Prayer: God at Work in Spite of Fear (Judges 6)

Heavenly Father,

We know you are a god of Good.  We know that you don't delight in evil or wickedness, that it doesn't please you when people do wrong. And yet we look around our world, and we see so many acts of evil and wrong, human against human, or the world seemingly against us, and it shakes us up. We hear of oppression and bullying and mistreatment of people based on their sexuality or gender identity, and we fear that they might suffer harm. We watch people fleeing from danger being put into detention centres by our government, and we fear for their safety and health. Stories of terrorism abound - bombings in Belgium and Pakistan that kill and wound hundreds; kidnappings, beheadings, shootings, knifings, all of which are designed to strike fear into our hearts. We hear statistics of domestic violence and child abuse, and they scare us - they make us look at our own churches, even our own families, and see possible dangers for ourselves and our children. All around us people get sick, and although we have good medical facilities and hard-working doctors and nurses, people still suffer with health problems, they grow frail and they die.

We know you're a good God, but when we see and hear all these terrible things, we become afraid. And so we call out to you, our mighty God, and we ask you to hear us in our fear. We don't understand why all these terrible things happen, but we thank you that we can trust in you, Lord, knowing that you are in control. We thank you that no matter how big and scary and unstoppable the forces of evil might seem to us, you are bigger and more powerful, and you can stop them, and you will stop them. We take your promises to heart, and we rely on them, knowing that you have set a time when evil will fall, pain will end, and you will call all of your people to come to you forever. Thank you for having that wonderful endgame, and sharing it with us so that we can have that hope.

And with that end in mind, we ask that you will give us faith to stand firm in amongst the many things that we might fear in this world. Give us strength in your spirit to carry your name into dark places, so that all of your children might hear your voice, hear your call, and come back to you.  Make us your hands and your feet, so that we can offer refuge to all who call on you and ask for your help. Fill our hearts with your love for the lost, the marginalised, the mistreated, the oppressed and the weak. Fill us with joy that we can share with them in their distress. Bless us as we give whatever we have, Lord, so that they might see your light and receive your gifts.

We pray for your protection and relief for those who are suffering in the grip of physical and mental health issues. We pray for new mothers and expecting mothers and fathers, that you will be with them and watch over them, and fill them with joy and keep their children safe. We pray for those who have lost loved ones through sickness or violence, that you will be with them in their grief. We pray for those who are struggling financially, that you will ease their burdens. And we pray for those struggling with sin and spiritual darkness, that you will show them your amazing grace, and welcome them into your wonderful light.

All these things we pray, trusting in your son, Jesus Christ, amen.

Prayer - God at work despite our disobedience (Judges 14-15)

Heavenly Father,

We know that you are a holy God, perfect in love, justice and truth. We know that you are set apart from anything or anyone else. You're certainly set apart from us. We're definitely not perfect in love, justice or truth - not as individuals, not as a church, not as a society, and not as the human race. We fall short of your perfect holiness, and yet you tell us, "Be holy, because I am holy," and Jesus tells us, "Be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect."

We are not perfect, and you know that. We are tired, exhausted, sick, troubled and weak. We despair at our condition, and you know that too. So we ask you to have mercy on us, Lord, because we are faint; heal us, Lord, because we are in agony; save and deliver us, Lord, because our souls are in deep anguish. 

And we thank you, our glorious and awesome father, because when we look around this world, full of troubles and sins and suffering, we see you at work through the weakness and inability of your people. We hear about you healing people through medicines and doctors and nurses and people who go out of their way to bring relief to the sick; and we pray that you will continue to heal the sick through your people. We watch videos of you bringing comfort and relief to those who are losing homes, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, children and fields because of persecution they face or because of disasters that strike; and we especially pray for those in Japan who are helping with the earthquake relief efforts there, and for those in Chibok, Nigeria, whose kidnapped daughters have now been missing for two years. We read about those who are taking your message into places it's never been, or to people who've never heard, or who have heard a hundred times before, who are guiding and discipling people into brand new relationships with you; and we pray that you will continue to work in the hearts of all those who hear in prisons, in scripture, in church and everywhere else. And we can look around and see your hand stretching over the adults and children and families in this church, and thank you for the provision you give, the instruction you give, the support you give, the love you give amongst us and between us; and we pray that you might help us as we continue to love and support one another through times of difficulty and stress and even joy - for all the new and expecting mothers and fathers of our church, we pray you will work through your people to provide love, comfort and support.

We know that we can turn our backs on you, and yet we thank you that you never turn your back on us. We are amazed at how you can turn even our weakest moments, even our greatest failures or temptations or sins, into your most glorious successes, into times that will make the heavens fill with songs of gladness. Only you can turn evil into good, O Mighty God - only you can create perfection with such imperfect tools - and we are humbled as you choose to work through our weakness to further show your strength and glory. Help us to embrace our weakness and accept your strength as we rejoice in your glory, and praise your amazing name.

By the grace of Jesus Christ we pray,

Amen

Prayer: Understanding Miracles (John 20:24-31)

Heavenly Father,

All your works are amazing and astounding to us. From the beginning, you created the world and everything in it, suspended in a universe so finely tuned for our survival that the very existence of everything speaks to us of your love and care for us. You made humanity in your own image, and revealed yourself to us, wanting your creation to know its creator and to relate to you in love. Again and again you have chosen to work through the weak, the troubled, the sinful and the scorned, so that when you are victorious - which you always are - your victory is that much more impressive for the path that it came. You chose a man and woman, old and unable to have kids, and turned them into a nation. You took that nation, when it was overpowered and enslaved, and made them your people, giving them freedom and riches and blessings.

When you came into our world as Jesus, you didn't do it as a mighty king backed by legions of angels, or born to the emperor of the most powerful nation. You chose shepherds and foreigners for your ancestors, a carpenter and a vulnerable young woman for your parents. You came without fame or fortune, and yet you healed the sick, drove out demons, and taught us your will with power and authority. You modelled a life of love and holiness, caring for the needs of your creation. And then you did the most amazing thing we can imagine: you defeated our greatest enemies - sin and death - through dying yourself. You made yourself the lowest of the low, a criminal on a cross, cursed for us.

And then you raised Jesus from the dead... and he left again.  Rather than storming the earth and conquering it at the hands of your glorified and risen Son, you sent your spirit to dwell in your people, in ordinary people, in people like us, and you sent them to conquer the world in your name - not with violence, but with love. You have worked through us - ordinary, normal, weak and stuttering and sinful and stumbling people - to bring your loving message to billions. 

And so we come together today, Father, to ask you to continue doing what have done from the beginning. We ask you, Lord, to glorify yourself. Make your name great among all the people that we meet - Waitara locals, family and friends, workmates, acquaintances and strangers. Show your love to us and through us to others, so that more and more people might know you and love you in return. Reveal yourself and your love in every way possible, and give us the faith to know your love and accept it even when it doesn't look like the love we might want.

We pray for those among us who are sick, who are struggling, who are in pain, who are suffering trials of many and various kinds. We ask, in love for them and for you, that you will act in love to them. And we know in faith that you already do. If it is your will to heal them and to make their situations easier, do that and be glorified, Lord. If it is your will that they continue on these difficult paths and you give them the strength to overcome through faith in you, do that and be glorified, Lord.  And if it is your will that they be helped through their pain and suffering by the loving actions of your people, give us the strength to do that, so that you will be glorified, Lord.

And in all these things we pray that you will be revealed to us in greater measure, so that we might know you better, love you more, and live for your glory. And we ask these things in the authority of your son, Jesus Christ. Amen

Sermon: The Man From Heaven Heals on the Sabbath (John 5:1-15)

 As per usual, I include the sermon itself, then after that you'll find a whole bunch of scribble notes I also made whilst preparing it, so you can see where my brain was going at the time. This sermon took a number of rewrites to get right. It was mostly rethinkings about the focus of God's priorities, and what was right and not right to say about them. This turned out to be a much more focused precision point than I first thought.

Update: I did a bit more thinking about my sermon, and I have posted the updated version below, along with the sermon outline that gets handed out to people in church. The main changes are swapping around the second and third point (so now it goes God's priorities, we ignore them, we misunderstand them). I tried to disentangle these points from the illustrations and applications a bit - one of the difficulties of this sermon is the applications and illustrations apply to both points, and that could create confusion.  I also removed a hypothetical illustration, both for time purposes and because I don't think hypothetical illustrations are as powerful or helpful as the real deal. I've left the original further below, but the updated one is directly below.


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Today I will be talking about priorities - our priorities and God's priorities. Let's start with a prayer, that God might help us focus: Heavenly Father, guide our minds and our hearts, so that we aren't off track, but prioritise you today. Amen. You may need your Bibles open for this talk, and there's a sermon outline in the handout. If you do have the handout, please draw a little arrow to swap the last two points.

Once when I used to work in a petrol station, I was training a new employee on the midnight shift.  Some time in the middle of the night, a large, scary looking man came in - with a big beard, shaved head, tattoos all up his arms - and started microwaving chicken sandwiches, eating one while loading the rest into a plastic bag. Then, bold as brass, he went to walk out the door without paying for them. Before he could, I pressed a button under the counter that locked the front door, so he couldn't leave. And then he went mental. He yelled and screamed and told me to let him out, because he was already on CCTV and the cops could just catch him later. I calmly approached him (calm on the outside, I was so afraid!) and told him that he could keep the sandwich he was eating, as we obviously couldn't sell that, but he needed to give me other microwave chicken sandwiches, because they didn't belong to him.  He looked at me as if I was crazier than him, and then after a moment gave me the bag full of sandwiches. I let him out, and he left the store.

Shortly after this, my new trainee asked me, "Is that what we're expected to do?" The answer, of course, is no! A petrol station attendant is not expected to put their life at risk for the sake of a microwave chicken sandwich. Or anything else, for that matter. At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing, but in reality I had made a stupid mistake. I had made some chicken sandwiches more important than my own safety. I had the wrong priorities, and I didn't even realise until a trainee pointed it out to me!

Right from the beginning of the series we heard that John didn't record everything Jesus did, but rather had a very clear purpose in recording certain acts of Jesus - 20:31 "these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." This act of Jesus that John records in chapter 5:1-15 is all about showing us that Jesus follows God's priorities.  As Christians, we have to make sure that our priorities match up with God's priorities. We can all have the wrong priorities - if we misunderstand God's priorities, or go so far as to even ignore them.

We can see God's priorities by looking at Jesus. Jesus learns of a man who has been crippled for 38 years and, because he cares about his physical wellbeing, Jesus heals him. Being healed allowed the man to go back to the temple - crippled people were barred otherwise. It's no accident that the next time Jesus meets this man, it is in the temple.  So not only does Jesus heal him, but he restores his relationship with God's people.  When he meets the man again, Jesus tells him that the consequences of sin are even worse than a lifetime of crippling disability, so he must deal with his sin problem, and so expresses concern for his eternal spiritual welfare. Jesus's priorities are for this man's wellbeing: physical and relational and spiritual. Jesus looks for the person who is really in need - the person who is really broken - and helps them.

Jesus is showing God's priorities.  God loves people and wants to fix their problems.  God promises us he will take away all sickness, suffering and pain.  God promises to bring people into relationship with himself and with each other as a community. God really cares for people who are really broken, who really need him. That alone is enough for us to see that Jesus is the Son of God and believe in him.  But that is true for any healing that Jesus performed.  As always, when we look at the gospel of John, there is more to it.  And we see it when we realise that Jesus is willing to face persecution and death at the hands of his enemies to demonstrate and pursue God's priorities.

Now you might think, Why would anyone want to persecute someone whose priorities are caring for a broken person's physical, relational and spiritual wellbeing? And yet they do. We read about it in the verse just after our reading: "So because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him."  This act of Jesus involves more than just Jesus and the crippled man.  So let's look at the other people in our story: the Jewish leaders.

In the passage today, the wrong priorities are perfectly illustrated by the questions the Jewish leaders ask the ex-crippled man. If I wanted to be generous to them, I would say that they were trying to help everyone live a life of holiness to attract God's salvation. If I wanted to be harsh on them, I would say they were using God's laws to make life more comfortable for themselves. As we read the gospels, the truth seems to fall somewhere in the middle.  The Jewish leaders at the time thought that if people kept God's laws, maybe God would drive out their Roman dictators and set them free.  But they also wanted to wield political power over others to benefit themselves. In this way they misunderstood God's priorities of how people come to God, and they ignored God's priorities by focusing on their own comfort.  Both are wrong, and these are traps we can just as easily fall into.

The first thing they say is, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.” That's not actually true.  What the Jewish leaders did was establish a set of rules that boxed in God's own laws - laws to stop people from breaking laws.  By boxing in God's laws with other laws, they sought to stop people from sinning so as to attract God's salvation. But when the Jewish leaders made up rules like "Don't carry your mat on the Sabbath," they then enforced them by excluding people from coming to the Temple. That made them powerful!  It made them important people, and they liked it.

The man gives his answer, which is essentially "Some guy healed me, and he told me to carry my mat, so I did."

Now what did the Jewish leaders ask? "Who told you to pick it up and walk?" Not "Who healed you, who made you well, who is performing such a remarkable miracle?"  But, "Who told you to pick it up, who told you to break our laws? Who is challenging our authority?" Again, the Jewish leaders had the wrong priorities.  Their priority is finding out who is telling people to break their rules (stopping them from being saved); and who is challenging their authority (and their power and importance they love so much).

The Jewish leaders had made up laws, and they wanted people to follow those laws. And just like the Jewish leaders, as a Christian community we can sometimes make up laws to box in people's relationship with God. We use these rules to draw a line between what's right and what's wrong, so we can point to (usually someone else's) actions and say, "That's wrong." We draw these lines for lots of reasons, but ultimately it usually comes down to the same two reasons the Jewish leaders had: we think laws will bring people to God; and we want power over others because our rules make us comfortable.

And both reasons are based on wrong priorities. We are mistaken about God's priorities, and we just plain ignore them. As I said, both of these things can exist together. Let's start with when we ignore God's priorities. This is sin itself. There's no positive intent in this. It is all about making ourselves more comfortable.

Making up rules is a way of making clear lines between good and bad. And that makes us comfortable, because it means not only do we now know what's right and wrong, but we also get to say what's right and wrong. You can usually tell when we are doing this for our own comfort, because we draw lines that make actions we would never take really black and white, while we make sins we might commit rather more grey.

Look at how the western Church treats greed - an actual sin, not something we made up. On Tuesday I was sitting next to a Christian woman at the doctor. She goes to church, runs a bible study in her home, and loves God. She was complaining that her $2000 gold watch was running slow. The western church is very good at thinking that someone who spends $2000 on a watch isn't greedy.  We can't judge them for wasting money on an utter extravagance when there are people in their church who live on less than that a month and struggle to pay their rent. We're good at being non-judgmental when it comes to greed. We're very cautious. We consider that we don't know the whole story. We don't know how much the person gives to church and Christian causes. We don't know what their own conscience is like. We don't know the background or the circumstances. We are very, very careful.

But how do we treat people who smoke cigarettes?  Who wear clothes that show too much skin? Who gamble? Who vote for the Greens? It's so easy to point at them and say, "That's wrong!" But these aren't God's rules; they're our rules. And our rules are to do with our comfort zones. You can probably think of other examples of things we rail against because they make us uncomfortable. Someone goes and watches an MA15+ rated movie full of swearing and violence like Deadpool, and we can furrow our brows and tut our fingers. Someone takes a holiday and flies business class, and we say, "Ooh, that must have been nice."

Don't get me wrong. Rich does not equal greedy, and I'm not calling on us to be more judgmental of people because of their wealth or their greed. I'm saying we need to be less judgmental of people whose actions and activities we are uncomfortable with. We know how to do it with greed - we need to learn how to do it with everything, and especially things that aren't God's rules, but rather middle class cultural rules.

Tony Campolo, spiritual advisor to US President Bill Clinton, once said to a big Christian conference:  "1) Last night 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases stemming from malnutrition. 2) None of you give a <swear word>. 3) You all care more about the fact that I just said <swear word> than the fact that I just said 30,000 kids died." I don't have the guts to read out that quote exactly, because I know the moment I swear in church, there are people who will be so distracted by it they won't hear anything else I have to say. But if we care more about swear words than about kids dying, we plainly have the wrong priorities!

Now sometimes there's more to it. Sometimes someone's sin hurts us, or someone we love. It seems unfair to talk about that as if it is mere discomfort. Sometimes the pain of sin is not just the loss of a comfy chair; it's torture and betrayal and loss. And so, in pain, we lash out. I understand that, and so does God. But that  doesn't make it right. Even in the midst of pain, we must still pursue God's priorities. Torture and betrayal and loss are what Jesus experienced on the cross because of other people's sin. And he sought to fulfill God's priorities in looking after broken people on that cross! Keeping Jesus free from suffering was not God's priority. Jesus died precisely for those who caused him pain. And we are called to love others - not because they're lovely, but because we love God, and that's his priority.

Now let's move on to mistaking God's priorities by thinking we are bringing people closer to God.

I want to make it clear, it's not wrong to tell people how to live holy lives. I have no problem with telling people that something is against God's will - I do it every time I preach. And there is nothing wrong with telling someone that their sin is an obstacle between them getting to God. Of course it is! We can never get to God on our own - that's the gospel! The mistake comes when we start telling people that their sin is an obstacle between God getting to them. That is wrong! Nothing is an obstacle between God getting to them! God overcomes sin! God does away with sin! God destroys sin! That's why Jesus came - to save the lost!  To quote Jesus from another gospel, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." Sinners are the ones Jesus came for!

I think we tell ourselves we're good at recognising this gospel truth. We say we understand God's grace. We think we wouldn't make a mistake like that. Of course someone's good works don't lead to their salvation. But then we see someone in our church commit a certain kind of sin, and it's like we lose our minds. "They call themselves a Christian? They shouldn't be sinning! They must be backsliding! They mustn't really be saved!" But that's the mistake! Christians are sinners. If we're not, why do we do a confession at church every week? Why confess if we don't have any sins to confess? If you say those words every week, and you mean them, but then you judge another Christian because they have sinned, you're a hypocrite. And if I then judge you for being a hypocrite, I'm a hypocrite. My point is not to judge people who are judgmental, but rather to point out that we're all sinners! Living more holy lives is a great way to love God.  But it's a terrible way to solve our sin problem.  We can only rely on God in Christ Jesus for that.

God's priority in caring for people's physical, relational and spiritual wellbeing is not reliant on our ability to live holy lives, so we don't need to worry about regulating other people's lives to make sure they are holy enough for God. If we prioritise their knowing and loving God and his care for them - God's priority - a transformed life will follow.

If we start complaining that sinners are coming to church, we're very close to the Jewish leaders complaining that Jesus heals cripples on the Sabbath, and we are outside God's priorities. And if we start judging people because they're breaking our rules, we're doing so because they are challenging an authority we don't have, and we're outside God's priorities. God makes the rules, not us. Jesus showed us he is God's son that by healing on the sabbath. We should be following God's priorities of loving broken people, meeting their physical, relational and spiritual needs, and giving them every opportunity to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, so that by believing they may have life in his name.

What are God’s Priorities?


    1.
        1. God’s priorities are shown in Jesus


Jesus cares for physical wellbeing
“At once the man was cured” (5:9)

Jesus cares for relational wellbeing
“Later Jesus found him at the temple” (5:14)

Jesus cares for spiritual wellbeing
“Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you” (5:14)

    1.
        1. Our priorities are either God’s or wrong


The Pharisees had the wrong priorities
“[B]ecause Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him” (5:16)

We can ignore God’s priorities
“It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat” (5:10)

We can misunderstand God’s priorities
“Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?” (5:12)

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This morning, I will be talking about priorities - our priorities and God's priorities. Let's start with a prayer, that God might help us focus: Heavenly Father, guide our minds and our hearts, so that we aren't off track, but prioritise you today. Amen.

Once when I used to work in a petrol station, I was training a new employee on the midnight shift.  Some time in the middle of the night, a large, scary looking man came in - with a big beard, shaved head, tattoos all up his arms - and started microwaving chicken sandwiches, eating one while loading the rest into a plastic bag. Then, bold as brass, he went to walk out the door without paying for them. Before he did, I pressed a button under the counter that locked the front door, so he couldn't leave. And then he went mental. He yelled and screamed and told me to let him out, because he was already on CCTV and the cops could just catch him later. I calmly approached him (calm on the outside, I was so afraid!) and told him that he could keep the sandwich he was eating, because we obviously couldn't sell that, but he needed to give me other microwave chicken sandwiches, because they didn't belong to him.  He looked at me as if I was stupid, and then after a moment gave me the bag full of sandwiches. I let him out, and he left the store.

Shortly after this, my new trainee asked me, "Is that what we're expected to do?" The answer, of course, is no! A petrol station attendant is not expected to put their life at risk for the sake of a microwave chicken sandwich. Or anything else, for that matter. At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing, but in reality I had made a stupid mistake. I was trying to prevent the chicken sandwiches from being stolen at the expense of my own safety. I had the wrong priorities, and I didn't even realise until a trainee pointed it out to me!

It is possible for us to have the wrong priorities - to misunderstand God's priorities, or sometimes to even ignore them. As Christians, we have to make sure that our priorities match up with God's priorities.  Right from the beginning of the series we heard that John didn't record everything Jesus did, but rather had a very clear purpose in recording certain acts of Jesus - 20:31 "these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." This act of Jesus that John records in chapter 5:1-15 is all about showing us God's priorities.

We see God's priorities by looking at Jesus. Jesus learns of a man who has been crippled for 38 years and because he cares about his physical wellbeing, Jesus heals him. Being healed allowed the man to go back to the temple - crippled people were barred otherwise. It's no accident that the next time Jesus meets this man, it is in the temple.  So not only does Jesus heal him, but he restores his relationship with God's people.  When he meets the man again, Jesus expresses concern for his spiritual welfare, and tells him that the consequences of sin are even worse than a lifetime of crippling disability, so he should deal with his sin problem. Jesus's priorities are for this man's wellbeing: physical and relational and spiritual. Jesus looks for the person who is really in need - the person who is really broken - and helps them.

Jesus is showing God's priorities.  God loves people and wants to fix their problems.  God promises us he will take away all sickness, suffering and pain.  God promises to bring people into relationship with himself and with each other as a community. God really cares for people who are really broken, who really need him. That alone is enough for us to see that Jesus is the Son of God, and believe in him.  But that is true for any healing that Jesus performed.  As always when we look at the gospel of John, there is more to it.  And we see it when we realise that Jesus is willing to face persecution and death at the hands of his enemies to demonstrate and pursue God's priorities.

Now you might think, Why would anyone want to persecute someone whose priorities are caring for a broken person's physical, relational and spiritual wellbeing? And yet they do. We read about it in the verse just after our reading: "So because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him."  This act of Jesus involves more than just Jesus and the crippled man.  Let's look at the other people in our story: the Jewish leaders.

What were the priorities of the Jewish leaders?  The first thing they say is, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.” That's not actually true.  What the Jewish leaders did was establish a set of rules that boxed in God's own laws - laws to stop people from breaking laws.  If I wanted to be generous to them, I would say that their priority was to try and help everyone live a life of holiness to attract God's blessing. If I wanted to be harsh on them, I would say that their priority was to use God's laws as a way of making life more comfortable for themselves. As we read the gospels, the truth seems to fall somewhere in the middle, and both are wrong.  The Jewish leaders at the time thought that if people kept God's laws, maybe God would drive out their Roman dictators and set them free.  In this way they misunderstood God's priorities.  But they also wanted to wield political power over others to benefit themselves. That is, they ignored God's priorities. And these are mistakes we can just as easily make.

In the passage today, these wrong priorities are perfectly illustrated by the questions they ask the ex-crippled man. When they first see him carrying his mat on the Sabbath, they approach him and ask him why he is breaking the law they had made, which they wrongly call God's law. And the man gives his answer, "A man healed me, and he told me to carry my mat, so I did."

Now just stop there for a moment. Imagine you see someone walking down the street carrying their wheelchair over their head. People may be freaking out a bit because, you know, they don't want this guy to drop a wheelchair on their head. And so someone, maybe you, comes up to him and says, "Hey mate, why are you brandishing that wheelchair about?" And he responds, "I broke my back 38 years ago and I've been stuck in this wheelchair ever since, but then someone came along and healed me instantly, and he told me to carry it home, so I am!" What would your initial reaction be? What would you first ask this person? What's the obvious question in that situation?

WHO HEALED YOU? Right? Well, as it turns out, that is only an obvious question if your priorities are caring for people, or you have even a bit of interest in other people or in amazing miracles.  But what did the Jewish leaders ask? "Who told you to pick it up and walk?" This tells us about the priorities of the Jewish leaders: this guy's healing is not important to them. They don't ask him about his healing. They may accept that he was healed miraculously. It's not important to them, because their priority is finding out who is telling people to break their rules - who is challenging their authority.

The Jewish leaders wanted people to follow the laws they had made. And just like the Jewish leaders, we can make up laws to box in people's relationship with God. We feel like we need to be able to draw a line between what's right and what's wrong, so we can point to someone else's actions and say, "That's wrong." We draw these lines for lots of reasons, but ultimately it always comes down to the same two reasons the Jewish leaders had: we think our laws will bring God's blessings, and we want power over others because our rules make us comfortable.

And in both cases, we are wrong. We are mistaken about God's priorities, or we just plain ignore them. Let's start with the mistake.  Why is it a mistake to want people to live holy lives? Why is it wrong to tell people what's good for them? The answer is: it's not wrong. I have no problem with telling people that something is against God's will. There is nothing wrong with telling someone that their sin is an obstacle between them getting to God. Of course it is! We can never get to God on our own! The mistake comes when we start telling people that their sin is an obstacle between God getting to them. Because nothing is an obstacle between God getting to them! God overcomes sin! God does away with sin! God destroys sin! That's why Jesus came - to save the lost! To quote Jesus from another gospel, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." Sinners are the ones Jesus came for!

I think we tell ourselves we're good at recognising that truth. We understand God's grace. We wouldn't make a mistake like that. Of course someone's good works don't lead to their salvation. And then we see someone in our church sin, and we lose our minds. "They call themselves a Christian! They shouldn't be sinning! They must be backsliding! They mustn't really be saved!" But that's a mistake. Christians are sinners. If we're not, why do we do a confession at church every week? Why confess if we don't have any sins to confess? If you say those words every week, and you mean them, and then you judge another Christian because they have sinned, you're a hypocrite. Of course, if I then judge you for being a hypocrite, I'm a hypocrite. My point is, we're all sinners, and while living more holy lives is a great way to love God, it's a terrible way to solve our sin problem.  Much better that we rely on God in Christ Jesus for that. We must ensure we have this right in our minds.

So that's when we make a mistake about God's priorities. What about when we ignore God's priorities? This is sin itself. There's no positive intent in this. It is all about making ourselves more comfortable. What does this look like?  For the Jewish leaders, it involved making up rules like "Don't carry your mat on the Sabbath," and then enforcing them.  Because they made the laws, if you wanted to know how to please God, you had to ask them what the laws were, and they enforced them when they were broken. They could exclude people from coming to the Temple by saying they were unclean. They were preachers, and police and judges all in one. That's what made them powerful!  It meant they could walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. It made them important people.

That is what is fundamentally comfortable about making up our own rules. It's a way of making clear lines between good and bad. And that makes us comfortable, because it means we get to say what's right and wrong. You can usually tell when we are doing this for our own comfort, because usually we draw lines that make actions we would never take really black and white, while we make sins we might get involved in rather more grey.

Look at how the western Church treats greed. On Tuesday I was sitting next to a Christian woman (who goes to church, runs a bible study in her home, and loves God) complaining that her $2000 gold watch was running slow. We're very good at thinking that someone who spends $2000 on a watch isn't greedy.  We can't judge them for wasting money on an utter extravagance when there are people in their church who live on less than that a month and struggle to pay their rent. We're good at being non-judgmental when it comes to money. We're very cautious. We consider that we don't know the whole story. We don't know how much the person gives to church and Christian causes. We don't know what their own conscience is like. We are very careful.

But how do we look at people who smoke cigarettes?  Who wear clothes that show too much skin? Who vote for the Greens? It's so easy to point at them and say, "Sinner!" But these aren't God's priorities; they're our rules. Someone goes and watches an MA15+ rated movie full of swearing and violence like Deadpool, and we can furrow our brows and tut our fingers. Someone takes a holiday and flies business class, and we say, "Ooh, that must have been nice."

Don't get me wrong. Rich does not equal greedy, and I'm not calling on us to be more judgmental of people because of their wealth. I'm saying we need to be less judgmental of people whose actions and activities we are uncomfortable with. And I know sometimes someone's sin hurts us, or someone we love, and we just sort of lose it. I understand it, I really do. And it seems unfair to talk about that as if it is mere discomfort. Sometimes sin is not just the loss of a comfy chair; it's torture and betrayal and pain. Just like the torture and betrayal and pain that saw Jesus on a cross. But keeping Jesus free from suffering was not God's priority. And keeping us free from suffering is not God's priority either. Broken people's physical, relational and spiritual wellbeing is God's priority. And that makes it our priority too.

Tony Campolo, spiritual advisor to US President Bill Clinton, once said to a big Christian conference:  "1) Last night 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases stemming from malnutrition. 2) None of you give a <swear word>. 3) You all care more about the fact that I just said <swear word> than the fact that I just said 30,000 kids died."  I don't have the guts to read out that quote exactly, because I know the moment I swear in church, there are people who will be so distracted by it they won't hear anything else I have to say. But if we care more about swear words than about kids dying, we plainly have the wrong priorities!

If we start complaining that sinners are coming to church, we're very close to the Jewish leaders complaining that Jesus heals cripples on the Sabbath, and we are outside God's priorities. And if we start judging people because they're breaking our rules, we're no better than those who crucified God's son Jesus Christ. We should be following God's priorities of loving broken people, meeting their physical, relational and spiritual needs, and giving them every opportunity to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, so that by believing they may have life in his name.


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Sermon notes

Healing on the sabbath
Healing of a crippled man (38 years!), otherwise marginalised from society
Jewish leaders don't care about healing, only about rules (sabbath - lies)

Big idea: Jesus highlights God's priorities

Big question: What are our priorities?

How do you feel about people who break the law?
What if they have an excuse?
What if they have done their time?
What if they have changed?

You may not know, but our church turns some people away. They are not welcome.

Jesus accepts those even his people reject. Those on the margins. 38 years - a lifetime of sickness!

Jesus tells this guy to carry his mat. It breaks the Jewish leaders laws (not God's laws)

We focus on who is carrying their mat - Jesus focuses on healing someone's sickness

We focus on what what sounds unfair or impossible - Jesus focuses on our eternal future

It is fine to be concerned about safety - but it is not our top priority

* Our priorities can be wrong
* God's priorities revealed in Jesus
* Jewish Leaders have different priorities
- want to protect people
- want to control people
* God's priorities are right, ours are wrong
- Churches can have wrong priorities
- Individuals can have wrong priorities
* How do we realign our priorities?

We like rules - but they're not our job
We have to separate between God's priorities and ours, because we sometimes get them mixed up

Prevention is great. Prevention is not better than cure when it comes to sin - it's impossible to prevent sin. God calls people through curing sin.

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Jesus seeks out and welcomes the broken people

How do we treat broken people

1) Jesus is showing that he is God by healing on the Sabbath
2) Humanity would rather have God's laws than God
3)

The act of Jesus we're looking at today involves Jesus healing a crippled man next to a pool.  But the healing is just one part of the picture, and I want to make sure that today we understand why John included this act of healing when he has left out so many others. As we were told a few weeks ago, it's not just a miracle, it's a sign - it points to something.

Here at Waitara Anglican, we're working through the early chapters of the gospel of John.

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Let me give you a simple example. There's a movie out at the moment called Deadpool. You don't need to know much about it - it's about a comic book character, and the whole point of the movie is violence and profanity. Now it's really easy if you're not a fan of comic books to just say, "It's violent and profane, don't see it." You're not going to see it, so drawing the line there is nice comfortably distant for you. But I'm a nerd, and I like the comic book movie genre. I'd love to go see this movie, and if I did, I think I'd laugh and enjoy myself. I won't see it, because I don't think I should. But I don't judge fellow Christians who have seen it, or are going to see it. And I definitely don't judge non-Christians who go see it, because that's not my role.

And if that's our biggest problem, then thank God! Because he's dealt with our sin. That's his priority - praise Jesus.

And yet it's so easy when you're on this side of salvation to cry out to the world, "Don't get drunk! Don't watch bad movies! Don't carry your mat!" because we're already saved. That's probably more what we need to hear. But non-Christians don't care what God wants, and have no reason to change how they live.  They don't need to hear "Change your life!" They need to hear, "Jesus will change your life!" And I'm not saying that God doesn't convict people of sin. Of course he does. But

That is the

I'm not saying we can't ever tell when someone is doing the wrong thing. Our society has specific people in positions of judgment - like judges in courts, and politicians who make laws. Those are very specific roles - and while they are blessed by God, they are still human institutions that are prone to human errors. And loving broken people sometimes means protecting them from their own brokenness, or protecting them from other people's brokenness. But we can't insert ourselves into another person's free will relationship with God. God changes hearts and minds. We simply love people along the way. That's God's priorities. And it has to be this way, because human lives are complex. The choices aren't always black and white. Sometimes we don't even know what's going on in our own lives, how can we judge someone else's? Now I know that love and judgment can be done together. I know that, because God does both. But he doesn't call us to do both. He calls us to love, and he says he will judge. We need to listen to God, and keep his priorities.




Let me give you a simple, non-confrontational example. There's a movie out at the moment called Deadpool. You don't need to know much about it - it's about a comic book character, and the whole point of the movie is violence and profanity. I'm a nerd, and I like the comic book movie genre. I'd love to go see this movie, and if I did, I think I'd laugh and enjoy myself. I won't see it, because I don't think I should. But I don't judge fellow Christians who have seen it, or are going to see it. And I definitely don't judge non-Christians who go see it. That's not my role.

Let me give you a confrontational example. Look at how we treat greed. We're very good at saying that someone who spends $500 on a bottle of wine isn't greedy, isn't wasting money on an utter extravagance when there are people in their church who live on less than that a week and is struggling to pay their rent; or the person who borrows to the hilt to buy a house in the local area so they can be close to church but now have to work more hours and cut their giving. We're good at being non-judgmental when it comes to money. We're very cautious. We consider that we don't know the whole story. We don't know how much the person gives to church and Christian causes. We don't know what their own conscience is like. We are very careful.

Now look at how the church in the western world treats any sexual sin. We lose our collective minds.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm not calling on us to be more judgmental of people because of their wealth. I'm saying we need to be less judgmental of people for those other sins we struggle with.


Even as churches we can have the wrong priorities. Tony Campolo, spiritual advisor to US President Bill Clinton, once said to a big Christian conference:  "1) Last night 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases stemming from malnutrition. 2) None of you give a <swear word>. 3) You all care more about the fact that I just said <swear word> than the fact that I just said 30,000 kids died."

I don't have the guts to read out that quote exactly, because I know the moment I swear in church, there are people who will be so distracted by it they won't hear anything else I have to say. But if we care more about swear words than about kids dying, we plainly have the wrong priorities!

And as individual Christians we can have the wrong priorities too.  Take me, for example. I love justice. I love it so much I'd throw my life away to protect a stolen chicken sandwich. Justice is a good thing! But if I go out and become a vigilante, that's not God's priority. He doesn't want me out there judging people. He tells me that quite clearly. Justice is good, but judgment is not my job. God's priority for me is love. I can have all the good intentions in the world, and still not be following God's priorities. I might have good priorities, but I need to have God's priorities.

This was the reason Jesus did this healing sign on the Sabbath, and it's the reason John has recorded this act in his gospel: to show us that the only priorities we should have are God's priorities, and to show us God's priorities: care for broken people, look after their physical, spiritual and relational wellbeing, so they come closer to God and closer to his people.

Now, it shouldn't surprise us that non-Christians don't have God's priorities.  But why is it that we as Christians still have these hard choices to make, if we have accepted God's priorities? I want to suggest three things that confuse our priorities, so that we can recognise them, change them in our minds, and re-align with God's priorities for people's physical and spiritual and relational wellbeing. Firstly, we're all sinful. Secondly, we feel responsible for other people's decisions.  And thirdly, we misunderstand wisdom.

First things first, we're all sinful. We all go off the rails. Sometimes our priorities get skewed because we're selfish - we don't want to follow God, so we do something else. Sometimes we think we're doing the right thing and have good intentions, but have bad practices based on wrong priorities - me with the chicken sandwich. Sometimes we've had something painful done against us, and we react to protect ourselves - someone hurts us, so we hurt them back. It's all sin. If you're a Christian, then you've accepted that you are a broken, sinful person. Just like that crippled man, we are the broken people that Jesus came to seek out and save!

My friends, how great is it that this is our biggest problem - because it is already solved! We can't do anything about being sinful, and we don't need to - because Jesus has done everything for us! God knows we're sinful. He knows we'll react badly. He knows we will have wrong priorities sometimes. And I'm not saying that so you can do whatever you want. I'm saying don't sweat it. Accept that it's going to happen. Repent when it does, and know that you are forgiven. Then move on, learning the lesson of your failure, and change your priorities to match God's.

Secondly, we worry about other people's decisions. This is sin! We can't change people's minds. That's God's job. But

Thirdly, I feel I need to say something about wisdom. I could not count the number of times I have heard a Christian say, "But we must exercise wisdom." We must be good stewards of our money. We must not let anyone get hurt. We must make sure we aren't putting ourselves in compromising situations. We must be seen to be doing the right thing.

That's not wisdom. That's risk assessment. That's duty of care. That's public relations. It's not wisdom. It's what we might call "world wisdom". This is what Paul says about world wisdom: "

You know what wisdom is? "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," so says Proverbs and so says Psalms.

* We are still sinful
* We worry about other people's decisions
* We misuse wisdom

One is because we are concerned about the consequences of our actions. And that's fair enough. After all, our priorities might lead us to unforeseen consequences. My chicken sandwich bravery could have led to my death or injury. The government's priority of stopping people smuggling leads to children suffering. A parent's priority of strict discipline for children might lead to those children going off the rails. The Jewish leaders' priority of stopping people breaking the Sabbath led them to persecute God's son and put him to death on a cross.

The thing is, changing our priorities to God's priorities doesn't stop bad things from happening as a consequence. Jesus is the ultimate example: he followed God's priorities perfectly, and was persecuted and put to death by the Jewish leaders. The problem isn't that negative consequences happen. The problem is we think that's somehow our responsibility. And it isn't. It just isn't. God doesn't leave it up to us. God's priorities aren't about our results. We don't have heavenly key performance indicators. What God cares about is that we have put him first. That's all. The consequences are all in his hands. It's a question of us having enough faith to trust that God will do his will through us keeping his priorities, even if that means consequences that we might not like.

If they make a bad decision and get hurt, then I'll love them and help them. And I'll do it seventy times seven times. "If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them life." 1 John 5:16. Because that's God's priorities for Christians.


Life is full of decisions we need to make, opinions we need to have, and positions we need to hold. And a lot of them compete. They clash. And we struggle to tell which ones should come out on top, because sometimes there are multiple good positions and we don't know which one should be given priority. It's hard, and we get it wrong.

Our focus often highlights our priorities, both as Christians individually and together as a Christian community.

Our priorities tell us something about ourselves.  For instance, you might think that my chicken sandwich story tells you that I believe that God will keep me safe in the face of danger; or that I am a very loyal employee; or maybe that I was showing off in front of the new trainee and I'm vain. Well, I can tell you why I went toe to toe with that monster of a man over a chicken sandwich: because I didn't think it was fair that he got a sandwich for free. I felt it was unjust, and so I stood up to him. And justice is a great priority to have, right? God loves justice, right? Yes, he does. But there are already structures in place to take care of that petrol station's precious chicken sandwich. My brave stupidity saved the company $6. That company's shareholders made $5.9 billion dollars last year. Their CEO alone gets paid $15 million a year. I might have died, but I saved them $6.

Prayer: The Man from Heaven Heals the Official's Son (John 4:45-54)

Heavenly Father,

You are a promise keeper. You said to Abraham that you would make him into a great nation, and you did. When that nation were enslaved in Egypt, you promised to free them from captivity, and you did. You promised to take them into a rich land of blessing, and you did. You promised to make them your people, and you did; to be their God, and you are. You promised to bless their obedience, and punish their wrong; and you did both those things. But you also promised to never leave or forsake them, and you have always stayed with them, even in their exile and disobedience. You promised to bring them out of exile and back to their land, and you did that too.

You promised a king who would sit on the throne forever, and a prophet to guide your people, a suffering servant who would take away our sins. And you have given us all of those in your son Jesus Christ. What an amazing God you are, that you would bind yourself to us with such promises, and continue to keep them regardless of our constant failures and rebellions. It is so wonderful to know that no matter how faithless we might be, you remain faithful to us. We thank you that even if we can't rely on ourselves to keep promises to you, we can rely on you to keep your promises to us.

And you have made yet more promises, that we can't always see fulfilled right at the moment. You promise that you always work for our good as we love you. Help us to love you then, knowing that our good times and our bad times are in your hands, and that you have only our best interests at heart, and always work for our benefit. Help us to believe in you for this, even when we can't see any way something might be good. We pray for those who suffer from sickness, from pain, from stressful circumstances, from loneliness and abuse and mistreatment and neglect; help them to have faith in your goodness when nothing else looks good.

You promise that your Holy Spirit dwells within us, marking us as guaranteed members of your family, and transforming us to be more and more like you. Help us to constantly strive to be more like you, even when we fail in sin, even when it hurts, even when we feel like we are far from you and have our doubts and our questions. We pray for those who you have called into your family and who yet live with failure, with sin, with doubts. Draw them close to you, and help them to know your genuineness even in the midst of doubt.  You promise that mercy is blessed; that purity is blessed; that peace is blessed; that righteousness is blessed; that persecution is blessed; that poverty is blessed; that meekness is blessed. We take you at your word, and seek to live for your blessing.

You promise that you will bring to yourself a people who you will call your own, that will be countless in number, that will live for you in perfect harmony forever, free from sickness, hunger or pain of any kind. You promise that Jesus will return, and take all of your people to be with you in a new heaven and new earth forever - and that he will judge wickedness and evil, and it will be banished forever. We long for those days, Lord; help us to have a thirst for that day, and to constantly look forward to it, and to live for it. And fill us with love so that we may long to see our many friends and co-workers and loved ones join us in that day; that we may long to see so many strangers we don't know on that day, and that we might even see our enemies who seek to hurt us and harm us and ruin us, stripped of their evil just as we are, and saved right alongside us on that day.

Let your promises ring true to us, and shape our lives so that we are living on the assumption that everything you have promised is true, is happening, and will happen. Let your word be our firm footing, for every step we walk this week, this year, and in this whole lifetime.

In Jesus' name we pray,

Amen

Prayer: John 3:22-36 Man from Heaven - Greater than John

Heavenly Father,

You are the biggest and the strongest, the greatest and the smartest, the fairest and most just, the best and most righteous, the most powerful and the most loving, the richest and the most generous - you are superlative in every way that is good. You are infinitely perfect, so much so that our brains can't even begin to fathom the magnitude of your awesomeness. We only see reflections of your amazingness: in the beauty of the creation around us; in the love of one person for another; in the endless complexity of even little, insignificant things; in the history of your truthfulness and faithfulness to your people.  You have no equal - no-one else even comes close to your all-encompassing greatness - and we realise in the light of your total perfection that we could never be like you.

And so you became like us. When we consider what you have done in sending your Son to earth, God as a human among us, we just have to stop and stare, because it is so amazing. You are almighty and supreme above all things, but you don't lord yourself over us like a tyrant. Instead, you made yourself nothing. You shed the royal robes of heavenly glory and took on the humble rags of an ordinary human being. You became one of us; and more, you went further and humbled yourself to become our servant! You who are the only thing in existence untainted by sin washed our dirty feet! You who needs nothing to sustain yourself gave us bread, and ate it with us. You who lives forever wept for our deaths. You, the infinitely perfect, died on a cross, alone and ashamed, to save us from a punishment we deserve.

And so we bow down our lives before you, almighty God, because you are worthy of the highest honour, the greatest glory, and all our praise and worship. And we do that by humbling ourselves, surrendering all we think and do and have and are to you. We humble ourselves because that's exactly what you did for us. We aren't as good at is as you, and sometimes we stand back on our feet, or we seek a little glory for ourselves.  We apologise for that, and we turn away from it.  You have given us so much, you deserve to be at the absolute top of every list in our lives.

Because we know that you love and care for us, we have confidence to come to you and ask for anything according to your will. we pray for all those who are newly entering our community - please give them a warm welcome, and bless their time in Waitara. We ask for healing and strength for all of those in our community, that they can honour you. We pray for those who are being mistreated and caused to suffer by our government's harsh asylum seeker policy - please give them freedom and hope. We pray for those who stand against injustice - please give them courage. And we pray that in all things you might be glorified and exalted.

We pray this by the authority of your son Jesus,

Amen

Prayer: Man from Heaven: Calling Others (John 1:35-50)

Heavenly Father,

We love that you're are a relational God. You are not cold and lonely and distant. You exist in three persons - Father, Son and Spirit - which means you interact with each other, you relate to one another, and relationships are part of your godly DNA.

We love that you created humans in your image, so that we are relational too, and that you called out to us from the very beginning, not just to have relationships with each other, but to have a relationship with you too.  We thank you that it is possible for us to relate to you - the all powerful Creator God of the universe, relating with finite, powerless little humans. And yet you love us more than anything else in creation! Wow.

We thank you also that you give us relationships that we can enjoy with each other here on earth - mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, wives and husbands, fellow Christians, and all sorts of friendships. And of course children like Alexander.  These relationships bring us so much joy, and we know that they're all based on the relationships that come from you. Thank you.  We thank you that Jesus had a family, had brothers and sisters, and had many friends too. We thank you that he personally called them to come and follow him, and we thank you that he personally calls us to follow you too. Help us to recognise your glory, and follow you not just as a servant, but as a friend, and as his brother and sister.

We love that you called for yourself a community, who you set apart from the rest of the world, to be the trophy example of how you love people, and what relationship with you can be like. We thank you that you then broke open the gates into that community so that anyone can come and join up and be a part of that community. We thank you that you've made a place for us here in Waitara, and for people all over the world to love and worship you together, and to love and serve each other as a Christian family. Help us to look out for each other as a family, from the newest of our members to our oldest, and we pray for everyone in our congregations, that we as a church might serve one another in love.

We recognise that even as a Christian community, we fail to act as a loving community all the time.  We are sorry for that, and we thank you that you forgive us and always welcome us into your arms.  Help us to forever seek to return to you and your love and your relationship, and then take that love out to each other, and out even further to others who are beyond these church walls. We pray that you will empower us to open the doors of your community to all those who we meet and talk with and relate to each and every day.  Help us to reflect your great love to them, and to welcome them into the community you are continually growing, so that one day we might all be together in your presence forever.

We pray all these things in the name of Jesus, our brother and Lord and saviour,

Amen

Sermon: A Light from Galilee (Isaiah 8:19-9:7; Matthew 4:12-17)

I prepared this sermon a little differently to normal. I wrote it out as I usually would, but then I wrote a series of headings for it, to practice preaching it from the headings, rather than from the substantive script I had drafted. I didn't like it for two reasons - one, I found that my sermon took about 10 minutes longer to deliver from the headings than from following the script; and two, I actually like my written style, and I find it works reasonably well orally, and I tend to put a fair amount of detail (perhaps too much) into my points, which are a lot easier to follow from a script. Also, as a subsidiary of that point, the fact that I use a generally narrative sort of style can make it a bit more difficult to summarise in point form quite so easily.

Anyway, I include here the sermon headings, as well as the actual sermon words. The sermon has markers in it for transitions in my Powerpoint presentation. These would clearly be of no use to anyone without the presentation, but I'm happy to supply it to anyone who asks. 


Sermon Headings

Promises: Isaiah 9:1-2, what does it mean?

History and Geography lesson

Cultural border between Jews and gentiles

The whole world is now a cultural border

The fate of Zebulun and Naphtali: invasion

1st Century AD: Times have changed

What is the darkness? The context of Matthew's quote

The shift in the promise: enlarging the nation to all people

Why must we wait for God's victory over spiritual darkness?

2 Peter 3:9 - God delivers a personal message personally

God delivers a message of relationship to people

Our role is as messengers of that message

God's way is to deliver his message through messengers who deliver it personally

The message is not just words: actions, attitudes, work - light people can see in darkness

Borders go both ways: either we shed the light, or it gets extinguished

Will we take light to the darkness, or will we huddle together in light? John Keith-Falconer



Sermon Words

Today I want to talk about promises. At Waitara Anglican, we have been working through a series looking at some of the prophecies made in the Old Testament that the New Testament links to the coming of Jesus. In the context of Christmas, the Old Testament reading for today from Isaiah 9 is pretty well known, especially verses 6 and 7, starting, “For unto us a Son is born.” What could be more Christmas-y than that?

But today I want to focus a little more on the promise that God makes in verses 1 and 2, because that’s the bit Matthew also quotes in his gospel, “Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan—2 The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.” Matthew actually paraphrases it a little, but the message is the same: a light has dawned, and those who are in darkness have seen it.

To understand what this means, we need to have a little bit of a geography and history lesson. Way back in Genesis, God promised to make himself a nation from one man, and the nation named after him, Israel, would get its own country, the promised land. *S* When the Israelites moved in and took the promised land God had given them, they split it up among the tribes of Israel (except the Levites – they didn’t get any land). *S* Zebulun and Naphtali are two of the tribes of Israel, and their portions of the land are up in the north of Israel, between the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean.

*S* The geographic placement of the land of Zebulun and Naphtali is important – they are on the far northern border of Israel’s territory. That’s Israel’s border with the gentiles – the foreigners, who aren’t part of God’s people, and who have different spiritual practices, who don’t worship God. Galilee is the cultural border where God’s people and ungodly people interacted. The northern kingdom had turned their backs on God, and instead they took on the beliefs and practices of their ungodly neighbours. As we read at the end of chapter 8, Isaiah says they were consulting with mediums and spiritists instead of consulting God’s instructions for them. That northern border was a place of spiritual darkness.

*S* I think Christians everywhere today know what it’s like to live on the border of spiritual darkness. This is the information age, and it is getting easier and easier for the beliefs and practices of those who live without God to infiltrate our lives. *S* Greed and idolatry advertise themselves in commercials on TV and radio, in newspapers and magazines and emails, on websites, buses, billboards and blimps, printed on pens and shirts and hats and fruit, and even written in the sky! *S* The invention of the smart phone allows people, including children, to both access and even create pornography with the push of a button! *S* People commit terrorist acts just so their twisted ideology gets a few seconds of screen time on our evening news! There is nowhere to hide anymore, if there ever was – the whole world is the land of Zebulun and Naphtali; the ways of the world are always on offer. We all live on the border of spiritual darkness.

That history and geography lesson helps us relate what Isaiah is saying to our modern context. But Isaiah isn’t giving his audience a history lesson.*S* Just before Isaiah gave this prophecy, the enemies of God who invaded and conquered the northern kingdom of Israel – Assyria – came across that northern border, and the first place they attacked was Zebulun and Naphtali (as we read in 2 Kings 15:29). He is saying that the northern tribes abandoned God, and now they are gone, and their land has been humbled, conquered by their enemies.

*S* Isaiah is delivering a promise from God to Isaiah’s own people, the southern kingdom, who are also turning their backs on God and consulting mediums and spiritists; who are also facing God’s wrath in a similar way, from another enemy who will also invade from the north – this time it is the Babylonians.

*S* Isaiah is saying that God promises those who are deep in spiritual darkness will see the great light of God. Regardless of whether Isaiah’s people turn their backs on God, or the enemies of God overcome them, God will drive away the darkness, he will free them from their captivity to the people of darkness. And he will do this through a child who will be born, who will reign in peace and justice and righteousness forever. And it is God’s zeal that will make this happen. It will be God’s victory, and the people will have great joy.

Skip ahead with me now 700 years to the first century AD, when Matthew quotes these Isaiah passages in his gospel. Matthew is linking Jesus to this prophecy. But the focus has shifted slightly. Times have changed from when Isaiah first gave this prophecy. Now, God’s people are not adopting the gods and spiritual practices of their non‑ Jewish neighbours. Galilee is still a place where Jews and gentiles interact, but they are quite spiritually separate – the Jews have learned their lesson. And there was no real fear of an armed invasion, because the Romans were already in control of Judea.
When Matthew talks about Jesus fulfilling this prophecy from Isaiah, he is still certainly talking about a light coming to those in spiritual darkness.  He is saying that light is Jesus. But what is the darkness in Matthew’s time that makes him draw this link? In Matthew chapter 4, Jesus is starting his ministry. When Jesus hears that John the Baptist has been put in prison, he decides that the time is right to put down his carpenter’s tools and start his ministry of miracles and healings and preaching the good news of God.

And where does he decide to start this ministry? You might think the best place to go would probably have been Jerusalem: it’s the centre of Jewish life, it’s a big city with lots of people, it’s the place of political power and influence, and it’s the religious focus of all Jews in the world – many of them made the trip every year for the Passover festival. Even those who don’t go to Jerusalem would know people in Jerusalem, who would tell them what was happening there. If you wanted to get your message to the Jews, that would be the best place and the best time. Start with Jerusalem and the Passover, and let your message spread from there.

But Jesus doesn’t go to Jerusalem. Not yet. No, he starts way, way out in in the back blocks of Judea, on the border with the gentile nations, where the people hearing his message are as likely to be gentiles as they are to be Jews. Galilee was still “Galilee of the nations” – that much hadn’t changed. When Matthew quotes the prophecy of Isaiah, he’s not only saying, “Look, Jesus is the light, Jesus is the child born to us that Isaiah promised.” He is also saying, “Look, God has sent a light to free people from spiritual darkness. And non-Jews are living in spiritual darkness, so God is revealing his light to them!”

Matthew expands the promise that God made through Isaiah all those centuries before. God is going to enlarge his nation; not by just bringing back the lost tribes of Israel, but by opening up his kingdom to include those from every tribe and language and people and nation. Spiritual darkness will be a thing of the past – not just for the Jews, but for everyone who lives in God’s enlarged nation – a nation that can include all people.  And that promise continues today.  Jesus is not only for people in churches.  In fact, Jesus is a light that is most needed outside churches, in places of spiritual darkness where he is not known!

Now I think you would all agree with me that this is a great promise God is making here. The picture of distress that Isaiah paints at the end of chapter 8 will be a thing of the past. Never again will people, any people, labour under a lie. Never again will they be oppressed by beliefs and practices that mean they live in fear, or that force them to make offerings to appease greedy idols or the spirits of their ancestors. Never again will they be far away from God, unable to enjoy the relationship that he so freely offers. What a great thing to look forward to.

It’s so great, in fact, that you might be wondering, “If God is promising to do so amazing a thing, why hasn’t he just done it yet?” About 700 years passed between God’s promise in Isaiah’s time and the birth of Jesus. Almost  2,000 years have passed since then to now, when Matthew reapplied the promise to Jesus and his ministry. Is God slow in keeping his promises?  When will the light of God shine so those in darkness can see it? When will God do what he said he would do?

For anyone whose families are still steeped in darkness, these are pressing questions. For people who are in spiritual darkness themselves, it would be a pressing question too if they knew about it.  Why doesn’t God snap his fingers and make these promises come true now? Why didn’t it all just happen when Jesus was born?

*S* God actually answers this question directly in the Bible. In 2 Peter 3:9 He says, "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.  Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." 

The banishment of spiritual darkness is not simply switching a light on. The darkness is banished with a message. What Matthew is telling us when he quotes this promise from Isaiah is not that Jesus brings that message. He's telling us that Jesus is that message! The content of the message is Jesus, and his deity, and his death on the cross, and his victorious resurrection.

God could have just written, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” in the clouds for all nations to see. But as I said, banishing spiritual darkness is not just a matter of flicking a light switch. God sends Jesus, God comes to earth as Jesus, because this is a personal message. The message he brings is a message of relationship. God is seeking to enlarge his kingdom, and he delivers the message personally, because he is the message - the message is a personal relationship with God.
*S* The pinnacle of closeness is to deliver a message personally. When you give a Christmas present to someone, what's the most personal way to give it? You could send it by mail. You could leave it on their doorstep. You could give it to someone to pass on to them. But the most personal way to give a gift is by it delivering it personally, from you to them.

That is what we celebrate at Christmas - the delivery of the message from God that says to people, "Come and join my kingdom." The greatest gift we could ever receive is the son of God, Jesus, coming to live and die and live again for us. Jesus is the personal message delivered personally.
Let me ask you: this Christmas, have you received the most amazing gift of an invitation to God's kingdom? Have you received that invitation directly and personally from God? He's offering to shine his light into your spiritual darkness, to drive those shadows out of your life. He offers the power to overcome the beliefs and practices of the world, and he offers you a place in his kingdom. Take him up on it. Ask, and you will receive.

But that's not all. A nation, a kingdom, is not just a bunch of individual subjects relating to their king. It is made up of people who relate to one another as fellow citizens, united together by their membership of the kingdom and service to their king. Jesus comes as the message; and he calls us to be his messengers. He wants those already in his kingdom to be the welcoming committee for those that have yet to be made members.

How do people in darkness see a great light? The same way the message itself came - personally. Just as God himself came to be the message personally, God sends out his people to deliver the message personally. This is God's way. When God first delivered this promise to his people, he did it through one of those people, Isaiah. When God expanded the promise with Jesus, he declared it through a disciple from Galilee, Matthew.

There are still millions of people who have never heard of Jesus, who've never heard the message. How do we reach them? Should the church send the whole population of Waitara a Christmas card? "Dear non‑Christians, please accept Christ. Yours sincerely, Church you've got nothing to do with"? What impact would that have? But what if the church sends people to go and meet people, and help them with their problems, and become close to them - how much more impact if the message is delivered personally?

Remember that the message God sent to us personally is not just a written, or spoken message.  If God had just sent Jesus to preach a few sermons, we would not be celebrating his birth at Christmas.  We don't celebrate Isaiah's birthday or Matthew's birthday.  God sent Jesus as a leader.  He sent him as a healer.  He sent him as a sacrifice to forgive our sin, a payment for our passports into his kingdom.  Jesus, the message, isn’t just words – it’s actions, it’s attitudes, it’s work.  It’s light – something people in darkness will notice.

It’s all too easy to complain about the fact that these days we all live on the border of spiritual darkness.  But borders go both ways!  For every opportunity the world has to spread its lies into your life, you have an opportunity to spread God’s truth into other people’s lives!  God has made it this way, so that we can live beside and work with and live amongst people in spiritual darkness, so that we can be their own personal messenger.  If we believe God's word tells the truth, then the only thing we can do is take God's light into the dark world and share it around.  There is absolutely no use in clumping together to share our light with each other - because the light isn't for those in the light, it's for those in the darkness.

So this Christmas, are you personally trying to carry God’s light to people who are in darkness through words, through actions, through attitudes, through work that shines his light of forgiveness?  Or are you seeking to gather your light with a bunch of other people’s light so that you’re all standing around in light together?  Let me encourage you to make this Christmas one where you go and shine God’s light into someone’s spiritual darkness.  Let me finish with the words of John Keith‑Falconer, a man who in the 1800s left his position as an Oxford professor to take the gospel to Yemen, and died of malaria two years later.  He said, “I have but one candle of life to burn, and I would rather burn it out in a land filled with darkness than in a land flooded with light.”

Prayer: Christmas Eve 2015

Our Father in heaven,

We thank you that Christmas is upon us. We thank you and that the search for gifts is (hopefully) almost over.  We thank you for the safe arrival of those family and friends who are coming and going, for the time off from everything to celebrate, for food and friendship  and family that are a part of so many people's Christmas.

But most of all, we are thankful to you for what we are celebrating at Christmas: your coming into the world as Jesus, God as a human being. You have come into the world to be human, and so you know what it's like for us.

You know what it's like to travel at Christmas time to be with your family.  Mary and Joseph had to travel a long way while Mary was heavily pregnant with you.  And you came from heaven down to earth, leaving your glorious throne above to enter this world as one of us! So we ask you to keep people safe as they travel this year, knowing that you can relate to the stress and danger of travelling.

You know what it is like to live in poverty - your first home was a stable, and your hospital bed was a feeding trough for animals. And so we ask you to bless those who are poor this Christmas, who have little for themselves and less to share, and those who have lost homes in natural disasters and freak weather. We pray that you will be with them this Christmas, knowing that you too have lived in poverty.

You also know the joy of receiving great gifts, because when you were young and in need the wise men came and brought you treasures. And so we ask you to bless those who this year are giving out of their wealth to those in need, because you know what it is like to receive such wonderful gifts.

You, Jesus, know the trauma of being a target of violence and hate, because when you were just a child King Herod wanted to kill you, and your family had to flee to Egypt to stay safe.  So we pray for those who have been subjected to violence, and who this Christmas have had to flee from their homes and their communities, leaving their lives behind. We ask you to bring them comfort, and to meet their needs this Christmas, and to give them somewhere safe to live, because you know the pains of being chased away from your home.

You know what it's like to be pushed to the edge of society, and to be ruled over by people who treat you as less than who you are. You grew up in a land that was conquered by people who treated you as a second class citizen, and punished you as a criminal. And so we ask you remember those who society forgets or belittles: the disabled, the homeless, the mentally ill, the prisoners in our gaols, the lonely in our nursing homes and hospitals - the rejected, the marginalised, the disaffected, those who face prejudice and discrimination. We ask you to lift them up, and shine your light on them, and fill us all with compassion and care so that we might include them, because you know what it's like to be rejected and cast aside.

Our God, you know what it is to be human, because in Jesus you are human. You know the challenges we face, the impossible rift that stands between us and you. You know that we can't come to you. We can't climb up into heaven to sit beside you. We can't possibly meet your requirements of perfection.  You know our weakness and our frailty. And we thank you that before we could even pray for it, you closed the gap, you bridged the rift. You did it by coming down to us, by being a human and living among us by becoming Immanuel - God with us. And you came to us because you love us.

We are just in awe that you would come to us like this, experience our weaknesses and our troubles, and reach out across the divide to take hold of us. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Please help us this year to do the same, and to care for all those who you care for, who remind us of you in their difficulties. Make this Christmas a time when we remember you, and bring love to those who you came to live beside.

We pray this in the name of your son, Jesus Christ, Amen

Prayer: Being Human Involves God (Genesis 11:1-9)

Heavenly Father,

From the very beginning, you have always had a place for us in your plans.  When you created the heavens and the earth, not only did you make humans part of your world, but you made us a crowning achievement, in your image, capable of relating to you and wanting to relate to you.  You named us as a people for yourself, and you guided us.  You sent messengers through history to tell us your plans and your will.  You sent your son, Jesus Christ, into the world as a human, coming to us and becoming one of us.  You share with us your desire to have us live in your presence for all eternity, and you put your Holy Spirit within us, so that you dwell inside us each and every day, assuring us that yes, you really do want to be with us, and want us to be with you. 

And yet despite you being the King of the World, the Lord of Creation, the Lord God Almighty, we still feel like we can do things on our own. Worse than that, we sometimes think that we know better than you!  We trade your assurances of glorious eternity for false promises of a slightly better tomorrow.  We take the good news proclaimed in the Bible and explained to us by those you send, and we squander it, choosing to focus on our own entertainment, or our own pleasure, our own security.  We judge people you made in your own image, even those you call our brothers and sisters in faith. We have so little trust in you that we make up all sorts of excuses for not taking the many, many opportunities you give to us to do what you ask. Instead of being obedient and relying on you, we try and turn living for you into a system, so that if we can follow the right rules, say the right things, live the right kind of life, then we can tick the boxes and feel like we're on track.

Father, we're sorry.  We're sorry because we forget that for you it's not about rules, it's not about systems, and it's not about our accomplishments.  You don't want us to simply follow a pattern.  You don't expect us to be successful.  You sent your son, Jesus Christ, not just to show us how to live, but to die for us knowing that we are failures!  Our salvation is at your cost, not ours.  All you've ever wanted from us is to love you, to thank you, and to trust you.  

So thank you, our Father, for being so far above us that you never make the stupid mistakes we do. Thank you for stooping down so low to come and pay attention to us because you just love us that much.  Thank you for not leaving us to try and guess what we have to do. You take responsibility for the success of all your plans, and simply ask us to say yes to you.  Thank you for walking this human life with us, for sending Jesus to walk in our shoes, to know our victories and our struggles. And thank you for making your home in our lives through your Holy Spirt, so that every day, whether in times of plenty and joy, or in times of sadness and pain, we are never, ever without you. 

We ask you, Father, please be with those who are sick, who are sorrowful, who are struggling - please let them know that it's okay, you've got it all under control, that their suffering isn't because they're sinful or they're worthless or that you've forgotten them. Please be with them in every dark moment, leading them into the light, where you walk with them. And be with us as we help them out of love for you.

In Jesus name we pray, Amen