happened back when Jesus died on a cross. Salvation isn't just something to look forward to at the end of time, whenever that will be. Salvation is here right now, it pays dividends in your life right now, the joy, the freedom from fear, and the peace and comfort of God. You should drink from God's salvation with joy; you should not be afraid of anything, because you trust God; you should treat God's future promises as guaranteed. If you expect it, and you value it, then you'll live it and proclaim it, and encourage others to do the same.

Sermon: Leviticus 16: Day of Atonement

Atonement: Lev 16:1-22

Sin is important to God. God goes through cycles of revealing to his people both his judgment and his mercy in relation to sin. In Genesis, he shows to Adam and Eve first his judgment (curses), then his mercy (clothing). To Israel at Mt Sinai, he showed judgment (slaughter and plague) then mercy (let his glory pass by Moses). Now, after the death of Aaron's sons (sin, judgment) he explains his institutional mercy in the Day of Atonement (mercy).

* Sin is serious stuff

- Sin is deadly: if you don't treat it seriously, it's like mishandling some deadly chemical.

- Sin separates us from God (hence the purification required before this sacrifice can even be made; hence the scapegoat being sent away). It has to be dealt with before we can approach him (hence the cycle of sin, judgment, mercy).

- You can't just deal with sin whenever you want. You have to do what God says.

* Sin has to be dealt with both in public and private

- Aaron's own sin and that of his family had to be atoned for, then a sacrifice was made for the tabernacle and the tent of meeting that were representative of God with the people.

- Then the other goat had hands laid on it, and was publicly sent away, representing sin being dealt with and removed.

- Sin is both public and private, personal and corporate.

* Atonement is needed

- Atonement means making reparations, doing what is necessary to restore things to how they were.

- But how can one goat atone for the sins of a whole nation?

- These sacrifices don't actually have any force to deal with sin. They are only as effective as God makes them. In this case, once a year. Just like God doesn't really live in the Most Holy Place, but he treats it as so to make the point that he lives with his people. The sacrifices are a metaphor for God's holiness, sin's seriousness and its need to be dealt with.

* So what?

- We don't live in a 'Christian nation', but we are still members of the one Church.

- We don't offer sacrifices of atonement for communities any more. God dealt with this once for all, so there is no reason to.

- This festival shows us that God takes sin seriously, and even though he deals with it himself, we still need to deal with it on our side, not just individually, but as a community. We may not be responsible for the country we live in, but we are responsible for our own spiritual community. Things like the child sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the church need to be dealt with seriously not just because they reflect on the church to others, not just because they reflect on God to the outside world, but because we need to take sin seriously because it's serious!

Sermon words

We don't tend to do much as a nation. We are more usually focused on our own individual activities. But once every three years or so, an event does occur that unites Australia, that involves almost every adult citizen, that brings us together as a people, for one day, to make a decision as to the future of our country. It is something that impacts everyone. It is something that crosses cultural, gender, and religious boundaries. And it's not a sport. And it is compulsory. That day is voting day.

And once every three or so years, when we have these elections, there is a little ceremony that takes place, whereby the Governor-General swears in the new prime minister and government ministers. It is a fairly simple oath that is taken, but without this ceremony, without this symbolic gesture, there cannot be a federal government. One small action has one very large result. After that oath, the prime minister and government is put in charge of over one trillion dollars, over 80,000 armed forces personnel, and over 160,000 Commonwealth public servants. After that oath, the wheels of government can start turning once more.

Well, in ancient Israel, the high priest officiated over a ceremony that was similarly a symbolic gesture, but that represented an even greater, more important result for the nation as a whole. Once a year, he would perform this Day of Atonement ritual, which represented God cleansing the sin of his people, so that they could remain in his presence.

Sin is serious stuff

Now, it's hard to really appreciate the depth of importance of this statement without having a proper appreciation of just how serious sin is. You see, sin is not just a matter of disobedience that requires punishment. It is something that prevents us from coming close to God. Sinfulness is the opposite to holiness, and God is holy. The Old Testament uses the language of cleanness and purity to describe holiness – God is perfectly clean and pure. When you're reading about this cleanness, and all the hard work God's people had to do to keep themselves ceremonially clean (we read a sample of that in verse 4), it's easy to mistakenly think that God is like clean, pure water, and sin is like poison, and you have to make sure that you're clean, and everything is clean, otherwise it might pollute God's perfect, clean water.

But that's not how it works. God's holiness is not like pure water that is in danger of being ruined by our sin. God's holiness is clean and pure the way disinfectant bleach is clean and pure, and our sin is like the germs of a disease. Do you think you wear thick rubber gloves and protective clothing to protect the bleach from getting contaminated by your skin? It's to protect us from getting burned! The problem with sin is that it's not just something we do – sin is part of who we are as human beings. The sickness of sin can't survive in God's holy presence... but neither can the people sick with sin. God's rules about ritual cleanness are not to protect him from the dirtiness of people's sin – they are to protect people infected with sin from his perfect, holy bleach.

Sin is serious stuff. Like any highly volatile and dangerous substance, you can't just deal with sin any way you want. You have to do it right. If you get bitten by a venomous snake, you can't decide, “Oh, I just want to get some bed rest and take some Panadol.” You can't decide, “It's not really convenient for me to get the anti-venom now, I'm going to wait until I've been to the shops and bought dinner.” But at the same time, you also can't decide, “You know, I don't like getting headaches. I'm just going to take enough painkillers now to last me the rest of my life.” Well, you can, but the rest of your life won't be very long. Earlier in Leviticus, the sons of Aaron, the high priest, decide they want to make sacrifices to God when they wanted, rather than when God had approved them. It was about them, not about God – and that is sin. The result was God burned them to death. You can read about that in chapter 10. It turns out you can't just approach God whenever and however you want. He is too holy, too pure for that. It's not God who gets burned by sin.

Sin, then, is serious stuff. It's not just bad, it's not just distasteful, it's not just ugly. Sin is not even just deadly. It prevents us from being able to come close to God – which is what he wants, since we're his people – so it has to be dealt with. Just think about that a moment... is that how you think about sin? Do you think about its consequences as being so severe, that it makes it impossible for people to come close to God? When you sin, are you thinking about what impact it will have on your relationship with God? And just to make this clear, I don't mean your eternal salvation. We know that as Christians, even if we sin, we are forgiven by God thanks to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We're free from eternal punishment. But sin still has consequences that aren't eternal. You still have a relationship with God to maintain.

Think of it this way: if a child swears at its mother and abuses her, does it stop being her child? No. You're always your mother's child, simply by virtue of being born to her. But that doesn't mean you can't ruin that relationship with your actions. That is what sin is like for us as Christians. God won't stop loving us, no. But it's like swearing at your mum. It still hurts the relationship. And it's hard knowing that in our relationship with God, the only person who ever does anything to screw it up is us. That's why it's so important to know that God wants us to be with him. That's why he goes to all this trouble to deal with sin, and to be seen to deal with sin. It is of supreme importance to God, and it should be of vital importance to us too.

If you want to see how far away our sin pushes us from God, then look at the ritual of the Day of Atonement. It really highlights God's holiness. The high priest has to take a bath. Only then can he put on the sacred garments to be worn for these special occasions. But that's not enough. Then he has to make a sacrifice to atone for the sins of himself and his own family. That's still not enough though. Then he has to sacrifice to cleanse the tabernacle, because that was the house of God amongst his people, and the people's sin made it unclean. Then he had to sacrifice for the most holy place inside that tabernacle, the place where God symbolically resides where the ark of the covenant sits. Then he has to make atonement for the altar, where the sacrifices are made to God.

It's like having to go through multiple security checkpoints that you see in the movies – you have to put in the right combination on the keypad, then you have to have a fingerprint scan, then a retinal scan, then a voice recognition scan, then you have to be X-rayed for weapons, then searched for bombs and chemicals, and then finally you are allowed into that most secure place where the most valuable people or possessions are kept. It is symbolic of how big a barrier sin is to our being with God.

Atonement, needed?

Finally, once all those steps have been taken, the high priest can lay his hands on the head of a goat, and he can confess all the sin and wickedness of God's people, and with that, all the sin of God's people is put onto that goat. And they don't kill that goat, surprisingly. Instead, they take that goat, with all the people's sins, out into the wilderness. And that symbolises the taking away of their sins, outside of the camp, outside of the people of God – and with their sins gone away, they can now remain in God's presence without fear.

I say it symbolises, and I think we have to be clear about this – the sacrifices in the Old Testament Levitical law do not deal with sin. They are only symbols. This is called the Day of Atonement, but really, it is not an atonement in the human sense of the word. 'Atone' means to be 'at one' with each other – that's not a silly saying to make it easier to remember, the word's provenance is actually from the saying 'at one'. It means you make reparations to bring a relationship that has become askew back into accord. But if the Day of Atonement really made atonement for the sin of the nation of Israel, then how much was sin of Israel's million or so people worth each year? How much did it cost? One goat. All the other animals are sacrifices to cleanse the tent and the altar and the high priest so he can come to this one, lone atonement goat. This goat is not a sacrifice – it is donated by all the people of Israel, so it represents essentially a zero loss on their part. And it doesn't even get killed – it gets released into the desert.

There is no part of the Day of Atonement symbolism that includes having to give sacrificially, or pay a cost. The Israelites are not paying reparations to God for their sin on this day. The Day of Atonement is entirely a work of God. Sound familiar? “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.” Yes, it may have been possible for some Israelites to mistakenly build for themselves a works based salvation – just like the church has done in the past. But God's attitude to sin has always been the same – it is something he despises, and something he deals with for us. People often think that God seems to change the rules between the Old Testament and the New, but really, this is the same God. When the Israelites see that goat being led off into the desert, they have to trust that God will deal with their sin. And he did so – at the cross of Christ. Is it any different for us, reading that Jesus takes away our sin? You can't see sin, after all. You can't feel it or measure it. God tells us that Jesus took it away, and we have to trust him – just like the people of Israel had to trust God would do what he was showing in this symbolic ritual.

God's People Saved

Which brings us back full circle to the beginning of my talk, about symbolic actions. The Day of Atonement is a national symbol, one that includes all of God's people, even if it is only the High Priest officiating. It takes away the sin of a whole nation, not just the High Priest. They are freed from their sin together, and that is what unifies them as a people before God. It's no coincidence that the scapegoat is taken out of the camp – it symbolises that the peoples' sin is carried outside the community now, outside of their camp.

We don't often focus on our sin as a community of God, although sometimes we're forced to. So we should remember that we are saved not just as individuals, but saved into the people of God. It is true that sin is a problem between you and God, but his solution is between us and God, together. We can spend a lot of our time focused on our own individual spiritual needs and standing before God, but we mustn't forget that God relates to us not just on our own, but as members of one body, which is his church.

In 1 Peter 2:9-10 it says, “[Y]ou are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

God's community is a vital part of the Christian spiritual life. It's not vital because we come and sing and hear sermons. It's about being a member of a larger community, whose focus is on God. We are linked not just with God, but with each other, and not just each other here, but with our brothers and sisters around the world. What links us is not our denominations, not our worship music, not our geography – it is our salvation, it is God's mercy. “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

If you are not a part of the church, by that I mean if you are not connected with God's people, then you are missing a huge part of how God interacts with you. I daresay that this is the biggest selling point any church should have. If weekly sermons and songs of praise are what attract people, then we should all be like Hillsong. Those things are good, but they are only a function of what church is really about – it's about us coming together as a community of believers united by God's mercy, and relating to God in that communal aspect. That's why our church's vision is “To see people engaging with God in community”. We don't just want people to meet God. We want them to meet God as a member of his people. We want to provide communities where you can come and see how salvation works as a people, not just as a person. We are thinking about this as a church, and that is encouraging – and we should keep thinking about it. God chooses a people for himself. He shows them mercy as a people. We should seek to serve him not just as a person, but as a people.

ANZAC Day

This war was meant to be the last,
Push battle lines into the past.
We didn't start that war, you know,
But helped to end it even so.

When Aussies still spoke like a Pom,
ANZACs were fighting at the Somme.
In the trenches and the fray,
Could be heard more than one g'day.

In Palestine, they changed the course
Of history with a light horse.
With slouch hats tilted at the brim,
They charged Beersheeba for the win.

Gallipoli is thought of most,
'Cause Aussies, they don't like to boast.
The diggers came, and many fell,
Trying to capture Dardanelles.

Remembering with pride those lost,
Helps keep us humble; counts war's cost.
I wouldn't call that first war great,
But we'll never forget it, mate.

Sermon: John 11: Raising of Lazarus

John 11:1-44 The raising of Lazarus

Jesus: The Resurrection AND the Life

Today we're looking at a great passage, one of those passages you could just preach on for hours and hours, because there are so many things to say about it – so get comfortable! Seriously, there are so many points that can be made about what happens and what is said in John 11, we will be watching a lot of opportunities fly by as we join Jesus on his walk first to Judea, to Bethany, then to Lazarus's tomb. Because even if we do get sidetracked by a few interesting tidbits, we need to ensure we stay focused on the main point of this passage – that Jesus is both the resurrection and the life.

That is a vital focus for us to hold, because the moment you take your eyes off resurrection and life – eternal life, that is – it is easy for so many other things, whether little or large, to crowd into our lives and seek to soak up our time and our headspace like a thousand little sponges.

We know how it's going to end (v 4)

We are told that is why Jesus does this miracle, this amazing action of raising one who was very dead. Look at verse 4 and see what Jesus says is going to happen with Lazarus and his sickness, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” Jesus knew what the result of this situation was going to be – it was not going to end in death. Now of course when we hear that, when the disciples heard that, they surely thought it meant Lazarus wasn't going to die. Because death is pretty final. If death is involved, it's fairly safe to say that the situation ended in death. But not when Jesus is involved.

Everyone here today heard this passage read out. I'm not ruining the story by telling you Lazarus gets raised from the dead. Most of you probably already knew. But the amazing thing about this story is that Jesus tells his disciples, and John records for us, before Lazarus has even died, that Jesus knows how this is going to end. It is not going to end in death. Death might be involved in the middle, but it's not the end. Because this is the way that glorifies God and Jesus.

Death is on the road before all of us, but it's not the end of the road. We shouldn't think it is, or act like it is. We have to remain, both in our hearts within ourselves, and in our speech and actions with others, focused on the fact that this life, while important, does not end with our death, but afterwards will come resurrection, and then eternal life through Jesus Christ. There really is nothing more important than eternal life. Our bodies will be resurrected, but our eternal dwelling will be either with God, or without him. That's where our focus should be – on spending eternity with God.

We know what the road ahead will be like (vs 9-10)

That is not as easy as it sounds. People don't like to be reminded that they are wrong either in what they think or what they do or don't do; to be told that their actions matter, that they are going to be judged and they are not good enough to pass such a judgment on their own. It doesn't matter how gentle we seek to make that message, it is a fundamentally offensive message to be told you're sinful and broken and you need Jesus. People are going to be offended, and be offensive back, and that's the road we have to walk, that's the focus we need to have, and the message we need to bring into other people's lives, or remind them of when necessary.

And again, no-one knows the hard road better than Jesus, who every step of the way – even before this miracle, and certainly afterwards - was dogged by Jewish leaders plotting and scheming his murder. In fact, last time Jesus was in Judea, they tried to stone him to death, and his disciples tell him as much. But what is Jesus' response? Look at verse 9, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. 10 It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”

This is a bit of a puzzle, but Jesus' meaning is clear from the situation. He's about to walk into a dangerous place, where he has already been threatened with stoning for his words. His disciples are concerned that it will be dangerous. But Jesus says to them two things. First of all, he knows what the road ahead holds. He's not walking into this situation ignorant of what's to come. Yes, it's dangerous. Yes, he's going to do it anyway. But knowing what's ahead is only part of the meaning. If that was all Jesus meant, it would be like saying, “It's okay to do stupid and dangerous things so long as you know they are stupid and dangerous.” Kind of like smoking.

No, there's more to it than that. Jesus is saying anyone who walks in physical light doesn't trip over – it's when you try and walk in the dark you trip and fall. In the same way, he is walking in God's light, and even though that will take him down what looks like a dangerous path (because it is), it is nothing compared to walking down the path of life that is without God's light. That path is the really dangerous path. That's the path where people really stumble and fall. That's the path that leads not just to death – because even God's path can lead to death - but to eternal death, an existence without God forever.

And this message is not new to Jesus' disciples either. We are all familiar with the words of Jesus in all three synoptic gospels that they were to 'take up their cross and follow' him (Matt 10:38, Mar 8:34, Luk 9:23). So this message is likely not foreign to us either. The road ahead is lit up for us – we know what to expect. How many times do we see those uncomfortable verses about persecution, suffering for God's name, trials and pain and loss in the New Testament? But the future is also lit up with God's light, so that not only do we know what's ahead, but we know that it's the only way we can really go. God's road might contain insults, pain, suffering, even death – but it is still better than the dark road, where people are stumbling and falling into an eternity without God.

Death is still sad (vs 33, 35,38)

Turn back with me now to Jesus and his path to Judea, to Bethany, where he is greeted first by his dead friend's sister Martha, and then his other sister Mary. Now I can't imagine the sort of weight that is placed on Jesus' shoulders at this stage, and I would think few people outside of doctors really could. How many of us have had our best friend's sisters come and say, “If you'd been here, he wouldn't have died?” And we read here in John 11 not once, but three times, how this fact of Lazarus's death impacts on Jesus emotionally. Verse 33 tells us that when Mary was weeping at his feet, along with other Jews who were weeping, Jesus too was deeply moved and troubled. Verse 35 is that simple and powerful verse, “Jesus wept.” And in verse 38 we see again Jesus deeply moved when he comes to the tomb of Lazarus.

Now I've been saying that our focus needs to be on resurrection and on life. And Jesus, as I've said, knows that this situation is not going to end in death – he told the disciples so! He knows that this has happened to glorify God and himself as God's Son. He knows whether Lazarus will be with God in eternity (we assume he will be!). He knows this isn't the end. He knows all this – but he still weeps. Why? I think every Christian, every human knows the answer – because death is still sad. We are at our core eternal beings, and so when we witness the ceasing of a life, it brings sadness. Even in someone who has 'lived a long life,' or someone who 'won't be suffering any more' – even in those who we know, as much as we can know, are going to be with God, part of us still weeps.

Death also brings with it grief – a feeling of loss, because we know that we will go on living and not have that person with us any more in this life. And we should recognise grief over loss is natural, and it is acceptable to God to express that grief. Jesus looks at Mary crying at his feet, the others around her in tears, and he feels that grief. Moreover, Jesus knows that even though Lazarus will be raised now, he's going to die again. Jesus is human too, and he knows what everyone is going through. Going to visit Lazarus's tomb makes him weep and moves him deeply, for himself, for his friends, for those others that have suffered loss.

But as Christians, we can recognise the grief of loss that death brings us, and still keep our focus upon resurrection and life. Paul tells the Thessalonians in 1 Thess 4:16-18, “The Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.” Paul's advice to the ancient church remains true for the modern church – our encouragement lies less in what is happening now, but in what will happen on that last day, when all Christians will find ourselves alive eternally through Christ.

Our focus should be on life, not just resurrection (vs 25-26)

Even though Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, after about seven days of being dead (four days in the tomb, but probably about three days being embalmed before that), that is not the most important part of this passage. This miracle only exists to back up the pivotal verses of this passage, verses 25 and 26, where Jesus explains his all important 'I am' statement. “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” And then he asks the hard question, “Do you believe this?”

This is the fundamental truth of being Christian. Even when we die we will live again, because we believe in the one who is the resurrection. And when we find life in Christ, we will never truly die, for he gives us life eternal. Our focus must be on resurrection, but it must also be on eternal life. Even resurrection, incredible truth that it is, is not enough to pull us through. Lazarus was raised to life, but he was going to die again. In fact, all people will be raised from the dead in the last day – Martha refers to that in verse 24 – and then they will be judged. Judged by Jesus, for Jesus is the resurrection. Do you believe this?

Jesus is also life. On the last day, all those who are resurrected that live by Christ will not die, but have eternal life with God, in a place where there is a new heaven and a new earth. Do you believe this? Because if you do, it should be visible in the way you live now. If we believe in eternal life with Jesus, then our attitude to those things in life that try and trip us up should be one that glorifies God.

I don't want to belittle those tragedies and struggles we can have in life – they can be a really big deal! Struggles with health, security, love, loneliness, death... they are big, hard, painful things. We can mourn for the loss that they bring, but still be encouraged that in the last day, we will all be caught up with the Lord forever ,with all Christians, in an instant on judgment day. We should know those hard struggles are ahead of us, so they shouldn't cause us to stumble, because no matter how hard life might get, we're on the road lit up by God's light. And we should be out there showing people that even though our lives as Christians are filled with the same troubles as all humans – we get sick, we suffer, we die – that we face those problems knowingly, and that our path is still the path in the light. Our path doesn't end with death, but with life.