Dust and Ashes

This is an outline of a sermon I gave on Ash Wednesday this year. Some people found it helpful, so I've written up my notes.

The Hebrew words for “dust” (aphar) and “ashes” (epher) are very closely linked, and the two are often paired, both in Scripture and in everyday life. It is helpful to look through something of a Biblical theology of dust and ashes.

Creation and Fall

Adam was originally formed out of dust.

The LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
Genesis 2:7, ESV

Adam's name is even derived from the word for “ground” - his identity seems to be linked to the fact that he's come from the ground, from the dust. After the Fall, the curse that is placed on Adam is that he will return back to dust.

By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Genesis 3:19

Dust and ashes are symbolic of our mortality and hence also our fallen humanity – we come from dust and return to dust. In 1 Corinthians 15, when Paul is contrasting Adam and Jesus, he does so by describing Adam as a “man of dust”. It can also therefore be a sign of judgement – the result of God's judgement is that we all return to dust.

Humiliation and Humility

Because of this, people often take dust and ashes as a symbol that they have come near to death and of utter humiliation. People put dust on their heads or roll in ashes as a sign of mourning (e.g. 2 Sam 13:19).

It's also a sign of humility. The Tower of Babel was in some senses people trying to escape from the dust and reach their own way to heaven. But that contrasts with Abraham, who does not try to be anything other than a man of the ground. He even describes himself as a man who is “just dust and ashes” (Gen 18:27).

It's therefore something that people can choose to take on as a sign that we recognise our mortality and the gap between us and God, especially with repentance. So Job's response to being rebuked by God is that he repents “in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6).

Redeemed from Dust

But there is hope. In the Old Testament, animals were sacrificed – reduced to ashes, and that ash could provide forgiveness for people of dust.

But there is far more. The dust is the place where God meets us, and from which he transforms us. Here's part of Hannah's prayer in 1 Samuel 2:

The LORD makes poor and makes rich;
he brings low and he exalts.
He raises up the poor from the dust;
he lifts the needy from the ash heap,
to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honour.
1 Samuel 2:7-8

Sermon on Habakkuk 1:12-17

I've cleaned up the audio from this sermon, which I preached a few weeks ago. The results are here. Sorry it's not great quality, but it's better than it was. short link.

Has Science Disproved God?

Earlier today, I did a talk called "Has Science Disproved God?" at Apologetics in Manchester. It seemed to be very well received. You can find audio of the talk here, and the handout here.

Give Me Only My Daily Bread

How would you feel if you got a pay rise? My guess is that you'd feel pretty happy, because pay rises are one of those things that people just like. Surely the only way that anyone could be sad at getting a pay rise is if they were expecting an even bigger rise!

But that's actually a reflection of the culture we live in – a culture that just accepts and assumes that money is good. So in the financial news, we read things like “Richard Branson is worth £3 billion”, as if the amount of money that people have in some way reflects how much they are actually worth. And even though Christians don't always go that far, we've still been far too influenced by the culture around us, and not influenced enough by the Bible. And that goes for me too.

So when we read words like Agur's prayer in Proverbs 30, it comes as a counter-cultural breath of fresh air.

Two things I ask of you, O LORD;
do not refuse me before I die:
Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, 'Who is the LORD ?'
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonour the name of my God.
Proverbs 30:7-9, NIV

Agur prays: “Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.”

There are two things we can learn from this short prayer.

Firstly, poverty and riches are both dangerous.

It's worth being clear on what we mean by poverty and riches here, because people mean different things by the word “poverty”. What Agur means is being so poor that he is tempted to steal so that he and his family have enough to eat.

That sort of poverty is dangerous, says Agur, because he'll be tempted to steal, and that would dishonour God. And generally, I think the church has understood that one. We want to help people who are that poor, and we see that it's a good thing to pray that we wouldn't be that poor.

So what about being rich? Agur uses “rich” to mean “having enough money that we don't have to consciously depend on God for what we need to survive”. Now by that definition, I guess almost all of us are rich. I know I am. I've got enough money and skills and I'm in a rich enough country that realistically I don't need to worry about where my food is coming from.

But that need to depend on God was built into the very way the Promised Land worked. Here's Moses speaking just before Israel enters the Promised Land in Deuteronomy 11.

The land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden. But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. It is a land the LORD your God cares for; the eyes of the LORD your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end.
Deuteronomy 11:10-12, NIV

Egypt is a flat desert country with a big river going through it. So to grow plants, you need to dig ditches for the water to get through. To stay alive, you work and trust yourself, and if you work harder, you can get rich. But Israel wasn't like that – it was lots of hills and little streams, so you needed to trust God for the rain. Hard work didn't mean as much, and it was harder to get rich. What mattered most was trusting God. Being part of God's people was tied up with leaving Egypt, the land where you worked for your food, and living in Israel, the land where you trusted God to bring the rain.

But if you're rich, says Agur, you can start feeling like you don't need to trust God. You can even say “Who is the LORD?” which is what the King of Egypt says when he won't let Israel go. He thinks you get where you are by hard work, and he's rich so he doesn't trust God and doesn't even recognise him. That's the danger of wealth – that we stop trusting God.

Why is it that in general, the richer a country is, the less we see God moving and the less of his power we see at work in the church? Why is it that the churches in Britain where God seems to be doing the most are full of students or immigrants, neither of whom have any money? Isn't it because by and large, we are rich, so we've stopped trusting God? We don't see the danger of wealth, so we fall for the trap.

Everything else in life, we see that you can have too much as well as too little. We know that too little food is bad for you, and too much food is bad for you as well. We know that too little exercise is bad for you, and too much exercise is bad as well. Well, too little money is bad for you, and too much money is bad for you as well.

We aren't jealous of people who've had too much food, are we? And we aren't jealous of people who have had too much exercise. So why should we be jealous of people who have too much money? Shouldn't we be sorry for them because they will find it harder to trust God?

What about those who can't help being rich? Well, here's Paul writing to Timothy.

Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.
1 Timothy 6:17-19, NIV

Those of us who are rich should remember and take care not to be arrogant, and not to trust in money, but to trust God who gives us everything we have. If we are rich in this age, says Paul, well are we rich in good deeds and generosity? And will we be rich in the age to come?

Those of us who are rich now need to be very careful that we invest in the kingdom of God – in the age to come – so that we can take hold of the life that is truly life. Because otherwise we're going to be the poor ones. We need to remember that our wealth is just something that is going to pass away, so we need to use it wisely and well now.

You know, people have done a lot of research about whether money makes you happy. And what they have found wouldn't have come as much surprise to Agur. They found that when people are very poor, the more money they have, the happier they are. But once people have enough money to survive, having more money doesn't make them any happier. Too much money is dangerous, and it doesn't make you happy.

And as Christians we know that true satisfaction doesn't come from money – it comes from knowing Jesus and being known by Jesus, from loving God and knowing that we are loved and accepted by God.

We all know that the happiest people we know aren't the richest, so why do we still so often aim for money?

But if money is dangerous, what should we aim for? This brings us on to the second point we can learn from Agur. Godliness is more precious than gold.

Look at v9. What does Agur actually want? What does he actually pray for? He prays that he won't have too little money, because then he'll dishonour God. And he prays that he won't have too much money, because then he'll forget God. What Agur really wants is to love God more, and to value God, and to trust God.

Agur wants godliness, because he knows that godliness is more valuable than gold. So we should aim for godliness too, the way that a lot of society today aims for money. We should aim for what will help us be closer to God, and what will help us love God more.

Aim to have enough money that you don't have to steal, but not so much that you'll trust your bank account rather than your God, and if too much money is a problem for you, then give the rest away.

Don't go for the job that pays the best; go for the job that will help you be the most godly. Don't go for the more comfortable house, go for the house that will enable you to use it the most for God's kingdom, because godliness is more valuable than gold.

And what does it mean for our prayer lives? What can we learn from Agur's masterclass in prayer?

Well, what do we pray for? Do we pray that our friends and family will get good jobs, or do we pray they will get jobs that help them to be godly, even if that means they'll be struggling financially?

Do we pray that we would be comfortable, or that we would be holy? When people are in pain, do we pray that they would be free from pain or that they would learn to trust God more through their pain? Don't get me wrong, it's important to pray for healing, but it's far more important to pray for godliness.

We pray for the poor, and for poor Christians, who struggle to survive. Do we pray for rich Christians who will struggle to keep on trusting God?

Are we willing to pray “Lord, please don't give me a pay rise if having more money will stop me trusting in you?”

Are we brave enough to pray, as Agur did, “Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.”

The Meaning of Life - Psalm 30

Psalm 30

I used to do a fair bit of theoretical physics. And one of the things that theoretical physicists are especially interested in is finding a theory of everything - one theory which explains all the physical phenomena we see in the universe.

I think David would agree with them that there's one dynamic underlying everything - one basic principle which the universe runs on. But David wouldn't look for the answer in quantum field theory or superstrings. For David, the single dynamic underlying the whole universe is this - worship. Everything that happens to people, everything that God does, according to David, is somehow because of worship.

Maybe that seems a bit weird to you, but bear with me.

The way that most people think most of the time is that worship is a response - God does something amazing for us, so we praise and worship him. And that's what happens in v1-3. David praises God for rescuing him from the grave and from going down into the pit. It's interesting that in v2 he uses "O Lord my God" rather than just "O Lord" like in v1,3. It's kind of an intense awareness of God's closeness to him, and the fact he doesn't use that language in v1 and 3 makes it stand out all the more in v2.

Then in v4-5 we get a slight development. Here, David generalises his own experience to the rest of the nation, and tells them that they can praise God because of what he has seen God is like, and that his love is so much stronger than his anger.

In verses 6 and 7, David develops this theme to describe his own individual situation. His security comes only from God's favour. We may think that mountains stand firm on their own, but it's only when God wants them to. When he hides his face, it doesn't matter how strong the mountain is, it won't stand firm. So why does God show his favour sometimes and hide his face other times? It's not just capricious, as we see in v8-10.

David calls to God for mercy - he recognises he needs it. But it's really interesting how his call is motivated, because it isn't actually about him. David knows that he isn't the centre of the universe, but doesn't then make the mistake that we so often make and assume that everyone is the centre of their own universe. David knows that God's glory and worshipping God is what it is all about. So his prayer for deliverance is motivated by the fact that he knows he will be praising God when God delivers him. Why does David want God to spare him? So that he can praise God for his faithfulness. Prayer motivated by a desire for God to be worshipped.

David doesn't worship because he has been saved, he is saved so that he can worship. Worship is so big and important that it's even behind the doctrine of salvation.

And we see the same again in v11-12.

You turned my wailing into dancing;
you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
that my heart may sing to you and not be silent.
O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever.
Psalm 30:11-12, NIV

Why did God save David and clothe him with joy? So that his heart could sing to God and not be silent.

Quick application. Have we been saved? If so, we've been saved so that we can praise God?

Do we want to be saved? Why?

Do we recognise that the underlying dynamic of everything that happens in the universe is God's praise? Are we willing to make that the underlying dynamic of everything that we do?

Talk on Science and Religion

Yesterday, I did a talk on science and religion at a local-ish university Christian Union. Here's the talk. It's about 24 mins long...

The title of the talk was "Is the Bible Scientifically Reliable?".

Advent Sermon - 2 Peter 3:8-13

Here's a sermon I preached earlier in Advent on 2 Peter 3:8-13...

Harvest Sermon

This is the sermon I preached at Harvest. The passage is 1 John 3:11-19.

As it's Harvest today, here's a quick quiz. Hands up; first hand up with the right answer gets a Harvest bar.

Question 1: What grows in fields that is one of the main ingredients of bread? (corn / wheat)

Question 2: During the Jewish harvest festival, people weren't allowed to live in houses. What did they have to live in instead? (tents / tabernacles)

Question 3: What do the Americans call their Harvest festival? (Thanksgiving)

Question 4: One of the things Americans do at Thanksgiving is they act out the first harvest festival some of the settlers had in America. But when is the first harvest festival in the Bible? (Cain and Abel)

Question 5: How did it end? (Cain kills Abel)

Now that's a bit disturbing, isn't it? The first harvest festival in the Bible was with two brothers, Cain and Abel, both farmers, and it ended with Cain killing his brother.

That's because there are two ways to give – two ways to give, and the passage we read earlier talks about them.

The first way to give is the way Cain did. Cain gave because he was a good person. He gave, but he didn't love. He gave because he thought that would show he was a good person, and then maybe God would accept him. Cain gave because he was good. And what happened? God wasn't pleased with him, but he was pleased with Cain's brother Abel. So Cain got angry and ended up killing his brother.

You see, sometimes when we give, the giving is really about us. It is us saying we are good and generous and decent. And the shock of the first harvest festival is that God isn't pleased with Cain. So Cain gets angry because he thinks God owes him one. But we can't make God like us by being decent people. Giving stuff at harvest doesn't mean that God accepts us. Cain giving at the first harvest festival was meant to show how good he was, but actually showed how evil he was, because he ended up killing his brother. Giving because we are decent people actually ends up showing that we aren't.

The other way to give is the way Jesus gives. At the Jewish harvest festival, people were meant to give the best of what they had, and the first bits of their fruit and so on. And that's what God did. He gave us the best of what he had to give, he gave Jesus. And Jesus gave himself for us even though we're not decent people. That is how we know what love is. That is the way we should be giving – not giving stuff because we're decent people and to show that we're good, but giving ourselves, because God is good and that's what he did for us. And so we give our money and our stuff not to earn God's favour but because we have already given ourselves to God who has given everything to us.

So when we see our brothers and sisters in need, like we have done in the video, we have pity on them, and we give to them because nothing we have is ours any more – it's God's, and he loves them. And we don't just love them with the things we say, we actually do something about it. And yes, it's the people in the video, but it's also one another in this congregation. It's brilliant when I see people really giving of themselves to look after each other here, and I'm going to be even more encouraged when I see that even more.

Because if we're actually doing that, says John, that's evidence that we're really Christians. It's God's love shining through us.` It's like putting a candle into a candle jar.

God's love shines out like a light. And when that love is inside us, it shines out. It's God's love shining still, but it's shining through us and it maybe looks a bit different because of our situation and what we're like, but that light shines. And if we see the light shining in people, that tells us there's a candle inside. When we see people loving one another like Jesus does, that shows us that they really know Jesus – that they've really got that light inside them – that they really know they're loved and accepted by God, and so they are loving others.

Not loving others because they should, or because it's the right thing to do, or to try to make God happy with them, but loving because God's love is living in them.

Sermon on Creation

Here's a sermon I preached recently on the topic of creation.

MP3 downloadable from here.

Sermon on Identity

Here's a talk I gave the other week about our identity in Christ...

Or download it from here.

Sermon on 2 Corinthians 6:1-13

I preached on 2 Corinthians 6:1-13 three times last weekend. Sadly, I forgot my voice recorded, but this is roughly what I said...

Last year, just after the US Presidential Election, the Daily Telegraph ran a cartoon on its front page. In the background was the White House in Washington, with the lawns in front of it. And in the foreground, was a fountain in the grounds of the White House, with a little sign stuck in it. The little sign said this “Do not walk on the water.”

The reason that cartoon is funny is that we only tell people not to do things which it is possible for them to do. So we tell children not to step out into the road, or not to touch a hot saucepan or not to talk to us in that tone of voice. I taught in secondary schools for 6 years. Some of the teenagers I taught were quite naughty. But I never once told them to get down off the ceiling, or not to fly to the moon on giant pink rabbits. We only tell people not to do things if there is a possibility they will do it.

Which means that when we read today's passage, and see St Paul warning the church in Corinth that they should not receive God's grace in vain, alarm bells should be going off in our heads. Because if Paul is warning them not to, that means it is possible to receive God's grace in vain.

I'll say that again. It is possible to receive God's grace in vain.

This comes straight after one of the most glorious passages in all Scripture, where Paul tells us that he is compelled by Christ's love, that Christ died for all and therefore all died, that God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God and that if anyone is in Christ they are a new creation.

Paul assumes that they've taken all of that on board. They are, after all, the Church in Corinth. Paul is preaching to the converted. And he warns them not to receive God's grace in vain. Literally, he says to receive God's grace, but not leading to emptiness.

You see, it is quite possible to go to church regularly, even to lead a church regularly and to do it in vain, leading to emptiness. It is quite possible to receive communion every week in vain. It is quite possible to believe that God made Jesus to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God, and if it makes no difference to our lives, then we are doing it in vain, into emptiness. That is why Paul urges them not to receive God's grace in vain, because it is possible to receive God's grace in vain.

In the second half of chapter 6, and on into chapters 7-10, Paul elaborates on what it looks like for the Corinthians to receive God's grace, and not to do it in vain. But for the rest of today's passage, we see what it looks like for Paul not to receive God's grace in vain, and how he goes about trying to persuade them.

But before we look at that in more detail, it is important to explain exactly what Paul is doing here. He isn't saying “This is what you need to do to earn God's favour.” He isn't saying “This is how we get into heaven.”

What Paul is saying is that God is offering us a free gift – Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous to bring us to God 5:21. Or in verse 2 of today's reading, God says “In the time of my favour I heard you and in the day of salvation I helped you.” We can't earn God's favour or his salvation because he has already shown us his favour and accomplished his salvation. Jesus takes the punishment that we deserve. He died for us all, as 5:15 puts it. And as a result of that, God makes those who are included in Christ into new creations 5:17.

So what Paul is saying here is that it is possible to look like a new creation, but for it to be empty.

When I was a little child, I used to love Cadbury's Creme Eggs. And one year, I saw a Cadbury's Creme Egg easter egg. It was big, and it looked just like a massive version of a Creme Egg, with the same wrapping and everything. And the next year, my parents got one for me, and it was really disappointing. I had been expecting that the middle would be filled with all that sickly sugary goo that you get in Creme Eggs, but it wasn't. It was empty.

That's a bit like what God is saying here. If we are new creations, we should be new creations on the inside as well as the outside. It should really make a difference to our lives. But some people just look like the real thing – there isn't any real transformation where it counts – on the inside. They receive God's grace in vain – into emptiness. This isn't what we do to earn salvation or to make God like us; this is about what we do with the salvation that God is offering to us. Do we really receive it, and let it change our whole lives so that we are new creations through and through, or do we just take the outward show? And Paul is warning us and saying here that the outward show is no good. It is empty, and it leads to being empty and at the end of the day all that is left is horrible emptiness.

So what does it look like for Paul? In verses 3-10, Paul is telling the Corinthians how he goes about his ministry, and he does it partly to set himself up as an example, to show what it means to be transformed by the gospel. There's loads here, and I just want to draw a few things out.

First thing, it means endurance. We're English; we're pretty good at endurance. We keep going, sometimes we complain a bit, but generally we're pretty stoical. But that isn't the sort of endurance Paul is talking about here. Paul is talking about the sort of endurance that comes from knowing where he is going. It's what comes from 4:18 “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” It's not so much the slog of trudging through a marsh to get it over and done with, as the pain of labour, that mothers go through because they know the joy of seeing a new baby born. That's the sort of endurance Paul's talking about. It's like Jesus, who “for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” And Paul had to put up with all sorts of things because of Jesus – here he lists troubles, hardships, distresses, beatings, imprisonments, riots, hard work, sleepless nights and hunger. It's that sort of endurance. And I don't think we're very good at it.

Here's an example. I used to be a secondary school teacher. And when I was just starting out one of the big issues I had to deal with was whether or not to talk to my pupils about Jesus. Probably the most common view I found among other Christian teachers was that it was unprofessional, that people might complain and I might even get sacked. Well ok. I will do the best job of teaching that I can, but am I willing for people to think of me as unprofessional, to have people complaining and even for me to be sacked for telling people about Jesus? Am I willing to endure that?

Are we willing to do things that are uncomfortable for the sake of Jesus, because of the amazing and wonderful glory of knowing him? Are we willing to welcome people into our homes, to speak to people we don't know, even to lose friendships for the sake of Jesus and because we know that in him we have received every spiritual blessing and we will one day inherit everything? Are we willing to endure? Sometimes I am; sometimes I'm not. But I know I should be, because I know in my head that what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal; I know that what I have in Christ is far greater than anything I can lose in the world, I just don't always live it out.

Second thing it means to be transformed by the gospel is purity. Verses 6-7. In purity, knowledge and kindness, in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love, with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left.

Lots of people have puzzled over what it means to have weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left. I think it's quite simply this. We don't have any other plan. In my right hand, says Paul, I have righteousness. But if that doesn't work, in my left hand, I have righteousness. There isn't any room for me to hold another weapon. Paul doesn't have anything up his sleeves just in case. He is going to try loving people sincerely, with purity, knowledge, kindness and the Holy Spirit. If his church doesn't grow with that, he's not going to try gimmicks or tricking people. He's not going to try hiding from the world or lying to save his own skin. He's going to carry on preaching Christ and loving others sincerely. Yes, he might find different ways to use those weapons – he might find that it's the slaves or the widows who particularly need loving, or that the best time to preach is at night or in the early morning, but Paul isn't going to change the fact that he lives with righteousness and he works for God with righteousness. If there's a big recession, Paul isn't going to try some clever pyramid scheme or running off with the church's money. He is going to keep fighting, with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left.

Why does Paul do this? Why does he keep going despite the situation. Why does he stick to only ever using weapons or righteousness? The answer is that as Paul points out, there's so often a tension between what we see now and what the eternal reality is.

So in verse 8 – glory and dishonour, bad report and good report. Would we rather have people saying bad things about us and God saying good things about us, or the other way round?

Genuine yet regarded as impostors. If it came down to it, would we rather have other people think we were genuine, but God knowing we were faking, or would we rather have people thinking we were faking, but God knowing we were genuine? Known, yet regarded as unknown. Would you rather be known by people or by God?

Dying and yet we live on. Blunt question. If it came down to a choice between this life or the next one, and we could only keep one of them, which would we choose? Jim Eliot, the American missionary and martyr famously said “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Do we live like that?

Beaten and yet not killed; sorrowful yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything. Part of what it means to be a Christian is acknowledging that what we see out there is not the ultimate reality. This outward life, the things we have in this world, the respect from people that we have in this world, is so insignificant that it isn't worth comparing to what we have in the inward life, to the blessings we have in knowing Christ, to the fact that we are new creations inwardly, to the amazing reality that we can have in part now, and will one day have fully if we are in Jesus.

I guess there are some people here who want to sit on the fence. I know that often I do. We want to have the old life and the new one. We want to receive eternal life without seeing that it involves dying to ourselves. And what I want to say to you, and to myself, today, is that we need to decide. Make sure that we do not receive God's grace in vain; make the decision that we are going to let God transform our lives by the recognition that if we are Christians this is not our home any more. We can endure anything in this life, because this life is passing away, and what we are receiving in Christ is eternal. And we aim only ever going to fight with weapons of righteousness. There is no plan B just in case being godly doesn't work out.

And we do this, not to earn God's favour, but because that is what it means to receive God's amazing grace, to recognise that God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God, to live as God's new creations in Christ. This is what God will do in us, if we let him.

Sermon on Isaiah 51-52

As some of you will know, the father of a close friend of mine drowned in a tragic accident on Saturday. Today I was meant to preach on Isaiah 51:1-52:12 to a congregation who know my friend. Here's the result.

Or download it from here.

Sermon on Matthew 14:22-33

Yesterday I found myself preaching twice, with translation into Portuguese. This is roughly what I said... The passage was Jesus walking on water from Matthew 14:22-33 because I don't think it's right for the preacher to choose the passage, and that was what the C of E lectionary said...

Today is Fathers' Day. I wonder what your memories of your fathers are like. Maybe they are bad and painful, maybe they are good. Maybe you don't remember your father. Maybe today is happy for you or maybe it is sad. But wherever we are, I think today's passage has something important to tell us about what it means for God to be our perfect Father.

I want to tell you about one memory I have of my father. I was only a boy then, and I was learning to ride a bicycle, but I was very scared of falling off. So we went to somewhere where there were not many cars, and my dad made me practice. I would try to ride the bicycle, and he would run along behind, holding it. After we had been going for a while, he told me that he often let go – that I had been riding the bicycle on my own, without him holding it.

That is one of the most important things that fathers do – they teach us how to do things and then help us feel that we can do them.

In some ways, that is very like what God does for his people in this passage, and in some ways it is very different.

To help us understand this passage more clearly, we will think about it as four events – four moments in the life of Jesus.

The first moment is that Jesus prayed. Jesus prayed. I want you to picture the scene. It is evening, the sun is setting, Jesus has sent the disciples and the crowds away, and he goes up a mountain to pray. It would be easy for me to talk here about how important prayer is – that even Jesus, God himself in human flesh, saw the need to pray to God for a long time, even until three or four o'clock in the morning. That means he was praying for about 9 hours. Jesus saw that praying was so important that he was willing to spend 9 hours praying when he could have been with his friends or sleeping. And it is critically important that we understand that, but that isn't where I would like to focus our attention this afternoon.

You see, Jesus had climbed a mountain, and was praying, while his disciples were in a storm on the lake. The Sea of Galilee, where they were, is a big lake, maybe 30 kilometers across, with a ring of mountains all around it. When Jesus was up the mountain, he would have known what the weather was like on the lake. He would have known that the disciples were in a storm, and he was praying. Quite possibly, there was a storm up on the mountain too – mountains tend to get very stormy, and yet he kept praying.

Jesus sent his disciples into a storm, and they did not know where he was. And yet he knew where they were, and he remained where he was, praying.

Is this what we feel like sometimes? Do we sometimes feel as if Jesus has sent us into a situation, and things have turned difficult, and we do not know where he is. Because that is what we see here.

It is like me as a boy riding the bike, if the first time I had been riding the bike, I turned round and suddenly could not see my father, I would have been terrified. But my father did not let go to start with, and when he did let go he kept running behind the bike so that if I looked round he would be there. He only let me ride off on my own once I felt more confident doing it.

And this is not the first time the disciples had been in a storm on the lake. In chapter 8, Jesus was with the disciples in a storm like this, but he was asleep in the boat. They woke Jesus up, he told the storm to calm down, and it was calm. They already knew that Jesus could defeat storms on the lake. But this time Jesus pushes them a bit further – it is a storm when they cannot see Jesus with them. And that is often how Jesus deals with us. He teaches us to trust him through difficult situations, then when we learn to trust him there, he teaches us to trust him in situations that are a bit more difficult. He is gentle with us – he does not give us more than we can bear.

But there is a big difference between Jesus and my father as well. When I was learning to ride a bike, the aim was that eventually I would be able to ride my bike without my father around – good earthly fathers teach us to be more and more independent from them.

But that is not what God is like, because God is not an earthly father. With earthly fathers, eventually we need to learn to be totally independent of them, and though we might still love them and respect them, we do not rely on them for everything. But with God, it is the opposite. As we grow up as Christians, we need to learn more and more to trust him in everything. We need to learn to become like little children in the way we rely on God.

So what the disciples need to learn here is that even when they cannot see Jesus with them, even when they cannot feel him with them, he is still in control and they can still trust him.

And the same is true for us. Even when it feels as if Jesus is not there, he is still in control, he still loves us, he does not abandon us, he is still praying for us – yes, Jesus, the one who made the universe by his powerful word is now praying for us with his words. He has promised always to be with us by his Spirit.

The second moment in this passage is when Jesus walks on the water. Jesus walks on the water. In the Bible, seas and lakes always represent chaos and uncertainty, especially when there is a storm. And this time, Jesus shows his complete control over the sea by just walking over it. It's far better than what the Israelites did when they came out of Egypt, when God sent a wind to make a path through the sea. Here, the wind is making the sea worse, and Jesus just walks on over it. He shows that he is totally in control. Whatever the situation is, however chaotic it is, Jesus is Lord over it.

But the disciples' first reaction is fear. They don't know what's going on, they don't understand it. And so they are afraid. And Jesus speaks to them immediately. He tells them not to be afraid, but the reason that they shouldn't be afraid isn't anything to do with his power. Jesus isn't safe. He is terrifyingly powerful, but the reason that the disciples should not be afraid is that “It is I”. The reason we should not be afraid of God is that we know what he is like. We know that he loves us. But more than that, the words Jesus uses to say “It is I” are the same words God used when he appeared to Moses in the burning bush. Jesus is saying that the disciples should not be afraid because he is the God of Israel – he is the God who has shown for centuries his love for his people and the way that he keeps his promises. We can trust God because we know what he is like, and we know that he loves us, and that he always sticks with his people.

The third moment is when Peter walks on the water. Peter walks on the water. And this is wonderful.

verse 28 “Lord, if it is you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” Peter sees Jesus' power. Peter knows that God is the sort of God who wants us to rely on him, who wants to get us out of places where we are comfortable so that we rely on him only. But at the same time, he is not mad. He does not just think that all that matters is trusting that God will help us – he knows that what matters is trusting that God will help us when we obey him. He does not just step out of the boat – he asks Jesus to tell him to step out of the boat, because when God commands us to do something, God's word is powerful and he enables us to do what he has commanded.

When I see pictures of this, or imagine it, it is almost always a lovely calm day, with still water. But this is in the middle of a storm. Peter trusts Jesus, he trusts the power of his words, that if Jesus tells him to walk on water in a storm, he can do it. What wonderful faith! What wonderful longing to be with Jesus, to lose everything that makes him comfortable!

Where are we comfortable? What is it that makes us feel that we are safe, that everything is ok? Because Jesus wants us to learn to trust him without any of that. We have to be willing to let go of it and step out on the water, trusting only Jesus.

Of course, it may well be that God sends us back to where we are comfortable, but the key is learning to trust him.

I do not know you. I don't know what you trust apart from Jesus. But I can tell you about what God has done for me over these last few weeks in Brazil.

In England, I used to be a science teacher in high school. I gave that up to go to seminary, and moved from a house to one room. But I was still comfortable there, with a lot of books and a car and a wonderful girlfriend. When I came here, I had to leave all of that behind. Normally, I love speaking in English and listening to people speak. I like to sit down and talk for a long time. But now I am in Brazil, where not many people speak much English. Almost all the things I brought with me from England have either broken or been lost for a while while I am in Brazil. There have been times when I have not been able to speak to my girlfriend, or have not been able to eat food. I am here in Brazil for 40 days, which is the length of time that Jesus spent in the desert before his ministry, and I have been learning, like Israel learnt in their 40 years in the desert, that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God, and that that word is Jesus – that the bread I need to eat and the water I need to drink, that is Jesus. Jesus is what I need to survive, and nothing else.

Jesus calls us to step out, like Peter did, from where we are comfortable, and to rely on him only. But more than that, Jesus wants us to ask to step out of the boat.

Peter asks Jesus to tell him to come out of the boat. Jesus says “come”, and Peter comes out. He leaves where he felt safe, where he felt secure, where he felt comfortable, and goes to Jesus on the water. That is what the Christian faith is. That is what it means to follow Jesus.

For Peter, it is impossible. But Jesus calls him to do it and he does it, because Jesus gives us power to do the impossible.

For many of you, it will be much easier than it is for me. One of the many dangers of living somewhere like England, where people have so much, is that we have so much that we must leave and let go of before turning to Jesus.

What might we have to leave? Maybe it will be how we are comfortable in our friendships – that people think we are just like everyone else, and we need to talk about our relationship with Jesus. Maybe it will be the language we use, or the way we think about other people, or the way we treat others. Maybe what we must leave behind will be the way we think about Jesus – the way that we imagine him to be, or that we think he only loves people like us, or that he does not love people like us. I cannot tell you which area of life it is where Jesus is telling you to leave where you are comfortable and come to him – to him as he really is, as we see him in the Bible.

But the story does not end there. Peter is looking to Jesus, he is trusting Jesus, and he walks on the sea. But then he looks at the waves and the wind and he gets afraid, and he begins to sink. And in the same way, it is so easy sometimes to be distracted by how difficult it is to follow Jesus, that we stop looking at him, and we start failing. Maybe that is where some of us are today. We have been trying to follow Jesus, but we have taken our eyes off him and are sinking.

If that is us, then do as Peter did. Cry out to Jesus “save me”, and fix our eyes on Jesus, as it says in Hebrews 12:1-2
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Fourth moment – the disciples worship Jesus. The disciples worship Jesus. This is the first time in Matthew that they call Jesus the “Son of God”. Jesus has led them out of where they were comfortable, by the storm and for Peter, by walking on the water. And as a result, they see Jesus better, they know him better, they see his power more clearly, they understand more about who he is. And when it is all over, when he is in the boat, the storm dies down, they know that Jesus is with them, when it is all over, they worship Jesus.

My father let go of the bike because he knew that even though it would be difficult for me, I would need to be able to ride the bike in the future, that I would enjoy life more and could travel around more easily if I could ride a bike.

In the same way, Jesus does not just call us out of where we are comfortable and to trust him because he can. He calls us to trust him more because that way we can see him better and worship him more, and that is what we were made for. That is where we can find true joy, that is where we can live life as it was meant to be lived. knowing and worshipping the one true God through his son Jesus Christ.

So what are we going to have to let go of? What areas of comfort is God going to lead us out of? How are we going to have to ask Jesus to lead us away from where we feel comfortable, away from where we feel like we know how to live and what to do, and how to trust in him and him only?

Sermon on Matthew 6:19-7:6 (Part of the Sermon on the Mount)

These are rough notes on what I said when speaking on Matthew 6:19-7:6 recently. The talk wasn't recorded, and I wasn't speaking from a script.

If you could have anything you wanted, what would it be? A large house? All the money you wanted? A gorgeous boyfriend or girlfriend? A fast and very expensive car? Instead of all that, Jesus says that we should seek first the Kingdom of God, and his righteousness.

Why should we seek first the Kingdom of God?

Three reasons for this which we see in the passage are as follows:

In 6:19-21, it is clear that everything else passes away, but there is real treasure that lasts in the kingdom. Whatever else we seek after will not last, so it is far more worthwhile to seek God's kingdom and righteousness.

In 6:22-23, we learn that if we seek God's kingdom, we can really see, but otherwise we are in darkness. The picture is that of the body as a room, with the eyes as the only window. If we look at something dark, we are filled with darkness. But if we set our eyes on the kingdom, we are filled with light.

In 6:24, we learn that we are slaves to whatever we seek. People who run after money are slaves to that money. People who run after relationships are slaves to those relationships. People who run after God are slaves to him. So who would you rather be slaves to - some inanimate, pointless and transitory principle, or the loving Father God?

What does it mean to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness?

In Matthew, the Kingdom of God is clearly both now and not-yet. It starts in the Old Testament, is brought in in a new and powerful way by Jesus, but still isn't fully here yet - it gets finally and fully brought in by Jesus' return.

So what it means to seek the now and not-yet kingdom of God is that now we should obey Jesus as our top priority. We should seek for him to be the person who is ruling in our lives now. We should seek for more people to come to see and acknowledge him as their king.

But we should also seek the future kingdom of God. We should be setting our sights primarily on heaven rather than on the here and now. We should be aiming for heaven and for the treasure that is there.

What stops us seeking first the kingdom of God?

In 6:19-24, it is treasures on Earth. v21 tells us that where our treasure is, there our heart will be also. It is that way round - our heart follows our treasure. It isn't saying that we shouldn't have money or relationships or whatever - they can be great gifts of God. But it is saying that they shouldn't be our treasure, because where our treasure is, there our heart follows.

In 6:25-34, it is worry about the future. If we look at nature, we see that God is totally reliable - that's what science is about. And we know that he is our Father - he cares for us far more than he does for nature. We should look at the birds and the flowers and see God's providence there far more than we should look at adverts or magazines, which are all about making us feel uncomfortable and wanting more.

In 7:1-6, it is judging. Seeking the kingdom of God is founded on poverty of Spirit - on recognising that we are spiritually bankrupt. Jesus says that we will be judged according to our attitude to others - if we are mean-spirited and nitpicking with others, when we are judged it will be in a mean-spirited and nitpicking way. But we should be wise in this v6. We shouldn't be vulnerable to those who will take advantage of us.

Summary

There will come a day when all of this world around us will have passed away, when our houses will have crumbled into dust, our cars rusted, our friends and relations died. There will come a day when we can see God fully, when it will be absolutely clear that God has always been totally trustworthy, and that his grace is far greater than ours. On that day, will we feel that we have wasted our lives?

Sermon on Jephthah - Judges 10-12

I foolishly left my MP3 recorder at home when I went on tour this Easter. So here's a near-transcript of my sermon on Judges 10-12.

When you look at other people, are you an optimist or a pessimist? Do you think that we're basically good, but maybe we sin sometimes or basically bad, but occasionally we get some stuff right?

Do you think that people are fundamentally beautiful or ugly? How about yourself?

Well, whatever you think, this passage has something to say to us tonight. We're in Judges 10-12, looking at the story of Jephthah, and I've got two main headings. The first one is that God's people keep abandoning God. God's people keep abandoning God.

I don't know if you've ever read George Orwell's book Animal Farm. In the book, there's a load of farm animals who are being oppressed by the farmer, so, led by the pigs, they have a revolution and get rid of the farmer. But as time goes on, the pigs who are leading the revolution get more and more like the humans they were meant to be replacing.

It's kind of the same thing happening in Judges. At the start of the book, Israel has come into the Promised Land. Before they got there, the land was full of Canaanites, who did really evil things like sacrificing their children to their gods. So God sent the Israelites in, Israel conquered most of the land, and they lived according to God's law. But as time goes on, they get more and more like the Canaanites they were meant to be replacing.

And we see that in Judges through a series of cycles. There's a 5 part pattern that keeps on repeating, which you can remember because it goes ABCDE.

A is for Apostasy – Israel keep going off and ignoring God and worshipping other gods.

B is for Baddies – some baddies come along and attack Israel and win.

C is for crying – God's people cry out to God for help. And God raises up a deliverer, that's D. And the deliverer beats the enemies, and then God's people rest – that's E for Ease.

And this pattern keeps on repeating itself through the book of Judges. Every time, Israel avoid God. Every time, they get invaded by some group of baddies. Every time, they cry out for help Every time, God raises up a deliverer, and then the people are ok, until the deliverer dies.

But now we're into the second half of Judges, which started either when Gideon went bad or with Abimelech and the pattern starts breaking down.

In chapter 10, which we didn't have read, we see that the people abandon God and go after even more gods than before, so they get two lots of baddies instead of one. And they cry out to God, but God sees that they aren't being sincere because they always keep on ignoring him after he saves them, so God doesn't save them. He doesn't raise up a deliverer like he has all the times before. The people go off and find one themselves, and there isn't going to be any mention of rest.

But even when the people seem to turn back to God, they don't worship God rightly, they worship him just the same as they'd worship one of their idols, and that's the key point in this passage. When God's people worship him, they worship him just like the Canaanites worshipped their gods.

We see a great example of that in 11v11. “So Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people made him head and commander over them. And he repeated all his words before the LORD at Mizpah.”

Now, God hadn't made Jephthah leader, like he did with the other judges. The people decided to make him leader, and they didn't ask God about it. But then they decide to go and have a ceremony in the sight of God, just to kind of rubber stamp their decision. But they don't do it where the ark is, or where the tabernacle is, or any of that. They ratify this decision that they've already made at Mizpah of Gilead, where they were already. It's where it's convenient for them to be, not where God has said he will be.

They try bargaining with God. Jephthah is a prime example of this. He says in v30 “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the LORD's, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.” Jephthah is trying to do a deal with God, just like the Canaanites had done with their gods. But as we're going to see later, God isn't like that. We can't just worship him the way everyone else worships their gods. But the extreme example of this is when Jephthah sacrifices his own daughter. We hear about that, and we think it is shocking and horrible, and we're right. But we only think that because we're in a culture which has been Christian for so long, and because our views about what is right and wrong and horrible have been shaped by the Bible. In Israel, it was wrong to kill people, but in the Canaanite culture, people sometimes sacrificed their children to their gods. In fact, it was partly because the Canaanites sacrificed their children that God had driven them out of their land and given it to Israel.

Here's Deuteronomy 12:31 “You must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshipping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.”

But that's exactly what Jephthah is doing. Yes, it's horrible and it is wrong, but the point here is that it's what the Canaanites did. Israel are worshipping God like the Canaanites worshipped their gods.

And we still do it. I don't mean child sacrifice, though maybe we do that too – I'll talk more about it later. I mean we make the same basic mistake as Jephthah did. We try to worship God the way that the people around us worship their gods. And often that's in ways our society finds more acceptable than child sacrifice, but which are still unacceptable to God.

There's probably loads of them – I want to focus on two, I guess because they're the ones I'm most aware that I do.

First, We ignore God's holiness and pretend that we're ok. We ignore God's holiness and pretend we're ok. One of the features of the way people today worship their gods is that their gods help them feel good about themselves. Do you know what the reaction in the Bible always is to someone getting a vision of God's holiness? Isaiah said “Woe is me, I am ruined.” Ezekiel fell on his face. John fell on his face, as though dead. And we'd probably offer to help them up and get them a cup of tea because they didn't seem to feel too well.

Where is that combination of longing to look on God because he is so beautiful and yet terror of looking on God because we know we are so sinful, and the light of his presence will show up all our imperfections? When was the last time that an awareness of God's holiness drove us to cry over our sin? Was it today?

Have you noticed how the confessions we use get blander? We don't tend to say “the memory of them grieves us” any more - we can say we are sorry for our sins, but we don't like saying we feel sorry, because at the end of the day we don't feel sorry, because a lot of the time we completely ignore God's holiness and pretend that we're ok.

Lets make this very concrete. Imagine a friend of yours comes to you, and they've done something wrong and are really upset about it. What's your first reaction? A lot of the time, I think my first reaction is to want to come up with an excuse for what they did, and that's because actually I pretend I'm ok and I ignore God's holiness. We forget that we should worship God acceptably, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.

But we also ignore God's demand for holiness and stay respectable. The way the world worships its gods is to give them a bit of their life, but not the whole thing. If someone gives absolutely everything to chase after money, we say they'd sell their own grandmother. If someone lets their support for Man Utd affect their love for their kids, we'd really worry about them. The world has a way of partitioning up life and only letting gods have bits of it. But God claims our whole lives. He doesn't necessarily want us to be respectable; he wants us to be following him, even to the point where people think we're fanatics.

Question. When did you last put your middle-class respectability on the line because you were following Jesus? When did you last take the kind of risks that the world just won't take because you were trusting God? When was last time you were passionate about God to the point where other people thought you were being stupid, but you carried on anyway?

We all do it, I think. We all try to keep back bits of our lives from God, we all have those relationships that we don't want to give to him. We don't want to give him our relationship with our difficult parents, with our husband or wife or with our colleagues at work. We want to set up a partition and not let our relationship with God affect our professional life, or our money, or our sex life, or whatever. And when we do that, we're not serving God the way he wants to be served. We all know that really. We're serving him the way the world around us worships its gods, just like Jephthah did when he sacrificed his daughter.

You see, I don't think we're that different from Jephthah after all. The culture surrounding us is different, but at the end of the day, we all try to worship God the way the world around us worships its gods rather than the way God wants to be worshipped.

And while we're thinking about how God's people abandon God, it's worth spending a minute thinking about Jephthah himself, because in Jephthah, Israel got the leader they deserved.

If you'll excuse the language, I think the best word for Jephthah is “bastard”, in more senses than one. He's born to a prostitute, and we're just told his father was “Gilead” - the area where he lived. Gilead wasn't quite in the Promised Land anyway, and Jephthah doesn't even get an inheritance there. He isn't really part of God's covenant people, and because his daughter gets killed, he doesn't have any descendants to be part of God's covenant people either. Jephthah isn't in any of those genealogies that the Jews loved so much. He isn't anyone's father, he isn't anyone's son.

And Jephthah only really seems to want one thing – power. He doesn't want to rescue his own people, until they offer him the chance to be their ruler if he does. And as soon as they make him ruler, he starts acting just like a king. 11:12 literally says “What do you have to do with me, that you have come into me to fight in my land.” That's the way kings talk. Jephthah thinks he owns everything.

Likewise, he is willing to give anything to win the battle, because it means he will get power. He even tries making this bargain with God in 11:30 – he offers God whatever comes out of his house if God will help him win the battle. We say some people would sell their own grandmother – Jephthah literally would and did give up his own daughter if it meant he could get power.

And when his daughter does come out, who does he blame?

v35 “You have made me miserable and wretched”. He makes the offer, then he blames his daughter for her having to be sacrificed.

Incidentally, people always ask what Jephthah should have done once he found he'd promised to sacrifice his daughter. There are two ways out he could have taken. The first is just not to sacrifice her. Yes, God might well curse him for not keeping his promise, but it's him that gets cursed and his daughter survives. The other way out is in Leviticus 27, which specifically says that if you vow to dedicate someone to God, you're allowed to buy them back for a substantial amount of silver. Does Jephthah know that law? We don't know, but he should have done.

So Jephthah could have suffered in the place of his daughter, but he doesn't do that. He could have paid money to get her out of it, but he doesn't do that either. What does he do? He sacrifices his own daughter, and blames her for it. What sort of man does that?

And he doesn't care about God's people either. In chapter 12, we see him getting into an argument with Ephraim. Gilead was just outside the promised land, on the wrong side of the Jordan, but was still inhabited by Israelites. Ephraim was just across the river, in the promised land. They have several arguments through Joshua and Judges. In Joshua 22, there's nearly a war between them, but they talk about it and settle all their problems. Jephthah can't be bothered doing that. He just kills them. 42000 of God's chosen people. Dead. Jephthah is a daughter-killing son of a prostitute who doesn't object to genocide against God's own people.

So far, this passage seems pretty bleak. God's people keep on abandoning God. But there are three big surprises I've not talked about yet, and they all come under the heading God never abandons his people. God never abandons his people.

First surprise – God uses Jephthah to rescue his people. You know what? If I was God, I'd have let Jephthah lose. But in 11:29, God's Spirit comes on him and 11:32-33, God uses Jephthah to rescue his people. So never think that you are too foolish or too weak or too sinful for God to use you. God used Jephthah; he can and will use you, and he uses me, even though I compromise so much with the world. That doesn't mean that it's ok to sin – what Jephthah did was wrong and led to lots of suffering, but it means that God can and does work despite our sin.

Second surprise – Jephthah gets commended for his faith in Hebrews 11. However much of a mess he makes, however selfish and wrong he is, Jephthah trusted God's promises 11:23, 27, and he is one of the great crowd of witnesses. So child-killing power-hungry son of a prostitute that he is, Jephthah gets saved by God's grace because he trusts God. So you know what? No matter who you are, no matter what you've done, God can and will save you if you trust him. And no matter what other people have done, God can save them too. There may well be people here who have had abortions and who feel guilty about it. But you know what? If you trust Jesus, God will forgive you, God will save you, God can make you into a hero or heroine of the faith, just like he did to Jephthah. Whatever we have done, we're never too bad for God. Jephthah was responsible for the deaths of 42000 people, and he is a hero of the faith. So however bad we are, God can make us into heroes and heroines of the faith too.

Does that offend you? If it does, maybe you don't understand God's grace. Maybe you don't understand what it means for you to be sinful, what it means for you to be like Jephthah, to be someone who compromises so much with the world around you that a lot of the time it doesn't even look like you're serving God any more. Maybe we need to understand what it means that “Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.” It means that Abraham, that great hero of the faith, wasn't righteous. But he trusted God, so God saw him as wonderful and righteous. Jephthah really wasn't righteous. But he trusted God, so God counts him as righteous too. Even though he did so much stuff wrong, even afterwards, Jephthah was willing to bet his life on trusting God's promises, so we see him as a hero of the faith. And the same is true for us. If we trust God, he will see us as righteous. He will look at us, no matter what we've done, and say that we are beautiful and good, because we trusted him.

Final surprise. God uses Jephthah to point to God's greater salvation. Jephthah was illegitimate. He was homeless, and followed by a group of outsiders. He seized power, and when it came to it, he killed his own daughter to get power and refused to die in her place.

Jesus was illegitimate too. He also was homeless, he also was followed by a group of outsiders. But Jesus gave up his power, and when it came to it, he was the Son who gave himself up to death, who died in the place of rotten sinners like Jephthah and you and me, so that we could have life.

So what are we going to do? Are we going to carry on compromising with the world in the way that we follow our Jesus? Are we going to keep clinging on to our own sense of self worth? Or are we going to see that we, like Jephthah, deserve God's anger, and deserve to be condemned because of the way we fail to follow him, but find that because we trust Jesus, God graciously gives us life and forgiveness and makes us into heroes and heroines of the faith?

1 Samuel 7 - Faithful Prophetic Leadership

This is a summary of a sermon I did on 1 Samuel 7. I didn't record it, and don't have a precise transcript.

Introduction

1 Samuel 4:10-11

So the Philistines fought, and the Israelites were defeated and every man fled to his tent. The slaughter was very great; Israel lost thirty thousand foot soldiers. The ark of God was captured, and Eli's two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, died.

1 Samuel 7:13

Throughout Samuel's lifetime, the hand of the LORD was against the Philistines. The towns from Ekron to Gath that the Philistines had captured from Israel were restored to her, and Israel delivered the neighboring territory from the power of the Philistines. And there was peace between Israel and the Amorites.

What a different three chapters and twenty years makes. In 1 Samuel 4, Israel are being destroyed by the Philistines. In 1 Samuel 7, the Philistines are the ones being destroyed and Israel are taking all their land back. In 1 Samuel 4, God is glorifying his name, but he does it in spite of Israel. In 1 Samuel 7, everything is the way it should be. What makes the difference?

Faithful Prophetic Leadership.

1 Samuel 7 is also the integration point for the whole of 1 Samuel so far. In 1 Samuel 1-3, we've got the story of Samuel, his birth and his call to be a prophet. In 1 Samuel 4-6, we've got the story of how God was glorifying his name even though his people were being destroyed. And here, in 1 Samuel 7, we see how the two fit together. God's prophetic leader transforms the fate of God's people.

I'm going to draw out three characteristics of faithful prophetic leadership.

Faithful Prophetic Leaders Call People to Repentance

We see this in verses 2-6. In verse 3, Samuel says

If you are returning to the LORD with all your hearts, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths and commit yourselves to the LORD and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.

So do we, as leaders, call people to repentance? Do we call them away from their idolatry and to God? Do we point out what their idols are, and tell them to reject them?

Idols of image - wanting people to think we are beautiful, or sound, or passionate, or honest, or sexy, or clever. Would we rather our children were rich, successful, well-educated and happy than that they were faithfully following Jesus on a rubbish tip in Brazil? Faithful prophetic leaders call people to repentance.

Faithful Prophetic Leaders Pray for their People

We see this in verses 5-11. Samuel prays for the people. The people see they need it - verse 8. And it is because Samuel prays for the people that God rescues them - verse 9.

Then Samuel took a suckling lamb and offered it up as a whole burnt offering to the LORD. He cried out to the LORD on Israel's behalf, and the LORD answered him.

What expectations do we have of God? Do we pray for our people? God in his grace often chooses to wait until the leaders turn to him in prayer before pouring out his blessing. God says that the prayers of a righteous man are powerful and effective - not because there is anything magical about them, but because God loves to answer prayer. So do we pray for those we have responsibility for?

Faithful prophetic leaders pray for their people.

Faithful Prophetic Leaders call God's People to a Remembrance of God's Blessings

Verse 12

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, "Thus far has the LORD helped us."

Do we do that? When God blesses us as individuals or as a congregation, do we set up a reminder of what God has done for us. Do we remember "Thus far has the LORD helped us"? What that would look like would be different in different settings, but it matters that we remember.

Every time an Israelite walked past that stone, they'd remember "Thus far has the LORD blessed us", and they'd be more likely to trust God for the future, because they'd know he'd blessed them in the past.

So do we call people to a remembrance of God's blessings?

The Perfect Prophetic Leader

Of course, the perfect prophetic leader is Jesus.

He is the one who calls us to repentance, to turn away from our idols and to him.

If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
Mark 8:34

He is the one who perfectly prays for us - he is at the Father's right hand and is also interceding for us. Hebrews 7:25 says that Jesus always lives to intercede for us. Jesus perfectly prays for us.

And Jesus is the one who perfectly calls us to a remembrance of God's blessings, by his Spirit living in us and by giving us Communion as a way of remembering and participating in his death for us, so that as we receive we can say "Thus far has the LORD helped us."

Amen.

The Sceptic's Dream

I was listening to Daniel 2 yesterday, and was reminded of how much I like it, particularly what we see of the character of Nebuchadnezzar.

He's the King of Babylon - the most powerful kingdom in the known world. And more than that, he's not taken in by all the superstition and "smart guys" in the royal court, though he's not quite modern either. So when he has a dream, he thinks it has a meaning and is worried about it. But he knows that if the court astrologers and so on aren't just faking it, they'll be able to tell him what the dream was as well as the meaning.

Then the king answered, "I am certain that you are trying to gain time, because you realize that this is what I have firmly decided: If you do not tell me the dream, there is just one penalty for you. You have conspired to tell me misleading and wicked things, hoping the situation will change. So then, tell me the dream, and I will know that you can interpret it for me."

The astrologers answered the king, "There is not a man on earth who can do what the king asks! No king, however great and mighty, has ever asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or astrologer. What the king asks is too difficult. No one can reveal it to the king except the gods, and they do not live among men."

This made the king so angry and furious that he ordered the execution of all the wise men of Babylon.

Daniel 2:8-12, NIV

Now I'm not saying I'd want to work for Nebuchadnezzar - his labour relations policy had a lot to be desired and he had some issues with pride, but I've got a lot of sympathy with him here. The astrologers and wise guys claimed to have access to some form of knowledge from beyond the universe. Neb calls their bluff, and wins.

It's interesting also that the astrologers, despite all their claims (and the Babylonians arguably invented Western astrology and astronomy), are still functional atheists when it comes to checkable claims. They genuinely don't think that gods reveal things to people, or that gods live among men, which makes one wonder precisely how they claimed their astrology and so on worked. Ask Russell Grant, or whoever the astrologers of today are, what the biggest news story of 2008 will be, and if they get it wrong, they're obviously bogus. They won't know any better than anyone else.

Anyway, Daniel shows up and says this:

Daniel replied, "No wise man, enchanter, magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries. He has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in days to come. Your dream and the visions that passed through your mind as you lay on your bed are these...

Daniel 2:27-28, NIV

And the story ends like this:

The king said to Daniel, "Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery."

Daniel 2:47, NIV

One of the big concerns of the prophets is attacking idolatry. Daniel does it in an unusual way - he presents a series of stories which serve as contests between God and the various gods worshipped in Babylon, the most powerful nation in the known world. Here he shows that the gods the astrologers and wise guys claimed to follow are precisely zero use when it comes to testable stuff, but that God can reveal mysteries.

And that seems to chime in with a lot of sceptics' views. The Babylonian religion looks like it is actually completely ineffective. Yes, there are clever guys involved, giving their own wisdom. But there is no access to transcendent truth or revelation in a way that goes beyond what normal people have. And the astrologers and so on know it when it comes to the crunch. There's a chance they're even just going along with it to keep themselves in business.

But there is a real God, who does have the power to reveal mysteries, and to act, and to save his people.

3 Reasons Christmas is Offensive

He was in the world, and the world was made by him and the world knew him not.
John 1:10, KJV

I think it's interesting and sometimes helpful to push at the inconsistencies in what people believe. A large proportion of people in England today claim to believe the truth of the Christmas story (and what a dangerous word “story” is). But it runs strongly counter to so much of English culture. I'm just going to explore three themes briefly.

God became man

In today's culture, it is offensive to claim that other people are wrong when it comes to things which people have no choice over. So it's wrong to say that one race or sexual orientation or gender is better than another. And the same goes for religion, because most people seem to follow the same religion as their parents. When I was a teacher, pupils were absolutely fine with me saying what I believed. But as soon as I claimed, implicitly or explicitly, that there was something wrong with what they believed, there was opposition.

When it comes down to it, we like the old Indian Parable of the Elephant, where a group of blindfolded men try to describe an elephant by feel. And so the claim at Christmas that the one true God of the whole universe uniquely became a man, and that he did it in Israel in 6BC or thereabouts and not in India or Arabia or Mexico or Britain, should offend us. Because it means that it is possible for some people to have a position where they can know God more clearly than others, because it is possible for us to look at what Jesus said and did and say that God is like X and not like Y.

God became man, and that offends us because it means that we can know God accurately, and therefore we can say that other people are wrong in their knowledge of God.

God became poor

God became man, but God did not become the sort of man whom we might think it worth becoming. He was not born to King Herod or to Caesar Augustus, but to a woman so poor that she could afford nothing more than an animal food-trough to put him in, and that was probably borrowed.

And yes, Jesus became the greatest celebrity the world has ever known – so much a celebrity that 2000 years later, people are still fascinated by his mother's sex life and a book of completely unsubstantiated gossip about him can reach the top of the bestseller charts. But how did he use his celebrity? He did not become rich or powerful as this world defines riches or power. He did not command an army or found a school of philosophy or even get a house. He lived as a homeless teacher, and his celebrity led to crowds baying for his execution, which was what he had planned all along.

And that offends us because we value the rich or the powerful or the famous, and we want to be like them. We do not value the person who chooses to stay in poverty, give up all their power and die the death of a criminal.

God did it for us

We (stereotypical men at least) love to think that we are self-sufficient – that we can cope with life and that we don't need anyone's assistance. And when we do get help, we prefer to be able to reciprocate. People are more likely to buy something than they are to accept it for free. And yet Christmas tells us that we most definitely do need help, and we need it from a God whom we could never even hope to repay.

Why?

And you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.
Matthew 1:21, NIV

Christmas shows not only that we are inadequate and need help, but that we are morally inadequate and need rescuing from the bad things that we do, not just from circumstances outside ourselves.

That is why Christmas is offensive. Happy Christmas.

Transformation by the Renewing of the Mind

Too many reviews lately. Time for some meat. And, at the risk of generalising from my own experience, here it is...

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Romans 12:1-2, NIV

For Paul, the normal way of seeing transformation in people's lives and the way that they act is by the renewal of their minds. That is part of the reason he so often spends the first half of his letters doing what can seem like dry theology - because he knew that simply telling people to do something doesn't make much difference. People need to be motivated to change, and that motivation often seems to come from having their mind changed first, so that they hear a dissonance between the way that they live and the way that they know it is better to live. Our actions flow from our thoughts, so transformation starts with the renewing of the mind.

I usually act in what I perceive to be my own best interests. Pretty much everyone does. So for me, when I do not do what I want to do, it is because I am in two minds about something. There is part of me that thinks that work is good; there is part of me that isn't actually convinced there's any point to it, so I don't do it. And that's part of the normal human experience, at least for the Christian - the sinful nature and the Spirit want different things, and both are in us. And part of that battle is the battle for the mind. It is teaching my mind to follow the Spirit, not the sinful nature, and doing so by meditating on the underlying truths.

In context, the example Paul is using is the idea of pride. Paul's letter so far has essentially been about how God has saved us by his grace, through faith, in Christ. And his first application in 12v3 is the consequence that we should not think of ourselves more highly than we ought to. If we want to deal with pride, we should spend time thinking about God's salvation by grace and praying through God's salvation by grace.

The same is true, only even more so, where we sin persistently and seemingly unavoidably in one area. When I do that, it is usually because the whole way that I think in that area is determined more by the world and the sinful nature than by God, his Word and his Spirit. And what we need to do in those situations is to identify the topic, to work round it in our own mind, rather as a gardener might do with the root of some horrible weed, and then pull it out, or cut it out, and replace it with how God views the topic.

Three quick examples - money, sex and power. There's lots more that could be written on each of them, and lots more that has been.

Money

The world's view is often that money makes people happier or is a good in itself. God's is that money passes away - just look at how often money and death are paired in the Gospels - and that while money can be useful, especially if given away, loving it is a root of all kinds of evil.

Sex

The world's view is often that sex is good and enjoyable and should be had as often as possible. God's view is that sex is a wonderful gift, and is a beautiful thing to be celebrated when it happens inside marriage, but outside is horrible and disgraceful. In my experience, Christians often tend to try to take the world's view, then bolt on the idea that sex outside marriage is wrong, which leads to an internally contradictory view and all kinds of tensions and problems.

Power

The world's view is often that power is a good and useful thing to have, and is used to serve the powerful. Hence if you are powerless, you should seek to take power. The Bible's view is that power should either be laid down or used to serve the powerless, and that if we are powerless, we should submit to those in power.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Romans 12:1-2, NIV

Romans 7:14-25 (Part 2) – Living with Sin but not in Sin

Part 1 - Sin And the Christian

One of the big weaknesses with a lot of evangelical preaching through Romans is that because Romans holds off the direct application until chapter 12, the preaching isn't applied enough. So how does this passage apply?

1. Do we acknowledge sin in our lives?

This is particularly a danger for those of us in leadership positions in churches. It seems that there are two main dangers in this. Either that we set up a quasi-sacerdotal us/them mentality, where we present ourselves as if we were sinless, we might not deny our sin, but we don't acknowledge it publicly either. And that's dishonest because it's implying that we're not sinful and that we are different from those in our care, which makes it much harder for us to live as a model for them to follow.

Alternatively, the other danger is that we are so honest and unconcerned by our sinfulness that we imply that it is ok to sin. We need to avoid both of them.

We need to live, and to be clear that we are living, as sinners striving for holiness, and so to encourage those we have responsibility for, who generally know that they are sinners, to strive for holiness too. It should be a struggle, and we should model that struggle.

2. Do we acknowledge sin in the life of the Christian?

It is so easy to present the Christian life as if it is wonderful, moving from one triumph to the next. We should be clear that reality often doesn't match up to that. Yes, sometimes it does, but we should be teaching the whole counsel of Scripture, otherwise we run the risk of becoming irrelevant, because we only ever say the good stuff; we don't talk about life as it really is.

I don't know how well you know Psalm 88. It's a great passage, often reckoned to be the most depressing chapter in the whole of the Bible. Here's an extract.

From my youth I have been afflicted and close to death; I have suffered your terrors and am in despair. Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me. All day long they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me. You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend.
Psalm 88:15-18, NIV

When I was at school, one of my best friends became a Christian after reading Psalm 88, because she saw that God wasn't about some kind of namby-pamby fluffiness – he understood where she was at.

3. Do we make promises we can't keep?

The sinful nature lives in Christians, but Christians don't live in the sinful nature. We do not do what we want. So do we expect people to make promises they can't keep? Do we make promises we can't keep?

Do we say that becoming a Christian means promising to obey Jesus as our Lord? Can they do that? Do we do that? Becoming a Christian means acknowledging that Jesus is our Lord, and striving to obey him, but we aren't going to do it perfectly so we shouldn't promise to.

An example of this is covenant renewal services. Which covenant are we renewing? The one that says that Jesus has saved us by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to God's glory alone, so that we can do good works? How can we renew that? Or have we made some kind of other covenant where we try to make a deal that we can't keep to try to avoid the gospel?

4. Are we paralysed because we aren't good enough?

I guess for a lot of people, this passage sounds really like their current Christian experience. And they feel guilty because they don't live up to the standards they set.

Take heart! God hasn't finished with us yet. God doesn't expect us to be perfect; he commands us to follow him and to trust him, however falteringly - to trust that in Jesus he has dealt with all our sin, past, present and future - to follow him, even though we mess things up, to recognise that he is Lord, even though we don't always treat him like that. What our disobedience shows is that we still need God's grace to work in us and to keep making us more like his Son.

This was the experience of the Apostle Paul, one of the men God used most in all of history. Are we willing to follow Jesus, to give him what we've got, even though we're foolish and sinful and we stuff up?