redemption

August 2, 2026 Tawa Baptist

Kidneys

Scriptures: Psalm 16:7, Psalm 26:1-3, Psalm 119:10-16, Jeremiah 12:1-2, Leviticus 7:3-6 and Mark 3:1-6.

Video Link: https://youtu.be/uQPyS8hrCLs

Audio Link: Stream Sermon – 2 Aug 2026 – Kidneys by tawabaptist | Listen online for free on SoundCloud

Structure:

Introduction
The kidneys are the seat of conscience
The conscience is sacred to God
Jesus wants to redeem our conscience
Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

The human body is a wonderful thing. Take your kidneys for example.

You cannot see your kidneys; most of the time you are not even aware they are there. And yet, your kidneys are continuously working to look after your body, even when you are asleep.

According to the Health NZ (Te Whatu Ora) website, the kidneys carry out a number of vital functions including removing waste products from your blood, balancing your body’s fluids, and releasing hormones that help control your blood pressure.

Your kidneys also control the production of red blood cells and produce an active form of vitamin D that helps your body absorb calcium from your diet. Calcium is needed for building and maintaining strong bones. Today we continue our series on body parts, with a focus on the kidneys.

The kidneys are the seat of conscience:

People in Biblical times did not have the same scientific understanding of their kidneys that we do. In the Bible, kidneys were thought to be the seat of the conscience.

For those who may not be familiar with English idiom, to refer to something as the seat, is to say it is a place of high importance. The seat is the centre or the core, where decisions are made.

For example, the seat of government in New Zealand is our parliament, what we call the Beehive. This is where decisions are made and laws are passed. Likewise, the seat of justice is our court system, where legal cases are decided that often have a far-reaching effect on society.

So when we say, ‘the kidneys are the seat of the conscience’, we are talking figuratively. We mean that part of us, in our core, where moral decisions are made.

Just as our kidneys filter our blood, so too our conscience acts like a moral filter; helping us to choose right from wrong. Basically, our conscience guides our actions and our actions shape our character.

Deciding what colour pants to wear is not a moral decision and therefore does not involve the conscience. Choosing whether to drink and drive is a moral decision and therefore does involve the conscience; although depending on how many drinks you’ve had, your conscience may be impaired.

How many of you have ridden a horse? [Wait]

Even if you haven’t ridden a horse, you will know that you steer a horse by pulling on the reins. Pull the reins to the left and the horse will go to the left. Pull the reins to the right and the horse will turn to the right. Pull both reins back and the horse will stop (hopefully). Reins control the horse.

Does anyone here know the Latin word for kidneys? [Wait]. That’s right.

It is renes (spelt R E N E S), from which we get the English word for the reins of a horse. In fact, the King James Version of the Bible translates the word ‘kidneys’ as reins, R E I N S.

Why am I telling you this? Because I’m hoping you will see the connection between the kidneys and the conscience. To the ancient mind, the kidneys were like the reins of a horse. Just as the reins help to control the horse, so too the conscience helps to control our desires and passions.

This is difficult for our 21^st Century minds to grasp, because we think about the conscience in a more scientific way, as residing in the frontal lobe of our brain; not the renal lobes of our bowel.

Let me give you some verses of Scripture which refer to the kidneys as the seat of conscience. The first comes from Psalm 16 which reads…

⁷I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart (kidneys) instructs me.

The word translated as heart (in English) is literally kidneys in the original Hebrew. The English translators have used heart instead of kidneys, in this instance, because saying ‘my kidneys instruct me’ makes no sense to the modern English reader.

This is poetry, not science. The kidneys are a metaphor here for the conscience. A more straight forward translation might read something like this: I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my conscience instructs me.

The psalmist is basically saying: God guides me by speaking to my conscience. Just as a rider guides a horse by pulling on the reins, so too God guides the psalmist by pulling on the reins of his conscience.

Psalm 26 also refers to the kidneys as the seat of conscience. From verse 1 we read: ¹Vindicate me, Lord, for I have led a blameless life; I have trusted in the Lord and have not faltered. ²Test me, Lord, and try me, examine my heart and my mind (kidneys); ³for I have always been mindful of your unfailing love and have lived in reliance on your faithfulness.

The word translated as mind (in verse 2) is literally kidneys in the original Hebrew. The English translators have used mind instead of kidneys, because saying ‘examine my kidneys’ makes no sense to the modern English reader.

It made perfect sense to the psalmist though, because (to his way of thinking) the kidneys represented his conscience. That part deep in his core where moral decisions are made. That part which only God can see.

The interesting thing about Psalm 26 is the way the author thinks about righteousness. For the Psalmist, being blameless does not mean never making a mistake. Rather, it has more to do with where he places his trust. The Psalmist’s conscience is clear because he lives in reliance on God’s faithfulness. In other words, he doesn’t have any idols in his life. The living God comes first.

The conscience is sacred to God:

Okay, from a Biblical perspective, the kidneys are thought to be the seat of the conscience, and the conscience is sacred to God; it is holy, set apart for a special purpose.

The Law of Moses stipulated how the kidneys of sacrificial animals were to be offered to the Lord. In Leviticus 7 we read…

³All its fat shall be offered: … ⁴both kidneys with the fat on them near the loins, and the long lobe of the liver, which is to be removed with the kidneys. ⁵The priest shall burn them on the altar as a food offering presented to the Lord…

Verse 6 goes on to say that the fat and kidneys of the animal is most holy.

Highlighting the sacredness of the kidneys (which represent the worshipper’s conscience) indicates the sort of sacrifice God wants. He wants us to offer our moral decision making in a holy way. The Lord wants us to hand over the reins of our conscience in faith to him, so our desires and passions are guided by his purpose.

Said another way, the Lord wants us to worship him from the depths of our being, from the inside out. He doesn’t want people to merely go through the motions. God doesn’t want tick box worship.

The prophet Jeremiah was grieved by the empty worship of his day saying to the Lord: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease? ²You have planted them, and they have taken root; they grow and bear fruit. You are always on their lips but far from their hearts (kidneys).

Once again, the word translated as hearts (in English) is actually kidneys in the original Hebrew.

We sang a song earlier by Matt Redman called The Heart of Worship.

“I’m coming back to the heart of worship and it’s all about you Jesus…”

The song offers a mild critique of the consumerism which has crept into church worship in the west.

If Matt was writing that song in Jeremiah’s day, he might have called it, The Kidneys of Worship. The lyric might read: “You search much deeper within, through the way things appear, You’re looking into my kidneys (that is, my conscience).”

Jeremiah is lamenting the false religion practised by the wicked. They pay lip service to God, but their kidneys (their moral decision making, their conscience) is far from what God desires.

The idolatry of consumerism coupled with the injustice it causes were widespread throughout the nation. People had become so accustomed to doing evil at the expense of their neighbour that they no longer thought of it as evil. The consumerism of their day did not bother their conscience.

That’s the thing with our conscience; as sacred as it is, it can still be led astray by the surrounding society we live in. Our conscience is like a musical instrument; it gets out of tune sometimes. We need to keep our conscience in tune with God’s will and purpose.

Like some of you, I do the Lectio 365 devotion each day. Last Wednesday’s devotion celebrated the life of William Wilberforce. Wilberforce was a man whose conscience was in tune with God, which led him to challenge the prevailing view of the society in which he lived.

Meditating on the Scriptures was one of the things Wilberforce did to stay in tune with God. Apparently, William Wilberforce would recite Psalm 119 each day on his walks from London’s parliament to Hyde Park…

¹⁰I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands.

¹¹I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
¹²Praise be to you, Lord; teach me your decrees. ¹³With my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth. ¹⁴I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches. ¹⁵I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. ¹⁶I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word.

To be clear, the word translated as heart in these verses is heart in the original Hebrew as well, not kidneys. But the heart and the kidneys are connected. The same blood that flows through the heart also passes through the kidneys. The point is that we keep our conscience in tune with God by keeping his word in our heart.

Wilberforce was elected to parliament as an independent MP in his early 20’s. He wasn’t sure, at first, whether he should stay in politics, but his purpose soon clarified. In 1787 he wrote in his diary: “God Almighty has placed before me two great objects: the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.”

By ‘manners’ Wilberforce meant the morals of the nation. The British empire saw no problem with slavery, but William Wilberforce did, because his conscience was in tune with God’s word.

For over 40 years Wilberforce acted as a Godly conscience in parliament; labouring to pass legislation to ban slavery, among other things. He faced many obstacles, but he overcame in the end. On Friday 26 July 1833 the Abolition of Slavery Act passed its final reading in parliament. Three days later Wilberforce died.

His legacy pricks our conscience today. Sadly, despite anti-slavery laws, human trafficking still flourishes in this world. Like William Wilberforce, we need to keep our conscience in tune with God’s purpose. We need to hide God’s word in our heart and resist the consumerism of the prevailing culture.

Jesus wants to redeem our conscience:

You don’t need to answer this question out loud, just think about it in your head? On a scale of 1 to 10, how strict is your conscience? (Where 1 equals ‘my conscience lets me get away with murder’ and 10 equals ‘my conscience is a fascist dictator’.)

We are not all made the same. Some people seem to breeze through life without any scruples. Nothing troubles their conscience. The strictness of their conscience might register around 1 or 2 on the scale.

People like this tend to have little regard for how their actions might affect others. They are obtuse, maybe even borderline sociopaths, leaving a trail of hurt and destruction in their wake, wherever they go. They don’t think there is anything wrong with their actions. They are strangers to guilt.

At the other end of the spectrum are those who suffer much because of an over sensitive conscience. The strictness of their conscience might be more like a 9 or a 10. For these poor souls the conscience can be a bit of a bully; criticising their every move, always condemning them, robbing their joy and making them feel guilty, even when they haven’t done anything wrong.

A conscience like that can cripple a person with fear. It locks them in a prison of sorts, where they are at war with themselves. An over-zealous conscience can sometimes drive a person down the path of legalism, forcing them against their true nature, to comply with the letter of the law at the expense of its spirit.

Neither extreme is helpful. Ideally, what we need is a backbone conscience.

A conscience which is strong enough to stand up to our selfish desires, but also flexible enough to show mercy. A conscience which holds grace and truth together.

I believe God wants to set our conscience free; not free to do whatever we want, but free to follow his law of love. So that when we are faced with a moral decision, we are thinking, how can I be God’s agent in this situation? How can I do some good?

Jesus came to redeem people, body and soul. That includes redeeming our conscience. Helping us to hold grace and truth together, so we can keep our moral balance.

Many of the people of Jesus’ day had a conscience which was bound by legalism. They felt compelled to rigidly follow a harsh set of rules which often missed God’s purpose of justice and mercy. They had lost their moral balance.

The gospels are peppered with stories of Jesus seeking to set people’s conscience free. On one occasion, in Mark 3, Jesus encounters a man with a shrivelled hand in the synagogue. Some of Jesus’ critics (the legalists) were watching closely to see if Jesus would break their rules by healing the man on a Sabbath.

Jesus knows this and wants to redeem their dysfunctional conscience. So, the Lord says to the man with the shrivelled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.” ⁴Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?”

Jesus is showing us here the right way to use our conscience. The law says we should not work on the Sabbath, but what if someone needs our help?

Well, a conscience that trusts in God is not afraid to risk doing some good.

A conscience that trusts in God is able to see beyond the letter of the law to find its true spirit (its purpose).

Sadly, the people remained silent. Their conscience was bound. They refused to answer the question.

⁵ Jesuslooked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored.

Jesus’ healing of the man’s hand proves it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. But Jesus’ critics don’t want to look at the evidence. The Pharisees’ conscience is in complete renal failure. They plot to kill Jesus.

Conclusion:

This morning we have heard how the kidneys are the seat of the conscience; that place deep in our core where moral decisions are made. Like the reins of a horse, our conscience guides us in matters of justice and morality.

The conscience is sacred to God. Mere lip service won’t cut it in our worship.

The Lord wants us to offer the kidneys of our conscience in faith and obedience to him. That is an acceptable offering.

Jesus wants to redeem our conscience; to set us free. Free from legalism and guilt. Free to follow God’s law of love. Obtaining the freedom Jesus offers requires us to step out in faith, trusting the Lord to justify us.

Let us pray…

Gracious and compassionate God, we offer ourselves to you. May your word dwell richly in our heart that our conscience would be in tune with your purpose. Set us free, by faith in Jesus, to do some good in the world. Amen.

Questions for discussion or reflection:

What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?
What is the conscience? Why is our conscience important? What does our conscience do?
How might we get a clear conscience?
Have we handed the reins of our moral decision making over to God? Is our conscience in tune with the Holy Spirit? Are we challenging injustice in our society? Or are we conforming to the prevailing culture?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how strict is your conscience? (Where 1 equals ‘my conscience lets me get away with murder’ and 10 equals ‘my conscience is a fascist dictator’.) Why is this do you think?
Why does Jesus want to set our conscience free? What does a redeemed conscience look like from a Christian perspective?

June 28, 2026 Tawa Baptist

Jesus’ Mission

Scripture: Luke 4:14-30

Video Link: https://youtu.be/gOnnJc8hsso

Audio Link: Stream Sermon – 28 Jun 2026 – Jesus’ Mission by tawabaptist | Listen online for free on SoundCloud

Structure:

Introduction
Jesus’ mission
Jesus’ rejection
Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

This June we have given special focus to mission work. Over the past three weeks we have heard about the work of Arotahi and our Baptist missionaries. Today’s message highlights the mission of Jesus, as outlined in Luke 4. From verse 14 of Luke 4, we read…

¹⁴Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. ¹⁵He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. ¹⁶He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: ¹⁸“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, ¹⁹to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” ²⁰Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. ²¹He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” ²²All witnessed to him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked. ²³Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’” ²⁴“Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. ²⁵I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. ²⁶Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. ²⁷And there were many in Israel with leprosyin the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.” ²⁸All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. ²⁹They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. ³⁰But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

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

There are two halves to our message this morning. Jesus’ mission and Jesus’ rejection. What then was Jesus’ mission? What did the Lord set out to do?

Very simply, Jesus’ mission was (and still is) to make all things new. He came to redeem and restore, to put things right.

In his book the Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning tells the following true story about one of New York’s most loved mayors, Fiorello LaGuardia. [1]

One bitterly cold night in January 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself.

Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia that her daughter’s husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges.

“It’s a real bad neighbourhood, your Honour.” the man told the mayor.

“She’s got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson.” LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said “I’ve got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions—ten dollars or ten days in jail.”

But even as he pronounced the sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He extracted a bill saying: “Here is the ten dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Baliff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant.”

The following day the New York City newspapers reported that $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren. The mayor received a standing ovation.

I love that story. It gives us a picture of the justice and mercy of God.

After his baptism and forty days of testing in the wilderness, Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Holy Spirit. He went from place to place teaching in their synagogues and people praised him.

Luke records, in some detail, the sermon Jesus preached in the synagogue in Nazareth, where he had been brought up. The synagogue was sort of like a community centre or a church hall; a place where Jews could gather to say prayers and hear the Scriptures read and discussed.

When the attendant handed Jesus the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, Jesus selected some verses from Isaiah 61, where it says…

¹⁸“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, ¹⁹to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

These verses describe Jesus’ mission, in a nutshell. They are talking about the Messiah making all things new. They speak of God’s justice and mercy, his redemption and restoration.

The first thing we notice here is that Jesus’ mission is prompted and empowered by the Spirit of the Lord. This is not something Jesus is doing in his own strength or by his own initiative. This mission is really God’s idea. And it’s an idea God has been planning for a long time. Isaiah gave this prophecy around 700 years before Jesus.

The next thing we notice is that Jesus’ mission is one of proclaiming. Three times in two verses Jesus says he has been sent to proclaim. To proclaim something is to announce it officially or publicly.

Proclaiming involves speaking words, of course, but in Jesus’ case it involves performing signs as well. For example, Jesus proclaimed recovery of sight for the blind by speaking the truth and physically restoring people’s sight. Word and deed, you see.

Jesus’ mission includes proclaiming good news to the poor. So, who are the poor? Well, we tend to think of the poor in economic terms; those who don’t have enough money. But to be poor in Luke’s gospel has a broader definition than this. The poor are basically those who are excluded or who have low status for any number of reasons.

For example, lepers were among the poor because they were not able to participate in corporate worship. They were excluded from society and regarded with fear. Likewise, tax collectors were among the poor, not because they lacked money, but because they were despised.

Jesus proclaimed good news for Zaccheaus the tax collector by inviting himself over for dinner. By doing this Jesus created the opportunity for Zacchaeus to repent and be restored to right relationship with God and his community.

In the context of Isaiah, freedom for the prisoners was a poetic way of saying the Jewish exiles would be forgiven and set free to return home to Israel.

In the context of Luke, freedom for the prisoners equates to forgiveness of sins, so that people may return home to God our Father. Jesus is the way home to God.

Recovery of sight for the blind has to do, not just with physical healing, but with opening the eyes of a person’s heart and mind. It’s about spiritual insight and revealing the truth, the truth about God and the truth about ourselves.

Mayor LaGuardia shows us what it looks like to set the oppressed free. When he paid the fine for the grandmother, he restored her, he released her. And, by fining everyone else in the court room, the mayor rebuked the people of New York for their callousness in letting this happen in the first place.

Setting the oppressed free comes from Isaiah 58 where the prophet says…

⁶Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free? …“If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, ¹⁰and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness…

Isaiah 58 is a challenge to those who practice false religion, those who don’t walk their talk. Those (for example) who sing songs about loving God in church on Sunday but then gossip about their neighbour the rest of the week or cheat people in their place of work or beat their wife and kids. Jesus challenged false religion when he called out the Pharisees for their hypocrisy.

In verse 19 of Luke 4, Jesus jumps back into Isaiah 61 when he talks about proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favour.

The year of the Lord’s favour is a reference to the year of Jubilee. The Law of Moses stipulated a Jubilee every 50 years, when debts were to be forgiven, slaves set free and ancestral lands returned to their original owners. The Jubilee was a year of restoration, a year of making all things new again.

It prevented the rich from getting richer and it gave people hope.

The verses Jesus read out from Isaiah 61 were a crowd favourite, one of Isaiah’s greatest hits. However, Jesus left out the part about proclaiming the day of vengeance of our God. And for the Jews of the first century this was the best part. They were oppressed by the Romans and looked forward to the day when God would destroy their enemies. Why did Jesus leave out God’s revenge?

Jesus had the congregation on the edge of their seats, at which point he says to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

This is a pretty audacious claim. Jesus is essentially saying he is the Messiah, God’s anointed one. Jesus is saying of himself, ‘I am here to make all things new, to restore and redeem, to set free and forgive. And I am doing it today. This is not some far off future promise. God’s plan of salvation has now gone live, in and through me’. Mic drop.

Jesus’ rejection:

Having heard what Jesus has just said, the people are amazed. Amazed, yes, but not believing. They ask, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” The people have a hard time believing the son of the local carpenter might be the agent of God’s salvation. They knew him when he was a toddler playing in the dirt. Their preconceived ideas about Jesus blind them to the possibility that Jesus could be the Messiah.

Not all creatures see colour in the same way. Unlike humans, deer have dichromatic vision, which means they can only see two types of colours; blues and greens. Reds and oranges, which stand out to us like a neon sign, appear greyish to deer. That’s why hunters often wear hi viz orange vests and hats.

It makes them invisible to deer but highly visible to other hunters (so they don’t get shot).

Bulls are similar to deer in that they can only see blues and greens as well. Contrary to popular belief, bulls are not angered by the colour red. In fact, red appears grey to them. Bulls become aggressive when they sense sudden erratic movement. It’s the flapping of the matador’s cape that triggers a defensive fight response in the bull, not the colour red. The matador’s cape is red to hide blood stains.

Not everyone sees Jesus in the same way. Some people see Jesus in his full spectrum of colour; he stands out as the Son of God, the Messiah, the Saviour of the world, worthy of our worship. To others though, Jesus appears greyish; just another ordinary human being.

The people of Nazareth were spiritually blind; they saw the world in black and white and so they could not see who Jesus really is. Jesus was one of them (Joseph’s son, so they thought), and that made it nearly impossible for them distinguish him from themselves, much like deer cannot see reds or oranges.

Jesus is aware of this so he brings their thoughts out into the open saying, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’

In other words, if you are God’s anointed one why don’t you perform some miraculous healings like we heard you did in Capernaum.

But Jesus does not need to prove anything to them. He is secure in his identity as God’s Son. Besides, a prophet is never accepted in his hometown.

Jesus illustrates his point with two accounts from the Old Testament Scriptures. The prophet Elijah was not sent to a Jewish widow during the famine of that time. He was sent to a Gentile widow in the region of Sidon.

Likewise, Naaman the Syrian was the only leper healed by the prophet Elisha. None of the Jewish lepers were healed.

The widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian are both examples of the poor whom God set free. In the minds of the people of Nazareth, they should have been excluded from God’s grace; they were among Israel’s enemies, destined for God’s vengeance. And yet, they are people who demonstrated great faith in the Lord.

The widow of Zarephath was down to her last meal when Elijah turned up and asked to be fed. Elijah was a foreigner to her and he was literally wanting to take the bread out her son’s mouth.

By taking Elijah in and showing him hospitality, the widow was showing faith in Yahweh, she was trusting God with the life of her son. And Yahweh provided for her. As long as Elijah was with the widow, she and her son had food to eat. The oil never ran out.

Naaman the leper also demonstrated faith in the God of Israel. When Naaman, who was an army general came to Elisha, the prophet told him to wash in the Jordan river seven times. Naaman, a man of honour for whom reputation was important, was offended by this.

But, with some encouragement from his servants, he humbled himself and did what Elisha asked. Naaman trusted God with his reputation and the Lord healed him.

The people of Nazareth won’t believe in Jesus. They want miracles as proof.

But God wants faith. By holding up two Gentiles as examples of the kind of authentic faith God wants, Jesus is saying the Jews of his hometown are less faithful, less righteous, less pleasing to God than the Gentiles they despise.

What’s more, they have misunderstood God’s purpose. God does not intend to destroy their enemies. God wants to save their enemies.

All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They drove Jesus out of town with the intention of throwing him off the cliff. They wanted to kill Jesus. Their rejection of Jesus was vicious and unjust. This was a lynching.

We note here that it was the people inside the synagogue who were furious with Jesus. Many of the poor, whom Jesus came to help, would have been outside the synagogue, excluded for a variety of reasons. Jesus came for those inside and outside the synagogue. But, more often than not, it was the outsiders who accepted him.

When we left Tauranga to move to Auckland to train for pastoral ministry, some people were supportive. They could see the fit and sent us off with a blessing. Others were not so supportive. No one tried to throw me off a cliff, but some did not like our decision and their disapproval leaked out in various ways.

Perhaps these friends and workmates felt like we were rejecting them, abandoning them. Perhaps they felt a little hurt. Or maybe they thought,

“Who does he think he is? He is not better than us.” I did not think that.

I don’t want to defend or condone those in the Nazareth synagogue who rejected Jesus that day. What they did was wrong. I wonder though if they possibly felt like Jesus had rejected them. Who does he think he is? He’s not better than us.

Jesus was not rejecting them. Jesus was trying to open their eyes. He was trying to set them free from the narrow nationalism which was blinding them to God’s broader plan of salvation. Sadly, Jesus’ words triggered a defensive fight response, so they reacted like a bull being startled by sudden movement.

By God’s grace the angry mob did not manage to harm Jesus. Verse 30 tells us the Lord walked right through the crowd and on his way.

God protected his Son. As it is written in Psalm 91: ¹¹For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; ¹²they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.

Conclusion:

How then does today’s message apply to us?

Well, Jesus’ mission is our mission. Jesus invites us to participate in his work of proclaiming good news to the poor, recovery of sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed and the year of the Lord’s favour.

How might we do this? Well, grace comes first. We cannot proclaim good news to the poor until we face our own poverty and realise our need for God.

We cannot proclaim recovery of sight for the blind until we recognise our own blindness and accept the truth which restores sight.

We cannot proclaim freedom for the oppressed until we name our own demons and are set free.

We cannot proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour and forgive others until we confess our own sin and receive God’s forgiveness. Grace must always come first.

What grace do you need to receive from God?

What grace has God given you to pass on to others?

We proclaim the good news by being the good news.

Let us pray…

Jesus, you came to make all things new. You are our hope. Help us to receive your grace, that we may embody your good news, your truth, your freedom, your forgiveness, your love for others. Amen.

Questions for discussion or reflection:

What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?
What was Jesus’ mission? Discuss reflect on the meaning of verses 18-19 of Luke 4.
In what ways do we see Jesus’ mission carried out in the gospels? In what ways do we see Jesus’ mission carried out in the world today?
Why did Jesus remind his listeners of the widow and Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian? What can we learn from the widow’s and Naaman’s example of faith?
Why did the people in the synagogue at Nazareth reject Jesus so violently?
How do we participate in Jesus’ mission? Why must grace come first?
What grace do you need to receive from God? What grace has God given you to pass on?

Bibliography:

William Barclay, ‘The Gospel of Luke’, 1965.
Leon Morris, ‘Tyndale Commentaries: Luke’, 1976.
Fred Craddock, ‘Interpretation Commentaries: Luke’, 1990.
Brennan Manning, ‘The Ragamuffin Gospel’, Multnomah, 1990
Darrell Bock, ‘NIV Application Commentary: Luke’, 1996.
Joel Green, ‘New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Gospel of Luke’, 1997.
Kenneth Bailey, ‘Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes’, 2008.

[1] Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel, Multnomah, 1990, pp. 91-2

May 17, 2026 Tawa Baptist

As He Is In Heaven

Scripture: Revelation 5:1-14

Video Link: https://youtu.be/15y0IXakKzk

Audio Link: Stream Sermon – 17 May 2026 – As He Is In Heaven by tawabaptist | Listen online for free on SoundCloud

Structure:

Introduction
Worthy
Sacrifice
Redemption
Omnipotent
Incense
Praise
Hope
Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

The first time I saw Aoraki Mt Cook up close and personal, I was awestruck.

The mountain was magnificent, majestic, beautiful. I could have sat there soaking up the grandeur all day. Every other little thought faded from my mind. It was liberating.

Last Thursday was Ascension, a special day in the church calendar when we remember the Ascension of Jesus. For 40 days after his resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples before ascending to heaven.

Today, in celebration of Jesus’ Ascension, our message focuses on Revelation chapter 5. In Revelation 5, the apostle John describes his vision of the ascended Jesus in heaven. John’s vision is magnificent, far greater than seeing Aoraki Mt Cook for the first time. It has the power to leave us awestruck in wonder and praise.

As we read this Scripture then, I invite you to park your questions and simply bask in the glory of the scene which John describes. Don’t think too hard about what it means. Simply enjoy the drama and majesty of it all. We will get to the interpretation later. From Revelation 5, verse 1, we read…

Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals. ²And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?” ³But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. ⁴I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. ⁵Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.” ⁶Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the centre of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spiritsof God sent out into all the earth. ⁷He went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. ⁸And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people. ⁹And they sang a new song, saying: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. ¹⁰You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.” ¹¹Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. ¹²In a loud voice they were saying: “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and praise!” ¹³Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honour and glory and power, for ever and ever!” ¹⁴The four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped.

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

The number seven is significant in the book of Revelation. It represents wholeness, completeness, perfection, like the seven days of creation. With this in view, our message today touches on seven key words from this chapter.

Our first word is worthy.

Worthy:

Some of you may be familiar with the legend of King Arthur. The story goes that one Christmas Eve an anvil sitting on top of a stone appeared in a churchyard. Embedded in the anvil was a sword. According to Merlin, only the true king could draw the sword out of the anvil.

Many nobles tried, but none succeeded. None were found worthy to be king. Then came the young Arthur, a teenage boy, whose true lineage was unknown. Quite by accident and without being aware of the contest, Arthur pulled the sword out of the anvil easily. The humble Arthur proved to be the only one worthy to release the sword and inherit the throne.

Revelation 5 begins with God holding a scroll in his hand. We wonder to ourselves what the scroll contains. Some think the scroll reveals God’s will and purpose for the future. More than just revealing knowledge though, opening the scroll may in fact release God’s plan of salvation on the earth.

This fits with the theme of Revelation. But we cannot afford to be too dogmatic, nor too literal in our interpretation. We can’t see the whole picture, which is probably the point.

In any case, the scroll has seven seals which can only be opened by someone worthy. To be worthy here is to be morally good enough. The seals of the scroll are like the sword in the anvil. They cannot be released by brute force or cunning. The test for unlocking the scroll is the moral worth that comes from divine pedigree.

How different heaven is from the world we live in. In this world, rulers get things done by force or deceit or just being popular. But in heaven things get done by righteousness, purity of heart and goodness of character.

When the angel asks, “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?”, no one can be found. John weeps. Weeping is a Godly response to the evil that happens in this world. Is there really no one good enough to open the scroll and release God’s saving purpose on the earth?

I like the way Leon Morris sees this: The seals that no man can break speak to mysteries in life. We can feel caught up in the world’s evil and its misery, unable to break free. At times we feel a sense of hopelessness and helplessness in the grip of forces stronger than us. The world’s agony is real. The world’s inability to break free from the consequences of its guilt is real. [1]

Only Jesus is worthy enough to open the seals and release God’s saving purpose.

From verse 5 we read…

⁵Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.”

Those of you who know your Old Testament will recognise that the Lion of the tribe of Judah and the Root of David is code for Jesus, the Messiah. So why not just say ‘Jesus is worthy to open the scroll’? Why does John hide what he is saying in poetry?

Well, John was protecting the church. In the historical context of the first century, the early church was persecuted by the authorities. If John wrote in a plain straight forward way and the Roman authorities got hold of his writing, Christians everywhere would suffer for it.

Much of Revelation is written in code, using language that would be understood by Christians but not by outsiders. John was being as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves to protect the infant church.

Sacrifice:

And so we come to our second word: sacrifice. In verse 6, John is given a vision of a Lamb that looked as though it had been slain. In Old Testament times, lambs were sacrificed as an atonement for sin. Jesus is the sacrificial lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Notice the contrast here. One of the 24 elders has just told John to look at the Lion of Judah, but instead of seeing a mighty lion, John beholds a wounded lamb. Jesus still bears the marks of his sacrificial death, even in heaven.

Most earthly kingdoms use mighty beasts to represent their countries.

Russia elevates the bear, Britain the lion, India the tiger and America the eagle.

Each of these creatures is noble but also naturally inclined to devour its prey.

New Zealand bucks the trend by having the kiwi as its national bird. The kiwi is a shy, flightless bird that comes out mostly at night to eat insects. The kiwi is no threat whatsoever. In fact, it is a vulnerable species.

In heaven, the lamb is elevated. Lambs are a bit like kiwi, vulnerable.

How different heaven is from the power broking kingdoms of this world. Jesus conquered sin and death, not by brute force, but by obedience to God the Father. Jesus gained the victory by losing. The weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

Redemption:

Hand in hand with Jesus’ sacrifice is our third word, redemption. In verse 9 the 24 elders sing to Jesus the Lamb, saying: and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.

This verse is speaking about redemption. Jesus purchased, he bought back, he redeemed human beings for God. The purchase price of our redemption is the blood of Jesus the sacrificial lamb.

What we notice here is that Jesus redeems persons from every tribe and people group. John’s vision of redemption is broad and inclusive in its scope.

Omnipotent:

We need to be careful not to overplay the lamb of God image. Yes, Jesus is represented as the Lamb who was slain, but he is not powerless or defenceless. This lamb has seven horns.

As we have already noted the number seven signifies wholeness, completeness or perfection. The horn, in Biblical imagery, represents strength or power. Seven horns, therefore, represents complete or perfect power. Omnipotence in other words.

Jesus’ omnipotence (his power) is perfect in the sense that no one can defeat him. As we sang earlier in the service, “There’s nothing too big, big, big for his power”.

But Jesus’ power is also perfect in the sense that Jesus is incorruptible. Jesus is worthy enough, he’s good enough to hold absolute power without being corrupted by it.

He possesses the strength of a lion and the gentleness of a lamb. Jesus exercises his authority as one who understands suffering. His power is tempered with compassion.

What about the seven eyes, which are the seven spiritsof God sent out into all the earth. Well, eyes are about seeing. Jesus is all-seeing, all knowing, he is omniscient, like God. There is no place in heaven or earth that the risen and ascended Jesus cannot see you or reach you.

In Psalm 139 we read…

⁷Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? ⁸If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
⁹If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, ¹⁰even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

I invite you to sit with that for a moment. Soak in it, like a warm bath. Jesus is watching over your life for good, 24-7. He is with you always. Wherever you go, he sees you. Jesus sees the good you do that no one else notices. He sees your heart, your motivation, your wounds. He sees your desire, your doubt, your faith, your quiet desperation. Jesus bears witness to your life. He is worthy of your trust.

Incense:

Knowing that Jesus sees us and is near to us is an encouragement to pray. Indeed, the prayers of God’s people are precious to Jesus. In verse 8 of Revelation 5, John saw the 24 elders holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people.

Incense is our fifth word this morning. How different heaven is from earth. Most people in this world do not see the value in praying. It seems so weak, so ineffectual, so feeble. How can prayer make a difference? But in heaven our prayers are like expensive perfume, highly valued as a fragrant offering to God.

To pray to Jesus is to acknowledge that Jesus is worthy. Worthy of our time, yes, but more than that. Jesus is worthy in the sense that he understands us completely and is he willing and able to help us.

We have touched on five of our seven words so far: Jesus alone is worthy to open the scroll. Jesus is the lamb of God who, by his sacrifice, redeems humanity. Jesus is omnipotent, all powerful, all knowing and he values our prayers like costly incense.

Praise:

Praise is our sixth word. In verse 12 of Revelation 5, John saw and heard countless angels giving praise to Jesus, saying: “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and praise!”

Notice there are seven things Jesus (the Lamb) is worthy to receive here. Notice also that these seven things are highly valued by most people in this world too. People want power, wisdom wealth, strength, honour, glory and praise for themselves. In fact, we human beings tend to make idols out of them.

When we pursue these things, they tend to ruin us. How easily we become slaves to money and the approval of others. We are not worthy, not morally strong enough, to receive too much of these things.

King Solomon is a case in point. He had power, wisdom, strength and wealth in abundance. He was showered with honour, glory and praise from all around, but it led him away from the Lord and it caused him to oppress his own people.

Unlike Solomon, Jesus is worthy. Throughout his ministry the devil tempted Jesus with offers of counterfeit power and glory, but Jesus resisted the evil one, remaining loyal to God the Father.

By overcoming these tests, Jesus proved that he alone is good enough, pure enough, righteous enough, strong enough, to receive and handle power and glory in all its forms, without becoming a slave to it.

Hope:

Our seventh word is hope. In verse 9 we read how the 24 elders sang a new song… The book of Revelation is full of new things: a new name, a new song, a new heaven, a new earth, a new creation. The elders sing a new song because God is making all things new, through Jesus.

The New Testament was originally written in Greek. The Greek language has two words for new, Neos and Kainos.

Neos means new in terms of time or age, something recent. Like when someone says, have you seen the new Spiderman movie? It’s the latest version of the same old story. Or when someone buys a second-hand car; its new for them but not brand new.

In contrast, Kainos means new in terms of quality or essence. Something fresh, something original that has not existed before or that we have not experienced before.

Revelation uses the word Kainos. New in the sense of: ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no human mind conceived what the Lord has prepared for those who love him.’

One of the big themes of the book of Revelation is that Jesus comes to bring a newness that is original and fresh, a quality of life that we have not experienced before. This Kainos type newness gives us hope.

The Christians of the first century (that John was writing to) were suffering and persecuted in this world. They needed something better to look forward to. John’s vision of the ascended Jesus, ruling from heaven, gave them hope that the life to come is not just more of the same. It is qualitatively new, different.

The hope John articulates is this: You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.”

God’s people may often be last in this world, but they will be first in the next. They may be subject to oppression in this life, but they will reign in the next. Through Jesus, God is making all things Kainos new.

Conclusion:

This morning we have touched on seven words, inspired by Revelation 5.

If we rearrange these seven words, the first letter of each word spells, W.O.R.S.H.I.P. W stands for Worth, O is for Omnipotence, R is for Redemption,

S is for Sacrifice, H is for Hope, I is for Incense and P is for Praise.

Jesus alone is worthy, for he is omnipotent, perfectly powerful. Jesus redeems humanity through his atoning sacrifice. Through Jesus we have the sure hope that God is making all things new. The Lord values our prayers like costly incense. Jesus is worthy to receive our praise.

Revelation 5 describes John’s vision of the ascended Jesus being worshipped alongside God the Father. We worship Jesus because he is divine.

Let us pray…

Jesus, you are worthy to receive power, wealth, wisdom, strength, honour, glory and praise. You are our hope, our righteousness, our joy. Be large in our awareness 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 had the experience of being filled with awe and wonder? What were the circumstances?
What does it mean that Jesus is worthy?
Discuss / reflect on some of the ways John’s vision of heaven (in Rev. 5) is different from the way things operate on earth.
What does it say about Jesus that he is described as a slain lamb with seven horns and seven eyes?
Why does John hide what he is saying in poetic code?
Why do the elders sing a new song? Take some time this week to compose a song or write a poem in praise of Jesus.

Bibliography

William Barclay, The Revelation of John, Volume 1, 1965.
Leon Morris, Revelation, 1969.
Marva Dawn, Joy in Our Weakness, 2002.

[1] Morris, page 93.

May 10, 2026June 28, 2026 Tawa Baptist

Three women and a baby

Scripture: Exodus 2:1-10

Video Link: https://youtu.be/6GXi7kmRR4o

Structure:

Introduction
Creative faith
Courageous intercession
Compassionate leadership
Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

Today is mothers’ day, a time to honour the women in our lives who have given birth to us, fed us, raised us and cared for us. With this in view our message today focuses on three women who acted in motherly ways. From Exodus chapter 2, verses 1-10, we read…

Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, ²and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. ³But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basketfor him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. ⁴His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. ⁵Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. ⁶She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said. ⁷Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?” ⁸“Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. ⁹Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him. ¹⁰When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”

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

There is more than one way to be a mother. In this passage we observe how three women all act as mothers for the same child. Moses’ biological mother exercises creative faith. Moses’ sister exercises courageous intercession and Moses’ adoptive mother exercises compassionate leadership. Let us begin with Moses’ biological mother.

Creative Faith:

There is a classic puzzle known as the nine dots puzzle. The aim is to link all nine dots using four straight lines without lifting the pen. What you discover (after much time and frustration) is that it’s impossible to do this if you think inside the box.

The only way you can do it is by drawing your lines outside the box. The nine dots puzzle requires outside the box thinking; that is, thinking in a creative way. Moses’ biological mother had a problem which required outside the box thinking. So what was the problem?

Well, the king of Egypt (also known as Pharaoh) had issued a command to all his people, to throw every newborn Hebrew boy into the River Nile.

Pharaoh was basically instigating a policy of genocide or ‘ethnic cleansing’ against the Israelites.

In the opening verses of Exodus 2, we read how Moses’ mum gave birth in the usual way and she saw that her son was a ‘fine’ child. There are echoes of the creation story here.

In Genesis 1, on the sixth day of creation we read, God saw all he had made and it was very good. The Hebrew word translated as fine, in Exodus 2, is the same word as good, in Genesis 1. Can you see the connection? Moses’ mother looked on her son and saw he was fine (or good), just as God looked on his creation and saw that it was good.

Although God’s name is not mentioned in the story of Moses’ birth, the reader is reminded of the creation story. Just as the Lord brought order to the chaos in the beginning, at creation, so too he is bringing order to the chaos of Pharaoh’s decree to murder Hebrew babies.

Moses’ biological mother cannot drown her own son, so she hides him as long as she can. This kind of ‘in the box thinking’ was never going to be a permanent solution. It would soon become impossible to keep her child hidden.

Let’s just pause a moment and imagine what life was like for Moses’ parents. Normally, the birth of a child is something to celebrate, but Moses’ mum and dad could not share the good news with anyone.

Presumably, Moses’ mum tried to hide the fact she was pregnant in the first place. Then there was the difficulty of giving birth as quietly as possible, not to mention the constant stress to trying to keep the baby from crying once he was born.

Parenting a newborn baby is difficult at the best of times. Just imagine how exhausted and on edge Moses’ parents must have been trying to protect their son with a death sentence dangling over his head.

Moses’ mum is a smart lady. She knows that hiding her son is not sustainable.

If Moses is to have a chance, she needs to think outside the box, and this is the creative solution she comes up with. Moses’ mum took a basket, covered it with tar to make it watertight and set it among the reeds of the Nile with her baby in it.

Moses’ mum didn’t just throw her son into the deep end to see if he would sink or swim. No. She put him in a water-tight vessel and nestled him in the calm part of the river, among the reeds, where he was likely to be found, hopefully by someone kind.

By doing this, Moses’ mum was exercising creative faith. Creative faith is not blind faith. Creative faith is smart faith, faith that thinks outside the box for the wellbeing of others. Faith that is as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Faith that provides doorways for our kids, giving them the best possible chance in life.

There were no guarantees with the plan. In fact, there was a lot that could go wrong. But it does no good to overthink the things we cannot control. Moses’ mum did everything in her power to give her son the best chance she could, and she gave God an opportunity to act. This is what creative faith does; it gives God options.

Courageous Intercession:

How many here have a younger brother or sister? Being an older sibling comes with responsibility. Indeed, the eldest child in the family normally possesses a stronger sense of responsibility than others. We often find ourselves in a parenting role for our younger siblings. It shapes us.

Moses’ biological mum was not the only woman who provided care for Moses. Moses’ sister also played a mothering role in her brother’s life by exercising courageous intercession.

Intercession comes from a Latin word that simply means ‘to go between’.

An intercessor intervenes on behalf of another person. Acting as the go between, or the advocate, for someone else.

Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, was a courageous intercessor. She was vocal in her support of the African American civil rights movement. Eleanor opposed her husband on this issue by becoming one of the only voices in the Roosevelt administration insisting that benefits be equally extended to Americans of all races.

Oskar Schindler (an Austrian born industrialist) was another courageous intercessor. He intervened, not with words but with actions, to save 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust of the Second World War. He did this by creative ‘out of the box’ thinking; employing Jews in his enamelware factory and bribing SS officials to look the other way.

Eleanor Roosevelt and Oskar Schindler were people of power. Their intercession was courageous in the context of the times, but they interceded from a position of relative privilege. Moses’ sister did not enjoy such power or privilege, which made her intercession all the more courageous.

In verse 4 we read how Moses’ sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to her baby brother. Unlike Cain, who killed his brother Abel, Moses’ sister watched over her brother for good. As an older sibling she had a strong sense of responsibility. She was her brother’s keeper.

When Moses’ sister saw that Pharaoh’s daughter had taken pity on the baby, she found the courage to speak up and intercede for Moses saying, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?”

What an incredibly brave thing to do. Moses’ sister was a lowly slave girl, while Pharaoh’s daughter was among the powerful elite. And yet, Moses’ sister was suggesting to Pharaoh’s daughter that she break the law and go against her father. Moses’ sister could have wound up in a lot of trouble for even talking to the king’s daughter, let alone encouraging civil disobedience. It was a huge risk.

But Pharaoh’s daughter agreed and Moses’ sister acted as an intercessor, a go between, fetching Moses’ mother. This resulted in Moses’ mother being paid to nurse her own son.

I invite you to pause and reflect in silence for a moment. Who has interceded for good in your life? Bring that person to mind. How did it make you feel when you learned they had your back? If it’s a good feeling, sit with it for a while.

Is there someone who needs you to intercede for them?

Compassionate leadership:

There is more than one way to be a mum. Moses’ biological mum exercised creative faith, Moses’ sister exercised courageous intercession and Moses’ adoptive mum, the princess of Egypt, exercised compassionate leadership.

God’s deliverance often comes from unexpected quarters. Pharaoh’s daughter is the one we least expect to save Moses. She is a pagan. She is the daughter of Israel’s arch enemy and she comes from a life of privilege.

We might expect her to be so self-absorbed that she doesn’t even notice the baby. Or, if she did notice him, so blindly loyal to her father that she would leave the child to drown. But this princess’ behaviour topples our prejudice.

Some commentators observe that God is parallel to Pharaoh’s daughter here.

We wouldn’t naturally associate God Almighty with a princess, much less a pagan princess whose dad is a homicidal maniac. And yet this is what we find in Exodus 2.

The Lord (Yahweh) is not mentioned in Moses’ birth narrative, but we see his image reflected in the way Pharaoh’s daughter responds to the situation with compassionate leadership.

Verse 6 tells us that when the princess opened the basket and saw the baby crying, she felt sorry for him. This ‘feeling sorry for him’ goes deeper than superficial sentimentality. She demonstrates genuine compassion for Moses.

Compassion is a feeling of empathy which moves a person to an act of mercy. Compassion doesn’t just feel sorry for the poor. Compassion does something to help the poor.

Jesus whole ministry was an act of compassion. In Matthew 9 we read…

³⁵Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. ³⁶When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. ³⁷Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. ³⁸Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

Jesus didn’t just feel sorry for people. He was moved to heal people and show them a better way to live. The interesting thing here is that Jesus drew others into the work of compassion with him. Indeed, he encourages us to pray for God to send more workers to help with the heavy lifting of compassion.

In verse 9 of Exodus 2, Pharaoh’s daughter says to Moses’ mother, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.”

Pharaoh’s daughter shows double compassion here. Compassion in saving the baby Moses and also compassion for a struggling Hebrew family. Pharaoh had subjected the Hebrew people to slave labour. But Pharaoh’s daughter does not agree with slavery. She wants to be fair and pay the workers.

Notice the connection with Jesus here. Just as Jesus invites others to help him in the work of compassion, so too Pharaoh’s daughter draws together a team of people to care for baby Moses.

Pharaoh’s daughter takes the risk of going against her father’s command and makes a long-term commitment to provide for Moses. She eventually adopts Moses as her own son, thus saving his life. This act of compassionate leadership is, at the same time, an example of courageous intercession.

God is parallel to Pharaoh’s daughter in this chapter. At the end of Exodus 2, we read how the Israelites cried out to God under their slavery and the Lord heard their cry and was concerned for them.

Just as the princess was moved with compassion by the cry of the Hebrew baby, so too God is moved with compassion by the cry of his people. And just as Pharaoh’s daughter was faithful in adopting Moses as her own son, so too God provides for our adoption through Christ.

In Galatians 4 we read…

⁴But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, ⁵to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. ⁶Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” ⁷So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.

Through faith in Jesus, we are adopted into God’s family. We are royalty.

The name ‘Moses’ is actually an Egyptian name, probably meaning ‘son’, but it sounds like the Hebrew word, ‘to draw out’. Just as Pharaoh’s daughter drew Moses out of the Nile, so too God will draw Israel out of slavery in Egypt.

Moses’ deliverance, by the hand of Pharaoh’s daughter, foreshadows Israel’s deliverance by the hand of Yahweh.

The princess’ compassionate leadership and courageous intercession remind us that not all the Egyptians are like Pharaoh. We cannot judge a group by one member of that group.

The actions of Pharaoh’s daughter also remind us that God’s people don’t have the monopoly on compassion. God is free to work with and through whoever he wants.

Conclusion:

As is so often the case, the Lord begins his work of redemption quietly, unobtrusively, under the radar, often through the creativity, courage and compassion of those we least expect.

In Israel’s case, God sowed his seeds of salvation through women. We see God’s sense of humour here. There is considerable irony in Pharaoh’s policy of killing the sons and preserving the daughters. As it turned out, the daughters were far more dangerous than the sons.

May the Lord bless you.

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 are some of the ways a person can be a mother? Who has been a mother to you?
How is the beginning of Genesis similar to the beginning of Exodus?
What is creative faith? How might you exercise creative faith in your everyday life?
What is intercession? Can you remember a time when someone interceded for good in your life? What happened? How did you feel? Is there someone you can intercede for?
In what ways is God parallel to the daughter of Pharaoh?
What connections do you observe between Moses and Jesus?

Bibliography:

R. Alan Cole, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries: Exodus, 1973.
George A.F. Knight, Theology as Narration: A Commentary on the Book of Exodus, 1976.
Terence E. Fretheim, Interpretation Commentary: Exodus, 1991.
Alec Motyer, Bible Speaks Today: Exodus, 2005.

October 20, 2024December 8, 2024 Tawa Baptist

Blind Ambition

Scripture: Mark 10:35-45

Video Link: https://youtu.be/zEJ2DkZTFQQ

Structure:

Introduction
Jesus’ humility (v. the disciples’ ambition)
Jesus’ vision (v. the disciples’ blindness)
Jesus’ redemption (v. the disciples’ anger)
Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

It’s October, which means some students will be sitting exams soon.

One method for exam revision is the 1-2-3-7 technique. That is, after your first read through, revise what you want to remember the very next day and then the day after that and then again on the seventh day.

Some people say you should re-read again 21 days after the first read, but if you are sitting exams two weeks from now you, you won’t have time. The point is you cannot expect to remember something you’ve only read once. Repetition is key to learning.

Today we continue our series in the gospel of Mark based on the lectionary readings. This Sunday’s Scripture is Mark chapter 10, verses 35-45. If you have been following this series, then some of what you are about to hear will sound familiar. This is because it’s the third time that Jesus has said it.

Jesus’ disciples didn’t understand what he was saying the first time, so he kept repeating himself. But, with each repetition, Jesus adds a little more information and so this sermon is not a repeat. From Mark 10, verse 35, we read…

³⁵Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.” ³⁶“What do you want me to do for you?” he asked. ³⁷They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.” ³⁸“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” ³⁹“We can,” they answered. Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, ⁴⁰but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.” ⁴¹When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. ⁴²Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. ⁴³Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, ⁴⁴and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. ⁴⁵For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

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

In this passage we see the contrast between Jesus and his disciples.

Jesus’ humility stands apart from the disciples’ ambition.

Jesus’ vision sees beyond the disciples’ blindness.

And Jesus’ redemption shines like a star against the darkness of the disciples’ anger. First, let’s consider the contrast between Jesus’ humility and the disciples’ ambition.

Jesus’ humility (v. the disciples’ ambition)

Thomas Merton, the 20^th Century Trappist monk, once wrote…

When ambition ends, happiness begins.

Merton is saying that when we let go of our relentless drive for success and achievement, we can find true contentment and fulfilment.

Ambition is the desire and determination to achieve something. Wanting to achieve something is not necessarily bad in itself, unless it comes at the expense of our well-being and relationships. If ambition is left unchecked, it tends to lead to things like envy and arrogance, anger and greed. Ambition is a hunger that is never satisfied.

The brothers James and John had ambitions. James and John were the sons of Zebedee, a local fisherman. From what we can piece together it appears James and John came from a moderately wealthy family who were well-connected.

Their father Zebedee owned several fishing boats and employed servants.

Also, James and John may have had a family connection with the household of the high priest.

For James and John to walk away from a successful family business to follow a travelling rabbi, who often criticized the religious establishment, was no small thing. James and John had given up a lot to become disciples of Jesus.

Maybe this was in the back of their mind when they said to Jesus, ‘we want you to do for us whatever we ask’.

This request is the opposite of winsome. This request is a bit insensitive in fact, given how it follows hard on the heels of Jesus’ third passion prediction. Jesus had just been telling his disciples (in verses 32-34) how he will be mocked, spat on, flogged and killed before rising three days later.

Somehow this doesn’t register with James and John. Jesus is their teacher.

He is their boss, and he is soon to suffer terribly, yet they want to tell Jesus what to do. That is ambition speaking.

But listen to the way Jesus handles their request. There is a grace and humility in Jesus’ response that is truly beautiful. Jesus does not get angry with James and John. He doesn’t yell at them or cast them into outer darkness. Jesus takes the posture of a servant. He listens.

‘What do you want me to do for you’, Jesus asks. That’s a listening question. That’s something a servant says.

And James and John reply…

“Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”

There it is. Naked ambition. James and John know that Jesus is a king. To sit at the right and left of a king is to occupy positions of power and prestige. It’s like saying, we want to be second and third in charge of your kingdom.

Although James and John’s ambition (to be in charge) looks quite ugly in many respects, we should not judge them too harshly. Each of us has a bit of James and John in us. None of us are immune from selfish ambition.

Looking at James and John in a more positive light, we note the strength of their faith and hope in Jesus. As I said before, James and John gave up a lot to follow Jesus. Their ambition may have been misguided but they have a confidence in Jesus which is quite inspiring.

Jesus had just been describing how he would be rejected, mocked and killed. To the disciples this might have sounded like Jesus was a bit discouraged or plagued with self-doubt. Perhaps James and John’s request was their way of saying to Jesus, ‘we believe in you, even if you don’t quite believe in yourself’.

But Jesus is not plagued with self-doubt. Jesus sees what the disciples can’t see. Jesus sees the cross before him.

Jesus came as a humble servant, but he is primarily a servant of the living God, the Lord Almighty, God of heaven and earth. Jesus does not take his orders from James and John or any other human being. Jesus takes his orders from God the Father. Jesus’ sole ambition is to love and obey God.

Humility does not mean saying ‘yes’ to every request. Humility is about having your feet on the ground. To be humble is to maintain an accurate estimation of yourself, remembering who you are and who you serve. Not being carried away by ambition but holding on to yourself.

Jesus’ vision (vs. the disciples’ blindness)

Jesus has the humility to know that it’s not his call who gets to sit on his left or right, much less James and John’s call. Jesus will not usurp God’s authority. And so, Jesus declines their request saying…

³⁸“You don’t know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”

James and John answer with confidence saying, “We can”.

Their ambition has blinded them. Jesus has just said, “You don’t know what you are asking…”, but James and John are not listening, they act as if they know better than Jesus.

You have probably seen the drawing of the old woman which, depending on how you look at it, is also a drawing of a young woman. Some people can only see the old woman and some can only see the young woman. Then there are those who can see both.

When Jesus asks James and John if they can drink the cup he is about to drink and be baptized with the baptism he is about to be baptized with, James and John misunderstand Jesus’ meaning. They can only see the young woman.

In the Old Testament, the cup had two meanings. Sometimes the cup referred to joy and abundance of good things, like in the 23^rd Psalm where we read…

You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life…

Other times though, the cup is a symbol of God’s judgement and wrath, like in the book of Jeremiah where the Lord says…

Take from my hand this cup filled with the wine of wrath and make all the nations to whom I send you drink…

When James and John hear Jesus talking about drinking from his cup, they probably think Psalm 23, joy and abundance, dining at the king’s table.

But this is not what Jesus has in mind. Jesus is thinking about the cup of God’s wrath that he will drink in going to the cross.

Likewise, the image of baptism had two meanings in the first century.

When Jesus talks about baptism in Mark 10, he is not referring to the ritual of baptism that we are familiar with.

Baptism in this context is a metaphor for being overwhelmed or submerged under water, like with Noah’s flood or when the Egyptian army were drowned in the Red Sea or when the Psalmist in distress says, Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me…

For first century Jews though, baptism was also an image of cleansing and renewal. So, when James and John hear Jesus talking about his baptism, they probably think Jesus is referring to God’s destruction of their enemies and the renewal of Israel. They want some of that.

But Jesus has a different understanding of baptism in mind here. Jesus is contemplating the overwhelming suffering he will soon experience in going to the cross.

Jesus can see the blindness of James and John, but he doesn’t humiliate them. Jesus’ vision sees beyond the disciples’ blindness. The Lord goes on to tell James and John…

“You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with…”

In fact, James and John were witnesses to Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection. More than that, James was among the first of the apostles to be killed for his testimony about Jesus. In Acts 12, we read how Herod had James put to death by the sword.

John was not murdered, as far as we know, but he did suffer in his witness for Jesus. John survived a series of state-sponsored persecutions of the early church and was eventually sent into exile on the island of Patmos.

The disciples’ experience speaks to our experience. When we first become believers, we don’t know what lies ahead for us in our journey of faith. We are blind, feeling our way like newborn puppies.

There is often an initial joy when we first accept Jesus. But there are also times of desolation along the way, when we feel alone and abandoned by God.

To follow Jesus is to drink from his cup and share in his baptism.

Sometimes, like the first disciples, we will get it wrong. We will misunderstand, we will fail and wonder how we might move forward. But Jesus understands. Jesus forgives and Jesus provides a way for us. Despite the disciples’ misplaced ambition and initial blindness, Jesus was still able to use them, and he is still able to use us.

Although James and John did indeed share in Christ’s sufferings, that did not automatically entitle them to call dibs on the best seats in God’s kingdom.

As Jesus said: ‘To sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.’

If Jesus had in mind the cross, then the ‘places’ in view here were allotted to two criminals. One was crucified on Jesus’ left and the other on his right. Ambition had blinded James and John, so they did not know what they were asking.

We have heard about Jesus’ humility in contrast to the disciples’ ambition.

And we’ve heard how Jesus’ vision sees beyond the disciples’ blindness.

Now let’s consider Jesus’ redemption in the face of the disciples’ anger.

Jesus’ redemption (v. the disciples’ anger)

There are basically two main ways to define greatness. Top down or bottom up. The top-down definition of greatness asks, how many people can I get to serve me? While the bottom-up definition asks, how many people can I serve?

William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, once said, “The greatness of a man’s power is the measure of his surrender”.

I believe it is true for women as well. Perhaps what Booth meant here was the more a person surrenders their life to God’s purpose, the more people they will help. William Booth thought of greatness in terms of obedience to God and service to others.

James and John’s ambition, their drive for success and achievement, threatened their relationships with the other disciples. In verse 41, we read how the 10 became indignant with James and John.

The word indignant means angry, but it’s a particular kind of angry. The other 10 disciples were angry with James and John because they felt James and John had behaved in a way that was unworthy or unfair.

By asking for top positions in Jesus’ administration, James and John were implicitly saying to the other 10 disciples, ‘we are better than you’. The other 10 disciples didn’t share James and John’s opinion. The other disciples’ indignation reveals they thought James and John were not worthy of sitting at Jesus’ left and right.

No one, it seems, was too bothered about how Jesus might be feeling, even though Jesus had just described in detail how he was going to suffer.

Jesus is not indignant. Jesus does not take umbrage. Jesus sees a teachable moment, an opportunity for redeeming the disciples’ relationships. Jesus sets the disciples’ free from their ambition and their anger, saying…

“You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. ⁴³Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, ⁴⁴and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.

This is the part that sounds familiar. Most people in the first century defined greatness in terms of how many people I can get to serve me. Jesus flips this on its head. Jesus redefines greatness as how many people I can serve.

Jesus goes on to use himself as an example saying, in verse 45…

⁴⁵For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

In the Jewish imagination, the Son of Man was a great figure, one of the greatest. But the thing that makes the Son of Man great is his service to others.

Jesus is the Son of Man. Jesus is trying to tell his disciples that he came to die in order that others might live. That is one of the main ways Jesus continues to serve humanity.

Much ink has been spilt over what Jesus meant by giving his life as a ransom.

In the first century, if you wanted to set someone free from slavery or prison, you did so by paying a large amount of money. The ransom payment redeemed the person’s life, allowing them to go free and start afresh.

Some people over the centuries have asked the question, “If Jesus’ life was the cost of the ransom, then who was paid?” Well, that sort of question misses the point. No one was paid. Jesus is speaking metaphorically here.

Like when someone says, ‘grief is the price we pay for love’. No one receives a payment. Grief isn’t like money. The expression simply means, love costs you. Our redemption cost Jesus his life. Our freedom cost God his Son.

Conclusion:

Let me finish with a story. This is a true story. On Sunday, 16 August 1987, Northwest Airlines flight 225 crashed shortly after taking off from Detroit Airport, killing 154 people on board and two people on the ground. Only one passenger survived, a four-year old girl named Cecelia.

Cecelia survived because, as the plane was falling, Cecelia’s mother, Paula, unbuckled her own seatbelt, got down on her knees in front of her daughter and shielded Cecelia with her body. Paula gave her life as a ransom for her daughter. She saved Cecelia.

Nothing could separate Cecelia from her mother’s love – not tragedy or disaster, not the fall or the flames, not height nor depth, nor life nor death. Such is Jesus’ love for us. He left heaven, became a servant for us and covered us with the sacrifice of his own body that we might live. [1]

Jesus’ sacrifice calls for a response from us. What will you do with the freedom Jesus bought you?

Let us pray…

Loving God, we thank you for Jesus who redeems our life and shows us the way. Set us free from misplaced ambition, blindness and anger. Help us to walk humbly with you. 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?
Why does Jesus keep repeating the same message to his disciples? (That is, about his suffering, death and resurrection and about service.) What faith lessons keep being repeated in your life?
Discuss / reflect on Thomas Merton’s words, “When ambition ends, happiness begins”. What does Merton mean by this? Do you agree? When is ambition good? When does ambition become harmful? What was Jesus’ ambition? What is your ambition?
What did Jesus mean when he talked about the cup and baptism, in verse 38? How did James and John (mis)understand Jesus’ words? What realities has God opened your eyes to, since becoming a Christian?
How does Jesus define greatness? How do you define greatness? Who serves you? Who do you serve?
Why did the other 10 disciples become indignant (angry) with James and John? What does their anger reveal about them? What makes you feel indignant?
What did Jesus mean when he said, the Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many? What freedoms do you enjoy because of Jesus? What will you do with the freedom Jesus bought you?

[1] Refer J. John and Mark Stibbe’s book, ‘A Box of Delights’, page 173.

May 5, 2024June 30, 2024 Tawa Baptist

Second Chances

Scripture: Genesis 44

Video Link: https://youtu.be/fZVV72MlMpM

Structure:

Introduction
A second chance
A substitute
Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

Many of you will remember, from childhood, the nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

couldn’t put Humpty together again.

It’s such a sad nursery rhyme. Why would you say that to a child? For years I have wondered what the point of it is. Humpty Dumpty raises so many questions.

Is the nursey rhyme a kind of health and safety warning, before health & safety became a thing, teaching kids to be careful how high they climb? Or is it saying that people who are indecisive and sit on the fence (aka the wall) end up worse off than those who pick a side?

Who is Humpty Dumpty anyway and what does he (or she) represent? Did Humpty fall by accident, or was he pushed? And if he was pushed, who pushed him and why? (Robyn says I tend to overthink things. She may be right.)

Whatever the answers to these important questions, I just wish the consequences for poor old Humpty Dumpty were not so fatal and final.

I wish Humpty Dumpty was given a second chance.

Today we continue our series in the life of Joseph. Joseph’s brothers certainly needed a second chance. They pushed their father Jacob off the wall by selling Joseph into slavery and lying about it. And they cannot undo what they have done.

But through Joseph, God gives them a second chance to make things right and put Jacob together again. From Genesis 44, verse 1, we read…

¹ Now Joseph gave these instructions to the steward of his house: “Fill the men’s sacks with as much food as they can carry, and put each man’s silver in the mouth of his sack. ² Then put my cup, the silver one, in the mouth of the youngest one’s sack, along with the silver for his grain.” And he did as Joseph said. ³ As morning dawned, the men were sent on their way with their donkeys. ⁴ They had not gone far from the city when Joseph said to his steward, “Go after those men at once, and when you catch up with them, say to them, ‘Why have you repaid good with evil?⁵ Isn’t this the cup my master drinks from and also uses for divination? This is a wicked thing you have done.’ ” ⁶ When he caught up with them, he repeated these words to them. ⁷ But they said to him, “Why does my lord say such things? Far be it from your servants to do anything like that! ⁸ We even brought back to you from the land of Canaan the silver we found inside the mouths of our sacks. So why would we steal silver or gold from your master’s house? ⁹ If any of your servants is found to have it, he will die; and the rest of us will become my lord’s slaves.” ¹⁰ “Very well, then,” he said, “let it be as you say. Whoever is found to have it will become my slave; the rest of you will be free from blame.” ¹¹ Each of them quickly lowered his sack to the ground and opened it. ¹² Then the steward proceeded to search, beginning with the oldest and ending with the youngest. And the cup was found in Benjamin’s sack. ¹³ At this, they tore their clothes. Then they all loaded their donkeys and returned to the city.

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

A second chance:

When Thomas Edison and his staff were developing the incandescent light bulb, it took hundreds of hours to produce the first one. After finishing the bulb, Edison handed it to a young errand boy and asked him to take it upstairs to the testing room.

As the boy turned and started up the stairs, he stumbled and fell. The bulb shattered on the steps. The boy felt terrible. He knew how much work had gone into it and he felt the disappointment of everyone in the room.

He turned to face the famous inventor. But instead of tearing strips off the boy, Edison reassured him. And then told his staff to start working on another bulb.

When the second bulb was completed several days later, Edison did something unexpected. He walked over to the boy, handed him the bulb and said, “Please take this up to the testing room”.

Thomas Edison knew it was a risk, both to himself and to his staff. But he also knew the boy needed another chance. He needed the opportunity to redeem himself. And the boy did just that, delivering the second bulb without incident.

You may remember, from a few weeks ago, that Joseph needed to test his brothers to determine whether they were trustworthy. Well, so far, they have been passing the tests. When Simeon was held hostage, the brothers returned with Benjamin and Simeon was released. Also, they were honest about the silver found in their sacks.

However, these tests didn’t really prove whether Joseph’s brothers had changed. It was in the brothers’ interests to bring Benjamin to Egypt and return the silver. They would have starved if they hadn’t.

Joseph needed a test that replicated the situation (as close as possible) from 22 years earlier, when his brothers had sold him into slavery.

Benjamin, the youngest son and the only other child born to Rachel, was now Jacob’s favourite. What would the brothers do if they had to choose between saving Benjamin and saving themselves?

There was risk in Joseph’s test, to be sure. Just as there was risk in trusting the errand boy with the light bulb a second time. But, like the errand boy, Joseph’s brothers needed a second chance, a chance to redeem themselves.

Joseph set Benjamin up to look guilty by instructing his steward to place a special silver cup in the mouth of Benjamin’s sack. Then, when Benjamin was found out, the steward gave the brothers a choice.

They could trade Benjamin for their own freedom. They could go home if they gave Benjamin up as a slave.

This was a similar scenario to the one 22 years earlier when they gave Joseph up to slave traders. Only now the stakes are higher.

When the cup was found in Benjamin’s sack the brothers tore their clothes as a sign of grief. It rips them up on the inside to think that harm might come to him.

To their credit all the brothers stand in solidarity with Benjamin, even though he appears guilty. The brothers’ calloused hearts have softened.

The brothers would rather go into slavery with Benjamin than return home to Canaan without him. This was a pretty big call. The brothers didn’t know if they would ever see their wives and children again.

A substitute:

So what happens next? From verse 14 of Genesis 44, we read…

¹⁴ Joseph was still in the house when Judah and his brothers came in, and they threw themselves to the ground before him. ¹⁵ Joseph said to them, “What is this you have done? Don’t you know that a man like me can find things out by divination?” ¹⁶ “What can we say to my lord?” Judah replied. “What can we say? How can we prove our innocence? God has uncovered your servants’ guilt. We are now my lord’s slaves—we ourselves and the one who was found to have the cup.” ¹⁷ But Joseph said, “Far be it from me to do such a thing! Only the man who was found to have the cup will become my slave. The rest of you, go back to your father in peace.” ¹⁸ Then Judah went up to him and said: “Please, my lord, let your servant speak a word to my lord. Do not be angry with your servant, though you are equal to Pharaoh himself. ¹⁹ My lord asked his servants, ‘Do you have a father or a brother?’ ²⁰ And we answered, ‘We have an aged father, and there is a young son born to him in his old age. His brother is dead, and he is the only one of his mother’s sons left, and his father loves him.’ ²¹ “Then you said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me so I can see him for myself.’ ²² And we said to my lord, ‘The boy cannot leave his father; if he leaves him, his father will die.’ ²³ But you told your servants, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you will not see my face again.’ ²⁴ When we went back to your servant my father, we told him what my lord had said. ²⁵ “Then our father said, ‘Go back and buy a little more food.’ ²⁶ But we said, ‘We cannot go down. Only if our youngest brother is with us will we go. We cannot see the man’s face unless our youngest brother is with us.’ ²⁷ “Your servant my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons. ²⁸ One of them went away from me, and I said, “He has surely been torn to pieces.” And I have not seen him since. ²⁹ If you take this one from me too and harm comes to him, you will bring my gray head down to the grave in misery.’ ³⁰ “So now, if the boy is not with us when I go back to your servant my father and if my father, whose life is closely bound up with the boy’s life, ³¹ sees that the boy isn’t there, he will die. Your servants will bring the gray head of our father down to the grave in sorrow. ³² Your servant guaranteed the boy’s safety to my father. I said, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, I will bear the blame before you, my father, all my life!’ ³³ “Now then, please let your servant remain here as my lord’s slave in place of the boy, and let the boy return with his brothers. ³⁴ How can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? No! Do not let me see the misery that would come upon my father.”

There’s a story from Japan about a man called Hamaguchi. Hamaguchi was a highly respected leader of a fishing village.

One day, as Hamaguchi looked out from his house on the top of the hill, he saw the tide receding quickly. The villagers below were running to the beach to look at what was happening.

Hamaguchi realized it was a tsunami. There wasn’t time for him to run down the hill to warn the people of the village, so he set his own crops on fire. When the people saw the smoke, they ran up the hill to help Hamaguchi put out the fire.

They were too late to save Hamaguchi’s crops but, by showing solidarity and coming to his aid, they saved themselves, for the entire village was devastated by the incoming tidal wave. Hamaguchi’s sacrifice brought people together and saved many lives.

Joseph is secretly pleased to see his brothers standing together in solidarity and not abandoning Benjamin. But he doesn’t show this, for the final test is not yet complete.

Joseph says to his brothers, What is this you have done? Don’t you know that a man like me can find things out by divination?”

Some ancients believed they could reveal secrets and predict the future by pouring oil into water and watching the pattern it makes. Kind of like some people today think they can reveal mysteries by looking at tea leaves or reading horoscopes or tarot cards.

The Bible forbids divination. But Joseph doesn’t practice divination in any case. He is just saying this to disguise his true purpose. In a way though, Joseph is using the cup to find out the truth.

Judah takes the lead and responds to Joseph. But it is a different Judah to the one that Joseph once knew. For this Judah, has been through the crucible of conversion. This Judah has lost his wife and two sons. He has humiliated himself with Tamar and been bullied by regret at what he did to Joseph and Jacob 22 years earlier.

This Judah doesn’t try to force his own way and he doesn’t try to deceive Joseph. Instead, he acknowledges God’s justice in their situation saying…

“What can we say? How can we prove our innocence? God has uncovered your servants’ guilt. We are now my lord’s slaves….”

Judah is making a confession. Even though Benjamin was the one found with the cup, Judah remembers his own sins and stands in solidarity with Ben.

To which Joseph replies…

“Far be it from me to do such a thing! Only the man who was found to have the cup will become my slave. The rest of you go back to your father in peace.”

Joseph is letting the brothers off the hook. It’s like Joseph is saying,‘Go on – you don’t need to stay. No one would blame you for leaving’.

This is the second time the brothers are tempted to abandon Benjamin. But they won’t budge. They stay loyal to Ben at great risk to themselves.

Judah takes the lead again. Calling himself a servant, Judah intercedes for Benjamin with a speech, the longest speech recorded in Genesis. Much of the speech is a retelling of the plot so far.

What we notice though, in Judah’s speech, is the three things that God requires of people. To do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly.

Judah does not beg for leniency from Joseph. He doesn’t ask to avoid punishment. He accepts that justice must be done and offers himself as a slave in Benjamin’s place. As a true leader, Judah takes responsibility.

At the same time, Judah performs mercy for his brother Benjamin. The Hebrew word often translated as mercy is hesed. You may remember that hesed is a life-saving action done for someone you know who cannot otherwise help themselves.

Judah is doing hesed for Benjamin and his father. Judah is preserving Benjamin’s freedom and saving Jacob from further grief.

Thirdly, Judah walks humbly. He approaches Joseph with utmost respect, naming himself in a lower position as Joseph’s servant. Judah is honest, without being rude, and he does not presume upon any entitlement.

The other thing we notice in Judah’s speech is his affection for his father, Jacob. Fourteen times in these verses, Judah mentions his father.

Judah is motivated by deep compassion for his dad. Judah is willing to sacrifice himself not just for the sake of Benjamin, but also for Jacob.

Judah, the same brother who once convinced the others to sell Joseph into slavery, now offers to become a slave himself, in Benjamin’s place. The transformation in Judah is miraculous. Only God can bring about that sort of change.

By God’s grace (and Joseph’s wisdom) Judah gets a second chance and he makes good on the opportunity for redemption.

As Bruce Waltke observes, Judah is the first person in Scripture to willingly offer his own life [as a substitute] for another. His [self-giving] love, to save his brother for the sake of his father, prefigures the vicarious atonement of Christ, who by his voluntary sufferings heals the breach between God and human beings.

Or to put it more simply, Judah points to Jesus by being willing to sacrifice himself to save his family.

Except, Jesus did something far greater than Judah. Jesus actually went through with the sacrifice, even unto death on a cross. And the Lord did it to save not just his family and friends but also his enemies, those who hated him.

Conclusion:

Have you ever done something you regret? I’m not talking about getting a bad haircut or ordering the wrong thing off the menu. I’m talking about serious regret. Regret that haunts you for decades.

Have you ever pushed Humpty Dumpty off the wall and not been able to put him back together again? Have you ever wished you could have a second chance and do things right this time?

Jesus came to show us the way of forgiveness, to release us from our regret and self-hatred.

Have you ever felt like Humpty Dumpty after his fall? Your life, your family, the things that really matter to you, all in pieces, perhaps through no fault of your own.

Jesus came to put our Humpty Dumpty lives and this Humpty Dumpty world back together again. Jesus came to make all things new.

May the Spirit of Jesus give us eyes to see the second chances God provides and the faith to put things right. Amen.

Questions for discussion or reflection:

What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?
What thoughts and feelings does the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme put you in touch with?
Why did Joseph frame Benjamin by putting a silver cup in his sack?
What stands out for you in reading Judah’s speech of intercession for Benjamin?
Have you ever done something you seriously regretted? What happened? Did you experience God’s redemption in this situation? If so, how?
In what ways does Judah remind us of Jesus?
How might we recognise when God is giving us a second chance?

March 24, 2024May 26, 2024 Tawa Baptist

Scripture: Genesis 42:1-24

Video Link: https://youtu.be/uimjqLmyGj8

Structure:

Introduction
Redemption is God’s initiative
Redemption requires our participation
Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

In the game of monopoly there is one card no one wants to be dealt and that is the Go to jail card. Getting sent to jail takes you out of the game so you can’t trade and you can’t pass Go and collect $200.

But at least the rules provide opportunities for redemption. To be released from jail and restored to the game, you must either throw a double or hand in a get out of jail free card.

This morning we continue our sermon series in the life of Joseph focusing on Genesis chapter 42, verses 1-24. The next three chapters of the story show how God used Joseph to redeem his brothers; to release them from the prison they were in and restore their relationships.

To set the scene, famine has spread over the known world and people everywhere are at risk of starving. From Genesis 42, verse 1, we read…

¹ When Jacob learned that there was grain in Egypt, he said to his sons, “Why do you just keep looking at each other?” ² He continued, “I have heard that there is grain in Egypt. Go down there and buy some for us, so that we may live and not die.” ³ Then ten of Joseph’s brothers went down to buy grain from Egypt. ⁴ But Jacob did not send Benjamin, Joseph’s brother, with the others, because he was afraid that harm might come to him. ⁵ So Israel’s sons were among those who went to buy grain, for the famine was in the land of Canaan also. ⁶ Now Joseph was the governor of the land, the one who sold grain to all its people. So when Joseph’s brothers arrived, they bowed down to him with their faces to the ground. ⁷ As soon as Joseph saw his brothers, he recognized them, but he pretended to be a stranger and spoke harshly to them. “Where do you come from?” he asked. “From the land of Canaan,” they replied, “to buy food.” ⁸ Although Joseph recognized his brothers, they did not recognize him. ⁹ Then he remembered his dreams about them and said to them, “You are spies! You have come to see where our land is unprotected.” ¹⁰ “No, my lord,” they answered. “Your servants have come to buy food. ¹¹ We are all the sons of one man. Your servants are honest men, not spies.” ¹² “No!” he said to them. “You have come to see where our land is unprotected.” ¹³ But they replied, “Your servants were twelve brothers, the sons of one man, who lives in the land of Canaan. The youngest is now with our father, and one is no more.” ¹⁴ Joseph said to them, “It is just as I told you: You are spies! ¹⁵ And this is how you will be tested: As surely as Pharaoh lives, you will not leave this place unless your youngest brother comes here. ¹⁶ Send one of your number to get your brother; the rest of you will be kept in prison, so that your words may be tested to see if you are telling the truth. If you are not, then as surely as Pharaoh lives, you are spies!” ¹⁷ And he put them all in custody for three days. ¹⁸ On the third day, Joseph said to them, “Do this and you will live, for I fear God: ¹⁹ If you are honest men, let one of your brothers stay here in prison, while the rest of you go and take grain back for your starving households. ²⁰ But you must bring your youngest brother to me, so that your words may be verified and that you may not die.” This they proceeded to do. ²¹ They said to one another, “Surely we are being punished because of our brother. We saw how distressed he was when he pleaded with us for his life, but we would not listen; that’s why this distress has come upon us.” ²² Reuben replied, “Didn’t I tell you not to sin against the boy? But you wouldn’t listen! Now we must give an accounting for his blood.” ²³ They did not realize that Joseph could understand them, since he was using an interpreter. ²⁴ He turned away from them and began to weep, but then turned back and spoke to them again. He had Simeon taken from them and bound before their eyes.

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

In this reading, we see God’s hand at work to redeem Joseph’s brothers. Two things we note here. Redemption happens at God’s initiative and redemption requires our participation. Let’s begin by considering God’s initiative in redeeming Joseph’s brothers.

Redemption is God’s initiative:

If you get caught in a rip while swimming in the surf, there’s not a lot you can do. The best advice is to go with the current and not fight against it. Otherwise, you might end up exhausting yourself and going under.

In a situation like that, when you are relatively powerless to save yourself, you are dependent on the initiative of the surf life savers to come to your rescue in an IRB.

Likewise, if you are seriously injured or sick in some way, you are dependent on the initiative of the doctors to heal you.

Or if you are lost in the bush with a broken leg, you need land search and rescue to find you and bring you out.

It’s similar with the redemption of our souls. We cannot save ourselves. Our redemption happens at God’s initiative.

One of the intriguing things about Joseph’s reconciliation with his family is that he does not initiate it himself. Joseph waits over 20 years before encountering his brothers again. And when he does finally meet them, it is not his doing nor is it his brothers’ doing. It is God’s doing. The Lord brings them together, at the right time, through a famine.

For more than seven years Joseph has been the second most powerful man in all of Egypt, next to Pharaoh. Joseph could have gone back to Canaan to find his family and confront his brothers. Joseph could have exacted his revenge if he wanted to. But he doesn’t.

In fact, far from nursing any resentment, Joseph has let the matter go. He has forgiven the past. As we heard last week, in Genesis 41, Joseph named his first-born Manasseh saying, ‘It is because God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father’s household’.

It’s interesting the way Joseph acknowledges God’s initiative here in making him forget his troubles. Joseph is able to forgive the past because God (by his grace) has enabled Joseph to let go of the hurt.

Joseph needed those 20 plus years, not only to rise to a position of power in Egypt where he could help his family, but also to allow God toheal him personally. To make him strong enough and wise enough to play a part in the redemption of his brothers.

Joseph may have forgotten the troubles of his past, but his brothers have not. They live with the burden of their guilt every day.

At the beginning of Joseph’s story, his brothers treated him badly. They sold him into slavery and added to their wrong by covering up what they had done so their father thought Joseph had been killed by a wild animal.

By committing this sin and lying about it, Joseph’s brothers put themselves in a jail of sorts. Not an actual jail, with concrete walls and iron bars. But rather the mental and spiritual prison created by guilt and deceit. They had been incarcerated in their minds for over twenty years.

As Walter Brueggemann puts it…

The brothers have no room in which to act, no energy for imagination and no possibility of freedom. They are bound by the power of an unforgiven past, immobilized by guilt and driven by anxiety. [1]

That is a truly awful place to be. Perhaps some of you here understand all too well what this is like. The brothers are trapped in their minds and their spirit suffers for it. But God wants to redeem them, just as he wants to redeem you.

There are two aspects to God’s redemption; two arms if you like. Release and restoration. God’s redemption releases and restores.

That is why Jesus came. Jesus came at God’s initiative to redeem creation. Jesus releases humanity from sin and guilt, superstition and fear and all that robs us of life and corrodes our spirit.

At the same time Jesus restores us to right relationship with God and each other so we can love courageously and enjoy abundant life.

The deeds Jesus performed; healing the sick, casting out demons, forgiving sins, restoring sight to the blind, raising people from the dead and so on, are signs of God’s redemption.

As Christians, we believe our redemption will be fully realized when Jesus returns in glory. It’s been a long wait though, 2000 years in fact.

Because redemption is God’s initiative, it happens in God’s time, not ours. Our part is to be ready when God provides the opportunity. For redemption doesn’t happen to us automatically. Redemption requires our participation.

The thing is redemption may not feel all that pleasant at first. The road to redemption can be a bit bumpy. The early stages of our redemption may feel like a trial or a punishment, as it did for Joseph’s brothers.

Redemption requires our participation:

Many people believe the way to test whether a diamond is real or fake is to run it across a piece of glass. If the diamond is real, it will cut the glass, and if it’s fake, it won’t.

Apparently, this test is a myth. It’s just something they do in the movies. In real life, dragging a diamond across a piece of glass damages both the diamond and the glass.

However, there are other tests you can carry out to determine whether a diamond is real or not.

If the gem is unmounted, then try placing it over printed words. If you can clearly read through the stone, it’s not a diamond. Diamonds refract so much light you cannot see any lines or letters through them.

Or you could do the fog test. Just put the diamond in front of your mouth and breathe on it. If it stays fogged for 2-4 seconds, it’s a fake. A true diamond will disperse the heat instantaneously so by the time you look at it, it has already cleared up.

Just as we might know the true character of a diamond by testing it, so too Joseph seeks to know the true character of his brothers by testing them. Redemption tests for truth, because without truth there is no freedom and no peace.

At their father’s prompting, the brothers go to Egypt to buy grain.

And when they get there, they bow down before Joseph. As a boy of 17, Joseph was powerless to stop his brothers. Now, as a man in his 30’s, the tables have turned and the brothers are at Joseph’s mercy.

Remember the dream God gave Joseph, all those years before, when his brothers’ sheaves of grain bowed to his. This is the beginning of the fulfilment of the dream.

We know this but Joseph’s brothers don’t. Verses 7 & 8 tell us that as soon as Joseph saw his brothers, he recognized them, but they did not recognize him.

It is little wonder that Joseph’s brothers did not recognize him. Firstly, it had been over 20 years since they had last seen Joseph and they thought Joseph was dead anyway, so they were not expecting to see him.

Secondly, Joseph was speaking to them through an interpreter and thirdly, Joseph looked like an Egyptian. He was clean shaven and dressed in clothes foreign to the bearded Hebrews.

Why then does Joseph accuse his brothers of being spies? He knows full well they pose no threat to Egypt’s security.

Well, Joseph is testing his brothers’ character. He needs to know whether they have changed their ways. It’s one thing to forgive someone, but it’s another thing entirely to learn to trust them again. Forgiveness is a gift. Trust is earned.

Forgiveness is letting go of our hurt and anger, so that we no longer seek to get even with the person who has wronged us. Forgiveness releases us. Forgiveness is one of the ways we participate in our own redemption. If we don’t forgive, we end up with the other person living rent free in our head.

It is always necessary to forgive others, but it may not always be wise to trust them. Trust is precious and needs to be offered with discernment. Don’t put your pearls before swine, is what Jesus said.

Some people think that reconciliation is the same as forgiveness. It’s not. Forgiveness is a necessary step in the process of reconciliation, but there is more to reconciliation than forgiving someone.

Reconciliation goes beyond forgiveness and seeks to restore the relationship fully by rebuilding trust. And for trust to be rebuilt, the truth must be faced. Joseph has forgiven his brothers. He just doesn’t know if he can trust them yet.

Joseph tests his brothers by speaking harshly and accusing them of being spies. And the brothers defend themselves against this accusation by explaining that they were twelve brothers from one father. But one of their brothers is at home and the other is no more.

This serves as proof because, if they were spies, their father would not risk ten of his sons. He would have sent just one or two.

Joseph pounces on the knowledge that one son (Benjamin) is still at home, saying, “It is just as I told you: You are spies! And this is how you will be tested… you will not leave this place unless your youngest brother comes here…”

Joseph’s test involves subjecting his brothers to a small taste of their own medicine. Just as Joseph’s brothers had thrown Joseph into a pit and sold him into slavery, Joseph throws them in jail for three days. This is not revenge. This is sowing the seeds of understanding.

Joseph does not enjoy it. As God’s agent of redemption, Joseph must put his brothers in a situation where they experience what it is like to be powerless and vulnerable.

Joseph wants to see if they have learned empathy and care for each other. Joseph needs to know whether his brothers are ready and willing to participate in their own redemption. Are they truly repentant in other words.

On the third day, Joseph releases his brothers from prison. The third day has special significance in the Christian imagination. The third day is the day of Jesus’ resurrection, a day of redemption. A day of release from death and restoration to eternal life.

Joseph says to his brothers, ‘If you are honest men, let one of your brothers stay here in prison, while the rest of you go and take grain back to your starving households. But you must bring your youngest brother to me…’

This shows us Joseph is not being vindicative or vengeful. Joseph knows it has taken the brothers a week or so to travel from Canaan to Egypt and it will take a week to get back. He does not want his family to suffer.

Joseph’s test works. The ten brothers say to one another, in verse 21…

“Surely we are being punished for our brother. We saw how distressed he was when he pleaded with us for his life, but we would not listen; that’s why this distress has come upon us.”

This verse marks a significant turning point in the brothers’ redemption. They face the truth of what they have done, making an honest confession of their guilt. They accept what is happening to them as just punishment. Little do they know that God is not punishing them. God is redeeming them.

In verse 22 Reuben says, “Didn’t I tell you not to sin against the boy? But you wouldn’t listen! Now we must give an accounting for his blood.”

At this Joseph turns aside to weep. When the brothers own up to their crime against him (albeit unwittingly), Joseph does not gloat. He weeps. These are not tears of bitterness and grief. These are tears of healing and release. Tears of redemption.

Joseph weeps because, without knowing it, his brothers have shown him they have a conscience and they feel remorse for what they have done. The brothers have taken the first difficult step of participating in their own redemption.

Of course, it is one thing to admit wrongdoing. It is another thing entirely to translate those feelings of remorse into a change in behaviour.

As much as Joseph wants to reveal his true identity, he knows the test cannot end here. The brothers must return to Egypt with Benjamin. Benjamin is Joseph’s only full-blooded brother and Joseph wants to see if they will look after him.

Simeon alone is made to stay behind as a hostage. Simeon is the second eldest and probably the most disliked and cruel of all the brothers. If they return for Simeon, then this will prove they care for one another.

Conclusion:

I’m not sure what redemption you crave. I don’t know what holds your mind captive. But I am sure God wants to release you and restore you. He redeemed Joseph’s brothers, so he can redeem anyone.

In first John chapter 1, verse 9, the apostle writes…

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

With the knowledge that God is gracious and wants to redeem, I invite you to pray this simple prayer with me now…

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

May God release you to walk in paths of righteousness and restore you to fruitfulness in his purpose. Amen.

Questions for discussion or reflection:

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

What is redemption? Discuss / reflect on the two arms of God’s redemption.

What does God do to redeem Joseph’s family? How do Joseph’s brothers participate in their own redemption?

What is forgiveness. How is forgiveness different from reconciliation?

Why does Joseph speak harshly to his brothers and accuse them of spying? Why does Joseph weep in verse 24?

Can you remember a time in your life when you were powerless to save yourself? What happened? How was your life redeemed? What role did God have in your redemption? What did you need to do? How did you feel (before, during and after)?

What redemption do you crave? Make some time this week to talk with God about this. What do you need to be set free and restored?

[1] Walter Brueggemann, Genesis, page 337.

August 7, 2022October 2, 2022 Tawa Baptist

Sabbath

Scripture: Deuteronomy 5:12-15

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

Structure:

Introduction
The Sabbath is about stopping
The Sabbath is about equality
The Sabbath is about redemption
Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

When a couple get married they normally exchange rings as part of the ceremony. The minister might say something like…

“Wedding rings serve as a symbol of the vows you have just made. They are the outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible love which binds your lives together.”

Each partner to the marriage wears a ring both as an inward reminder to themselves of the covenant commitment they have made and as an outward sign to others that they are married.

Today we continue our series in Deuteronomy. Over the past couple of weeks, we have been looking at the ten commandments (or the ten words) of Yahweh to Israel. This week we focus on the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy.

The Sabbath is like wearing a wedding ring, it has a dual purpose. The Sabbath reminds Israel of their covenant commitment to Yahweh and shows other people they are committed to God for the long haul. From Deuteronomy 5, verses 12-15, we read…

¹²“Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you. ¹³Six days you shall labour and do all your work, ¹⁴but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do. ¹⁵Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.

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

There is much we could say about the Sabbath, too much for one sermon. So our message today focuses on just three things. The Sabbath is about stopping. The Sabbath is about equality and the Sabbath is about redemption.

Stopping:

The Hebrew word ‘Sabbath’ comes from a root word which literally means to cease or to stop. The Sabbath day, therefore, is about stopping work.

A stop sign, on the road, is not like a give way sign. By law, a stop sign requires you to bring your vehicle to a complete stand still, irrespective of whether any other traffic is coming or not. They normally put stop signs in places where they want you to take extra care.

Just as a compulsory stop sign is there to prevent accidents, so too the compulsory stop of the Sabbath day is there to keep you safe.

The pace of life for many people these days is so fast. We often go from one thing to the next without a chance to catch our breath, let alone reflect. Taking one day in seven to stop, allows us the time and space we need to regather our thoughts and make better decisions; decisions which will prevent a crash.

Most people can see the wisdom in taking a regular day off, and yet many of us find it quite hard to actually stop working completely. When we do take a day off work our hearts and minds are still on the job. It’s like we are on a treadmill.

Technology doesn’t help us to stop either. Technology exasperates the problem. We are tethered to our phones and laptops, literally the touch of a screen away from emails and work worry. So how do we stop?

Well, before we can down tools and walk off site, before we can resist the urge to check those emails one last time, we have to stop at a deeper internal level.

If we feel like the job isn’t finished, then it will be a lot harder to rest. In my job I don’t feel like I can really knock off for the week until the sermon is preached on a Sunday and sometimes not even then.

Of course, most jobs can’t be completed in a week. If you are a builder, then it might take you months to complete the house you are working on. Or, if you are a teacher you will likely be with the same class of kids for a whole year.

You have to break the job down into smaller pieces. That way you give your mind permission to rest when you have completed the stage you had planned to accomplish that week.

The risk with this approach is that something else will come along to derail your goal for the week, so if you can’t accomplish what you had planned you feel like you have to use the weekend chasing your tail to catch up.

Going a little deeper, each of us has a drive for meaning. We want our lives to have purpose. When we retire, we want to feel like we did something worthwhile with our life.

We can find meaning in a whole variety of ways. For example: through quality long term relationships with other people; by raising children; through the nurture of a deep spiritual life; by making truckloads of money or conversely by giving away time and money in service to the community.

One of the main places people try to find meaning is in their career, their work. They may put all their eggs in one basket pursuing a career in sport or business or politics or academia or whatever and strive to become the top in their field because they believe that will fulfil their need for meaning.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to be the best you can be, but one would have to question the wisdom in sacrificing everything (your family, your health, your sanity, your very soul) for work.

Common sense says, spread the risk. Don’t put all your eggs in the same basket. Find a healthy balance. If work is the only place you find meaning in life, or even the primary place, then you will find it hard to stop and rest. You may also become starved of meaning when you cannot work any longer and all your eggs are broken.

Ultimately, our life finds its meaning and purpose in God. We live to glorify God and enjoy him. Enjoying God can happen any day of the week, but if we don’t practice Sabbath, then it probably won’t happen at all.

We are talking about the deeper things that prevent us from stopping and resting. Closely related to the search for meaning is that unconscious feeling which keeps telling us we are not enough.

It’s that voice inside which goads us and sometimes scolds us into justifying our own existence. ‘I must be productive, I must achieve this goal, I must do more in order to be enough.’

That voice is lying to you. You are enough already. You were born being enough. While you were still in your mother’s womb, before you could do anything for yourself let alone for anyone else, God looked at you with love and acceptance and said, ‘You are my child’.

Faith is believing that you are enough and you don’t need to prove anything. Christian faith is resting secure in the knowledge that you are accepted by God, through Jesus. We are accepted, not because of what we have done, but because of what Christ has done on our behalf.

When you know deep in your soul that you are justified by Christ, that Jesus has got you, then work becomes an expression of gratitude and Sabbath rest the warm embrace of your heavenly Father.

The Sabbath is about stopping. Not just stopping our day job, but stopping at a deeper inner level. Stopping the compulsion to justify ourselves.

Equality:

Sabbath is also about equality. In verse 14 we read…

¹⁴but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do.

In ancient Israel there were three tiers or strata to society. There was the natural born Israelite, with Jewish parents. Then there was the resident alien or foreigner. Immigrants basically who were not Jewish by birth but for whatever reason chose to live among the Jews. And then there were slaves, referred to in the NIV translation as male and female servants.

What we notice in verse 14 is that all three classes of people are to be treated equally on the Sabbath. Distinctions over race, gender, free and slave, rich and poor are suspended on the Sabbath. No one has to justify their existence through productivity.

Our underlying value as human beings is upheld and given a chance to breathe on the Sabbath. This egalitarian approach, where everyone gets a break from work, reminds the economically secure that the people who work for them are to be treated with dignity and respect.

Likewise, it reminds the economically vulnerable of their humanity, that they are not tools. That their lives matter and count for something more than their mere usefulness on the farm.

We also notice God’s grace in extending the Sabbath rest to animals – to the oxen and donkeys for example. This reminds us of our responsibility as stewards or caretakers of God’s creation.

The equality of the Sabbath points beyond this world to the next. The equality of the Sabbath reminds us that it is God’s plan to stop slavery, stop sexism, stop exploitation, stop racism, stop the oppression of one group by another.

In his book called, The Sabbath, Abraham Heschel recalls a rabbinic legend:

At the time when God was giving the Torah to Israel, He said to them: My Children! If you accept the Torah and observe my [commandments]. I will give you for all eternity a thing most precious that I have in my possession.

And what, asked Israel, is that precious thing…?

The world to come [God answered]

Show us in this world an example of the world to come.

The Sabbath is an example of the world to come.

You see, God intended the Sabbath as a taste of heaven on earth. The Sabbath is meant to give us a picture of what God’s kingdom is like. Sabbath equality nourishes our hope for the future.

The world we live in badly needs to observe a regular Sabbath. Many people today are short on hope and filled with anxiety. The justice and equality of the Sabbath interrupts our anxious thoughts and fosters hope of a better world to come.

Redemption:

For equality to be possible there must first be redemption. Redemption has to do with being saved from something bad; being delivered, set free or rescued. In Christian thought, redemption is closely related to atonement.

In 1999, a 23 year old man, Cornelius Anderson (nicknamed Mike), robbed a Burger King at gunpoint, stealing $2,000. He was arrested and sentenced to 13 years in prison. They released him on bail and told him to await orders on when to show for his prison sentence.

Due to an admin error the orders did not come, so Anderson did not go to prison. At this point, Mike Anderson had a choice: either continue down the path of crime or choose an honest life.

Mike decided to make good and choose an honest life. He used his freedom to become a master carpenter and start his own construction business. He became a football coach, volunteered at his local church, got married, had three children and became a well-liked member of his community.

Thirteen years later the state discovered their error. They thought Mike was already in prison and only noticed their mistake when Mike was due to be released. The authorities then acted to have him incarcerated.

Mike wasn’t in prison long though. 35,000 people signed a petition for his release and after less than a year the judge let Mike go, saying he was a changed man. Anderson walked out of the courthouse thanking God.

That is a true story of redemption. Mike Anderson used the gift of freedom to turn his life around.

Some people might complain that justice was not served, that Mike got away with it, but I don’t see it that way. Redemption is not in conflict with justice. Redemption is a higher form of justice. Redemption is a God given opportunity to start again and make things right.

To force Mike Anderson to serve 13 years in jail after he had made good, would be to treat God’s grace with contempt.

In verse 15 of Deuteronomy 5, we read of another true story of redemption, Israel’s redemption…

¹⁵Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.

This verse points quite clearly to the purpose of the Sabbath, which is to remember and celebrate God’s redemption.

During the exile, when the Israelites were living in Babylon, the Sabbath became a symbol of solidarity and an exercise in hope. God had led their ancestors out of Egypt with a mighty hand. This inspired the exiles to hope that he would lead them out of Babylon too, back to their homeland.

Over the centuries quite a few man made rules developed around the Sabbath commandment, detailing what people could and could not do on the Lord’s day. Sadly, the purpose or the spirit of the law got buried (or lost) along the way.

Jesus challenged these man made rules on a number of occasions by healing people on the Sabbath day. In doing this he was reminding us the Sabbath is about redemption.

In Mark 2, Jesus famously said: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. ²⁸So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

When Jesus says, ‘the Sabbath was made for man’, he means it was made for humankind.

Conclusion:

I don’t want to tell you what you can and can’t do on your day off. But I do want to encourage to take one day off in seven. It tends to work better if you take the same day off as other people, whenever possible.

For the Jews the Sabbath is a Saturday, the last day of the week. For most Christians the Sabbath is traditionally a Sunday, the first day of the week. A Sunday Sabbath makes sense if you are a Christian because Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday and Jesus’ resurrection is the basis for our hope of redemption.

In keeping with Jesus’ teaching, that the Sabbath was made for man, we do well to ask ourselves: What is it that my soul needs?

Perhaps you have had a particularly difficult week and you need to think about something other than the problem you have been trying to solve. Focusing on God in adoration and worship could help with that.

Perhaps you sit at a desk in front of a computer most of the week. What is something you enjoy doing that is completely different from that? Maybe gardening or fishing or mountain biking or walking on the beach is what your soul needs.

Perhaps your work involves staying home and looking after children most of the time. Maybe some adult conversation is what you need?

Perhaps your job is highly pressured with back to back meetings and long hours. Maybe just sitting still in a quiet room with a good book will refill your tank.

Or perhaps you live alone, filling the hours as best you can. Maybe coming to church to be with others or going out to lunch to chat with friends is the Sabbath for you.

Alongside this question, ‘what is it my soul needs?’, we also need to ask, what is it the people around me need? Because the Sabbath is for everyone.

If you are an extravert and you are married to an introvert, then what your partner needs on their day off is probably going to be different from what you need. How can you both get what you need?

The Sabbath is about stopping and resting, on the inside and the out.

The Sabbath is about equality, being fair to yourself and those around you.

And the Sabbath is about redemption, using your freedom to put things right.

Let us pray…

Father God, we thank you for the gift of Sabbath. Give us the grace we need to stop worrying, to stop striving and to stop trying to justify ourselves. Help us to see your redemption, both for ourselves and for others, and to walk in it. 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?

Why do we need to stop working on the Sabbath?

How do we stop working, on the inside and the out?

Where do you find meaning for your life? Are all your (meaning) eggs in the same basket? How might you diversify your meaning making?

What does verse 14 of Deuteronomy 5 tell us about the Sabbath? What does the Sabbath show us about God’s kingdom? How does Sabbath equality foster hope?

What is redemption? Can you think of an example of redemption from your own life (or from the Scriptures)?

What is it your soul needs? What is it those around you need?

January 24, 2021March 14, 2021 Tawa Baptist

Power

Scripture: Jonah

Structure:

Introduction
Patient & Omnipotent
Wise & Equitable
Redemptive
Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

You may have heard the saying: ‘Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men…’

This phrase was coined by Lord Acton, who was a British historian and politician during the 1800’s. He wrote this in a letter to an Anglican bishop. Whatever Lord Acton’s reason for writing about power in this way, it has stuck. It resonates with people. Generally speaking, we human beings are suspicious of power and reluctant to trust those who hold it.

Certainly we can think of many people throughout history who have abused power but really the problem is not power itself, the problem is with the human heart. Power simply reveals the contents of a person’s character.

Sadly, a negative attitude to power tends to taint our faith in God. By definition God is the most powerful being there is and if we think that power corrupts then we may struggle to trust God.

We need to understand that God’s heart and character are quite different from that of a human being. This morning we are looking at five aspects of God’s character through the story of Jonah. That is, God’s patience, God’s omnipotence, God’s wisdom, God’s equity (or fairness) and God’s redemption. Firstly, let’s consider God’s patience and omnipotence.

Patient & Omnipotent:

Over the past couple of weeks, we have been fortunate enough to spend some time walking on the beach. The ocean is both powerful and patient. A beach is created over thousands of years as the surf gradually pounds stone and shell into sand. The work of the ocean points to the power and patience of God in transforming the human heart.

Patience is the ability to wait something out or endure something tedious, without losing your temper. Having patience means you can remain calm, even when you have been waiting ages or dealing with something painstakingly slow or trying to teach someone how to do something and they just don’t get it.

In Corinthians 13, when Paul writes about love, patience is the very first descriptor he uses. “Love is patient, love is kind…”

Patience, therefore, is an expression of love.

Omnipotence simply means ‘all powerful’. Omni means ‘all’ or ‘everything’ and potence refers to ‘power’. Power is the ability to do something. To say that God is omnipotent, therefore, is to say that God can do all things; there is nothing beyond God’s ability or reach.

In the book of Jeremiah 32:27 the Lord says to the prophet, “Is anything too difficult for me?” It is a rhetorical question. The answer is clearly, ‘No, nothing is too difficult for the Lord’. God is omnipotent – all powerful.

We see God’s patience and power in the story of Jonah…

The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: ²“Go to the great city of Ninevehand preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”

³But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa,where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.

You see, Jonah was an Israelite and Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria, the headquarters of Israel’s enemies. Most of the time when God told his prophets to preach a message against Israel’s enemies the prophets had the luxury of doing so from the relative comfort and safety of home. But God wanted Jonah to physically go to Nineveh and tell the Assyrians how bad they were.

Talk about a hospital pass. Jonah knew it was a bad assignment and so he got on a ship headed in the opposite direction. It was not that Jonah doubted God’s power. Jonah was quite convinced God could make the mission successful. And that was precisely the problem. Jonah did not want to be involved with saving his enemies. That would feel like a betrayal of his own people.

But God was patient with Jonah. In truth, God’s omnipotence (his power) is tempered or controlled by his patience. God waited for the ship to get out to sea and then he sent a storm. The storm was a frightening display of God’s omnipotence.

The pagan sailors did everything they could to save the ship but the storm just got worse. Meanwhile Jonah was asleep below deck. When the sailors woke him up he explained that he was running away from the Lord of heaven and earth, who made the land and sea. Their best chance of survival was to throw him overboard.

The sailors were honourable men and did not want to do this but eventually Jonah persuaded them and as soon as the prophet hit the water the storm stopped. Once again God’s omnipotence was on display, this time to bring a great calm.

God’s omnipotence is not limited to the weather though. God has power over all things. God sent a giant fish to swallow Jonah whole. The incredible thing here is not that Jonah was eaten by a fish. The truly incredible thing is that Jonah was able to remain alive inside the fish.

This may seem impossible to some of us but that is precisely the point: God is omnipotent, nothing is too difficult for the Lord. Not only that but God is in control, not Jonah and not us, which is just as well.

A giant fish that can swallow a man whole, without digesting him, is a symbol of God’s patient omnipotence. The Lord has the power to destroy Jonah but instead God uses the very same power to save his messenger.

God’s omnipotence and patience go together. God did not get frustrated with Jonah. God did not use his power to kill Jonah. Nor did God use his power to overthrow Jonah’s will. It may have been much easier and quicker for God to find someone else to go. But God’s ways are not our ways.

God waits for Jonah and his patience is rewarded. After Jonah had repented from the belly of the fish, the fish spat him out on dry land and Jonah went to Nineveh in obedience to God.

God’s patience (his fuse) is very long indeed. When the nation of Israel turned away from him, the Lord patiently waited for them to return for a couple of hundred years.

And he waits patiently for the world to turn to him again. As we read in 2^nd Peter 3:9, The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

God’s omnipotence is tempered by his patience. What’s more, God is wise and equitable in his dealings with creation.

Wise & Equitable:

We live in a democracy but the Kingdom of God is not a democracy. The Kingdom of God is a theocracy, which means it is ruled by God. Heaven is a place where God’s will is done. This is not to imply that God is a dictator. No. Dictators are closed to the voice of the people and tend to eliminate anyone who disagrees with them. By contrast, God is secure enough within himself to be open to what his subjects have to say. God listens to people and takes our thoughts and feelings into account when making his decisions. That is one of the reasons we pray.

When Jonah finally made it to Nineveh his preaching was simple. “In forty days Nineveh will be destroyed.” At first that sounds like a very closed message. There is no hope in it. No call to repentance. No nuance. No clever illustrations. No compassion. No redemption. No PR. No subtle maneuvering of the media. Just doom and destruction.

Nevertheless, Jonah’s message was wise and fair. While God is patient, he is no one’s fool. God’s omnipotence includes the capacity to destroy. God must be worshipped. If we do not put God first (if we worship something else in God’s place) then God is well within his rights to exercise his power either to destroy the things we worship or to destroy us.

God gave Jonah that message for Nineveh because the people’s behavior was very bad. They were incredibly violent and ruthless. God’s sentence on the people may have seemed harsh but it was wise and equitable, it was fair. God could not, in good conscience, allow the Assyrians to run amuck oppressing other people groups. That would not be kind or just.

Jesus said the measure we use for others is the measure God will use for us. If we are generous with others, God will be generous with us and vice versa. The Assyrians were violent in their treatment of others so God gave them fair warning, he would destroy them.

We can see God’s wisdom in sending Jonah. While Jonah’s preaching was incredibly blunt, it was also without pretense or guile. He did not disguise his contempt for the Assyrians and this (paradoxically) made his message all the more believable. Had God sent a diplomat to speak smooth words, the people of Nineveh probably would not have believed the message.

In response the people of Nineveh decided that everyone should fast, which means go without food. And everyone from the least to the greatest was to put on sackcloth to show they had repented.

The king of Nineveh issued a decree that all people must pray earnestly to God and must give up their evil ways. Perhaps God will change his mind and we will not die, they thought.

God saw what they did; he saw that they had given up their wicked behavior. So he changed his mind and did not punish them as he had said he would.

The people were open to change their ways and so God was open to give them another chance.

As much as it grated with Jonah to preach to his enemies, actually, it was in Israel’s interests. Having their enemies bow to Yahweh was a victory of sorts. From a political point of view, Nineveh’s repentance meant some respite for Israel.

Not only that but God’s mercy with the Assyrians offered hope to Israel when they strayed from God’s path. If God relented with the Assyrians, then how much more when Israel repented.

God is patient and omnipotent. He is also wise and equitable. Ultimately though, the Lord’s patience & power, wisdom & justice, all serve the purpose of redemption.

Redemption:

As I mentioned earlier, we were fortunate enough to walk the beach during our holiday. The beaches between Pekapeka and Paekakariki collect quite a bit of drift wood. As a consequence, you see these wooden structures at regular intervals along the beach. People have redeemed the drift wood and detritus for a creative and useful purpose. Human beings seem to have this insatiable urge to build shelters with whatever is at hand.

I wonder if this urge to build and create and redeem reflects something of the residue of God’s image in us. It is interesting that when God became a man (in the person of Jesus) he chose to apprentice himself to a carpenter, a builder.

In any building or renovation project there is usually some demolition involved. But this demolition serves the ultimate purpose of creating and constructing something new and better.

To redeem something is to reclaim it, to save it or restore it. God’s heart, his preference, is to redeem whatever he can. The story of Jonah is full of God’s redemption. Let me touch briefly on three examples.

First there is the way God redeems Jonah’s running away. God used Jonah’s disobedience to inspire the sailors’ worship.

I said before that the sailors were honourable men. They may have been pagans but they were good pagans. They had a moral compass and wanted to do the right thing. At the height of the storm, just before they reluctantly threw Jonah overboard, the sailors cried out to the Lord saying…

¹⁴“Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man,for you, Lord, have done as you pleased.”¹⁵Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. ¹⁶At this the men greatly fearedthe Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vowsto him.

If Jonah had not done a runner, the sailors would not have encountered the Lord in the way they did. The sailors’ prayer shows us they believed the God of Israel to be powerful, just and wise. Jonah’s attempt to get away from the Lord actually resulted in the sailors getting closer to the Lord. That is the power of God’s redemption.

The second main act of redemption is seen when God changes his mind and decides not to destroy Nineveh. The people of Nineveh are similar to the pagan sailors in that they recognize the power and justice of God and submit themselves to the Lord in fear and hope.

The Assyrians’ redemption is not unconditional or automatic. Their redemption hinges on their response to Jonah, their enemy. Paradoxically they are saved by trusting the word of their enemy. Sort of like in the second Terminator movie when Sarah Connor is confronted by a Terminator who she thinks is out to kill her. But the Terminator (played by Arnie) says, ‘Come with me if you want to live’. The people of Nineveh were helped by their enemy. This shows God’s wise redemption.

But the one who is offered more redemption than anyone else is Jonah himself. At the beginning of the story Jonah is like the younger prodigal son who has run away from home. But God redeems Jonah and puts him on the right path again using a storm and a sea monster.

By the end of the story though, after God relented and saved Nineveh, Jonah is more like the older son in Jesus’ parable (in Luke 15). Just as the older son stood outside the party refusing to celebrate the return of his younger prodigal brother, so too Jonah sat outside the city of Nineveh refusing to celebrate the Assyrians’ repentance and salvation. In chapter 4 of the book of Jonah we read,

But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. ²He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is why I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knewthat you are a graciousand compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.³Now, Lord, take away my life,for it is better for me to diethan to live.”

Jonah acknowledges that it is God’s heart and character to redeem but strangely this makes Jonah depressed. He’s had enough and wants it to be over.

There are any number of reasons why someone might become depressed, human beings are complex. But the cause of Jonah’s depression is related to his anger. If you hold onto your anger and resentment, if you bury it deep inside, the in-rage you feel will eventually result in depression.

This is not to suggest that all depression is caused by repressed anger. But we know it was the case for Jonah because God says to the prophet, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

This is another rhetorical question. We all know it was not right for Jonah to be angry but Jonah has to arrive at that conclusion himself. Even though God is omnipotent he does not click his fingers and resolve the issue for Jonah. He makes Jonah do some inner (soul) work.

Jonah was angry and depressed but God did not give Jonah a pill or counselling or a support group or cognitive behavioural therapy, as helpful as some of those things may be. God patiently sought to redeem Jonah by giving him a parable.

⁵Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. [I imagine this shelter was similar to what one might see on the beach along the Kapiti Coast.] The Lord God provideda leafy plantand made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. ⁷But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. ⁸When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die,and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”

⁹But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”

“It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”

¹⁰But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. ¹¹And should I not have concernfor the great city of Nineveh,in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”

And that is how the story of Jonah ends. God has the last word.

The Lord’s message to Jonah seems to be that Jonah is the one who is not being fair and equitable.

If it was up to Jonah the city of Nineveh would be destroyed but God’s power (his omnipotence) is different from the way human beings exercise power. God’s power is tempered with patience, guided by wisdom and equity and used to serve his redemptive purpose.

Conclusion:

God is free to use his power as he wishes. Sometimes that will disappoint us and make us angry, as it did with Jonah. We do not control God and we cannot leverage his power for our own ends. We have to make peace with the fact that we are not in the place of God. We are not omnipotent. We have to embrace our powerlessness and let God be God. Or, as Jesus put it, we must pick up our cross and follow him.

Like Jesus’ parable of the two sons in, Luke 15, we don’t know how the story of Jonah ends. We don’t know whether the older son let go of his anger and joined the party. Nor do we know how Jonah responded. Did he sit with his resentment or did he find redemption?

This is not a rhetorical question. It is not an abstract theoretical debate about a man who lived thousands of years ago. It is a very real existential question that we must all face. If it hasn’t happened already it is just a matter of time before you will feel disappointed by God. When that day comes (and I expect for many of us here it has already arrived) I pray that we will be able to forgive.

Forgiveness is the greatest power available to us. It is the pathway to redemption.

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 does God’s power make you feel? In what ways is God’s power different from the way human beings exercise power?

In what ways do we see God’s patience and power at work in the story of Jonah? In what ways are you aware of God’s patience and power at work in your own life?

In what ways do we see God’s wisdom and equity (fairness) in the story of Jonah?

Discuss / reflect on the various aspects of God’s redemption in Jonah. For example, how does God redeem Jonah’s running away? How has God redeemed your mistakes?

The people of Nineveh were saved by believing the word of Jonah, their enemy. Can you think of a time in your own life when God has used an enemy to help or save you?

Why does Jonah want his life to end? How does God help Jonah? What does Jonah need to do to find redemption? Have you ever felt disappointed by God, like Jonah? If so, how did you find redemption from resentment?

December 17, 2017December 17, 2017 Tawa Baptist

Good News

Scripture: Isaiah 61:1-4 & 8-11

Title: Good news

Structure:

Introduction
Messiah – jubilee
Yahweh – justice
Redeemed – joy
Conclusion

Introduction:

This morning’s sermon is based on the lectionary reading for today, Isaiah 61, verses 1-4 and verses 8-11. In today’s reading we hear three voices:

– The voice of the Messiah, proclaiming jubilee, in verses 1-4

– The voice of Yahweh, affirming his justice, in verses 8-9

– And the voice of the redeemed, expressing their joy, in verses 10-11

– Jubilee, justice and joy. From Isaiah 61 we read…

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, ²to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion – to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendour. ⁴They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.

⁸“For I, the Lord, love justice; I hate robbery and wrongdoing. In my faithfulness I will reward my people and make an everlasting covenant with them. ⁹Their descendants will be known among the nations and their offspring among the peoples. All who see them will acknowledge that they are a people the Lord has blessed.” ¹⁰I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. ¹¹For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate this Scripture for us

Good news is a relative term – what passes as good news for one person can be bad news for someone else

– It depends on your perspective and on where your loyalties lie

The Black Caps’ recent test series win over West Indies was good news if you are a Black Caps supporter, but not good news if you support the West Indies

– If house prices go down then that’s good news if you are a first home buyer but bad news if you’ve only just bought a new home

– We could go on but you get the point, generally in our society today, one person’s good news is another person’s bad news

The other thing to say here is that sometimes what appears to be bad news at first, actually turns out to be good news in the long run

– Maybe you miss out on a promotion at work and it feels like bad news at the time

– But then 6 months later the organisation gets a new CEO and she restructures everything so the job you missed out on gets disestablished – had you got the job you’d be out of work now

– Or maybe you have an overseas holiday planned but for some reason you are prevented from going

– It seems like bad news at the time until a few days later you learn that the resort you had booked to stay in was flattened by a Tsunami

– Sometimes what seems like bad news at first, turns out to be good news

The message of Isaiah 61 is good news for the righteous poor – but is it good news for anyone else? We’ll have to see

Messiah – jubilee:

Verses 1-4 are the voice of the Messiah proclaiming jubilee

Messiah is a Hebrew word which literally means ‘anointed one’

– Priests in Old Testament times would be anointed with oil as a sign of their consecration and commissioning as priests

– Likewise when a king was chosen to lead the nation God would send his prophet to pour oil on the king’s head as a sign that the one being anointed was God’s choice to lead Israel

– (The prophet Samuel anointed Saul to be king and then later David)

We know it is the voice of the Messiah speaking in the opening verses of Isaiah 61 because he says…

– The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor… to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour

The ‘year of the Lord’s favour’ is most likely a reference to the year of Jubilee

– Under Jewish Law every 50 years was a special anniversary when everyone returned to their ancestral land

– It was a sabbatical year – which means the people didn’t sow or reap crops, they simply ate what grew by itself in the fields and had a holiday for 12 months – sounds fantastic doesn’t it

– Slaves were set free, debts were forgiven and land was redistributed so that any gap between the rich and poor was eliminated – everyone went back to an even footing

The year of Jubilee was good news if you were poor because it meant redemption and restoration – you got the family farm back with a fresh start and a clean slate

– Obviously if you were rich it meant giving back some of the wealth you had accumulated during the past 50 years

– It’s not that the rich became poor – they just went back to being like everyone else again

Now that might seem unfair to us, because we are immersed in a capitalist society where price is driven by demand & supply

– House prices have gone up in NZ because the demand for houses is greater than the supply

– But in ancient Israel the value of land wasn’t driven by demand

– In ancient Israel the value of land was determined by the number of years remaining to Jubilee, when the land would return to its original owner

– So, if there were 5 years left to Jubilee you only paid half as much as you would 10 years out from Jubilee

– In effect this means you weren’t buying land to own forever, you were leasing it for a fixed period of time

– Price was determined by time (not demand) – a much fairer system

So was the year of Jubilee bad news then if you were rich?

– Well, it depends on your perspective and where your loyalty lies

– If you were the kind of rich person who loved God (more than money) and was generous toward your neighbour, then it was good news for you too, because you would be happy for your neighbour

– But, if you were the kind of rich person who was greedy and loved accumulating wealth then the year of Jubilee would still be good news, only it would have felt like bad news at the time

You see, losing wealth might feel unpleasant at the time but is actually a form of redemption in the long run

– Giving back to the community sets us free from slavery to greed

– The year of the Lord’s favour (Jubilee) is good news for everyone because it’s about putting everything back in the right place

– It’s about putting God in charge of our life (not money) and it’s about putting our neighbour beside us, not above us or below us

The Messiah of Isaiah 61 is speaking this message of good news to Jews who were returning to their homeland after being held captive in exile for 70 years

– The Jewish refugees are the broken hearted receiving healing

– They are the captives being redeemed (or set free) from exile

– They are the poor and dispossessed being restored to their ancestral lands

The year of the Lord’s favour is also the day of God’s vengeance

– God’s favour and vengeance are two sides of the same coin

– We don’t normally like thinking about God’s vengeance

– We like God to be friendly & indulgent toward us like Santa Claus or a dotting grandparent, but vengeance belongs to the Lord

– God is the only one who can be trusted with vengeance

– He does not over punish as we are inclined to do

Jesus read these opening verses of Isaiah 61 in the synagogue at Nazareth near the beginning of his public ministry and he added that today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing [1]

– In other words, I’m the Messiah that Isaiah talked about and I’ve come to bring Jubilee, to set the captives free and so forth

– That’s a pretty big claim to make

– For some reason though he left out the part about the day of vengeance

– I don’t think that’s because there is no vengeance with God

– I think God wanted to postpone the day vengeance in order to give Israel’s enemies the chance to be redeemed as well

– Any way the people of Nazareth didn’t like that and they tried to throw Jesus over a cliff, but he escaped – it wasn’t his time to die

From verse 3 the Messiah continues his proclamation of good news saying he will comfort all who mourn in Zion

– Zion is another name for Jerusalem

– When the exiles returned to find their beloved Jerusalem in ruins and occupied by foreigners they were devastated

– Put yourself in their shoes for a moment

– They had been living in Mesopotamia (Babylonia) for 70 years.

– Most of them would have only heard about Jerusalem from parents or grandparents

– They finally get royal permission to return to their homeland and are filled with a great sense of anticipation & hope

– But on arriving to the holy city they find the place is a mess

– They’re tired, the kids are grumpy, there’s no McDonalds and there’s so much work to do

– To make matters worse the people who moved in while they were away aren’t that welcoming or friendly – in fact they are a thorn in the returnees’ side.

– What a huge disappointment – feels like bad news at first but actually they will discover the good news in the long run

Putting ashes on the head was a sign of grief and shame

– The Messiah will bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes

– The oil of gladness instead of mourning

– And a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair

– In other words he will reverse their circumstances & give them something to smile about

They will be called oaks of righteousness

– Righteousness means right relationship – relating to others in a right way

– Loving your neighbour as you love yourself – that sort of thing

– An oak tree speaks of strength and being established, firmly rooted

– It is oaks (plural) as in a forest of oak trees

– The refugees may feel vulnerable and misplaced on first returning to their homeland but they will be called oaks of righteousness, meaning they will become an established long standing community, where people love their neighbour

– Of course, it takes time for an oak tree to grow – this won’t happen overnight

Verse 4 says the people will rebuild, restore and renew ruined cities

– Jerusalem had been laid waste but God will give his people the strength to rebuild

– Their present may look bleak but their future is strong and hopeful

Yahweh – justice:

Okay, so that’s the voice of the Messiah proclaiming jubilee

The second voice we hear is that of the Lord God (Yahweh) affirming his justice, in verse 8…

– “For I, the Lord, love justice; I hate robbery and wrongdoing. …”

This is a statement about the character of God – the Lord is just & fair

From our point of view in history it is easy to take the justice of God for granted

– As Christians we worship God because he is good – he is just & merciful

– But people in the ancient world (500 years before Christ) did not automatically associate the gods with justice

– For most pagans in the ancient world the gods had little or no moral compass – so for Yahweh (the God of Israel) to say “I love justice” was a significant and shocking thing

– ‘What? A God who loves justice. That’s unheard of”

This Jewish/Christian belief that God is just poses a problem for some people – because this life is not always fair

– Sometimes bad things happen to good people

– We might not always get what we deserve – we may suffer loss at the hands of others – but God has a way of compensating us for those losses

– He has a way of evening things up – restoring our losses and making things right

– The year of Jubilee was one of the ways God evened things up

Of course, some losses can’t be easily restored in our lifetime (even with Jubilee) – in those cases we trust God to make things right in eternity

– We can count on God’s justice because it is fundamental to who he is

– God can’t be unfair

In the second part of verse 8 the Lord (Yahweh) says…

– In my faithfulness I will reward my people and make an everlasting covenant with them…

The ancestors of the returning exiles had broken God’s covenant – that’s why they were sent into exile in the first place (kind of a massive time out)

– But God will make a new covenant with the descendants of these refugees

– This covenant is based on God’s faithfulness to his people, not on the people’s worthiness

– Once again we see that what God does, flows out of who he is

– The Lord is making a covenant because he’s faithful and that’s what the refugees need – security & commitment from a higher power

People generally change countries to improve their lot

– But coming to a new country and starting again can be challenging

– Parents will put up with the hard ship though if they think it will ultimately mean a better quality of life for their kids

– Yahweh’s words give the returning refugees the assurance they need

– The Lord is basically saying, I know it is tough for you now but it will get better (easier) for your descendants

The band Imagine Dragons have a song called ‘Not Today’

– The chorus reads…

– “It’s gotta get easier and easier somehow but not today, not today”

– The returning exiles had the hope of knowing God would make things easier somehow, but not today

– It would be their descendants who would be called blessed

Jesus is the one through whom God established this everlasting covenant

– Jesus is the Messiah through whom the blessing of God comes

We’ve heard the voice of Messiah proclaiming Jubilee

– And we’ve heard the voice of Yahweh affirming his justice

– Now let’s listen to the voice of the redeemed, expressing their joy in verses 10 & 11

Redeemed – joy:

I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God… as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

Delight, rejoicing, bride & groom on their wedding day – these are words and images of joy

– And the reason for the joy is that the Lord (my God) has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness

– God has covered our shame (our nakedness) and made us look good

– He has made us publicly acceptable once more

There’s a movie called Central Intelligence, starring Dwayne Johnson, the Rock

– It’s nothing too heavy – just feel good entertainment

– In this film Dwayne Johnson plays a character named Bob Stone

– Bob gets picked on and bullied in high school

– As a prank some guys steal his clothes while he’s in the shower and when he chases them to get his clothes back they lead him into an assembly hall where the whole school sees him in his birthday suit

– They don’t actually show you anything (thankfully) – they just leave it to your imagination

Anyway, everyone is laughing at Bob except for the most popular guy in school who takes off his jacket and gives it to Bob to cover himself

– The jacket was Bob’s salvation – covering his embarrassment & shame

– That simple act of kindness changes Bob’s life

– Bob studies hard and goes to the gym and undergoes a remarkable renewal, becoming a buff undercover agent for the CIA

The refugees are a bit like Bob Stone in the movie – they have been publicly humiliated, shamed for all the world to see

– But God has covered their shame – he has clothed them with his own jacket (his own righteousness) and this saves them, precipitating a renewal of their life

In verse 11 the redeemed of the Lord sound a note of hope…

– For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.

There’s that word righteousness again, keeps coming up doesn’t it

– This image of the soil making the sprout come up and seeds grow reminds us of the oaks of righteousness in verse 3

– Righteousness and praise are compared to a sprout and seeds – living things that start out small but contain incredible potency

– The sprouts and seeds then are an image of spiritual renewal

– God is the one who grows righteousness & praise

– The Lord is the one who brings renewal

The sprout and seeds of righteousness & praise are not like Jack’s bean stalk – they don’t grow to the sky overnight

– They take time to grow – in due course it will get easier to do right and easier to praise God, even if it doesn’t feel like it today

So often we approach Christmas with this expectation that it will be perfect or complete – that it will be the fruit fully formed, ripe and ready to eat

– But that kind of expectation usually leads to disappointment

– We are better to think of Christmas as a seed or a sprout – the beginning of renewal, not it’s end

In the meantime, if we truly believe things will get better in the future, if we know Jubilee is coming, it gives us joy & strength to cope in the present

Conclusion:

Isaiah 61 is a message of good news

– The Messiah proclaims that a time of Jubilee is coming

– The Lord (Yahweh) affirms his justice (his commitment) to the people

– And those overdue for redemption are filled with hope & the joy it gives

https://soundcloud.com/tawabaptist/17-dec-2017-good-news

[1] Luke 4: 21