Advent: invitation to life

Preached on:
The sermon text is given below or can be download by clicking on the “PDF” button above. Additionally, you can download the PowerPoint PDF by clicking here 19-12-08-Brightons-Powerpoint-Scott-sermon.
Bible references: Luke 1:26-47
Location: Brightons Parish Church

Text: Luke 1:26-47
Sunday 8th December 2019
Brightons Parish Church
 
Let us pray. May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of all our hearts, be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Of all the seasons in our year, Christmas-time is probably the one that has the most traditions, is it not? More than Easter, more than birthdays and anniversaries, we all have expectations of how Christmas will go, we have set ideas of what should happen and when. You may have set ideas about who should go downstairs first to see if the presents have arrived, or when the presents should be opened, or what should be worn on the day. Then there’s the issue of when you will eat Christmas dinner – if you’re willing to participate, let’s do a quick straw poll by a show of hands: whose families eat between noon to 2pm; then 2pm to 4pm, then anyone around 4pm or later?
In my family, when to eat has been an issue in previous years because normally it would be about 2pm, but a few years ago, my middle sister asked for a later time because of seemingly important reasons like visiting the in-laws and wanting her kids to be awake for the meal. My youngest sister and I just about had a heart-attack over the idea of moving Christmas dinner back to three o’clock, so we eventually compromised on 2.30pm, and I had to change my set ideas on how Christmas should be, because sometimes our set ideas need to change.

Our reading today from Luke’s gospel is a familiar one to many of us: the angel Gabriel brings a message from God to Mary about the upcoming birth of Jesus. Even this early into Advent, I’ve told the story a number of times – so it’s easy to gloss over the dynamics of this event…
and to reduce it to something nice and familiar. But in all honesty, this isn’t a nice comfortable story, it is really quite unsettling, because Mary and Joseph are engaged – they have their plan, their set ideas, for how life will work out: I wonder if they were buzzing with excitement at being engaged, and if Joseph was busy building the house that they would live in together, and was Mary discussing with her friends what the wedding day would be like and what it would be like being married to Joseph and whether children might come along one day.

And then suddenly, out of the blue, they are asked to change their set ideas for how life will go. Gabriel arrives with a message that God wants to involve Mary and Joseph in His plans and purposes for the whole world. But the message from God is a challenging invitation…
– Mary is asked to carry a baby that will be called the Son of God, a baby that will be given the throne of David by the Lord God, and this baby will reign over a kingdom that will be eternal and all encompassing. This message from God is a really big ask – this message is going to thoroughly upend Mary and Joseph’s plans for their future.

What’s more, this invitation from God is going to result in Mary and Joseph facing scandal and humiliation, probably for the rest of their lives, because everyone will know that Mary was pregnant before the wedding day, and everyone will know she became pregnant after being away from Joseph for 3 months – that’s going to raise a lot of questions about the identity of the father. Their set ideas for life will be forever replaced if they accept this invitation from God.
So, this story is no nice, comfortable story. Sure, we let the kids think that, but in reality, it is both gut-wrenching and awe-inspiring. In the midst of a cosmic story about how God will set the world aright through the coming of His Son, the promised Messiah, we find a very moving invitation. And like I was saying last week, on every page of Scripture, we are invited to consider how the cosmic story of what God is up to in the world brings us an invitation for today as well.

So, let me ask you this: as we count down the weeks to Christmas and so approach the end of another year, what has God been saying to you these past months? The Christmas story clearly shows that God is the living, everpresent God, and as such He is frequently inviting us into His plans and purposes – He might have spoken to you during a church service, or a conversation with a friend, or something you read or experienced in recent months – but be assured, God has been speaking to you. And if we have been attentive, then we might have heard some of what He has been whispering to our hearts. So, what has God been speaking to you about? What has been His message to You this past year?

Or what about us as a congregation? Amidst the change, amidst the uncertainty of the future, what has God been saying to us collectively? Where has been the encouragement, where has been the challenge? What has God by His Spirit been impressing upon us as a congregation?

Now, I realise I’m putting you on the spot with that question, but I’m not looking for an answer…
by the time you reach the door, which might be a relief to you. But maybe in these final weeks of the year, as we go about our set ideas for Christmas, as we ponder the Christmas message afresh, a message that brought encouragement, challenge, and an invitation, maybe we can take some time in these final weeks and reflect upon what God’s invitation to us has been.

Now, if you have something you’d like to share on that, particularly for us as a congregation, then please speak with me, or speak with one of our team conveners. We interviewed them a few weeks’ back for Guild Sunday and any one of us would be happy to hear you out.

Now as we ponder God’s invitation to us, and find Him challenging the set ideas for our individual and collective lives, then we’ll likely be faced with a choice akin to Mary’s, so how did Mary respond?

She said: ‘I am the Lord’s servant…May your word to me be fulfilled.’ (Luke 1:38) In other passages we see how Joseph reacts and the end product is similar: in both Mary and Joseph, we see an openness to the invitation of God, and a trust in His plans and power. They both evidence an open trust in God, an open trust in the invitation of God to be part of His plans and purposes for the world. This could show an open trust, such that they are willing to put aside their set ideas for life and embrace a new life from God.

And once again, we are invited to consider how the divine story affectsour story. God has been speaking to you this year, He has been whispering a particular message to you, and the question is – will we take up God’s invitation to a life we never anticipated? In this moment of choice, how will we respond? Will we be like Mary, with an open trust in God, in His plans and power?

Now as I outlined earlier, this is not simply a nice invitation from God, saying: “oh, would you like a baby?” Because Mary saying “yes” to God’s invitation would mean saying “yes” to ridicule and contempt for being pregnant whilst unmarried in a small town, a town probably as full of gossips as anywhere else. And Mary would have known this at the time of God’s invitation, yet she still said, “May your word to me be fulfilled.” It is surely one of the most courageous statements ever said…

to sign up to something that will bring heartache, even suffering. Her openness to pay such a price, to even lose some happiness, to lose something she valued; there’s part of me that can never get my head around that, to say “yes” to that particular invitation, is so very inspiring.

In comparison to that, are the things that God is asking of us, quite so hard? In light of Mary’s example, an example that would foreshadow her Son’s example, though His was of a magnitude much greater, but in light of Mary’s example, can we really still keep making excuses? Or will we embrace God’s invitation, no matter how it might change our set ideas for our lives?

I could give you any number of examples from my own life, either from over the years or from this past year… when I have made the wrong choice, when I was not prepared to pay the cost, but which now, looking back, I so wish that I had: that nudge from God to make sure that I prioritised time with Him, because when I didn’t I grew weary, hope dimmed, perspective blurred; or there’s that challenge from God, quite frequently, on how I parent or how I treat my wife, and the need then to apologise, to seek His wisdom, and commit to a different way of life all because I keep ignoring Him. Or there’s the invitation to speak about by faith to someone, and too often the times even I turn it down, and then the opportunity never arises again.

Friends, as I’ve said, God has been speaking to you. He communicates through His Word, through His people, by His Spirit and in the midst of the circumstances of life. If we have been attentive,…
we might have heard His invitation, but now the question is, what will we do with it – how will we respond? Will it be like Mary, with an open trust in the plans, the power and the love of God?

One final observation about Mary’s story. After Mary trusts God’s invitation, it leads her on to sing her own song, and it begins with these words: “My soul glorifies the
Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.” (Luke 1: 46-47)

Some time has passed since that initial visit from the angel, and Mary has had time to dwell upon and maybe experience the effect of her trusting response in God’s invitation. Yet it feels like there’s a change in the dynamics now. Before, in the encounter with the angel,
Mary’s response was quite muted,…
not necessarily grudging, for there was an open trust, but maybe a little uncertainty because of all that’s going to happen.

Yet now, when Mary is with Elizabeth, and after some time has passed, there is a different tone, a different feel, to Mary – the trust is still clearly there, she still trusts in the goodness and purposes of God, but now, now, we see in her a joy that spills over into song, a song that will be written about and which will inspire music and drama in generations to come. God brought the invitation – Mary responded with open trust – and in time, joy came and an impact on future generations as well.

Friends, individually and corporately, God has brought
His invitation to us this year…
It could be a costly invitation, maybe not to the extent of Mary’s, but nonetheless still costly to us. And, as I’ve said, we then have a choice of how to respond – will we too respond with open trust? For if we are willing to trust, and only if we trust, then the joy and the impact that was Mary’s, can be ours as well.

Now, God doesn’t promise an easy life, He doesn’t promise that if we respond with open trust that the invitation won’t be costly or leave us with unanswered questions; after all, Mary was to go on and experience some degree of difficulty and hardship herself, even before Jesus went to the Cross; she still lost a husband, she still worried what her grown-up Son was doing; though the angel called her blessed she knew hardship.
But she also knew joy – and one day that joy…
would forever remain with her, as she placed her trust in the plans of God, in the very Person of God who was her Son, that babe who was also her Messiah and Saviour; she would place her trust in Him and in His invitation, and in Him she found a joy that could never be taken from her.

Friends, God issues His invitation – His invitation to a life you could never dream nor imagine, both individually and corporately. He is speaking, has spoken, and if we are to share in the joy of Mary, then we too must respond with open trust, we must make room for this Christ-child, just as Mary had to make room for Him in her life as well.

And let’s take a moment to think about that impact Mary had on future generations. Many of us would like to see our congregation and young people come to own the
Christian faith for themselves; we hope to have…
an impact upon them as well, just like Mary. But in today’s culture, we can’t simply talk at them or point to words on a page, because they simply do not care. Yet, when these words from Scripture are combined with your personal story of how it has made a difference, well then they might listen and heed what is shared.

Now, I don’t know all your stories much yet, but when on placement, it was so sad that few people could share their experience of what their faith had done in their life; they could tell me that they came to share for X number of years and what jobs they had done, but too few could share how their relationship with God had shaped their character, and what they had seen God do in their lives individually or collectively. Why was that? Why did they have so little testimony to share? Was it because of a lack of trust and response to God?

If we want to impact the next generation, then we must have testimony to share, stories of what God has done in and through us. And if we can’t share anything, then maybe it’s time to start asking why, and we might need to begin with this question: have you accepted Jesus as Your Saviour and Lord? Have you made room for Him in Your life?

I asked a question several times at the start of my time here, but I’ll keep asking it, just in case today is the day it finally sinks in for someone: Have you responded to Him with open trust? Have you accepted Him? Have you made room for Him to come into Your life?
Since coming here, I’ve heard of a few stories from folks in our congregation who were attending church for decades and were even members, but who had never actually responded to this question. So, how can we tell if we have accepted Jesus?

Well as Mary said, “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.” Can you truly say that of Jesus? Is Jesus real to you? Is He so real to you, and the relationship He offers you, is this so real that in the depth of your being your soul glories in God and rejoices in Him?

Can we say like Mary, ‘I am the Lord’s servant…May your word to me be fulfilled’? Is our heart for the Lord’s Kingdom and the Lord’s priorities, for the Lord’s will and word to be fulfilled?…
Because if your attitude to Jesus is a little bit ambivalent; if His will is not what you aspire to live out; if the core of your identity is something other than as a child of God, then maybe you still have some room to give over to Jesus?

This Christmas time, Jesus stands in our midst and He issues His invitation to come into our lives. He doesn’t promise an easily life; in fact, accepting His invitation may well lead to a more difficult life. But we’ll never know the joy of the Lord, or the impact upon generations that Mary made, if we keep Jesus at arms’ length and fail to make room for Him in every area of our individual and corporate lives. Friends, my hope, is that we will respond like Mary, allowing our set ideas for our lives to fall away if need be, and with an open trust, take up God’s invitation to a life, to a joy, to an impact, we could never have imagined. May it be so. Let us pray.

Advent: good news!

Preached on: Sunday 1st December 2019
The sermon text is given below or can be download by clicking on the “PDF” button above. Additionally, you can download the PowerPoint PDF by clicking here 19-12-01-Brightons-Powerpoint-Scott-sermon.
Bible references: Luke 1:5-25
Location: Brightons Parish Church

Texts: Luke 1:5-25
Sunday 1st December 2019
Brightons Parish Church
 
Let us pray. May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of all our hearts, be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

How are you approaching Advent this year? Are you someone who is suddenly thinking: “Advent!?! How did it become Advent already! I’ve only got 24 days to get the shopping done now!?!” Is that you?

Or, are you a “Advent’s here, sigh, same old, same old” – is that you? Or, do you approach Advent in some other way?

Why not take half a minute to turn to your neighbour and share how you feel at the beginning of this Advent season? (PAUSE)
As I was saying to the children and young people, I really do think Advent is a time of invitation, a time when God invites us deeper with. Part of my reasoning for this is that the accounts we reed during this season – of Zechariah and Elizabeth, of Mary and Joseph – again and again these accounts show God inviting people into something that very first Christmas.

So, over these first three Sundays of Advent, we are going to look at God’s invitation to the characters in Luke chapter 1, and through their experience see what God’s invitation to us might be as well. In today’s reading, I think there’s an ‘invitation to deeper relationship’ and an ‘invitation to respond’.

Let’s begin with, ‘invitation to deeper relationship’. Do you remember this box from January this year? Upon this box, I asked our young people to stick on labels which shared the words they would use to describe God. So, we have ‘loving’…

Part of this past year of ministry, I think, has included a focus upon adding different words to all our boxes, including mine, so that the box we have God in – the box that defines His character and ways might expand and change.

In a similar way, what Luke shares here is not only retelling a nice story and it’s not simply about God putting things in place for the promised Messiah, it’s much more.
For on every page of Scripture God always, always… invites us to know His character and His ways. For Zechariah and Elizabeth part of the invitation to a deeper relationship was to know that God is a meticulous planner and that He is graciously powerful.

Their story, in Luke, begins at chapter 1 verse 5 and Luke shares some of their back-story. We read today:
“In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron.” (Luke 1:5)

Luke is being very specific here in naming Herod – he is trying to show that this is not just a nice made up story but rather it is rooted in history. This story features a couple who are both part of the priestly tribe of Levi.
Zechariah himself is a priest and at that time there were so many priests available that the tribe of Levi was divided into 24 divisions, each doing duty at the temple for one week, twice in the Jewish year, with the rest of their time spent elsewhere and in regular work. So, what is about to happen, happens on one of those rare occasions when Zechariah was serving at the temple.

We then hear another part of their back-story:
“Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old.” (Luke 1:6)

This couple are described as ‘righteous’ and ‘blameless’, so a better couple you couldn’t imagine. Now, they aren’t perfect, because who is, but they did serve God faithfully. Yet we also hear that they are childless, and at this time, people understood that to mean they had displeased God, maybe because of sin, and so it was often seen as a disgrace upon the couple, especially the wife.

However, Luke wants us to understand that this is not the case here; that what we have here is a very faithful couple and yet they aren’t able to conceive – but it has nothing to do with them being in the wrong. Additionally, by saying that “they were both very old”, we’re to understand that they were so old that they (and others) did not expect the situation to change.

So, here is this couple, incredibly faithful, but with deep unfulfilled longings, and in their faithfulness, Zechariah reports for duty, for we read:
“Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense”
(Luke 1:8-9)

The incense offering was made twice each day and the choice of the individual was decided by casting lots so that human will was circumvented, and the divine will could be ascertained. This was really important to the Jews because offering the incense was a great privilege for the chosen priest went into the Holy Place, that area once removed from the Most Holy Place.
What is more, a priest could never offer incense more than once in his entire life, and some priests never received the privilege. To have the opportunity was a great honour.

These are details Luke includes, not just to fill out a story, but to give us clues to something more – Luke wants us to see here that this seemingly random fall of the lot, to Zechariah, was something designed to set the stage for a fresh entry of God into this couple’s lives, for as we reed next, something incredible is going to happen:

“Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him: ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah…Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord…’” (Luke 1:11-15a)

Such good news for the couple – they will have a son – a son who will bring great joy to them and to others, and he is to have a special place in God’s plan, for as we read next:

“‘He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous – to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.’” (Luke 1:16-17)

This child, John, is to be tasked with bringing back many of the people of Israel to God so that they are prepared for the coming Messiah. In a nutshell, John is to call people to repentance, he is to call them back to God and to God’s ways, which was a characteristic of the prophets, like Elihah.

Now, this repentance isn’t about being more religious, or nice, or giving lip service; no – this repentance will have a day to day impact, for family life will radically change, and all because people will have a firm commitment to a way of life that honours God and heeds His priorities, His wisdom.

In all of this, from verse 5 to verse 17, we are told not only a nice story, we are invited to see…
the meticulous planning of God, for God was guiding the events of history, so as to prepare the way for Jesus, and He did this because we are that valuable to Him.

The Apostle Paul reminds us that, “at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly…But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
(Romans 5:6-8)

The time was right, at roughly the age of 33, for Jesus to die, demonstrating God’s love for you and for me. But roughly 34 years before that point, the time was also right for God to fulfil His Old Testament promises and weave together the events of history so as to prepare the way for the Son of God, to come as a babe.
God did it all for love of you and love of me. We are told in John chapter 3: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:16-17)

There was no cross, no death of the promised Christ, the promised Messiah, without first the Son of God being sent from heaven to take the form of humanity as a babe. God did it all for love of you and love of me, and in that love, He put the pieces in place, for God is a meticulous planner, fulfilling His promises, and making a way for us to be saved, to have eternal life, by having a heart open, given over, prepared for, the Lord.

But Zechariah and Elizabeth’s story gives us a second facet to God’s character, for He is revealed as graciously powerful. Earlier we read these words, but I deliberately skipped over a few words, which I’ve highlighted here:
“the angel said to him: ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John…’” (Luke 1:13)

‘Your prayer has been heard.’ That’s what I skipped over. When we read those words, we all probably thought that the angel was referring to a prayer for a child, yes? That would be the most likely thought to have. But a few commentators highlight that the language here suggests a one-off prayer rather than a regular prayer, and also that it’s unlikely such an honourable priest as Zechariah would bring a private concern at this special moment,… where for the first and last time of his life, he enters the Holy Place.

It’s more likely then, that Zechariah prayed for Israel, for Israel’s redemption, for that promised Messiah to come. What’s startling, in that case, is God decides to answer both the spoken and unspoken prayer, both the prayer for Israel and the secret desire of Zechariah’s heart. In His grace, God answers both of Zechariah’s longings and so rightly, he and Elizabeth are to name the child “John”, which means, “God is gracious”, He gives generously, He gives beyond expectation, He gives unearned, unmerited gifts.

What is more, we see that God is not only gracious, but
He is powerful – it’s almost like God wants a challenge;… I almost imagine God saying: “I’ll use a barren couple, but they’ll be really old, and I’ll only appear to them when the lot falls to Zechariah”. I mean, what are the odds?!

But God never makes a promise He can’t fulfil, God always delivers for He is able to fulfil any promise He makes, and He most powerfully showed that, not just through John, but through Jesus, that Christ-child, whose odds of fulfilling all of God’s promises concerning His birth were inconceivable, and yet He did, because that is our God, the God who is graciously powerful.

This grace and power were also shown in the cross of Jesus where in generous, unearned, unmerited gift He gave His life for you and for me. But to die, as Paul said,
“while we were still sinners” – while we were still… telling God to get lost, to take a hike – to die even then, that is true grace, that is love.

But His death was not simply as a display of love so as to captivate our hearts, no, His death was to achieve something much more necessary and vital, for in the death of Jesus the power of God was at work, and so now as one hymn puts it:
“No guilt in life (sin is forgiven),
no fear in death (an eternal home is secured),
This is the power of Christ in me
From life’s first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny
No power of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand
Till He returns or calls me home
Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand.”
(In Christ Alone by Keith Getty & Stuart Townend)

At the beginning of the Advent story, God reveals Himself as a meticulous planner full of grace and power. He extends an invitation to know this of Him; He extends it not only to Zechariah and Elizabeth, but to you and to me.

But this story also includes a second invitation, an invitation to respond, for in the remaining verses we read today there is a great contrast made between Zechariah and Elizabeth. We see someone who is closed and someone who is open to God’s invitation, for we read: “Zechariah asked the angel, ‘How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well on in years.’” (Lk. 1:18) To all intents and purposes, it seems a very reasonable question. But it belies the state of Zechariah’s heart, for even confronted with the angel Gabriel, Zechariah responds in unbelief, He’s closed off, He is unprepared for God to move in grace and power.

In contrast, not one negative word is said about Elizabeth. Maybe it is Luke’s way of helping us see that she responded differently. Never once does she come across as bitter or forgetful, rather she is consistent in honouring God and of acknowledging the gracious hand of God, for as she said at the end: “‘The Lord has done this for me…In these days he has shown his favour (his grace) and taken away my disgrace among the people.’” (Luke 1:25)

In the contrast of these two very real people, God issues an invitation: will we respond like Elizabeth or like Zechariah? Am I someone who has a soft and responsive heart towards God? Or am I someone whose faithfulness to tradition and to what I know, is closing me off to the possibilities of God, and keeping God in my box?

Now if you are like the latter, if you are a bit more like Zechariah, there’s still good news – for just like Zechariah, God doesn’t give up on you either! He might not grab your attention quite as dramatically, but if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, it will be possible to perceive the ways He is extending that invitation and awaiting your response, awaiting it even now.

Friends, as we begin Advent and remember this portion of the Christmas story, please don’t let it just wash over you, try to come to it afresh, notice the details of God’s meticulous plan for the coming of His Son in love for you, and let His grace and power so captivate your heart that you respond to His invitation.

May it be so. Let us pray.

The present Kingdom

Preached on: Sunday 29th September 2019
The sermon text is given below or can be download by clicking on the “PDF” button above. Additionally, you can download the PowerPoint PDF by clicking here 19-09-29-Brightons-Powerpoint-Scott-sermon.
Bible references: Luke 10:25-37 and Hebrews 9:1-15
Location: Brightons Parish Church

Texts: Luke 10:25-37 and Hebrews 9:1-15
Sunday 29th September 2019
Brightons Parish ChurchLet us pray. May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of all our hearts, be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

We are now into week six of our current sermon series on ‘the kingdom of God’ and hopefully we’ve seen how central ‘the kingdom of God’ is to the biblical story. In Genesis 1 and 2, we saw the pattern of the kingdom, with God’s people, living in God’s place, under God’s rule and enjoying God’s blessing.

In Genesis 3, we saw how the pattern of the kingdom was lost through Adam and Eve’s rebellion, and then with Abraham in Genesis 12 to the reign of King Solomon in 1st
Kings, we saw how God sought to form a people for
Himself once more,…
a people who would live in God’s place, under God’s rule, with the king God had chosen and so once again enjoying God’s blessing.

In the book of 1st Samuel we read about the future king who would come, a king who would be a son of God and a descendant of David, and a king whose reign would be eternal. This would be no ordinary king.

Two weeks ago we ended on the climax of Israel’s history, that golden moment with King Solomon, but we noted that soon afterward Solomon strayed from the Lord and so the kingdom disintegrated. What we didn’t cover, and didn’t have time to cover in last week’s all age service, is that God’s prophets did not only speak a message of hope and encouragement,…
the prophets also warned God’s people to turn from their rebellious ways because otherwise God would bring His judgment upon their sin.

But as with Solomon, the people, and especially the kings after Solomon, largely ignored the prophets and rebelled against God. And so, God brought His judgment upon His people and He dismantled what He had brought about such that His people were taken into exile. The whole of the nation of Israel is in exile around 600BC, although it happened in two stages because the kingdom became divided into a northern and a southern kingdom with two separate kings.

But even in exile, God still raised up prophets, such as
Ezekiel, to bring hope, comfort and warning to God’s people, affirming the promises God had made and that if they turned back to Him, there would be a future.

In the period of 540 to 440 BC, God brought back a portion of the people to the land He had given, under the leadership of men like Ezra and Nehemiah, whose accounts we can read in the Old Testament books under their name. To that small remnant of the nation, God also sent prophets, again to encourage and to warn, and the last of these was Malachi, whose book finishes off the Old Testament – and then from Malachi until the beginning of the New Testament we have 400 years of silence: 400 years of without any word from God, 400 years of waiting.

Until, finally, it is time for the arrival of Jesus and a new prophet is raised up in the person of John the Baptist, and following on from his ministry, Jesus appears. Mark tells us that when Jesus began His ministry, Jesus proclaimed: ‘The time has come…The kingdom of God has come near.
Repent and believe the good news!’
(Mark 1:15)

With these words, and it is echoed in each of the gospels, though in different ways, but with these words we are meant to see that Jesus is the fulfilment of the Old Testament promises, as Paul will say in 2 Corinthians: ‘For no matter how many promises God has made, they are
‘Yes’ in Christ.’
(2 Cor. 1:20)

We are meant to see that all the patterns and all the promises of Israel’s history point to Jesus, are fulfilled in
Jesus and this is also true for the pattern of the Kingdom of God.

We are hopefully familiar by now, that part of God’s kingdom is a people who are His, and this was meant to be the people of Israel, descendants of Abraham, a people who would reflect the character of God and His ways. But as we’ve just reviewed, Israel went astray, especially under the influence of their kings.

But then Jesus comes and He says in John 15: ‘I am the true vine…you are the branches.’ (John 15:1, 5) The ‘vine’ was an image used by the Old Testament prophets to speak of Israel, and so Jesus is saying that He is the true
Israel, together with any who are joined to Him;…
and so all who are in Christ are God’s people, but they are His because of the faith they have placed in Jesus, because of the relationship they now have with Jesus.

Similarly, with regards to God’s place, that place where God would dwell with His people, the Apostle John, earlier in his gospel, speaks of Jesus this way in the introduction: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.…the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.’
(John 1:1, 14)

The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.
God came to earth and was found in human likeness;… the Word became flesh, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity moved into the neighbourhood. The very presence of God dwelt among us in the person of Jesus.

However, Jesus was not only the true Israel and the place of God’s presence, Jesus was also the true King, in whose life the rule of God was lived perfectly, and in whose life we also see the hallmarks of God’s kingdom and blessing.

Luke records at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, these words:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them,
‘Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.’ (Luke 4:18-21)

Here are the hallmarks of the Kingdom – spoken first by the prophet Isaiah hundreds of years earlier, foretelling what the Kingdom of God upon the earth would look like. This is what it would look like as the reign of God came amongst His people through the promised Messiah.

And Jesus quotes these words, saying that they are now fulfilled in Him for they will be seen through His ministry, and affirm Him as the promised King. But these are no empty words of Jesus, He will go on to fulfil them.

In Matthew’s gospel, we read of an incident where two men meet Jesus:

‘Two blind men were sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was passing by, they shouted, ‘Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!’

The crowd rebuked them and told them to be quiet, but they shouted all the louder, ‘Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!’

Jesus stopped and called them. ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ he asked.

‘Lord,’ they answered, ‘we want our sight.’

Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes.
Immediately they received their sight and followed him.’ (Matthew 20:30-34)

The blind see, the prisoners are set free, the Lord’s favour, His blessing, breaks out amongst the people. Here is the true King, that promised descendant of David; son of God, son of man; in whose life the rule and blessing of God are seen.
So, everything in the Old Testament prepared the way for Jesus, acting as a signpost towards Him, helping us to understand who He was and what He fulfilled: that in Jesus, the kingdom of God is embodied and is in our very midst.

And that foreshadowing in the Old Testament is captured by the writer of Hebrews time and time again. In Hebrews chapter 9 the focus in primarily on the tabernacle, that place and symbol of God’s presence amongst His people.

In verses 1 to 5, the writer reminds us of the tabernacle, which we touched on this briefly a few weeks’ ago.

But here in Hebrews, the writer gives us a quick reminder, to get our bearings and prepare us for what he will go on to say about Jesus. So, we are reminded about the two rooms, the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. We are also reminded about the pieces of furniture to aid the ministry the priests would conduct.

But then in verses 6 to 7, that limitation of access, that limitation of relationship which was highlighted two weeks’ ago, is spelt out here for us. We read:
‘When everything had been arranged like this, the priests entered regularly into the outer room to carry on their ministry. But only the high priest entered the inner room, and that only once a year, and never without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance.’ (Hebrews 9:6-7)
In reminding us of these limitations, the writer of Hebrews affirms for us the holiness of God and the seriousness of sin – that the sin of His people created distance between God and the people, and this sin could not be overlooked by a truly loving, truly just, truly holy God, and so sin would bring the judgment of God upon the people. Sin was so serious that any entering into the very presence of God would bring instant judgment and instant death upon themselves. And so, there is a limitation of relationship, there still exists a degree of division, a degree of distance, between the holy God and His people.

The writer goes on in verses 8 to 10, to say that the Holy Spirit was showing something in the tabernacle being setup this way. We read:
‘The Holy Spirit was showing by this that the way into the Most Holy Place had not yet been disclosed as long as the first tabernacle was still functioning. This is an illustration for the present time, indicating that the gifts and sacrifices being offered were not able to clear the conscience of the worshipper.’
(Hebrews 9:8-9)

So, the Spirit of God, in giving these specific instructions for the layout, structure and the workings of the tabernacle was showing that distance still existed – the conscience, the debt, between humanity and God… had not been fully overcome. There was a degree of relationship, but not full access and intimacy.

But then, in verses 11 to 15, things change, and they change because Jesus came. He came as a new high priest, one of greater stature, to stand before God on our behalf, and where He went was not to an earthly tabernacle, but to a heavenly tabernacle, to the very presence of Father God, to His very throne room. And He did not gain access to there through the blood of an animal, no, He entered that Most Holy Place in the heavenly realms by His own perfect, sinless blood.

And so, because Jesus’ priesthood and sacrifice and place of ministry are all greater, what He achieves is greater – He obtains an eternal redemption for His people, an eternal freedom and right relationship with God. He is then the mediator of a new covenant, He ushers in a new promise, a new relationship between God and humanity, because He died as a ransom to set us free from the penalty of our sins, that we might be forgiven once for all, and have direct relationship, and intimate access to God.

All this was foreshadowed in the Old Testament, with the tabernacle being a living parable, a living story of what God yearned for His people but which was not feasible through the first covenant, which we call the Old Covenant, or the Old Testament. And so, Jesus came, and He fulfilled what had been foreshadowed.

And yet, when He came, so many people missed this, even though they were steeped in its history and symbolism and limitation – they missed it. They missed who Jesus was, what He meant, what He offered and achieved. And even when He died and rose again, people still missed it, and they still failed to respond in faith.

Friends, have you missed it? You could have been attending church all your life, just like the Israelites, fulfilling religious duty, but missing it, missing the significance of Jesus.

Friends, do you see who Jesus truly is? And does He captivate your heart? Because if Jesus appears meaningless, or if Jesus seems irrelevant, or if Jesus doesn’t fire you up with thankfulness to God, you might have missed it! The writer of Hebrews was writing to people who were giving their lives, in death, because of their faith in Jesus. To what degree, have we grasped an understanding of Jesus that would fuel such faith in us?
And this isn’t just for people who know they are not Christians – this point of application is for us all, even the committed Christian: does Jesus fire your faith? Or have you become a bit lukewarm towards Him? Because if you grasp Jesus, if you see just a minute part of who He is and what He has done, and if you can appreciate that for what it’s worth, you can’t be lukewarm. But if you are lukewarm, maybe you’ve also missed it, or maybe you’ve taken your eyes and your heart off of Jesus. So, have we missed it, friends, have we missed Jesus and all that He embodies and offers?

But you know, the people of Jesus’ day also missed another crucial part of God’s kingdom and of the mission of Jesus. They had forgotten that the promise to Abraham was also for the nations. God had promised: ‘You will be a blessing…and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’ (Genesis 12:2-3)

The people of God had missed this, even though the prophets would affirm it again and again, they missed it, or they ignored it. And so, when Jesus comes embodying the kingdom it jars with people, because He tells stories like that of the Good Samaritan. Sometimes we think this story is about simple, good morals, but it was revolutionary in His time, because Jesus was challenging people to realise that within the heart of God, was a heart for the nations. The kingdom of God is not about me, mine and us – and that shocked and frustrated the people of Jesus’ day, for they couldn’t see beyond themselves, and they anticipated the Messiah bringing blessing only for them. They missed that God had a heart for the nations.
Friends, have we missed this also? Have we missed this aspect of the kingdom? Do we see, in the example of the Good Samaritan, that the way of the Kingdom is to give of ourselves for those who are without? Do we see, that the kingdom isn’t purely about me or you?

The cross is the ultimate embodiment of this – that God would give of Himself for the sake of rebellious humanity – He gives Himself up for others before they can even think to reciprocate. So, can I ask friends: does that sound like you? Are you giving of yourself for others?

We have a vacancy list needing filled so that people can see Jesus, meet with Jesus, receive from Jesus through the people of Jesus. Are you playing your part? Is there some way you could get involved?
Or what about the Alpha course we’re running just now – did you invite anyone along? If you have a heart for the nations like God, then you might have, even if they turned you down. It’s not too late by the way, people can still come this week for the very first time if they accept your invitation in the next few days.

Brothers and sisters, in Jesus the Kingdom of God came, He is the embodiment of God’s people, place, rule, King and blessing. Have we missed this, or are we lukewarm towards Him?

What’s more, in Jesus, the way of the kingdom was also embodied, because He was outward looking, sacrificial and self-giving for the sake of the nations, are we?

Because what we have in Jesus is not just for us, for as the writer to Hebrews says, the death of Christ is meant to change us, such that we serve the living God. Who are we serving? Who are you living for? Ourselves or God?

I pray we may all grasp Jesus afresh today, and for the first time or for this time and this week, may our hearts be so captivated by Jesus that we live for Him, the One in whom is the kingdom of God.

May it be so. Let us pray.

The Father who rejoices

Preached on: Sunday 23rd June 2019
The sermon text is given below or can be download by clicking on the “PDF” button above. Additionally, you can download the PowerPoint PDF by clicking here 19-06-23-Brightons-Message-Powerpoint-–-Sunday-School-Closing-Service (1).
Bible references:
Location: Brightons Parish Church

• GOOD MORNING AGAIN TO OUR CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE!
• I HAVE BEEN SO IMPRESSED WITH ALL THE HARD WORK YOU HAVE PUT IN TO PREPARE FOR TODAY’S SERVICE.

• NOW I ASKED YOU TO DRAW A PICTURE FOR ME TO SHOW ME WHAT YOU IMAGINE GOD TO BE LIKE, OR WHAT YOU IMAGINE GOD TO BE DOING RIGHT NOW.
• SO, WHAT DID YOU DRAW?
• THESE ARE ALL WONDERFUL PICTURES OF GOD, BUT TODAY I WANT TO SHARE WITH US ALL SOMETHING ABOUT GOD, SOMETHING THAT I DON’T SEE VERY MUCH OF IN YOUR PICTURES.
• ONE TIME, JESUS TOLD A STORY ABOUT A WOMAN…

• THIS WOMAN HAD 10 COINS, 10 VERY SPECIAL COINS, AND THESE COINS MEANT
A LOT TO HER, THEY WERE PRECIOUS TO HER. BUT THIS WOMAN LOST ONE OF
HER COINS. HOW DO YOU THINK SHE FELT? (SAD, WORRIED)
• WHAT DO YOU THINK THE WOMAN DID WHEN SHE REALISED SHE HAD LOST ONE OF HER COINS? (SHE SEARCHED FOR IT)
• AROUND THE CHURCH I’VE LOST 10 COINS THAT LOOK LIKE THIS…

• I WONDER IF YOU CAN HELP ME SEARCH FOR THE 10 LOST COINS AND BRING
THEM BACK HERE WHEN YOU’VE FOUND THEM? NOW, DON’T START YET – WE’LL
START WHEN THE BAND STARTS PLAYING THEIR MUSIC. I’VE GOT A FEW RULES
FOR YOU: YOU HAVE TO WALK. YOU MUST BRING A COIN BACK AS SOON AS YOU FIND IT. YOU MUST BRING IT BACK WITH A YOUNGER CHILD. (SEARCH BEGINS)
• SO, THE LADY SEARCHED FOR HER ONE LOST COIN….

• SHE PROBABLY LIT A CANDLE TO HELP HER HUNT HIGH AND LOW FOR THE LOST COIN.
• EVENTUALLY SHE DID FIND IT. WHAT DO YOU THINK SHE FELT? (HAPPY, EXCITED, RELIEVED)
• NOW JESUS WAS TELLING THIS STORY ABOUT THE WOMAN WITH THE LOST COIN BECAUSE HE WAS TEACHING ALL THE PEOPLE ABOUT FATHER GOD…

• IN HIS TEACHING ABOUT FATHER GOD, JESUS TOLD ANOTHER STORY, THE STORY WE HEARD READ TO US THIS MORNING. IT IS A STORY ABOUT A SON WHO LEFT HOME AND A FATHER WHO WAS SAD BECAUSE HIS SON LEFT HOME.
• IN THE STORY, THE SON RETURNS HOME EVENTUALLY, DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT
THE FATHER FELT AND DID WHEN THE SON RETURNED HOME? (HAPPY, FORGIVES, THREW A PARTY)
• BECAUSE HE FELT THAT WAY HE THREW A BIG PARTY…

• NOW, JESUS TOLD THE STORIES ABOUT THE LOST COIN AND THE LOST SON BECAUSE JESUS WAS TRYING TO TEACH US ABOUT FATHER GOD.
• AND ONE OF THE THINGS JESUS WANTED US TO KNOW ABOUT FATHER GOD, IS THAT FATHER GOD IS A GOD WHO SMILES AND LAUGHS. IN FACT, GOD LOVES A PARTY, AND FATHER GOD KNOWS HOW TO REJOICE AND CELEBRATE.
• NOW, LET’S LOOK AT YOUR PICTURES AGAIN…

• I DON’T SEE MANY PICTURES OF HOLD THROWING A PARTY OR EVEN OF GOD BEING HAPPY.
• MOST OF US, INCLUDING THE ADULTS, HAVE A PICTURE OF GOD IN OUR HEADS. WE CAN IMAGINE WHAT GOD IS LIKE, OR IF WE WERE ASKED, WE COULD USE WORDS TO DESCRIBE GOD.
• NOW, WHAT I FIND INTERESTING, IS WHAT YOUR PICTURES OF GOD, REVEAL ABOUT THE ADULTS’ PICTURE OF GOD. I THINK
THAT THERE ARE PROBABLY VERY FEW PICTURES OF GOD BEING HAPPY OR CELEBRATING IN WHAT YOU DREW, BECAUSE FEW OF THE ADULTS THINK ABOUT GOD THAT WAY EITHER. IF WE DID, THEN WE WOULD TEACH YOU THAT AND THEN YOU WOULD HAVE DRAWN THAT.
• BUT EVEN THOUGH THE ADULTS MIGHT BE UNCERTAIN OF THIS, THE BIBLE TEACHES US THAT FATHER GOD DOES REJOICE…

• GOD ALWAYS LOVES US – HE LOVED US SO MUCH THAT JESUS DIED TO HELP US. HE DIED THAT WE MIGHT KNOW GOD AND HAVE PEACE WITH GOD. HE DIED TO SHOW US HOW MUCH GOD LOVES US.
• BUT WHEN WE CHOOSE TO BE GOD’S FRIEND, WHEN WE CHOOSE TO FOLLOW GOD’S WAYS, WHEN WE CHOOSE JESUS AS LORD AND SAVIOUR, THEN FATHER
GOD NOT ONLY LOVES US – HE ALSO REJOICES OVER US WITH SINGING! THAT’S
HOW MUCH HE LOVES US – YOU AND I MAKE GOD SO HAPPY THAT HE SINGS OVER US! NORMALLY WE THINK THAT WE DO THE SINGING ABOUT GOD, BUT GOD SINGS IN HEAVEN WITH SONGS ABOUT US AS WELL.
• SO, TODAY WE HAVE CELEBRATED EACH OF YOU…

• WE HAVE CELEBRATED THAT EACH OF YOU IS PART OF THIS CHURCH, YOU ARE
PART OF GOD’S FAMILY. WE ARE SO ENCOURAGED BECAUSE YOU COME ALONG TO SUNDAY SCHOOL AND LEARN MORE ABOUT JESUS EACH WEEK. AND WE ARE THANKFUL FOR THE ADULTS WHO GIVE THEIR TIME TO HELP YOU.
• BUT YOU HAVE ALSO HELPED US TO CELEBRATE GOD…

• TO CELEBRATE A GOD WHO LOVES US, LIKE A PERFECT FATHER, AND CARES FOR
US LIKE A GOOD SHEPHERD. SO, WE SHOULD COME ALONG EVERY WEEK AND CELEBRATE IN OUR GOD…

• BUT TODAY, LET US ALL ALSO REMEMBER THE TEACHING OF JESUS AND THE SCRIPTURES – THAT GOD CELEBRATES, GOD REJOICES AND HE REJOICES OVER US.
• BECAUSE WE ARE PART OF HIS FAMILY, BECAUSE WE HAVE CHOSEN TO FOLLOW HIM, GOD NOT ONLY LOVES US, HE DANCES AND SINGS AND THROWS A PARTY IN HEAVEN FOR YOU AND ME AND FOR ALL OF US.
• SO, WHEN WE ARE TELLING OUR FRIENDS ABOUT CHURCH AND THEY ASK US WHY
WE GO TO CHURCH, MAYBE, WE CAN TELL THEM, THAT PART OF THE ANSWER IS THAT WE HAVE A GOD WHO LOVES US BUT A GOD WHO ALSO REJOICES OVER US AND THROWS A PARTY IN HEAVEN FOR EACH OF US.

Can I really know the affection of this God?

Preached on: Sunday 16th June 2019
The sermon text is given below or can be download by clicking on the “PDF” button above. Additionally, you can download the PowerPoint PDF by clicking here 19-06-16-Brightons-Powerpoint-Scott-sermon-morning.
Bible references: Luke 15:11-20 and Ephesians 3:14-19
Location: Brightons Parish Church

Texts: Luke 15:11-20 and Ephesians 3:14-19
Sunday 16th June 2019
Brightons Parish ChurchYou’ll be glad to hear that we are on the penultimate week of our sermon series on Luke chapter 15, and next week’s Sunday School Closing Service will round off this series.

Last week we explored the robe and ring in the parable of the prodigal Father, and we saw that these symbolised pardon and position for the younger son. We asked ourselves whether we, as adopted sons or daughters of God, were sharing in the great adventure of faith? Are we living out our pardon and position, or have we tamed the life of faith to something comfortable, something familiar, but something less than God wants for us?

We asked those questions amidst a “Weekend of Invitation”, where we were all encouraged to invite someone along to church, and it was heartening to see around a dozen or so newer faces, which is about 9% of our weekly adult attendance here on a Sunday morning.

We did that “Weekend of Invitation” within the “Thy Kingdom Come” prayer movement, which is an international, interdenominational season of prayer, where the church at large is encouraged to pray and especially to pray for others to come to faith in Jesus Christ.

And we partnered in both these initiatives because to introduce people to Jesus, to be part of their journey of faith, where they come to trust and follow Jesus as Saviour and Lord, well that’s one of the greatest adventures we can participate in – because as we heard last week, God is on an adoption adventure and by that He seeks to heal our broken world. This isn’t about evangelism and conversion for their own sake – this is about participating in the very mission of God, at the heart of which, is people coming to know Him and being reconciled to Him through Jesus. And so, helping people to know and follow Jesus is a key way of sharing in the adventure of God and a key way of sharing in a process takes us beyond comfort and what is familiar.

The “how” of doing this in our current society…
is one of the greatest quandaries of our time, and we often do not feel equipped or ready to participate in this part of the adventure. But I’m reminded of a colleague’s third year theological project, which was about mission in the 21st century. She explored a variety of issues, but within that project she included this quote:

‘The challenge for the church is to recognise that while not all of what postmodernity stands for is good, there are values that this generation holds that provide a key for how the church could communicate the message of Jesus Christ to a very post-Christian generation.’
(Brian Krum, The Missional Shift of Youth Ministry: from cookie cutter to incarnational ministry)

The principle thing I take away from this is that there are ways to engage with today’s generation, which could very well refer to anyone under the age of 50, but the key to engage with them is to know their values. Now, there are many values we could highlight but the ones of relevance this morning are: spirituality, the experimental (or experiential) and authenticity. So, these young folks are not interested in religious duty or more knowledge or good morals or acts and forms of religion. But what they are open to is a faith that makes a real difference in life, and which is also experiential. Now, when it comes to their desire for an experiential spirituality, I wonder if we sometimes scoff at that, or denounce it as part of hedonistic Western culture, a culture that appears to simply seek one experience after another. But you know,…
I wonder if we have always sought this out? For example, we have our well-loved Psalms:

‘My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?’ (Psalm 42:2)

‘The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.’ (Psalm 23:1-3)

If we’re brutally honest, to attempt to understand these Psalms without involving some experiential dynamic simply guts all meaning and relevance from the them… So, if we’re honest, we also want to experience God – we want our souls refreshed by God, we want led and helped and provided for. But I wonder if we actually expect God to come through on these ideas, or do we just settle for the comfort of nice words but without the comfort of God Himself? If this is the case, then maybe today’s generation is not as hedonistic as we might think; maybe they simply are not willing to settle for concepts and flowery words, and instead they want to see and know God as a true being and presence.

And maybe all this terrifies you or confounds you? Maybe you appreciate that this is what young people seek and expect, what they (and we) hunger for, but you don’t know how to join up the dots? You’re not sure how that hunger and expectation might be met?
Well, I have some good news for you – our very familiar parable, the parable of the prodigal Father, reveals a God who wants to provide the very answers and needs of our moment in history, our missional moment.

In the midst of the parable we read these words:
‘But while he [the younger son] was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms round him and kissed him.’ (Luke 15:20)

Now, we have looked at just about every part of this verse – the watching and waiting of the Father; the compassion the Father felt at the son’s return such that He ran towards His child; and we have looked at what comes after this moment, with the robe, the ring and the response of the elder brother.
But we have skimmed over the words: the Father…‘threw his arms round him and kissed him.’ The Father…‘threw his arms round him and kissed him.’ In these very words we see a God, Father God, who is ready to draw close, embrace us, and be affectionate, be demonstrative in His relationship with us.

Now, you may wonder if I am making a mountain out of a mole hill here, or whether I am turning parable into allegory? But as we have seen, Jesus is very deliberate in His storytelling, for He draws on the customs of the day and ensures that this parable is as loaded with meaning about Father God as possible. So, I don’t think it stretches the purpose of the parable to focus on these words in a little more detail, for in truth,…

their meaning is picked up and expanded upon again and again elsewhere in the New Testament.

For example, we read in Ephesians 3 today:
‘I pray that you…may have power…to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.’ (Ephesians 3:17-19)

Here Paul speaks of knowing the love of Jesus, the love of God, such that we are filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. “the fullness of God” in Ephesians refers to the way God makes his presence and power felt, that in experiencing Christ Christians experience the fullness of God, his presence, and His power…
For Paul is praying that they will experience a greater measure of the divine presence in their lives such that they partake of God’s own being and are made like him. Now, as Paul makes clear, here and elsewhere, this is an ongoing process, but it is an experiential process nonetheless, yet we tend to gloss over such nuances and uncomfortable truths. However, once again we see that we have a God who is ready to draw close, embrace us and be demonstrative in His relationship with us.

Or take the prayer of Jesus in chapter 17 John’s gospel: Jesus prayed…‘Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they [current and future disciples] know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.’ (John 17:25-26)

Again, we must gloss over or twist these words if we are to take away any sense of God being close, embracing us and being demonstrative in His relationship with us.

Or, what about Paul’s words to the Romans:
‘And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.’ (Romans 5:5)

Now, Paul is not simply meaning here that we are to love like God, that we have a loving heart, for then it would have little relevance to having hope – you don’t have hope because you have a loving heart towards others… No, you have hope because you have something within you that sustains you, and what sustains the Christian is God’s very own love – a love, which Paul says here, is poured into our hearts, the centre of our being, not simply into our minds, where it can be kept as a nice concept, but rather, it is poured in here, so that it is known deep in our being and able to nourish true and lasting hope.

So, once again, we see that the wider teaching of the New Testament is of a relationship with God wherein He is close, embracing and demonstrative; He is not distant, He is not cold, He is the Father who threw His arms round the younger son and kissed him. And likewise, God wants to come close, embrace us and be demonstrative…
[STORY OF PRAYER IN CAR FOR WEDDING] So, how is it that Father God draws close, embraces us and demonstrates His love? How will today’s younger generations come into that experience of God which they expect or yearn for?

Well, whether it be in Ephesians 3, or in Romans chapter 5, or in John’s gospel from chapters 3 to chapter 20, in all these places and in every portion of the New Testament, it is by the person of the Holy Spirit that we are given help to know the Father’s love, to know His nearness and embrace. Romans 5 is maybe the most succinct:

‘God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.’ (Romans 5:5) Note here that Paul refers to the Holy Spirit, ‘who has been given’ – ‘who’…a person. It is easy to slip into referring to the Holy Spirit as ‘it’, because we are tempted to think about the Holy Spirit as a force, or energy or some kind of ghostly presence. But the clear teaching of Scripture is that the Holy Spirit is a person, the Holy Spirit is God’s personal presence amongst us. He is one of the three persons of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit – One God but three Persons.

Notice what else Paul says here about this third Person of God: the Holy Spirit ‘has been given to us’ – ‘has been given’, as in, this has already happened, and this has happened ‘to us’, to any person who claims the title
Christian and affirms Jesus as Lord and Saviour…
So, anyone who claims to be a Christian has the Holy Spirit, the personal presence of God residing in them, in our hearts; we have become a temple of God’s presence, as Paul says to the Corinthians.

So, why am I labouring this point? Well, as we have seen, the Holy Spirit is the means by which Father God helps us to know His love, to know His nearness and embrace. This is given to each and every Christian, as we have seen, and so to each and every Christian is given the means by which to know the Father’s love, His nearness and embrace, just like the younger son. And it will be by that same Holy Spirit, the third Person of God, that the Father’s love, nearness and embrace will be imparted to those younger generations who want a faith that is more than mere words on an old page or good moral and religious duty.
But here’s the thing: can we, each, speak of knowing the Spirit’s work in our lives? For young people today, it isn’t enough to point to an old book and claim it as truth – they want to know how these old words have come alive in your own life, they want to hear and see them in reality.

I came across a helpful illustration this past week…(pg99 of Mark Stibbe, The Father You’ve Been Waiting For.)

What’s the lesson of the story for us this morning? It is this: don’t settle for second-hand relationship, or secondhand religion; we each should and must pursue the real thing for ourselves. We each should and must pursue a real, authentic relationship with God, by His Holy Spirit, the third Person of God, His very presence amongst us…
Because a dynamic life of faith is not meant to be the reserve of the few; a dynamic life of faith, where we know the Father’s love, nearness and embrace is meant to be the bread and butter of all God’s people, for the Holy Spirit has been given to one and all who claim the title Christian, and so the Holy Spirit is ready to lead us into the Father’s embrace.

And if we want to help the younger generations see that the Christian faith meets their hunger and expectations, then we must be able to share our own stories of faith and be ready to point them in the direction of a God who is ready to draw close, embrace them and be demonstrative.

Now, there probably isn’t a quick fix to this, it will take time,…
it will take some learning and maybe even some unlearning of previous ideas. It will likely involve us going deeper in our own faith journey first, of being willing to admit that maybe there’s more to God and the life of faith than we ever imagined and maybe have ever experienced.

To help towards that, the Discipleship Team are planning an Alpha Course in the autumn session, beginning on the 18th September and running to the end of November. The Alpha course is a great way to explore, or re-explore, some of the core aspects of the Christian faith, so we are giving you 3 months’ notice in the hope you’ll make the time to come along and take a new step in the adventure of faith, by giving Alpha a try.

But the Discipleship Team also hope that some of us might consider inviting friends, family or neighbours to the Alpha course. The Weekend of Invitation was really just the beginning of a process: we all need to regularly invite others to come and find out more about this God who wants to draw close, embrace us and be demonstrative. And so, maybe the next step in the adventure of faith is for us is to invite someone to Alpha, to invite someone to come see that the hunger and expectation they have of God, can be found in this God, who has revealed Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and who is ready, so very ready, to throw His arms round and embrace all who return to Him.

May it be so. Amen.

Who is the ‘elder brother’ today?

Preached on: Sunday 2nd June 2019
The sermon text is given below or can be download by clicking on the “PDF” button above. Additionally, you can download the PowerPoint PDF by clicking here 19-06-02-Brightons-Powerpoint-Scott-sermon-morning.
Bible references: Luke 15:11-32
Location: Brightons Parish Church

Texts: Luke 15:11-32
Sunday 2nd June 2019
Brightons Parish ChurchIn our sermon series on Luke chapter 15, we have been exploring what these three parables of Jesus reveal to us of our heavenly Father and our focus has primarily been on the sheep, coin and younger son. Each of these three is very clearly lost – the sheep wanders away and the shepherd goes to find it; the coin falls, rolls into a dark corner and the woman hunts high and low; the younger son rebels but is welcomed home by a loving, patient, compassionate and forgiving father.

But in the telling of these three parables, who was the target audience for Jesus? What prompted the telling of these parables in the first place? We read in v1-3:

‘Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering round to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them.’ Then Jesus told them this parable…’

There are two groups of people gathering to listen to Jesus: the sinners, the bad people, and the religious leaders, the moral people. And it is the muttering of the religious leaders which prompts Jesus to tell the three parables.

Now, in the parable of the prodigal father, there are two sons – one bad and rebellious, one good and obedient. There are two groups of people are listening to Jesus; there are two sons in the story. So, quite clearly, the elder brother, the one who stays at home,…
portrays the religious leaders. In telling this parable, with its particular characters and ending, Jesus is seeking to speak into the lives of the religious leaders, He is seeking to challenge their way of life just as much as He is seeking to challenge the tax collectors and sinners.

So, what is Jesus saying to them? Well all three parables are about being lost and how we become found, how we return home, how we become reconciled with Father God. The sheep is found, the coin is recovered, the younger son is welcomed home. So, we can naturally conclude that Jesus is saying the elder son is just as lost as the others and that there is a way for him to find his way home as well.

So, in what way is the older son lost? Well, when the elder brother hears that a celebration is being held for the return of the younger son, this is his response:

‘The elder brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, “Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!”’ (Luke 15: 28-30)

The elder son is furious, furious at the father for the grace and forgiveness and compassion that has been shown to the younger son.
But just like the younger son, the elder son also disgraces the father, for he refuses to go in to what is perhaps the biggest feast and public event the father has ever held. The elder son, remains outside, a vote of no confidence in the father’s actions, a refusal to condone such love and welcome. This forces the father to go out to the elder son, a demeaning thing to do when you are the head of the family and host of a great feast. And in response, the elder son does not address his dad as “esteemed father”, or “my dear father”, but simply with the word “look!” – in our culture, we would probably say “look you!”, and to say that, in a culture of respect and deference to elders, is simply outrageous behaviour. The elder son, in mere minutes, has disgraced his father three times, and in his disgracing of his father, we begin to see how the elder son is lost, for in the midst of his rant he says this:
‘All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.’ (v29)

I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. The elder son has been seeking to earn his way into his father’s good books; by slavish obedience and rigid morality the elder son has become lost. For sure, he toes the line with diligence and self-sacrifice, but it is done out of duty, not love. For sure, he stays in the same house as the father, but he is not at home. For sure, the elder son is within reach of the father, but he is distant in his heart. The elder son is lost, and he is lost because of his good works, not in spite of them.

And so, what Jesus seeks to convey here…
is that you can rebel and be distant from the father, from God, either by breaking His rules, like the younger son, or by keeping all His rules diligently, like the older son. This is the challenge of Jesus to the Pharisees, that by their rule keeping, they are just as lost as the sinners gathered around Jesus. As one commentator wrote, ‘the main barrier between the Pharisees and God is “not their [blatant] sins, but their damnable good works.”’

And sadly, in every generation, across all the millennia of human existence, we have thought we can earn God’s approval, that we can earn salvation, that we can balance the scales and do enough to merit the Father’s love, to merit access to heaven, by our good deeds. But the teaching of the Christian faith, the teaching of Jesus and of the early church, challenges that very idea.
The Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans: ‘For no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands. The law simply shows us how sinful we are.’
(Romans 3:20)

He also wrote to the Galatians: ‘we know we cannot become right with God by obeying the Law. A man is made right with God by putting his trust in Jesus Christ…No man can be made right with God by obeying the Law.’ (Gal. 2:16)

Jesus himself taught the same thing, for in another parable He said, ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.”

‘But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said,
“God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” ‘I tell you,’ said Jesus, ‘that this man, rather than the other, went home right with God.’ (Luke 18:10-14)

In every generation of human existence, there have always been elder brothers, like the Pharisees, who have sought to be their own Saviour and Lord, and who have been blind to this reality in their lives.

But the teaching of the Scriptures, the teaching of Jesus, calls out to us – challenging that tendency within…

all our hearts to think we can do enough, to think we can be our own Saviour.

Friends, on a day when we have heard a profession of faith in Jesus and come to celebrate the meal that reminds us of the sacrifice of Jesus, can I ask you: who is your Saviour? On what grounds does the Father accept you? On what grounds are your sins forgiven? On what grounds will you get into heaven?

If you think you don’t need forgiveness, then that is a sign you are lost. If you think God will overlook your sin, then that is a sign you are lost. If you think the Father accepts you and will welcome you into the kingdom of heaven … because you’ve tried to be good, and you’re not as bad as other people, then that too is a sign you are lost.
But the Good News of the Christian faith is both frightfully challenging and wonderfully liberating: you can’t be your own Saviour, yet Jesus died and rose to save you, and He is a Saviour you can fully trust.

In preparation for today, Alan and I worked through the Open Door material, and we spent some time talking about this verse from John chapter 1:

‘Yet to all who did receive him [Jesus], to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.’ (v12)

You are never welcomed into the family of God through good works, nor the family you were born into, nor attendance at church or being a member –
as Alan and I discussed, we enter God’s family, we come home to God, when we believe in Jesus and receive Him. It’s not enough to have the right thoughts, the right beliefs, about Jesus – even the demons know who Jesus is.

But when we act upon our beliefs, then we receive Jesus: to receive Jesus, we must acknowledge that we need forgiveness, we must trust in Jesus for that forgiveness by asking for it, and we must submit to Him as King, as Lord, of our lives.

The Good News of the Christian faith is both frightfully challenging and wonderfully liberating: you can’t be your own Saviour, there’s no shortcut, there’s no back door into the family of God, it’s only through Jesus.
Yet, wonderfully, He makes it so easy, you must simply ask for His forgiveness, and yet it is also so costly, for you must submit to Him as Lord of your life.

In the parable of the prodigal Father, the younger son, the rebellious one, he comes home, he accepts the Father’s ways. But it is the elder son, the obedient one, who refuses to come in; he refuses to accept the Father’s ways, he refuses the way of grace and love and forgiveness.

Friends, who will we be? Who are we?

Are we younger sons and daughters, ready to acknowledge our need of forgiveness,…
to depend on the grace of Father God, and come home by trusting in His means of salvation through Jesus?

Or, are we elder brothers and sisters, blind to our true condition and seeking to be our own Saviour and refusing to bow the knee to Jesus?

Who is your Saviour? Is it yourself and your damnable good deeds? Or is it Jesus?

Who is your Saviour, my friends? I pray it will be Jesus.

The Father: compassionate and running

Preached on: Sunday 19th May 2019
The sermon text is given below or can be download by clicking on the “PDF” button above. There is no PowerPoint PDF accompanying this sermon.
Bible references: Luke 15:11-20 and Romans 5:6-11
Location: Brightons Parish Church

Texts: Luke 15:11-20 and Romans 5:6-11
Sunday 19th May 2019
Brightons Parish Church
Let us pray. May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of all our hearts, be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

We are now part way through our sermon series on Luke chapter 15, and we have been slowing down to really explore what these three parables of Jesus reveal to us of our heavenly Father.

We’ve seen that Father God loves with a seeking and prodigal love, that we are so precious to God that He seeks us out like a lost coin or sheep, and then in the example of the father and his lost son, we see a God who is extravagantly patient and recklessly generous in love.
We’ve also asked whether it is possible to hold onto belief in such a good God in light of the brokenness of our world.

To get us into this week’s focus, I wonder if you would turn to your neighbour, and try to come up with a working definition for compassion. I’ll give you one minute. Go!
(PAUSE)

Compassion has been defined as suffering with someone in their pain and distress. It means to come alongside someone in their suffering and to feel what they feel. It means far more than just pity – it is empathetic love. It involves the engagement of both the heart and the hand
– the heart in sharing in another’s pain,…
the hand in reaching out to help. Compassion, in short, is about participation, not detachment. It is about actions more than words. It is about ‘suffering love.’

It can be hard to picture compassion sometimes but when we see it, it is so very powerful. During the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, British athlete Derek Redmond ran in the 400 metres semi-final, which was the fulfilment of a dream for him. But 100 metres into the race he fell on the track, having torn a hamstring. Here is a video of what happened – look out for the moment of compassion.
(PLAY VIDEO)

What was unknown to most folks at the time, was that the man who helped Derek reach the finish line was his dad, Jim…
His father, seeing his son’s distress, came alongside him – Jim refused to let guards deter him, he even pushed one over, because he was driven by compassion, by suffering love, to help his child finish that race.

We read today these words: ‘But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms round him and kissed him.’ (v20) The father saw the younger son and was filled with compassion for him.

This father had watched his precious child rebel and go off the rails, shaming the father and disappearing off into the sunset, with no intention of ever returning. But every day the father had been looking. Whenever a merchant came into the village, the father would ask,…
‘Have you seen him? Have you seen my son? Have you seen him on your travels, especially in the far country?’

And every time he would see that blank stare, that look which signalled ‘no’. Every day the father lived with the gossip and the rumour-mongering in the village. Every night the father stayed awake and no one ever saw the tears that streamed down his face as he relived the agonising day of his son’s departure. No one saw the heaving of his shoulders as he gave way to quiet grief.

Yet, every day he patiently waited, he kept up hope, sitting on the flat roof of his house, looking towards the horizon. Then, one day, he caught sight of a familiar outline. He rubbed his eyes, blinked several time, and peered again. Could it be? Is it he?
At first the father feels shock, then momentary hesitation, but finally, certainty sets in, as he becomes sure it is his precious child, and with gut-wrenching emotion filling his entire being, the father can’t help himself anymore and he runs towards his son.

When we read that one little verse, we almost skip over it – we might be tempted to think, “well of course he did that, that’s obvious, who wouldn’t run to their child?”

But we need to remember the cultural dynamics at the time when this parable was told. As a general rule, distinguished Middle Eastern patriarchs did not run. There was a proverb around at the time: ‘A man’s manner of walking tells you what he is.’ Children might run; women might run; young men might run…
But not the father of the family, the dignified pillar of the community, the owner of the great estate. He would not pick up his robes and bare his legs like some boy. It was shameful and dishonourable for a man over 30 to be seen running in public, because quite literally you would be revealing your undergarments. No man who held honour highly enough would ever do that.

But this father does. He runs to his son – his feet move in response to his heart, to the deep well of compassion in the bowels of his very being; his love for his child is so deep that he will overcome all embarrassment and social conventions to reach his child.

So, what does Jesus hope to reveal of our heavenly Father in this parable? Well, we are clearly meant to see that our heavenly Father is filled with compassion towards us.

A few weeks ago, we saw that we each are like the younger son, we each have told God that He is as good as dead to us, that we want no part of Him, even though we want all the good stuff He has given us. We considered the agony that God would feel in response to such a rejection, a rejection, which if we suffered it, would result in a temper tantrum and the end of the relationship.

But Jesus is revealing something else entirely – Father God feels such compassion for us that He will pay a price to be reconciled to us. And that very price is summed up for us by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans: ‘But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’ (Rom. 5:8)

While we were still far off rebels, telling God to drop dead, He literally did – He laid down His life to make it possible for us to be forgiven. At the very moment when we were furthest away, the Father took the initiative. Even though we have sinned by rejecting Him, the Father decided to act. The justice of God said that human beings must experience the consequences of their rejection of God, and so experience separation from Him eternally. But the love of God said that this could not be the end of the story. So, out of this tension in the heart of God, the Father acted in history – He showed His great compassion for us by sending His one and only Son to die the death that we deserved…

Our heavenly Father, is a God who runs to rescue us, He is truly the God who saves, for at the Cross we see God’s love come running towards us, with outstretched arms, defusing the power of guilt and shame in any son or daughter who will return home.

If you feel far away from God, then remember the Father whom Jesus reveals in this parable – the Father who is waiting for you to come home. God’s heart is not filled with anger and hatred towards you, He loves you with a suffering love, with such compassion that He died in the person of His Son to bring you home, He is for you and His arms are opened wide. I asked a few weeks ago, friends, but just in case anyone was not here to hear it, I’ll ask it again – do you need to come home to God?

To be a Christian, is to come home to God – where God becomes the centre of your life, such that you build your life upon Him and He shapes your choices, your values, your priorities – that’s when you know you live for God, that’s when you know you’ve come home. That’s true repentance.

And God is lovingly waiting for us, my friends – if you haven’t returned to God, will you come home to God? If you’re unsure how to begin that journey home, then come speak with me after the service, and you can come home to God today.

But for those of us who have returned home, then there is the call of God upon our lives to grow up in the family likeness and take up the family business: we are to grow in the compassion of God and take up the reconciling work of God.
I know that you are a socially compassionate church – I have seen and felt it personally. I have seen you give of your time and of your money and of your love to help folks in desperate need and real sadness and brokenness. I am not speaking into these aspects of our congregational life, for there you do reflect the love of God.

But Jesus did not tell this parable to challenge us to be more loving in practical ways – that’s the parable of the Good Samaritan. No, Jesus told this parable in the context of helping His listeners understand the Father’s desire to be reconciled to us. In this instance, to reflect the compassion of God, is to take up the family business and help people come back into relationship with God, to come back home to God; that’s what Jesus was about here, that’s how the compassion of God was being displayed.
So, let me ask you, brothers and sisters in Christ: will we get out of the stands and get alongside others to help them finish the race? Like Derek Redmond’s father, will we get out of the comfort of the pew, or our homes, or our church groups, and will we break with convention, expectation, or even political correctness so as to come alongside others in compassion with the Good News of Jesus Christ? Will we wave off embarrassment, excuses of age or ability, or the apathy within our hearts and get out into our parish with the Good News of these very parables?

I realise it’s not easy; I am not a natural evangelist either.
Every time I stand up here and ask you to come home to God, I don’t do it well and every fibre of my being cringes.
But I know I’ve to do it because I know God wants as many as possible to come home to Him.

So, today I want to share with you in these closing moments, two initiatives to help us grow and show the compassion of God in this particular way.

The first is the prayer initiative you will have found in your news sheet. (READ SHEET) (WATCH VIDEO)

So, that’s the first initiative. As it happens, the time for Thy Kingdom Come, comes right before we are seeking to have our weekend of invitation here at Brightons Church on Sunday 9th June…

The idea with this initiative is for us to invite someone to church that weekend. To help with this, we’ve produced a simple invitation that will go out with the next copy of the Bright Lights magazine. The elders’ hope is that those who don’t regularly attend might be encouraged to come back. But also, that those of us who do come regularly, might take the invitation and use it to invite someone else along on the 9th June. This might be a neighbour, family member, colleague at work.

I realise that this is a big step for a lot of us – it’s a big step for me. So, that’s why we are coupling it with prayer – because we will never invite someone without deep compassion and conviction, and really, that only comes about as the Holy Spirit works in us and we talk with God in prayer about our fears, our hopes, our need for help.
So, please consider joining in prayer and using your invitation to share the compassion of our heavenly Father with those who are in your life, and invite them to not only to come to church, but to come home to God.

Can God really be this good?

Preached on: Sunday 12th May 2019
The sermon text is given below or can be download by clicking on the “PDF” button above. Additionally, you can download the PowerPoint PDF by clicking here 19-05-12-Brightons-Powerpoint-Scott-sermon-morning-website.
Bible references: Luke 15:1-10 and Romans 8:18-39
Location: Brightons Parish Church

Texts: Luke 15:1-10 and Romans 8:18-39
Sunday 12th May 2019
Brightons Parish ChurchLet us pray. May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of all our hearts, be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Over the last few weeks we’ve begun our sermon series on Luke chapter 15, exploring what these three parables of Jesus reveal to us of our heavenly Father.

We’ve seen that Father God loves with a seeking and prodigal love, for in the example of the shepherd and the woman we see a God who seeks us out, so as to rescue us from our lostness, because we are that precious to God. And then in the example of the father and his lost son, we see a God who loves with such extravagance patience and such reckless generosity that He is truly the one that is prodigal in His love and in His waiting.
This week I want to attempt to respond to one question that can arise in our minds in response to these parables. It is a question that can arise in response to many passages or come to us amidst the varied events of life. And the question is this: can God really be this good? You may even want to shorten it to: is God good?

After seeing and hearing about a good heavenly Father who loves with a seeking and prodigal love, such that He patiently waits for us, is it truly possible to hold on to such a view of our heavenly Father when all around us we see a terribly broken world with so much pain and hardship? Is it possible to hold the tension between the goodness of God and the suffering in the world?

It is a question that people have asked across the ages, and indeed one that Christians have asked across the centuries, for many of our New Testament letters and gospels were written amidst periods of great suffering, particularly persecution. It can be helpful to remember, that the authors of the New Testament were not only seeking to share the Good News of the Christian faith or how to live godly lives; those very same authors were often seeking to help the Church at large understand how to hold the tension between a belief in a good heavenly Father who loves with a seeking, prodigal love, whilst at the same time experiencing brutal treatment and even death for their faith in Jesus Christ.

And likely, this question, this tension, is one which many, if not all of us, have wrestled with, or are still wrestling with.
Indeed, I suspect that few of us ever really settle the issue fully, and instead, we are forced by the repeated hardships of life to re-evaluate where we have got to in our handling of the tension. And I phrase it that way quite deliberately – “where we have got to in our handling of the tension” – because to say we should or can reach an answer, or a conclusion on the issue seems, to me, to be unlikely and maybe even unhelpful.

Four years ago, my family went through some really hard times, which I won’t share today, because I don’t want those times to become the focus of our attention. But shortly after those difficult experiences, we met someone who knew what had happened, but we hadn’t seen this person in a while. In the brief conversation they had with us,
I think they sought to give us a measure of support and encouragement.
However, what they shared with us was anything but that, because to try and tell us that “God only lets these things happen to people whom He knows can handle them” is not pastorally sensitive and I wouldn’t recommend saying it any time soon.

To claim to have answers to these questions is, in my experience, very unhelpful. Sure, we all want answers, but I’m just not certain God gives that many on these particular issues. Yet what that person shared, was probably shared out of where they were at in their own handling of the tension between belief in a good Father and the very apparent hardships of life. And likewise, what you’ll get from me today is borne out of my four years of wrestling with the issues, in light of the Scriptures, and represents some of where I have got to in my own thinking… But most likely, my own thinking will continue to adapt, and hopefully mature, with the passing of time and the gaining of experience in pastoral ministry.

So, all that was introduction and setting the scene, but is it possible to hold the tension between the goodness of God and the suffering in the world? For myself, I think I have managed to reach a point where I can live with that tension, and I can do so because of what the Scriptures teach about the Christian faith.

Firstly, the Scriptures clearly face up to the reality of suffering in our world, and the Christian faith has always done so. Indeed, the Apostle Paul never tries to hide the fact of suffering and often he goes as far as to highlight it.
We read today: ‘For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration…in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay…We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.’ (Romans 8:19-23)

Here Paul highlights that all of creation groans in its current state, that it yearns to be liberated from its bondage to decay. When Greek speakers talked about things decaying, they were referring to the tendency of living things to become sick, tired, or die…
and it included the inevitable process by which material objects collapsed and food spoiled. So, the biblical tradition affirms the perspective that our world is broken, that it is not what it once was or should be, that it is not what God intended it to be.

But Paul is also aware that it is not only the wider creation which groans – we, human beings, also groan for something more, we groan to be free of the degeneration, sickness and death we see around us or experience. And this groaning is there just as much for Christian folk – for Paul affirms that we Christians continue to groan ourselves, that we are not exempt from problems, and sadness, and disappointment.

So, the Scriptures clearly face up to the reality of suffering and of our innate yearning for liberation from such circumstances; there is then no belittling of our experiences, there is no exhortation to a stiff upper lip, there is no encouragement towards a faith that either ignores these hardships by sticking one’s head in the sand, nor towards a faith that is so spiritually minded that it glosses over the difficult times. The Christian faith is not scared to admit that the world is a mess – yet it also affirms the continued validity of faith and of being able to hold the tension between the goodness of God and the suffering we see around us.

The ability to hold that tension is possible, I think, because of two incredible facets of the Christian faith.

Firstly, we have hope. Paul writes: ‘I consider that our present sufferings [do not compare] with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration…in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God…we ourselves…groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.’

In the Christian faith we have hope, specifically, we have hope that this is not the end, that God hasn’t given up, that God Himself hasn’t been defeated, but that more is in store. And what is in store, is that there is a ‘glory that will be revealed in us’ (v18), there is a ‘freedom and glory’ for us the children of God (v21), and there will be a future ‘adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies’ (v23). These are phrases worth unpacking a little.

When Paul speaks here of ‘glory’ we need to remind ourselves of what else he has associated ‘glory’ with in the letter to the Romans: God’s immortality (1:23), the immortality of those to whom God gives eternal life (2:7), the power of God that raised Jesus from the dead (6:4). So, in all these instances Paul associates ‘glory’ with the expectation of sharing in the resurrection life of Jesus and His immortality. Elsewhere, Paul writes in Philippians: ‘But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who…will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.’ (Philippians 3:20-21)
When Paul speaks of ‘glory’ in Romans 8 this is what he has in mind – of a glory that will come to us from outside and transform us personally, such that it is ‘revealed in us’, in our physical, resurrected bodies.

Paul also writes, in the 3rd bullet point, that ‘we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.’ (v23) This is not to say that we aren’t children of God already, because we are, and Paul has affirmed that very reality in v16-17. But there is a sense in which our adoption is also in the future because we don’t experience now the fullness of what has been won for us by God in that we still have bodies which decay. In that sense, our salvation and redemption are still something we are waiting for, even if we have the firstfruits of it now.
So, in all this, Paul affirms the hope the Christian has, the hope they received when they placed their faith in Jesus: that the suffering and injustice which we experience will one day give way to God’s re-created world, and in that “new creation” we will no longer grow weak, fall apart, or die but will live in immortality. Moreover, God will also release the world around us from the effects of sin, and so both we and the world will be free from all suffering. In that new creation our existence will be like that of Jesus Himself, who presently lives in immortality and in a loving relationship with Father God.

So, whilst the suffering in the world currently obscures the glory which is ours, that glory will one day be revealed in full, but in the meantime, we hope – we hope for what we do not yet have; we hope, we wait with expectation… for a future in which every tear will be wiped away, and then there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the present order of things will have passed away.

This hope is part of what helps me hold the tension, when faced with the realities of life, that our God is truly good, because He hasn’t left us or deserted us, He hasn’t been defeated, instead, He has secured for us a future beyond our present comprehension, a future that is good.

And God has secured that future through His works and especially the person and work of His Son. Let’s begin with the works of God. Paul writes: ‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.’ (Romans 8:28-30)

Many of us will know that first line and may have found comfort in its words for our own lives. But I must admit, until this week I struggled to find much comfort in them, probably because I read more into those words than may actually be there. So often, I think we understand these words to say that God orchestrates the suffering of life or that God brings good out of the sufferings of life, that He is working all things together for good.
But renowned biblical scholar John Stott admits himself that this rendering of the words is ‘to be rejected, since all things do not automatically work themselves together into a pattern of good.’ And so, I think it might be helpful to review what Paul could be saying here.

Let’s unpack a few key words. ‘God works for the good…’- what is ‘the good’ here? Well, in the context of the passage, ‘the good’ is the glory which God has prepared for us, the glory in which we hope. That final future, that the new creation, where we shall share in the resurrection life of Jesus, with glorified bodies in a perfect new heaven and new earth – that is the good which Paul means, that is the purpose which God has for those who love Him, who are part of the people of God.

And if that is the good, then the ‘works’ which God does, are the actions of God which create, sustain and bring His people into the glory He has provided. And so, we read, ‘For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.’ (v29-30)

These are the ‘works’ of God, coupled with what Paul said in v26-27, that God has given us His Spirit to ‘help us in our weakness’ – He has given the Spirit to sustain us through the times of suffering and ensure that one day we will reach the glory in which we currently hope.

And so, if that is the ‘works’ of God, which bring about ‘the good’ He has planned and provided, then to say that God works ‘in all things’, is to say that in the midst of all things, in the midst of all circumstances and times of difficulty, God is at work, but His works are to help and sustain, to comfort and see us through into the glory He has purposed for us. That is how God works in all things.

So, it need not mean, and may not mean, that God orchestrates your suffering or that He will work all things together for good. Because, to be honest, I think we end up minimalizing so much suffering by our over-reaching with this verse, and we possibly over-reach because we want an answer to the “why?”, because we don’t like the tension and the unresolved questions.
But in our seeking to resolve it, we may go too far, and unnecessarily too far, because our hope is not undermined and God’s purpose is not defeated, His works are not thwarted, and His love remains strong and sure, despite the tensions, despite the questions – and all because of what we read next in Paul’s writings:

‘What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?…we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced…[nothing] will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Romans 8:31-32, 37-39)

In the four years of my wrestling with the tension of believing in a good heavenly Father, yet experiencing the reality of our world, the Cross is what has got me through – that on the Cross, God died, in the person of His Son, for love of me, to secure a glory beyond anything that I can imagine and so guarantee reunion with those I have lost.

That foundational truth has got me through, has allowed me to hold the tension, because in the Cross I know that God is “for me”, and in the Cross and resurrection of Jesus, I know with certainty that God was won a sweeping victory, such that we are more than mere conquerors over the enemies of sin, flesh, decay, death or shame; none of these will prevail against the purposes of God because of our Saviour.

In the Cross of Jesus, I see a God who is concerned with our suffering, is concerned with our plight, such that He did something about it – He sought us out, as the parables of Jesus affirm; He died to reconcile us to Himself through the forgiveness of our sin, securing for us a place in God’s family, and thus one day full conformity to the image, to the likeness, of His glorified, His immortal Son.

Is it possible to hold the tension between the goodness of God and the suffering in life? Is God truly as good as the parables of Jesus portray? I’ve managed to reach a point where I can live with that tension, because I see in our faith, a God who knows our suffering, who cares about our suffering, who never minimises our suffering, and so
He did something about it in Jesus,…
He entered into our suffering and so in Jesus, I see the love of God and I find hope, a God-given hope, of a future glory.

To Him be the praise and honour, this day and for ever.
Amen.

The Father: patient and waiting

Preached on: Sunday 5th May 2019
The sermon text is given below or can be download by clicking on the “PDF” button above. Additionally, you can download the PowerPoint PDF by clicking here 19-05-05-Sermon-PowerPoint.
Bible references: Luke 15:11-20
Location: Brightons Parish Church

Texts: Luke 15:11-20
Sunday 5th May 2019
Brightons Parish ChurchLet us pray. May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of all our hearts, be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Last week we began our sermon series on Luke chapter 15 and we took quite a broad overview of the chapter, looking at each of the three parables Jesus told.

In the first two parables, Jesus spoke about a shepherd going in search of his lost sheep and a woman going in search of her lost coin. In the third parable, we explored the story of a father and his younger son. To help us understand what Jesus is getting at with these parables, we need to remember what He said to His disciples:

‘All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’ (Mt. 11:27) Here Jesus helps the disciples understand that He knows the Father perfectly, that Jesus is the ultimate authority on what the Father is actually like, and that part of His mission is to reveal the Father to others.

So, in our three parables from Luke 15, Jesus is seeking to help us grasp the character of Father God, and to see what the Father prioritises and how He interacts with the world. Last week, we saw that Father God loves with a seeking and prodigal love, that in the example of the shepherd and the woman we see a God who seeks us out, so as to rescue us from our lostness, because God never writes us off.

And then in the example of the father and his lost son, we see a God who loves with such extravagance and such reckless generosity that He can truly be described as prodigal.

In the coming weeks, we’ll take some time to dig a little deeper into some of the other traits which Jesus gives us of Father God, and we’ll also ask some of the questions that arise out of these parables, especially the parable of the prodigal father and his two sons.

Since arriving here in Brightons, I’ve generally had a Friday off to look after my daughter Hope. A common feature of my days off to go swimming together and we’ve been doing that since she was about one year old.

Now-a-days, I know not to fit in too many things before or after swimming, but in my foolish youth, I often attempted to fit in a bit of shopping as well. When Hope was younger, it generally worked quite easily, because she would sit in the trolley, interact or eat away on something. But when she could start walking, that brought its own challenges, because my daughter refused to go in the trolley any more.

The experience helps me empathise with a short story I read this week: a man is in a supermarket, pushing a trolley which contained, among other things, a screaming baby. As the man proceeded along the aisles, he kept repeating softly,’Keep calm, George. Don’t get excited, George. Don’t get excited, George. Don’t yell, George.’

A lady watching with admiration said to the man, ‘You are certainly to be commended for your patience in trying to quiet little George.’

‘Lady,’ he declared, ‘I’m George.’

How I feel that father’s pain! Keeping our patience is such a difficult thing, whether with children, or colleagues, or family members, neighbours, or even here, we can rub each other up the wrong way.

Patience has been defined as a state of suffering with fortitude, as the ability to endure evils without complaining. The word comes from a Latin word meaning ‘suffering’, and has the idea of being able to endure much, to be ‘long-suffering’, of enduring without giving way to fury or to flight.

In the parable we read today, the third from Luke chapter 15, we are reminded of the younger son’s request and of the father’s response. Last week we saw how shockingly offensive these remarks by the younger son are: ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ (Lk. 15:12) To say such a thing in the context of Middle Eastern customs would be the equivalent of someone here saying: “I can’t wait until your dead. I want the money now.”
And then, to sell that portion of the estate, whilst the father was still alive, showed a total lack of decency and effectively said of the father, “To me, you don’t exist any more.” Ouch!

In all of this, the younger son rejects his father, he rejects the Father personally, he rejects the fathers ancestry, he rejects the father’s way of life and what he stood for.

Now, I find it hard to keep my cool when Hope decides she doesn’t want the lunch I’ve prepared – a lunch she specifically asked for, let me tell you – and yet here is a child causing untold hurt on multiple levels as he rejects his father so completely.

At this point in the story, following the customs of the time, the original listeners would be expecting a traditional Middle Eastern response from the father, which would have involved him driving out the son from the family with nothing less than physical blows.

And yet, the father, does nothing like that. We read that: ‘So the father divided his property between them. Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, and set off for a distant country.’ (Lk. 15:12-13) Instead of responding with blows, the father patiently endures a tremendous loss of honour as well as the pain of rejected love. Ordinarily, when our love is rejected, we get angry, we retaliate and do what we can so that we don’t hurt as much.
But this father maintains his patience, and so his affection, for his son. The father bears the agony – he is truly long-suffering, he endures without giving way to fury or flight, and he doesn’t compile rejection upon rejection.

And in this wonderfully moving story, we see a portrayal of our heavenly Father, who loves with a seeking and prodigal love, and does so with great patience towards us, His children.

I wonder, to what measure do we reflect this kind of patience? It is a of the fruit of the Holy Spirit, it should be increasingly seen in our lives if we are followers of Jesus.

Leonardo da Vinci once said:
‘Patience serves as a protection against wrongs, as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be less powerful to vex your mind.’

This quote reminds me of what a friend once said: Christians should be the least offendable people anyone knows. Christians should be the least offendable people anyone knows. If makes sense, if you think about it a moment – if we are growing in the fruit of the Spirit, particularly love and patience, then we really shouldn’t take offence at very much, should we?
Paul says to the Colossians that we are to clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, as well as bearing with one another and forgiving as quickly and fully as we have been forgiven by the Lord. So, we should be the least offendable people around, should we not? But, let me ask: how quickly do you take offence? How long do you hold on to a grievance? What hurts are you still holding on to and allowing to vex your mind?

These are hard questions to face up to – but we must, because we are called to reflect our heavenly Father. So, maybe it is time friends, for us to face up to the lack of patience in our lives? Maybe it is time to face up to all the ways we are short with one another,…
or where we become easily irritated, or hold onto a grudge or offence made against us? Because, the God we serve, and whom we call our heavenly Father, He is prodigal in His patience towards us, and we are called to reflect Him.

In addition to the father showing great patience and longsuffering at the beginning of the story, in response to such terrible treatment by his younger son, we also see another facet of the father’s patience and a little later in the parable.

In v20 we read: ‘So [the younger son] got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms round him and kissed him.’ The younger son has come to his senses, he has realised the folly of his choices and the selfishness of his actions, indeed, he probably realises the great shame he brought on his father and so the pain he also inflicted. But in his desperation, he still goes back to his father. And what do we read? ‘But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him…’

His father saw him. His father was looking out for him. Who knows how long the father had been watching? Long enough for his son to burn through a fortune, then become desperate, so desperate that he will work on a pig farm, which is offensive to Jews, and still longer than that because the son endures part of a famine as well.

The father likely waited a long time. He was longsuffering. He was patient. Who knows how many days he squinted in the sunlight, peering into the horizon, for the slightest hint of movement? Who knows how many nights he lit a torch and walked the boundaries of his home waiting on his son?

But the father did it, and he did it, because he loves with a prodigal, seeking love which will not allow him to give up being patient towards his precious child.

How many of us have waited patiently for something? It can feel like agony, but in these particular circumstances, it surely would have been near unbearable for the father.
To help us get a true feel of this, Christian author, Philip Yancey, has rewritten the parable in today’s context and I’ve made it fit our situation, so let me read it to you.

(READ FROM BOOK: ‘The Father You’ve Been Waiting For’ by Mark Stibbe, pg179-183.)

Her father waited. Her father waited with patience beyond our comprehension, probably with great agony, and he did so because he loved her so very much.

Friends, Jesus told the parable, and Yancey retold the parable in today’s language, so that we could see and appreciate afresh the prodigal love and patience of God – not with a fictional character, but with you and me.
We, each, are younger sons and daughters – we, each, have told God to drop dead, that we want His stuff: life, pleasure, the wonders of this creation, satisfaction in work, the enjoyment of family…many good, good things actually…and yet, we’d rather not have God – in fact, God is as good as dead to us.

Now, you know how much agony it feels when we are rejected, and you can imagine some of the agony the parents of the girl in the story must have felt. But imagine with me the agony God must feel, when we reject Him? Imagine loving with a perfect love – not the measure of love that you and I have towards our children, or the measure of love felt by the girls’ parents – but rather a perfect, pure love, a love that is so holy, so other,…
that it defines love? What degree of agony does someone face when they love that strongly and they are rejected?

Friends, God loves you that much, that perfectly, and His heart breaks for you to return to Him and live in relationship with Him as His child. In His very great patience, fuelled by prodigal love, God waits, God suffers, for you, for you to return to Him.

Let me ask: have you returned to God yet? Would you call yourself a Christian? Would you say that God is the centre of your life? Being a Christian, being a child of God, is much more than coming to church, or giving your offering, or even being loving and patient.

To be a Christian, is to come home to God – that God becomes the centre of your life, such that you build your life upon Him and He shapes your choices, your values, your priorities – that’s when you know you live for God, that’s when you know you’ve come home. That’s true repentance.

And God is lovingly waiting for us, my friends – if you haven’t returned to God, will you come home to God today?

But God is lovingly waiting for any of us who have grown cold towards Him, despite being a Christian – for us too, He waits, and calls us home once more. If that is you, will you hear the call of God today and return home to Him?
Will you come back into His embrace and know His prodigal love for you? Because, even for you, God patiently waits, He waits for all of us to respond today, and every day, to His love.

May we all come home to God. Let us pray.