Tawa Baptist

An Inside Story – by Neville Gardner

A couple of years ago, in the rather isolated village of Hrastovlje, in western Slovenia, Nicky and I were shown a building that looks like a small castle with a tower. Close up, it looked a bit forbidding, but after we got through the gateway, we could see that the tower is actually attached to a very plain little Christian church. No-one’s sure when the church was built, but probably in the thirteen or fourteen hundreds. The tower was added later. The castle-like wall was built in 1581, to give villagers a refuge from Turkish invaders.

The church is nothing to look at on the outside, but as soon as we got inside, it was obvious why my sister-in-law, who grew up in the area, wanted us to see it. Just about every part of the interior is covered by colourful frescoes painted in 1490 – we know the date because the artist signed and dated them. The pictures are mostly scenes from the Bible, aimed at telling the stories to a mainly illiterate congregation.

These frescoes were once doubly hidden – not only inside a nondescript building, but at some time long ago they were completely hidden by a thick layer of white plaster. They were only rediscovered in 1949.

So my first impression of the church, from the outside, was one of disappointment. But this was a case of “appearances can be deceptive.” It was only on looking inside that a beautiful treasure was revealed.

The phrase “appearances can be deceptive” can apply to people too.

Relating to people, the term ‘appearance’ covers a wide range of things – the way a person is dressed, things they own or don’t own, things they say and the language they use, their apparent age or culture, their manner (such as being talkative or quiet, rude or polite, using facial expressions and hand gestures) and so on.

When we meet a person for the first time, we sometimes let their appearance either encourage us to get to know them, or put us off. Perhaps we try and get to know them whatever their appearance.

Imagine a conversation going on between two people next Sunday at church.

“Did you hear the sermon Neville gave last week?”

“No. I’m new here, which one’s Neville?”

“Oh, he’s tall, bald and wears glasses. Probably in his late 60s and has an English accent.”

“Thanks, I should be able to spot him.”

The facts of this description are probably quite accurate. ‘Tall, bald and glasses’ are obvious features about my external appearance. Late 60s and English accent – they are both part of my appearance too, but they could lead to questionable judgements about the inner person. Someone in their late 60s might be expected to have certain attitudes and prejudices associated with their age, which they may be judged on. An English accent might suggest a particular cultural background, and all that implies. You’d need to look past these appearances to get to know me and be able to judge my real character. That’s just an example, not a challenge!

The Bible has many examples of how God looks beyond external appearances to see the heart of the person beneath the skin. Obviously we can’t see as God sees, but we can learn from some of the things he looks for.

For example, in 1 Samuel 16: 6-7 we read of how God wanted to replace Saul as king of Israel, because of his disobedience. He sent Samuel to Bethlehem to search among the sons of Jesse. When he arrived in Bethlehem:

“Samuel noticed Eliab and said to himself, “Surely, here before the Lord stands his chosen king.” But the Lord said to Samuel, “Don’t be impressed by his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. God does not view things the way people do. People look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

After God had rejected seven of Jesse’s sons, his youngest son, David, was brought in from looking after the sheep. God looked into David’s heart and chose him to be anointed.

The Israelites hoped God would pick a strapping hero, a brilliant and successful person. But God chose ordinary David for the potential he saw in his heart. We know that David went on to do great things, and very bad things too. But God had chosen him for his nature – at heart, he was devoted, obedient and thankful to God.

Some key words from the passage are “God does not view things the way people do. People look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

People look at the outward appearance – it’s what they do.

God looks at the heart – it’s what He does.

So what are some of the things God looks for in our hearts?

Here are just a few to give us an idea.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” Matthew 5:8

  • God looks for a pure heart, free from sin and devoted to Him.

In Acts 15:8-9 we read: “God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted the Gentiles by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith.”

  • God looks for a genuine faith in Him, regardless of ethnic origins.

Romans 12:1-2 urges believers to “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.”

  • God looks for sincere worship.

John 7:24 says: “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with righteous judgment“.

  • God looks for discernment, through truth and righteousness.

That’s just a small selection. Much of what God looks for is concerned with the relationship between God and that person. And that’s not for us to know, and even less to judge. We cannot look at the heart in the way that God does.

But we can still make the effort to go beyond appearances. I think we tend to look for two main categories of things – character and needs. We look for character traits that affect our relationship with the person, even if it’s a fleeting one. We might look for honesty, integrity, compassion, kindness, fairness and trustworthiness. And people look for the same things in us too. By looking beyond appearances, we can also get to understand people’s needs that are not obvious on the surface, or that we miss because of our initial judgements.

This is not to say that we should totally ignore appearances. After all, Jesus showed that he cared about physical appearances when he healed people of various diseases and disfigurements, although even then the results were often internal as well.

Proverbs 27: 19 sums this up – “As in water the face is reflected as a face, so a person’s heart reflects the person.”

Jesus knew what it was like to be misjudged because of his appearance. He didn’t have the appearance of the powerful king the Israelites were expecting. So he was continually having to prove who he was, that his authority came from within, not from what he looked like. Jesus often wanted people to look for his inner self.

Getting people to look at his inner being was a hard lesson that did not always sink in. Towards the end of his ministry on Earth, Jesus’ disciples looked for reassurance about what was going to happen next.

In John 14:8-10 we read that

“Philip said “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be content.” Jesus replied, “Have I been with you for so long, and you have not known me, Philip? The person who has seen me has seen the Father! How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me?”

In other words, Philip had not really looked beyond appearances.

Jesus wanted people to see his inner self, but not all humans are so open. Many people have barriers which can prevent or delay others moving beyond appearances. These could be barriers of language, culture or social difference, or they could be things like shyness, rudeness, poor social skills, anxiety, the need for privacy. Some people even go so far as to deceitfully create false impressions, with the aim of causing harm.

As part of the Sermon on the Mount, (Matthew 7: 15), Jesus warned “Be on your guard against false prophets; they come to you looking like sheep on the outside, but on the inside they are really like wild wolves.” We should look out for people, not just false prophets, who appear harmless on the outside, but are actually dangerous and deceitful inside.

Jesus encountered many barriers like this. He had constant run-ins with the Pharisees, who were an influential group big on tradition and external display, rather than on inner belief.

Jesus didn’t hold back when he said

“Woe to you, experts in the law and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs that look beautiful on the outside but inside are full of the bones of the dead and of everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you look righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” Matthew 23: 27-28.

As well as encouraging us to look out for hypocrites and wolves in sheep’s clothing, Jesus modelled other ways to look at the heart rather than the appearance. And what we do with what we find there.

Just for example, Mark 12 41-44 tells us

“Then Jesus sat down opposite the offering box, and watched the crowd putting coins into it. Many rich people were throwing in large amounts. And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, worth less than a penny. He called his disciples and said to them, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the offering box than all the others. For they all gave out of their wealth. But she, out of her poverty, put in what she had to live on, everything she had.”

One thing he was saying was not to look at and judge the appearance of a small offering, but consider the sacrifice and heart behind it.

In John 4 we read of an encounter between Jesus and a Samaritan woman at a well. She was a female in a society that held women in disregard, she was from a culture despised by Jews and she lived in shame, a social outcast. Outer appearances did not look good. But Jesus looked at her heart, spoke with her and offered eternal salvation. She went on to give testimony to her whole town.

Verse 27 tells us “And at this point His disciples came, and they marvelled that He talked with a woman; yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or, “Why are You talking with her?””

The disciples looked at the appearance, but did not think to look any further.

This reminds me of a news item I saw a couple of weeks ago. Georgia Evans was playing rugby for Wales in the Women’s Rugby World Cup. During the competition she was subjected to considerable online abuse – not for her playing, but for her appearance on the field. Her reply was “The bows in my hair, the eyelashes and full-face makeup I choose to wear – none of that affects my ability, passion or fight for this game.”

That’s just the attitude we’ve been talking about in Christians – look past the appearance at the passion, the belief.

I said earlier that what God finds in a person’s heart is part of a relationship that we are not meant to see. It’s okay to keep this inner self hidden from other people, if that’s what we want, but there is one thing that God does want other people to see in our hearts.

God wants people to see our belief in Him, to see our Christianity. In fact, Jesus tells us that people shouldn’t have to see into our hearts – our faith and Christianity should shine out anyway.

In Matthew 5:14-16 Jesus said

“You are like light for the whole world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bowl; instead it is put on the lampstand, where it gives light for everyone in the house. In the same way your light must shine before people, so that they will see the good things you do and praise your Father in heaven.”

So, people shouldn’t have to look inside us to see that we are Christians, that should be part of our outer appearance.

In some parts of the world, shining out your Christian belief can get you into serious trouble. That’s not the case here in New Zealand, for which we are thankful, but there is a level of opposition to Christianity. There are many people who love God, but for various reasons tend to shy away from revealing this to strangers. There are also people who are happy to walk into a room of strangers and almost the first thing they say is “Hi, I’m a Christian.”

Whatever we feel comfortable with (or sometimes not!), God expects other people to be able to recognise us as Christian by the way we live our lives. We shine our light by exemplifying the Christian qualities of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These are all aspects of character we can develop through the presence of the Holy Spirit. We can also shine our light when God calls us to use the spiritual gifts He has given us – and again, we have the Holy Spirit to help us do that.

And we need to show those qualities all the time, not just when we feel like it. In that sense we are lamps on a lampstand, shining continuously – not like lamps totally hidden under a bowl, or even lamps under a colander letting bits of light leak through the holes, and definitely not like a torch, switched on and off to suit.

How much is being a Christian part of your external appearance, as well as your inner character?

I’d like to finish by going back to the decorated church in Slovenia. There is a sequence to the frescoes, and they end with what is known as ‘The Dance of Death.” There are eleven skeletons, each leading a person towards an open grave. There’s a child, a man with a wooden leg, a young man, moneylender, merchant, monk, bishop, cardinal, queen, king and a pope.

The message of this image is simple – When God looks in our hearts, we are all equal in his eyes, regardless of appearance or how important we think we are in our worldly life.

Tawa Baptist

Thin Ice

Scripture: 1st Corinthians 10:1-13

Video Link: https://youtu.be/G0sJ4VhYD2Q

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • The danger of privilege (1-5)
  • The danger of presumption (6-11)
  • The deliverance of God (12-13)
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

The expression, “You’re on thin ice”, is a warning that you are in danger. You are venturing into an area that is life threatening or detrimental to your wellbeing.

The literal meaning of being on thin ice is skating or walking on a frozen lake where the ice could give away under your weight at any moment, probably resulting in a painful death.

Figuratively, a teacher might say to a student who is always late or rude, “You’re on thin ice Mr”. Or your mum might say it when you are testing the limits of her patience. Or you might be on thin ice with your landlord if you miss a rent payment.

Other expressions which mean the same thing as being on thin ice include…

“You’re playing with fire”, or “You’re on shaky ground”, or “You’re dancing with the devil”.

The thing about thin ice is that you know you should get off it as quickly as possible, but there’s something in you (is it curiosity?) that just wants to test how far you can go. Either that, or you are completely unaware of where you are standing.        

Today, after Ascension Sunday, Pentecost Sunday and Trinity Sunday, we return to our series on First Corinthians chapters 8 to 10, where Paul writes about Christian freedom.

Freedom needs to be tempered with self-control. Too much freedom is a dangerous thing. Indeed, unbridled freedom will put you on thin ice. From First Corinthians 10, verses 1-13, we read…      

For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. 2 They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3 They all ate the same spiritual food 4 and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. 6 Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. 7 Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: “The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.” 8 We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did—and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died. 9 We should not test Christ, as some of them did—and were killed by snakes. 10 And do not grumble, as some of them did—and were killed by the destroying angel. 11 These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come. 12 So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! 13 No temptationhas overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be temptedbeyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

To refresh your memory, First Corinthians is one of the letters the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, during the first century. The believers in Corinth had sent their own letter to Paul with some questions and concerns. Paul wrote back to gently pull them out of the rabbit holes they were going down. 

Some of the believers in the Corinthian church were over-confident in their new found freedom in Christ. They felt at liberty to join in the feasts held in the pagan temples that peppered the city they lived in.

But Paul tells them, no. This is not a right use of your freedom as followers of Jesus. Eating meat in places of pagan worship puts you on thin ice with God. 

Three handles to give us a grip on this morning’s reading from Corinthians 10. First, Paul warns against the danger of privilege and the danger of presumption. Then he reminds us of the deliverance of God.

The privileges we enjoy as followers of Jesus do not make us immune from evil. Nor should we presume upon the grace of God, seeing how far we can push it. The Lord won’t tolerate sin indefinitely.

It’s not all danger and thin ice though. The Lord is faithful; we can rely on him to provide a way out of temptation, so long as we are not looking for a way into temptation. Our first point though is the danger of privilege…

The danger of privilege:

In Roald Dahl’s book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, five children win a golden ticket to meet Willy Wonka and see inside his factory. It is a real privilege to see the secrets of Mr Wonka’s chocolate making.

But this privilege is not without its dangers. Winning a golden ticket comes with all sorts of temptations. One by one, each of the children acted against Willy Wonka’s instructions and disqualified themselves for the prize.

Holding a golden ticket got the children into the chocolate factory, but it did not give them a right to do whatever they wanted once inside. Far from giving them license, the privilege of holding a golden ticket actually required the children to act responsibly and with self-control.

Special privileges can deceive us. They can lull us into a false sense of security and make us over-confident; feeling like we have a license to walk on thin ice and get away with it. Privilege does not make you special or immune from danger. Privilege is like a hand grenade; it needs to be treated with great care.

In verses 1-3 of Corinthians 10, Paul draws an analogy between the Israelites of Moses’ time and the Corinthian believers.

When God redeemed the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, they went through a baptism of sorts. Passing through the Red Sea and following the cloud of God’s presence, was a type of baptism which prefigured the water baptism the Corinthians had received on becoming followers of Jesus.

Likewise, the people of Israel received a type of communion in the wilderness. God provided manna for them to eat and water from a rock. This food and drink was spiritual. It nourished their bodies and their relationship with God.

In a very real sense, the supernatural provision of manna and water prefigured holy communion, which the Corinthians partook of regularly.

Being redeemed from slavery, sin and death is a privilege. Baptism and communion are a privilege. But these privileges don’t give us a right to behave however we like. With great privilege comes great responsibility.

Despite their privileged position, God was not pleased with most of the Israelites of Moses’ day, and their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.

Some of the Corinthian believers had way too much confidence. They figured, we’ve been baptised and redeemed. We participate in the Lord’s supper, so we’re all good. We can eat meat sacrificed to idols in pagan temples, no problem. The devil can’t touch us.  

But the privileges of baptism and communion do not make us immune from evil, any more than holding a golden ticket kept the children out of trouble in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

If you walk on thin ice, you risk falling through, whether you’ve been baptised or not. If you participate in pagan rituals, you open your spirit up to a whole world of evil, whether you take communion or not.  

Paul’s message to the Corinthians is this: don’t be like the Israelites. Don’t be deceived by your privilege. Don’t walk on thin ice.

Paul does something quite interesting in these verses, which is easy to miss. The Corinthians were mostly gentiles and yet, in verse 1, Paul talks about the Israelites being our ancestors. The Corinthians were not genetically related to the Israelites, like Paul was. But in a spiritual sense they were related.

If you are in Christ, there is a continuity between you and the people of God in the Old Testament. The stories of the exodus and the exile are our stories too. We, who belong to Jesus, whakapapa back to Abraham, through Christ.

That is a unique privilege, which comes with great responsibility.

The responsibility to learn from Israel’s mistakes. As Paul writes in verse 6: these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did.       

One of the dangers of privilege is that we can get so accustomed to it that we forget we are in fact privileged. We can start to view our privilege as an entitlement; something we are owed. Privilege can lead to presumption.

The danger of presumption:

Presumption is behaviour which is arrogant and disrespectful. To act in a presumptuous way is to take liberties and go beyond the bounds of what is considered appropriate.

If you are in a restaurant and someone you don’t know sits down at your table and starts eating food off your plate, then that is presumptuous. It’s not presumptuous, by the way, if your husband or wife eats food off your plate. That is simply marriage.

Or if you are pregnant and a complete stranger walks up to you in the supermarket and puts their hand on your belly, that is presumptuous.

Or if someone parks their car in an accessible carpark, without a permit, that also is presumptuous.

You may have heard of the term ‘diplomatic immunity’. Diplomatic immunity is a principle of international law where foreign diplomats and officials are protected from the criminal justice system of the host country. So, if a diplomat commits a criminal offence, they cannot be arrested or sent to jail.

Even though diplomats have this special privilege, most would not be presumptuous enough to shop lift or punch someone in the face or eat chips off your plate.

In fact, in cases where a serious crime is committed, like murder, the sending country may well choose to waive diplomatic immunity and grant the host country the right to press criminal charges against their own official.

In other words, the ice of diplomatic immunity wears thin in some cases and cannot always be relied upon to save the foreign official if they act really badly.

As believers, we are sort of like diplomats from a foreign country. This world is not our home, but we still have a responsibility to behave ourselves.

We must not presume upon the grace of God, seeing how far we can push it, as the Israelites did in the wilderness. The Lord won’t tolerate that for long.  

In verses 7-10, Paul briefly touches on four occasions when the Israelites of old found themselves on thin ice and fell through. Paul highlights the Israelites’ sins of idolatry, sexual immorality, testing the Lord and grumbling.

Idolatry is the worship of idols; basically, the worship of anything that is not God. As I said earlier, some of the Corinthians presumed it was okay to participate in the feasts held at the local pagan temples. But these dinner parties were essentially idolatrous.    

Even if the Corinthians themselves did not believe in idols, they were on thin ice by eating in the idol’s temple. Idolatry in the ancient world inevitably led to revelry. Drunken carousing and loose partying, the kind that uni students during O week might indulge in. Revelry of this sort often leads to fornication.   

In verse 8, Paul warns against sexual immorality. This seems to be a reference to the time when Israelite men indulged in casual sex with strangers; Moabite women who had invited them to pagan worship. Thousands died as a warning.

Sexual immorality was a problem in Corinth too, just as it is a problem in our society today. You may have heard on the news recently how girls as young as 10 are being used as prostitutes. If we who are used to evil are outraged by that kind of exploitation, how much more is God’s holy wrath provoked.

Verse 9 says, we should not test Christ, as some of them did—and were killed by snakes.[1] ‘Testing God’ means trying to prove God wrong, trying to make his word fail, rather than trusting him.

When Satan quoted Scripture, tempting Jesus to jump off the highest point of the temple, the evil one was trying to prove God’s word wrong.

Jesus responded by saying, “Don’t put the Lord your God to the test”.

In other words, don’t presume upon God’s grace. Don’t see how far you can push the boundaries and get away with it.

Putting God to the test is the opposite of trusting God. It puts us on thin ice, where we end up learning the hard way.

Interestingly, Paul says we should not test Christ. Paul gives Jesus the same standing as God. By hanging out in pagan temples, the Corinthians were presuming upon Jesus’ grace.

Now at this point, some of you might be thinking, I don’t bow down to idols or have casual sex with randoms or otherwise test Jesus. I’m not presumptuous like those haughty Corinthians. I’m humble. Today’s sermon is not for me.

Hmm. If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!

The fourth presumption Paul lists is that of grumbling. Some of the Israelites in the wilderness grumbled against Moses, just as some of the believers in Corinth were grumbling against Paul, which is probably why Paul mentions it.     

Grumbling? Is that a sin? Really? Apparently it is. Stink. Just when I thought I was in the clear I find out grumbling is not allowed. Many of us are guilty of grumbling. In fact, kiwis are quite good at grumbling. We call it, ‘tall poppy syndrome’. Cutting others down with our words and criticisms.

Grumbling may be more socially acceptable, but it’s still a presumption. Grumbling reflects an attitude of arrogance and entitlement. When we grumble, we put ourselves on thin ice. Secure people, people with their feet on solid ground, build others up.

We’ve talked about the danger of privilege and the danger of presumption. Now let’s consider the deliverance of God.

The deliverance of God:

Sometimes we can find ourselves on thin ice through no fault of own, simply because the ice is melting and we are in the wrong place at the wrong time.  

God is ready to deliver us in situations like that.

In verse 13 Paul addresses the issue of temptation and how God delivers us from it. We will break it down because there’s quite a bit going on in this verse.

Firstly, Paul writes: No temptationhas overtaken you except what is common to mankind.

Now when we hear the word temptation we are probably inclined to imagine a little devil enticing us to do bad things so that we fall through the ice.

But in this context, temptation is more like a test designed to make us stronger, rather than a torture designed to break us.

Running a marathon is a test of your endurance. The temptation is to give up before you reach the end. But if you do make it all the way, without giving up, you are stronger for it.

Likewise, writing an essay or sitting an exam is a test of your mastery of the subject. The essay or exam is not designed to break you or make you fail.

Its purpose is to help you learn and strengthen your mental proficiency. 

Getting a license to drive involves a series of tests. Acquiring the skill and experience necessary to pass these tests makes you a better, safer driver.  

Temptation in the sense of testing is not bad or evil. It is necessary and inevitable if we are to grow and develop and become better human beings.

Being baptised and receiving communion does not make you immune from temptation. Everyone faces testing in this life. It is common to humankind.

Therefore, we should not be surprised by temptation. We should prepare for it, like we would prepare for a marathon or an exam or a driving test. 

The second thing Paul says in verse 13 is that God is faithful; he will not let you be temptedbeyond what you can bear. 

Note here that God is not the one who brings the temptation, but he does allow it, within certain limits. God is good. He knows our limits and cares for our wellbeing. (Not that it always feels like that to us.)

Sometimes it feels like God takes us beyond our limits. We might think we can only run half a spiritual marathon, when in fact God knows we can go twice that distance. Just as we can be overconfident at times, so too we can underestimate ourselves in other situations. The testing of temptation shows us the truth about ourselves.   

Paul reassures his readers saying, …when you are tempted, God will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.

The original Greek word translated as ‘a way out’ (in verse 13) imagines an army platoon trapped in the mountains, escaping a seemingly impossible situation through a pass. [2] 

Very seldom is God’s deliverance as easy as Star Trek, where Captain Kirk says, ‘Beam me up Scotty’. God’s deliverance, his way out, usually requires us to show some character and make a conscious choice.

When Joseph was tempted to sleep with Potiphar’s wife, Joseph avoided her, even running out of the room when she got him alone. God’s way out for Joseph was the indignity of being falsely accused and sent to prison, where Potiphar’s wife could not get to him.

Eventually though, that prison became God’s means of elevating Joseph to Prime Minister of Egypt. God is faithful.

Conclusion:

Not many of us are as good as Joseph. A lot of us (given the opportunity) might prove to be more like David and Bathsheba.

At some point we all find ourselves on thin ice, whether by accident or our own deliberate fault. If we do fall, then we need not despair.

God has provided for our rescue through Jesus. Jesus does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Jesus resisted every temptation and test thrown at him, overcoming sin on our behalf. Jesus is our righteousness.

When we do fall, we are honest about that with God. We own it. We don’t try to justify ourselves. We seek his forgiveness and we ask the Lord to restore us; to put our feet on the right path, the firm foundation of Christ our rock.

Let us pray…      

Gracious God, keep us off thin ice. Lead us in the way everlasting, for your name’s sake. Through Jesus we pray. Amen. 

Questions for discussion or reflection:

  1. What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?
  2. Have you ever found yourself on thin ice, either literally or figuratively? What happened? How did you get there? What (or who) saved you?
  3. What are the dangers of privilege? How might we enjoy our privilege (freedom) without being deceived by it? 
  4. Why do we get baptised and receive communion? What purpose do these rituals serve? What are baptism and communion not to be used for?  
  5. Discuss / reflect on the four sins (or presumptions) Paul lists in verses 7-10; idolatry, sexual immorality, testing Christ and grumbling. In what ways are these sins expressed in our society today? How might we keep ourselves from these temptations.
  6. What is meant by ‘temptation’, in the context of verse 13? What is the purpose of temptation? Can you think of a time when you felt sorely tested? What happened? How did God provide a way out?
  7. How might we prepare for temptation? What rhythms and routines improve your spiritual fitness?
  8. Take some time this week to confess and repent of anything you know that is putting you on thin ice with God.

[1] Refer Numbers 21:4-9

[2] Refer Leon Morris’ commentary on 1 Corinthians, page 144.

Tawa Baptist

Transformation

Scripture: Isaiah 65:17-25

Video Link: https://youtu.be/Spt3lNxBec0

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • God’s new creation
    • From grief to joy
    • From death to life
    • From frustration to fulfilment
    • From harm to harmony
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

Miracles of transformation are all around us. Perhaps the most common and yet unnoticed transformation is the miracle of photosynthesis.

Plants are able to absorb water, carbon dioxide and sunlight then transform it into glucose energy. As part of this process, plants release oxygen into the atmosphere as a by-product. We human beings benefit from this miracle of transformation. Plants form the basis of the food chain and they give us air we can breathe.

I wish I could explain to you the miracle of cows transforming grass into milk,

or acorns transforming into oaks or caterpillars transforming into butterflies or salmon transforming from saltwater fish into freshwater fish, but that’s a whole other level of complicated. Miracles of transformation are happening around us all the time.

Today, Easter Sunday, is a day when we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus is more than mere resuscitation, it is a miracle of transformation.

One of the classic Old Testament readings for Easter Sunday is Isaiah 65. In this passage we hear how God intends to transform the whole cosmos. From Isaiah 65, verse 17 we read…

17 “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. 18 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. 19 I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more. 20 “Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; the one who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere child; the one who fails to reacha hundred will be considered accursed. 21 They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 22 No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the work of their hands. 23 They will not labour in vain, nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the Lord, they and their descendants with them. 24 Before they call, I will answer; while they are still speaking, I will hear. 25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,” says the Lord.

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

God’s new creation:

You’ve probably heard of anagrams. An anagram is a word, or a phrase, created by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase. For example, you can rearrange the letters of the name Andrew to spell Warden.

The names Andrew and Warden are quite close in meaning. Andrew means manly or strong, while Warden means guardian or watchman. Not all anagrams are similar in meaning though.

Those anagrams which are opposite or contradictory in meaning are called antigrams. For example, you can rearrange the letters of the phrase entails sin to create the word saintliness. The antigram of the phrase ill fed is filled. On the sly becomes honestly and antagonist transforms into not against.

Fluster is actually restful in a muddle. Violence converts to its opposite, nice love. Ailed becomes ideal. And adultery changes to true lady. Just as we can transform the meaning of a word by rearranging its letters, so too God can transform our quality of life by rearranging our values and circumstances.

In verse 17 of Isaiah 65 the Lord God (Yahweh) says he will create new heavens and a new earth. This does not mean God plans to throw out the existing heavens and earth. Rather it means God is going to transform this world into something far better.

In the Genesis accounts of creation, God rearranges the elements of chaos to create order so that life can flourish. In doing this, God did not destroy what was there, he transformed it into something functional and beautiful, into a paradise.    

Likewise, when God raised Jesus from the dead, he didn’t destroy Jesus’ earthly body. Rather he transformed Jesus’ corpse into a spiritual body, a body that would not get sick or age but would be fit for eternity. A body made new with the stuff of heaven and yet still bearing the scars of his earthly experience.  

In verse 17 the Lord God goes on to say, the former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.

This indicates God’s renewed creation will be fully realized in the age to come. The current age we are living in now is drawing to a close and when it does the things we have suffered in this life will be forgotten, like a bad dream.

Indeed, the start of the next age (when God makes all things new) will be like waking up to the reality of what God originally intended for his creation.

From grief to joy:

In verses 18-19 we read of the first transformation, from grief to joy.

From weeping and crying to rejoicing and delight. From funeral to real fun.

(That’s right, if you rearrange the letters of the word funeral you get real fun, it’s an antigram.)

Verse 19 highlights the transformation of Jerusalem, the holy city.

In Matthew 23, Jesus lamented over Jerusalem saying, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!”

In the age to come, the new Jerusalem will be transformed from a source of grief to a source of joy and a delight to the Lord. The thing that strikes us here is that God suffers with people. When bombs rain down on homes, when parents lose their children, when families are torn apart, God is grieved.

By the same token, when human beings treat each other with justice and compassion, when we exercise self-restraint for the well-being of others,

when we turn away from violence and greed, then perhaps we put a smile on God’s face and a warm glow in his heart.

From death to life:

The next picture of transformation is from death to life, or more accurately from an untimely death to long life. 20 “Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years…

The average life expectancy in New Zealand these days is 82 years and 9 months. A little less for men, a little more for women. In 1960 the average life expectancy was a touch over 70 years.

The oldest human being, in recent history, was a French woman who lived to be 122 years old. The oldest living land animal is a giant tortoise (named Jonathon) who is thought to be at least 192 years old.

But these ages are nothing compared to some varieties of trees. The largest living kauri tree (Tāne Mahuta) is estimated to be roughly 2000 years old, give or take.

In verse 22 of Isaiah 65, the Lord says, ‘For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people’. This is a proverbial way of saying, that in the age to come (in God’s new creation) people will live much longer than the 70-80 years we are used to. People will live for hundreds of years.

Now for those who are feeling the aches and pains of getting older, that might sound like a terrible thought. But it’s not, for these extra years will be good ones, filled with health and vitality. As verse 20 says, one who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere child.

In the book of Job chapter 14, Job laments the brevity of human life and the finality of death saying…

7 “At least there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail. 8 Its roots may grow old in the ground and its stump die in the soil, 9 yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth shoots like a plant. 10 But a man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last and is no more.

There’s a Norwegian spruce tree growing in Sweden which (according to carbon dating) is over nine and half thousand years old. However, it is not the original tree. When the trunk and branches die, the roots remain alive and grow a new trunk and branches. Some trees can do this.

But human beings are not like that. When a person dies, we don’t sprout a new body and limbs. There is a finality to death which mocks life’s meaning and cuts hope short.

Many centuries after the time of Job, Jesus conquered sin and death on the cross. God raised Jesus to eternal life on the third day and now humanity has hope of another life, a more abundant life, after death.

From frustration to fulfilment:

Returning to God’s vision for his creation in Isaiah 65, so far we have observed the transformation from grief to joy and from death to life. Now we note a third transformation, from frustration to fulfilment.

I’m working on a little building project on my days off at the moment, making a small retaining wall in one part of the garden where there is risk of erosion. This has involved digging some holes for the posts.

Unfortunately, the ground is hard and compacted with lots of tree roots in the way. While the tree roots help to provide stability for the soil, they also make digging quite frustrating. Rather than breaking my spade and my back, I decided to buy a manual post hole borer.

It worked like a dream, peeling through the dirt and slicing up the tree roots. The right tool for the job, transforming frustration into fulfilment.

Anyway, the next morning after digging the holes, I was woken by a heavy downpour. The first thing I thought, on hearing the rain on the roof was, what’s happened to my holes. Hope the rain hasn’t washed away my hard work, because that would be really frustrating. 

By God’s grace (and the shelter provided by a camelia tree) the holes survived and frustration was avoided.

In verses 21-23 of Isaiah 65, the Lord says to his people…

21 They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 22 No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat… my chosen ones will long enjoy the work of their hands. 23 They will not labour in vain, nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune;

Note the three crippling frustrations in these verses. The loss of houses, the loss of income, and the even more devastating loss of seeing your children suffer misfortune. Home, work and family. These are things we can identify with.

Many people in this world work hard to establish some form of security, they labour to have something to hold on to and something that will hold them, only to have it ripped away by forces beyond their control. Sometimes the things we hoped would be fulfilling turn out to be frustrating.   

But this is not what God wants for humanity. The Lord’s vision for the age to come is one of fulfilment, not frustration. A future in which his people enjoy the fruits of their labours and get to see their children doing well.

Previously, in Isaiah 64, the prophet had cried out to the Lord in frustration…

1 Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down… 10 Oh, look on us, we pray, for we are all your people. Your sacred cities have become a wasteland… 12 After all this, Lord, will you hold yourself back? Will you keep silent and punish us beyond measure?

This shows the great chasm the people felt between themselves and God.

The Lord seemed distant and indifferent to their suffering.

We all have times like that don’t we. Times of desolation when we feel like God has forsaken us, that he doesn’t care. Times of frustration in prayer when we desperately desire God to intervene and come to our aid, but we get no response.

In verse 24 of Isaiah 65, the Lord answers the prophet’s prayer of frustration, saying:Before they call, I will answer; while they are still speaking, I will hear.

In the age to come, the frustration of unanswered prayer will be forgotten.

The Lord will be so close to his people that we will know the fulfilment of God’s presence in real time.

To be heard and understood is a precious thing. It makes us feel less alone, more connected. This kind of intimacy with God is what eternal life is like.

From harm to harmony:

We are talking about the transformation God envisions for his creation. It is a transformation from grief to joy, from death to life, from frustration to fulfilment and from harm to harmony. 

In verse 25 we read…

25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,” says the Lord.

This verse may sound familiar; it is found in Isaiah 11 as well.

In this world, the age in which we live, the wolf is the proverbial enemy of the lamb. Wolves are ferocious predators and lambs are defenseless creatures. Wolves (as we know them) do harm to lambs. But, in the next age, the wolf will do no harm to the lamb. To the contrary, wolves and lambs will live in harmony.

In this world, lions eat meat and they pose a threat. They are to be feared.

But in the age to come (in God’s perfect world) lions will be vegetarians and pose no threat. This is a parable. Wolves and lions represent the strong and powerful, while lambs represent the weak and vulnerable.

The Old Testament scholar, John Goldingay, explains…

Harmony in the animal world is a metaphor for harmony in the human world. The strong and the powerful (the wolves and lions) will live together with the weak and the powerless (the lambs) because the weak and the powerless can believe the strong and powerful are no longer seeking to devour them. [1] 

The mention of the serpent eating dust is a reminder of Genesis 3, where the snake tempted Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. In God’s vision for the future, sin and temptation will be under our feet. Sin and temptation will have no power over us.

The harm we experience in this world will be transformed into harmony. All of God’s creatures living in peace and respectful relationship with one another.

Conclusion:

Isaiah 65 is a picture of paradise. It is life as God intended it. It is the kingdom of heaven on earth. It is creation raised from the dead. Sadly, the world we live in is like a desert in comparison. It may seem to us that Isaiah 65 is just pie in the sky, a mere pipe dream that will never be realised.

Well, if it was up to human beings to realise the vision of Isaiah 65, then we would have to agree, just pie in the sky, opium for the masses. But it does not depend on us. It depends on God Almighty, and all things are possible with God.

God’s sovereignty sets the tone for the vision of Isaiah 65. In verse 17 the Lord says that he will create new heavens and a new earth. We could no more bring about our own transformation than we could raise ourselves from the dead.         

The renewing of God’s creation is God’s work. The resurrection of Jesus is the first fruits, the down payment guaranteeing God’s commitment to make all things new. Knowing God plans to transform and renew his creation gives us real hope for the future.

When we are overwhelmed by grief, we recover some joy and strength from knowing that grief will not have the last word.

When death cuts life short or we feel like our life is going too fast, we remember that this life is not all there is. The best is yet to come for those who are in Christ Jesus.

When our prayers, our work and our plans for our family are frustrated by forces beyond our control, we find consolation in trusting that God works all things for good in fulfilment of his redemptive purpose.

And when the wolves of this world devour the lambs, when the strong crush the weak, when harm is done to people and the planet, we live in the light of the age to come (the age of harmony). We take responsibility to care for others and protect the environment, to the extent we can.

Let us pray…

Sovereign God, we thank you for the hope that is ours through faith in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. May your vision for the transformation of the cosmos be real in our minds. Keep our feet on the ground as we walk through this world with you. Through Jesus we pray. Amen. 

Questions for discussion or reflection:

  1. What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?
  2. What miracles of transformation do you observe in the natural world? What miracles of transformation do you observe in history? What miracles of transformation do you observe in your own life?
  3. What does it mean for God to ‘create’ in Isaiah 65? What does Isaiah 65 show us about God’s intention for his creation?
  4. How does Jesus’ resurrection relate to the vision of Isaiah 65?
  5. Discuss / reflect on the four main transformations envisioned in Isaiah 65. That is: from grief to joy, from death to life, from frustration to fulfilment and from harm to harmony.
  6. What frustrations have you experienced in your life? How might we deal with our frustrations? What fulfilments can you give God thanks for?
  7. What difference does the vision of Isaiah 65 make for us now, today?  

[1] Refer John Goldingay’s commentary on Isaiah, page 85.

Tawa Baptist

God’s Control & Compassion

Scripture: Genesis 41:1-40

Video Link: https://youtu.be/BkeLVZRDzN0

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Genesis 41:1-8
  • Genesis 41:9-16
  • Genesis 41:25-32
  • Genesis 41:33-40
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

Many of you will know the story of king Canute. Canute the Great was king of England about a thousand years ago. He was a good ruler and the country enjoyed peace and prosperity during his reign.

One day king Canute decided to demonstrate to his flattering courtiers that there were some things outside of his control. To do this he set up his throne on the seashore and commanded the incoming tide to halt.

The tide continued to rise, of course, washing over his legs.

Then the king stood up and said, ‘Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth and sea obey by eternal laws’.

King Canute then hung his crown on a crucifix and never wore it again to honour God the Almighty King. 

Today we continue our sermon series in the life of Joseph by focusing on Genesis 41, verse 1-40. In this passage, we see that God is in control and God is compassionate. God’s control and his compassion go together.

From verses 1-8 of Genesis 41 we read…

Genesis 41:1-8

1 When two full years had passed, Pharaoh had a dream: He was standing by the Nile, 2 when out of the river there came up seven cows, sleek and fat, and they grazed among the reeds. 3 After them, seven other cows, ugly and gaunt, came up out of the Nile and stood beside those on the riverbank. 4 And the cows that were ugly and gaunt ate up the seven sleek, fat cows. Then Pharaoh woke up. 5 He fell asleep again and had a second dream: Seven heads of grain, healthy and good, were growing on a single stalk. 6 After them, seven other heads of grain sprouted—thin and scorched by the east wind. 7 The thin heads of grain swallowed up the seven healthy, full heads. Then Pharaoh woke up; it had been a dream. 8 In the morning his mind was troubled, so he sent for all the magicians and wise men of Egypt. Pharaoh told them his dreams, but no one could interpret them for him.

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

In Roald Dahl’s book, ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, five children win golden tickets for a guided tour through Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Four of the five kids are used to always getting what they want and because of this they come to a sticky end.

Charlie is the only child who knows what it is to not get what he wants, and he is the only one to make it out unscathed.

You see, the problem with always getting what we want is that it creates the illusion that we are in control when, in reality, we are not.

Yes, we do have choices and we can control ourselves if we put our mind to it. But ultimately, we are limited in what we can do.

There are forces at work in the world more powerful than us which we must submit to. Trying to maintain the illusion that we are in control creates a great deal of stress and anxiety. Ultimately, we function better when we trust our lives to God.   

Unfortunately, Pharaoh is used to having his own way. He is the dictator of the Egyptian empire. He can have whatever he wants whenever he wants. This only serves to strengthen the illusion that he is in control.

For Pharaoh’s own good, God dismantles the illusion by giving Pharaoh a dream. God needed to disturb Pharaoh to get his attention. As king of the land, Pharaoh was not used to being disturbed. A man in his position had assistants who filtered out much of the riff raff and bad news.

But there is no filter for our dreams. We cannot control the great ocean of the unconscious.

Pharaoh’s dreams were frightening. It cannot be pleasant watching a scrawny cow eating a fat cow. Cows are supposed to eat grass, not each other. Same thing with grain. Both dreams depicted something outside of Pharaoh’s control and he did not know how to interpret them.  

Pharaoh was probably also disturbed by the fact that the River Nile featured in his dream. The ancient Egyptians believed the River Nile, and its annual flooding, were the source of life, fertility and prosperity.

Unlike Palestine, which relied on rainfall for successful crops, Egypt relied on the Nile. As long as the Nile watered everything, the people were happy and Pharaoh’s throne was secure. Any threat to the Nile was a threat to Pharaoh’s power.

Pharaoh’s magicians and wise men cannot figure out Pharaoh’s dream either, which only exacerbates Pharaoh’s anxiety. And this is where Joseph comes in. From verse 9 we read…

Genesis 41:9-16

9 Then the chief cupbearer said to Pharaoh, “Today I am reminded of my shortcomings. 10 Pharaoh was once angry with his servants, and he imprisoned me and the chief baker in the house of the captain of the guard. 11 Each of us had a dream the same night, and each dream had a meaning of its own. 12 Now a young Hebrew was there with us, a servant of the captain of the guard. We told him our dreams, and he interpreted them for us, giving each man the interpretation of his dream. 13 And things turned out exactly as he interpreted them to us: I was restored to my position, and the other man was hanged.” 14 So Pharaoh sent for Joseph, and he was quickly brought from the dungeon. When he had shaved and changed his clothes, he came before Pharaoh. 15 Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I had a dream, and no one can interpret it. But I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.”

16 “I cannot do it,” Joseph replied to Pharaoh, “but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires.”

Joseph in Pharaoh’s court reminds us, a little, of Charlie in the Chocolate Factory. When Charlie won his golden ticket, things changed for him, and quite quickly. He was lifted out of poverty and his dreams came true. It was similar for Joseph.

Joseph’s sudden rise from the dungeon to the palace sounds a note of hope for us. Sometimes when we are in the pit, we can feel like we have no future, with nothing good to look forward to. The truth is none of us knows what’s around the corner. God can change things for the better very quickly, so don’t give up.

When we feel down and out, we do well to remember the words of Jesus, the first shall be last and the last shall be first. 

Joseph did not abandon his hope in God. Joseph remained close to the Lord in prison. Then, when his opportunity came, he was ready.      

Standing before Pharaoh, Joseph was under no illusion as to the limits of his power and control. Joseph understands he can no more interpret Pharaoh’s dreams than hold back the tide. Joseph is quick to credit God as the one with the answer Pharaoh desires.

What we notice here, in verse 16, is Joseph’s complete confidence in God. Despite everything he has been through, Joseph is totally convinced that God is in control, not Pharaoh or anyone else. More than this, Joseph also believes God is compassionate.

Joseph listens carefully while the king retells his dreams…

Genesis 41:25-32

25 Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, “The dreams of Pharaoh are one and the same. God has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do. 26 The seven good cows are seven years, and the seven good heads of grain are seven years; it is one and the same dream. 27 The seven lean, ugly cows that came up afterward are seven years, and so are the seven worthless heads of grain scorched by the east wind: They are seven years of famine. 28 “It is just as I said to Pharaoh: God has shown Pharaoh what he is about to do. 29 Seven years of great abundance are coming throughout the land of Egypt, 30 but seven years of famine will follow them. Then all the abundance in Egypt will be forgotten, and the famine will ravage the land. 31 The abundance in the land will not be remembered, because the famine that follows it will be so severe. 32 The reason the dream was given to Pharaoh in two forms is that the matter has been firmly decided by God, and God will do it soon.

Have you ever looked at a puzzle or a problem and not been able to make sense of it? Then someone comes along with the insight you need which unlocks the answer for you. All at once everything makes sense. In hindsight it seems so obvious.

This is what God does for Pharaoh through Joseph. God unlocks the meaning of the dream. Pharaoh does not question or doubt the interpretation. It all makes sense the moment it is explained.

What is perhaps less obvious is the way Joseph repeatedly underlines the fact that God is in control and God is compassionate.

In verse 16, Joseph says God will give the answer.

Then in verses 25 & 28, Joseph says that God has revealed what he is going to do.

And in verse 32 we read that, God has decided the matter, it will happen soon. 

Joseph is speaking truth to power in these verses and the message is clear: ‘Pharaoh, you are not in control of this. You have no say in the matter. But don’t worry. God is in control and God is compassionate.’

That is a brave statement for Joseph to make. Especially to a man who could take his head off.

The idea that God is in control is not difficult to grasp; we see this in the way Joseph says, God will do it soon, the matter is firmly decided.

It’s a little harder, though, to see how God’s compassion comes into it. After all, the seven good years are followed by seven years of famine, so severe that the good years are forgotten. 

Well, we see God’s compassion in the warning he gives. God is not angry with Egypt. There is no call to repentance here. The seven years of famine are not a judgement or a punishment. They are simply bad weather.

God has revealed to Pharaoh what’s going to happen,so Pharaoh can take action ahead of time to save lives. God, in his compassion, gives a long-range weather forecast so the king can avoid a humanitarian crisis.

There was a problem with one of the air forces’ planes during the week which meant our Prime Minister was late to some important meetings in Australia. I kept thinking, how good it was that our air force personnel were on to it and detected the fault before the plane took off.

The flight might have ended badly if the plane had taken off with faulty landing gear. To my mind, God’s control of the situation and his compassion were at work through the care and initiative of the air force crew.     

For some people, the story of Pharaoh’s dream raises a philosophical question. Is the future fixed or flexible? Is the future closed or open? Is the course of history set in stone or more fluid, like a braided river?

Well, I don’t think we can draw any firm conclusions based solely on Pharaoh’s dream and Joseph’s interpretation. It would appear, from a broader reading of Scripture, that God does determine some things in advance but not everything.

The fact that God, in his inscrutable wisdom, predetermined seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine, in Genesis 41, does not negate human initiative.

As Walter Brueggemann points out, the fixed purpose of God is no occasion for human abdication. God’s purpose is not the end of human planning but the ground for it.  

Knowing what God has planned is no excuse for throwing our hands in the air and saying, there’s nothing we can do anyway. To the contrary, knowing God’s purpose for the future gives clarity about how to proceed in the present. The choices we make matter.

This is certainly how Joseph sees it. Joseph is confident in God. He does not wait to hear if Pharaoh agrees with his interpretation. Joseph sees himself primarily as a servant of Yahweh, more than a servant of Pharaoh.

With this in view, Joseph offers a prudent response, a plan of action to save Egypt. From verse 33 Joseph says…

Genesis 41:33-40

33 “And now let Pharaoh look for a discerning and wise man and put him in charge of the land of Egypt. 34 Let Pharaoh appoint commissioners over the land to take a fifth of the harvest of Egypt during the seven years of abundance. 35 They should collect all the food of these good years that are coming and store up the grain under the authority of Pharaoh, to be kept in the cities for food. 36 This food should be held in reserve for the country, to be used during the seven years of famine that will come upon Egypt, so that the country may not be ruined by the famine.”

One thing that churches throughout the country are wrestling with currently is the ever-increasing cost of insurance. If we knew when disaster was going to strike, we could prepare for it.

But, unlike Pharaoh and Joseph, we don’t know what the future holds. We live by faith. Thankfully, the life of the church and our salvation are not based on our insurance policy. The future of the church depends on God. And Jesus has said, ‘I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it’.

Bearing that in mind, it is still prudent to have insurance if you can afford it. Joseph’s plan is to insure against the coming years of famine by putting aside the overflow of the good years.      

37 The plan seemed good to Pharaoh and to all his officials. 38 So Pharaoh asked them, “Can we find anyone like this man, one in whom is the spirit of God?”  39 Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has made all this known to you, there is no one so discerning and wise as you. 40 You shall be in charge of my palace, and all my people are to submit to your orders. Only with respect to the throne will I be greater than you.”

Pharaoh, a man who up till that point in his life had trusted in a river, found faith to publicly acknowledge that the ‘spirit of God’ is in Joseph.

And while it is not clear what Pharaoh meant by the ‘spirit of God’, it is clear that Pharaoh trusted Joseph in a very real way. For Pharaoh made Joseph second in command of the entire Egyptian empire.  

Throughout today’s reading we have seen Joseph’s confidence in God. Now we observe Pharaoh’s confidence in Joseph and his faith in God.

Pharaoh is like king Canute in the way he recognizes the limits of his power and control. Pharaoh understands he can no more prevent the coming famine than he can hold back the tide.

By handing Joseph the keys of his kingdom, Pharaoh acknowledges that God is in control and God is compassionate.

Conclusion:

When we look at the world we live in today, a world scarred by war, hunger, injustice, climate change and a whole catalogue of evils, it may be difficult to swallow this belief that God is in control and God is compassionate. If that is true, if God is in control and God is compassionate, then why is there so much suffering in the world?

God has not given us an explanation for suffering. Instead, God has given us his Son, Jesus, who shares in the suffering of the world.

When you are in the thick of it, you don’t need an explanation. What you need is to know that you are not alone and the suffering will not last. The best is yet to come. Jesus’ death and resurrection communicate divine presence and hope in ways that words cannot.

God sent Jesus to establish the kingdom of heaven on earth. Whether we can see it or not, the Spirit of Jesus is at work in the world to bring an end to the chaos and violence. Jesus came to make all things new.

Herod could not prevent the birth of Jesus and Pilate could not prevent the death of Jesus. For God had already decided that Jesus would be born human, die on a cross and raised to eternal life. 

It may not be in our power to stop the crisis in Gaza or the war in Ukraine or domestic violence in New Zealand. But it is in our power to put our faith and hope in Jesus. And so that is what we do.    

May God open our eyes to see his control and compassion at work in the world around us. Amen.

Questions for discussion or reflection:

What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?

  • What sorts of things are outside of our control? What, in your life, can you control? What strategies do you have for dealing with the things you cannot control?
  • Can you think of a time when God lifted you out of a pit? What happened? How does that experience strengthen you to face the future? 
  • Why does Joseph tell Pharaoh that he cannot interpret dreams, but God will give Pharaoh the answer?  
  • In what ways do we see God’s control and God’s compassion at work in Genesis 41? In what ways can you see God’s control and God’s compassion at work in the world today?
  • Why does God reveal the future to Pharaoh? What plans do you have for the future? How do your plans fit with what you know of God’s plans? 
  • Discuss/reflect on the ways Jesus embodies/works out God’s control and compassion. 
Tawa Baptist

Owls

Scriptures: Isaiah 34:8-15 & 43:18-21

Video Link: https://youtu.be/gbOgWsraLvk

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • God’s vengeance (Isaiah 34)
  • God’s salvation (Isaiah 43)
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

There’s a saying, ‘birds of a feather flock together’. It means, people with things in common tend to be found together.

Birds of the same kind do often flock together, but not always. Owls tend to be a relatively solitary bird for the most part. Only very rarely do you see them together. But, in the unlikely event you were to see a group of owls in one place, what would you call them?  [Wait] That’s right, a parliament of owls.

Other descriptors might include a wisdom of owls or a congress or a hooping or an eyrie or a looming or a stare and so on. All these words indicate the way owls haunt the human imagination. There’s something a little bit spooky about this bird.

Today we conclude our sermon series on Birds of the Bible, with the owl. Many people associate the owl with wisdom, as in ‘the wise old owl’. That idea comes from Greek mythology. In ancient Greece, the little owl was the companion of Athena the Greek goddess of wisdom. 

In Scripture, the owl is not really associated with wisdom. More often the owl is associated with sleepless nights, loneliness and alienation, desolation and judgement. There is a certain sense of foreboding (like a bad omen) that accompanies the owl.

With this in view, it is not surprising that owls appear several times in the Old Testament prophetic books. Our message today focuses on two occurrences of owls in the book of Isaiah. Let’s begin with chapter 34, verses 8-13.  

God’s vengeance

8 For the Lord has a day of vengeance, a year of vindication for Zion’s cause. 9 And the streams of Edomshall be turned into tar and her soil into sulfur; her land shall become burning tar. 10 Night and day it shall not be quenched; its smoke shall go up forever. From generation to generation it shall lie waste; no one shall pass through it forever and ever. 11 But the desert owland the screech owl shall possess it; the great owl and the raven shall live in it. He shall stretch the line of confusion and the plummet of chaos over it…  13 Thorns shall grow over its strongholds, nettles and thistles in its fortresses. It shall be the haunt of jackals, an abode for ostriches. 14 Wildcats shall meet with hyenas; goat-demons shall call to each other; there also Lilith shall repose and find a place to rest. 15 There shall the owl nest and lay and hatch and brood in its shadow; there also the buzzards shall gather, each one with its mate.

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

Owls are raptors. They are birds of prey. Owls have very good night vision and excellent hearing. The shape of the owl’s face funnels sound to their ears, magnifying what they hear up to ten times. Owls are keen listeners.

Put that together with super strong talons, natural camouflage and the ability to fly silently and that makes owls stealth hunters.

Like the sparrow, owls are resilient hardy birds found all over the world except Antarctica. They know how to survive. Fossil records show that owls have been around for about 55 million years. Significantly longer than human beings.

Owls will typically feed the oldest and strongest of their young first. This means if food is scarce, the smaller weaker owlets tend to starve while the fittest of the next generation survive. Owls are very unlike God in this way.

Nevertheless, owls are helpful to humankind. Farmers like to keep owls around as pest control. A barn owl can eat up to 1000 mice a year, usually swallowing them whole. Later it will regurgitate the bones and fur in the form of a pellet.

In Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, the owl is a symbol of death, used to portray evil and darkness. The sound of the owl marks the death of Duncan, haunting Lady Macbeth. But long before Shakespeare, the prophet Isaiah associated the owl with ominous and fearful forces.  

In our reading earlier, from Isaiah 34, the prophet talks about God’s vengeance on the nations that have opposed the people of Israel. In particular, Isaiah foresees a day when God will smash Edom.

Edom (not to be confused with the cheese) is the people group descended from Esau. Esau was Jacob’s twin brother. Esau’s descendants became the nation of Edom and Jacob’s descendants became the nation of Israel.

Human parents, in the ancient world, treated their children in much the same way that owls treat their young. The oldest and strongest male was favoured and given the lion’s share of the estate.  

Esau was the oldest and therefore in line to inherit the land and birth right, while Jacob (the younger twin) would have to make do with the leftovers. This did not make for good family dynamics. Jacob cheated Esau out of his inheritance so there was bad blood between them.

Although Jacob and Esau did eventually make peace, the bad blood lingered with their descendants. The people of Edom treated the Israelites with aggression and cruelty.  

The worst of it though, was the way Edom allied itself with the Babylonians. (Birds of a feather flock together.) When the Babylonian army laid siege to Jerusalem, the people of Edom supported the Babylonians and after the city had been sacked, the Edomites plundered what remained. No love lost.  

Because of their violent opposition to God’s people and to God’s purpose, Isaiah predicted the destruction of Edom, saying the land of Edom would become the possession of the desert owl, the screech owl and the great owl.

Owls do not build their own nests. Rather, they take over the nests of other birds. So, from the perspective of Israel, who had lost their home to the Babylonians, the imagery of owls inhabiting Edom was poetic justice.

The owl’s association with darkness and evil comes out even more clearly in verses 14 & 15, where the prophet Isaiah puts the nesting owl alongside goat demons and Lilith.

Goat demons are a mythical creature, half goat, half man. And Lilith is the name of a demoness of the night who was thought to devour new born babies. These evil creatures were the stuff nightmares are made of and so they serve Isaiah’s poetry well.

Reading about God’s vengeance like this is a bit disturbing. As Christians we are more familiar with Jesus who is full of grace and compassion. Jesus who teaches us to love our enemies and turn the other cheek and so on. How do we reconcile the vengeance of God with the mercy of God?

Well, God’s vengeance is one aspect of his justice. God’s justice and mercy are not separate. They are one, just as God is one. The God of the Old Testament is the same as the God of the New Testament. God is consistently fair and measured in his response to evil.

We see the oneness of God’s justice and mercy in the way he contains Lilith. Following the logic of Isaiah’s poetry, if Lilith eats babies, then to read that she is at rest in a desolate and isolated place is a comfort, because it means she is not hurting children anymore.          

Likewise, if a nation is loose in the world doing harm, like Edom was, then it is not merciful of God to ignore that nation and look the other way. The just and merciful thing is to give that nation the opportunity to change their ways and if they don’t change, then the next step is to stop that nation from continuing to do harm.

God has every right to protect his creation from those who abuse it. That’s what God’s vengeance is, a just and merciful response to stop evil.

In Isaiah 34, the prophet is dressing an old wound. The Israelites have suffered much at the hands of the Edomites and Isaiah wants to clean up the wound so it can heal without becoming septic.

Think of it this way. If someone does serious violence to you or someone you love, then you will quite rightly feel angry with them and want that person stopped. You will also need to find a way to safely vent your rage, so it doesn’t eat away at you from the inside out and turn you bitter.

Forgiveness is a process which involves letting go of your anger in a way that does no harm. The poetry of Isaiah 34 provided Israel with a way to release their anger and their fear so they could forgive the past and not turn septic.

The words of Isaiah 34 give the people of God faith to leave vengeance in the Lord’s hands and move forward with hope. If you believe that God is going to carry out justice on your behalf, then it protects you (to some degree) from going down the path of violence yourself.

We have heard recently how Christians in the state of Manipur, in India, are being persecuted, with many churches burned to the ground. We feel for the believers in Manipur and pray for God to protect them and help them.

I’m not sure how I would respond if faced with that sort of violence. I pray that we would never have to find out. Lord, save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil.

Isaiah 34, with its graphic description of God’s vengeance, may be confronting to many of us, but I imagine it is a comfort to those who are abused for their faith. It helps to know God will right the wrongs committed against his people.

Okay, so we have heard how owls are associated with death and the aftermath of God’s vengeance. But vengeance does not have the last word, for the prophets generally follow a message of judgement with a message of hope.

God’s salvation

God’s vengeance serves his greater plan of salvation. Later, in Isaiah, owls are depicted as honouring God.  From chapter 43, verses 18-21, we read…  

16 This is what the Lord says… 18 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 19 See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. 20 The wild animals honour me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, 21 the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.

In a nutshell, Isaiah’s message in these verses is: don’t be blinded by the past, be open to the future.

There’s an advertisement on TV at the moment for Ford motorcars. It quotes Henry Ford saying: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said, faster horses.” Henry Ford was a man of vision, an innovator. He was not blinded by the past. He was open to the future and to new possibilities. 

Isaiah 43 was written for the Jewish exiles in Babylon. The exiles probably felt a bit like the owl; lonely and alienated, living in a spiritually desolate place, surrounded by evil. Remembering the stories of their past (how God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt) had a soothing affect. The old familiar stories were a comfort, like a security blanket.

Isaiah was aware that dwelling on the past was holding people back. The past can become an idealised world into which we retreat when the future becomes too frightening to face. The Jewish exiles were at risk of looking so long at a door that had closed that they would miss the new door of salvation God was opening.

Don’t dwell on the past can also mean, let go of your hurt and anger. There is a time and place for contemplating God’s vengeance and for venting your rage but, once you have got it out of your system, don’t wallow in self-pity and resentment. Move forward. Don’t be blinded by the hurts of the past.

In verse 19 the Lord says: See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?  This is a call to be open to the future.

After some decades the Babylonian empire was conquered by the Medes who took a different approach. In 538 BC (around 50 years after the fall of Jerusalem) King Cyrus released the Jewish exiles, allowing them to return to their homeland to rebuild the Jerusalem temple.

On the one hand this was good news but, at the same time, it was also challenging. The Jewish exiles had become quite settled in Babylon. The prospect of picking up sticks and making a long journey through the wilderness to resettle in Palestine would have been daunting.

They were returning to ruins. They would have to rebuild from scratch. They needed reassurance and encouragement, so the Lord says…

I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

God was promising to provide what the people needed to return and rebuild a new life in Jerusalem. 

Are you facing a daunting prospect at the moment? Are you facing challenges that feel overwhelming? Let me say to you: The Lord is able to make a way for you when you cannot see a way for yourself. Look to him to lead you.

The idea of God making a way in the wilderness continues in verse 20, where the Lord talks about the jackals and the owls honouring him because of the new thing he is doing.

Previously, in Isaiah 34, we read how the jackals and owls prowled among the ruins. They were associated with God’s vengeance, with chaos and evil spirits. Now, in chapter 43, Isaiah reintroduces the jackals and owls, not as sinister prowlers, but this time as giving honour to God. This is new and different.

The image here is one of salvation. Given that God can transform the owl from an omen of evil and death to a symbol of praise and new life, how much more will the Lord redeem his people.

Isaiah’s words are full of hope. The Lord Almighty is a creative, redemptive God, committed to the healing of his entire creation. Ultimately, even owls and jackals have a place, serving a positive purpose in God’s plan of salvation.

Conclusion:

The very things we dread and fear are often the things God uses to redeem us. We see the way of God’s salvation fulfilled in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. God used the cross, an instrument of cruelty, vengeance and shame, to serve his purpose of forgiveness, reconciliation and salvation.

May the Lord bless you and keep. May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance on you and give you peace. Amen.

Questions for discussion or reflection:

What stands out for you in reading these Scriptures and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?

  • How do you feel when you hear an owl (or Morepork) calling at night? What comes to mind when you think of an owl?
  • Why does God declare vengeance on Edom? What purpose does God’s vengeance serve? How might the idea of God’s vengeance help us to let go of our anger and forgive those who do harm?
  • Why does Isaiah tell the Jewish exiles to forget the former things? Are there things from the past you need to let go of? 
  • What is your life situation at the moment? Are you facing a daunting prospect? Are you facing challenges that feel overwhelming? Whatever your situation, can you sense God’s presence, making a way for you? If so, how?
  • In what way(s) is the characterisation of the owl in Isaiah 34, different from Isaiah 43? What does this change show us about God’s ultimate purpose?
Tawa Baptist

Chickens

Scriptures: Luke 13:31-35, Proverbs 30:29-31 and Luke 22:33-34 & 54-62

Video Link: https://youtu.be/HJdg6OUzr2M

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • The protective hen
  • The conceited rooster
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

There are literally hundreds of jokes that start with the question, ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ Unfortunately, none of them (that I could find) are that funny. I did come across one chicken joke though that almost made me laugh…

‘I dream of a world where chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned.’ 

Today we continue our series on Birds of the Bible, by focusing on the Chicken. Unlike the eagle or the dove, chickens don’t get mentioned a lot in the Bible but when they are mentioned it is in relation to significant events.

Our message today features the hen (which is a mother chicken) and the rooster (a male chicken). Let us start with the hen.

The protective hen:

From the gospel of Luke chapter 13, verses 31-35, we read…

31 At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.”
32 Jesus replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’ 33 In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem! 34 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. 35 Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

The main image here is that of a protective mother hen. The instinct of Jesus (and indeed of God) is to protect people from harm, like a mother hen instinctively protects her chicks.

This image of a mother hen protecting her young would have instantly connected with Jesus’ middle eastern audience 2000 years ago. However, when we in the 21st Century western world think of a chicken, we don’t necessarily make the same intuitive connection. For us today, the chicken is a symbol of foolish fear or cowardice.  

This is because we have been influenced by the 19th Century fable Chicken Little (aka Henny Penny). If you remember, Chicken Little thought the sky was falling because an acorn fell on her head. In her panic she stirred up mass hysteria around the farmyard. In some versions of this story the cunning fox invites the anxious birds to his lair and eats them all.  

Contrary to popular belief, chickens are neither stupid nor cowardly. A mother hen will bravely defend her chicks.

Chickens are intelligent birds with keen senses. Like ravens, chickens are able to remember faces. And like human beings, chickens can see red, blue and green light. More impressive than that, they can also see ultra-violet light, which we can’t.

Chickens dream when they sleep, they have a REM cycle. They also have a sleep phase (that humans don’t have) called uni-hemispheric slow-wave sleep, where one half of the brain is asleep and the other half is awake. This means chickens can sleep with one eye open, which helps to protect them against predators.

Chickens make around 30 different sounds for communicating with each other. A mother hen is careful to teach her young how to survive by showing them what they can eat and what to avoid. Contrary to the prejudice created by Chicken Little, hens are actually smart and brave.

You would have noticed the reading from Luke 13 had a fox in it. The fox is the enemy of the chicken.

Unexpectedly, some Pharisees warn Jesus to leave the area because Herod wants to kill him. It appears that not all the Pharisees were against Jesus. Some could see he was doing good work and were looking out for him, even though they didn’t really understand Jesus’ purpose.

Herod was the puppet ruler in that region of Palestine. Herod was the one who had beheaded John the Baptist. Jesus replied: “Go tell that fox, ‘I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’…”

When we hear the word fox we might think ‘silver fox’, someone handsome and charming like George Clooney or Richard Gere. For us the term fox is a compliment. 

But in the culture Jesus was living in, to call someone a fox (silver or otherwise) was not a compliment. The fox was used by the Jews of the first century as a metaphor for an insignificant or worthless person, someone who has a destructive effect on society. So calling someone a fox was a bit of an insult. Jesus had no time for Herod.

Jesus is not afraid of Herod. Jesus will carry on his ministry of deliverance and healing until he has reached his goal and accomplished God’s purpose of salvation by going to the cross. Jesus’ courage comes from knowing it is God’s purpose for him to die to save the world.

In verse 34, of Luke 13, Jesus laments over the city of Jerusalem saying: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing…” 

There is quite bit going on in this verse. Firstly, we notice that Jesus views the city of Jerusalem from the perspective of God, as though he has been watching over the city (in sadness) for centuries.  

As the living Word of God, Jesus is revealing God’s heart and (in this context) it is the heart of a mother. The Lord is grieving for the people of Jerusalem. Jesus came offering the way of peace but the people rejected Jesus. As a consequence, Jesus could see disaster in the city’s future as there had been in its past.

In AD 70, nearly thirty years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Jews defied Rome and the Roman Army destroyed Jerusalem, killing over a million people in the process. The real tragedy was that this violence and suffering could have been avoided.

It is curious that Jesus compares God to a mother hen, the very essence of protective care. It’s like Jesus is saying, ‘True protection, true security is found in God’. Jesus could have used any number of images to convey the idea of protection and security.

Jesus could have compared God to some powerful creature, like a lion or a bear, which would easily kill a fox. Or he could have a compared God to a fortified tower or some kind of weapon. But Jesus does not go with military images, nor anything as strong as a lion or a bear. Jesus goes with the humble, down to earth, relatively vulnerable, very un-scary chicken. 

There is real tenderness in this image of a mother hen sheltering her chicks. Tenderness in contrast to violence.

You have probably heard about the shooting in Auckland this past week. We don’t know exactly what led the gunman to that point, but his actions do not leave us untouched. Perhaps, like Jesus, we may feel something of the weight of it, the sadness, the tragic loss. There are no words.    

Jesus’ choice of a mother hen to describe God’s heart for Jerusalem comes across as something of a minority report. The majority of the images we have of God (from the Bible) are masculine. God is our Father. He is Lord and King, a mighty warrior and so forth. All very male oriented. But here, in Luke 13, Jesus uses a feminine image in relation to God.

There is nothing wrong with the male images. They are okay as far as they go, as long as we remember they are only an approximation to help our limited human understanding. Really though, we can’t assign a specific gender to God. We can’t fit God into our traditional male / female stereotypes, or any other category for that matter. God is original, set apart, holy.

Jesus’ words about the people of Jerusalem not being willing to find shelter under God’s wings, imply a criticism of God’s people. Baby chicks instinctively hide under their mother’s wings when danger approaches. But the people of Jerusalem don’t seem to be aware of who their mother is, much less what to do when they sense a threat.  

What do we do when we feel anxious or threatened? Are we like Chicken Little, running around spreading our fear? Or do we run to God, who comforts and protects us like a mother hen? I guess most of us have done both (and other things besides) at some point in our lives.

We find shelter under the wings of God primarily through prayer. As Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians: Do not be anxious about anything but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

The conceited rooster:

Okay, so the hen represents God’s motherly protection and care. What about the rooster? What do we associate the rooster with?

Well, in Proverbs 30 we read: 29 “There are three things that are stately in their stride, four that move with stately bearing: 30 a lion, mighty among beasts, who retreats before nothing; 31 a strutting rooster, a he-goat, and a king secure against revolt.

In this context, a strutting rooster suggests fearlessness, bordering on arrogant conceit or at least over confidence. The rooster struts around as if he owns the place. The rooster is the very picture of a creature that thinks it is better than those around it. The rooster has ideas above his station.

Scientists have proven that chickens are the closest living relatives of the dinosaur. So there is a shared ancestry between chickens and Tyrannosaurus rex. Could this be one reason why the hen is brave and the rooster struts around so fearlessly? Who knows? What we do know is that the chicken is a survivor.

Perhaps the most well-known reference to a rooster in the Bible is in relation to Peter’s denial of Jesus. In Luke 22, the night before Jesus’ crucifixion, Peter says to Jesus: “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.”

Clearly, Peter feels fearless in this moment. Perhaps also he thinks of himself as somehow better than the other disciples? At the very least, Peter has an inflated view of himself.  

Jesus recognizes Peter’s conceit and answers: “I tell you Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny knowing me three times.”   

After Jesus had been arrested and taken to the house of the high priest, Peter followed at a distance, not exactly strutting like a rooster but still over confident.

As he warmed himself by the fire, Peter was asked three times if he was with Jesus and three times Peter denied knowing Jesus as his friend. After the third denial the rooster crowed and, at that moment…

61 The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: “Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times.” 62 And he went outside and wept bitterly.

Conceit is when our confidence exceeds our competence, so that we think we are better than we are.Conceit is very close to denial. Conceit blinds us. It prevents us from seeing ourselves accurately. Conceit turns us into roosters, strutting around like we own the place.

Peter didn’t think he was being conceited when he declared his willingness to die with Jesus. Peter totally believed in his own integrity and courage. He thought he was better than he actually was. 

We can’t help but feel sorry for Peter. His intentions were so good. He just wasn’t that self-aware. He thought he was brave and true. Now, every time he was woken by a rooster crowing, he would be reminded of his failure.

We all have a bit of rooster in us, a bit of arrogant conceit. At some point or other we have all strutted in our mind, thinking we are better than we are. The problem is, conceit often hides in our shadow. Your shadow is your blind spot, that aspect of your personality that you cannot see and therefore are inclined to deny.

The potential to act out of conceit is in each one of us. It’s just waiting for circumstance to pull the trigger.

Imagine, for example, you are playing a game with someone, maybe of scrabble or football or tennis or whatever you are into and believe you are good at. Now imagine your opponent beats you convincingly.

If you are surprised by your defeat and get upset (perhaps by blaming the ref or even accusing the opposition of cheating), then that is probably a sign of conceit. A red flag that says your confidence exceeds your competence. You are not as good as you thought you were.

I remember thinking in seventh form (Year 13), I would leave school with an A Bursary. I didn’t find the class work too difficult that year and felt like I’d done pretty well in my exams. As it turned out I got a B Bursary. I didn’t miss by much but I still missed. It wasn’t the end of the world but I certainly felt disgruntled by that result and wondered if the examiners had made a mistake in overlooking my brilliance.

Turns out I had been hood winked by my own conceit. My confidence exceeded my competence on that occasion. But there was valuable learning in that experience. I grew in my self-awareness, which is probably more important than getting an A Bursary. I learned I was not as smart as I thought I was, so I would need to work harder in life and I would need to ask for God’s help if I wanted to excel.

The truth about ourselves, mixed with a generous portion of grace, is how Jesus remedies our conceit.  Jesus forgave Peter and restored him. So Peter’s denial was not fatal. The hard part for Peter was forgiving himself, or more accurately, accepting himself. Faith includes accepting ourselves, even when we discover things in our character that we believe are unacceptable.

Jesus saw beyond the rooster in Peter. Jesus recognized Peter’s leadership potential and called Peter to feed his lambs, to take care of the fledgling church. Fortunately for us, Peter got over himself and became the leader Jesus always knew him to be.

The strength of Peter’s pastoral leadership was grounded in the reality of God’s grace. Peter could preach a gospel of grace, with humility, precisely because he had received and experienced Jesus’ grace for himself personally.

Of course, our inclination toward conceit is not something we can be cured of once and for all. We remain susceptible to conceit throughout this life. So we need to check ourselves from time to time.   

If you have ever been on a farm, you might have noticed the way chickens ruffle their feathers in the dirt. It might seem strange to us but they are actually cleaning themselves. We bathe in water, chickens bathe in dirt.

This is because chickens have a gland on their back which spreads oil over their feathers. The oil makes them water proof. After a while though, the oil goes stale. The chicken gets rid of the old oil by covering itself in dirt. The stale oil sticks to the dirt and comes off when the chicken shakes its feathers. Pretty clever really.

We get rid of our conceit in much the same way a chicken gets rid of its stale oil. By covering ourselves in dirt. Not by literally rolling in the dirt (although in ancient times people did actually repent in dust and ashes). But I’m speaking metaphorically.

The spiritual equivalent of rolling in the dirt, involves honest confession. Not denying the fact that we stink. But rather, facing the dirty truth about ourselves and shaking it off by asking God’s forgiveness.

Truth with grace is the cure for rooster like conceit.    

In many ways, I’m preaching to the choir. I don’t see anyone here as especially conceited. In fact, there may be some here who struggle with self-doubt, which is the opposite of conceit.

If conceit is when your confidence exceeds your competence (so you are not as good as you think you are), then self-doubt is when your competence exceeds your confidence, so you are actually better than you believe you are.

The remedy for self-doubt is the same as the remedy for conceit. Truth with grace. That means being on your own side and not sabotaging your mind with negative self-talk. It means graciously accepting encouragement and not beating yourself up if you fall short in some way. It means having confidence in God to support the choices you make and remembering you are a work in progress.   

God calls us to walk humbly with him. Humility is when our confidence matches our competence, so we have an accurate measure of ourselves.   

Whether we are more inclined to conceit or self-doubt, we are all partially blind and prone to denying the truth about ourselves. The good news is, God sees what’s in our heart, even if we can’t, and he loves us anyway. His grace is sufficient for us. 

Conclusion:

Neither Jesus, nor God, align themselves with the strutting rooster. Conceit has no place in the Kingdom of God. Instead, the Lord describes himself as being like a mother hen. A symbol of brave, protective care.

May you find shelter and tenderness under the wings of our God of peace. Amen.

Questions for discussion or reflection:

What stands out for you in reading these Scriptures and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?

  • Do you know any good chicken jokes?
  • Why did Jesus compare God to a mother hen? What thoughts or feelings does the image of a mother hen evoke for you?
  • What do you do when you feel anxious or threatened? How do you find shelter under the wings of God?
  • How is the image of the rooster different from that of the hen?
  • How might we know when we are being conceited? What is Jesus’ remedy for conceit?
  • What are some strategies for overcoming self-doubt?  
Tawa Baptist

Eagles

Scripture: Exodus 19:3-6 and Isaiah 40:27-31

Video Link: https://youtu.be/BVEFT_yjKSM

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Freedom with faithfulness
  • Strength with grace
  • Vision with patience
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

Today we continue our sermon series on ‘Birds of the Bible’ by focusing on eagles. Eagles are mentioned more than 30 times in the Scriptures, mostly in the Old Testament. There are many things we could say about eagles but three characteristics stand out: Freedom, strength and vision.

Freedom:

Let us begin with the eagle’s freedom. From Exodus 19 we read…

3 Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain and said, “This is what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: 4 ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, 6 youwill be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ 

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien uses eagles to rescue the Hobbits and their friends. When the Hobbits are outnumbered or in an impossible situation, the eagles come (at Gandolf’s command) and carry them away to safety. Tolkien borrowed this imagery from the Bible. 

Perhaps the most obvious characteristic of eagles is their freedom. Any bird with the ability to fly has freedom of course, but eagles have an even greater freedom than most because they are at the top of the food chain. They are an apex predator. The eagle is fearless.

Eagles are also one of those birds that mate for life, or at least until their mate dies. So as well as being free, the eagle is also a symbol of faithfulness.

In verse 4 of Exodus 19, Yahweh (the Lord God) talks about the freedom he secured for the nation of Israel. The people of Israel were being oppressed as slaves in Egypt and God delivered them, carrying them on eagles’ wings.

Eagles don’t actually carry their young (or anything else) on their wings, which is the point of the metaphor. God is using the eagle (a symbol of freedom and faithfulness) and making it do something that eagles don’t ordinarily do.

When God says to Israel, I carried you on eagles’ wings, he means something like, ‘I rescued you, Israel, from an impossible situation in a truly miraculous way. What I did in delivering you from Egypt has never been done before.’

We might read this passage and be so taken with the poetry of eagles’ wings that we miss what comes next. The Lord goes on to talk about faithfulness, saying: …if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.

Can you see how God puts freedom and faithfulness together?

To be faithful means obeying God and keeping his covenant. Following his law of love in other words. To be God’s treasured possession means that Israel will belong to the Lord in a special way. God is the creator of all there is and so everything belongs to God, but if Israel remains faithful to the Lord, they will be his Taonga, his prized treasure.  

In the islands you often see outrigger canoes. In Hawaii they are known as Wa‘a (Vah-ah). Outrigger canoes have at least one lateral support which give the canoe stability. 

Freedom is a wonderful gift to be given but it needs to be balanced by faithfulness. If freedom is the canoe, then faithfulness is the outrigger, supporting freedom so the people paddling the canoe don’t capsize.

In Galatians 5 Paul writes: It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then and do not let yourselves be burdened by a yoke of slavery.

The yoke of slavery in this context could be the observance of man-made religious rules, that only make you feel guilty when you break them. But the yoke of slavery could also be some kind of unhelpful or unholy habit.

Jesus came to set us free from sin and guilt. But the freedom Jesus bought for us is not a freedom to do whatever we want. It is a freedom to obey God. A freedom to love God with all our being and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  Faithfulness is the right use of freedom.   

Freedom is a good thing, so long as we don’t make it the main thing. We live in a society which places a high value on personal freedom. We are very attached to our individual autonomy. We don’t like anyone or anything messing with our plans or getting in the way of our happiness. You could say that personal freedom (or individualism) is one of the golden calves of western society.

Sadly, our society is not so enamored by faithfulness. Broadly speaking we like the convenience of personal freedom but are less keen on the responsibility that freedom requires. It’s like we have done away with the outrigger of faithfulness, so the canoe of freedom is prone to capsizing. 

Freedom, without faithfulness tends to leave the door open to fear. Despite our emphasis on freedom we are a relatively anxious society. We are not fearless like the eagle.

As the people of God in this place, we need to hold freedom and faithfulness together, like the eagle. That means we will often have to sacrifice our personal freedom for the sake of God’s purpose. Sometimes following Jesus’ way is not convenient but we do it anyway because that is who we are, we belong to Christ, we are his treasured possession.

It needs to be acknowledged that most of you do hold freedom and faithfulness together much of the time. I can see that. So, in talking about the divorce between freedom and faithfulness, I am not criticizing anyone here personally. I’m simply making an observation about western society generally.

Strength:

Okay, so freedom coupled with faithfulness is the first characteristic of the eagle. The second is the eagle’s strength. Eagles are among the most powerful birds on the planet. They can fly at speeds of up to 160 km’s per hour and they can reach altitudes as high as 15,000 feet.

The claws of an eagle can exert a pressure of over 300 psi. That’s a vice like grip. Eagles often swoop down to catch fish but will also eat rodents and snakes. Some species of eagles are strong enough to pick up a lamb or a small calf. They are powerful creatures.

But raw strength and power by itself is not necessarily a good thing. Just as a hot curry needs some yogurt and cucumber to temper the taste, so too strength needs to be tempered with gentleness and grace. To give balance to their strength, eagles also possess a wise grace.

Seeing an eagle fly is a beautiful thing. Eagles are graceful. Here in New Zealand we are more likely to see hawks in the sky. A hawk is quite similar to an eagle in the way it soars and glides on the wind. Although an eagle has great strength, it has the sense not to waste its energy flapping madly. The eagle makes good use of the air currents.

Gliding gracefully takes some skill. Eagles are so fine-tuned, so adept at flying, that if they lose a feather in one wing, they are able to shed a corresponding feather in their other wing in order to maintain equilibrium.   

We also see the wise grace of the eagle in the way it parents its young. The mother stays with her young eaglets to protect them and keep them warm, while the father goes out to catch food and bring it home to the family.

And, contrary to popular belief, eagle parents don’t push their young out of the nest to see if they will fly. Rather, they use a wise and gentle approach. When the parents think their children are ready to fly, they stop feeding them. Then, when the young eagles get hungry, they venture out of the nest in search of food for themselves. Smart birds.

We notice this careful balance of strength and grace in the eagle imagery used in Isaiah 40, where the Lord God says through the prophet…  

27 Why do you complain, Jacob? Why do you say, Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God”? 28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. 29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; 31 but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

The message of Isaiah 40 is one of comfort for the Jewish exiles in Babylon. Following the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC, those who had survived the siege were forcibly marched off to a strange land. Apparently some of the exiles were thinking that God did not care for them anymore.

By definition, God is the most powerful, strongest being there is. But it does not matter how deeply you might believe in God’s strength and power, if you don’t believe in God’s grace for yourself personally, then you will become bitter towards God.

In verse 29 we read that the Lord strengthens those who are weak and tired. God shares his power with people who are spiritually exhausted so they soar on wings like eagles…

As I’ve already mentioned, eagles don’t flap. Eagles are calm and graceful. They spread their wings in freedom and they glide. Eagles can’t see the thermal currents that carry them but they still trust themselves to the wind.

God’s grace uplifts the weak who trust in him, like the thermal currents uplift the eagle with outstretched trusting wings.  

Those who wait in hope for God will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not grow faint. In other words, God’s grace sustains us both in the challenging times of life, when the pressure is on and we find ourselves running just to keep up, as well as in the ordinary routine of life when things simply tick over at a steady walking pace.

Isaiah’s use of the eagles’ wings imagery connects the exile with the exodus. Just as God got Israel out of an impossible situation, carrying them out of slavery in Egypt, so too he carried Israel out of captivity in Babylon.

Are you feeling like a captive in your life’s circumstances at the moment? Are you run off your feet, tired, weak and at the end of your tether? Are you feeling out of place, oceans from where you want to be? Are in an impossible situation, trapped between a rock and hard place? 

What might God be saying to you this morning? Put your hope in the Lord.

God can do the impossible. He can renew your strength so that you soar on wings like eagles; so you run without growing weary and walk without growing faint.     

Vision:

The eagle is a symbol of freedom, strength and vision.

You have probably heard the phrase, ‘eagle eyed’. This is because eagles have very good vision. An eagle’s eyesight is around five times better than that of a human being. In practical terms, that means, an eagle can spot a rabbit from three kilometers away. Pretty impressive, not to mention handy.

Of course, having amazing vision does not make for an expert hunter. Like any good hunter, the eagle also needs patience to support its vision. The eagle may have to patiently glide around the sky for hours, waiting for its prey and the right moment to strike.

Just as freedom needs the outrigger of faithfulness and strength needs to be tempered with grace, so too vision needs the twin virtue of patience. The ability to wait, with the right attitude, until the time is right.    

In the Bible, vision has at least two meanings. Firstly, vision is the ability to see what God is doing in the present. In John chapter 9, Jesus heals a man born blind. Somewhat ironically, the man who was blind had more vision than the religious leaders. He could see that God was at work in and through Jesus, whereas the religious leaders refused to acknowledge the Lord.

At the same time, vision also has to do with hope; vision is the capacity to imagine a good future.  And so we have the well-worn verse, ‘without vision the people perish’; which basically means, without hope for a good future the people give up.

Vision, then, is about seeing what God is doing in the present and believing in God to provide a good future. Jesus is God’s vision for humanity. The risen Christ is our hope for the future.   

Returning to Isaiah 40. In verse 31 we read, but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles.

It seems that Isaiah is making a connection between the long range vision of eagles and the long range vision of those who hope in the Lord.

Hoping and waiting and patience go together in Biblical thought. As Paul says in Romans 8: 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.   

Hope is a powerful source of energy. Hope for a good future gives us joy in the present and that joy can carry us on eagles’ wings through tough times.

Those who are familiar with the story of Jacob might remember how Jacob had to work seven years to pay the bride price and be married to his sweetheart, Rachel. But that seven years seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her. The hope of a good future with Rachel carried Jacob, on eagles’ wings, through his seven years hard labour.

Hope is a powerful source of energy but like any kind of power, hope can be dangerous if it is misplaced. If we put our hope in the wrong things, and our hope is disappointed, then our heart can be broken and our capacity to trust damaged.

That’s why we need to be careful to put our ultimate hope in the Lord. Not in our career or money. Not in education or expertise. Not even in marriage or family. While all those things are good and helpful and we need them to get by in this world, they are not perfect and so they have the potential to let you down, to break your heart.  

Let me say it another way. Putting your hope in the Lord does not mean believing that God will give you what you want. No. If you think that God will always give you what you ask for, then you will be disappointed. God will give you what you need and sometimes what you want, but not always.

Most of the time we don’t realise what we have put our hope in. We can be quite blind to our own vision of the future until that vision is threatened or taken away.

Although I wasn’t aware of it at the time, as a child, my hope was in my parents. When my mum and dad got divorced, my hope (or my vision of what the future held) came apart, it was undone.

At that point I had a choice. I could become angry and bitter or I could transfer my hope to God. In other words, I could trust God to be my vision. I could trust God to redeem the past and create a good future.  

Where have you placed your hope?

Waiting for God to fulfil his vision for our lives is the work of a lifetime, it requires patience.  

If you love God more than the things God gives, then you will be more secure. You will be better equipped to accept your losses in this life, because you know that you have God and God has you. And that is what really matters. 

Conclusion:

Freedom with faithfulness, strength with grace and vision with patience. These are the qualities of the noble eagle.

We see these qualities embodied in Jesus. Jesus sets people free and he faithfully lives out God’s law of love on our behalf.

Jesus has the strength to defeat sin and death, as well as the grace to forgive.

Jesus’ vision is to make all things new, to bring heaven to earth, and he suffers patiently to realise this vision.

May the Lord bless you and keep you. Amen.

Questions for discussion or reflection:

What stands out for you in reading these Scriptures and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?

  • Why does freedom need faithfulness? What happens if we separate freedom from faithfulness? What does it mean to be faithful to God today?
  • Discuss / reflect on the imagery of God carrying Israel on eagles’ wings. What does this mean in the context of Israel’s exodus from Egypt. What does it mean for you personally?
  • The eagle combines strength with grace. Can you think of an example, either from your own experience or from the gospels, of how Jesus combined strength and grace?
  • Have you experienced God renewing your strength? What happened? What did God do for you?
  • What are the two ways of understanding vision? Why is patience the necessary companion to vision?
  • Where is your hope placed? How do you know this?
Tawa Baptist

Being Baptist

Scriptures: Matthew 18:19-20, 1st Samuel 16:6-7, 1st Peter 2:5&9, Ezekiel 36:26, Matthew 15:8-9, Matthew 23:26

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Liberty of conscience
  • Biblical authority
  • Congregational government
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

When you go to the ice-cream shop you have to make a decision. Right there in front of you are a range of different flavours: vanilla, boysenberry, hokey pokey, chocolate, rum and raisin, coffee and more.

Each of the different flavours has essentially the same base. Probably milk, cream, water and sugar, churned in a particular way. You may have a preference for mint choc chip but that doesn’t mean you can’t associate with someone who eats black forest ice-cream.

I’m quite partial to chocolate ice-cream, if I’m having it in a cone. Robyn occasionally has a rum and raisin, which I don’t enjoy. But even though we prefer different flavours, we don’t fall out over it. At the end of the day, it’s all still ice-cream.

The Christian church is a bit like ice-cream. There are a variety of flavours or denominations from Catholic, to Anglican, to Church of Christ, to Presbyterian to New Life, to Baptist and so on.

Even though this is a Baptist church many of us here (if not most of us) have probably worshipped in other Christian traditions as well. And that’s okay. Each of the denominations has essentially the same base. We all believe Jesus is the Son of God and that Jesus rose from the dead. We just have a different emphasis and different organizational structures which gives us our own unique flavour.

This morning our message focuses on what it means to be Baptist. What are those beliefs and practices which give the Baptist movement its own distinct flavour?

Well, there are four things basically: liberty of conscience, Biblical authority, congregational government and believers’ baptism. Some other denominations might have one or two of these in their kite of beliefs but not all four of them together.           

Before we get into what each of these terms mean, I want to be clear, these are not the most important beliefs in Christian faith. So you don’t have to agree with every aspect of Baptist belief in order to worship here. You may have a different view and that’s fine.

The essential thing is Jesus. All I’m doing this morning is describing to you the four main ingredients which, when combined, make the Baptist flavour.  First, let’s consider liberty of conscience.

Liberty of conscience:

Some of you may have heard of John Bunyan. John Bunyan was the author of the book, Pilgrim’s Progress. John Bunyan was also a Baptist preacher during the 17th Century. There’s a quote of his that I quite like. Bunyan wrote…

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words, than words without a heart.    

The heart in this context refers to a person’s inner conviction, their desire or their motivation. Sometimes we have a yearning or a thirst for God in our heart but we just can’t seem to find the words to do our thoughts and feelings justice. That’s better than saying empty words to God when our heart simply isn’t in it.

The heart, the core motivation, the inside of a person is an important theme running through the Bible. When God instructed the prophet Samuel to anoint a new king for Israel, Samuel saw Jesse’s eldest son, Eliab, and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed stands here”. But God said to Samuel…

Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. [1st Samuel 16:7]

Later in Israel’s history, the prophets emphasized the importance of the heart in worshipping God. For example, in Ezekiel 36:26, the Lord says to His people through the prophet…

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

A heart of stone is a hard heart, a dead heart. A heart that is insensitive to the things of God. A heart of flesh is a heart (or an inner disposition) that is tender and sensitive to the things of God. A willing and obedient heart that is alive and beats for the Lord, that’s a heart of flesh.

Jesus was also interested in the heart. He had some strong words of criticism for the Pharisees who were big on appearances but whose hearts were like stone when it came to perceiving God’s purpose in and through Jesus.

This is what the Lord had to say about the Pharisees and the importance of the heart, in Matthew 15:8-9…

These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.

Jesus went on to talk about the importance of washing the inside of the cup. In other words, if you get the inside right (if you get your heart right) then the outside will be clean too. Our life and worship needs to come from the inside out. [Matthew 23:26]

We are talking about liberty of conscience. Your conscience is part of your inner self, part of your heart. The Baptist movement of churches started with people who felt very strongly that the religious leaders of their day honoured God with their lips but had hearts that were far from the Lord.

To understand liberty of conscience you have to know a little bit of English Church history. Prior to the 1530’s there was one church in England and that was the Roman Catholic church. No other church was permitted. There was only one flavour.  

Then came king Henry VIII who broke with Rome to establish a Protestant church, the Church of England, which in NZ we know today as the Anglican church.

At that time the church and the State were basically one. So the Church of England made the law and the law said you had to belong to the Church of England, whether you actually believed in Jesus or not. Resistance could result in prison, torture or even death.

But people did resist and those who set up their own church, separate from the Church of England, were called Separatists. Baptists evolved out of the Separatists. At first, life was so dangerous for Baptists they had to escape to the Netherlands which permitted religious tolerance. But they returned to England a few years later.

And this is where John Bunyan comes in. After being discharged from the army and becoming a Christian, Bunyan joined a Baptist church at Bedford, in England, and became a preacher. It was against the law of the land to do this and so John Bunyan was imprisoned for eleven years (1661-1672) for following his conscience, such was the strength of his conviction that he was doing God’s will.

Liberty of conscience is the idea that Christ alone has the right to command the individual’s conscience. No one, not even the State or your parents, can force you to believe something.

Being a Christian is a matter of the heart. You can’t make someone love God through legislation or fear of punishment. That goes against the gospel of Christ. People need to come to faith in Jesus voluntarily. True worship is from the inside out.

Liberty of conscience does not give us a license to do whatever we want. The main issue at stake here is the Lordship of Jesus. As I said before, Christ alone has the right to command the individual’s conscience.

If the State forces people to go to church, then it is usurping the place of Jesus. Jesus is Lord, not the government. The State, at its best, is God’s servant. 

One implication of liberty of conscience is that Baptists believe the church and state should remain separate. It’s okay for Christians to be in politics. And it’s okay for the church to speak truth to people in power. But it’s not okay for the church to dictate what society should think or believe.

Most people these days would agree with the idea of liberty of conscience, but 500 years ago it was a radical thought. 

Another implication of liberty of conscience is religious tolerance. Baptists don’t give people of other faiths a hard time. To the contrary, we uphold the freedom for people to practice their own religion, without compromising what we ourselves believe. We do not need to be afraid of other religions because we believe Jesus is Lord. Our job is to remain in Christ and be a positive witness to the world around us.     

We see the principle of liberty of conscience reflected in our church’s values. Being real and authentic and integrating our faith, from the inside out, is important to us here. What’s more, we give people freedom to be involved. We don’t put pressure on people. We let people become involved in church life at a pace that suits them.

We also try to avoid loading people up with so many church activities that they don’t have time to engage with the outside world. Many of you are already doing good things for God and His kingdom, through your everyday work. My hope and prayer is that you would find nourishment and refreshment for your faith and your soul during our times of gathered worship.

Biblical authority:

Now, as I said earlier, liberty of conscience is not a license to do whatever we want. Our conscience is not God. In fact, our conscience can be misled or it can become callous or insensitive, as if seared with a hot iron. Jesus is Lord. As Christians, Jesus is the one who informs and guides and molds our conscience and behavior, by his Word and his Spirit.

Our early Baptist forebears soon realized they needed a measuring stick for their conscience, a higher authority. They needed some way of checking their conscience was on the right track and so the Bible became that measure.

Study and discussion of the Scriptures was central to early Baptist worship. The Bible was the means for seeking the mind of Christ. John Tucker, the Principal of Carey Baptist College in Auckland, writes…

The oldest description of Baptist worship that we have dates back to 1609. It records that the worship service began at 8am with a prayer and a Bible reading. This was followed by four or five different church members taking turns to prophesy or preach out of that text. Each sermon ran for about 45 to 60 minutes, with opportunity for interaction and discussion among the congregation. At midday the members shared a meal together and took a collection for the poor. Then, from 2pm to 6pm, the morning pattern of worship was repeated.

Imagine that, ten hours of church every Sunday. We don’t spend as much time in gathered worship these days (which I’m sure you are thankful for) but Scripture is still central to our worship. One of our church values is sharing Biblical truth. We open the Scriptures through the Sunday sermon, through small group Bible studies and through our own personal devotional time. We do this because we believe God still has more light to shed on His Word.

I have come to think of the Bible as a woman. The Bible is wise and beautiful, full of truth and grace. She can be complicated and hard to understand sometimes but I love her and, for reasons I can’t really explain, I find myself drawn to her gentle power.

As a woman, the Bible is pregnant with the Word of God and the Holy Spirit is the midwife. We can’t really receive the Word of God without the help of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit delivers God’s Word to our hearts and minds and that Word speaks to our conscience.  

Given the importance Baptists place on Scripture, it is not surprising that some of the world’s most well-known preachers have been Baptists. People like Charles Spurgeon, Martin Luther King Jnr. and Billy Graham.  

Liberty of conscience, Biblical authority and congregational government. 

Congregational government:

We find three models of church government in the New Testament:

Episcopacy – which involves one person governing, e.g. the bishop.

Presbyterianism – which involves an inner group of elders governing, and

Congregationalism – which is where all the members of the church govern.

Early Baptists went for congregationalism; the belief that final authority over the local church rests not with a bishop or a national council, or the senior pastor or a group of elders, but with the risen Christ who promises to be present and make his will known, whenever that church gathers together to seek his will. As Jesus said in Matthew 18:19-20…

Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there I am with them.

This does not mean that if two Christians agree together they would like a Porsche that God will give it to them. The emphasis here is on Jesus’ presence when his followers gather to seek the will of God. When Christ is present, speaking to our conscience, we find ourselves praying a prayer that God is happy to answer positively.    

Hand in hand with the principle of congregational government is the idea of the priesthood of all believers. In 1 Peter 2, verse 5 we read…

You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

And then in verse 9 Peter says…

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God…

Baptists believe that all regenerate Christian believers are priests, which means God could speak through any Spirit filled believer. Therefore, it follows that all church members have a part to play in seeking the mind of Christ and hearing the will of God.

Early Baptist churches were normally comprised of about 50 people, a relatively small number. And so with a congregation that size, who were willing to meet for 10 hours at a stretch, it was possible for everyone to have their say and agreement to be reached.

Church sizes are generally bigger these days, so the more routine day to day management and governance of the church is handled by the Deacons Board and the staff. And larger decisions, like approving the church budget and hiring the minister, are decided by the congregation at a church meeting.    

One implication of congregational government is the autonomy of the local church. Because it is the congregation who seeks the mind of Christ and not the Arch Bishop, or some other authority, each congregation can discern the direction they believe Jesus is leading in their context.

Autonomy does not imply complete independence though. Baptist churches also believe in associating with other Baptist churches. And so Tawa Baptist is part of the Baptist Union of New Zealand and part of the Wellington Baptist Regional Association.          

One of the things that is needed for congregational government to work well is commitment from the members. Church members need to have a strong commitment to loving Jesus and loving one another.

Baptists are not persecuted in New Zealand today, but they were persecuted in 17th Century England. As we’ve heard with John Bunyan’s story, it was illegal for Baptists to meet. They risked prison, torture and even death. This meant you needed to be able to trust your fellow church members. You needed to have each other’s back. You needed to know you weren’t going to be betrayed to the authorities by the person sitting in the pew next to you.

That was the kind of next level covenant commitment that early Baptists expected from one another. That’s where the idea of Baptist church membership comes from.

It would be fair to say that the level of commitment required by your average church member is not as high today. No one is really at risk of being thrown in prison for coming to this worship service. In fact, anyone can attend services here without threat of violence.

The reality is each of us brings a different level of commitment to this faith community. Some of you are highly committed, others are moderately committed and still others aren’t sure if you’ll be back next week. I don’t want to criticize that. We are a diverse congregation. We may be in different places in our journey of faith and in our situation in life. That’s okay. God is able to meet each of us where we are at.

Again we see our church values reflected in the principles of congregational government and the commitment this requires. In particular, we place value on showing genuine care for one another and in making decisions faithfully.          

Conclusion:

I said at the beginning of this message that there are four beliefs which give Baptist churches their own distinct flavour: liberty of conscience, Biblical authority, congregational government and believers’ baptism.

I’ve talked about the first three but I’m not planning to talk about Believers’ baptism this morning because I’ve talked about this on a number of occasions in the past and we are likely to hear about it again next time we have a baptismal service. Plus, I don’t want to keep you until 6pm.

So let me finish by saying two things…

Firstly, we live at a different time in history to the early Baptists. Our context is not the same as theirs. The walls between denominations are not as high or as strong as they once were. Movement between churches has become more fluid. The wider Christian church these days is more like a braided river, interlaced and interwoven.

Secondly, these four Baptist distinctives are not the most important things. The most essential thing is Christ. It is in and through Jesus that we find our identity, our connection and our unity. So, whatever happens, whatever differences you may feel with others, hold to Christ.

May grace and peace be yours in abundance.

Some of the material for this message was gleaned from the following sources:

https://www.baptist.org.nz/general/Being-a-Baptist/

Baptist distinctives

Click to access Who-are-the-Baptists-Looking-through-a-New-Zealand-lens-by-Laurie-Guy.pdf

Questions for discussion or reflection:

What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?

  • Do you like ice-cream? What is your favourite flavour? Which different denominations of Christian faith have you been involved with? What were some of the good things about each of these experiences for you?
  • Liberty of conscience is founded on the belief that ‘Christ alone has the right to command the individual’s conscience’. Why is this important? To what extent does Christ command your conscience?
  • In what ways has the idea of liberty of conscience shaped (or influenced) our world today? (E.g. religious tolerance…)  
  • Why do we give so much attention to opening the Scriptures?
  • What are some of the implications of congregational government?
  • How is our situation today different from that of 17th Century England? Which of the four Baptist distinctives do you think is most relevant (or most helpful) for our context?
Tawa Baptist

Being Present

Scripture: Genesis 18:1-15

Title: Being Present

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Abraham is present
  • Sarah is afraid
  • God is free
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Last year we began a series on the life of Abraham, pausing for a few weeks during Advent

–         This morning we pick up Abraham’s journey of faith from Genesis 18, where we left off

Abraham’s journey of faith is characterised as two steps forward, one step back

–         Abraham & Sarah didn’t start with perfectly formed faith – it took time and testing for their faith to grow and develop

–         From Genesis 18, verse 1, we continue Abraham & Sarah’s story…

The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground. He said, “If I have found favour in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant by. Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way—now that you have come to your servant.”

“Very well,” they answered, “do as you say.”

So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah. “Quick,” he said, “get three seahs of fine flour and knead it and bake some bread.”7 Then he ran to the herd and selected a choice, tender calf and gave it to a servant, who hurried to prepare it.  He then brought some curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared, and set these before them. While they ate, he stood near them under a tree.

“Where is your wife Sarah?” they asked him.

“There, in the tent,” he said.

Then the Lord said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”

Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?”

Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.” Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.”

But he said, “Yes, you did laugh.

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate this reading

There are three main characters in this episode: Abraham, Sarah & God

  • – Abraham is present – fully present to serve his guests
  • – Sarah is afraid – she is hiding in the tent
  • – And God is free – nothing is too hard for the Lord
  • – First let’s consider how Abraham is present

 Abraham is present:

A couple of weeks ago Robyn and I were fortunate enough to take a trip to Kapiti Island

  • – Kapiti Island is a special conservation reserve – it’s a place set apart for native bird life
  • – You can’t just travel over any old time and land your boat on the island, you need a permit
  • – So Robyn made the arrangements, we had our bags checked to make sure we weren’t bringing anything to the island that we shouldn’t and then took a boat ride over – we spent most of the day there

 

There’s really only one thing to do on Kapiti: walk around and look at the bird life

  • – Some people might find that boring but Robyn & I really enjoyed it
  • – You see, when you have only one thing to do you are able to be fully present to that one thing
  • – I’ve walked through native bush many times but usually it was to get from point A to point B – I was on a mission
  • – Kapiti was different. There was no mission, no goal to achieve – all I had to do was be present and enjoy
  • – The forest and birds filled up my senses so I could be fully present to just one thing – it was freeing

 

There’s a line in John Denver’s “Annie’s Song”, which says…

  • – You fill up my senses, like a night in the forest, like a sleepy blue ocean, like a storm in the desert, like a walk in the rain …
  • – ‘You fill up my senses’ means I am fully present to you, you are so beautiful, so captivating that I’m not distracted by anything else, you have my full and undivided attention

 

In Genesis 18 Abraham is fully present to God

  • – The Lord appears to Abraham in the form of a man
  • – The Bible shows us that manifestations of God’s presence are rare – they don’t happen often and when they do happen it’s usually different each time (unexpected)
  • – For example, the Lord appeared to Job as a storm in the desert and he appeared to Moses in the burning bush and to the people of Israel in a pillar of cloud & fire
  • – But on this occasion the Lord appears to Abraham as a human being
  • – Imagine that, God physically turning up and knocking on your door

 

Now obviously in appearing to Abraham as a man, God is holding back his full glory – it was like God was making himself smaller so He could meet Abraham where he is at

  • – Abraham does not go to God – God comes to Abraham in a form that Abraham can relate to
  • – The Lord is incredibly considerate of us human beings

 

God is accompanied by two heavenly associates, most likely angels also in the form of men

  • – They come during the heat of the day – which in Abraham’s culture wasn’t altogether convenient, it was siesta time (time for rest)
  • – But Abraham does not let that bother him – as soon as he notices them Abraham hurries out to greet them, inviting the men to stay and enjoy his hospitality for a little while – the Lord accepts

 

Abraham is fully present to their every comfort

  • – He offers water to wash their feet, rest under a shady tree and a full meal with the best food he has to offer

 

Abraham moves quickly to prepare the meal – he respects his guests’ time

  • – And he provides generously for them – more than they can eat
  • – He tells Sarah to bake some bread using three seahs of fine flour
  • – Three seahs is about 22 litres of flour – that makes a lot of bread [1]
  • – He also has one of his servants prepare a tender calf – a whole beast between three men, plus curds and milk (curds is probably a bit like yogurt) – only the best for his guests

 

Once the meal is served Abraham stands near them waiting and listening

  • – This is a sign of respect – he won’t eat until they have finished
  • – Abraham is taking the role of a servant, making himself fully present, fully available for whatever his guests may want
  • – Apparently the Lord and his heavenly companions have filled up Abraham’s senses

 

We live busy lives don’t we – we are pulled in so many different directions, distracted by so many competing voices, juggling to keep all the balls in the air

  • – Being on Kapiti Island, letting the forest fill up my senses, put me touch with the creator of that forest, with the Lord God – it was prayerful

 

At its best prayer is about opening ourselves up to God so that he fills our senses and we are able to be fully present to him, ready to do whatever he asks

 

What is the one thing that fills up your senses?

  • – What is the one thing that sets you free to be fully present?

 

Sarah is afraid:

During the meal the three men ask Abraham, “Where is your wife Sarah?”

  • – This question tells us two things:
  • – Firstly, even though Abraham has never seen these men before, they seem to know Sarah’s name – how do they know this

 

The second thing it tells us is that Sarah is not present – she is hiding

  • – This seems a bit strange to me – we would expect Sarah to be coming in and out of the tent helping Abraham serve, but the guests haven’t seen her
  • – Why is Sarah hiding?

 

Abraham answers honestly, “She’s there in the tent”

  • – By being honest and not holding anything back Abraham is trusting God

 

Then the Lord said…

  • – “I will surely return to you about this time next year and Sarah your wife will have a son”

 

Sarah, who is still in the tent, overhears this and laughs to herself

  • – But it’s not a happy laugh – it’s more a laugh of disbelief, she can’t (or won’t) believe this word because she is past the age of child bearing
  • – The original Hebrew basically says she has finished having her monthly cycle – so she is on the wrong side of menopause for having children
  • – For Sarah to get pregnant would be a miracle on par with raising someone from the dead – resurrection, it’s the biggest miracle you can think of

 

Sarah’s faithless response is understandable

  • – For years she has hoped for a child and every month of waiting and hoping she has had to deal with the disappointment
  • – Now, from a natural (human) point of view, she is beyond hope

 

Hope is a dangerous thing

  • – If we put our hope in the wrong things, the disappointment can destroy us
  • – I wonder if Sarah has suffered so much disappointment in her life that she is not able to risk hoping anymore
  • – She is (understandably) afraid to believe the Lord’s promise of resurrection

 

When we were on Kapiti Island we met a couple from the UK, from Yorkshire in fact, who were having a holiday here in NZ

  • – They had hopes of seeing a kiwi in the wild
  • – Kapiti Island has kiwis but they don’t come out during the day – you can only see them at night

 

This couple, who looked about the same age as Robyn & I, were on the track ahead of us

  • – When we caught up with them they motioned for us to be quiet
  • – As we drew closer they whispered that they had seen a kiwi come out of the bush and walk across the track in front of them
  • – I thought that was unlikely but I didn’t say anything
  • – Then, out of the undergrowth, a brown bird looking much like a kiwi emerged onto the track

 

I could tell straight away that it was a Weka, not a Kiwi (Weka are far more common than Kiwi)

  • – Seeing the excitement on their faces I didn’t have the heart to correct them, so I smiled and said nothing
  • – I figured, what harm would it do if they went back to the UK thinking they had seen a Kiwi in the wild

 

Later on we met up with them again at the homestead for lunch

  • – By that stage I was thinking to myself, ‘I wish I had the courage to be honest with them on the track. Now it’s going to be more awkward if I have to burst their bubble’
  • – Fortunately on the way back they saw another Weka and realised their mistake and, because they were good sorts who didn’t take themselves too seriously, they admitted to us they had it wrong and that cleared the air for everyone – the truth sets you free

 

Returning to Genesis 18, when Sarah laughed in disbelief at the Lord’s promise of a son, the Lord responded by saying…

  • – Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child now that I am old?’
  • – Sarah was afraid so she lied and said “I did not laugh”
  • – But the Lord has the last word saying, “Yes, you did laugh”

 

The Spirit of God is a Spirit of grace & truth

  • – Grace & truth go together with God – you can’t separate them
  • – God can forgive us (that’s grace) but God’s forgiveness comes with truth
  • – We must be honest with ourselves and confess what is true because it’s the truth that sets us free and clears the air
  • – It is when we name things for what they are that they lose their power over us

 

I respect the couple from the UK

  • – Obviously they hadn’t done anything morally wrong in confusing the Weka for a Kiwi (that’s a harmless mistake), but they had the courage to be honest with themselves and with us, while I fumbled with the socially awkward truth, albeit to save them embarrassment

 

I don’t think God was trying to humiliate or embarrass Sarah by calling her out for laughing in disbelief – God is not like that

  • – I believe the Lord understood Sarah better than she understood herself
  • – He was simply inviting Sarah into a conversation so that Sarah could speak her truth (because it’s the truth that sets us free)

 

Had Sarah found the courage to be honest with herself and with God the conversation may have continued with Sarah saying something like

“Yes Lord, I did laugh in disbelief. All these years I’ve waited for you to fulfil your promise of a child and you have disappointed me time and time again. You’ve let me down and now it’s too late. Now I can’t have children anymore. I have become cynical and untrusting because it’s safer than getting my hopes up and risking more disappointment.”

I don’t really know what Sarah might have said if she was being honest with God – I’m just guessing

  • – Whatever was on her heart God knew it already and I believe He was giving Sarah the chance to clear the air and find release

 

Abraham is present and Sarah is afraid, but God is free

God is free:

In responding to Sarah’s fear & doubt God says of Himself…

  • – “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”
  • – That’s a key question which keeps coming up in the Bible
  • – It’s a question all believers must face at some time or other
  • – Israel faced this question in the wilderness when they wondered how God would provide for them
  • – They faced it again centuries later during their exile in Babylonia

 

Jesus’ disciples faced it too, asking our Lord, “How then can anyone be saved?”

  • – To which Jesus responded, “…all things are possible with God.” [2]
  • – Jesus himself faced the question in the Garden of Gethsemane when he prayed: “Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will” [3]
  • – As we know, God did not remove the cup (of suffering) from Jesus

 

The point is, while all things are possible with God, it doesn’t automatically follow that we will always get what we want

  • – All things are possible with God but not all things are promised
  • – God is free to do the impossible
  • – But he is also free to say ‘no’ to us
  • – Whether God is promising us the impossible or saying ‘no’ to what we want, our best option is to trust Him, as difficult as that might be

 

God promised Abraham & Sarah a son but up until Genesis 18 he didn’t put a timeframe on it

  • – God made Sarah & Abraham wait until their situation seemed hopeless from a human perspective
  • – I expect this wasn’t what Sarah or Abraham wanted but there is no glory without suffering
  • – Just as truth & grace go together, so too suffering & glory go together
  • – It was possible for God to remove the cup of suffering from Jesus, but not without diminishing Christ’s glory
  • – It was possible for God to give Abraham a son through Sarah while they were still young but not without diminishing their faith

 

The fact that Sarah lied showed that she didn’t trust the Lord, but God in his grace did not hold it against Sarah

  • – While I believe God would have preferred Sarah to trust Him, the fulfilment of His promise of a son did not depend on her trust
  • – God was still able to do what he said even though Sarah did not believe
  • – If God’s purpose could be thwarted by Sarah’s doubt & denial then he wouldn’t really be God

Conclusion:

Genesis 18 presents Abraham & Sarah as polar opposites

  • – Abraham is fully present to the Lord, ready & willing to serve
  • – While Sarah is hiding, too afraid to admit her disbelief
  • – But God is free – nothing is too hard for the Lord
  • – The Lord is able to work out his purpose through Abraham’s faith & service as well as Sarah’s fear & doubt.

 

Questions for reflection or discussion

1.)    What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon?

2.)    In Genesis 18 God manifests His presence in human form. Can you think of other ways in the Bible (or your own experience) that God makes His presence real?

3.)    What does it mean to be fully present?

–         How was Abraham fully present to God in Genesis 18?

–         What helps you to be fully present?

–         What gets in the way of you being fully present?

4.)    Why do you think Sarah was hiding in Genesis 18?

–         Why do you think Sarah laughs in disbelief at the Lord’s promise that she will have a son within a year?

5.)    In what sense is hope a dangerous thing?

–         Have you ever felt disappointed by God?

–         How can we handle our disappointment?

6.)    How did the Lord respond to Sarah’s laugh of disbelief?

7.)    What does it mean that ‘God is free’?

8.)    Make some time this week to be present to the Lord

 

https://soundcloud.com/tawabaptist/28-jan-2018-being-present

[1] Refer the NIV Study Bible, page 32 – in the footnotes

[2] Mark 10:17-27

[3] Mark 14:36