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

Building Bridges

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 9:19-27

Video Link: https://youtu.be/o7Bdmv-u9XQ

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • The freedom to build bridges (vv. 19-22)
  • The necessity of self-discipline (vv. 23-27)
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

I grew up in Kirikiriroa, Hamilton, a city with a river running through it. There are eight bridges spanning the Waikato River in Hamilton. Six vehicle bridges, one rail bridge and one pedestrian bridge. I was there for the opening of the Whitiora bridge in the 1970’s. But the Fairfield Bridge, the one with the humps, is probably the most iconic and my favourite. 

The purpose of a bridge is to connect people, allowing greater movement and better communication. If Hamilton had no bridges, then your options for getting to the other side of the river would be limited.

You could swim across but that’s not ideal; the water is cold, dirty and dangerous. Alternatively, you could travel by hot air balloon but that is time consuming, especially if the wind is blowing the wrong way. 

Without bridges our world would be an even more divided place. Bridges save time and drownings. They promote life and relationships. I like bridges, almost as much as I like trees.

Not surprisingly, the term building bridges has become a metaphor for improving relationships between people who are different from each other; people who may not agree or like one another all that much. 

Today we continue our series in First Corinthains, not the whole letter, just three chapters (8, 9 and 10) where Paul discusses the subject of freedom.

How are Christians to use their freedom?

This week’s Bible reading focuses on Corinthians 9, verses 19-27, where Paul describes how he uses his freedom to build bridges. Not literal physical bridges, but relational bridges. Bridges which span the religious and cultural divides that separate people. From First Corinthians 9, verse 19 we read…

19 Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21 To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. 23 I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. 24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. 25 Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. 26 Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. 27 No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.

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

There are two parts to this morning’s message. In verses 19-22 Paul writes about the freedom he has to build bridges and in verses 23-27 he writes about the necessity of self-discipline. Let us begin then with the freedom to build bridges. 

The freedom to build bridges:

The psychiatrist, Dr Milton Erickson, was a master at building bridges of rapport with people.

On one occasion Dr Erickson was working with a man in a psychiatric ward who had only spoken six sensible words in the five years he had been in hospital. Four of those words were, ‘My name is George’. The rest of the time he spoke in ‘word salad’, a long jumble of words and sounds in no apparent order.

In all that time no one had been able to connect with George much less get any sense out of him. Dr Erickson did something different. He got his secretary to record a sample of George’s speech. Erickson then studied this sample until he could improvise a word salad in similar form.

Dr Erickson sat down beside George and introduced himself. George responded with an angry stream of word salad. Dr Erickson then replied with an equally angry stream of the same kind of sounds. George appeared puzzled and spat out more word salad. So Dr Erickson responded in kind.

A few days later Erickson returned and again George spoke in word salad, this time for four hours. The doctor, aware that George had been watching the clock on the wall, replied in word salad for another four hours. He missed his lunch. George listened carefully.

The next day George gave only two sentences of his word salad. After Erickson had returned his two sentences of gobbly gook, George did an extraordinary thing…

He said: “Talk sense doctor.”

“Certainly, I’ll be glad to. What is your last name?” Erickson asked.

“O’ Donavan, and it’s about time somebody who knows how to talk asked. Over five years in this lousy joint…” and then he lapsed back into word salad.

It was the start of his recovery.

A few months later, with Dr Erickson’s input, George left the hospital and found himself a job. He was never readmitted. Before George could move past speaking in word salad, he needed to feel understood; he needed to be met with his own experience of the world. [1]

Dr Erickson did that for him. Milton Erickson built a bridge and helped George to cross it.

In verse 19 of Corinthians 9, Paul says: Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.

Paul is talking here about how he uses his freedom. Paul builds bridges of trust so that others may come know Jesus and the abundant life he offers.

For example, when Paul is with Jews, he eats kosher food so as not to offend Jewish sensibilities. But when he is with Gentiles, Paul eats whatever is put in front him, because the people Paul is building a bridge with matter to God more than food.

For a physical bridge to stand it needs to be anchored on both sides of the river. It’s the same when building a relational bridge with people who are different from us. If we don’t have a firm foundation in knowing who we are and what our purpose is, then the bridge will collapse and we will fall. 

In verse 21 Paul writes: To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law),       

In building a bridge to connect with those who are different from him, Paul does not abandon his principles or beliefs. He does not lose himself in the process. He holds on to himself and to what is important, namely Christ.

When Milton Erickson built a bridge to reach George, the good doctor did not lose himself. He didn’t go home speaking word salad. Erickson remembered who he was and his purpose, to help George.

It’s not always easy to show empathy for someone without compromising who you are and what you value. Before you can build a bridge, you need to have a strong sense of identity and a healthy self-awareness.

Paul’s identity and purpose in life is firmly grounded in Christ. Paul knows that he belongs to Jesus and he is very clear about why he is building a bridge;

in order to share the love and truth of Jesus. 

So how might this apply in our lives? Well, here’s one example. If you are invited to a party by a friend who is not a believer, then you are free to go to the party remembering who you are and what you stand for.

If others are drinking alcohol and alcohol is not a problem for you, then you might have a wine or a beer, but you don’t get drunk. And if alcohol is a problem for you, then you drink ginger ale, otherwise the bridge you are building will collapse.

Whoever we are with and wherever we might go, we hold fast to Christ for we belong to Jesus. He is our foundation. We can’t build bridges without remaining in him.

Now, when it comes to building bridges, it is important to remember that construction happens from the bottom up. Construction of a bridge is never a top-down thing. You have to put the supports in place first, before you lay the top part which spans the divide.

After the emperor Constantine had conquered territory with his great army, he sent preachers in to proclaim the gospel to the defeated people. [2] That is a top-down approach. That doesn’t really work with the gospel. The defeated people might submit to Christ out of fear, but they will struggle to love or trust him.

Paul’s approach was modelled after Jesus. Paul came, not in overwhelming strength, but in weakness. Paul came alongside people, building bridges from the bottom up. He earned their trust. He spoke their language. He received their hospitality and he served them.

Paul’s bottom-up approach often meant he suffered abuse and hardship. But it also meant others came to faith in Jesus, submitting to Christ out of love and not out of fear.

When we build bridges with people, we need to avoid a top-down approach. We shouldn’t come with a superior attitude, like we’ve got all the answers, or we have a monopoly on the moral high ground. Because we don’t.

In our contemporary New Zealand context, a bottom-up approach to sharing the gospel often means we need to start by listening. The first duty of love is to listen. We also need to live our lives in alignment with the gospel; be true to the gospel in other words.

Then, when the opportunity presents itself, we articulate the gospel; we give words to our faith. And when we speak, it’s important not to feel ashamed or embarrassed about what we say. Just say it. Own it and let the other person feel whatever they might feel.  

Listen in love, be true to the gospel and speak without shame. That’s what a bottom-up approach looks like. 

The necessity of self-discipline:

We are talking about freedom. Freedom is a wonderful thing, but it needs to be tempered by self-discipline. If freedom is the accelerator, then self-discipline is the brake to stop you crashing.

If freedom is hot water, then self-discipline is the cold water to stop you burning yourself. If freedom is sky diving, then self-discipline is your parachute. Freedom needs self-discipline. Without self-discipline, freedom becomes a kind of tyranny. Self-discipline makes freedom functional.

Now in using a term like self-discipline I need to be clear about what we mean. Some people associate discipline with punishment, like hitting a person with a stick. This is not what we mean by discipline.

Discipline is another word for teaching or learning. A disciple (from which we get the word discipline) is an apprentice or a learner, someone in training.

Self-discipline, therefore, is about discipleship. It’s about training yourself, through the formation of good habits. Having a rule of life or a rhythm and routine to your day and week which makes your self-control muscles stronger and trains you in the ways of Christ.  

In verses 24 to 27 Paul writes about the necessity of self-discipline. From verse 24 we read…

24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. 25 Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. 

The city of Corinth hosted the Isthmian games. The Isthmian games were sort of like the Olympics, except they happened every two years and were located in Corinth. Paul is using an image his Corinthian readers were familiar with. 

In order to be eligible to compete in the Isthmian games one had to commit to a strict training regimen for months beforehand. If you failed to do the training properly, then you were disqualified and could not compete in the games.

High performance sport takes a great deal of self-discipline. You have to exercise your self-control muscles and curb many of your freedoms to be able to compete. You might, for example, give up eating pizza and only eat healthy food. You may also have to forego your sleep-in to get up early and train.

Paul says to run in such a way as to get the prize. In other words, exercise self-discipline. Run purposefully, with a clear objective in mind, for the prize at stake is eternal glory, a crown that lasts forever; something even more valuable than coming first at the Isthmian games.

We need to be careful here not to make Paul’s parable walk on all fours. Paul is not suggesting that only one person can win in the Christian faith. Christian believers are not competing against each other for a place in heaven. There’s plenty of room. Paul is simply saying, it takes self-discipline to be a believer.

Indeed, it requires self-discipline to build bridges. In reaching out to others, Paul found that the bridge doesn’t build itself. There is considerable effort involved in travelling to a new place where the culture is different and you have to learn a new language and new customs. It’s hard graft building rapport.     

Paul carries on to say, 26 Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; 

I do not fight like a boxer beating the air

The apostle Paul (God bless him) has a habit of mixing his metaphors.

He switches from the runner to the boxer halfway through verse 26. Just as a runner in the games competes to win the prize, so too a boxer aims to land his punches and knock out his opponent.

The strange thing about Paul’s boxing metaphor though, is that he is throwing punches against himself. In verse 27 we read: No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.

Please understand, Paul is not advocating self-harm or self-flagellation here. Paul’s opponent is self-indulgence, the opposite of self-discipline.  

Paul exercises self-discipline so that he is not disqualified for the prize.

What is Paul talking about here? What exactly is the prize he has in mind?

Well, in the context of what he has just been saying about building bridges to win others for Christ, it stands to reason that the prize (or the crown) is winning others for Christ. Paul doesn’t want to forfeit the privilege of being an apostle of Christ. He doesn’t want the bridges he has built to collapse.

But, given what Paul is about to say in Corinthians 10 (which we will get to another time), we can’t rule out the possibility that he might be talking about losing his eternal salvation. That’s a scary thought.         

We shouldn’t live in fear though. God is not looking for an excuse to exclude us from his kingdom. He wants a right relationship with us. We do better to remember that God’s grace is sufficient for us, for his power is made perfect in weakness.

Just as we cannot build bridges in our own strength, so too we can’t really teach ourselves. We need the help of the Spirit of Jesus who supports us and encourages us in our self-discipline, like a personal trainer.

If you are sincere in your desire to please God and follow Jesus, then you can be confident that He who has started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (The Lord has got you.)

Conclusion:

Paul was a remarkable individual. We might feel quite inadequate and under achieving by comparison. But comparisons are not always helpful. Kiwi culture (so I’m told) is quite relaxed, quite chill. We might not have Paul’s sense of intensity or passion, but we can learn from Paul.

Can I suggest little steps to start with, whether it’s building bridges or exercising self-discipline, start small and grow with God. 

Building bridges might mean talking with someone at work who may be different from you or making a connection with a neighbour who you don’t know.

If they are a person of peace, then you might make time to get to know them better and let them get to know you. See where the Spirit leads. You don’t have to quote Scripture at them straight away. Take the pressure out of it. They are not a project or a prop. They are a person to be listened to, understood, respected and loved. 

Exercising greater self-discipline might mean being more selective about what you watch on TV or spending less time focused on work in order to create a more consistent rhythm of physical exercise, prayer, Bible reading and practising hospitality.

Self-discipline isn’t always about doing more. Sometimes it’s about learning to be still and quiet your soul.

I don’t want to be too prescriptive. You need to figure out what is right for you in conversation with your personal trainer, the Holy Spirit. What’s good for one person may not be good for another. Know yourself, be yourself, share yourself, in Christ.

Let us pray: Gracious God, establish us in your love we ask. Guide us in paths of freedom and righteousness for your name’s sake. Help us to build bridges where we can and where you lead, 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. Why do we need bridges? What does it mean to build a bridge?
  3. Why did Paul build bridges? Can you think of a time when someone built a bridge with you (or vice versa)? What happened? How did you feel?
  4. How might we go about building relational bridges with people we don’t know and/or who are different from us?
  5. Why is self-discipline essential to freedom?
  6. What habits or rhythms do you practice to strengthen your self-control muscles and train yourself in the ways of Christ? What sorts of things get in the way of self-discipline?
  7. What are the next (little) steps for you from this message?

[1] The Dr Erickson story came from a book called ‘Transforming Communication’ by Richard Bolstad and Margot Hamblett, page 71.

[2] Refer Kenneth Bailey’s commentary on 1st Corinthians, ‘Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes’, pp. 257-258.

Tawa Baptist

The Freedom Paradox

Scripture: 1st Corinthians 9:1-18

Video Link: https://youtu.be/ZG-yEtPvtoY

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • An apostle’s proof
  • An apostle’s rights
  • An apostle’s responsibility
  • Conclusion – Paul’s freedom

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

Less is more. The only constant is change. The more you know, the more you know you don’t know. You have to spend money to make money. It’s hard making elegance look easy.

Each of these statements describes a paradox. A paradox is a statement or situation that seems contradictory or absurd at first but when investigated proves to be true.

Two weeks ago, we started a new sermon series in First Corinthians, not the whole letter, just one section of it: chapters 8, 9 and 10. We interrupted this series last Sunday for Mothers’ Day. We return to Corinthians again this morning.

In this section of Corinthians, Paul addresses the issue of freedom. How are Christians to use their freedom? Well, for Christians, freedom is somewhat of a paradox. When it comes to freedom, less is more. From First Corinthians chapter 9, verses 1-18 we read…

Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not the result of my work in the Lord? 2 Even though I may not be an apostle to others, surely I am to you! For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. 3 This is my defence to those who sit in judgment on me. 4 Don’t we have the right to food and drink? 5 Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas? 6 Or is it only I and Barnabas who lack the right to not work for a living? 7 Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink the milk? 8 Do I say this merely on human authority? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing?  9 For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” Is it about oxen that God is concerned? 10 Surely he says this for us, doesn’t he? Yes, this was written for us, because whoever ploughs and threshes should be able to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. 11 If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? 12 If others have this right of support from you, shouldn’t we have it all the more? But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ. 13 Don’t you know that those who serve in the temple get their food from the temple, and that those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar? 14 In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel. 15 But I have not used any of these rights. And I am not writing this in the hope that you will do such things for me, for I would rather die than allow anyone to deprive me of this boast. 16 For when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, since I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! 17 If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me. 18 What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make full use of my rights as a preacher of the gospel.

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

There are a few twists and turns in Paul’s thinking here. So that we don’t get too lost, let me summarise…

Some of the Corinthian believers were questioning Paul’s pedigree as an apostle because he refused financial support from them. They figured, we pay the other apostles and preachers who come to visit but we don’t pay Paul, therefore Paul can’t be a real apostle.

In a world that attaches value to money there is this false assumption that if you are a volunteer (and not a paid professional) you are somehow less.

Paul counters this assumption by proving that he is an apostle and as an apostle he has every right to claim support. By the same token he is also free to refuse financial support.

Here in lies the freedom paradox. Less is more. If he accepts his right to payment, Paul loses his freedom as an apostle. But by refusing payment he loses his credibility but preserves his freedom.  

In the process of presenting the freedom paradox, Paul illuminates an apostle’s proof, an apostle’s rights and an apostle’s responsibilities. Let us begin then with an apostle’s proof. How do we know someone is a genuine apostle?

An Apostle’s Proof:

If you ever have the misfortune to call your bank or insurance company on the phone, you will have to prove to them that it’s really you. It’s not enough to give your name, you also need to tell them your date of birth, your address, your last eftpos withdrawal and what you ate for dinner on Wednesday three weeks ago. It’s hard to prove who are sometimes.

As I said before, some in the church at Corinth were questioning whether Paul really was a genuine apostle. So, in the opening two verses of Corinthians 9, Paul gives them his credentials by way of a series of short rhetorical questions. This shows humility on Paul’s part and invites empathy from his readers.

Paul’s first two questions are these: Am I not free? Am I not an apostle?  These two questions go together because what Paul is really talking about here is his apostolic freedom.

The word ‘apostle’ literally translates as ‘sent one’. An apostle is one sent by Jesus, like an ambassador of salvation sent to a foreign land. By definition an apostle is free. Not free to do what they want, but free to go where the Spirit of Jesus sends them. Paul is clear in his own mind that he definitely is an apostle.

Paul’s next question is this: Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?  

An apostle bears witness to the resurrection of Jesus. And so, in the first century, one of the qualifications of apostleship was having seen the risen Jesus with your own eyes. Paul encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus and it turned his life around. It transformed his whole outlook.

Not many people these days can claim to have seen the risen Jesus with their own eyes, although we do hear reports of some in the Middle East and Asia who say Jesus has appeared to them. Given the transformation that happens in their lives as a result, we need to take their testimony seriously.

In any case, to be an apostle one must be completely convinced of Jesus’ resurrection and live out of that conviction, as Paul did wholeheartedly.  

After his resurrection, Jesus appeared to 500 people on one occasion. Not all of them though became apostles. Consequently, Paul’s final proof is this: Are you not the result of my work in the Lord?

This is probably Paul’s strongest proof and the hardest one for the Corinthians to refute. They had come to faith in Jesus through Paul’s evangelism and preaching among them. How could Paul have done this if he wasn’t a real apostle?

Indeed, to call Paul’s apostleship into question is to call their own conversion into question. Paul’s intellectual and spiritual leadership is proof that his apostleship is genuine.

The Corinthians are the seal of Paul’s apostleship in the Lord. In ancient times a wax or clay seal guaranteed the authenticity of a document. The presence of the Corinthian church guarantees the authenticity of Paul’s apostleship.

So do we have apostles today? Yes, we do. To say we don’t have apostles implies the risen Jesus has given up on sending ambassadors of salvation to the world, which he hasn’t of course.

In practical terms, we might think of an apostle as someone with special gifts of leadership and preaching, who establishes churches in unreached places.

Paul doesn’t spend too much time proving his apostleship (just two verses), the evidence speaks for itself. Rather strangely, he spends a lot more time talking about an apostle’s rights (12 verses).

An Apostle’s Rights:

The Prime Minister of NZ is entitled to a number of perquisites or benefits.

To start with they are paid close to $500,000 a year. Their official residence while in office is Premier House. They are transported by the Diplomatic Protection Service in a BMW car or by Air NZ or the Air Force.

The Prime Minister and their spouse and children are also entitled to travel allowances and reimbursement for accommodation.

The Prime Minister is given the title ‘Right Honourable’ and retains this title after leaving office. Those Prime Ministers who serve for more than two years get paid an annuity after leaving the role. Usually, they are made a knight or a dame as well and they are entitled to a state funeral.

Most Prime Ministers accept these entitlements and fair enough. It’s a demanding job and they shouldn’t have to pay their own way. There was one Prime Minister though (John Key) who gave up some of his rights by donating his salary to charity.

In verses 4-6 Paul outlines the rights of an apostle to receive food and drink from those they minister to and to take a believing wife along with them, who would also be supported by the church. We are not talking about a Prime Minister’s entitlements here. Just basic food and lodging.

Paul mentions that other apostles (and their wives) receive this kind of support, including Cephas (which is another name for the apostle Peter) and the Lord’s brothers. Apparently, Jesus’ half-brothers became believers after Jesus’ resurrection and had an honoured role in the early church.

Paul and Barnabas, however, chose to pay their own way. They supported themselves by working with their hands to make ends meet, then preaching and evangelizing whenever they could. Paul was a tent maker. He worked with leather (sort of like Suzy from the repair shop).

Paul came from a Jewish background, where rabbis worked at a trade and refused to be paid for teaching the Torah. For the rabbis, using the Torah to make money was like using something sacred as a spade. They wouldn’t do it.

But for the Corinthians, who had a Greek influenced background, the idea of a teacher or philosopher working with their hands was absurd, it was a contradiction. Philosophers were supposed to have lots of free time to think.

How can you think properly if you are laying bricks or sewing tents all day?

This may be why the Corinthians questioned Paul’s apostleship.              

Paul then proceeds to provide a series of justifications for why apostles (like himself) have a right to be provided for. Soldiers, vintners, shepherds, temple workers all get fed on the job. Even oxen get to eat the grain as they work.

How much more right does Paul have to be fed. He was the very first apostle to bring the gospel to them.  

As usual, Paul saves his best argument to last saying in verse 14: In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.

Paul is referring to Luke 10, verse 7, where (in the context of sending out some disciples on a short-term mission trip) Jesus says: Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages.

Boom. There you have it. Mic drop. Paul is entitled to financial support from the Corinthians and yet he declines this support. Why?

Well, rights come with responsibilities, something once known as duty.

Rights and responsibilities are two sides of the same coin. The more rights you claim, the greater your responsibility and the greater your responsibility the less free you are. It’s the freedom paradox you see.    

An Apostle’s Responsibilities:

Imagine a future in which you are a scientist and you discover a way to make engines run on water. The great thing about your discovery is that it doesn’t use up water in the environment, it recycles water without causing pollution.

Your discovery means that fossil fuels are no longer needed. The potential benefits for the world’s ecosystems are manifold, reducing humankind’s carbon footprint and saving the planet from ecological disaster.

You now have a choice. You could, by rights, sell your intellectual property for an enormous amount and make a lot of money so that you never had to work again. But that would hinder the roll out of your discovery and millions of the world’s poor would pay the price in the meantime.

Alternatively, you could post your research online, making it freely available to any and all to reproduce. You would still need to work for a living but you would also remove any hindrance to the redemption of the environment and save millions of lives.

It’s a choice between the money or the environment. You can claim your rights by taking the money or you can give up your rights and save the environment from the tipping point of climate change. What would you do?

The apostle Paul did not discover the secrets of the water engine, but by God’s grace, he did discover the key to eternal life when he encountered the risen Christ. And from that point on he chose to make Jesus freely known to as many people as he could.    

After going to great lengths to show he is entitled to the right of support from the Corinthians, Paul then says (in verse 12), But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ.

This phrase about not hindering the gospel is key. Paul wants to avoid anything which might prevent a clear road for the advance of the gospel. How then does accepting support hinder the gospel?

Probably the main reason Paul doesn’t want to accept support from the Corinthians is that he would lose his apostolic freedom. As an apostle, Paul needs to be free to go wherever Jesus sends him.

If he is on the Corinthians’ payroll then he has a greater obligation to the Corinthian church. He would get sucked into doing a lot of admin for them and he wouldn’t be free to preach to other unreached people groups. Also, he would not be as free to correct the Corinthians when they got out of line.

In verse 16 Paul says he is compelled to preach the gospel. In other words, he doesn’t have a choice. For Paul, preaching the gospel is compulsory. He has been commissioned by Jesus to do it.

He does have a choice however in whether he charges for his services and, as we read in verse 18, Paul chooses to offer the gospel free of charge and so not make full use of his rights as a preacher.

Paul’s pay is to receive no pay, thus preserving his apostolic freedom. This is the freedom paradox. Less is more. Claiming less rights allows Paul more freedom.

I know what some of you are thinking. If Paul didn’t accept payment for his work as an apostle, why don’t I do as Paul did? Why don’t I preach for nothing? Well, I’m not an apostle. I don’t have Paul’s gifts or energy. Besides, preaching is not the only thing I do for the church.

We need to ask the right question. Not the superficial question. The deeper question. The question is not, should we pay people to do Christian ministry? The question is, what will remove any hindrance to the gospel? Or said more positively, what will make the gospel more accessible to others?

If I worked fulltime as an accountant or a business analyst or a teacher or a movie star, I would earn more money, but I would be less free to give myself to preaching the gospel.          

Now please understand, there’s nothing wrong with secular employment.

The world needs Christians to be salt and light for Jesus in the workplace. Accounting and teaching and plumbing are no less sacred than church work.

If I could do both, I would. But if God compels you to preach (like Paul) then you have to give yourself to the gospel.   

For Paul it was all about the gospel. Although he would not accept support for himself, he did ask for money to help other churches in need, and he did ask for travelling expenses for his mission work. Why? Because this promoted the gospel and preserved his freedom.

Paul’s example warns us to avoid self-interest. We don’t want to be like some TV evangelists from the 80’s who always had their hands out for money. It is not right to use the gospel like a spade to dig for cash, taking advantage of the sick and the old. That sort of thing is a hindrance to the gospel. As Bono said, ‘The God I believe in isn’t short of cash’.

Nevertheless, there is still a price to pay in making the gospel accessible to others.

A question for you personally to consider, what are you compelled to do for the gospel? Not everyone is compelled to preach. Not everyone has the same gifts or calling. What are you compelled to do for the gospel?  Maybe you are already doing it. Maybe you are yet to discover it? Don’t look back with regret. Look forward in hope.  

Conclusion:

In thinking about Paul’s freedom paradox, I’m reminded of another paradox. We might call it the life paradox. In Luke 17, verse 33, Jesus says: Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it.

Let us pray…

Lord Jesus, thank you for the freedom we enjoy. Help us to spend our freedom responsibly in service to your gospel purpose. 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 is an apostle? How do we know someone is a genuine apostle? Can you think of any apostles in recent history?
  3. Why do some in the Corinthian church question Paul’s pedigree as an apostle? How do you think this made Paul feel? How does Paul respond?
  4. Why does Paul give up his right to financial support? What is the cost to Paul of doing this? What does Paul gain by giving up his right to support?
  5. What would you do if you discovered how to make an engine run on water? Take the money or give your research away to save the environment? Why?
  6. What are you compelled to do for the gospel? 
  7. What sorts of things today are a hindrance to the spread of the gospel? What will make the gospel more accessible to others?
Tawa Baptist

Informed by Love

Scripture: 1st Corinthians 8:1-13

Video Link: https://youtu.be/r5yAZXm_xNQ

Audio Link: https://soundcloud.com/tawabaptist/sermon-4-may-2025-informed-by-love

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Love informs knowledge (vv.1-3)
  • God is one (vv. 4-6)
  • Love restrains freedom (vv. 7-13)
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

Imagine for a moment that you have a superpower. Maybe super strength or the ability to fly or perhaps move objects with your mind or make yourself invisible. What if you could heal people just by touching them? Or discern what people were really thinking. 

The examples I’ve given are a bit far-fetched. They sound like something out of a Marvel movie, but power comes in more subtle forms too. Things like, inside knowledge, privileged position, money, creative ability and freedom; these are all examples of more commonplace powers we might take for granted.  

Whatever form it might take though, power makes us more vulnerable to temptation and more likely to cause harm. How do we use our power? Do we use it to help others, or do we use it to take advantage?

Today we start a new sermon series in First Corinthains. We are not planning to work through the whole letter, just one section (chapters 8, 9 and 10) where the apostle Paul addresses the question of freedom. How are Christians to use their special power of freedom? From 1st Corinthians chapter 8, verses 1-13 we read…   

Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that “We all possess knowledge.” But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. 2 Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. 3 But whoever loves God is known by God. 4 So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is no God but one.” 5 For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), 6 yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live. 7 But not everyone possesses this knowledge. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food they think of it as having been sacrificed to a god, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. 8 But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do. 9 Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. 10 For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? 11 So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. 12 When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. 13 Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.

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

Have you ever walked in, midway, through someone else’s conversation and felt a bit lost, trying to pick up the thread of what they are saying, not sure of what you have missed? Reading Paul’s letters to the Corinthians can feel like that sometimes.

The experts tell us Paul probably wrote at least four letters to the church in Corinth, but only two of his letters survived. To make matters more complicated, the Corinthian believers also wrote some letters to Paul, seeking clarification on a few issues. But the content of their letters is lost to history.

The result is that we, today, are left trying to put the pieces of the puzzle back together. Apparently, 1st Corinthians is Paul’s response to one of the letters the Corinthians had written to him.

One of their questions had to do with eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols. Is this okay or not? Eating idol meat might not seem like a hot button topic for us today in New Zealand, but it was a big deal in the first century.

Whether the question of eating meat sacrificed to idols seems relevant to us or not, the principles embedded in Paul’s response are still very pertinent for the church in the 21st Century.    

Three timeless principles woven through today’s Scripture reading:

Love informs knowledge, God is one and love restrains freedom.

Let us begin with love and knowledge. What do we mean when we say love informs knowledge?   

Love informs knowledge:

Well, basically this: True knowledge is not about accumulating a stack of information in your head. (We have the internet for that.) Nor is knowledge about having lots of degrees and qualifications.

True knowledge is relational. True knowledge (what we might call intimacy) comes with the experience of giving and receiving love over time.   

I didn’t get to know Robyn by taking a class (although there may have been times when she wished I had taken classes). There were no lectures or tests (at least not the kind NZQA would recognize), but there was a lot of listening and work and laughter (mainly Robyn laughing at me).

As someone said to us on our wedding day. Marriage is an education in which you lose your bachelor’s and never really gain your masters.  

Seriously though, Robyn and I have grown in our knowledge and appreciation of each other through more than three decades of marriage, with all the joys and difficulties and humdrum in between that living and working and raising kids together entails.

The first thing we notice about Paul’s response to the Corinthians’ question is the way he models the principle of love informing knowledge. Paul could have simply said, ‘No. Eating meat sacrificed to idols is wrong. Don’t do it. It’s my way or the highway’. End of conversation. But Paul takes a different approach.

You don’t deal with weeds by cutting off the tops and leaving the root in the ground. A more effective way of dealing with weeds is to pull the whole weed out, root and all. And it’s normally easier to pull weeds out if you soften the ground first with some water.

Paul persuades his readers by addressing the root of the problem. But first he waters the ground. He softens people’s hearts in a gentle way.

To be clear, the Corinthians are not the weeds here. The Corinthians are people that Paul cares about deeply. Unfortunately, some of their ideas were like weeds that needed to be removed and replaced with a more fruitful thought.

The surface question might be, ‘Is it okay to eat meat sacrificed to idols?’

But the deeper (root) question is, ‘Do you love God and your brothers and sisters in Christ?’

You see, the Corinthians believed that being spiritual had to do with possessing special knowledge. In their minds, having the right knowledge gives you a kind of superpower that makes you more ‘spiritual’ than others.        

But Paul helps the Corinthians (and us) to see that this is not what Christian spirituality looks like at all. For Christians, knowledge is informed by love.

Being spiritual is not about having the right answers or insights. Being spiritual is about giving and receiving love.

Indeed, Christian spirituality is about loving God and loving your neighbour as yourself.   

Paul agrees with the Corinthians’ statement that, “We all possess knowledge”. However, he qualifies their statement saying, “But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. 2 Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know.”

Or, as J.B. Phillips puts it: “While knowledge may make a person look big, it is only love that can make them grow to their full stature. For whatever a person may know, they still have a lot to learn.”      

In other words, knowledge doesn’t make you spiritual. Knowledge makes you arrogant. It inflates your ego, so you think you are better than other people. Love grows you spiritually.

In verse 3, Paul uproots the Corinthians’ false thinking: But whoever loves God is known by God.

Life is connection with God (intimacy with him). To be known by God is to be recognized by God as having a relationship with him. We gain true spiritual knowledge by being in a loving relationship with God. A relationship in which we receive love from God and learn to trust and obey him as well.

Love informs knowledge. If knowledge is divorced from love, then it becomes a destructive power. That’s Paul’s first principle. His next principle is that God is one. Or said another way, there is only one true God.

God is one:

Some people will not open an umbrella inside because they believe it brings bad luck. According to one theory this superstition comes from ancient Egypt where noblemen used umbrellas to shade themselves from the sun. To open an umbrella inside was considered offensive to the sun god.

These days we avoid opening umbrellas inside because we don’t want to knock anything over or poke anyone in the eye. It has nothing to do with any sun god.

In medieval times people associated black cats with the devil and witches and the plague. Consequently, for some, having a black cat cross your path is an evil omen. But really there is no scientific basis for being fearful of black cats, unless you are a mouse or a bird or a saucer of milk.

What about throwing salt over your left shoulder? Well, apparently this is to cleanse yourself of the little devil which sits on your left shoulder whispering things into your ear.

In my experience there is more than one little devil and they tend to attach themselves to memories. They don’t sit on my shoulder; there’s not enough room for them all. What’s the point in throwing salt over my shoulder? Not only is it a waste of good salt, it also means I have to vacuum more often, which is bad for my back.   

The city of Corinth, in the first century, was a very superstitious place. There were pagan idols everywhere you went. Trying not to offend any of the gods and trying to appease them if you did cause offense, was exhausting. 

One of the attractions of converting from pagan worship to Christianity is that with Jesus there is just one God. It’s a lot easier to serve one master, than many at the same time. Knowing there is only one God and he loves you, sets you free from a lot of unnecessary fear and superstition.

Knowing there is only one God also gives you a kind of superpower in a society that believes in many gods. And, as I said at the beginning of this message, having a superpower can be a dangerous thing.

Some of the Corinthian Christians were misusing their knowledge to justify some sketchy behaviour. They reasoned that because there is only one true God, then the so-called gods which the idols of wood and stone represent, don’t really exist. Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, Aphrodite and so on are nothing.

And if the idols are nothing, if they are not real, then they have no power. Therefore, eating meat that has been sacrificed to idols cannot hurt you.

Just like opening an umbrella inside your house is not going to offend the sun god and bring you bad luck because there is no sun god.

Again, Paul is gentle in weeding out the Corinthians’ self-serving thinking.

Paul agrees wholeheartedly that there is only one true God and all the idols are nothing. But he does qualify this somewhat by acknowledging the dual reality.

Objectively speaking there is only one God but existentially speaking (in the felt experience of most Corinthian citizens) there are many gods and many lords. Those gods and lords (false though they be) are still real enough in the minds of the pagan majority.

Later, in chapter 10, Paul goes on to clarify: “…the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons”.

In verse 6 Paul gives a wonderfully rich and valuable theological statement which has stood the test of time down through the centuries…

…yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.          

There’s a lot going on here, so let me give you the skinny version. Paul is affirming that there is only one God. God is the creator and Jesus is the one through whom God created all things. Caesar is not lord, as the cult of emperor worship believed. Jesus is Lord and he is one with God.  

More than this, the one true God is our Father. To describe God as our Father indicates a close and caring relationship with God. The Christian God is not like the pagan gods who don’t care about humanity. Our God is invested in his creation like a good Father is invested in his children. 

Building on this idea of God being a Father, we look to God just as a child looks to their parents to know things. We know who we are and why we are and what to do by looking to God our Father. God gives us our identity, our purpose and the right path through life.  

We don’t look to blind superstition to guide our behaviour, like the pagans do. Nor do we manipulate knowledge to justify our own bad behaviour, like some of the ‘knowledgeable’ Corinthians were doing. No. We take our lead from God’s love for us.     

We are talking about the responsible exercise of knowledge and freedom.

Love informs knowledge and love restrains freedom. Wait, did he just say, ‘love restrains freedom’? That can’t be right, can it? Isn’t love supposed to let me do what I want? No. True love knows when to exercise restraint.  

Love restrains freedom:

Now the kind of love in view here is not a fluctuating feeling. Rather, it is a settled commitment to the wellbeing of others, irrespective of how they make us feel. It is agape love, self-giving love. The kind of love modelled by Jesus.

Jesus didn’t need to go to the cross, at least not for himself. He was free to walk away, but he chose to restrain his freedom out of love for God and love for us. ‘Not my will Father, but your will be done’.

We drive north to see family in Hamilton and Tauranga every three months or so. It normally takes us about seven hours depending on road works and traffic. Our is not new or fast or powerful, but it is reliable; it gets the job done without costing too much.  

Most drivers are patient and show consideration on the road. But every now and then you come across someone who takes a crazy risk. Best to give them room and pray they don’t cause an accident.

People like that may know how to drive and they may own a fast and powerful car, but that doesn’t entitle them to pass at speed by crossing a yellow line on a blind corner. That kind of behaviour is not loving. It puts personal freedom ahead of the wellbeing of others.

Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. Seeking the wellbeing of others sometimes requires us to limit our power and restrain our freedom.

In verse 7 Paul says that not everyone possesses the knowledge that there is only one God and idols are nothing. As believers in Christ, they may know in their head that God is one, but this knowledge hasn’t properly connected with their heart yet. It’s not part of their felt experience.

After years of bowing and scraping to idols in fear and superstition, they still feel like the pagan gods are real and could do them harm. What if eating the idol’s meat contaminates them in some way? What if eating in a pagan temple without worshipping the pagan gods makes the gods angry?    

Those believers who felt free to eat sacrificial meat thought their faith was stronger or more mature. They were looking down on other believers who had a sensitive conscience and were more selective with their eating.

So, in verse 8 Paul says: food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.

In other words, eating meat sacrificed to idols does not prove that your faith is stronger. It doesn’t make you more ‘spiritual’. In fact, God is not that concerned with what goes into your stomach. The Lord is more concerned with how you treat others, especially those you might think are weaker than you.

Paul’s line of reasoning here follows Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 15 where the Lord says, 11 What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”

In verse 9 Paul gets to the crux of the matter saying: Be careful that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak.

Have some consideration for the wellbeing of other believers, for whom Christ died. Just because you feel free to eat meat doesn’t mean you should. Be ready to limit your own personal freedom for the sake of others.

If someone feels morally uncomfortable eating meat or drinking alcohol or watching a particular movie or laughing at your dodgy jokes or whatever, then don’t pressure them.

Don’t goad them into following your example, by making them feel they are somehow inadequate if they don’t do as you do. Let others feel comfortable in their own skin. Let their faith grow and take shape as the Holy Spirit directs.   

In verse 12, Paul joins the dots for the Corinthians (and us) saying: When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.

Again, we are reminded of the words of Jesus who said: Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

To sin against another believer is to sin against Christ. To love another believer is to love Christ and to love Christ is to love God. Paul would rather give up meat altogether than cause a fellow believer to fall and lose faith. Love informs knowledge and love restrains freedom.

Conclusion:

What is the takeaway here? (Please excuse the pun.) Well, one person’s meat is another person’s poison. What you have no problem with may be quite harmful to someone else.

We need to be conscious of the power of our words and actions and how these affect others. In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty. In all things let love be your guide.  

Let us pray…

Father God, you are one and you care for all people, weak and strong. Forgive us for the times we have wounded others’ faith and conscience. May your love inform our knowledge and restrain our freedom, 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. If you could choose a superpower, what would it be (and why)? What more subtle powers do you already possess? How do you use your power?
  3. What is the purpose of knowledge? Why does love need to inform knowledge?
  4. What does it mean (for Christians) to be spiritual? What does it mean to be known by God?
  5. Do you have any superstitions? If so, what are they and where do they come from?
  6. Discuss / reflect on 1st Corinthians 8, verse 6: Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live. What are the implications of this statement?         
  7. Why is it important to restrain freedom? How do we know when to restrain our freedom?
Tawa Baptist

Responsibility

Scripture: Proverbs 6:1-11

Video Link: https://youtu.be/-TP-QDgpdto

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Guard your authority
  • Take responsibility for yourself
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

In a moment I’m going to list some words and as I do, listen carefully and see if you can pick up the common thread: Kiwi, Kākāpō, Morepork, Fantail, Tui and Black Robin. What is the common thread with these? [Wait]

That’s right, they are all native birds of New Zealand. 

Today we continue our series in the Old Testament book of Proverbs. Proverbs offers practical wisdom for living. It gives handy life hacks for people starting out in the world. 

Often when we read Proverbs it seems like a random collection of unrelated sayings. And sometimes that’s because it is. Other times though it’s possible to find a common thread.

A couple of weeks’ ago we heard about the importance of guarding your heart. This morning we look at Proverbs chapter 6. If we were to read the whole chapter, we would notice one of the common threads tying Proverbs 6 together is responsibility.  

Most of Proverbs 6 deals with our responsibility to God and our neighbour, but the first 11 verses (the focus of our message today) is primarily concerned with personal responsibility. That is, our responsibility to and for ourselves. From Proverbs 6, verse 1, we read…

My son, if you have put up security for your neighbour, if you have shaken hands in pledge for a stranger, 2 you have been trapped by what you said, ensnared by the words of your mouth. 3 So do this, my son, to free yourself, since you have fallen into your neighbour’s hands: Go—to the point of exhaustion—and give your neighbour no rest! 4 Allow no sleep to your eyes, no slumber to your eyelids. 5 Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the snare of the fowler. 6 Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! 7 It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, 8 yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. 9 How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? 10 A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest—11 and poverty will come on you like a thief and scarcity like an armed man.

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

As I mentioned earlier, one of the common threads with this reading is the idea of responsibility, in particular personal responsibility. For responsibility to be life giving though, it must always go together with authority.

Being responsible means you are the one who will be held accountable for the outcome. While authority means having the resources and decision making control you need to get the job done and achieve the outcome.  

Responsibility plus authority equals freedom.

Conversely, responsibility minus authority equals captivity.

To make someone responsible for something but then take away their authority to act, is unfair. It puts that’s person in a difficult position.

Responsibility without authority is like saying, you must cook a meal to feed your family but I’m tying your hands behind your back first. Or, you must build a house to provide shelter but I’m taking away your land and your tools.

In order to maintain our freedom, we must keep responsibility and authority together; we must guard our authority and not give it away thoughtlessly.

Guard your authority:

In verses 1-5 of Proverbs 6, the teacher gives a real life example of what separating responsibility from authority looks like; putting up security for your neighbour.

This scenario imagines someone, you might not know all that well, asking you to act as guarantor for a loan. Maybe they need some cash for a business venture. They come to you and say, “I’ve got a proposition for you. Act as guarantor on my loan so I can buy this field. I’ll flip it for a quick profit and give you a cut.”

Whatever the reason, they want to borrow money from someone else and they ask you to pledge your tractor or your house or something of value you possess as collateral against the loan.

If you agree to do this, then you are making yourself responsible for their debt and you are giving away your authority. You cannot control whether or not this strange neighbour will repay their debt. Maybe they will and you will be okay, but if they don’t you will lose your tractor and your house and your financial freedom.  In any case, you will lose sleep while you wait to find out.    

Agreeing to help someone in this way might seem like a smart thing to do, but it is foolish because it ties your hands. It puts you in their power.

You may have noticed the word hands is used multiple times in these verses. Quite often in the Bible hands is a poetic way of talking about power. To be in someone else’s hands is to be in their power, to be captive, not free.

If you (in the heat of the moment) rashly say you will cover someone else’s debt, then do everything in your power to get out of the arrangement as soon as possible. Take a lesson from the gazelle and the bird caught in a trap. Free yourself before it is too late. Better to humiliate yourself temporarily than to become a slave permanently. Better still not to get yourself in that position in the first place.

Now, it is important to note that the teacher is not advocating stinginess or meanness toward people in need. Elsewhere, in the law of Moses, God encourages those who can afford it to lend money to the poor and to help those in need.

But lending money to the poor (who may or may not be able to pay you back) is different from mortgaging your land for them. Because when you lend (or give) money to someone, you limit your liability and you guard your authority. You maintain your freedom to be generous in other words.

Acting as guarantor for other people’s debt is not only personally irresponsible, it’s also socially irresponsible. It places a strain on community relationships that the neighbourhood is not strong enough to bear.

As one commentator puts it, the principle of wisdom here is: take responsibility for what is yours and do not take responsibility for what is not. [1]

So how might this apply in our context today?

How many of you here have received a phone call or an email or a text message from a scammer, trying to get access to your bank account details. [Wait] It’s disturbing really. Proverbs 6 is a warning to be alert and not allow yourself to be scammed.

Some people will play on your emotions to get money out of you. They will appeal to your fear, or your ego or your greed. Whatever strategy the scammer uses they are trying to put you in their power by getting you to hand over your authority while making you responsible.     

Keeping responsibility and authority together has a broader application though than not acting as a guarantor and avoiding scammers. Money is not our only resource. For most of us these days, time is a more valuable thing.     

When we over commit ourselves and try to do too much with the limited time and energy available to us, we effectively give away our authority and make ourselves responsible for more than we can handle. We become slaves to an over busy schedule; trapped on a treadmill of never ending activity.   

I imagine most people here don’t need to be told to work harder. More likely you need to become more discerning about what you commit yourself to. That can be difficult. Our need to feel useful, to find meaning, purpose and a sense of belonging often drive us to take on more than we can handle.

One of our church values, here at Tawa Baptist, is freedom to be involved.

‘Freedom to be involved’ means we don’t put pressure on people to do lots of church stuff. We let people become involved in church life at their own pace.

We don’t guilt people into doing things and we don’t load people up with so many church responsibilities that they lose authority (or control) over their lives.

We try to encourage people to maintain a healthy balance, allowing time for family, time for church and time for engagement with the wider world. Hopefully too, time for fun and rest.

The risk with freedom to be involved is that some people might think they have a license to kick back and cruise. To be slack and to take without giving anything back. But that is not a responsible use of freedom.   

Freedom to be involved is about contributing in a way that is life giving for you and the community. We want people to be involved in church life from a place of personal authority and responsibility, because you want to and you can. 

It’s like Jesus said in Matthew 11: “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

The wisdom of Jesus does not separate responsibility and authority. The wisdom of Jesus calls us to do what is in our power to do and to trust God for the rest.

Take responsibility for yourself:

Responsibility plus authority equals freedom. If the first five verses of Proverbs 6 talk about the importance of guarding your authority (keeping some control over your life), then the next six verses underline the importance of taking responsibility for yourself. Verses 6-8 tell us to learn from the ant… 

6 Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! 7 It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, 8 yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.

A sluggard is a lazy person, someone who does not take responsibility for themselves. They have authority over themselves but they don’t exercise it in a positive or constructive way.

Ants keep authority and responsibility together. Ants have their own authority. They are not slaves at the mercy of a dictator. Ants have autonomy over themselves, no one tells them what to do. And how do they use their authority? How do they use their freedom? Wisely and responsibly.

Ants work hard, carrying loads much bigger than themselves. But they also work smart. They make hay while the sun shines. They go with the grain of the seasons, putting themselves to work when the environment is most conducive to a good outcome, during the summer harvest, when conditions are right and food is plentiful.

Another wise thing about ants is that they work together. Working on your own (especially doing heavy physical labour) can be quite tough. But when you work as part of a team, there is a certain buoyancy or energy that carries you. Somehow the work doesn’t seem so overwhelming.

But wait, there’s more. Ants are good for the environment too. Ants turn and aerate the soil, allowing water and oxygen to reach plant roots. Ants also help with seed dispersal. In the very act of taking responsibility for themselves, ants make a positive contribution to the environment.

It’s similar with us human beings. Personal responsibility forms the building blocks of social responsibility. As we work to earn a living, taking care of ourselves and our family, we contribute positively to society.    

The ant is a model of setting a goal, making an appropriate commitment in community with others and sticking with it. The ant teaches us to avoid those responsibilities that are not ours so we can be free for those responsibilities that are ours.

Verses 9-11 paint a picture of what not taking responsibility for yourself looks like. The outcome of shirking our responsibility is poverty.

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest—11 and poverty will come on you like a thief and scarcity like an armed man.

Notice how scarcity sneaks up and mugs a person. No one really sets out to be poor. Poverty ambushes people, it takes the sluggard by surprise. The point here is that being irresponsible is a lifestyle or a pattern. It’s a bad habit that eventually leads to disaster.

Now, in reading these verses, we need to be very careful. While being slack and not taking responsibility for yourself generally does result in poverty, it does not automatically follow that everyone who is poor is lazy or irresponsible. People can fall on hard times for a whole raft of reasons.

Sometimes people fall into the pit of poverty because they lack discipline and drift aimlessly through life. Other times though people find themselves in the pit of poverty because they have been pushed. There are often systemic reasons why people find themselves trapped in poverty.

You are probably aware of the saying, ‘Give a person a fish and they eat for a day. Teach them to fish and they eat for a lifetime’. That saying is well intentioned but a little naive. It assumes the world is fair, when it is not.

It’s not enough to teach a person to fish. Many of the world’s poor would fish responsibly if they could, but the authority to fish has been taken from them. We address systemic inequalities, we give people authority, by ensuring people have the right fishing equipment and fair access to the fishing pond.

To avoid poverty, we need to keep authority and responsibility together.

Thinking of systemic injustice, which takes away people’s authority and discourages personal responsibility, the ant has more to teach us. In the context of Proverbs 6 at least, the ant gathers its food in season, which is often quite different from the way we gather food.

We live is a consumer oriented culture, one in which we don’t necessarily know what we want but we feel we don’t have it and so we always want more. We are always consuming but never really satisfied.

As a consequence, our society gathers perpetually, with little or no regard for the demand and supply of resources or the needs of others. Affluent ‘out of season’ consumption can drive the price up and make life more difficult for the global poor.    

So how does the advice of Proverbs, to not be lazy but rather store up provisions in season, fit with the teaching of Jesus? After all, didn’t Jesus warn against storing up riches on earth? Didn’t the Lord tell us not to worry about tomorrow because God knows what we need is able to provide?

Yes, Jesus did teach those things.

We need to keep in mind that the wisdom of Proverbs is not complete; it is not whole. Jesus completes the wisdom of Proverbs. He fulfils it. The wisdom of Proverbs is generally intuitive, it’s common sense. Whereas the wisdom of Jesus is often counter intuitive. It’s paradoxical.

Proverbs tells us how to identify and avoid pitfalls in life. Proverbs says, ‘This is what a pit looks like. Stay away from it’. But Jesus does more than that. Jesus looks for pits in order to lift people out of them. Jesus came to redeem and restore and make whole.   

Proverbs builds a fence to protect people. Jesus builds a gate in the fence to connect people and show them the way.   

Jesus brings some much needed perspective to the wisdom of Proverbs. Proverbs is very focused on this life and how to survive in an imperfect world, so much so that it puts us at risk of losing sight of the next life.

Part of Jesus’ message is to remind people that this life is not all there is. What we do in this life has consequences for the next life. The life to come is by far the bigger part. Wisdom dictates that our behaviour in this world needs to be informed by the life to come.

When Jesus said, don’t worry about the food you eat or what tomorrow might bring, he was not encouraging people to be lazy or irresponsible. He was encouraging the work of faith. He was setting people free from unhelpful fear and anxiety. He was broadening people’s horizons, helping the human mind to imagine a different reality, an eternal reality.        

That does not mean we fold our hands and give up our jobs. We still need to work but we do so by the light of eternity, rather than the fear of not having enough. 

The apostle Paul brings the teaching of Jesus and the wisdom of Proverbs together nicely when he says in his letter to the Thessalonians… 

11 make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, 12 so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. 

Conclusion:

We need to keep authority and responsibility together. When we do that we are free. Not free to do whatever we want, but free to love God, love our neighbour and love ourselves.

May the Lord give you grace to walk in freedom and righteousness. 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?

  • Why is it important to keep responsibility and authority together? What happens if we separate responsibility and authority?
  • Can you think of examples (either from Scripture or your own experience) when authority was separated from responsibility? What happened?
  • How might we guard our personal authority? How might we help others, in a way that respects their freedom and our own?
  • What wisdom (life skills) can we learn from observing the ant?
  • How does the advice of Proverbs 6 fit with the teaching of Jesus? How does Jesus complete (fulfil) the wisdom of Proverbs? 

[1] Paul Koptak, NIVAC Proverbs, page 199.

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

The Gate

Scripture: John 10:7-10

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Security
  • Freedom
  • Nourishment
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

Today we continue our sermon series on the I am sayings of Jesus in the gospel of John. Jesus uses a number of I am statements to describe himself. These sayings tell us about Jesus’ being, his identity.

Last week someone asked me if I was familiar with Colin McCahon’s I am paintings. Colin McCahon is one of New Zealand’s best artists. In 1970 McCahon painted an enormous piece called Gate III. For some time, it hung on the wall at Victoria University. It is 11 metres wide and 3 metres high.

Gate III is a landscape with the words I AM painted in the middle. Either side are a selection of Bible verses. One of those verses, a quote from Psalm 90:12, reads: Teach us to order our days rightly, that we may enter the gate of wisdom.

Some people say Gate III is a kind of protest or statement against the nuclear situation post world war two. Gate III could be showing a way through either to a pure land or a wasteland. Either abundant life or interminable death.

Please turn with me to John chapter 10, verse 7, page 132 toward the back of your pew Bibles. Last week we heard how Jesus is the good shepherd. This morning we hear how Jesus says: I am the gate for the sheep. From John 10, verses 7-10 we read…

7 So Jesus said again, “I am telling you the truth: I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All others who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the gate. Those who come in by me will be saved; they will come in and go out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only in order to steal, kill, and destroy. I have come in order that you might have life—life in all its fullness.

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

In this reading Jesus holds before his readers the option of life or death. Jesus is basically saying he is the gate for entry into life. Not mere existence but rather life in all its fullness. Abundant life. Three aspects of abundant life are highlighted in these verses: security, freedom and nourishment. First, let us consider the security that is ours through Christ.

Security:

It seems every generation faces some kind of threat. Colin McCahon was acutely aware of the nuclear threat. Often the threat is related to war and starvation. But not always.

Many of you would remember the Y2K bug and the way the world nervously waited through 1999 to see if computer technology would crash, when the clock ticked over to the new millennium, sending us all back to the dark ages. It turned out to be nothing in the end.

Currently the threat we are most aware of is the Covid virus, which is something very real. I suppose for people in places like Yemen and Gaza and Sheikh Jarrah the threat is bullets and shrapnel.

Security is the state of being free from danger or threat. Security is one of the pillars of abundant life.

In verse 7 & verse 9, of John 10, Jesus says: I am the gate. In other words, I am your security. (Or, as Frankie Goes to Hollywood would say: I’ll protect you from the hooded claw, keep the vampire from your door…)

Verses 7-10 of John 10 envision a shepherd caring for his sheep in the wilderness. Kenneth Bailey [1] explains that when grass is plentiful, in the middle east, shepherds can easily find pasture for their sheep. Therefore, they don’t need to travel far and can return to the safety of the village at night.

But toward the end of summer and beginning of autumn, when it hasn’t rained for a while and grass is harder to find, shepherds must go further afield to find pasture. This requires them to stay out overnight in the wilderness with their sheep.

Obviously the wilderness at night is a more threatening environment and so the need for security is heightened. Unlike relatively safe New Zealand, the middle east was (and still is) a dangerous place, both in terms of wild animals and thieves (and rockets).           

Typically, the shepherd would build a walled enclosure for the sheep made of rocks with thorns on the top, to deter thieves from climbing over to steal the sheep. The enclosure did not have a door as such, because this is the wilderness and shepherds don’t carry around spare doors in their pockets.

So the shepherd himself would lie across the opening of the sheep fold [2] to prevent the sheep walking out into the night and as a guard to prevent thieves or wild animals coming in. The shepherd themselves would act as the door or gate. Sort of like a bouncer on the door of a night club, except without the loud music and drinking. 

Freedom:

Many of you would be familiar with the folk tale of Rapunzel. The princess who was trapped in a tall tower and who never cut her hair. Eventually she found freedom when she let her hair down so a brave prince could climb up.

Rapunzel was definitely very secure but her life was not at all full or abundant.    Security, by itself, is not enough to ensure abundant life. Too much security actually makes for an impoverished life. Rapunzel had lots of security but no real freedom.

In verse 9 Jesus says: …Whoever comes in by me will be saved; he (or she) will come in and go out…

This verse is talking about the freedom that comes with the security Jesus provides. The shepherd does not keep the sheep locked up in a walled enclosure all the time. The sheep are not prisoners. During the day the sheep are free to come and go from the enclosure as they please. Freedom goes hand in hand with security.

The implication here is that security is provided by one’s closeness to the shepherd, not by the walls of the enclosure.

F.F. Bruce makes the comment: Whenever the people of Christ have… tried to secure unity or safety by building walls around themselves, the results have not been encouraging. The walls have either been so comprehensive as to enclose a number of wolves along with the sheep… or they have been so restrictive as to exclude more sheep than they enclose. [3]   

If you want an example of what F.F. Bruce is talking about here think Gloriavale or Jonestown or the movie The Village or some other religious cult that cuts itself off from the world.

We might think of the walls of the sheepfold as the traditions of a faith community. The walls of our traditions have their place and they do make us feel safe in times of change and uncertainty. But the traditions are there to serve us. We are not there to serve the traditions.

For example, traditionally the communion elements are bread and wine. But we bend the tradition a little to serve the people. Instead of wine we serve grape juice because we don’t want to make life difficult for someone who may have a problem with alcohol. Likewise, we serve gluten free craters alongside the bread because not everybody has the same tolerance for gluten. 

It’s not the tradition that saves us. It’s staying close to Jesus that saves us. The purpose of the tradition is to help us stay close to Jesus. If the tradition no longer does that, then we change the tradition. 

Because Jesus is both the good shepherd and the gate for the sheep, he is at home in the church and in the world. There is a time for the sheep to gather in the fold of the church. Just as there is a time for the sheep to roam the hillsides of the world.

To follow Jesus is to walk in freedom and righteousness. Freedom is both exciting and frightening at the same time because it takes us out of our comfort zone. When we walk with Jesus, we walk by faith and not by sight.

In verse 8 Jesus says: All others who came before me are thieves and robbers. And then in verse 10 Jesus goes on to say: The thief comes only in order to steal, kill and destroy. So who is the thief?

Well, there are many potential candidates. Most likely Jesus is referring to those who falsely claimed to be the Messiah. Often these false Messiahs were insurrectionists and revolutionaries, willing to sacrifice the sheep in a violent uprising against the authorities.

Jesus is the good shepherd. He is not asking people to take up arms and die in a bloody revolution. He wants nothing to do with such violence. God’s kingdom is not of this world.

We are talking about those things that make life truly abundant. Abundant life is not about having lots of stuff. Nor is abundant life about achieving lots of things. Abundance is not the same as busy-ness and clutter. To have abundant life we need security with freedom. But we also need nourishment for our souls.

Nourishment:

It is thought that around 9 million people die of hunger every year. In contrast nearly 3 million people die of obesity. We live in a world of great disparity.

Nourishment can be defined as the food necessary for growth, health and maintaining a good condition. Some foods contain more nourishment than others. Salmon, for example, is one of the most nutrient dense foods. Apparently not all fish are created equal. But if you don’t eat salmon then kale is also high in nutrients, as are foods like garlic, potatoes, seaweed and sardines.

In verse 9 Jesus says: I am the gate. Whoever comes in by me will be saved; he will come in and go out and find pasture.

Pasture is of course nourishment for the sheep.

Earlier I mentioned that grass, in the middle east, becomes more scarce towards the end of summer and into autumn. This means it takes a skilful shepherd to find feed for his flock. Jesus has the wisdom and knowledge to lead his followers to places of spiritually rich nourishment. 

Because of the security and freedom that Jesus provides, his sheep are able to find spiritual nourishment for their souls. Notice though the relationship between nourishment and freedom. We are not free to do whatever we want. No. We are free to find pasture or nourishment for ourselves.   

Our pasture may come in any number of forms. Perhaps through reading and reflecting on the Scriptures. Maybe by spending time in the beauty of God’s creation; climbing mountains or walking beaches. Quality time connecting with other people in an unhurried way may also nourish one’s soul, as can solitude and stillness. 

Interestingly, in John chapter 4, when Jesus’ disciples brought him some food he said to them, I have food to eat that you know nothing about. The disciples misunderstood, taking Jesus literally. But Jesus wasn’t talking about physical food. My food, Jesus said, is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish the work he gave me to do.

Ultimately, the thing that satisfies our hunger for meaning more than anything else, is doing the will of God. So, when Jesus refers to himself as the gate for the sheep to find pasture, he could mean we discover God’s will for ourselves through him – that is, through Christ.

Conclusion:

For life to be abundant we need at least three things: security, freedom and nourishment. Jesus is the one who provides those things.

Now you may be thinking, that’s all well and good but what difference does that make to me today? How does Jesus being the gate translate in our experience?

Well, a gate or a door is a transition point. A gate leads us from one space to another. Our lives are punctuated with gates. Starting school is a transition point or doorway both for the child and their parents. Adolescence is a significant transition in one’s life from childhood to becoming an adult. The mid-life transition is also significant.

Leaving home is a gateway. Getting married, changing jobs, immigrating to another country, retiring from the work force and, when the time is right, passing from this life to the next; these are all doorways where we transition from one place to another.

Each of us must pass through a kind of internal, psychological gate. If we are to develop and mature we must take off our masks, walk through the door of consciousness and face the truth about ourselves.

Transitions or gates, whether they are internal or external, are not always easy to negotiate. Often when we pass through one of life’s metaphorical doorways we feel anxious. What will we find on the other side?

When we follow Jesus, we don’t walk alone. Jesus is the gate or the door for the sheep. We are the sheep. That means Jesus is present with us when we face the many transitions we must make in this life. Most importantly, Jesus is with us when we make our final transition through the doorway of death to eternal life. In fact, Jesus is the doorway to God the Father.

May security, freedom and nourishment be yours in abundance.    

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?

  • How is abundant life different from mere existence?
  • What does Jesus mean when he says: I am the gate for the sheep?
  • How does Jesus provide security for you? Can you think of a time or situation when Jesus shielded you from some kind of threat or fear?
  • Why is freedom a necessary companion to security? When are the walls of tradition helpful? When might we need to step outside the walls of tradition? (Think of an example from your own experience.)   
  • Where do you find nourishment for your soul?
  • Are you facing a transition (or doorway) in your life at the moment? Take some time this week to tell God how you are feeling and to ask his guidance. What is God saying to you?

[1] Kenneth Bailey, ‘The Good Shepherd’, pages 220-224

[2] William Barclay, John, page 58.

[3] F.F. Bruce, quoted in Bruce Milne’s BST commentary on John, page 147. 

Tawa Baptist

Eternal Life

Scripture: John 11:1-45

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Freedom
  • Faith
  • Feeling
  • Conclusion – Friendship

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

Today we begin a new sermon series on the I am sayings of Jesus in the gospel of John. Jesus uses a number of I am statements to describe himself. These sayings tell us about Jesus’ being, his identity.

Please turn with me to John chapter 11, page 133, toward the back of your pew Bibles. This morning, because we are in the season of Easter, we focus on John 11, where Jesus says: I am the resurrection and the life. From verses 1-45, we read…  

A man named Lazarus, who lived in Bethany, became sick. Bethany was the town where Mary and her sister Martha lived. (2 This Mary was the one who poured the perfume on the Lord’s feet and wiped them with her hair; it was her brother Lazarus who was sick.) 3 The sisters sent Jesus a message: “Lord, your dear friend is sick.”

4 When Jesus heard it, he said, “The final result of this sickness will not be the death of Lazarus; this has happened in order to bring glory to God, and it will be the means by which the Son of God will receive glory.”

5 Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 Yet when he received the news that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was for two more days. 7 Then he said to the disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”

8 “Teacher,” the disciples answered, “just a short time ago the people there wanted to stone you; and are you planning to go back?”

9 Jesus said, “A day has twelve hours, doesn’t it? So those who walk in broad daylight do not stumble, for they see the light of this world. 10 But if they walk during the night they stumble, because they have no light.” 11 Jesus said this and then added, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I will go and wake him up.”

12 The disciples answered, “If he is asleep, Lord, he will get well.”

13 Jesus meant that Lazarus had died, but they thought he meant natural sleep. 14 So Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, 15 but for your sake I am glad that I was not with him, so that you will believe. Let us go to him.”

16 Thomas (called the Twin) said to his fellow disciples, “Let us all go along with the Teacher, so that we may die with him!”

17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had been buried four days before. 18 Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, 19 and many Judeans had come to see Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother’s death.

20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed in the house. 21 Martha said to Jesus, “If you had been here, Lord, my brother would not have died! 22 But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask him for.”

23 “Your brother will rise to life,” Jesus told her.

24 “I know,” she replied, “that he will rise to life on the last day.”

25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me will live, even though they die; 26 and those who live and believe in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

27 “Yes, Lord!” she answered. “I do believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”

28 After Martha said this, she went back and called her sister Mary privately. “The Teacher is here,” she told her, “and is asking for you.” 29 When Mary heard this, she got up and hurried out to meet him. (30 Jesus had not yet arrived in the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him.) 31 The people who were in the house with Mary comforting her followed her when they saw her get up and hurry out. They thought that she was going to the grave to weep there.

32 Mary arrived where Jesus was, and as soon as she saw him, she fell at his feet. “Lord,” she said, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died!”

33 Jesus saw her weeping, and he saw how the people with her were weeping also; his heart was touched, and he was deeply moved. 34 “Where have you buried him?” he asked them.

“Come and see, Lord,” they answered.

35 Jesus wept. 36 “See how much he loved him!” the people said.

37 But some of them said, “He gave sight to the blind man, didn’t he? Could he not have kept Lazarus from dying?”

38 Deeply moved once more, Jesus went to the tomb, which was a cave with a stone placed at the entrance. 39 “Take the stone away!” Jesus ordered.

Martha, the dead man’s sister, answered, “There will be a bad smell, Lord. He has been buried four days!”

40 Jesus said to her, “Didn’t I tell you that you would see God’s glory if you believed?” 41 They took the stone away. Jesus looked up and said, “I thank you, Father, that you listen to me. 42 I know that you always listen to me, but I say this for the sake of the people here, so that they will believe that you sent me.” 43 After he had said this, he called out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 He came out, his hands and feet wrapped in grave cloths, and with a cloth around his face. “Untie him,” Jesus told them, “and let him go.”

45 Many of the people who had come to visit Mary saw what Jesus did, and they believed in him. 

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

The main point of today’s message is that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Or to put it another way: Jesus is eternal life.

Eternal life is not the same as this life. In the context of John 11 we note four F’s in relation to eternal life: Freedom, faith, feeling and friendship. First let’s consider the freedom associated with eternal life.

Freedom:

For many of us life is incredibly busy these days. We tend to be time poor. Being short on time creates an internal pressure so that we end up feeling like a pin ball, bouncing back and forth in every direction, with little or no control over our lives. Unfortunately, being time poor lead can lead to poor decision making.

When Jesus learned that his friend Lazarus was sick, we notice he responds with freedom. For most people this would have been a difficult decision. On the one hand, Jesus’ friends needed his help urgently. But on the other hand, helping his friends meant travelling to Judea where people wanted to kill Jesus.

Clearly there was an inherent tension in this decision, a bit like being trapped in a vice of love and fear. But Jesus is no ordinary man. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Jesus does not make this decision based on temporal concerns. He makes this decision based on God’s glory, which eternal.

Jesus waits two days before deciding to go to Lazarus. In verse 9 Jesus says to his disciples: “A day has twelve hours, doesn’t it? So those who walk in broad daylight do not stumble, for they see the light of this world. 10 But if they walk during the night they stumble, because they have no light.” 

Perhaps Jesus is using daylight here as a metaphor for time. During daylight hours one is free to move about but when darkness falls you lose your freedom. The point is, with Jesus there is light (or time) and therefore freedom.   

In verse 11 Jesus added, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I will go and wake him up.”

Once again the disciples misunderstand. They think Jesus is talking about natural sleep. But Jesus is using sleep as a metaphor for death. By calling Lazarus’ death ‘sleep’, Jesus is saying that Lazarus’ death is not permanent. And if death is not permanent then it is not to be feared. There will be more time (more daylight) after the night of sleep has passed.

Eternal life leads to freedom then. This point is illustrated literally when Lazarus walks out of his tomb wrapped in grave clothes and Jesus tells the people there to untie him and let him go.

When we truly believe that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, when we trust in Jesus, who is eternal life, then the tyranny of time and the fear of death lose their power over us and we enjoy freedom in our inner being.

The key to this sort of freedom though is faith in Jesus.

Faith:

In 1986 David Bowie starred as a Goblin king in a film called the Labyrinth. The Labyrinth is a musical fantasy in which Sarah, a 16-year-old girl, goes searching through a maze to rescue her baby brother Toby.

Toby is being kept in the castle of the Goblin king because Sarah had wished Toby away. Now Sarah regrets what she has done and wants her brother back.

At one point in the film Sarah couldn’t find her way through the maze. Wherever she looked she could only see wall. Sarah couldn’t see the opening right in front of her until a friendly creature pointed it out to her. Sarah had to trust the advice of one of the locals to find her way through.

That is often how we face death. We see death as a wall, a dead end, without any openings. But, with Jesus, we are able to find a way through.

By the time Jesus arrives in the village of Bethany, Lazarus has been dead four days. His body is in a tomb behind a wall of rock (a dead end) and no one (except Jesus) can see a way through. The mourners are trapped too, in the maze of their grief.  

In some ways Jewish mourning rituals were similar to Maori tangihanga (funeral protocol). It was a sacred duty to visit in person to give comfort and support to the grieving family. In Jewish and Maori thought people are connected. 

Another similarity between Jewish and Maori funerals is they last a number of days. Jews put seven days aside for the process. Like a tangi (funeral), people would be coming to visit Martha and Mary throughout the whole week. And it wouldn’t just be a fleeting visit either.   

Jesus turns up half way through the week of mourning. Martha goes out to meet him and says, “If you had been here Lord, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask him for.”  

Martha is not accusing Jesus here. She is not angry. To the contrary she is bravely declaring her faith in Jesus. She is saying, ‘Even though my brother is dead I still trust you. We are still friends. You are welcome here’. Martha does not tell Jesus what to do, like she did in Luke 10. No. Martha lets Jesus be Jesus and she lets God be God.

Jesus says to Martha: “Your brother will rise to life”. Martha thinks Jesus is referring to the general resurrection of the dead at the end of time, sort of like when someone tries to offer comfort at a funeral by saying, ‘We will see them again in heaven one day’.

But Jesus means more than Martha is able to grasp at that moment and he takes the conversation deeper saying: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me will live, even though they die; 26 and those who live and believe in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Jesus doesn’t just say, ‘I can raise Lazarus from the dead’. No. He says, ‘I am the resurrection. I am eternal life’. The very essence of Jesus is resurrection life. Therefore, to enter eternal life, one must be in Christ. And the way to get into Christ is through faith, that is, through believing in him. Not just believing that he exists but actually trusting him.

In verse 15 Jesus indicates that Lazarus’ death is so that his disciples will believe. Likewise, in verse 42, Jesus prays publicly so the people there would believe that God sent him. Lazarus’ death and resurrection serves to inspire and strengthen faith in Jesus, because faith in Jesus creates openings in walls.

Commenting on Jesus’ words to Martha, in verse 25, Leon Morris says: ‘Death is a but a gateway to further life and fellowship with God.’

This means, when we put our faith in Jesus, death is not an end in itself. Rather, faith in Jesus creates an opening in the wall of death, an opening to a new beginning. (Sort of like that line in the song Closing Time: “…every new beginning starts with some other beginning’s end”.)

Martha responds remarkably well when she says: “Yes Lord, I do believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who has come into the world.”

That’s an impressive answer. Firstly, Martha agrees that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Then she goes on to describe Jesus in the highest terms. Martha calls Jesus the Messiah; the anointed one, chosen by God to come into the world and save his people. Martha also calls Jesus the Son of God; which, in this context, meant that Jesus had the closest possible relationship with God that a person could have.  

Although Martha doesn’t fully comprehend what Jesus has just said to her, she is willing to take it on faith. She accepts what Jesus says as true even though she doesn’t fully understand what this means or what Jesus is about to do.

Faith usually precedes understanding. It is only after we have trusted and obeyed the Lord that mental comprehension follows.

With eternal life comes freedom. And the way to enter eternal life is through faith in Jesus. Eternal life involves freedom, faith and feeling. Deep feeling.

Feeling:

It is thought that the world’s largest and possibly oldest living organism is the Pando. (Not to be confused with Panda).

On the surface the Pando looks like a forest of individual aspen trees but scientists have discovered that all the trees have an identical genetic marker. Apparently the trees are connected by the same underground root system.

The Pando covers about 108 acres of land and weighs around 6,600 tons. The root system is thought to be several thousand years old, maybe older.

While the Pando is not eternal, in the same sense that Jesus is eternal, it does offer an analogy for eternal life. The aspen trees seen above the surface may only live for around 100 years or so, but the root system underneath keeps putting up new shoots, so the organism is continually renewing itself.

Eternal life is a deeply connected life, sort of like the Pando is connected.

In John 11:28 Martha goes back to the house and sends Mary out to see Jesus. Like her sister, Mary also says to Jesus, “If you had been here Lord, my brother would not have died.” But Jesus says nothing, at least not straight away. He connected with Martha through a theological conversation, probably because that is what Martha needed. But he connects with Mary on an emotional level.

Verse 33 reads: Jesus saw her weeping, and he saw how the people with her were weeping also; his heart was touched, and he was deeply moved. 

The Greek word translated as weeping here means wailing or crying loudly.[1] This is not just a few stifled tears.

Often in European style funerals people turn the volume down on their emotions. It’s not that we feel any less. We just don’t express our grief as loudly. But in Jewish culture people were more inclined to turn the volume up on their emotions. If a wave of grief sweeps over you, you wail and cry out loud. You let people know how much the deceased means to you.

It’s not that one way is better than the other. It’s just that different cultures handle grief in different ways.

Jesus lets Mary’s grief touch his heart. He makes himself vulnerable, in other words, and is deeply moved. This is an emotionally intimate moment. Verse 5 tells us that Jesus loved Martha, Mary & Lazarus. Love creates a connection. You can’t really love someone without feeling what they feel. Eternal life is a deeply connected life.

We read, in verse 35, that Jesus wept. However, the Greek term translated as wept here is different from Mary’s loud wailing. Jesus’ weeping is quiet. [2]

Why does Jesus weep? He is about to raise Lazarus from the dead so it doesn’t make sense that he is sad for Lazarus. It appears something is going on here which is bigger than Lazarus. Perhaps Jesus is in touch with the ocean of grief caused by death over the millennia. Maybe also he is anticipating his own death on the cross. Raising Lazarus seems to have cost Jesus something.

It is natural to feel sadness and to express grief when someone dies. Jesus’ tears show his connection with humanity. More than that, his tears give permission for us to grieve also. Even though, for Christians, death is a temporary thing (like sleep), it still hurts to be disconnected from the ones we love.

We need to hold on to the fact that death is not in control. Jesus is the resurrection and the life and that means he is in control. Jesus has the power to restore the life connection.

Verse 38 tells us how Jesus was deeply moved once more, only this time he did not weep. This time he was moved to raise his friend from the dead. And Lazarus emerged alive from his tomb.    

Conclusion – Friendship:

You know, when we (in the west) think of eternal life, we tend to think in terms of time. We perceive eternal life, therefore, as a never ending sequence of events; an existence that just keeps going and going and going forever. The idea of never ending time is actually quite terrifying if you think about it.

However, this may not be the best way to think about eternal life. When Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life he was indicating that eternal life is a relationship – a friendship with him in fact.

This friendship with Jesus, and consequently with God the Father, is of such a high quality that the prospect of never ending life becomes something good to look forward to. This is the Christian hope. 

Now, it’s important to understand that Christian hope is not all pie in the sky, off in the future one day. No. You see, death isn’t just when someone’s heart stops and their brain function ceases. Death happens while we are still breathing, when right relationship breaks down and our connection with God and others is destroyed. 

Eternal life (or reconnection with God) actually begins in this world at the point we put our faith in Jesus. But it isn’t fully felt or realised by us until after our resurrection from physical death.

Last Sunday, at Easter, we celebrated Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Jesus’ resurrection creates an opening for our resurrection. Through faith in Jesus our friendship with God is restored and we are able enjoy freedom and a deep connection in our relationships with others. 

Grace and peace be yours in abundance.  

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 do you think Jesus means when he says, “I am the resurrection and the life”? 
  • How would you feel if you heard a good friend of yours was sick and needed your help? Why did Jesus take his time before going to Bethany? What was Jesus’ main consideration in making this decision?
  • How do you view death; as a wall or as a gateway to fellowship with God? Can you think of a time in your life when trusting Jesus helped you to find an opening in the wall you were facing?
  • How does Jesus connect with Martha? How does he connect with Mary? How does Jesus connect with you when you are grieving?
  • What difference does it make thinking of eternal life as a friendship with Jesus (rather than just an unquantifiable amount of time)?  

[1] Refer Leon Morris, page 495.

[2] Ibid.

Tawa Baptist

Freedom

Scripture: 1st Peter 2:13-17

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Submission
  • Freedom
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

Some things do not go well together. For example, forks and power sockets are not a good combination. Orange juice and toothpaste don’t mix very well either. (Just try drinking an OJ after brushing your teeth.) Hair driers and bath tubs should also be avoided, along with late nights and early mornings or ice-cream and sensitive teeth. These sorts of things are simply not compatible. 

By the same token there are some things that naturally work well together. For example, bread and butter, shoes and socks, darkness and sleep, soap and water, macaroni and cheese and salty chips dipped in melted chocolate. It took me over 40 years to discover that last combination. Chips and chocolate go surprisingly well together. The salt accentuates the flavour of the chocolate. It tastes great.     

Today we continue our series in 1st Peter. Last week we heard how we need to get the foundation of our inner life right so that we can be a winsome witness to the world. This morning’s passage continues the theme of the believers’ relationship to the world, with a particular focus on our relationship with the government. From 1st Peter, chapter 2, verses 13-17 to read…

Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, 14 or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. 15 For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. 16 Live as free people,but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil;live as God’s slaves. 17 Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers,fear God, honour the emperor.

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

In this reading we find two ideas which, at first, sound incompatible: submission and freedom. Hearing these two words together we might be inclined to think orange juice and toothpaste. But actually, on closer examination, we find submission and freedom are more like salty chips and melted chocolate – an unexpected match made in heaven.

First let us consider what Peter has to say about submission.

Submission:

To submit means to accept, or yield to, the will of another person. Obedience goes hand in hand with submission. When we submit to someone we put ourselves under that person’s authority. Submission does not diminish our worth or our value as human beings. It is simply a way of saying, ‘you first’.

One of my earliest memories, as a child, is of my grandfather putting me on his shoulders and carrying me around his house. I was quite young at that stage and still learning to talk. But I found that when I turned my grandfather’s head he would go in the direction I had indicated, without a word being spoken.   

My grandfather did not need to play this game and did not need to follow my directions. Nevertheless, he freely chose to submit to me when I was on his shoulders. His submission did not make him any less of a person. To the contrary it opened a door in our relationship and was an expression of his love.

Submission is not always an expression of love. When submission is forced it feels more like violence but when submission is freely given it creates a connection, a bridge, between people.

Now in sharing this story I don’t mean to suggest parents and grandparents should always submit to their children and grandchildren. This was just a game my grandfather played with me and was the exception rather than the rule. Generally speaking, it is more helpful for small children if they feel like caring and responsible adults are in charge.

But, at the same time, a child needs to know the adults in their life trust them. And that’s what my grandfather was doing in playing a game of submitting to me – he was creating trust.    

Peter instructs his readers to Submit yourselves… to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, 14 or to governors, who are sent by him…

Peter is talking about the Christian believers’ relationship to the government. Generally speaking, we are to submit to the government. Now we need to remember here that the governing authority of Peter’s day was very different from the government we know. In the first century the Romans were in charge and it was essentially a pagan dictatorship, not a democracy.

The ‘emperor’ refers to Caesar and the governors were those men appointed by Caesar to manage certain geographical areas within the empire. Most likely Peter wrote his letter when Nero was emperor – sometime near the beginning of Nero’s reign. Nero was a bad egg. He was not a benevolent dictator. By the end of his reign he was openly persecuting Christians. He used Christians as a scapegoat for whatever suited his purpose.

Peter’s instruction to submit was probably given a couple of years prior to Nero’s full on persecution of the church. In any case, the Christian community was a marginalized minority and in no position to influence or leverage the political powers that be.

Given the political context of that time Peter’s instruction to submit to a pagan government may seem strange to us, like putting a fork into a power socket. The Roman authorities could be violent.

However, Peter’s advice was wise. The church at that time was perceived by society at large to be a relatively new religion and therefore a threat to the peace of the empire. The most sensible strategy in that situation was for the church to try and foster trust by submitting to the authorities and demonstrating they were not a threat.

Indeed, the Christian church posed no threat at all. Jesus made it very clear that his kingdom is not of this world and so Caesar had no reason to fear the church. Unfortunately, Nero was a bit bonkers and reason did not really feature that much in his leadership.       

Nevertheless, Peter tells his readers to submit to the government. This is in keeping with Jesus’ teaching. Earlier in the service we read a passage from Mark 12, where Jesus was asked whether it was right to pay taxes to Caesar? After all, the tax money was supporting a pagan power and being spent in all sorts of ways that were disagreeable to Jewish religion.

The question was a trick, designed to trap Jesus, but the Lord saw through it and called his opponents out for their pretense. Jesus said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s.”

In other words, ‘Submit to the government by paying your taxes, but save your worship for God’.

In Christian thought the government is actually God’s servant, even if the government is not aware of it. God uses governments (of all varieties) to maintain law and order. This does not mean that God is micro-managing every law change and policy decision. To the contrary, governments do a fair bit that I expect God does not agree with. But, looking at the bigger picture of history, God is sovereign. He plants governments and uproots them as he determines.    

This is how Jesus saw it. The people in political power are only there because God has allowed it. When Jesus stood trial before Pilate, the Roman governor said to Jesus, “Do you refuse to speak to me? Don’t you realise I have power either to free you or to crucify you?” [1]

And Jesus replied, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above.”

In that situation Jesus knew it was God’s will for him to die on the cross. Jesus submitted to the Roman government because he understood that, as ungodly as the Romans were, they were still appointed by God. Pilate was, unwittingly, serving God’s purpose.

Interestingly, the reason Peter gives why Christians should submit to the authorities is:  for the Lord’s sake …15 For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people.

The idea here is that submission provides a winsome witness. People can argue with the words you say but they cannot argue with their experience of you. Humble submission speaks volumes. Jesus’ quiet submission certainly spoke volumes to Pilate. It helped to convince Pilate that the accusations against Jesus were false. From then on Pilate tried to set Jesus free.

While submitting to the governing authorities is a good strategy for fostering trust between the church and the government, there is no guarantee it will save us. Ultimately, we submit for the Lord’s sake. In other words, our submission to the government is really an act of loving obedience to God.

As I said earlier, submitting does not makes us less valuable in any way. If anything it demonstrates our worth.

So, should we always submit to the government then? What if the government ask us to do something that is clearly wrong? Well, no. We should not blindly do whatever the government tells us. There are exceptions to the rule. We need to exercise some discernment. The key is obedience to God. Jesus submitted to death on a cross, at the hands of the Roman government, because that was God’s will for him. But if Pilate had told Jesus to bow down to Caesar we know Jesus would have refused.

The point is, our ultimate submission is to God. If the government wants us to do something that is clearly offensive to God, then we must give priority to what God wants.

For example, in Exodus 1 when the people of Israel were being oppressed in Egypt, Pharaoh told the Jewish midwives to kill all the baby boys, as they were born, but to let the girls live. In that situation the mid wives, Shiphrah and Puah, disobeyed the government and lied to Pharaoh because they feared God.

In Daniel 6, king Darius issued an edict that anyone who prayed to any god or man during a set 30-day period, except king Darius, should be thrown into a den of lions. The prophet Daniel, who was a leading servant of the king and normally did submit to the government, disobeyed the edict. Daniel carried on praying to Yahweh, the God of Israel, three times a day as he always did.     

Likewise, in Acts 4 when the Sanhedrin told the apostles Peter & John to stop healing and preaching in the name of Jesus, Peter & John replied: “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”      

We submit to the government for the sake of the Lord. Faithful obedience to God is the key to discerning when civil disobedience is called for.

The past several months have been an interesting time. Because of the COVID pandemic the government has, when necessary, put bans on large gatherings with the result that we have missed 18 Sundays of gathered worship so far this year. (12 weeks the first time and 6 weeks the second time.) We have submitted to the government’s requirements and have not overstepped the mark.

We submitted for the sake of the Lord and for the well-being of the wider community. Although we stopped gathering physically for 18 weeks, we did not stop worshipping God. We believe submitting to the government in this context is the right thing to do. It is an act of obedience to God.

Okay, so we are to submit to the government, in accordance with God’s will.

Freedom:

The other word Peter puts alongside submission, in this passage, is freedom.

In verse 16 of chapter 2, in the same breath as telling his readers to submit to the governing authorities, Peter says:  Live as free people,but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil;live as God’s slaves.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon, submission and freedom do not seem like they go together at first. But actually, like salty chips dipped in melted chocolate they are an unexpectedly good match.

Freedom empowers submission. Freedom lends dignity to submission. Freedom is to submission what electricity is to a lightbulb – freedom fulfills the purpose of submission (which is to foster trust and express love).

To understand how freedom relates to submission we need to ensure we have a right understanding of freedom. Most people in contemporary western society think of freedom as the ability to do whatever one wants, so long as it does not harm anyone else. So, in popular culture at least, freedom has to do with self-determination.

But this is not what the Bible means by freedom. In a Christian understanding, freedom is not about an escape from responsibility and service. No. Freedom is about a change of master. Without Christ, our master is sin and death. But with Christ our master is the Living God. And the Lord God Almighty is a far kinder master than any other we could have.

To help us understand this concept of freedom, think of a fish. A fish is free so long as it remains in water. But if the fish decides to go walk about on land it loses its freedom and in fact loses its life. In the same way we human beings are free so long as we remain in God’s will for us. If we reject God as our master, if we remove ourselves from the water of God’s will, then we lose our freedom and our life.

Let me tell you a story to further illustrate what Christians mean by freedom. Once there was a quiver of arrows straight and true. One day one of the arrows, we’ll call him Aaron (Aaron the arrow), decided he was sick and tired of being cooped up in the quiver with all the other arrows. Aaron wanted to be free. As chance would have it Aaron’s wish was granted and he fell out of the quiver onto the ground.

At first he thought, this is great. Out in the fresh air and sunshine. Not jammed in with the other arrows. But before long some children found Aaron and started playing with him. They used his head to draw in the dirt and his shaft in a pretend sword fight. Aaron’s feathers got seriously ruffled. He did not like this at all. After a while the children got bored playing with Aaron and dropped him in the mud.

By and by a dog came along and sniffed at Aaron. The dog picked the arrow up in her mouth and carried it for a while before burying it in the ground under a tree. Aaron disliked this even more than the children playing with him. If this was freedom, then he did not want a bar of it.

As Aaron lay in the damp earth he realized the only way he could be truly free was in his master’s hand. He was an arrow and his purpose was to fly through the air in obedience to his master’s aim. Aaron longed to return to the quiver.  

After a few days lying in his shallow grave, another dog sniffed him out and dug him up. Aaron the arrow was in luck. This was his master’s dog. The dog returned Aaron to his master who cleaned the arrow up and put Aaron in the quiver. Aaron was pleased to be back where he belonged. Now his life had meaning again. Now he was free to fulfill his purpose.

Freedom is about a change of master.

You see freedom is not about being able to do whatever we want. Like Aaron, we are only truly free when we submit to God as our master. We are only truly free in God’s hand, in his will. Christian freedom means being free to serve God.

Joel Green sees the connection between submission and freedom. Joel writes: ‘Submission is best understood as finding and occupying responsibly one’s place in society… In Biblical thought submission is an expression of freedom, not coercion.’ [2]  

The point is, we freely choose to submit to the government in accordance with God’s will for us. We are not to use our freedom as a cover up for evil. We are not to use our religion as a cloak for avoiding our civic responsibility. We are to abide by the laws of the land because in doing this we are really obeying God; swimming in the water of his will.  

Alan Stibbs observes a connection between submission to the governing authorities and freedom in Matthew 5:41. In this verse Jesus is giving an example of what it means to do good to one’s enemies. Under Roman law, a soldier could lawfully require a civilian to carry their load for one mile. But Jesus said, if an occupation soldier forces you to carry his pack one mile, carry it two. (Go the extra mile.)

The idea here is that when you are compelled to submit you should openly show that you are still free by engaging in more of the same service, willingly and of your own initiative. [3]     

Our submission to the government, therefore, is to be free – it is to be voluntary and willing. In this way, freedom empowers submission. Freedom lends dignity to acts of submission and fulfills the purpose of submission.  

In verse 17 of chapter 2 Peter summarises (in general terms) what it means to live as slaves (or servants) of God, when he says: Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers,fear God, honour the emperor.

That phrase translated as show proper respect is literally honour everyone, in the original Greek. It is the same word translated as honour the emperor. This implies that all human beings (whether they are a slave or Caesar himself) are valuable in God’s sight and deserving of honour and respect, for we are all made in the image of God.

Peter’s message to respect everyone, regardless of gender, race, religion or socio-economic standing, still speaks to our society today. The Me Too movement has highlighted the need to show sexual respect, just as the Black Lives Matter movement has highlighted the need to show racial respect.

We are to respect everyone but we are to love the family of believers. The sort of love in view here is agape love, deeply devoted love, divine love. We are to love other Christians in the same way that God loves us in Christ.

Notice too how we are to honour the emperor but we are to fear God. Fear, in this context, does not mean terror or anxiety. Rather, fear means awe and reverence. It is only when God is given his proper place in the center of things that all other things take their proper place. [4] 

The implication here is that we do not need to fear the emperor (or the government). We need to honour our political leaders, yes, but we do not need to hold them in the same reverence and awe reserved for God. The emperor, the President, the Prime Minister, the Queen; these people are people, they are not God.

Conclusion:

This morning we have heard how submission to the governing authorities and freedom to serve God go together.

We submit to the government, partly because that fosters trust, but mostly as an expression of obedience to God.

Our submission is not forced though. Our submission is freely given and that makes all the difference.

Let us pray…

We thank you Father God for your Son Jesus who show us what it looks like to freely submit to the governing authorities out of obedience to you. Give us wisdom to use our freedom well, for your glory. Help us to know when to submit and when to resist. Give us grace, Almighty God, to respect all people, to love our fellow believers and to fear you, with reverence and awe, above all else. Through Jesus we pray. 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?

  • Have you ever tasted salty chips dipped in melted chocolate? Did you enjoy this combination of flavours? What other unexpected flavour combinations have you tried that work well together? (A note for group leaders: you might want to bring an assortment of tasty culinary combinations for the people in your group to try. E.g. blue cheese and honey, regular cheese and Krispy biscuits, apple and peanut butter, chips and chocolate, etc.) 
  • Why does Peter instruct his readers to submit to the governing authorities?
  • What do you think Jesus meant when he said: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s”? (in Mark 12)
  • When is it not appropriate to submit to the government? Can you think of any examples from the Scriptures, or from human history, when civil disobedience was called for?
  • What does the Bible mean by freedom? How is this different from a contemporary secular understanding of freedom?
  • Discuss / reflect on the dynamic between submission and freedom, particularly with respect to the church’s relationship with the government. How might we (today) apply Jesus’ instruction to ‘go the extra mile’ in our relationship with the governing authorities?
  • In 1st Peter 2:17 we are told to ‘respect everyone, love the family of believers, fear God and honour the emperor’. Which of these four things do you find most difficult? Why is this do you think? What do you need to be able to carry out Peter’s instruction here?  

[1] John 19:10-11

[2] Refer Joel Green’s commentary on 1st Peter, pages 73 & 75.

[3] Refer Alan Stibbs’ commentary on 1st Peter, page 112.

[4] Refer William Barclay’s commentary on 1st Peter, page 248.

Tawa Baptist

Abram in Egypt

Scripture: Genesis 12:10-20

 

Title: Abram in Egypt

 

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Famine
  • Fear
  • Freedom
  • Conclusion

 

Introduction:

When a toddler is learning to walk, they fall over a little bit

–         No one criticises the toddler because she is just learning and needs encouragement

 

Likewise, when a child is learning to ride a bike, they fall off sometimes but no one punishes the child for this – a scraped knee is punishment enough

–         Instead we give the child confidence to pick themselves up and carry on

 

Or when a young person is learning to drive

–         They might stall a few times as they get used to the clutch but the instructor is patient with them because they are still getting the hang of it

 

Learning to trust God is a bit like learning to walk or ride a bike or drive a car

–         We make mistakes – we fall, we scrape our knees and we stall

–         But God isn’t there with a big stick ready to hit us if we get it wrong

–         He understands and gives us the grace we need to carry on learning

 

This morning we continue our series on the life of Abram

–         Last week we heard how God called Abram to leave his country, his people and his father’s house

–         Abram responded by obeying God’s call in stages

–         First he left his country and then, some years later, he left his father’s household

 

When Abram finally did make it to Canaan (the Promised Land) the Lord appeared to him and said, “To your offspring I will give this land”

–         Following this wonderful spiritual experience there is a famine in the land and Abram migrates to Egypt to avoid starvation

–         While in Egypt his faith falters – Abram’s fear & anxiety gets the better of him and he trips up

–         But the Lord isn’t waiting with a big stick to punish Abram

–         Rather God is patient and gracious as Abram learns to walk by faith

 

We pick up Abram & Sarai’s story from Genesis chapter 12, verse 10…

 

10 Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. 11 As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. 12 When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. 13 Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.”

14 When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was a very beautiful woman. 15 And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. 16 He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels.

17 But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai. 18 So Pharaoh summoned Abram. “What have you done to me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? 19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!” 20 Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had.

 

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate this reading for us

 

Today’s Scripture passage conveniently divides into 3 parts…

–         Famine, fear and freedom

–         Famine in the land, fear in Abram’s heart and freedom by the Lord’s hand. First let us consider famine in the land…

 

Famine:

I remember when I was about 13 or 14 going to an Anglican youth group camp

–         To teach us what the journey of faith is like they had us all line up one behind the other and then told us to take two steps forward and one step back, two steps forward, one step back and so on

–         It was frustrating in a way but it was also effective in teaching the point

–         This is often how it is in our journey of faith

–         Things are going along fine, we feel close to God, and then we go through a famine experience

–         We might sustain some kind of loss – perhaps the death of a loved one or the loss of a job or the breakdown of a marriage

–         Or maybe we experience some kind of disappointment – either with another person or with God

–         Or our prayer life becomes stale and dry

–         Or we might suffer a famine of meaning, where we struggle to find purpose in life – somehow the things we once valued no longer seem so important

–         Whatever form or shape the famine comes in, it feels like we are taking a step backwards and it tests our faith

 

After making two steps forward (leaving his country and his father’s house to enter the Promised Land), Abram now takes one step back as he faces a literal famine in the form of a severe food shortage

–         God had promised to give the land of Canaan to Abram’s offspring and then, sometime after he gets there, Abram discovers the land is not a reliable food source

–         It’s sort of like being given a car with no petrol in the tank

–         Or a cell phone with no battery

–         Or a pair of shoes with a hole in them

–         The famine calls God’s faithfulness into question

 

On the wall here is a diagram of what to do if you are caught in a rip tide at the beach

–         A rip is a current of water on a surf beach which is moving out to sea

–         You can identify a rip by the relative calmness of the water – ironically the rip is where the water is flat (that is, where the waves aren’t)

–         If you are caught in a rip and feel yourself being taken out to sea you basically have three options:

–         Wave out to a life guard to come to your rescue

–         Or, try swimming against the current

–         Or, go with the current and swim sideways till you come out of the rip

–         Once you are out of the rip you can swim back to shore

 

Swimming against the current is probably the worst thing you can do – it will simply make you exhausted and you’ll get nowhere for your efforts

–         Waving for help and swimming to the side are better options

 

A famine is sort of like a rip tide – it’s one of those circumstances you don’t have control over

–         Abram was caught in a severe famine and he had three options:

–         He could call out to God for help

–         Or, he could try and swim against the famine by staying in the land

–         Or, he could let the current of the famine carry him to Egypt, where the food was, and then swim out the side later

 

As far as we know Abram did not call on the Lord for help or ask his advice

–         Instead he thought he would take care of it himself

–         Maybe he didn’t realise that the fulfilment of God’s promise depended more on God than it did on him

–         In any case Abram doesn’t try to swim against the famine (he doesn’t stay in the land) but rather he lets the current carry him to Egypt with a view to returning to Canaan once the famine has finished

 

Interestingly God is silent – he doesn’t say anything to try and stop Abram

–         The Lord let’s Abram make his choices and then works with the choices Abram gives him

 

Fear:

Okay, so that’s the first point, famine in the land

–         Now let’s consider our second point: Abram’s fear

 

About 6 months ago we bought a new car – a 2008 Nissan Tiida

–         The car we traded in was a 1995 Mitsubishi Lancer, so the Tiida is about 13 years newer than the Lancer

–         Consequently the Tiida has a lot more technology built into it

–         One of the things with the Tiida is that talks to you

–         There is literally a voice which says ‘konichiwa’ when you turn it on

–         Not only that but the car is covered in sensors so whenever you get a bit close to something it beeps at you to warn you to stop

–         Or, if you leave your lights on, it beeps at you when you open the door to remind you to turn your lights off

–         It even has a little display estimating how many more km’s before you run out of petrol

–         The point is the new car has all this warning technology built in to it

–         You can turn the volume down though and drive old school if you want

 

Fear is a bit like warning technology built into our brain and nervous system

–         A little bit of fear can be a good thing – it warns us when danger is imminent so we can take corrective action to protect ourselves

–         Sometimes though the volume of our fear is turned up too high so that the warnings our fear gives us is all we can hear and we end up over-reacting

–         Other times our fear malfunctions – it starts beeping when it’s not supposed to, warning us of imminent danger when none exists, so that we end up anxious over nothing

 

A little bit of fear is a healthy thing but when fear has too much influence in our lives it distorts our thinking

–         It makes us forget the bigger picture and deceives us so that we feel like we have no other options than the one presented by our fear

–         Too much fear is like a cruel tyrant living in our head – it bullies us and makes us do things we don’t want to do

 

Turning the volume of fear down, in our brains, is more difficult than turning it down in a car. Verses 11-13 describe how fear affected Abram

 

11 As Abram was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. 12 When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. 13 Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.”

 

The first thing to say here is that Abram’s fear was not unfounded – his fear did have some basis in reality

–         Pharaoh was a dictator with a reputation for taking whatever he wanted and disposing of whoever got in his way

–         So Abram was being sensible in heeding the warning his fear gave him

–         Unfortunately the volume of Abram’s fear was turned up too high and that prevented him from thinking clearly

–         With fear calling the shots in Abram’s mind it seemed that deceiving Pharaoh was his best option, perhaps his only option

–         Apparently it didn’t occur to Abram to enquire of the Lord

–         Just as he had left Canaan without asking God for help or advice he now also excludes God in dealing with Pharaoh

–         It’s like Abram thinks the fulfilment of the promise depends on him rather than God

–         Fear has temporarily disabled Abram’s faith in God’s promises

 

A couple of other minor technical points that this passage raises…

–         We know from other parts of Scripture that Sarai was 10 years younger than Abram and that Abram was 75 when he left Harran to go to Canaan

–         This means Sarai must have been at least 65 when she entered Egypt

–         If the genealogies in Genesis are to be accepted at face value then it appears that people 4000 years ago lived longer than we do today

–         In other words they might have aged more slowly – so their 65 may have been more like our 35 [1] (which would make sense in light of Abram’s concern about Pharaoh wanting Sarai because of her beauty)

 

The other minor point to be aware of is that Sarai was Abram’s half sister

–         We know from Genesis 20:12 that Sarai & Abram had the same father but different mothers

–         So by today’s standards their marriage would be considered incestuous,

–         But in that time and culture marrying your half-sister was acceptable – in fact it may have even given more status to the marriage [2]

 

We shouldn’t get hung up though on Sarai’s age and relationship to Abram, they are minor curiosities in the context

–         The main point is that on this occasion Abram acted out of fear, not faith

–         Fear can be a ruthless dictator – not unlike Pharaoh

–         It can distort our thinking and cause us to do things we wouldn’t ordinarily do

–         Fear turned Abram into a con man and it made him use his wife, Sarai, as a shield to protect and enrich himself

 

Now on the one hand we don’t want to condemn Abram for his actions, he was in a difficult situation

–         But on the other hand we can’t condone what he did either

–         We human beings are a mixture – capable of both fearful deceit and faithful courage

–         Abram is not perfect at this point – he is still learning to walk by faith and part of learning to walk by faith is learning to manage our fear

 

Fear and anxiety plays a big part in our lives these days – more than it did 20 or 30 years ago

–         I don’t think shame or guilt over our fearful responses is helpful

–         Learning to manage our fear, learning to walk by faith, is like learning to ride a bike or drive a car

–         There is no shame in falling over or in stalling – it’s part of the learning process

–         God is not standing over us with the big stick waiting to wallop us the moment we make a mistake

–         He is standing alongside us, encouraging us, helping us to find our feet

–         If you suffer from anxiety or fear then take heart by Abram’s example

–         Abram was overcome by fear at times too and yet God used him to bless many

 

As I said before, Abram’s fears were not unfounded

–         Pharaoh did in fact hear of Sarai’s beauty and took her into his harem, treating Abram well for her sake

–         Sarai and Abram didn’t get a choice in the matter – Pharaoh was a dictator. What Pharaoh wants, Pharaoh gets

–         The text doesn’t say whether Pharaoh actually slept with Sarai or not

–         We the reader are left hoping he didn’t, for Sarai’s sake at least

 

This is a picture of men behaving badly

–         Not only did Abram act out of fear to save himself

–         Pharaoh acted out of his lust to have Sarai

–         And so God intervened to set Sarai & Abram free

 

Freedom:

Jesus said, “The truth will set you free”

–         In the context Jesus was talking about holding to the truth of his teaching

–         The principle is, when we believe what is true our minds are set free

–         But when we believe what is false our minds are bound in fear

–         It appears Abram believed that God couldn’t help him with the famine or with Pharaoh and that false belief created a fear which led him to deceive Pharaoh and that deceit resulted in Sarai becoming a captive in Pharaoh’s harem

–         Consequently God intervened to set her free, not by force but by revealing the truth

 

Verse 17 tells us the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh because he had taken Abram’s wife

–         We might look at this situation and think – that doesn’t seem fair, Abram tells a porky (a big fat lie) and Pharaoh gets punished for it

–         Well, I don’t think the Lord is punishing Pharaoh, so much as trying to communicate with him

–         The message was, ‘Pharaoh, your attitude to women is sick and your whole regime is diseased. Your behaviour Pharaoh is as repulsive to me as this illness is to you’

 

I’m not sure whether Pharaoh interpreted his sickness in this way but he certainly realised something was wrong and after investigating what it might be he learned the truth, that Sarai was actually married to Abram

–         We are not told exactly how he learned this but that doesn’t matter

–         The main point is that Sarai was set free when Pharaoh learned the truth

 

When Pharaoh learns the truth he confronts Abram, saying, ‘What have you done to me?’

–         Apparently Pharaoh wants to blame Abram for his predicament

–         Now while it’s true that Abram did deceive Pharaoh, the Egyptian king is missing the point

–         Abram didn’t do this to Pharaoh – Pharaoh brought this on himself

–         It’s not okay for the king to take women against their will to use as objects for his own pleasure

–         Pharaoh has been abusing his power for quite some time it seems

–         He clearly has a Harvey Weinstein reputation, otherwise Abram wouldn’t have felt he needed to deceive Pharaoh in the first place

 

God is love – he doesn’t just love Abram & Sarai, he loves Pharaoh and the Egyptians (and Harvey Weinstein) too, even if he hates their behaviour

–         I believe the sickness God sent on Pharaoh’s household was a message of truth intended to set Pharaoh free from his own sin

–         Unfortunately the Egyptian king didn’t want to face the truth about himself – otherwise he would have said, ‘What have I done?’ rather than ‘What have you done?’

–         He repented in part (by returning Sarai to Abram) but it appears he didn’t go far enough – what about all the other women he had used?

 

The dictator is reaping what he has sown – now it’s Pharaoh’s turn to be afraid and he manages his fear by sending Abram and Sarai away

 

In many ways, God’s deliverance of Abram & Sarai from Egypt foreshadows Israel’s exodus experience

–         Just as Abram & Sarai were forced to migrate to Egypt due to a famine, so too Abram’s grandson, Jacob, moved his family to Egypt because of famine

–         Just as Sarai was oppressed by the Pharaoh of her day, so too the people of Israel were oppressed by the Egyptians some centuries later

–         And just as God intervened with diseases so Pharaoh would set Abram & Sarai free, so too the Lord sent plagues on Egypt so another Pharaoh would let the nation of Israel go free

 

Conclusion:

There are parallels here between Abram and Jesus too

–         After the joy of Jesus’ birth, Joseph and Mary are forced to flee Israel to find refuge in Egypt because Herod is out to kill the new born Messiah

–         Unlike Abram though, Joseph makes the journey to Egypt, not out of fear but in faith, because an angel of the Lord instructed him in a dream

 

Another connection between Abram & Jesus…

–         After his baptism in the River Jordan, God said to Jesus – ‘This is my beloved Son with whom I’m pleased’

–         And then, straight after that wonderful (two steps forward) spiritual experience, the Holy Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness (one step back) to be tested by Satan

–         And what’s the first temptation?

–         Famine, hunger. ‘If you are God’s Son, turn these stones into bread’

–         Forget God and rely on yourself

–         Unlike Abram, Jesus passed the test

 

Where you are at in your journey of faith at the moment?

–         Is this is a two steps forward or a one step back stage for you?

–         Are you walking confidently in faith or ducking & diving under that cruel dictator we call ‘Fear’?

–         Either way, the Lord Jesus is faithful to his promises

–         He does not promise us an easy ride – we all face a famine of sorts at some point

–         What Jesus does promise is to never leave us or forsake us

–         And when our journey on this earth has finished he promises heaven

–         Those two things, his presence and heaven

 

Reflection / discussion questions:

 

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

 

2.)    Can you identify with your journey of faith being two steps forward, one step back?

–         If yes, what have the forward and backwards steps looked like for you?

–         If no, how would you describe your journey of faith?

 

3.)    What is your best option if you get caught in a rip at the beach?

–         If being caught in a famine is like being caught in a rip, what option did Abram go with?

 

4.)    How did Abram’s fear of Pharaoh affect him – what did his fear make him do?

–         How does fear affect you?

–         When is fear a good thing?

–         How might we know when fear is having too much influence in our life?

 

5.)    How does God set Abram & Sarai free?

 

6.)    How does Abram & Sarai’s sojourn in Egypt foreshadow Israel’s exodus experience?

 

7.)    Reflect on /discuss the parallels Genesis 12:10-20 raises between Abram & Jesus

 

8.)    What does Jesus promise us?

–         What does he not promise?

https://soundcloud.com/tawabaptist/22-oct-2017-abram-in-egypt

 

 

[1] Derek Kidner, Genesis, pages 116-117

[2] Ibid