Prepared by Mike Harvey
Good morning
For those of you who don’t know me, or who are new or new-sh to this church, you might guess I’m from Canada or the US. Pretty good guess – California actually. I moved to NZ 22 years ago to see the lovely sights in this country, well, one lovely sight whose name is Geraldine. Being the smart man I was, I married Geraldine almost straight away, and we have been attending Tawa Baptist since 2003.
I grew up in a Christian home, and went to what I think was a pretty typical evangelical church in America. I was a child of the 1970s & 80s — at the time, evangelical leaders and groups such as Campus Crusade were big on such jargon and ideas like being born again, the Four Spiritual Laws, and the Romans Road to Salvation.
There was a big emphasis on sharing the Gospel, or ‘the Good news’; and as a college and university student, I did a bit of that, knocking on doors once (frightening experience), and then after university I did missionary work for a while. Later in life, I heard sermons that it’s not only your words, but it can be your deeds too, that attract people to the Gospel. And the importance of prayer. So that was nice, took the pressure off. I didn’t feel I always had to be ‘out there’ talking to strangers.
But lately I’ve come to realise that in my life, I haven’t heard many sermons about WHY I should evangelise, or do good deeds, or pray. Was it primarily to get people into Heaven? Or was it primarily so they’d have better lives now, while they are still alive? They would feel loved (?), for example, by the Divine, and so they’d feel more able to love others? Which one of these was the primary reason? Or were all of these good reasons in equal measure? All of these goals were of course mentioned in some of the things I heard and read, but I don’t remember hearing or reading anyone saying, THIS is the main goal, and those other things are secondary, or no, THAT’s the main goal, and here are some by-products.
As a Christian singular, where am I trying to go? Or maybe a better question – As Christians plural, as a church (Tawa Baptist and the wider church), where are WE trying to go? What are we hoping to achieve?
I was listening to a podcast a couple months ago and Matthew W Bates was being interviewed. He’s a professor of theology at a small university in Illinois and he’s written a handful of books. His most recent book is called Why the Gospel? On the podcast he told a story about him talking to a room of pastors and he gave them this question: “Why did God give us the Gospel?”
He said, “There was a fairly stunned silence. If I had asked What IS the gospel, I would have got some pretty good answers. But the question WHY the gospel is one I think throws people off.” When he has asked this to other groups, he does say after a while he gets answers such as “Well because we need forgiveness” or “Because God loves us”.
Mr Bates went on to say this: “But both of those miss the target, I think, by short circuiting what Scripture teaches us…, and misses the primary reason God gives us the gospel…and that is, because we need a King.”
Mr Bates later goes into what he means by that, and if you want to listen to the episode, I have a link to that podcast at end of my sermon notes. But I want to use his idea of kingship to go in a different direction. And that is: Why a king? Why is THAT important – what human need does a king fill?
As an American import living in NZ, I have had to become familiar with NZ’s connection to the British monarchy. At first, I didn’t quite understand that relationship, and I suppose I still don’t fully get it. Why keep that connection? Indeed, why does the UK still have a queen, or a king? When it’s only a ceremonial role? What practical use does it have?
But then I watched the Queen’s and King’s Christmas messages over the years. The Queen would often talk about peace and reconciliation, of community service, of faith and hope. Last month, King Charles said we “must protect the Earth and our natural world as the one home which we all share”.
And then there was the movie ‘The King’s Speech” about King George VI. (A terrific movie by the way, recommended!) The day Britain declared war on Germany, he said in a radio address:
“The task will be hard. There may be dark days ahead, and war can no longer be confined to the battlefield. But we can only do the right as we see the right, and reverently commit our cause to God. If one and all we keep resolutely faithful to it, ready for whatever service or sacrifice it may demand, then, with God’s help, we shall prevail.”
So now I was starting to get it – what the point of a monarch was. At their best, they can inspire us to do great things, or rally us in times of difficulty. And in the movie, you saw all of Britain huddled around radios together as families or at a pub. In the old clips of the Queen visiting NZ, we see throngs of people, all together as one as they welcomed her.
At our best, this speaks to something about identity, doesn’t it? A CORPORATE identity. By joining together around a king or queen, we’re making a statement that we are part of a group, with a common purpose. We are saying we want to be a PLACE of justice, freedom, and beauty, a place of joy, hope and love.
In other words, yes I agree with Mr Bates that we need a king, but it would be kind of strange for me as individual to have a king who is king of only me. King implies there is a kingDOM, a group of people rather than just one person. And to me, that’ a more exciting prospect, that I would be part of a kingDOM, to have a sense of belonging, of knowing who I am in the context of community.
First Sameul 8 tells us that 1000 years before Jesus, Israel wanted a king like the other nations had. And if you’ll recall, God was pretty mad at them for asking that. But it wasn’t because he was against the idea of kingship and kingdom; it was because HE was supposed to be their king.
Israel was to be different from other nations – while they had human kings, Israel was to have a DIVINE king. They were to have a UNIQUE identity, a unique corporate identity, a divine identity, which would be a model of peace and justice and fairness and joy and love to other nations, that other nations may be drawn to them and ultimately to God the King, so that all of humanity would experience the same glory. After all, God had promised Abraham in Genesis 12 that all peoples on earth would be blessed through him.
But Israel wanted that human king – they gave themselves over to worldly powers. This was sin with a Capital S.
I think it’s helpful to think of sin in two ways – Capital S versus small S sin. Capital S sin is when we overvalue things of this world that are temporary, like $$, personal success, or comfort, and undervalue our relationship to God, undervalue our relationship to each other as God-image-bearing humans, and undervalue God’s Creation. When we have Capital S sin in our lives, we’re much more likely to commit small s sins, such as greed, envy and hatred, and that’s what often happened with Israel, according to the Old Testament.
Time and again in the Old Testament, we see God trying to help Israel out of the trap of Sin and sins. He gave them laws to help them value their relationships with Him and each other, and he gave them prophets to warn them when they were going off on the wrong path. Through his prophets, he also showed them his heart, how much he loved them. Listen to these words from the prophet Hosea – chapter 11:
1 When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
2But the more they were called,
the more they went away from me.
It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, [Ephraim was one of the 12 tribes of Israel]
taking them by the arms;
but they did not realize
it was I who healed them.
Verse 4: To them I was like one who lifts
a little child to the cheek,
and I bent down to feed them.
Will they not return to Egypt because they refuse to repent?
Verse 7: My people are determined to turn from me.
Even though they call me God Most High,
I will by no means exalt them.
Verse 8: “How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, Israel?
My heart is changed within me;
all my compassion is aroused
Verse 9: I will not carry out my fierce anger,
nor will I devastate Ephraim again.
Behold the heart of God! Verse 4, he shows the tenderness of a parent. But verse 7, he’s angry and pained at their rejection, and says he will not exalt them. But then verse 8, he says his heart is changed and says he won’t carry out his fierce anger. You see this internal anguish, the going back and forth between pain and compassion. One would have hoped Israel, when listening to these words by Hosea, would have finally turned to God.
But in general, Israel wouldn’t budge; they would fall under the temptation of Capital S sin and, as a result, become so weak and powerless, burdened by a multitude of small s sins, they’d again fall victim to invasion and exile. The pattern, the cycle, continued, even up to the time of Jesus, when they still found themselves under the power of someone else, this time the Romans.
But was Jesus now the King, the Messiah who would free Israel from this worldly power Rome? Well, no and yes. Jesus certainly didn’t live the life of a king. But he did show his power over human and demonic forces, with healings and forgiveness. He didn’t start a political revolution in the traditional sense, but he did show a revolutionary way of living where the law of God, the law of love would be followed, rather than the unjust laws of man – but in the end Jesus, and so God himself, was rejected and killed.
History had been building to this moment. God coming to earth through his Son was the ultimate illustration of God’s desire to reconcile mankind with Himself, and reconcile mankind with each other. The cross was the ultimate incident of mankind’s rejection of God’s love. And because of this, it was the ultimate incident of divine suffering, and so the ultimate expression of God’s love.
Sin, with a capital S, that is, mankind’s rejection of God, had seemed to have won. But on the 3rd day Jesus rose, showing that Sin and death were conquered. And by the way, not all of Israel had rejected Him. Lifted in their spirits by the resurrection, 11 of his disciples, and then Paul, all 12 of them Israelites, and then small groups of followers, took up the mantle and spread the Gospel. They wrote letters and books that became the New Testament that tried to explain the meaning of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. And we’re still grappling with understanding that meaning in 2024, and today in this sermon.
So what does all of this have to do with individual salvation and sharing the Gospel to my friend so my friend can be saved? You may have noticed so far I’ve been using words like Israel and mankind (rather than the individual) – I’ve been talking about groups of people and communities. When we read the Bible, I wonder sometimes whether we over-individualise certain verses, and fail to see the larger context, the larger story, that is of God’s purpose for Israel and the church, of what our divine corporate identity is to be.
I’ll give an example. At the start of the sermon, I mentioned the common tools of the Gospel used in the 1970s/80s, like the 4 Spiritual Laws and the Romans Road. From what I can tell on the internet, they are still being used today. The Romans Road is a series of 4 or 5 verses plucked from different parts of the book of Romans. One of them is Romans 5:8:
“But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” NRSV
Here is the way many Christians read this verse:
While I was a sinner (e.g taking drugs, being envious, being selfish, not honouring my parents), he died for me, which means I can go to Heaven despite my sins.
But putting this verse in the larger context of Romans and the wider Bible, how about this as another way to read it?
While Israel, when humanity, was looking to other things besides God as giving meaning to their life, not relying on Him, rejecting Him as a community (Sin with a capital S), and while this led to societal breakdown and to the increase of individual sins and people going off the rails, and while all this was happening despite God time and again trying to show his love and guidance – while this terrible rejection of God from humanity was going on, God stepped into History and upped the ante, showing humanity EVEN again AND EVEN MORE how much he loves us, by sending us His Son to death, setting US free from the ‘death’ that we as a community were bringing on ourselves. Sin ‘did its worst’ but he conquered it. This means that we as individuals and as a community are free and empowered to bring his Kingdom indeed to Earth.
To me, this is a far richer way to understand Romans 5:8, and the ‘why’ of the Gospel. The Lord’s prayer says thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Revelation 21, which Angela read earlier talks about the end of the age, when heaven comes down to earth, when the divine and humanity meet.
God’s dwelling place is now among the people…He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.
Revelation 21 is a vision of a corporate salvation. And it’s not about escaping the earth, but about the arrival of God’s Kingdom ON earth. That’s our corporate goal. That’s our corporate Gospel.
I am not suggesting that individual salvation is not important – but I propose that our thinking about it can be enhanced. I am saved – saved from what, and in order to do what? Well, not only saved at some future date from this world, to go to the new heaven and new earth, but rather saved NOW from the stranglehold of sin on my life, in order to free me up to live NOW as a divine image bearing human, to enjoy God’s creation now, to improve this world now, to belong to a community, a community of other empowered people whom God has also saved, maybe to work alongside them to bring hope and healing to our society, that is, to bring the kingdom of God to Tawa, NZ and the ends of the earth. And in this way, bringing Revelation 21 to pass.
In closing I’d like to share something from NT Wright, an Anglican NT scholar who was the Bishop of Durham for a number of years and has written over 70 books. In his book ‘The Day the Revolution Began’, he says this as a commentary on Galatians 1:4:
“The loving purpose of God, working through the sin-forgiving death of Jesus, frees us from the power of the present evil age, so that we may be part of God’s new age, his new creation, launched already when Jesus rose from the dead, awaiting its final completion when he returns, but active now through the work of rescued rescuers, the redeemed human beings called to bring redeeming love into the world – the justified justice-bringers, the reconciled reconcilers, the Passover People.” (Pages 364-5.)
Amen. So be it.
Further notes and resources
- The podcast episode featuring Matthew W Bates who asked the room of pastors ‘Why the gospel’
https://podcast.choosetruthovertribe.com/episodes/why-the-gospel-matthew-bates?hsLang=en
- The Day the Revolution Began (2016), by NT Wright – the book from which I used to conclude the sermon. NT Wright is well known for his criticism of the North American church’s overemphasis on ‘going to heaven when you die’ – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N._T._Wright
- Other NT Wright resources
– https://www.premierunbelievable.com/shows/ask-nt-wright-anything – a series of 30 minute podcasts where NT Wright asks listener questions. I’ve found this very helpful.
– Go to youtube and search “NT Wright” – you’ll find many sermons, lectures, interviews etc.
- Divine Government: God’s Kingship in the Gospel of Mark (1990) by RT France
“…the personal change of values which Jesus required must obviously have an effect on the lifestyle and relationships of those who followed him. The new relationship with God…could never by a purely private, individual affair, and it is particularly in their relations with one another that the new values of God’s kingship must begin to operate. Hence the frequent stress on matters of status and leadership, the call to welcome the insignificant, and to serve rather than to be served….In this topsy-turvy community, where the first are last and the last first, the new values of divine government can begin to take visible form. And when that happens, as a result of the inward transformation which God’s kingship demands, there is the promise of a truly transformed society, not changes merely by a reordering of its structures, but by a reorientation of its values.” Page 62.
- Further to the idea that kingship can inspire a positive corporate identity, this is from the Guardian’s review of ‘The King’s Speech’ flim:
“When war broke out in 1939, he [King George VI] became an unlikely symbol of national resistance, his mundane domesticity a reminder of what Britain was fighting for. ….[H]is newsreel appearances were regularly interrupted by applause from the audience. But it was not merely deference that explains the public reaction, even though it played its part. The truth, I suspect, is that when thousands applauded the King in the cinema, they were not just acknowledging their monarch; they were applauding themselves.” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/jan/02/the-kings-speech-george-vi
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