Heavenly Father,
You are the almighty God. You are the king of kings, and lord of lords. You are the God of unbeatable armies, the God of fire from heaven, the God of lightning and thunder. And you are the God of Jesus Christ, your beloved son, who suffered much, was rejected by his people, and was killed. That alone should tell us how amazingly you love us. We should be living a life of constant fear of a vengeful God who wants to punish those who rebel against him, as we so constantly do. You would be absolutely within your rights to sentence us to death for our rebellion. But we don't have to live in fear, because you are a loving God, so loving that not only do you forgive us for killing your son, but you use your son's death to cleanse us of our sin. That is amazing. It is breathtaking. Please give us a better and better understanding of that as we seek to live our lives for you, in thankfulness or the great and loving God you are.
Lord, there are so many things in our lives that seek to pull our attention away from you. We worry about our lives. While many of us don't have to worry about what we will eat or what we will drink or what we will wear, we make up other things to worry about: we worry about our safety and security in this age of uncertainty and terrorism. We worry about what people think of us. We are attracted to money and wealth, because it makes our lives comfortable and easy. We follow our own desires, and we seek to put ourselves first. Please God, transform our minds, so that we might see that there is nothing more valuable than your son Jesus, and his message that your kingdom has come with power.
There are so many people in this world who see Jesus as something else: a teacher, a role model, a tragic hero, a rebel leader, or a mythical storybook character. Help us to proclaim to others the truth - that Jesus is the messiah, Jesus is your son, and that his coming ushered in the coming of your kingdom. Give us strength and courage so that we won't be ashamed of your good news to all humanity. Help us to carry that message in every part of our lives - when things are good and we are praising you for them, or when things are bad and we throw ourselves at your feet and trust in your sovereignty. And help us to carry that message in how we relate to others. Give us a love for those who are sick, for those who are struggling financially, for those who are stuck in life situations that they can't get out of. Free them from these terrible problems, and make us your hands and feet in helping them. And we pray for those we can't help - those who languish in prisons and detention centres, those who hide their problems, those who suffer for your name on the other side of the world. We ask that you might stretch our your hand and alleviate their problems. Give your people across the world faith that you are in control. In the same way that the disciples could not understand that Jesus must die as part of your plan, we can't begin to understand the complexities of your plan in this age. So let us remember that you are almighty loving God, and that yours is the only plan that is guaranteed to succeed, and that it is absolutely built on your love for us.
We praise you in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Sermon: Mark 9 - The Transfiguration
(This sermon took a lot of writing. The transfiguration is a difficult passage to preach on! I have included all of my previous notes to give an idea of the different directions I took throughout. The actual sermon I have put at the top - the notes will all be underneath it.)
Who do you listen to?
I'm not asking who your favourite musicians are, or what radio programs you prefer. I'm asking who do you pay attention to? Who do you believe when they express an idea or an opinion or a fact? Who do you provide for when they say they need something? Who do you obey when they ask you or tell you to do something? Who you listen to is more than just what you hear, it's who impacts on what actions you take.
When your spouse, or your parents, asks you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do. We all want happy homes. When your children tell you they need something, do you listen? Of course you do, you love your children. When your boss at works tells you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do, you want to keep your job. When environmentalists tell us to recycle, we listen. When doctors tell us to take medication, we listen. We listen to friends, we listen to family, we listen to preachers (hopefully), we listen to police, we even listen to politicians.
In our passage today, Jesus is transfigured in glory, Elijah and Moses appear, and God says about Jesus, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!"
Over the past eight chapters of the Gospel of Mark, we have seen Jesus driving out demons, healing the sick, forgiving sin, ruling over the Sabbath, calming storms, walking on water, multiplying bread, discarding traditions and teaching in parables about the kingdom of God. Those are impressive, great, worthy of praise. They are all signs that point to Jesus being God. But the transfiguration is not just a sign. It doesn't point. It reveals that Jesus is God. All those miracles before were like those little signs on the side of the road that say, "God: 180kms. God: 35kms. God: 16kms." The transfiguration is the big sign that says, "Welcome to God. Population: Jesus."
Jesus proves that he is God, but not by doing miracles putting up signs pointing to him being God. He reveals one of the characteristics of God: he reveals his Glory. God is not just worthy of glory because of all the things he does, but God IS Glory. Just like God is Love, and all love comes from God, and God is Goodness and Holiness, and those things come from him, God is also Glory - no glory exists apart from God. When Jesus shows his friends his glory up on that mountaintop, Jesus is revealing Glory itself - he is revealing God. It's not just a light show, it is God's power, his holiness, his goodness that make up the light of his glory.
Later in his life, Peter would say that the transfiguration was the key act of Jesus he witnessed that meant his message about Jesus could be trusted. In 2 Peter 1 "16 For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty." The transfiguration is the time in Jesus' life that we can point to and say with absolutely certainty that Jesus is God. That is why he is worth listening to.
"This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" The message is loud and clear. Jesus is God. The Kingdom of God has come with power. That has been the message for eight straight chapters now, getting stronger and stronger, culminating in the transfiguration. Moses and Elijah, the two men who represent the epitome of God's relationship with his people, are right there with Jesus. God spoke with his people by the giving of his law through Moses; and God spoke to his people through the prophets, of whom Elijah is a representative. Jesus is the way God speaks to us in these last days.
Listening to Jesus should have a huge effect on how we live our lives. For the disciples at the time, this required a huge upheaval in their faith. As Jews, Moses and the Prophets were the foundation upon which they did everything. They were the way God and his people interacted. Now God himself had told them, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" That's a foundational change for them, because 'listen to him' means 'do what he says'.
Take one small example. In chapter 7:19 it says as an offhand comment in brackets, "In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean." What a huge difference to people who their whole lives followed restrictive food laws! Imagine if the opposite happened tomorrow - if Jesus told us that we have to follow the food laws to be Christian. No pork, no ham, no bacon. No shellfish. No cheese and meat mixed together. How does Christmas look without ham and prawns? How does McDonald's look without cheeseburgers? One small part of life, one huge upheaval when it changes because we do what Jesus says.
God says "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" But no-one is going to force you to do it. God certainly doesn't force people to listen to him. If he did, I wouldn't have to stand here telling you to listen to him, because we wouldn't have a choice. God wouldn't have had to say, "Listen to him!" because there wouldn't be another option.
But there is an option. God gives you a choice. And you should choose to listen to him. If you accept that Jesus is God but refuse to listen to him, that is something you need to fix. Not listening to God is untenable. Being God's enemy is terrible. But if we listen to Jesus earlier in Mark 2:10 he said, "I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." That is, he can forgive being God's enemy. We can actually be transformed from being God's enemy to being his friend. It's not about being forced to listen to Jesus. It's about wanting to listen to him. If you want to know how to listen to Jesus in your life, because Jesus is God and because Jesus is your friend, then I see four things that we need to do.
Step 1: To listen to Jesus, you need to hear what he says. Jesus speaks in the New Testament, and he quotes from almost every book of the Old Testament. So the whole bible is valuable in understanding what Jesus has to say. I read the Bible almost every morning. I have a devotional that looks at one verse, sometimes one idea in one verse, and explores it. It's about a hundred years old, but it's free. It's actually online. It's one page, takes about five minutes to read, if that. Before that, I used to read 10 verses of the Bible every morning, and really focus on what they were saying. That took about an hour. Before that, I used to follow a yearly Bible reading plan, where you're reading several chapters a day. That took about 40 minutes. They are all good.
Memorize scripture. I started in September last year, and I have memorized the entire book of Galatians (six chapters), and coincidentally I have memorised the first nine chapters of Mark. It takes about 45 minutes every morning. Yes, it takes a long time. But I cannot praise it highly enough. It is a phenomenal way of listening to Jesus. I strongly recommend it to you all. If you want to do it, come to me afterwards and give me your contact details, and I'll send you the pamphlet I used to learn how to do it (it's free). It is not hard to do, all it takes is time. I recommend that you make time to do it. Give other things up to do it. That's what I did. It's better than reading the news.
I started memorising scripture because I was convicted about it by something Bruce said in a sermon on James last year. Which brings me to the next thing to do to listen to Jesus: Listen to sermons being given here, at Waitara, every Sunday. Sermons are an amazing resource. They don't just tell you what Jesus says, but they help us to do it to our lives - the other half of what listening means. One thing I don't do takes notes during sermons. I listen to sermons every week, and as sure as I listen to them, I forget most of them the next day. What a waste!
Every week there's a sermon outline. I'm going to start using it. Well, actually I'm probably going to take notes on my tablet because my handwriting is rubbish. But I'm going to note down the challenge that the preacher gives every week, and if I'm not doing it, figure out one way I can apply it to my life, then actually do it.
Go to a Bible study. Bible study is a great way of sharing not only what we think Jesus is saying to us, but also challenging and supporting one another to listen to what Jesus says, and to do it. It turns listening to Jesus from being just a personal act into it a communal activity.
Step 2: We need to talk to Jesus. That means pray. I keep a prayer blog actually. I write in it every morning. I pray about my daily devotion. I pray about whatever is exercising me that morning. Then I pray about different topics each day of the week. Prayer is not just about me asking for stuff though. It's about working with God through why stuff needs to be prayed for at all. It's a time where I thrash out with God why things are the way they are, and every day come to the same conclusion - I need to have faith that God is in control.
If you go into praying every day expecting everyone around you who is sick to get well, and everything that's wrong to go right, you're going to be disappointed. That's certainly not my experience. But if you go into prayer expecting to wrestle with God, and to be put into submission by him - then do it. Prayer is where the desire comes from to want to listen to Jesus.
One thing I struggle with is praying to God throughout the day. But I find the more I learn to rely on God in one area of life, the more I'm prepared to reach out to him, to put him in control of that. So one step at a time.
Step 3 is to think. What I mean is, try to think about what you're doing, thinking, and saying, and evaluate it against what Jesus says. I am thoroughly terrible at this. I often act or speak without thinking. Sometimes I do things even after thinking about it and knowing it's probably not what God wants me to do. Trying to evaluate everything you say and do can be tiring. But what I find is the more I want to listen to Jesus through prayer, and the more I actually hear Jesus through the Bible, the more my thoughts come from a godly basis.
And that makes a huge difference. Thoughts that come from an not-godly basis are the ones that you have to firstly identify, and then stop and check, analyse, consider, and think about. They're the thoughts Jesus describes as the thorns that choke the seed in Mark 4:19 "the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things". They choke Jesus' word, making it unfruitful.
But thoughts that from a godly basis, you don't need to analyse - because God's ways are the right ways, and they will never be defeated. Instead, they're the thoughts we need courage to act on. Because they're the thoughts and actions that aren't like what everyone else is doing and thinking. They're the hard sayings of Jesus that we'd really rather not follow. They're the scary actions, the ones we pray we don't have to do.
Lastly, step 4, of course, is to do those actions. With the courage and the strength God gives, trying to live the life he wants us to live. Not the life that makes us comfortable. Not the life that makes us feel good. Not the life that everyone else thinks we should live. It's trying to live the life God wants. To me, that generally looks like being confronted by things some other people don't even think about; struggling to work out what Jesus says I should do; not wanting to do it; being too afraid to do it; being too selfish to do it; and then deciding to trust God, and stepping forward to do it anyway. And I praise God when he gives me the courage to do what he says. And I thank God that Jesus can forgive my sins, because there are so many times in my life where I am too selfish or too scared to take this last step of listening to Jesus.
But listening to Jesus is a package deal - you have to do it all. You can't think about what Jesus says if you don't know what he says. You won't do what he says if you haven't had your mind transformed to think in a godly way. You won't do any of it if you don't pray. If you want to listen to Jesus, then you need to know what he says. You need to talk to God. You need to have your mind transformed to think the way Christ wants you to think. And you need to do what Jesus says. I want to ask you all to take these words of God seriously: "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" Don't just ask yourself if what you're doing is enough to listen to Jesus. Ask yourself first if that's what you actually want to do. Ask yourself honestly, Who do I really listen to?
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Obvious points:
Major
Jesus is God, the son of God, the fulfilment of God's revelation to people.
Minor
John the Baptist was Elijah.
What does this mean for us?
* God's command to the disciples: "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!"
- It means we must respect the ultimate authority Jesus has over us as God.
* The Law and the Prophets were the primary guides of life for the Jews. It's what makes them a people.
- Jesus is our Law and Prophets.
- He should rule our lives. Our lives should be dominated by the law of Christ.
** Only three of the apostles saw this transfiguration before tasting death. The others had to die first before they saw Jesus glorified. They didn't get to hear about this until after the resurrection.
-- We don't see Jesus glorified till we die, or if we're lucky, when he returns.
-- We shouldn't need to see Jesus for ourselves. We can trust the testimony of the apostles who saw him and who were with him. The disciples, even nine of the 12, did not get to see Jesus transfigured. This should not be a block to our faith.
* Jesus is not just worthy of glory: God is Glory.
glory n. (pl. glories) [mass noun] 1 high renown or honour won by notable achievements: to fight and die for the glory of one's nation. 2 magnificence or great beauty: the train has been restored to all its former glory. - [count noun] (often glories) a thing that is beautiful, impressive, or worthy of praise: the glories of Paris. - the splendour and bliss of heaven: images of Christ in glory. 3 praise, worship, and thanksgiving offered to God. 4 [count noun] a luminous ring or halo, especially as depicted around the head of Christ or a saint. ■ v. [no obj.] (glory in) take great pride or pleasure in: they gloried in their independence. - exult in unpleasantly or boastfully: readers tended to defend their paper or even to glory in its bias.
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You don't often hear the word 'glory' used outside a church. We sing songs about God being the King of Glory, and we say that God is worthy of glory, honour and praise. We pray that God will be glorified. But outside of church and talking about God, when do we talk about glory? ('Melbourne Victory skipper Mark Milligan hungry for more title glory' [Feb 11]; 'BMX champ Caroline Buchanan uses AIS to give her an edge on the quest for Olympic glory' [Feb 8]; 'Wallpaper returns - in all its vibrant glory' [Feb 6]) It's a compound concept that takes in a few ideas. If we see something beautiful, impressive, worthy of praise, we might say, "We looked over the city of Paris in all its glory." It is often used to mean a high renown and honour that is gained through a notable achievement, so we might say that a soldier or a sportsperson who pushes the limits and tries to accomplish more is, "Going for glory." When something was once good, but has since fallen into ruin, and we rebuild it, we say we are, "Returning it to its former glory." So 'glory' really means something that is the epitome of beauty, of impressiveness, something that is so good that it is worth giving praise and honour and being renowned.
You might think it's little wonder that we talk about God in these terms. After all, God is the epitome of beauty, of impressiveness, He is so good that he is worth giving honour and praise.
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'Melbourne Victory skipper Mark Milligan hungry for more title glory' [Feb 11]; 'BMX champ Caroline Buchanan uses AIS to give her an edge on the quest for Olympic glory' [Feb 8]; 'Wallpaper returns - in all its vibrant glory' [Feb 6]. When we talk about glory these days, this is usually what we mean - sporting heroes and their accomplishments, or the beauty and impressiveness of something, like a city, or in that case some wallpaper. We even have a football team called Perth Glory. We might occasionally describe something as "glorious": again usually sporting victories, but once upon a time we might have talked about a glorious military victory. We rarely talk about something being "glorified" outside of churches - when we do, we usually mean it's overstated - so the Archibald Prize, the famous portrait competition, has been disparagingly called a "glorified lucky dip".
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Even going over what Jesus has said in the last eight chapters of Mark would be a series of sermons on its own. And guess what? It has been! We've been preaching through Mark since December. I can guarantee that every sermon given between now and then has looked at what Jesus said, and then applied that to our lives today. So let me ask you this: how have the sermons over the last eight or so weeks impacted your life? What changes have you made because of them?
Gosh, that's a hard question, isn't it? Can you remember what Mark's sermon was about last week? Or Emily's the week before? Nick's the week before that? If I were to ask for a show of hands of how many people were here for Penny's sermon on <date>, I will bet a good number of hands would go up. If I were to ask for people to tell me one thing she said about applying that chapter of Mark to our lives, how many people could give me an answer? Could anyone tell me what chapter of Mark she preached on, or what story it was? But I wonder if we have forgotten the general plot or story of what happened in a regular TV series we watch, or a book we've read back then.
No, I'm not bringing this up to shame you. I'm bringing this up to make a point - every week we have sermons delivered to us here, on a platter. Sermons that people put hours and hours of work into, in order to bring God's word to us and help us apply it to our lives. And we are so used to it that we sit here, lap it up, and then walk out the door and forget it a week later. Maybe the sermons are boring. I'm sure I could do better to grab your attention. And sermons aren't memory tests to see how much you can recall. But my point is that if we're really serious about listening to what Jesus has to say, what steps are we taking to make sure that the point that was made to us on any given week is something we include into our lives? Do you take any active steps at all? Because I don't! I know some people use the sermon outlines to take notes. That's more than I do.
How much do you care about knowing what Jesus said and how to act on it? Do you care enough to go to church, even when you don't feel like it? Do you care enough to listen to sermons? Do you care enough to read the Bible every day, even though you're already pressed for time? Are you prepared to give up other things you do to make that time? Do you care enough to pray every day, not asking God for sunshine or safe travel or a holiday, but for him to reveal to you what he says? I think everyone here would say yes, we all care enough to want to do those things. So why aren't we doing them? What gets in the way? Is it busyness, family, work, life's other distractions? Remember the parable of the sower, Mark 4:18 "Still other people, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; 19 but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and desires for other things choke the word, making it unfruitful."
Because how can you listen to Jesus if you don't even know what he says? How do we find out what Jesus says? It's in the Bible. We read it.When you read what Jesus says directly in the gospels, you'll see he claims the whole Bible as the word of God, Old and New Testament. What do you need to do to make that happen? Every week someone stands up at this podium and gives a talk about God and the Bible, and how to relate it directly to your life. Listen to them!
Summary of the the sermons up to this point
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What is the most amazing thing you've ever seen? Perhaps it was something natural, like the Grand Canyon. Anyone seen that? Was it amazing? Perhaps the most amazing thing you've ever seen was man made. Has anyone been to the Great Wall of China? Was it amazing? Maybe the most amazing thing you've ever seen was an event, like Cirque du Soleil (which I have on good authority is amazing). Maybe you're a romantic, and the most amazing thing you ever saw was your first child being born, or your spouse at your wedding. Aww. Maybe the most amazing thing you've ever seen was a miracle. Whatever it is, what I'm talking about the most striking, most heartfelt, most impressive thing you have ever seen. It is something that impacts you.
Let me tell you about the most amazing natural thing I've ever seen. I was in Townsville as a teenager, and went to the Great Barrier Reef. If you've never been, the reef is very impressive. Worth going to see. It takes a couple of hours in a boat to get there. We went around in glass bottom boats, and saw the pretty coral and fish. It's quite nice. But it's not the most amazing thing I've ever seen. It's all underwater, and you can't see it all from a boat, or by swimming around it. Maybe it's more impressive from the air. But while I was there, I did some snorkelling. When you're snorkelling at the reef, you are pretty much looking down, because your air is coming from a tube that points up that way, and there's colourful coral and stuff beneath you, so you don't really look where you're going.
Well, I was swimming along, looking at all the pretty colours, when all of a sudden I swam too far. The coral very, very suddenly disappeared, and below me was nothing. Just emptiness. Water going down into blackness. I looked up in front of me, and it was the same. I had reached the end of the reef, and in front of me there was just deep, endless water. It was floating all around me, for as far as I could see. And it was so big. I could see nothing but water. No coral. No fish. No sharks. No seaweed. But I knew all that stuff was out there, somewhere, in that infinite abyss. I can still picture it now. It still makes a pit in my stomach. It was hypnotising. It was terrifying. It was amazing. Seeing it made me realise how big and vast the ocean is.
Today, we read about Jesus, standing atop a mountain with three of his closest friends, showing them the most amazing thing they would ever see. Mark doesn't go into great detail about what it was like. Peter, who likely gave Mark this report, probably had trouble describing exactly what it was like. He says that Jesus' clothes became a dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. He says Elijah and Moses appeared. And he says they heard God's voice from a cloud.
And that's it. That's all we're told. Just like my amazing experience at the Great Barrier Reef, there are probably only so many ways to describe what the transfiguration was like. There are only so many ways to say, "water, deep, wow".
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Today we are looking at the transfiguration of Jesus.
This transfiguration of Jesus, as we call it, is the turning point of the whole gospel. We might not get a detailed description of what it was like, but its importance is absolutely unquestionable. This is the moment the gospel has been leading up to. Rather than doing something as an object lesson that points to who he is, Jesus shows himself to be God by revealing his glory.
This is different from all the miracles Jesus has performed up to this point. Healing the sick, forgiving sin, calming storms, walking on water, multiplying bread - those are all impressive, they are great, they are worthy of praise. But the transfiguration is not just Jesus doing something. It is revealing that Jesus is God in the same way that being confronted with the vast ocean reveals the vastness of the ocean - the ocean doesn't need to do anything but be seen in a certain way. That is the transfiguration.
We have to realise that God is not just worthy of glory because of all the things he does, but because God IS Glory. Just like God is Love, and all love comes from God, and God is Goodness and Holiness, God is also Glory - no glory exists apart from God. When Jesus shows his friends his glory, Jesus is revealing Glory itself - he is revealing God. It's not just a light show. It is God's power, his holiness, his goodness that make up the light of his glory.
Later in his life, Peter would say that the transfiguration was the key act of Jesus he witnessed that meant his message about Jesus could be trusted, 1 Peter 2 "16 For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” 18 We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain." The transfiguration is the point in Jesus' life that we can point to and say with absolutely certainty that Jesus is God.
But only three people ever got to see it. And I acknowledge some people struggle with that. After all, this is the unassailable proof that Jesus really is God. This is the evidence people could see with their own eyes... but only three people actually got to see it. It's not there for us to see. Some people don't want to believe that Jesus really is God without seeing it for themselves, or without indisputable proof. They want God to prove himself to them in a specific way that makes it undeniable. They don't trust the testimony of witnesses. They want testable results, obervable phenomena. That's how science works.
But that's not how history works, it's not how law works, it's not how philosophy works, and it's not how God works. The gospels are highly trustworthy sources. You can trust what they say. Yes, what they say will challenge you to rethink what you believe, what other people say about the world. But that shouldn't be a reason to ignore it.
We aren't the only ones who don't get to see Jesus as God for ourselves. Jesus had huge crowds of thousands of followers - none of them got to see it. He had hundreds of disciples. None of them got to see it. He had twelve special apostles, whom he especially selected to be with him. And of those twelve, nine of them were left behind. All they got was the story told by Peter, James and John, and even then not till after Jesus had been resurrected. That's all they got. And that's all we get - the same story retold to us in the Bible. That is all, but that is enough.
If you think witness testimony is not a strong enough basis to believe in what Jesus said and did, then this is where you disembark the Jesus train. This is your station. Jesus did not share this experience with most of the people closest to him, his most faithful apostles. My advice to you would be to honestly consider for yourself whether it's okay for God to choose to reveal himself in a way other than what you want, and think about what you personally require to believe the things that change how you live your life.
Because that's what the transfiguration is all about. It's not just about believing some errant fact of history, like Julius Caesar's birthday. We're told that Jesus is God, and the truth of that should impact the very core of how we live our lives. We don't get to see it, but we are told it. God himself told the three on that mountain: "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" I counsel everyone who hears me now to accept this as the truth, and to do what God says - listen to Jesus. And if you can't, or you won't, then you should work out exactly why you can't or won't. Are your problems with God only intellectual? Christian faith is a fundamentally intelligent position, and is highly defensible. I challenge you to approach me or Emily or Nick with your intellectual problems with God - there are answers, they can be worked out!
Are your problems with God personal - maybe you don't want to give up certain parts of your life, or you disagree with God on some things? That's also common. If you accept Jesus is God but refuse to listen to him, this is something you need to deal with. You need to come to terms with the fact that God is God, and not listening to him is untenable. Being God's enemy is terrible. But if we listen, Jesus said in Mark 2:10, "I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." We can actually be transformed from being God's enemy to his friend if we listen to Jesus. Perhaps you have both intellectual and personal problems with God. That's perhaps most common. Then you need to do both - come and talk to someone, and we'll work out the intellectual problems. Then we can sort out the personal issues, and by listening to Jesus, learn to become God's friend.
The message is loud and clear. Jesus is God. The Kingdom of God has come with power. That has been the message for eight straight chapters now, it's been getting stronger and stronger, culminating in the transfiguration. Moses and Elijah, the two men who represent the epitome of God's relationship with his people, are right there with Jesus, because just as God spoke with his people by the giving of his law through Moses; and just as God spoke to his people through the prophets, of whom Elijah is a sort of first among equals; so Jesus is the way God speaks to us in these last days.
Realising the amazing truth that Jesus is God, and that God speaks to us through him, should have a huge effect on how we live our lives. For Peter, James and John at the time, this required a huge upheaval in their faith. As Jews, Moses and the Prophets were the foundation upon which they did everything. They were the way God and his people interacted. Now God himself had told them, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" That's a foundational change for them, because 'listen to him' means 'do what he says'. For just one small example, in chapter 7:19 it says as an offhand comment in brackets, "In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean." What a huge difference to people who their whole lives followed restrictive food laws! Imagine if the opposite happened tomorrow - if Jesus told us that we have to follow the food laws to be Christian. No pork, no ham, no bacon. No shellfish. No cheese and meat mixed together. No leavened bread at passover. How does Christmas look without ham and prawns? How does McDonald's look without cheeseburgers? How does pizza look without cheese? One small part of life, one huge upheaval when it changes because we do what Jesus says.
God speaks to us through Jesus. We need to take that seriously. We need to do what he says. Think about the voices that currently speak into your lives, and that make you spring into action. When your spouse, or boyfriend or girlfriend, ask you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do. We all want happy homes. When your children tell you they need something, do you listen? Of course you do, you love your children. When your boss at works tells you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do, you want to keep your job. When people tell us to recycle, we listen. When doctors tell us to take medication, we listen. We listen to friends, we listen to family, we listen to police, we even listen to politicians. And God help us, despite ourselves we listen to advertising, if for no other reason than it is repeated constantly. These voices don't just speak to us, we listen to them, and we do what they ask.
Well God is more important than all of those voices! He's more important than all of them put together! I'm sure you would all agree with me on that. But how much time do you give to listening to God? How much time do you spend praying - that is talking and listening to God? How much time do you spend reading the Bible - that is, what God has to say? How much time do you spend thinking about God, thanking him for what you've got, or doing what he says because he says it?
That's what I want us to all take away from the transfiguration today. I now want us to focus on how we can 'listen to Jesus' in our lives. But there is a big temptation to just give a long list of things you should listen to Jesus about. That could go on forever. The truth is, I don't know what you're already doing to focus on listening to Jesus in your life. So I'm going to tell you what I do. Not to boast - definitely not to do that, trust me. But I want to show that there are things we can be done to help us seriously listen to Jesus, the way the transfiguration demands that we do.
Starting from the basics here: to listen to Jesus, I need to know what he says. Jesus speaks in the New Testament, and he quotes from almost every book of the Old Testament. He adopts it as saying what he has to say. So the whole bible is valuable in knowing what Jesus has to say. I read the Bible almost every morning. I have a devotional called My Utmost For His Highest that looks at one verse, sometimes one idea in one verse, and explores it. It's about a hundred years old. But it's free. It's actually online, but I use a book someone bought for me when I was first baptised, what, 16 years ago now. I only started using it last year. It's one page, takes about five minutes to read, if that. I find I often don't agree what what Oswald Chambers has to say about a verse. But then I pray about it, and on reflection I see that he's usually got a point. Oswald is all about putting faith in God, and it's amazing how often I disagree with him just because he says the Bible demands I put more faith in God than I do.
I also memorise the Bible. I also started memorizing just last year, around September. Since then, I've memorised the whole book of Galatians, and up to chapter 9 of Mark. This takes about 45 minutes of every morning. Yes, it takes a long time. But I cannot tell you how thankful I am for it. There are bits of Galatians I have come to mind that I would never have thought about. I see how the gospel of Mark fits together in ways that just didn't come to me before I had repeated them a hundred times, or however many times it is (it's a lot). I started doing it because I got convicted about it by something Bruce said in a sermon on James - he said we should focus on what the Bible says, even just one thing, and really try to apply it. One thing at a time is enough. I cannot speak highly enough of memorizing scripture. It is a phenomenal way of listening to Jesus. I recommend it to you all. Anyone who wants to do it, come to me afterwards and give me your contact details, and I'll send you the pamphlet I used to learn how to do it (it's free). And anyone who says they can't do it, or they don't have time, I want to ask you this:
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Who do you listen to?
I'm not asking who your favourite musicians or bands or singers are. I'm not asking you what radio programs you prefer. I'm asking you who do you pay attention to? When they express an idea or an opinion or a fact, who do you believe? When they say they need something, who do you provide for? When they ask you or tell you to do something, who do you obey? Who you listen to is obviously more than just what you hear, it's who impacts on what you do with your life.
When your spouse, or boyfriend or girlfriend, ask you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do. We all want happy homes. When your children tell you they need something, do you listen? Of course you do, you love your children. When your boss at works tells you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do, you want to keep your job. When environmentalists tell us to recycle, we listen. When doctors tell us to take medication, we listen. We listen to friends, we listen to family, we listen to preachers (hopefully), we listen to police, we even listen to politicians.
Now, no doubt you listen to different people about different things. So for example, if your boss tells you how to do your job, you listen. But if your boss tells you child vaccinations cause autism, you don't listen. People are important to different parts of our lives, and the more authority they have on a subject that is important to us, the more we listen to them, and actually act on what they have to say in that area.
In our passage today, God says about Jesus, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!"
God is the creator of all things on earth, including you and me. He is the arbiter of all justice, and decides all right and wrong. He is the giver of all love, all money, all health, and all thought. Without God, there is nothing. He the only person who you must listen to about everything you do, about every part of your life. Friends, family, children, employers, police, politicians, doctors, preachers, environmentalists - you can listen to them all. But if any of them says something that goes against what God says about how you must live your life, then no matter what it is, God wins. God is more important than all those other voices you listen to put together. And that includes your own voice.
In our passage today, Jesus is transfigured in glory, Elijah and Moses appear, and God says about Jesus, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!"
Over the past eight chapters of the Gospel of Mark, we have seen Jesus driving out demons, healing the sick, forgiving sin, ruling over the Sabbath, calming storms, walking on water, multiplying bread, discarding traditions and teaching in parables about the kingdom of God. Those are impressive, great, worthy of praise. They are all signs that point to Jesus being God. But the transfiguration is not just a sign. It doesn't point. It is revealing that Jesus is God. All those miracles before were like those little signs on the side of the road that say, "God: 180kms. God: 95kms. God: 40kms." The transfiguration is the big sign that says, "Welcome to God. Population: Jesus."
Jesus proves that he is God not by doing miracles and putting up signs pointing to him being God. He reveals one of the very things that makes God God: he reveals his Glory. We have to realise that God is not just worthy of glory because of all the things he does, but God IS Glory. Just like God is Love, and all love comes from God, and God is Goodness and Holiness, and those things come from him, God is also Glory - no glory exists apart from God. When Jesus shows his friends his glory up on that mountaintop, Jesus is revealing Glory itself - he is revealing God. It's not just a light show. It is God's power, his holiness, his goodness that make up the light of his glory.
Later in his life, Peter would say that the transfiguration was the key act of Jesus he witnessed that meant his message about Jesus could be trusted. In 1 Peter 2 "16 For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” 18 We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain." The transfiguration is the time in Jesus' life that we can point to and say with absolutely certainty that Jesus is God.
I know some people don't think they can believe in God without some sort of absolute proof that he exists. They want to see the transfiguration for themselves. I think we're a spoilt and greedy generation. We have voice recorders, cameras, even video cameras, on our phones that we carry everywhere we go. We are so used to having everything recorded, everything on video, everything photographed, that if we can't see it for ourselves, we choose not to accept it. "Pics or it didn't happen" as the kids say, or at least they used to in 2011.
But the transfiguration shows that this attitude is entirely against how God works. Here Jesus reveals the Glory of God, indisputable evidence that he and God are one - and only three people get to see it. And they're sworn to secrecy until after Jesus dies and is raised from the dead. Jesus had huge crowds of thousands of followers - none of them got to see it. He had hundreds of disciples. None of them got to see it. He had twelve special apostles, whom he especially selected to be with him. And of those twelve, nine of them were left behind. All they got was the story told by Peter, James and John, and even then not till after Jesus had been resurrected. That's all they got. And that's all we get - the same story retold to us in the Bible. God says that is enough.
If you disagree, then my advice to you would be to honestly consider for yourself whether it's okay for God to choose to reveal himself in a way other than what you want, and think about what you personally require to believe the things that change how you live your life. The Christian faith is a fundamentally intelligent position, and is highly defensible. The proof is there in history. God doesn't need to prove it to you at your convenience. God is who he claims to be, and Jesus is God. Which brings us back to my original question: Who do you listen to?
"This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" The message is loud and clear. Jesus is God. The Kingdom of God has come with power. That has been the message for eight straight chapters now, it's been getting stronger and stronger, culminating in the transfiguration. Moses and Elijah, the two men who represent the epitome of God's relationship with his people, are right there with Jesus. Just as God spoke with his people by the giving of his law through Moses; and just as God spoke to his people through the prophets, of whom Elijah is a sort of first among equals; so Jesus is the way God speaks to us in these last days.
We need to listen to Jesus, and that should have a huge effect on how we live our lives. For the disciples at the time, this required a huge upheaval in their faith. As Jews, Moses and the Prophets were the foundation upon which they did everything. They were the way God and his people interacted. Now God himself had told them, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" That's a foundational change for them, because 'listen to him' means 'do what he says'.
Take just one small example. In chapter 7:19 it says as an offhand comment in brackets, "In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean." What a huge difference to people who their whole lives followed restrictive food laws! Imagine if the opposite happened tomorrow - if Jesus told us that we have to follow the food laws to be Christian. No pork, no ham, no bacon. No shellfish. No cheese and meat mixed together. No leavened bread at passover. How does Christmas look without ham and prawns? How does McDonald's look without cheeseburgers? How does pizza look without cheese? One small part of life, one huge upheaval when it changes because we do what Jesus says.
I said earlier that we must listen to God. I said he the only person who you must listen to about everything you do, about every part of your life, and that God is more important than all those other voices you listen to put together. But no-one is going to force you to do it. God certainly doesn't force people to listen to him. If he did, I wouldn't have to stand here telling you to listen to him, because we wouldn't have a choice. God wouldn't have had to say, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" because there wouldn't be another option.
But there is an option. God gives you a choice. And you should choose to listen to him. If you accept that Jesus is God but refuse to listen to him, this is something you need to deal with. You need to come to terms with the fact that God is God, and not listening to him is untenable. Being God's enemy is terrible. But if we listen, Jesus said earlier in Mark 2:10, "I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." That is, he can forgive being God's enemy. In Mark 3:28 he says, "Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins." We can actually be transformed from being God's enemy to his friend. It's not about being forced to listen to Jesus. It's about wanting to listen to him. Do you want to know how to listen to Jesus in your life, because Jesus is God and because Jesus is your friend? Let me tell you how I do it now, and how I think I could do it better.
Step 1: to listen to Jesus, you need to hear what he says. Jesus speaks in the New Testament, and he quotes from almost every book of the Old Testament. He adopts it as saying what he has to say. So the whole bible is valuable in knowing what Jesus has to say. I read the Bible almost every morning. I have a devotional called My Utmost For His Highest that looks at one verse, sometimes one idea in one verse, and explores it. It's about a hundred years old, but it's free. It's actually online, but I use a book someone bought for me when I was first baptised, what, 16 years ago now. I only started using it last year. It's one page, takes about five minutes to read, if that. Before that, I used to read 10 verses of the Bible every morning, and really focus on what they were saying. That took about an hour. Before that, I used to follow a yearly Bible reading plan, where you're reading several chapters a day. That took about 40 minutes. They are all good.
The other thing I do these days is memorize scripture. I started in September last year, and I have memorized the entire book of Galatians (six chapters), and coincidentally I have memorised the first nine chapters of Mark. This takes about 45 minutes every morning. Yes, it takes a long time. But I cannot praise it highly enough. There are bits of Galatians I have come to mind that I would never have thought about. I see how the gospel of Mark fits together in ways that just didn't come to me before I had repeated them a hundred times, or however many times it is (it's a lot). These bits of scripture come to mind when I am stressed, or worried about something, or even just thinking about a particular thing. It is a phenomenal way of listening to Jesus. I highly recommend it to you all. Anyone who wants to do it, come to me afterwards and give me your contact details, and I'll send you the pamphlet I used to learn how to do it (it's free). It is not hard, it just takes time.
I'm not telling you to read the Bible, or to memorise the Bible. It's your choice. But if you want to listen to Jesus, these are amazing ways to do it. I will help anyone who needs help doing these things. I haven't asked, but I bet Nick and Emily would also volunteer themselves. It is so valuable, I will make time to help. I suggest you make time to do them too.
I started memorising scripture because I got convicted about it by something Bruce said in a sermon on James last year. He said we should focus on what the Bible says, even just one thing, and really try to apply it. One thing at a time is enough. And that brings me to the next thing I do to listen to Jesus: I listen to sermons being given here, at Waitara, every Sunday. Sermons are an amazing resource. They don't just tell you what Jesus says, but they help us to do it to our lives - the other half of what listening means. Our preachers spend hours and hours on their sermons, and they are good stuff. One thing I don't do - but after preparing this sermon, I have started doing as of last week - is to become one of those people who takes notes during sermons. Because I listen to sermons every week, yes, and as sure as I listen to them I forget most of them the next day. What a waste!
Every week there's a sermon outline. I'm going to start using it. Well, actually I'm probably going to take notes on my tablet because my handwriting is rubbish. But what better way to make sure that I listen to what Jesus says than to write down the challenge that the preacher gives every week, and figure out one way I can apply it to my life.
I also go to a Bible study every week. Bible study is a great way of sharing not only what we think Jesus is saying to us, but also challenging and supporting one another to listen to what Jesus says, and to do it. I tend to talk too much, and argue too much.
The next thing I do is pray. I keep a prayer blog actually. I write in it every morning. I pray about my daily devotion. I pray about whatever is exercising me that morning. Then I pray about different things each day. I pray about my marriage. I pray about Ministry of Game. I pray about Bible study. I pray about church. I pray for missionaries. I pray for persecuted Christians. Prayer is not just about me asking for stuff though. It's about working with God through why stuff needs to be prayed for at all. It's a time where I thrash out with God why things are the way they are, and every day coming to the same conclusion - I have to have faith that God is in control.
If you go into praying every day expecting everyone around you who is sick to get well, and everything that's wrong to go right, you're going to be disappointed. That's not my experience anyway. But if you go into prayer expecting to be able to wrestle with God, and to be put into submission by him - then do it.
One thing I don't do, even though I keep a prayer blog, is go back and read through it. People ask me about that all the time, but I've never done it.
Another thing I struggle with is praying to God throughout the day. But I'm getting better at that. I find the more I learn to rely on God, the more I'm prepared to reach out to him, to put him in control. To listen to him. I also find myself confessing my sins more when I do that too.
The last thing I do is think. What I mean is, I try to think about what I'm doing, thinking, and saying, and evaluate it against what Jesus says. Now, I am thoroughly terrible at this. I often act or speak without thinking. Sometimes I do things even after thinking about it and knowing it's probably not what God wants me to do. It can be tiring, trying to evaluate everything you say and do. But what I have found is the more I want to trust God, the more I want to listen to Jesus, the more I read the Bible not just so that I've read it, but really to get to grips with what it says so that I can act on it, the more my thoughts come from a godly base.
And that makes a huge difference. Because thoughts that come from an ungodly base are the ones that you have to stop, analyse, check, wonder about, consider, debate, and think about. But ones that come out of a godly base, you do't need to analyse - you know they're from God. Instead, you need courage to act on them. Because they're the thoughts and actions that don't look like what everyone else is doing. They're the hard sayings of Jesus that we'd really rather not follow. They're the scary actions, the ones we pray we don't have to do.
Lastly, of course, I try my best to do those actions. With the courage God gives me, and the strength, I try to live the life he wants me to live. Not the life that makes me comfortable. Not the life that makes me feel good. Not the life that everyone else wants me to live. I try to live the life God wants. To me, that looks like being confronted by things some other people don't even think about, and struggling to work out what I should do, not wanting to do it, being too afraid to do it, being too selfish to do it, and then deciding to trust God, and just stepping forward to do it anyway. I thank God that Jesus can forgive my sins, because there are so many gaps in my life where I am too selfish or too scared to take that step of listening to Jesus. And I thank him when he gives me the courage to do what he says.
You don't have to do any of those things. They are just examples that might be helpful to anyone who wants to do what God says, and listen to Jesus. What you have to do, what is important to do, is to think about that one big question: Who do you listen to? If it's God you want to listen to, then you need to know what Jesus says. You need to pray. You need to have your mind transformed to think the way God wants you to think. And you need to do what Jesus says.
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Who do you listen to?
I'm not asking who your favourite musicians are, or what radio programs you prefer. I'm asking who do you pay attention to? Who do you believe when they express an idea or an opinion or a fact? Who do you provide for when they say they need something? Who do you obey when they ask you or tell you to do something? Who you listen to is more than just what you hear, it's who impacts on what actions you take.
When your spouse, or your parents, asks you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do. We all want happy homes. When your children tell you they need something, do you listen? Of course you do, you love your children. When your boss at works tells you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do, you want to keep your job. When environmentalists tell us to recycle, we listen. When doctors tell us to take medication, we listen. We listen to friends, we listen to family, we listen to preachers (hopefully), we listen to police, we even listen to politicians.
In our passage today, Jesus is transfigured in glory, Elijah and Moses appear, and God says about Jesus, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!"
Over the past eight chapters of the Gospel of Mark, we have seen Jesus driving out demons, healing the sick, forgiving sin, ruling over the Sabbath, calming storms, walking on water, multiplying bread, discarding traditions and teaching in parables about the kingdom of God. Those are impressive, great, worthy of praise. They are all signs that point to Jesus being God. But the transfiguration is not just a sign. It doesn't point. It reveals that Jesus is God. All those miracles before were like those little signs on the side of the road that say, "God: 180kms. God: 35kms. God: 16kms." The transfiguration is the big sign that says, "Welcome to God. Population: Jesus."
Jesus proves that he is God, but not by doing miracles putting up signs pointing to him being God. He reveals one of the characteristics of God: he reveals his Glory. God is not just worthy of glory because of all the things he does, but God IS Glory. Just like God is Love, and all love comes from God, and God is Goodness and Holiness, and those things come from him, God is also Glory - no glory exists apart from God. When Jesus shows his friends his glory up on that mountaintop, Jesus is revealing Glory itself - he is revealing God. It's not just a light show, it is God's power, his holiness, his goodness that make up the light of his glory.
Later in his life, Peter would say that the transfiguration was the key act of Jesus he witnessed that meant his message about Jesus could be trusted. In 2 Peter 1 "16 For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty." The transfiguration is the time in Jesus' life that we can point to and say with absolutely certainty that Jesus is God. That is why he is worth listening to.
"This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" The message is loud and clear. Jesus is God. The Kingdom of God has come with power. That has been the message for eight straight chapters now, getting stronger and stronger, culminating in the transfiguration. Moses and Elijah, the two men who represent the epitome of God's relationship with his people, are right there with Jesus. God spoke with his people by the giving of his law through Moses; and God spoke to his people through the prophets, of whom Elijah is a representative. Jesus is the way God speaks to us in these last days.
Listening to Jesus should have a huge effect on how we live our lives. For the disciples at the time, this required a huge upheaval in their faith. As Jews, Moses and the Prophets were the foundation upon which they did everything. They were the way God and his people interacted. Now God himself had told them, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" That's a foundational change for them, because 'listen to him' means 'do what he says'.
Take one small example. In chapter 7:19 it says as an offhand comment in brackets, "In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean." What a huge difference to people who their whole lives followed restrictive food laws! Imagine if the opposite happened tomorrow - if Jesus told us that we have to follow the food laws to be Christian. No pork, no ham, no bacon. No shellfish. No cheese and meat mixed together. How does Christmas look without ham and prawns? How does McDonald's look without cheeseburgers? One small part of life, one huge upheaval when it changes because we do what Jesus says.
God says "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" But no-one is going to force you to do it. God certainly doesn't force people to listen to him. If he did, I wouldn't have to stand here telling you to listen to him, because we wouldn't have a choice. God wouldn't have had to say, "Listen to him!" because there wouldn't be another option.
But there is an option. God gives you a choice. And you should choose to listen to him. If you accept that Jesus is God but refuse to listen to him, that is something you need to fix. Not listening to God is untenable. Being God's enemy is terrible. But if we listen to Jesus earlier in Mark 2:10 he said, "I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." That is, he can forgive being God's enemy. We can actually be transformed from being God's enemy to being his friend. It's not about being forced to listen to Jesus. It's about wanting to listen to him. If you want to know how to listen to Jesus in your life, because Jesus is God and because Jesus is your friend, then I see four things that we need to do.
Step 1: To listen to Jesus, you need to hear what he says. Jesus speaks in the New Testament, and he quotes from almost every book of the Old Testament. So the whole bible is valuable in understanding what Jesus has to say. I read the Bible almost every morning. I have a devotional that looks at one verse, sometimes one idea in one verse, and explores it. It's about a hundred years old, but it's free. It's actually online. It's one page, takes about five minutes to read, if that. Before that, I used to read 10 verses of the Bible every morning, and really focus on what they were saying. That took about an hour. Before that, I used to follow a yearly Bible reading plan, where you're reading several chapters a day. That took about 40 minutes. They are all good.
Memorize scripture. I started in September last year, and I have memorized the entire book of Galatians (six chapters), and coincidentally I have memorised the first nine chapters of Mark. It takes about 45 minutes every morning. Yes, it takes a long time. But I cannot praise it highly enough. It is a phenomenal way of listening to Jesus. I strongly recommend it to you all. If you want to do it, come to me afterwards and give me your contact details, and I'll send you the pamphlet I used to learn how to do it (it's free). It is not hard to do, all it takes is time. I recommend that you make time to do it. Give other things up to do it. That's what I did. It's better than reading the news.
I started memorising scripture because I was convicted about it by something Bruce said in a sermon on James last year. Which brings me to the next thing to do to listen to Jesus: Listen to sermons being given here, at Waitara, every Sunday. Sermons are an amazing resource. They don't just tell you what Jesus says, but they help us to do it to our lives - the other half of what listening means. One thing I don't do takes notes during sermons. I listen to sermons every week, and as sure as I listen to them, I forget most of them the next day. What a waste!
Every week there's a sermon outline. I'm going to start using it. Well, actually I'm probably going to take notes on my tablet because my handwriting is rubbish. But I'm going to note down the challenge that the preacher gives every week, and if I'm not doing it, figure out one way I can apply it to my life, then actually do it.
Go to a Bible study. Bible study is a great way of sharing not only what we think Jesus is saying to us, but also challenging and supporting one another to listen to what Jesus says, and to do it. It turns listening to Jesus from being just a personal act into it a communal activity.
Step 2: We need to talk to Jesus. That means pray. I keep a prayer blog actually. I write in it every morning. I pray about my daily devotion. I pray about whatever is exercising me that morning. Then I pray about different topics each day of the week. Prayer is not just about me asking for stuff though. It's about working with God through why stuff needs to be prayed for at all. It's a time where I thrash out with God why things are the way they are, and every day come to the same conclusion - I need to have faith that God is in control.
If you go into praying every day expecting everyone around you who is sick to get well, and everything that's wrong to go right, you're going to be disappointed. That's certainly not my experience. But if you go into prayer expecting to wrestle with God, and to be put into submission by him - then do it. Prayer is where the desire comes from to want to listen to Jesus.
One thing I struggle with is praying to God throughout the day. But I find the more I learn to rely on God in one area of life, the more I'm prepared to reach out to him, to put him in control of that. So one step at a time.
Step 3 is to think. What I mean is, try to think about what you're doing, thinking, and saying, and evaluate it against what Jesus says. I am thoroughly terrible at this. I often act or speak without thinking. Sometimes I do things even after thinking about it and knowing it's probably not what God wants me to do. Trying to evaluate everything you say and do can be tiring. But what I find is the more I want to listen to Jesus through prayer, and the more I actually hear Jesus through the Bible, the more my thoughts come from a godly basis.
And that makes a huge difference. Thoughts that come from an not-godly basis are the ones that you have to firstly identify, and then stop and check, analyse, consider, and think about. They're the thoughts Jesus describes as the thorns that choke the seed in Mark 4:19 "the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things". They choke Jesus' word, making it unfruitful.
But thoughts that from a godly basis, you don't need to analyse - because God's ways are the right ways, and they will never be defeated. Instead, they're the thoughts we need courage to act on. Because they're the thoughts and actions that aren't like what everyone else is doing and thinking. They're the hard sayings of Jesus that we'd really rather not follow. They're the scary actions, the ones we pray we don't have to do.
Lastly, step 4, of course, is to do those actions. With the courage and the strength God gives, trying to live the life he wants us to live. Not the life that makes us comfortable. Not the life that makes us feel good. Not the life that everyone else thinks we should live. It's trying to live the life God wants. To me, that generally looks like being confronted by things some other people don't even think about; struggling to work out what Jesus says I should do; not wanting to do it; being too afraid to do it; being too selfish to do it; and then deciding to trust God, and stepping forward to do it anyway. And I praise God when he gives me the courage to do what he says. And I thank God that Jesus can forgive my sins, because there are so many times in my life where I am too selfish or too scared to take this last step of listening to Jesus.
But listening to Jesus is a package deal - you have to do it all. You can't think about what Jesus says if you don't know what he says. You won't do what he says if you haven't had your mind transformed to think in a godly way. You won't do any of it if you don't pray. If you want to listen to Jesus, then you need to know what he says. You need to talk to God. You need to have your mind transformed to think the way Christ wants you to think. And you need to do what Jesus says. I want to ask you all to take these words of God seriously: "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" Don't just ask yourself if what you're doing is enough to listen to Jesus. Ask yourself first if that's what you actually want to do. Ask yourself honestly, Who do I really listen to?
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Obvious points:
Major
Jesus is God, the son of God, the fulfilment of God's revelation to people.
Minor
John the Baptist was Elijah.
What does this mean for us?
* God's command to the disciples: "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!"
- It means we must respect the ultimate authority Jesus has over us as God.
* The Law and the Prophets were the primary guides of life for the Jews. It's what makes them a people.
- Jesus is our Law and Prophets.
- He should rule our lives. Our lives should be dominated by the law of Christ.
** Only three of the apostles saw this transfiguration before tasting death. The others had to die first before they saw Jesus glorified. They didn't get to hear about this until after the resurrection.
-- We don't see Jesus glorified till we die, or if we're lucky, when he returns.
-- We shouldn't need to see Jesus for ourselves. We can trust the testimony of the apostles who saw him and who were with him. The disciples, even nine of the 12, did not get to see Jesus transfigured. This should not be a block to our faith.
* Jesus is not just worthy of glory: God is Glory.
glory n. (pl. glories) [mass noun] 1 high renown or honour won by notable achievements: to fight and die for the glory of one's nation. 2 magnificence or great beauty: the train has been restored to all its former glory. - [count noun] (often glories) a thing that is beautiful, impressive, or worthy of praise: the glories of Paris. - the splendour and bliss of heaven: images of Christ in glory. 3 praise, worship, and thanksgiving offered to God. 4 [count noun] a luminous ring or halo, especially as depicted around the head of Christ or a saint. ■ v. [no obj.] (glory in) take great pride or pleasure in: they gloried in their independence. - exult in unpleasantly or boastfully: readers tended to defend their paper or even to glory in its bias.
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You don't often hear the word 'glory' used outside a church. We sing songs about God being the King of Glory, and we say that God is worthy of glory, honour and praise. We pray that God will be glorified. But outside of church and talking about God, when do we talk about glory? ('Melbourne Victory skipper Mark Milligan hungry for more title glory' [Feb 11]; 'BMX champ Caroline Buchanan uses AIS to give her an edge on the quest for Olympic glory' [Feb 8]; 'Wallpaper returns - in all its vibrant glory' [Feb 6]) It's a compound concept that takes in a few ideas. If we see something beautiful, impressive, worthy of praise, we might say, "We looked over the city of Paris in all its glory." It is often used to mean a high renown and honour that is gained through a notable achievement, so we might say that a soldier or a sportsperson who pushes the limits and tries to accomplish more is, "Going for glory." When something was once good, but has since fallen into ruin, and we rebuild it, we say we are, "Returning it to its former glory." So 'glory' really means something that is the epitome of beauty, of impressiveness, something that is so good that it is worth giving praise and honour and being renowned.
You might think it's little wonder that we talk about God in these terms. After all, God is the epitome of beauty, of impressiveness, He is so good that he is worth giving honour and praise.
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'Melbourne Victory skipper Mark Milligan hungry for more title glory' [Feb 11]; 'BMX champ Caroline Buchanan uses AIS to give her an edge on the quest for Olympic glory' [Feb 8]; 'Wallpaper returns - in all its vibrant glory' [Feb 6]. When we talk about glory these days, this is usually what we mean - sporting heroes and their accomplishments, or the beauty and impressiveness of something, like a city, or in that case some wallpaper. We even have a football team called Perth Glory. We might occasionally describe something as "glorious": again usually sporting victories, but once upon a time we might have talked about a glorious military victory. We rarely talk about something being "glorified" outside of churches - when we do, we usually mean it's overstated - so the Archibald Prize, the famous portrait competition, has been disparagingly called a "glorified lucky dip".
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Even going over what Jesus has said in the last eight chapters of Mark would be a series of sermons on its own. And guess what? It has been! We've been preaching through Mark since December. I can guarantee that every sermon given between now and then has looked at what Jesus said, and then applied that to our lives today. So let me ask you this: how have the sermons over the last eight or so weeks impacted your life? What changes have you made because of them?
Gosh, that's a hard question, isn't it? Can you remember what Mark's sermon was about last week? Or Emily's the week before? Nick's the week before that? If I were to ask for a show of hands of how many people were here for Penny's sermon on <date>, I will bet a good number of hands would go up. If I were to ask for people to tell me one thing she said about applying that chapter of Mark to our lives, how many people could give me an answer? Could anyone tell me what chapter of Mark she preached on, or what story it was? But I wonder if we have forgotten the general plot or story of what happened in a regular TV series we watch, or a book we've read back then.
No, I'm not bringing this up to shame you. I'm bringing this up to make a point - every week we have sermons delivered to us here, on a platter. Sermons that people put hours and hours of work into, in order to bring God's word to us and help us apply it to our lives. And we are so used to it that we sit here, lap it up, and then walk out the door and forget it a week later. Maybe the sermons are boring. I'm sure I could do better to grab your attention. And sermons aren't memory tests to see how much you can recall. But my point is that if we're really serious about listening to what Jesus has to say, what steps are we taking to make sure that the point that was made to us on any given week is something we include into our lives? Do you take any active steps at all? Because I don't! I know some people use the sermon outlines to take notes. That's more than I do.
How much do you care about knowing what Jesus said and how to act on it? Do you care enough to go to church, even when you don't feel like it? Do you care enough to listen to sermons? Do you care enough to read the Bible every day, even though you're already pressed for time? Are you prepared to give up other things you do to make that time? Do you care enough to pray every day, not asking God for sunshine or safe travel or a holiday, but for him to reveal to you what he says? I think everyone here would say yes, we all care enough to want to do those things. So why aren't we doing them? What gets in the way? Is it busyness, family, work, life's other distractions? Remember the parable of the sower, Mark 4:18 "Still other people, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; 19 but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and desires for other things choke the word, making it unfruitful."
Because how can you listen to Jesus if you don't even know what he says? How do we find out what Jesus says? It's in the Bible. We read it.When you read what Jesus says directly in the gospels, you'll see he claims the whole Bible as the word of God, Old and New Testament. What do you need to do to make that happen? Every week someone stands up at this podium and gives a talk about God and the Bible, and how to relate it directly to your life. Listen to them!
Summary of the the sermons up to this point
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What is the most amazing thing you've ever seen? Perhaps it was something natural, like the Grand Canyon. Anyone seen that? Was it amazing? Perhaps the most amazing thing you've ever seen was man made. Has anyone been to the Great Wall of China? Was it amazing? Maybe the most amazing thing you've ever seen was an event, like Cirque du Soleil (which I have on good authority is amazing). Maybe you're a romantic, and the most amazing thing you ever saw was your first child being born, or your spouse at your wedding. Aww. Maybe the most amazing thing you've ever seen was a miracle. Whatever it is, what I'm talking about the most striking, most heartfelt, most impressive thing you have ever seen. It is something that impacts you.
Let me tell you about the most amazing natural thing I've ever seen. I was in Townsville as a teenager, and went to the Great Barrier Reef. If you've never been, the reef is very impressive. Worth going to see. It takes a couple of hours in a boat to get there. We went around in glass bottom boats, and saw the pretty coral and fish. It's quite nice. But it's not the most amazing thing I've ever seen. It's all underwater, and you can't see it all from a boat, or by swimming around it. Maybe it's more impressive from the air. But while I was there, I did some snorkelling. When you're snorkelling at the reef, you are pretty much looking down, because your air is coming from a tube that points up that way, and there's colourful coral and stuff beneath you, so you don't really look where you're going.
Well, I was swimming along, looking at all the pretty colours, when all of a sudden I swam too far. The coral very, very suddenly disappeared, and below me was nothing. Just emptiness. Water going down into blackness. I looked up in front of me, and it was the same. I had reached the end of the reef, and in front of me there was just deep, endless water. It was floating all around me, for as far as I could see. And it was so big. I could see nothing but water. No coral. No fish. No sharks. No seaweed. But I knew all that stuff was out there, somewhere, in that infinite abyss. I can still picture it now. It still makes a pit in my stomach. It was hypnotising. It was terrifying. It was amazing. Seeing it made me realise how big and vast the ocean is.
Today, we read about Jesus, standing atop a mountain with three of his closest friends, showing them the most amazing thing they would ever see. Mark doesn't go into great detail about what it was like. Peter, who likely gave Mark this report, probably had trouble describing exactly what it was like. He says that Jesus' clothes became a dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. He says Elijah and Moses appeared. And he says they heard God's voice from a cloud.
And that's it. That's all we're told. Just like my amazing experience at the Great Barrier Reef, there are probably only so many ways to describe what the transfiguration was like. There are only so many ways to say, "water, deep, wow".
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Today we are looking at the transfiguration of Jesus.
This transfiguration of Jesus, as we call it, is the turning point of the whole gospel. We might not get a detailed description of what it was like, but its importance is absolutely unquestionable. This is the moment the gospel has been leading up to. Rather than doing something as an object lesson that points to who he is, Jesus shows himself to be God by revealing his glory.
This is different from all the miracles Jesus has performed up to this point. Healing the sick, forgiving sin, calming storms, walking on water, multiplying bread - those are all impressive, they are great, they are worthy of praise. But the transfiguration is not just Jesus doing something. It is revealing that Jesus is God in the same way that being confronted with the vast ocean reveals the vastness of the ocean - the ocean doesn't need to do anything but be seen in a certain way. That is the transfiguration.
We have to realise that God is not just worthy of glory because of all the things he does, but because God IS Glory. Just like God is Love, and all love comes from God, and God is Goodness and Holiness, God is also Glory - no glory exists apart from God. When Jesus shows his friends his glory, Jesus is revealing Glory itself - he is revealing God. It's not just a light show. It is God's power, his holiness, his goodness that make up the light of his glory.
Later in his life, Peter would say that the transfiguration was the key act of Jesus he witnessed that meant his message about Jesus could be trusted, 1 Peter 2 "16 For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” 18 We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain." The transfiguration is the point in Jesus' life that we can point to and say with absolutely certainty that Jesus is God.
But only three people ever got to see it. And I acknowledge some people struggle with that. After all, this is the unassailable proof that Jesus really is God. This is the evidence people could see with their own eyes... but only three people actually got to see it. It's not there for us to see. Some people don't want to believe that Jesus really is God without seeing it for themselves, or without indisputable proof. They want God to prove himself to them in a specific way that makes it undeniable. They don't trust the testimony of witnesses. They want testable results, obervable phenomena. That's how science works.
But that's not how history works, it's not how law works, it's not how philosophy works, and it's not how God works. The gospels are highly trustworthy sources. You can trust what they say. Yes, what they say will challenge you to rethink what you believe, what other people say about the world. But that shouldn't be a reason to ignore it.
We aren't the only ones who don't get to see Jesus as God for ourselves. Jesus had huge crowds of thousands of followers - none of them got to see it. He had hundreds of disciples. None of them got to see it. He had twelve special apostles, whom he especially selected to be with him. And of those twelve, nine of them were left behind. All they got was the story told by Peter, James and John, and even then not till after Jesus had been resurrected. That's all they got. And that's all we get - the same story retold to us in the Bible. That is all, but that is enough.
If you think witness testimony is not a strong enough basis to believe in what Jesus said and did, then this is where you disembark the Jesus train. This is your station. Jesus did not share this experience with most of the people closest to him, his most faithful apostles. My advice to you would be to honestly consider for yourself whether it's okay for God to choose to reveal himself in a way other than what you want, and think about what you personally require to believe the things that change how you live your life.
Because that's what the transfiguration is all about. It's not just about believing some errant fact of history, like Julius Caesar's birthday. We're told that Jesus is God, and the truth of that should impact the very core of how we live our lives. We don't get to see it, but we are told it. God himself told the three on that mountain: "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" I counsel everyone who hears me now to accept this as the truth, and to do what God says - listen to Jesus. And if you can't, or you won't, then you should work out exactly why you can't or won't. Are your problems with God only intellectual? Christian faith is a fundamentally intelligent position, and is highly defensible. I challenge you to approach me or Emily or Nick with your intellectual problems with God - there are answers, they can be worked out!
Are your problems with God personal - maybe you don't want to give up certain parts of your life, or you disagree with God on some things? That's also common. If you accept Jesus is God but refuse to listen to him, this is something you need to deal with. You need to come to terms with the fact that God is God, and not listening to him is untenable. Being God's enemy is terrible. But if we listen, Jesus said in Mark 2:10, "I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." We can actually be transformed from being God's enemy to his friend if we listen to Jesus. Perhaps you have both intellectual and personal problems with God. That's perhaps most common. Then you need to do both - come and talk to someone, and we'll work out the intellectual problems. Then we can sort out the personal issues, and by listening to Jesus, learn to become God's friend.
The message is loud and clear. Jesus is God. The Kingdom of God has come with power. That has been the message for eight straight chapters now, it's been getting stronger and stronger, culminating in the transfiguration. Moses and Elijah, the two men who represent the epitome of God's relationship with his people, are right there with Jesus, because just as God spoke with his people by the giving of his law through Moses; and just as God spoke to his people through the prophets, of whom Elijah is a sort of first among equals; so Jesus is the way God speaks to us in these last days.
Realising the amazing truth that Jesus is God, and that God speaks to us through him, should have a huge effect on how we live our lives. For Peter, James and John at the time, this required a huge upheaval in their faith. As Jews, Moses and the Prophets were the foundation upon which they did everything. They were the way God and his people interacted. Now God himself had told them, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" That's a foundational change for them, because 'listen to him' means 'do what he says'. For just one small example, in chapter 7:19 it says as an offhand comment in brackets, "In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean." What a huge difference to people who their whole lives followed restrictive food laws! Imagine if the opposite happened tomorrow - if Jesus told us that we have to follow the food laws to be Christian. No pork, no ham, no bacon. No shellfish. No cheese and meat mixed together. No leavened bread at passover. How does Christmas look without ham and prawns? How does McDonald's look without cheeseburgers? How does pizza look without cheese? One small part of life, one huge upheaval when it changes because we do what Jesus says.
God speaks to us through Jesus. We need to take that seriously. We need to do what he says. Think about the voices that currently speak into your lives, and that make you spring into action. When your spouse, or boyfriend or girlfriend, ask you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do. We all want happy homes. When your children tell you they need something, do you listen? Of course you do, you love your children. When your boss at works tells you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do, you want to keep your job. When people tell us to recycle, we listen. When doctors tell us to take medication, we listen. We listen to friends, we listen to family, we listen to police, we even listen to politicians. And God help us, despite ourselves we listen to advertising, if for no other reason than it is repeated constantly. These voices don't just speak to us, we listen to them, and we do what they ask.
Well God is more important than all of those voices! He's more important than all of them put together! I'm sure you would all agree with me on that. But how much time do you give to listening to God? How much time do you spend praying - that is talking and listening to God? How much time do you spend reading the Bible - that is, what God has to say? How much time do you spend thinking about God, thanking him for what you've got, or doing what he says because he says it?
That's what I want us to all take away from the transfiguration today. I now want us to focus on how we can 'listen to Jesus' in our lives. But there is a big temptation to just give a long list of things you should listen to Jesus about. That could go on forever. The truth is, I don't know what you're already doing to focus on listening to Jesus in your life. So I'm going to tell you what I do. Not to boast - definitely not to do that, trust me. But I want to show that there are things we can be done to help us seriously listen to Jesus, the way the transfiguration demands that we do.
Starting from the basics here: to listen to Jesus, I need to know what he says. Jesus speaks in the New Testament, and he quotes from almost every book of the Old Testament. He adopts it as saying what he has to say. So the whole bible is valuable in knowing what Jesus has to say. I read the Bible almost every morning. I have a devotional called My Utmost For His Highest that looks at one verse, sometimes one idea in one verse, and explores it. It's about a hundred years old. But it's free. It's actually online, but I use a book someone bought for me when I was first baptised, what, 16 years ago now. I only started using it last year. It's one page, takes about five minutes to read, if that. I find I often don't agree what what Oswald Chambers has to say about a verse. But then I pray about it, and on reflection I see that he's usually got a point. Oswald is all about putting faith in God, and it's amazing how often I disagree with him just because he says the Bible demands I put more faith in God than I do.
I also memorise the Bible. I also started memorizing just last year, around September. Since then, I've memorised the whole book of Galatians, and up to chapter 9 of Mark. This takes about 45 minutes of every morning. Yes, it takes a long time. But I cannot tell you how thankful I am for it. There are bits of Galatians I have come to mind that I would never have thought about. I see how the gospel of Mark fits together in ways that just didn't come to me before I had repeated them a hundred times, or however many times it is (it's a lot). I started doing it because I got convicted about it by something Bruce said in a sermon on James - he said we should focus on what the Bible says, even just one thing, and really try to apply it. One thing at a time is enough. I cannot speak highly enough of memorizing scripture. It is a phenomenal way of listening to Jesus. I recommend it to you all. Anyone who wants to do it, come to me afterwards and give me your contact details, and I'll send you the pamphlet I used to learn how to do it (it's free). And anyone who says they can't do it, or they don't have time, I want to ask you this:
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Who do you listen to?
I'm not asking who your favourite musicians or bands or singers are. I'm not asking you what radio programs you prefer. I'm asking you who do you pay attention to? When they express an idea or an opinion or a fact, who do you believe? When they say they need something, who do you provide for? When they ask you or tell you to do something, who do you obey? Who you listen to is obviously more than just what you hear, it's who impacts on what you do with your life.
When your spouse, or boyfriend or girlfriend, ask you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do. We all want happy homes. When your children tell you they need something, do you listen? Of course you do, you love your children. When your boss at works tells you to do something, do you listen? Of course you do, you want to keep your job. When environmentalists tell us to recycle, we listen. When doctors tell us to take medication, we listen. We listen to friends, we listen to family, we listen to preachers (hopefully), we listen to police, we even listen to politicians.
Now, no doubt you listen to different people about different things. So for example, if your boss tells you how to do your job, you listen. But if your boss tells you child vaccinations cause autism, you don't listen. People are important to different parts of our lives, and the more authority they have on a subject that is important to us, the more we listen to them, and actually act on what they have to say in that area.
In our passage today, God says about Jesus, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!"
God is the creator of all things on earth, including you and me. He is the arbiter of all justice, and decides all right and wrong. He is the giver of all love, all money, all health, and all thought. Without God, there is nothing. He the only person who you must listen to about everything you do, about every part of your life. Friends, family, children, employers, police, politicians, doctors, preachers, environmentalists - you can listen to them all. But if any of them says something that goes against what God says about how you must live your life, then no matter what it is, God wins. God is more important than all those other voices you listen to put together. And that includes your own voice.
In our passage today, Jesus is transfigured in glory, Elijah and Moses appear, and God says about Jesus, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!"
Over the past eight chapters of the Gospel of Mark, we have seen Jesus driving out demons, healing the sick, forgiving sin, ruling over the Sabbath, calming storms, walking on water, multiplying bread, discarding traditions and teaching in parables about the kingdom of God. Those are impressive, great, worthy of praise. They are all signs that point to Jesus being God. But the transfiguration is not just a sign. It doesn't point. It is revealing that Jesus is God. All those miracles before were like those little signs on the side of the road that say, "God: 180kms. God: 95kms. God: 40kms." The transfiguration is the big sign that says, "Welcome to God. Population: Jesus."
Jesus proves that he is God not by doing miracles and putting up signs pointing to him being God. He reveals one of the very things that makes God God: he reveals his Glory. We have to realise that God is not just worthy of glory because of all the things he does, but God IS Glory. Just like God is Love, and all love comes from God, and God is Goodness and Holiness, and those things come from him, God is also Glory - no glory exists apart from God. When Jesus shows his friends his glory up on that mountaintop, Jesus is revealing Glory itself - he is revealing God. It's not just a light show. It is God's power, his holiness, his goodness that make up the light of his glory.
Later in his life, Peter would say that the transfiguration was the key act of Jesus he witnessed that meant his message about Jesus could be trusted. In 1 Peter 2 "16 For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” 18 We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain." The transfiguration is the time in Jesus' life that we can point to and say with absolutely certainty that Jesus is God.
I know some people don't think they can believe in God without some sort of absolute proof that he exists. They want to see the transfiguration for themselves. I think we're a spoilt and greedy generation. We have voice recorders, cameras, even video cameras, on our phones that we carry everywhere we go. We are so used to having everything recorded, everything on video, everything photographed, that if we can't see it for ourselves, we choose not to accept it. "Pics or it didn't happen" as the kids say, or at least they used to in 2011.
But the transfiguration shows that this attitude is entirely against how God works. Here Jesus reveals the Glory of God, indisputable evidence that he and God are one - and only three people get to see it. And they're sworn to secrecy until after Jesus dies and is raised from the dead. Jesus had huge crowds of thousands of followers - none of them got to see it. He had hundreds of disciples. None of them got to see it. He had twelve special apostles, whom he especially selected to be with him. And of those twelve, nine of them were left behind. All they got was the story told by Peter, James and John, and even then not till after Jesus had been resurrected. That's all they got. And that's all we get - the same story retold to us in the Bible. God says that is enough.
If you disagree, then my advice to you would be to honestly consider for yourself whether it's okay for God to choose to reveal himself in a way other than what you want, and think about what you personally require to believe the things that change how you live your life. The Christian faith is a fundamentally intelligent position, and is highly defensible. The proof is there in history. God doesn't need to prove it to you at your convenience. God is who he claims to be, and Jesus is God. Which brings us back to my original question: Who do you listen to?
"This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" The message is loud and clear. Jesus is God. The Kingdom of God has come with power. That has been the message for eight straight chapters now, it's been getting stronger and stronger, culminating in the transfiguration. Moses and Elijah, the two men who represent the epitome of God's relationship with his people, are right there with Jesus. Just as God spoke with his people by the giving of his law through Moses; and just as God spoke to his people through the prophets, of whom Elijah is a sort of first among equals; so Jesus is the way God speaks to us in these last days.
We need to listen to Jesus, and that should have a huge effect on how we live our lives. For the disciples at the time, this required a huge upheaval in their faith. As Jews, Moses and the Prophets were the foundation upon which they did everything. They were the way God and his people interacted. Now God himself had told them, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" That's a foundational change for them, because 'listen to him' means 'do what he says'.
Take just one small example. In chapter 7:19 it says as an offhand comment in brackets, "In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean." What a huge difference to people who their whole lives followed restrictive food laws! Imagine if the opposite happened tomorrow - if Jesus told us that we have to follow the food laws to be Christian. No pork, no ham, no bacon. No shellfish. No cheese and meat mixed together. No leavened bread at passover. How does Christmas look without ham and prawns? How does McDonald's look without cheeseburgers? How does pizza look without cheese? One small part of life, one huge upheaval when it changes because we do what Jesus says.
I said earlier that we must listen to God. I said he the only person who you must listen to about everything you do, about every part of your life, and that God is more important than all those other voices you listen to put together. But no-one is going to force you to do it. God certainly doesn't force people to listen to him. If he did, I wouldn't have to stand here telling you to listen to him, because we wouldn't have a choice. God wouldn't have had to say, "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" because there wouldn't be another option.
But there is an option. God gives you a choice. And you should choose to listen to him. If you accept that Jesus is God but refuse to listen to him, this is something you need to deal with. You need to come to terms with the fact that God is God, and not listening to him is untenable. Being God's enemy is terrible. But if we listen, Jesus said earlier in Mark 2:10, "I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." That is, he can forgive being God's enemy. In Mark 3:28 he says, "Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins." We can actually be transformed from being God's enemy to his friend. It's not about being forced to listen to Jesus. It's about wanting to listen to him. Do you want to know how to listen to Jesus in your life, because Jesus is God and because Jesus is your friend? Let me tell you how I do it now, and how I think I could do it better.
Step 1: to listen to Jesus, you need to hear what he says. Jesus speaks in the New Testament, and he quotes from almost every book of the Old Testament. He adopts it as saying what he has to say. So the whole bible is valuable in knowing what Jesus has to say. I read the Bible almost every morning. I have a devotional called My Utmost For His Highest that looks at one verse, sometimes one idea in one verse, and explores it. It's about a hundred years old, but it's free. It's actually online, but I use a book someone bought for me when I was first baptised, what, 16 years ago now. I only started using it last year. It's one page, takes about five minutes to read, if that. Before that, I used to read 10 verses of the Bible every morning, and really focus on what they were saying. That took about an hour. Before that, I used to follow a yearly Bible reading plan, where you're reading several chapters a day. That took about 40 minutes. They are all good.
The other thing I do these days is memorize scripture. I started in September last year, and I have memorized the entire book of Galatians (six chapters), and coincidentally I have memorised the first nine chapters of Mark. This takes about 45 minutes every morning. Yes, it takes a long time. But I cannot praise it highly enough. There are bits of Galatians I have come to mind that I would never have thought about. I see how the gospel of Mark fits together in ways that just didn't come to me before I had repeated them a hundred times, or however many times it is (it's a lot). These bits of scripture come to mind when I am stressed, or worried about something, or even just thinking about a particular thing. It is a phenomenal way of listening to Jesus. I highly recommend it to you all. Anyone who wants to do it, come to me afterwards and give me your contact details, and I'll send you the pamphlet I used to learn how to do it (it's free). It is not hard, it just takes time.
I'm not telling you to read the Bible, or to memorise the Bible. It's your choice. But if you want to listen to Jesus, these are amazing ways to do it. I will help anyone who needs help doing these things. I haven't asked, but I bet Nick and Emily would also volunteer themselves. It is so valuable, I will make time to help. I suggest you make time to do them too.
I started memorising scripture because I got convicted about it by something Bruce said in a sermon on James last year. He said we should focus on what the Bible says, even just one thing, and really try to apply it. One thing at a time is enough. And that brings me to the next thing I do to listen to Jesus: I listen to sermons being given here, at Waitara, every Sunday. Sermons are an amazing resource. They don't just tell you what Jesus says, but they help us to do it to our lives - the other half of what listening means. Our preachers spend hours and hours on their sermons, and they are good stuff. One thing I don't do - but after preparing this sermon, I have started doing as of last week - is to become one of those people who takes notes during sermons. Because I listen to sermons every week, yes, and as sure as I listen to them I forget most of them the next day. What a waste!
Every week there's a sermon outline. I'm going to start using it. Well, actually I'm probably going to take notes on my tablet because my handwriting is rubbish. But what better way to make sure that I listen to what Jesus says than to write down the challenge that the preacher gives every week, and figure out one way I can apply it to my life.
I also go to a Bible study every week. Bible study is a great way of sharing not only what we think Jesus is saying to us, but also challenging and supporting one another to listen to what Jesus says, and to do it. I tend to talk too much, and argue too much.
The next thing I do is pray. I keep a prayer blog actually. I write in it every morning. I pray about my daily devotion. I pray about whatever is exercising me that morning. Then I pray about different things each day. I pray about my marriage. I pray about Ministry of Game. I pray about Bible study. I pray about church. I pray for missionaries. I pray for persecuted Christians. Prayer is not just about me asking for stuff though. It's about working with God through why stuff needs to be prayed for at all. It's a time where I thrash out with God why things are the way they are, and every day coming to the same conclusion - I have to have faith that God is in control.
If you go into praying every day expecting everyone around you who is sick to get well, and everything that's wrong to go right, you're going to be disappointed. That's not my experience anyway. But if you go into prayer expecting to be able to wrestle with God, and to be put into submission by him - then do it.
One thing I don't do, even though I keep a prayer blog, is go back and read through it. People ask me about that all the time, but I've never done it.
Another thing I struggle with is praying to God throughout the day. But I'm getting better at that. I find the more I learn to rely on God, the more I'm prepared to reach out to him, to put him in control. To listen to him. I also find myself confessing my sins more when I do that too.
The last thing I do is think. What I mean is, I try to think about what I'm doing, thinking, and saying, and evaluate it against what Jesus says. Now, I am thoroughly terrible at this. I often act or speak without thinking. Sometimes I do things even after thinking about it and knowing it's probably not what God wants me to do. It can be tiring, trying to evaluate everything you say and do. But what I have found is the more I want to trust God, the more I want to listen to Jesus, the more I read the Bible not just so that I've read it, but really to get to grips with what it says so that I can act on it, the more my thoughts come from a godly base.
And that makes a huge difference. Because thoughts that come from an ungodly base are the ones that you have to stop, analyse, check, wonder about, consider, debate, and think about. But ones that come out of a godly base, you do't need to analyse - you know they're from God. Instead, you need courage to act on them. Because they're the thoughts and actions that don't look like what everyone else is doing. They're the hard sayings of Jesus that we'd really rather not follow. They're the scary actions, the ones we pray we don't have to do.
Lastly, of course, I try my best to do those actions. With the courage God gives me, and the strength, I try to live the life he wants me to live. Not the life that makes me comfortable. Not the life that makes me feel good. Not the life that everyone else wants me to live. I try to live the life God wants. To me, that looks like being confronted by things some other people don't even think about, and struggling to work out what I should do, not wanting to do it, being too afraid to do it, being too selfish to do it, and then deciding to trust God, and just stepping forward to do it anyway. I thank God that Jesus can forgive my sins, because there are so many gaps in my life where I am too selfish or too scared to take that step of listening to Jesus. And I thank him when he gives me the courage to do what he says.
You don't have to do any of those things. They are just examples that might be helpful to anyone who wants to do what God says, and listen to Jesus. What you have to do, what is important to do, is to think about that one big question: Who do you listen to? If it's God you want to listen to, then you need to know what Jesus says. You need to pray. You need to have your mind transformed to think the way God wants you to think. And you need to do what Jesus says.
-----------------------
Sunday, February 08, 2015
8/2/15 Prayer, 'Who is the King?' Mark 6:30-56
Heavenly Father,
No matter where we look in this world, we see your power and glory. You are behind the beauty of the sky at sunrise and sunset. You are responsible for the food and water that all life depends on. You are the model for all relationships in life - in families, in churches, and with friends. You provide work to be done, and you give food and shelter and wages as its reward. You give health, you give freedom, and you give love. You are God Who Provides, and all good things come from you, so that in everything we cannot help but see your greatness and bring you glory for it.
And yet sometimes there are tragedies in this world. Planes crash. Sickness and financial hardship plague our world, and threaten the security of our own lives. Relationships break down. There are wars and massacres that threaten people's freedom, and the lives of our brothers and sisters and of your church. There is worry and anxiety and stress, born of overwork, greed and misplaced desire. We are your family, and yet sometimes we don't even trust you to provide for us, and we don't treat you with the honour you deserve and demand.
But you have revealed yourself to us through your son Jesus Christ, our Messiah. You show us through his life that this is not how the world should be. Jesus healed the sick, and taught us that sickness is not part of your perfect kingdom. Jesus had compassion on people, and showed his love by teaching the people who came to him. And you continue to teach us through your word as it is contained in the bible, as we study it alone in quiet times and together in Bible study, and as we are exhorted to follow it by our preachers. Be with Emily as she seeks to encourage us to respond to your word today. Jesus fed people who had come out to the wilderness to hear him, and did it in an amazing way, showing us your glory. Help us to rely on you, and not on ourselves, and to be thankful for what you provide for us, and to be thankful in knowing that we will never be hungry or thirsty in your perfect kingdom.
You are our shepherd, our leader, and we thank you that we can trust you to always have our best interests at heart. Give us faith to rely on you, even when we don't have answers for why life isn't treating us the way we'd like it to. Regardless of our situations, bring us closer to you, and help us to find peace in that closeness.
You are truly amazing, God, and we pray that many people will come from all over to hear more about you. But you also send us out to preach your word. Help us to speak clearly the good news that Jesus has come, and people need to repent. Let people see the work that you are doing in us, the change you write across our lives, and let us tell them boldly and lovingly about you. Remind us that you also desire to bring us rest, and even as we seek to do our work for you, help us to remember it is your work, not ours, and that you ultimately call us all to rest in you.
We ask all these things, trusting that you give to us all that we need, and will continue to transform us and renew us into the likeness of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, AMEN.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
The King's Power Mark 4:35-5:20 Prayer 25/1/15
Heavenly Father,
We live in awe of your amazing power. You make clouds rise from the ends of the earth, you send lightning with the rain and bring out the wind from your storehouses - We can't accurately predict if it's going to rain. You wield armies like a club, dispatching them against your enemies and your people with perfect precision - we cannot prevent innocent casualties. You own every animal in the forest, and the cattle on a thousand hills - we can't even feed the hungry. Sick people begged to touch the edge of Jesus' cloak, and were healed - we can't even cure a cold. You have power over Satan and his demons - we struggle to believe that demons are even real.
You have all this amazing power, and yet like rebellious peasants, we rise up against you, and fail to follow your commands. But instead of crushing us, you use the incredible power of your love to save us, even at the cost of the life of your beloved son Jesus. Help us to see the amazing value of our salvation, and to live lives that bring the glory to you that you deserve. Give us a hunger to discern your will, and a thirst to follow in your ways. Give us minds that accept your total power. Give us hearts that call out to you to use that power for our good and for your glory. And give us faith to put the two together, and realise that you are all-powerful, and you are using your power for our good and to your glory, even if we don't see it or understand it. Give us the humility to accept that we don't see the full picture, but that you do, and we can, and should, trust you to use your power better than we ever could.
It is with this humble faith that we pray for those amongst us who are suffering from sickness, from financial hardship, from persecution because of their faith, and from loneliness. We pray that you will lift them up in their difficult circumstances, and that you will bring them healing, plenty, peace and fellowship. But we pray that you will also give us all the faith to know that you already have them all within your hand. Help us to trust you whatever our situation. Give us the secret of being content in any and every situation - well fed or hungry, in plenty or in want. But also give us the compassion to ensure that none of our brothers or sisters are hungry or in want. You give to us in plenty so that we can give to others in your name. Help us to give our money, our time, our presence and our peace to those who need it most, knowing that you have an unending store of all of these things at your disposal. And we pray for those who are lost, who are far from you - bring them into your family, and make them one of yours. Help us to accept everyone that you bring into our family with us.
We pray by the authority of Jesus, Amen.
We live in awe of your amazing power. You make clouds rise from the ends of the earth, you send lightning with the rain and bring out the wind from your storehouses - We can't accurately predict if it's going to rain. You wield armies like a club, dispatching them against your enemies and your people with perfect precision - we cannot prevent innocent casualties. You own every animal in the forest, and the cattle on a thousand hills - we can't even feed the hungry. Sick people begged to touch the edge of Jesus' cloak, and were healed - we can't even cure a cold. You have power over Satan and his demons - we struggle to believe that demons are even real.
You have all this amazing power, and yet like rebellious peasants, we rise up against you, and fail to follow your commands. But instead of crushing us, you use the incredible power of your love to save us, even at the cost of the life of your beloved son Jesus. Help us to see the amazing value of our salvation, and to live lives that bring the glory to you that you deserve. Give us a hunger to discern your will, and a thirst to follow in your ways. Give us minds that accept your total power. Give us hearts that call out to you to use that power for our good and for your glory. And give us faith to put the two together, and realise that you are all-powerful, and you are using your power for our good and to your glory, even if we don't see it or understand it. Give us the humility to accept that we don't see the full picture, but that you do, and we can, and should, trust you to use your power better than we ever could.
It is with this humble faith that we pray for those amongst us who are suffering from sickness, from financial hardship, from persecution because of their faith, and from loneliness. We pray that you will lift them up in their difficult circumstances, and that you will bring them healing, plenty, peace and fellowship. But we pray that you will also give us all the faith to know that you already have them all within your hand. Help us to trust you whatever our situation. Give us the secret of being content in any and every situation - well fed or hungry, in plenty or in want. But also give us the compassion to ensure that none of our brothers or sisters are hungry or in want. You give to us in plenty so that we can give to others in your name. Help us to give our money, our time, our presence and our peace to those who need it most, knowing that you have an unending store of all of these things at your disposal. And we pray for those who are lost, who are far from you - bring them into your family, and make them one of yours. Help us to accept everyone that you bring into our family with us.
We pray by the authority of Jesus, Amen.
Sunday, January 25, 2015
The Hidden Kingdom Mark 4:1-34 Prayer 18/1/15
Heavenly Father,
We live in a complex and complicated world. You have created a universe so vast we can scarcely comprehend it. We are amazed by the enormous variety of colours, shapes, sizes and numbers of things that you surround us with. Even thinking about the number of people on earth, and the huge resources that it takes to provide for them, is phenomenal. And yet you provide for us, and even for all the animals that live on earth too. Amazing.
You are a mysterious God in many ways. There are so many things we don't understand, so many secrets that life holds. We do not understand the depths of the universe, but nor do we even fully know everything about the world we live in. There are mysteries even about the simple things of everyday life. We thank you that you have control over all things, that you are at work in so many miraculous ways that we can't even see. You know everything there is to know, and we are glad you are in charge.
We also thank you that you let us discover so many new things, and that all the time people are making new discoveries about the world we have lived in for so many thousands of years. New animals, new cures for disease, new corners of the oceans, new things in space, new technologies for doing things that our grandparents would never have imagined. We also thank you that you reveal to us things that we specifically do not know. We thank you for education, for the ability to learn, and for those who dedicate themselves to teaching us. And we thank you for your precious word, contained in the Bible for us. We ask that as we continue to read it, you will continue to reveal more about yourself and your plan to us, and that you will build our faith in you, so that even when we don't know, we will trust that you have everything in hand. We pray for those who instruct us in your word, that you will give them all good things. We pray for Nick as he preaches to us tonight.
We thank you for the recent revelation about our new minister, Martin, and his wife Jasmine. Please be with them as they bring their ministry at Balmain to an end, and give them whatever they need to start here with us at Waitara fresh and motivated to serve you. We also thank you that the commendation service for Bruce and Heather Stanley went well at Eastwood church. We thank you for leading them in your will, and pray that you will use the Stanleys powerfully at that church, and bless Eastwood through them.
We pray for those who are struggling through sickness, financial difficulties, or other problems that make life hard. We don't always understand why we are suffering, and we can have an expectation that you should make things better. In those times, help us to remember Christ Jesus, who has shown the power to fix all of our problems. Give those who are struggling through difficult times a strong faith in you, and a firm foundation on Christ, the forgiveness of our sins, our unbreakable relationship with you, and our assured place in heaven for all eternity.
It is by the authority of Jesus, and as his brothers and sisters, that we pray all these things. Amen
We live in a complex and complicated world. You have created a universe so vast we can scarcely comprehend it. We are amazed by the enormous variety of colours, shapes, sizes and numbers of things that you surround us with. Even thinking about the number of people on earth, and the huge resources that it takes to provide for them, is phenomenal. And yet you provide for us, and even for all the animals that live on earth too. Amazing.
You are a mysterious God in many ways. There are so many things we don't understand, so many secrets that life holds. We do not understand the depths of the universe, but nor do we even fully know everything about the world we live in. There are mysteries even about the simple things of everyday life. We thank you that you have control over all things, that you are at work in so many miraculous ways that we can't even see. You know everything there is to know, and we are glad you are in charge.
We also thank you that you let us discover so many new things, and that all the time people are making new discoveries about the world we have lived in for so many thousands of years. New animals, new cures for disease, new corners of the oceans, new things in space, new technologies for doing things that our grandparents would never have imagined. We also thank you that you reveal to us things that we specifically do not know. We thank you for education, for the ability to learn, and for those who dedicate themselves to teaching us. And we thank you for your precious word, contained in the Bible for us. We ask that as we continue to read it, you will continue to reveal more about yourself and your plan to us, and that you will build our faith in you, so that even when we don't know, we will trust that you have everything in hand. We pray for those who instruct us in your word, that you will give them all good things. We pray for Nick as he preaches to us tonight.
We thank you for the recent revelation about our new minister, Martin, and his wife Jasmine. Please be with them as they bring their ministry at Balmain to an end, and give them whatever they need to start here with us at Waitara fresh and motivated to serve you. We also thank you that the commendation service for Bruce and Heather Stanley went well at Eastwood church. We thank you for leading them in your will, and pray that you will use the Stanleys powerfully at that church, and bless Eastwood through them.
We pray for those who are struggling through sickness, financial difficulties, or other problems that make life hard. We don't always understand why we are suffering, and we can have an expectation that you should make things better. In those times, help us to remember Christ Jesus, who has shown the power to fix all of our problems. Give those who are struggling through difficult times a strong faith in you, and a firm foundation on Christ, the forgiveness of our sins, our unbreakable relationship with you, and our assured place in heaven for all eternity.
It is by the authority of Jesus, and as his brothers and sisters, that we pray all these things. Amen
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Results of survey taken in January 2015 by legal transcriptionists of 58 ERISPs
In January 2015, I conducted a study of 58 records of interviews of persons of interest conducted by NSW police. Six other legal transcriptionists at Spark and Cannon NSW assisted me gathering the data. The sample was random: ERISPs (Electronically Recorded Interview of a Suspected Person) of persons of interest (POIs) were chosen according to normal work practices, which are based on a due date rather than any content of the interview. Interviews of witnesses, or of children, have been excluded.
Each transcriptionist answered five questions of each interview they transcribed:
1. David Dixon, Interrogating Images: Audio-visually Recorded Police Questioning of Suspects (Institute of Criminology, 2007) 126.
Each transcriptionist answered five questions of each interview they transcribed:
- The record number - for identification of the ERISP (because of copyright and confidentiality issues, no other details about the ERISP were recorded).
- Did the POI have a lawyer present? This was obvious to the transcriptionist from video footage.
- Did the POI receive legal advice? If mentioned in the interview, this was noted as either yes or no. If not mentioned, it was noted as unknown.
- Did the POI attempt to remain silent during the interview? This question was answered in the affirmative if any attempt was made by the POI to remain silent. So a 'yes' to this question would represent a single question being answered with 'no comment', no verbal reply, or something similar.
- Was the POI successful in remaining silent in the interview? This required a level of judgment on the transcriptionist's behalf, based on the perceived aim of the POI. For instance, if the POI only attempted to remain silent to one question, were they successful in refusing to answer that question in the face of police pressure in the interview? Or if the POI was trying to remain silent throughout the entire interview, were they successful in refusing to answer any question of the police?
Because about 53% (31 of 58) of the interviews did not mention whether the POI had received any legal advice, analysis has been done both only of those cases where this information was available, and over the whole of the cases analysed. In the analysis of all of the cases, these interviews are treated as interviews where the POI has not had legal advice. This decision is based on my experience of transcribing many hundreds of ERISPs and observing the general actions of police in ERISPs in NSW over the last five years.
With respect to the right to silence the following characteristics were noted:
- No POIs had a lawyer present in their interview (0 of 58). Experience tells me that this is a very rare occurrence. In David Dixon's research,(1) his number of 0.76% of interviews having a lawyer present are probably generous.
- About 22% of POIs obtained legal advice when excluding unknowns (6/27), but this drops sharply to about 10% when the unknowns are included (6 of 58).
- About 17% POIs attempted to remain silent in at least part of their interview (10 of 58).
- Excluding unknowns, only one POI attempted silence without legal advice (3.7%, 1 of 27), but this rises to around 8% when including the unknowns (5 of 58), which is the same number of POIs who attempted silence having had legal advice (5 of 58).
- Only half of those who attempted to remain silent were judged to have successfully remained silent in their interview (5 of 10). Excluding unknowns, the one POI who attempted to remain silent without advice did not succeed. Including the unknowns, 40% of those without legal advice successfully remained silent (2 of 5), where 60% of those with advice succeeded in remaining silent (3 of 5).
No observations were requested from the transcriptionists, but several were recorded at any rate.
In R0351663, it was unknown if the POI received legal advice. The POI remained silent on one charge (successfully), but did not remain silent on two other charges.
In R0353835, the POI received legal advice only partway through the interview. The POI was clearly heavily intoxicated and distressed (both observably and stated so). After considerable questioning by the police the POI requested legal advice, and (after a two hour suspension of the interview) then successfully remained silent for the rest of the interview.
In R0349934, the POI was under the influence of drugs (both observably and stated so), and did not understand his rights. The POI had no legal advice, and did not attempt to remain silent.
Conclusion
The incidence of a lawyer being present in an interview has been commented on elsewhere as being extremely low. That finding was replicated here.(2) The rate of POIs exercising their right to silence seems high when the unknowns are excluded, but with their inclusion as having no legal advice, falls to about 10%, which is in line with other studies.(3)
Of particular interest is that only half of those who attempted to remain silent succeeded. Again, this is in keeping with my anecdotal experience in viewing ERISPs. This is of concern, although a fairly high level of persistence in police interrogation in an ERISP is accepted by the courts.(4) A 50% rate of failure to remain silent when a POI wishes to exercise their right to silence raises a concern that this right's value is limited without the presence of a lawyer(5) or perhaps a support person.
It is difficult to come to any clear finding on whether having received telephone legal advice makes a difference to the POI's ability to successfully remain silent given the low numbers of those who succeeded. A wider-ranging study would be useful in discovering what correlation there was between the type of offence, the state of sobriety of the POI, and the reception of legal advice by the POI, in whether attempts to remain silent are successful. It would be interesting to see both what bearing police interrogation tactics have on the ability of a POI to remain silent, as well as whether those tactics are targeted more towards POIs who have not received legal advice, or otherwise seem vulnerable.
1. David Dixon, Interrogating Images: Audio-visually Recorded Police Questioning of Suspects (Institute of Criminology, 2007) 126.
2. Ibid; Federation of Community Legal Centres (Vic) Inc, Submission to the
Parliamentary Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee Inquiry into
the Right to Silence, July 1998, 10-11; Derwent
Coshott, A
Hollow Ring: The Right to Silence
(29 July 2013) DerwentCoshott.com
<http://www.derwentcoshott.com/2013/07/a-hollow-ring-right-to-silence-under-s.html>.
3. New
South Wales Law Reform Commission, The
Right to Silence,
Report No 95 (2000),16; Dixon, above n 1; Federation of Community Legal Centres (Vic) Inc, above n 2, 10, appendix 1.
4. MacKenzie v The Queen (2004) 150 A Crim
R 451 453-4, 464-6.
5. Anthony
Gray, 'Constitutionally Heeding the Right to Silence in Australia'
(2012) 39 Monash
University Law Review
156, 184.
Monday, January 05, 2015
Comment regarding article about One Term Tony
The original article is here.
This article is too tongue-in-cheek - perhaps because they feel we need to laugh, or we'll cry - and so it paints a picture that is just too far on the side of fantasy. Real political parties don't try to lose power. If there were one (major) party that was capable of going off the deep end, it would be the Libs, because their policy decisions don't have to be vetted through a caucus. There has been a little bit of rumblings of whinging from Liberal backbenchers occasionally, but that's fairly normal.
I think this article uncovers a reality that perhaps even it doesn't want to acknowledge. In 2013 the Liberal Party were faced with an election they could not lose - a hung parliament being run by a female prime minister who was bringing in an unpopular tax. If you can't lose the election, it is an opportunity to bring in a leader who slashes and burns the country so that they can shape it into a country that best suits your political purposes. With that agenda in mind, consider this: Abbott is trying to do in one term what Howard also tried to do in four terms - shift the political landscape to make it undeniably more favourable towards the Liberal Party. Blatant lies and attacks on the marginalised are not radicalising the masses, but are apathising them. They have big ticket items that might fail - the GP co-pay, for instance - but they are a mixture of toe in the water policies (how much of a stir will this create?) and ingenious smokescreens for each other. Think back over all the really disgusting policies: GP co-pays, six months of starvation for the unemployed, slashing funding to the ABC, deregulating university fees. Now think about these things that you noticed in amongst all those - a massive cut to our foreign aid, an increase in our deficit, rising unemployment, and the treatment of refugees. Now think about things you perhaps didn't even hear about. There are just so many. It is designed to wear down and tire out those people who aren't going to vote for him anyway. People are forced to forget so many despicable things.
Their re-election model will be simple: a straightforward message appealing to middle Australia (my guess is it will be something like "We'll Make The Tough Decisions" - but it might equally play to something that arises closer to election time, since they get to choose when the election will be), funded by Big Business who know that the Libs will look after them. You don't need to win the people. You don't need to win the debates. You just need to win the elections. The ALP is playing small target politics, waiting for the Libs to lose. But that just means the Libs have no opposition - they have pulled out the opposition's teeth, making them irrelevant by saying outlandish things and not getting any pushback. If the ALP found themselves a powerful, charismatic leader, then the Libs might get rattled, and Tony would probably be gone (and Turnbull might take his place). Again, that is what would give them the best chance of winning the election. But there are no powerful, charismatic ALP leaders to be found.
Abbott et al are not crazy. They are idealists. They really believe that killing welfare and freeing up the market are the best things they can do for Australia. But they are also realists. They daren't throw power away. Better to scorch the political earth and rule over the smoldering ruins.
Friday, December 26, 2014
Christmas Eve Prayer 24/12/14
Dear God, our Heavenly Father,
Tonight we come together in expectation of Christmas. We thank you for the many gifts we will give and receive. We wonder what we might get, and hope what we've bought for others will be enjoyed. We praise you for giving the most valuable gift, by sending your son Jesus, the Messiah, into the world as both God and Man, sharing the human experience with us. You are the God who Provides, and so we thank you both for our little presents this year, and for your incredible gift of salvation that those little gifts all represent. Help us to keep Jesus in mind with every gift we unwrap.
We look forward to seeing family and friends. We pray for all those who will be travelling tomorrow, or who are travelling now. Please keep them safe, keep the roads safe, and keep drivers aware and awake. We pray that family celebrations will be full of joy and happiness. We pray that there will not be anxiety or fighting or awkwardness. You know what it's like to make a dangerous trip to an awkward family, God - you came to earth as a little baby, and even from the beginning people wanted to kill you. We are sorry for our own part in that - we acknowledge there are times when we don't want you to be God, and we argue and disagree with your ways. Please place us on the safe road that brings us back to you.
There's lots to worry about at Christmas - making sure we have enough food, that people aren't allergic to it, that everyone will enjoy themselves; that everything is perfect. We worry about family members who don't get along. We worry about living up to high standards for our families. Please give us peace in our hearts and our minds about all of these things. Bring your peace into our homes and our celebrations, so we can enjoy Christmas together with happiness and joy. You have already brought us peace in our relationship with you, by the coming of Jesus Christ, who died and was resurrected so that we might know great and eternal peace with you. Thank you.
We pray for those whose Christmases may not be full of joy. To those of us who are poor, unemployed, facing job cuts, or are pushed out of home by enemies, give all the same joy in knowing that you are the God who Provides, and give us thankfulness that salvation is freely given for us all. We pray you would give everyone things to enjoy this Christmas, and we're thankful for the generosity of people who give toys and tucker for the needy.
Give those of us who are sick this Christmas an inner joy that comes from knowing you, and the peace that only you can give, peace that is even bigger than our personal health. We thank you for those who care for the sick over Christmas time, because sickness rarely takes holidays.
We pray for those of us who are alone, or miss those that are no longer with us, that you will draw near to us and give us that same peace with you, so that we can know we are never alone when we have you. We also thank you for those people who open up their homes at Christmas to those who are lonely, and pray that they will be blessed by sharing Christmas with friends and strangers.
And we pray for those who don't know you, don't know your love or your peace or your salvation. Without you, Christmas is an empty holiday of meaningless food and drink with family and friends. We pray that you will open their eyes and soften their hearts, so that they might accept the true message of Christmas - that God is with us, and his name is Jesus.
We come together not just in expectation of Christmas tomorrow, but of Jesus returning and an eternal future in heaven with you.
And it's in Jesus' name that we pray these things. Amen
Give those of us who are sick this Christmas an inner joy that comes from knowing you, and the peace that only you can give, peace that is even bigger than our personal health. We thank you for those who care for the sick over Christmas time, because sickness rarely takes holidays.
We pray for those of us who are alone, or miss those that are no longer with us, that you will draw near to us and give us that same peace with you, so that we can know we are never alone when we have you. We also thank you for those people who open up their homes at Christmas to those who are lonely, and pray that they will be blessed by sharing Christmas with friends and strangers.
And we pray for those who don't know you, don't know your love or your peace or your salvation. Without you, Christmas is an empty holiday of meaningless food and drink with family and friends. We pray that you will open their eyes and soften their hearts, so that they might accept the true message of Christmas - that God is with us, and his name is Jesus.
Monday, October 27, 2014
Sermon: Luke 22:63-23:25 - Jesus' Trials
Something a little different here. First will be the finished sermon. After that, will be a bunch of notes I made in writing it. Just for posterity of my thought process, really.
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Today, we are looking at the court trials of Jesus - where he is found to be innocent of crimes he didn't commit, but is still sentenced to death. It's a powerful moment in history. There are several questions that come to our minds when we read about the trials. We want to know why Jesus stood there silent when he was accused. We want to know why the religious leaders hated him so much, and why the people chanted for his crucifixion. We want to know why the Roman government authorities go along with it. Finally, we ask why didn't Jesus just prove who he was and save himself? I want to answer these questions, because firstly, they are good questions that deserve good answers. Secondly, this account of Jesus' trials tells us something about ourselves. Answering these questions reveals something about how humanity reacts to Jesus, and how God acts toward humanity.
Our first question is why did Jesus remain silent? He is being charged with blasphemy, punishable by death under Jewish law, and treason, punishable by death under Roman law. Those are serious charges, with serious consequences. And yet Jesus stands there silent, giving glib responses when questioned. Now lying, of course, is not an option for Jesus - this is the perfect messiah we are talking about, so giving false testimony is right out. That would be breaking the ninth commandment. But why not just tell the truth, so he can deal with these charges properly?
One problem is not what he is charged with, but how the people determine his guilt. First of all, Jesus is hauled before a temple court of Jewish religious leaders. They charge him with blasphemy. What does that mean? Well, it means a lot of things, but in this specific instance they are charging Jesus with saying that he is God's son. Because a son inherits from a father, this is the equivalent of putting yourself as equal with God. Now at any other time in history, if you charged someone with blasphemy when they said, "I'm the son of God", you would have been right! This one time, though, the Jewish religious leaders were wrong in following this logic. Jesus really is God's son, really is equal with God. So what can he say? "Yes, I am God's son"? "Yes, I am equal with God"? He's proved that already - he healed a paralysed man, and forgave his sins. Repeating that he is equal with God is not going to change the outcome. In fact, it's only going to dig him in deeper.
It's the same when Jesus appears before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea. The Jewish leaders don't bother mentioning the blasphemy charge, because the Romans don't care about blasphemy against a non-Roman god. Instead, they now charge him with being a king. Why doesn't Jesus say anything about that? Because the truth is he is the King of the Jews. He is the King of the Romans too. It's the same thing: every single time someone who wasn't appointed by the emperor claimed to be a king in the Roman empire, you could safely say they were being rebellious and committing a crime, and that they had no claim to the title. This one time though, Jesus really is the son of God, and King of all Kings. So what's he going to say, "Yes, I really am the King who reigns on high above your petty emperor"? How will that help him?
There is nothing wrong with these charges. The charge about taxes is false, and we'll get to that later. But with these charges, the method of determining whether someone is guilty of these crimes or not is pretty simple, but is usually effective. If a person said they're God or they're King, they are guilty. That person can't then justify it by saying, "But it's the truth," because it never ever is. Except this once. Except for Jesus.
It can be hard to understand this situation, so let me put it this way. Imagine you were on a jury in a murder trial. The accused man stands there in the dock, and when asked how he pleads, he pleads not guilty. The prosecutor has all the necessary evidence - the accused was there at the time. He had the gun. There's an eye-witness account that the accused man pulled the trigger. When he's called to give evidence, the man admits to all those things, because he was there, he did have the gun, and he even admits he did pull the trigger. Moreover, he even says he wanted to shoot to kill. All the elements of murder are there! So then the prosecutor asks, "If you were there, if you had the gun, if you pulled the trigger, if you wanted to kill, how are you not guilty of murder?" And the accused responds, in perfect seriousness, "The person I killed wasn't a human being. It was an alien from outer space. It's not murder because it's not a human being." No, the accused is not pleading insanity. Would you be surprised if the prosecution does not lead any evidence to prove that the victim was a human being? They say they don't need to prove the victim was a human, because there is no reasonable doubt the victim was human. The judge will tell you in this case that the threshold by which you need to make this decision of guilty or not guilty is 'beyond reasonable doubt'. It's not just the balance of probabilities, it's not a 50/50 chance. If you have even one reasonable doubt this person is guilty, you can set them free.
You're on the jury in this case. How would you vote? Is the accused guilty or not guilty? I think the vast, vast, vast majority would say this man is guilty. The only reason you would be wrong to make that finding is if the person he murdered really was an space alien. And what are the chances of that? What are the chances an alien really came to earth, and this man found it, and killed it, and no-one else noticed? Is that a reasonable doubt? The law does not deal with this situation, because it is so far out of the bounds of ordinary human experience.
But Jesus is really that unique. He is exceptional, one of a kind. Outside the bounds of ordinary human experience, or even extraordinary human experience. And this is a problem for people who hear about Jesus, especially in today's society where there are so many religions to choose from. It's really easy for so many people to listen to the claims of religions or religious leaders, and just decide they are not true, so they don't need to listen. I can go to any mental asylum and find for you someone who claims to be the Son of God, who claims to be the King of Australia. Would you believe them? No, of course not. It's really very safe to say that any time someone makes these outlandish claims, they're lying, or perhaps crazy. Except Jesus isn't lying. Jesus isn't crazy. He really is God's Son. He really is equal with God. He really is King of Kings. And that truth is hard to accept, because it is a unique truth, not true of anyone else.
Our second question is about the attitudes of the different people involved in Jesus's trials. Why did the Jewish religious leaders hate Jesus so much that they wanted him to be killed, and why did the crowds of people chant for Jesus to be crucified. After all, weren't they looking for a messiah, weren't they waiting for the promised christ, the king of God, to be born and come to them? Yes, they definitely were. But they have a problem - they have already made their decisions about what the messiah will be like before Jesus has arrived. They are looking for a charismatic, military ruler who will raise up an army, free Israel from under its Roman oppressors, and bring back the wealth and prosperity of King David's time. And they are looking for a messiah who will, of course, agree with them on every theological issue, because they are so sure that they are right.
But when Jesus actually arrives, he has come to deal with sin, and repair people's broken relationships with God. The religious leaders can't see it as their mistake. They have this idea stuck in their head about what God is like, and what the messiah will be like, and so even when the messiah comes to them, even when God comes to them in the form of Jesus, they reject him. This is The Messiah, but not the messiah they were expecting. This is not the messiah they wanted. For the religious leaders, Jesus was challenging their power. They were in positions of dominance over the people, and what they said was literally religious law. But Jesus comes and says they've got it all wrong, that God desires mercy, and that you must rely on God and his grace, not on following a list of rules. So they hate Jesus - because he points out that they're wrong, and he wants people to question what they say.
Is that you? Do you have it already stuck in your mind how the world works, how God works, how faith works? A lot of people see religious truth like a marketplace - they buy into whatever beliefs they already agree with. They pick and choose what is right and what is wrong. Does Jesus challenge your power over your own life, to choose how you relate to God, whether or not something is sin, or what your church or your life should be like? Because Jesus should always win that battle. If we refuse to give in to Jesus's authority, then we are like the religious leaders, calling for him to be crucified because even though Jesus is God, he is not the god we want him to be.
As for the everyday people, they were expecting a powerful military leader, victorious over their enemies. They had seen Jesus performing miracles, healings, exorcisms, wondrous signs. And he preached God's word with authority. They had high hopes for him. But they didn't put their hope in what he said. They put their hope in what they wanted - and they wanted a man who would drive out the Roman oppressors. So when they see that the religious leaders have arrested him, and he is handed over to Pontius Pilate, they feel betrayed. Here is the man who promised to be God's messiah - but now he is the enemy's prisoner. If he really is the messiah, then why doesn't he free himself? Why doesn't he fight against them and win? How can it be that he so quietly admits defeat?
And so they hate him. He doesn't give them what they want, or he can't give them what they want, and so they turn on him, and they cry out for him to be crucified. Jesus doesn't live up to their ideal of what the messiah should be, so they don't want him any more. I should point out that the thing the crowds wanted was a good thing. They wanted freedom, they wanted an end to tyranny and oppression.
Maybe you are angry with God because he lets people suffer, or because he doesn't stop people from destroying the environment. Those are good things, but it is important to understand that having faith in God, trusting God, means trusting him to decide what is most important for us. The anger and disappointment the crowds expressed was exactly what happens when we don't have faith in God to have the absolute best plan for us, and for everyone, and for his glory.
It is a failing of humanity that if we want something, and we are given something we need instead, we can end up resenting the thing we received, because we didn't get what we want. Have you ever resented a present, even though it was something you needed, because it's not that thing you had your heart set on, it's not the thing you wanted? This is an all too common reaction we have to God's will - he gives us what we need, not necessarily what we want, and because we have so little faith in God, we find ourselves resenting God's plan for our lives.
At my church there is a lovely older couple who came to faith in Christ later in their lives. The husband has cancer. For years they have fought against it with every kind of medical treatment. But he has not been healed. There are no more medicines left for the doctors to try. And yet they still praise God for his goodness to them. I'm sure you can all think of inspiring, godly Christians who find themselves in a terrible, difficult place in their lives, and yet can still praise God for his goodness. We find their faith inspiring. That's how we should be. But we are more usually like the crowds. God puts us in a position of difficulty, deals with our biggest problem of all in sin, and we cry out, 'Crucify him!'
Or maybe we are more like the Roman governor Pilate. He is presented with an innocent man, with whom he cannot find any fault at all. And what is his response when faced with complete innocence? It's not, "This man is innocent, free him at once." No, it's "I'll punish him for you, and then I'll set him free." Is that how you would like to be treated when you are being disciplined at work, or by parents, or by the law? Is this justice? "Well, you're not guilty of anything, but people are upset, so we're going to punish you anyway to keep them happy." This is totally unjust. Pilate does not care about justice, he cares about comfort. Having people yelling and screaming, and possibly rioting in his streets, will look bad for him, and it will cause him trouble. So justice takes second place to expediency. And so we should not be surprised that when the crowd keeps calling for Jesus to be crucified, Pilate eventually just agrees.
Are we like Pilate, caring more about our own comfort than about what is right? Do we decide that following Jesus is too hard, because we have non-Christian friends or family who put pressure on us to act a different way? Or is the pressure of the world to live for ourselves, to be selfish, to focus on money and security and family, is that just too tempting? Before you think that believing in God would stop you from acting that way, remember Pilate thought Jesus was innocent. He thought Jesus was innocent, and he still sent him to be crucified. Because it was easier. So even as Christians, we have to be so careful that even though we know Jesus is God, we don't still turn to the easy answers, the easy way of life, the things that make us comfortable, to just making people happy so that we can also be happy. We have to care about what is right more than about what is comfortable.
Finally, we have Herod. We are probably all a little bit like Herod. Herod was the accepted king of the Jews at the time and, unlike the temple leaders, he did not feel threatened by Jesus at all. He felt threatened by John the Baptist, and cut off his head. But not Jesus. For Herod, Jesus was a curiosity. He had heard about Jesus doing miracles, and wanted to see one. He asked lots of questions, asked to see some wondrous signs that would prove Jesus really is who he claims to be. But Jesus did no miracles, and answered no questions. Herod probably decided that if Jesus couldn't do a miracle to save his own life, then he must not be the messiah. So Herod mocked and ridiculed him, and so did his soldiers, and sent him back to Pilate.
So many of us want Jesus to answer our questions, we want him to sate our curiosity, we want him to entertain us with miracles. If he can't do that, then we assume he must not be God, he must not be the messiah, and so we send him away. After all, if God is all-powerful, why not just prove who he is? What would it cost Jesus to do a miracle or two? If Jesus can't do a miracle to convince us that he is God, to save our lives from eternal punishment, if he can't answer the questions we have, then he mustn't be the messiah, and so we send him away. I know I've felt that way before. It's such a common attitude towards Jesus in the modern western world.
I want you to think about which of those groups of people at Jesus's trials you are like. Where would you have been? Does Jesus challenge your power over your own spiritual life, so you reject him like the religious leaders? Does Jesus not do what you want, do you feel like you've been let down by Jesus, so you are upset with him, like the crowds? Does the pressure of non-Christian family or friends, or just the non-stop shouting of our non-Christian culture to be selfish, put yourself first, and value material things, make you just give in for the sake of your own comfort, like Pontius Pilate? Or do you simply think that you don't need to take Jesus seriously, because he doesn't appear at your beck and call, doesn't answer the questions you want answered, or do miracles that would convince you of his being the Son of God, so you send him away like Herod and his soldiers?
Jesus' trials are the culmination of humanity's response to God on earth: both Jews (God's people) and Romans (not God's people) give Jesus over to be crucified. People who had seen his miracles, and people who had not. People who want him to be the messiah, and people who don't want him to be. All kinds of people ended up wanting Jesus dead because he was not what they wanted.
We all have it in us to be an enemy of God. We are guilty of insurrection and murder, just like Barabbas. But where Barabbas was guilty of insurrection and murder against the Romans, we are guilty of insurrection and murder against God. And as God's enemies, we deserve to be punished.
Well I want to tell you, wherever you are with God, whatever your attitude, the action that Jesus takes is his answer to you. What is that action, you might ask. Jesus doesn't seem to do anything. Jesus, as God, is surely all powerful. He could just call down legions of angels, or pillars of fire, or do whatever he wanted to miraculously break his bonds and free himself. But he doesn't.
Why is that? Why doesn't Jesus fight back? Because God's plan is that innocent Jesus should be punished and die in the place of every sinful human being. His death takes away the sin of the world - the punishment of God's enemies. Of those who wanted him dead. Of those who shouted angrily for him to be crucified. Of those who just wanted him out of the way so they could be comfortable, and of those who were convinced he could not be the Messiah. The action Jesus takes answers every question that is raised against him.
This is how much God is king over everything. He is able to turn the death of his son on earth at the hands of his enemies into that moment which saves us from eternal death, saves us from the punishment for being the enemies of God that we are. And in doing this, God transforms his enemies into his children, brings them into his loving family.
God does not act at our beck and call. God's plan is perfect, and it is the best plan for every single person on earth. Jesus' death does not give us the power to decide what is right and what is wrong for ourselves. Jesus' death does not stop climate change, or ISIS, or cancer. Jesus' death does not make us comfortable, or help us fit in with the world around us. Jesus' death does not answer all our questions, or take place to meet the level of proof we want.
No, Jesus' death perfectly repairs a relationship with God we didn't even know we had, that we didn't even realise was broken. It means we can be with God forever - free from sin and death and pain and suffering forever. His resurrection proves with perfect sufficiency that God loves us, and wants us to be with him. And it glorifies God, showing that he has the power over sin and death, the power to set us free from those things when we can't free ourselves.
We need to recognise that our attitudes can be against God. And we need to realise that God's plan is perfect. We can trust God to do everything exactly as it should be done. We can see that he has done everything that was needed to bring us to him. And we should repent of being his enemies, and be thankful that he has made us his children. Every time you think one of those enemy thoughts, remember God's answer was Christ's death, and change your attitude.
Our first question is why did Jesus remain silent? He is being charged with blasphemy, punishable by death under Jewish law, and treason, punishable by death under Roman law. Those are serious charges, with serious consequences. And yet Jesus stands there silent, giving glib responses when questioned. Now lying, of course, is not an option for Jesus - this is the perfect messiah we are talking about, so giving false testimony is right out. That would be breaking the ninth commandment. But why not just tell the truth, so he can deal with these charges properly?
One problem is not what he is charged with, but how the people determine his guilt. First of all, Jesus is hauled before a temple court of Jewish religious leaders. They charge him with blasphemy. What does that mean? Well, it means a lot of things, but in this specific instance they are charging Jesus with saying that he is God's son. Because a son inherits from a father, this is the equivalent of putting yourself as equal with God. Now at any other time in history, if you charged someone with blasphemy when they said, "I'm the son of God", you would have been right! This one time, though, the Jewish religious leaders were wrong in following this logic. Jesus really is God's son, really is equal with God. So what can he say? "Yes, I am God's son"? "Yes, I am equal with God"? He's proved that already - he healed a paralysed man, and forgave his sins. Repeating that he is equal with God is not going to change the outcome. In fact, it's only going to dig him in deeper.
It's the same when Jesus appears before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea. The Jewish leaders don't bother mentioning the blasphemy charge, because the Romans don't care about blasphemy against a non-Roman god. Instead, they now charge him with being a king. Why doesn't Jesus say anything about that? Because the truth is he is the King of the Jews. He is the King of the Romans too. It's the same thing: every single time someone who wasn't appointed by the emperor claimed to be a king in the Roman empire, you could safely say they were being rebellious and committing a crime, and that they had no claim to the title. This one time though, Jesus really is the son of God, and King of all Kings. So what's he going to say, "Yes, I really am the King who reigns on high above your petty emperor"? How will that help him?
There is nothing wrong with these charges. The charge about taxes is false, and we'll get to that later. But with these charges, the method of determining whether someone is guilty of these crimes or not is pretty simple, but is usually effective. If a person said they're God or they're King, they are guilty. That person can't then justify it by saying, "But it's the truth," because it never ever is. Except this once. Except for Jesus.
It can be hard to understand this situation, so let me put it this way. Imagine you were on a jury in a murder trial. The accused man stands there in the dock, and when asked how he pleads, he pleads not guilty. The prosecutor has all the necessary evidence - the accused was there at the time. He had the gun. There's an eye-witness account that the accused man pulled the trigger. When he's called to give evidence, the man admits to all those things, because he was there, he did have the gun, and he even admits he did pull the trigger. Moreover, he even says he wanted to shoot to kill. All the elements of murder are there! So then the prosecutor asks, "If you were there, if you had the gun, if you pulled the trigger, if you wanted to kill, how are you not guilty of murder?" And the accused responds, in perfect seriousness, "The person I killed wasn't a human being. It was an alien from outer space. It's not murder because it's not a human being." No, the accused is not pleading insanity. Would you be surprised if the prosecution does not lead any evidence to prove that the victim was a human being? They say they don't need to prove the victim was a human, because there is no reasonable doubt the victim was human. The judge will tell you in this case that the threshold by which you need to make this decision of guilty or not guilty is 'beyond reasonable doubt'. It's not just the balance of probabilities, it's not a 50/50 chance. If you have even one reasonable doubt this person is guilty, you can set them free.
You're on the jury in this case. How would you vote? Is the accused guilty or not guilty? I think the vast, vast, vast majority would say this man is guilty. The only reason you would be wrong to make that finding is if the person he murdered really was an space alien. And what are the chances of that? What are the chances an alien really came to earth, and this man found it, and killed it, and no-one else noticed? Is that a reasonable doubt? The law does not deal with this situation, because it is so far out of the bounds of ordinary human experience.
But Jesus is really that unique. He is exceptional, one of a kind. Outside the bounds of ordinary human experience, or even extraordinary human experience. And this is a problem for people who hear about Jesus, especially in today's society where there are so many religions to choose from. It's really easy for so many people to listen to the claims of religions or religious leaders, and just decide they are not true, so they don't need to listen. I can go to any mental asylum and find for you someone who claims to be the Son of God, who claims to be the King of Australia. Would you believe them? No, of course not. It's really very safe to say that any time someone makes these outlandish claims, they're lying, or perhaps crazy. Except Jesus isn't lying. Jesus isn't crazy. He really is God's Son. He really is equal with God. He really is King of Kings. And that truth is hard to accept, because it is a unique truth, not true of anyone else.
Our second question is about the attitudes of the different people involved in Jesus's trials. Why did the Jewish religious leaders hate Jesus so much that they wanted him to be killed, and why did the crowds of people chant for Jesus to be crucified. After all, weren't they looking for a messiah, weren't they waiting for the promised christ, the king of God, to be born and come to them? Yes, they definitely were. But they have a problem - they have already made their decisions about what the messiah will be like before Jesus has arrived. They are looking for a charismatic, military ruler who will raise up an army, free Israel from under its Roman oppressors, and bring back the wealth and prosperity of King David's time. And they are looking for a messiah who will, of course, agree with them on every theological issue, because they are so sure that they are right.
But when Jesus actually arrives, he has come to deal with sin, and repair people's broken relationships with God. The religious leaders can't see it as their mistake. They have this idea stuck in their head about what God is like, and what the messiah will be like, and so even when the messiah comes to them, even when God comes to them in the form of Jesus, they reject him. This is The Messiah, but not the messiah they were expecting. This is not the messiah they wanted. For the religious leaders, Jesus was challenging their power. They were in positions of dominance over the people, and what they said was literally religious law. But Jesus comes and says they've got it all wrong, that God desires mercy, and that you must rely on God and his grace, not on following a list of rules. So they hate Jesus - because he points out that they're wrong, and he wants people to question what they say.
Is that you? Do you have it already stuck in your mind how the world works, how God works, how faith works? A lot of people see religious truth like a marketplace - they buy into whatever beliefs they already agree with. They pick and choose what is right and what is wrong. Does Jesus challenge your power over your own life, to choose how you relate to God, whether or not something is sin, or what your church or your life should be like? Because Jesus should always win that battle. If we refuse to give in to Jesus's authority, then we are like the religious leaders, calling for him to be crucified because even though Jesus is God, he is not the god we want him to be.
As for the everyday people, they were expecting a powerful military leader, victorious over their enemies. They had seen Jesus performing miracles, healings, exorcisms, wondrous signs. And he preached God's word with authority. They had high hopes for him. But they didn't put their hope in what he said. They put their hope in what they wanted - and they wanted a man who would drive out the Roman oppressors. So when they see that the religious leaders have arrested him, and he is handed over to Pontius Pilate, they feel betrayed. Here is the man who promised to be God's messiah - but now he is the enemy's prisoner. If he really is the messiah, then why doesn't he free himself? Why doesn't he fight against them and win? How can it be that he so quietly admits defeat?
And so they hate him. He doesn't give them what they want, or he can't give them what they want, and so they turn on him, and they cry out for him to be crucified. Jesus doesn't live up to their ideal of what the messiah should be, so they don't want him any more. I should point out that the thing the crowds wanted was a good thing. They wanted freedom, they wanted an end to tyranny and oppression.
Maybe you are angry with God because he lets people suffer, or because he doesn't stop people from destroying the environment. Those are good things, but it is important to understand that having faith in God, trusting God, means trusting him to decide what is most important for us. The anger and disappointment the crowds expressed was exactly what happens when we don't have faith in God to have the absolute best plan for us, and for everyone, and for his glory.
It is a failing of humanity that if we want something, and we are given something we need instead, we can end up resenting the thing we received, because we didn't get what we want. Have you ever resented a present, even though it was something you needed, because it's not that thing you had your heart set on, it's not the thing you wanted? This is an all too common reaction we have to God's will - he gives us what we need, not necessarily what we want, and because we have so little faith in God, we find ourselves resenting God's plan for our lives.
At my church there is a lovely older couple who came to faith in Christ later in their lives. The husband has cancer. For years they have fought against it with every kind of medical treatment. But he has not been healed. There are no more medicines left for the doctors to try. And yet they still praise God for his goodness to them. I'm sure you can all think of inspiring, godly Christians who find themselves in a terrible, difficult place in their lives, and yet can still praise God for his goodness. We find their faith inspiring. That's how we should be. But we are more usually like the crowds. God puts us in a position of difficulty, deals with our biggest problem of all in sin, and we cry out, 'Crucify him!'
Or maybe we are more like the Roman governor Pilate. He is presented with an innocent man, with whom he cannot find any fault at all. And what is his response when faced with complete innocence? It's not, "This man is innocent, free him at once." No, it's "I'll punish him for you, and then I'll set him free." Is that how you would like to be treated when you are being disciplined at work, or by parents, or by the law? Is this justice? "Well, you're not guilty of anything, but people are upset, so we're going to punish you anyway to keep them happy." This is totally unjust. Pilate does not care about justice, he cares about comfort. Having people yelling and screaming, and possibly rioting in his streets, will look bad for him, and it will cause him trouble. So justice takes second place to expediency. And so we should not be surprised that when the crowd keeps calling for Jesus to be crucified, Pilate eventually just agrees.
Are we like Pilate, caring more about our own comfort than about what is right? Do we decide that following Jesus is too hard, because we have non-Christian friends or family who put pressure on us to act a different way? Or is the pressure of the world to live for ourselves, to be selfish, to focus on money and security and family, is that just too tempting? Before you think that believing in God would stop you from acting that way, remember Pilate thought Jesus was innocent. He thought Jesus was innocent, and he still sent him to be crucified. Because it was easier. So even as Christians, we have to be so careful that even though we know Jesus is God, we don't still turn to the easy answers, the easy way of life, the things that make us comfortable, to just making people happy so that we can also be happy. We have to care about what is right more than about what is comfortable.
Finally, we have Herod. We are probably all a little bit like Herod. Herod was the accepted king of the Jews at the time and, unlike the temple leaders, he did not feel threatened by Jesus at all. He felt threatened by John the Baptist, and cut off his head. But not Jesus. For Herod, Jesus was a curiosity. He had heard about Jesus doing miracles, and wanted to see one. He asked lots of questions, asked to see some wondrous signs that would prove Jesus really is who he claims to be. But Jesus did no miracles, and answered no questions. Herod probably decided that if Jesus couldn't do a miracle to save his own life, then he must not be the messiah. So Herod mocked and ridiculed him, and so did his soldiers, and sent him back to Pilate.
So many of us want Jesus to answer our questions, we want him to sate our curiosity, we want him to entertain us with miracles. If he can't do that, then we assume he must not be God, he must not be the messiah, and so we send him away. After all, if God is all-powerful, why not just prove who he is? What would it cost Jesus to do a miracle or two? If Jesus can't do a miracle to convince us that he is God, to save our lives from eternal punishment, if he can't answer the questions we have, then he mustn't be the messiah, and so we send him away. I know I've felt that way before. It's such a common attitude towards Jesus in the modern western world.
I want you to think about which of those groups of people at Jesus's trials you are like. Where would you have been? Does Jesus challenge your power over your own spiritual life, so you reject him like the religious leaders? Does Jesus not do what you want, do you feel like you've been let down by Jesus, so you are upset with him, like the crowds? Does the pressure of non-Christian family or friends, or just the non-stop shouting of our non-Christian culture to be selfish, put yourself first, and value material things, make you just give in for the sake of your own comfort, like Pontius Pilate? Or do you simply think that you don't need to take Jesus seriously, because he doesn't appear at your beck and call, doesn't answer the questions you want answered, or do miracles that would convince you of his being the Son of God, so you send him away like Herod and his soldiers?
Jesus' trials are the culmination of humanity's response to God on earth: both Jews (God's people) and Romans (not God's people) give Jesus over to be crucified. People who had seen his miracles, and people who had not. People who want him to be the messiah, and people who don't want him to be. All kinds of people ended up wanting Jesus dead because he was not what they wanted.
We all have it in us to be an enemy of God. We are guilty of insurrection and murder, just like Barabbas. But where Barabbas was guilty of insurrection and murder against the Romans, we are guilty of insurrection and murder against God. And as God's enemies, we deserve to be punished.
Well I want to tell you, wherever you are with God, whatever your attitude, the action that Jesus takes is his answer to you. What is that action, you might ask. Jesus doesn't seem to do anything. Jesus, as God, is surely all powerful. He could just call down legions of angels, or pillars of fire, or do whatever he wanted to miraculously break his bonds and free himself. But he doesn't.
Why is that? Why doesn't Jesus fight back? Because God's plan is that innocent Jesus should be punished and die in the place of every sinful human being. His death takes away the sin of the world - the punishment of God's enemies. Of those who wanted him dead. Of those who shouted angrily for him to be crucified. Of those who just wanted him out of the way so they could be comfortable, and of those who were convinced he could not be the Messiah. The action Jesus takes answers every question that is raised against him.
This is how much God is king over everything. He is able to turn the death of his son on earth at the hands of his enemies into that moment which saves us from eternal death, saves us from the punishment for being the enemies of God that we are. And in doing this, God transforms his enemies into his children, brings them into his loving family.
God does not act at our beck and call. God's plan is perfect, and it is the best plan for every single person on earth. Jesus' death does not give us the power to decide what is right and what is wrong for ourselves. Jesus' death does not stop climate change, or ISIS, or cancer. Jesus' death does not make us comfortable, or help us fit in with the world around us. Jesus' death does not answer all our questions, or take place to meet the level of proof we want.
No, Jesus' death perfectly repairs a relationship with God we didn't even know we had, that we didn't even realise was broken. It means we can be with God forever - free from sin and death and pain and suffering forever. His resurrection proves with perfect sufficiency that God loves us, and wants us to be with him. And it glorifies God, showing that he has the power over sin and death, the power to set us free from those things when we can't free ourselves.
We need to recognise that our attitudes can be against God. And we need to realise that God's plan is perfect. We can trust God to do everything exactly as it should be done. We can see that he has done everything that was needed to bring us to him. And we should repent of being his enemies, and be thankful that he has made us his children. Every time you think one of those enemy thoughts, remember God's answer was Christ's death, and change your attitude.
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22:63-71 guards beat Jesus and mock him, Jewish religious leaders accuse him of blasphemy
23:1-7 Taken before Pilate, accused of being seditious. Pilate finds no basis for charge. Sends him to Herod because he is from Galilee.
23:8-12 Herod wanted to see miraculous signs, but Jesus said and did nothing. Accused by Jews some more, mocked some more, sent back to Pilate, the two become friends.
23:13-17 Pilate announces there is no basis for a charge either from him or Herod. Offers to punish him (even though innocent) and let him go.
23:18-25 The people are adamant that they want Jesus crucified. Pilate doesn't want to, but in the end he relents, and releases Barabbas instead - a real guilty man.
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Why doesn't Jesus answer? Because he cannot lie, and the truth will damn him.
Why doesn't Jesus fight back? Because this is God's plan - to take our place, as Jesus took Barabbas's place.
#Why do the people chant for him to be crucified? Because he is a loser, and has dashed their hopes of a Messiah the way they wanted
#The religious leaders began to oppose Jesus in ch 11 when he spoke woes against them
#They were looking for reasons to accuse him back in chapter 6
Jesus is a threat to the jewish leaders because he usurps their spiritual sovereignty - he claims to be in charge, rather than them. They paint him as being a threat to secular political power, but really he isn't - and yet in the end the secular powers relent because they are human institutions. Herod is king of the jews, but knows he's not the messiah. When Jesus doesn't show him a miracle, he mocks him and sends him away - and Jew and Gentile here shake hands and grow a friendship based on mutual rejection of Christ.
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"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can be used against you in court." Maybe you've heard this on TV before. In the Australian legal system, we had something called the right to silence. This means that when the police arrest you for a crime, and they interview you to ask you questions about the crime, you don't have to answer any of their questions if you don't want to. But more than that, it means when you go to court and you're sitting in front of a jury, the judge and the jury are not allowed to hold your silence against you. You don't need to prove you weren't there - the government needs to prove you were there. You don't need to prove you didn't have motive, the government needs to prove you did have motive.
Some people find this right to silence confusing or confronting. Why should a criminal be able to just sit there and say nothing? Why can't they be forced to confess to their crime? If there is good evidence that tends to imply they did it, why shouldn't they have to speak up and explain how they didn't do it? But this ignores a fundamental tenet of our law - you are innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. You don't have to prove your innocence - the government prosecutor has to prove that you are guilty. And if they can't prove that, if they can't prove to twelve of your peers that you are guilty beyond any reasonable doubt, then even though you said nothing at all in your defence, you are legally innocent - you are free to go.
This right to silence, this presumption of innocence, exists for several reasons. It restrains government tyranny - they can't just go around imprisoning whoever speaks out against them. It helps cure the imbalance between a government that has millions of dollars and thousands of police investigators at its disposal, whereas you have just your own modest means. Put simply, the right to silence and presumption of innocence exist to ensure that, so far as is possible, justice is done. It is better that a guilty man goes free, than an innocent man is punished.
But when we look at the trial of Jesus reported in Luke's gospel, we do not see justice being done. There are a few questions people regularly ask about this part of Jesus's life, about his trial. I want to answer them, because for one, it's always good to have your questions answered, but secondly, it really helps us get to the truth of why this whole thing occurred.
First of all, you might ask why is it that the Jewish religious leaders are so eager to see Jesus charged with a crime. Isn't Jesus the Jewish messiah? Shouldn't the temple priests have been looking for him, waiting for him, wanting him to come? Absolutely they should have been. Another question that often gets asked which is related to this is why do all the crowds of people chant for Jesus to get crucified? Didn't he heal their sick? Didn't he preach with authority? Didn't they greet him at the gate as if he were a king? They sure did. So why the sudden change of heart?
Well, for the religious leaders, it wasn't a change of heart at all. All the way back in chapter 6 of Luke they were looking for reasons to accuse Jesus. Then several times throughout his life, they are reported as trying to find ways to get him into trouble. Why? Because Jesus spoke out against them. Here is a man, born in accordance with Old Tetament scripture; pointed to by John the Baptist, a prophet; performing miracles, healing the sick, feeding thousands; preaching God's word with authority, interpreting scripture; making himself out to be not just God's messiah, but God's Son, equal with God. But he didn't agree with the temple leaders. He spoke out against them, and so they wanted him dead. The message he preached from God was not favourable to them, so they didn't want people to hear it.
What about the crowds? Why were they chanting at the governor's palace, shouting for Jesus to be crucified? It's the same reason: because Jesus did not agree with them. They wanted a powerful saviour, a military messiah, a leader who would raise an army and defeat their enemies, the Romans, who held their land and their people captive. God instead said, "I know better what you need: you need your sins forgiven," and they were angry that they weren't getting what they wanted. This was proved to them by Jesus being arrested. If Jesus really was the messiah they wanted, the mighty, powerful military leader, he would have struck down his enemies, and been victorious. Instead, here was he was arrested, paraded before the Roman governor. He had failed to give them what they wanted. So they shouted for him to be crucified.
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When Jesus is arrested, there is a lot of injustice. He isn't arrested by the lawful authorities. It isn't centurions that detain him, but temple guards. An he isn't taken before a judge, but before temple leaders. This is the equivalent of church security arresting you. It's the equivalent of John or Gordon grabbing you for you crimes, an dragging you in front of Roger and Colin to hear your case. And you might think that if you're a Christian, perhaps you should agree to appear before your church elders if you are thought to be guilty of some sinful misdeed. You might have read recently about the leader of a huge church in America, Mark Driscoll, who recently resigned from his position after being found to be antagonistic, angry and acting improperly and without love towards people. Fair enough. But what if Gordon or John came and kicked down your door, pointed a gun at you, amnd marched you off? What if they mocked you, and beat you? Slapped you, laughed at you and insulted you? These are your brothers in Christ doing this to you. Imagine that.
They drag him off in front of the governor, Pontius Pilate. He's the representative of the entire Roman empire. He's not religious, he doesn't care about blasphemy and religious rules. So they change the charges. Now it's about sedition, rebellion, tax evasion. And I can tell you, the government will forgive a lot of things, but they will always pursue a tax evader! But even on these trumped up false charges, the governor isn't interested. There's no basis for the charges. And anyway, the man doesn't come under his jurisdiction. He's a local from Galilee, and there's a Jewish political leader from that region called Herod, and he's in the city at that time. So Pilate sends Jesus over there. One less problem for him.
Now Herod, he's keen to see Jesus, because he's heard Jesus is a miracle worker. He wants to see a miracle. But he's disappointed.
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Now imagine that you were innocent. You were innocent, not because you hadn't done what you were accused of, but because what you were being accused of was not a sin. Maybe you are being accused of telling lies, where what you were saying is really the truth, but they just don't want to believe it. Where is the justice in that? You might feel that no matter what you say, they will only believe what they want to believe. So you keep silent.
That's what Jesus does. After all, what is the crime that Jesus faces here? It is the crime of being the messiah, the Christ, the promised king of God. His crime is being the Son of God, and the religious leaders simply don't believe him. They think he is lying. They think it's blasphemy. And so they beat him, and they mock him, and they insult him.
Now imagine that you are taken before a court by these people, these brothers of yours, Colin and Roger, who don't believe you are telling the truth. They take you to the International Court of Justice in the Hague. And they accuse you of lying. More than that though, they say that your lies are stirring people up, making them rebellious. They accuse you of being a terrorist. You are now on trial in the same court where war criminals face justice. And so in front of a foreign European jury, the foreign European judge puts you in the witness box and asks you: are you a terrorist? Are you lying? Are you inciting rebellion? You might think that if you tell the truth, the jury might think less of you. Your own church elders didn't believe you - why would these people who don't know you? And so you decide to say nothing. You just repeat what the others have said - "You say that I am".
This is what happened to Jesus. When he was before the temple leaders, he was charged with blasphemy. They are convinced by their own biases that he is guilty. But they can't pass a sentence on him. So they take him to the Roman government, to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. He's the representative of the emperor, of the whole Roman empire, there in Jerusalem. He's not religious. He doesn't care about blasphemy, so the religious leaders need to make the charges sound more important. So they accuse Jesus of sedition, of inciting rebellion, of telling people not to pay their taxes. Now I can tell you this - the government will forgive a lot of things, but they will always, always, always prosecute a tax offender! Pilate asks Jesus if he's this master criminal, this seditious rabble rouser, and Jesus says basically nothing - he just repeats the charge back. So Pilate, the governor, can't find any basis for the charges against Jesus.
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