Proverbs 30:8-9 OUR DAILY CHOCOLATE...?

Proverbs 30: 8-9, Philippians 4:19

I love bananas. I don’t actually eat that many of them myself, but they are brilliant when you have kids. It’s one of the few things that my little Ben isn’t allergic to, it has its own wrapper, and it’s pretty easy to mop off the furniture when the kids decide to copy Jackson Pollock’s artwork on the lounge. I love them. So it came as a shock last year when the price of bananas went from about $4 a kilo to (at least at my local shop) $16 a kilo.

Cyclone Larry blew through Queensland in March 2006, and in a 12-hour period wiped out 80% of their banana industry. As a result, the supply of bananas evaporated within a few weeks, and the prices rose unbelievably – to the point that the Federal Government of the day blamed the first interest rate rise in years on banana price increases. I doubt that the nation's economy will be plunge into the abyss because of bananas, but it does point out one of the big fundamentals of the world: demand and supply. Are bananas a want, or are they a need?

One of our greatest problems is that society, as a whole, has no idea what needs are anymore. There's a non-stop, high-intensity war being waged by marketing departments. The side-effect is the pressure that's put on us by a world that demands that we appear a certain way, eat or drink certain products, buy certain clothes. The pressure demands that we spent money to do this. Strange to say, with it comes the sad fact that we are almost forced to think that it could never be any different.

Here in a nutshell is the distortion that that we must consider:

*Needs are considered as rights, or entitlements. If your needs are not met, then somebody is to blame – someone has fallen down on the job.

*Wants are considered to be needs. Mobile phones are now so much a part of society that most of us would have trouble functioning socially without one.

*Luxuries are now wants. Look no further than iPods. Basically it’s the new Walkman – it plays music. It’s no better than most other MP3 players, twice as expensive, requires its own software in order to work (now making a computer a necessity to simply program a luxury device)… and it’s about the most desirable electronic device since colour television. It's so desirable, and so well-packaged that it's really re-defined the term must-have.

*Absolute extravagances are marketed as “you deserve it” indulgences and rewards – high-end sportscars, resorts to cater to your every whim and first-class accommodation to fly you there.

Marketing gurus earn their keep by making things that are not, strictly speaking, NEEDS into can’t-live-withouts. That’s their job. And the cleverest ones hit us right on the envy button. Basically we know we’ll feel a little better once we have it – whatever it is. And (here’s the subtle and dangerous bit) we won’t quite be as happy as we were… until we have it. Avarice is congratulated and praised as ambition.

We live in a world of demands and wants – but we live in a world of needs, too. It’s one of the most amazing and ironic things that two of the best-known Bible passages outside the Church contain a REAL need and the answer…

“Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins… and deliver us from evil…”
“The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down…”

Along with John 3:16, these are probably the two most-turned-to passages in Scripture; one is a request so stripped of anything other than raw need, and the other contains God’s answer.

Praise to our wise Lord who knows us – really knows us – and knows our needs better than we do. We need to pray earnestly that we can tell the difference between our needs and our wants. Personally, I need to trust His wisdom when He doesn’t supply all my wants. Daily bread is far better for me than daily Mars Bars. And – and this is a big and­ ­– I need to pray that the Lord will teach me how to be content when He provides what He deems to be my needs.


The world actively encourages a spirit of discontentment, of dissatisfaction. Never, it says, be satisfied with what you have, where you are, what you are given, who you are, the quality of the things you do, or the quality of your life. Strive for more. Never settle for second-best… with the implication that best is always ahead of us, not yet – perhaps never – within our furtive graspings.

Until we allow God to disconnect us from the world’s irrational rationale we will never really find comfort in the beauty of Psalm 23. He knows our needs, and he will supply them. He knows we need rest and nutrition and hydration – He makes us lie down, He leads us to green pastures and to quiet and still waters. This is what the Good Shepherd does. And He reaches beyond the physical needs of our mortal bodies to give us the things our spirits need – safety, deep security… “He restores my soul.” But right up front is the unsaid condition that so many crave: “I shall not want…”

And yet… and yet we insist on choosing our own path. We chase our own desires, and fool ourselves into thinking that satisfaction is just a hill away… the grass is just that bit greener over there… and then we wonder how on Earth we got ourselves into the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

Humans crave satisfaction. We don’t want to be little Mick Jaggers complaining that we can’t get no satisfaction (we can’t get no grammar lessons, either). But we need to be able to be satisfied with HOW God provides for us. That’s so hard when the world has trained us to be unsatisfiable. It will take a transformation to renew our minds like this!

I have a favourite verse tucked away in Proverbs, and it popped up again when I started gathering thoughts for this – and it amazed me (again and again) how the question and the answer come so brilliantly. Testament ping-pong! Here’s one of the best prayers I’ve ever come across, one that I’ve tried to use as a prayer guide for myself:
“Two things I ask of you, O LORD; do not refuse me before I die: Keep falsehood and lies far from me; Give me neither poverty nor wealth. Yes, provide me with just the food I need today; for if I have too much I might deny you and say ‘Who is the Lord?’ And if I am poor I might steal and thus profane the name of my God.” Proverbs 30:8-9 (Proverbs of Agur)

James Macbeth sent the answer as a text message a few months ago (which makes me reconsider the cell-phone - maybe it's a need after all...), and I chewed on this for ages;

And here’s the answer – “My God shall supply all your needs, according to His riches in glory by Jesus Christ.” Philippians 4:19. His riches – not my riches, or riches that any accountant, billionaire or government can begin to comprehend. God’s riches are so vast that meeting every possible need could never dent the supply… and, if we consider the old law of supply and demand, God gives us priceless gifts freely.

Sometimes it is not so easy to see the answer – to see God supplying the need. Not so long ago, our one-year-old, Maggie, was injured. Our boy Ben was playing around, and he threw a video case - and it hit Maggie by accident. But it hit her right on the eyeball. She screamed - and kept screaming. We rushed her up to the Children's Hospital at Randwick, and the doctors there found a great rip across her cornea. And right then and there, we realised how horribly close she was to losing sight in that eye. At the very least, she was looking at a life of compromised vision.

What I wanted was – well, I wanted it to un-happen, I wanted everything to be all right if I clicked my fingers or prayed hard enough. What I needed was to be a support for Fiona, a calm one in a crisis, and a comfort to the rest of my little family who were getting very distressed with all the noise. In short, I needed to be a husband and a father. What I wanted to be was a super-hero. And you know what God supplied… It’s very easy for me to say that my needs aren’t being supplied – but I have to take the time to work out that most of what I want… I want, not need. And I need to be thankful.

Because that’s one of the things that must mark us as men defined by grace – that we are thankful. In a world of dissatisfaction and discontentment, we who are satisfied, contented – and thankful – stand out like a clean green oasis in the middle of the desert. And you won’t believe how an oasis will draw every creature that craves water. Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life, said our Lord, and our job is always to take people to the water. Let’s go into the world today, being thankful, trusting that God will always do as he says He will in supplying all our needs.

Artwork: Detail from School Of Athens, Sanzo Rafaello. From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Heraklit.jpeg

It's The End Of The World...

MEN'S BREAKFAST
October 2007

We are in the world but not of the world.

It’s a sentence of ten words, but it powerfully places us. And it gives us quite a few headaches along the way. Where is the dividing line between IN and OF? Should we be monks? Residents on the planet’s surface, but totally removed from any corrupting influence of modern society? Should we be right in the middle of the fire, at constant risk of smoke inhalation, doing our level best to insulate our souls while attempting to save others around us from burning too? That’s pretty well where we men are at the moment. Suburban Australia is truly the belly of the beast – worldly in ways both overt and subtle.

In the world but not of the world… and we know that the world as we know it will end. Strange as it sometimes seems, the world has realised this too. Climate change is the biggest “hot-button” topic going. Everyone is looking at ways to save the world… and here we stand, trying desperately to tell anyone who will listen that we CAN’T save it.

Going green has now become the greatest priority – at least in political and corporate Australia, the greatest priority is to be SEEN to be going green. We are encouraged to mind our carbon footprint, to pay an extra couple of bucks so that we can “carbon offset” our purchases.

It’s the end of the world as we know it. And I feel fine. I’ll borrow the song title from REM for a couple of minutes, because it reflects rather loudly what people see as the Christian response to the increasing worldwide panic surrounding global warming.

Here’s what we know. Christ will come again. There will be a new heaven and a new Earth. So we take it as a given that the Earth will pass away – and we look forward to this day. And so we should.

Strangely enough, the world around us finds this to be a terrible reaction.


Don’t you care what happens to the planet?

It’s a double-edged question, and we can cut ourselves on the answers. Don’t you care?

If we think about a new heaven and a new Earth, and if we assume that God is the Lord of His creation (and we put our trust in His ability to keep the world running until the return of His Son), we can honestly say “no.” I’ll invite you to think about the repercussions of that response…

Let’s be honest, now – it’s how the world sees a Christians response at the moment, and it only reinforces the view that we are all old, neo-conservative hypocrites living in the past with our heads buried in the sand. And, most likely, our views on everything else will be considered just as irrelevant. This is not very helpful when we NEED to talk to them about Christ in order to save their lives…

Don’t you care?

If we consider that the Lord has given us dominion over the Earth and all of His creation that’s in it, and we want to be excellent stewards of His resources, and we answer “yes,” then the next question (logically and rightly) will be “well, what are you doing about it?”

And here is the problem. The Church as a whole appears to be just plain confused. On the one hand, George Cardinal Pell (Catholic Archbishop of Sydney) said this –
I am deeply skeptical about man-made catastrophic global warming, but still open to further evidence. I would be surprised if industrial pollution, and carbon emissions, had no ill effect at all. But enough is enough. A few fixed points might provide some light. We know that enormous climate changes have occurred in world history, e.g. the Ice Ages and Noah’s flood, where human causation could only be negligible.
(Column, Sunday Telegraph 18/2/07)
He also said in his 2007 Easter message that Jesus said nothing about climate change.

At the national Anglican synod in Canberra on October 24th, 2007, the Anglican Bishop of Canberra, George Browning, attacked Cardinal Pell.
“I wrote him a letter saying Jesus had an awful lot to say about the rich taking what belonged to the poor and about the heritage of the children, and as he spoke about both of these things he spoke about climate change.”." He concluded his Synod address by saying that “I want all of you to leave the synod today believing this is our core business, it's not something [that just] greenie Christians do."


And Christians like me can attack both points of view, and very quickly, too.
But in making my own reaction public, I merely demonstrate that I can argue too. I haven’t improved anything, and I’ve just proven my own point… the church looks confused in the face of something that, for the rest of the world, is a deadly serious threat.

So what should we do? What should we say?

As with anything, the first thing we must do before we have an answer for all men is to pray. People who ask need to hear God’s wisdom, not our own.

Ask the Lord for the right reply – a reply that not only answers the question accurately, but a reply that opens the way for the saving Gospel. I have no set suggestions for this – we should all take the time to get acquainted with the problem enough to give a reasoned, clear and cogent answer.

The first part of our answer is in how we live our lives – what we are seen to do, how men see how we live. We need to be above reproach in our word, our morals and our actions.

There are several things to consider;

We have been given dominion over the Earth (Genesis 1:28-30), but that still implies a great deal of stewardship. It is still God’s creation, over which He has ultimate sovereignty. Further, many of Jesus’ parables were focused clearly on stewardship – it is an issue clearly in God’s heart. How we use our money – and for that matter, any of the Earth’s resources – must be seen in this light. It is NOT ours to use, abuse and discard. It doesn’t matter whether we call it “reducing carbon footprints” or simply wisely (not wastefully) using whatever resources God has provided for us.

Think before we buy an overpackaged item. Buy what we NEED rather than what we WANT or DESIRE. Be conscious of how much petrol we use. Switch off the lights in rooms we’re not in. Don’t waste, don’t spend frivolously, don’t be mindless consumers. Buy clothes or cars because we NEED them, not because they are due to go out of fashion at eight o’clock next Wednesday. Andrew Cameron pointed out in one of his excellent Social Issues Briefings (#69) that living frugally used to be a recognised hallmark of a Christian life, at least until recently.

Is this saving the planet? No – but it is reducing the damage caused by excess waste, as well as freeing up God-given resources to accomplish His work. Reg raised a lot of these points to consider a couple of months ago when he brought John Wesley to our attention, and he didn’t bring it to our attention for reasons of saving the planet. It’s unbelievably ironic that the lifestyle that the Green Movement now encourages has already been championed by Christian reformers. It’s unbelievably sadder that the world sees us uncaring because we’re lagging behind.

But above all we must use this opportunity to show people how to be saved from the end of the world. Our friends and family around us, our workmates, neighbors, protesters on street corners, people carrying surfboards or chairing boardrooms are beginning to wake up to the fact that the world is going to die – and they are beginning to get serious in their anxiety. How long have we been praying for an opportunity to talk to these people about Christ and His salvation? What better opportunity can there be to show them the only way mankind can be saved? This is the Ultimate Inconvenient Truth – there is nothing that Man can do by his own efforts to save the Earth, or himself.

Like the Philippian jailer in Acts, the world has felt the first tremors, and is in dread of a great earthquake. The world is genuinely scared, and is rightly asking in a trembling voice “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And, like Paul, our answer has to be both unexpected and bold; “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, both you and your household.”

Very unfortunate photo taken from http://officespam.chattablogs.com/archives/forklift-bomb-thumb.GIF

Matthew 1 - THE GOSPEL'S OVERTURE

SERMON

7:00pm

I've got a confession to make. I love classical music. I've got to say I love music generally – I listen to almost anything from 12th Century to Tchaikovsky to Trent Reznor and back again. I don't do country. Or Western. Or Jimmy Barnes. But... I love classical.
Overtures, for those who don't listen to classical music, are pieces of music at the start of a long opera or a symphony. They're designed to prepare the listeners for the music that is coming. An overture proclaims the content. Ludwig van Beethoven was a genius with the overture. He took the idea to another level completely. Instead of a summary of the music, he would set up simple themes, but those themes were so rich in themselves that it would take an entire symphony to tease them out fully.

All of the Gospel writers knew the idea well, and their opening chapters are all like excellent Beethoven overtures. They all have introductions that tell us, clearly, what their great themes will be. Luke writes “an orderly account for you, the most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught”. Mark wants his readers to know, before anything else, that this is the Gospel (literally, the euagge;lion, the good message) about Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God. John wants us to see, even before we see Jesus the man, that he is the Word, and was with God at the beginning of everything – and that “through him, all things were made”.

Matthew, meanwhile, begins... strangely. It's such an odd beginning that we often skip it – we miss it out completely. We take little bits of it for Christmas cards – the three Wise Men and their equally-scriptural camels – but we overlook a lot of the way that Matthew opens his Gospel. Which is a shame, because one of the very important characters in the Gospel narratives is found here. Here's the story of Joseph, the son of Jacob, the husband of Mary, the father of Jesus the Son of God.

Father of Jesus the Son of God. That sounds a little odd, doesn't it? We'll come back to this in a second.

The story begins eighteen verses previously. Matthew really begins with a roll-call of forty-nine names covering forty-two generations. And I think that's one of the reasons why we ignore the beginning of this book. Who wants to read out a roll-call?

I suspect people who set out to read the Bible from cover to cover glaze over when it comes to the big genealogies. If you don't believe me, here's a good one – read the first nine chapters of 1 Chronicles. In one sitting. With no coffee. Aloud, so you don't skip a verse...

But... the genealogy at the beginning of Matthew's book is part of his overture, part of his great theme, and part of how he wants us to see this man Jesus. What does Matthew want us to know about Jesus?

Verse 1 - “a record of the genealogy of Jesus, Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham”. Three titles. Here is one of Matthew's themes; Jesus is the Anointed One, Meshiach in the Hebrew, Christos in the Greek, “Christ” in the English. Jesus is also the Son of David, and the Son of Abraham. A Son of David can trace his roots all the way back to David, the second King of Israel. A son of Abraham can trace his lineage all the way back to Abraham, who was the grandfather of a man named Isra'el. This is important for Matthew, because Matthew is writing with an audience in mind – a Jewish audience, people who knew themselves as the children of Israel.

So the first eighteen verses – as boring as we find them – are the first credentials that Matthew offers. And they're gold-plated credentials, too. The lineage covers some major characters in the history of the Jewish people, from the man who first entered into a covenant agreement with God, to great men of power and influence, through men like Boaz who were pretty ordinary but had an influence on the future direction of Israel.

To a First Century Jew, these credentials were very important. Lineage was very important – not for “good breeding” or for “class” but because they recognized authority that came through family lines. Anointed authority could be hereditary (the Levites, for instance). God had entered into covenant with King David, that he would establish David's kingdom forever through his offspring. Matthew has put in this enormous family-tree to establish Jesus' credentials to be known, the right to be known, as “the Son of David”.

Matthew now turns the spotlight on the birth of Jesus, at least according to the heading in my Bible here. I'm not sure if that's totally fair, though. Truth be told, calling this a Christmas story is a bit of a myth. Almost all of it happens a good nine months out from Christmas. It might be the story of the origins of Jesus, but it's really Joseph's story. Matthew, as we have seen, has successfully linked Joseph to David, and to Abraham. What Matthew now sets out to do is to link Joseph to Jesus.

Of course, it wasn't quite that easy-peasy. As a matter of fact, it looks, at one point, very unlikely to happen. Let's look at Joseph's story. It's not an easy story – if anything, it's an uneasy story. He is betrothed to a young lady named Mary. Betrothed is a little bit more serious than an engagement today – it implied that one was, legally, married to the other, but not yet living together or enjoying the full riches of married life. It was a done deal – literally. It would have involved a contract.

Mary becomes pregnant. And while the narrative tells us that “she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit”, I think it would be safe to assume that the only one who really knew this at the time was Mary. I have no idea how the conversation would have played-out between Joseph and Mary, but I cannot imagine that it went that well. Because his next decision is to divorce her quietly.

That's an unusually decent move. The options, under Israel's laws, that Joseph had available to him ranged from quietly annulling the contract to having this obviously promiscuous woman stoned to death. Joseph's choice tells us a lot about the man. "Because Joseph was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly." This is a man of mercy and compassion, even when something as sacred as their sexual integrity is in question... and would remain in question for a long time to come – for the next two thousand years, in fact.

How painful would it be to Joseph? In all that pain, he chooses the gentlest possible option. Mercy, compassion, righteousness. He had in mind to divorce her quietly. The connection between the unborn Jesus and Joseph rests on the edge of a knife.

But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. The effect of the dream is pretty immediate. And it's probably safe to say that it was more than an ordinary dream. Dreams can be very strong every now and again. I've had a dream more than once where I've done something that went terribly wrong. I crashed a car in a dream, and when I woke up, the dream was so strong that as I was showering and getting changed, I was trying to re-plan my day by public transport. But at some point, I was able to realise that it was... just a dream.

This dream is very different. Joseph acts immediately and obediently after his dream. And to a point, I'm not surprised – he was visited by an angel of the Lord.

Ditch the normal mental picture of pretty wings and halos and wearing white pillow-cases. These angels are supernaturally powerful, immortal beings who work as the personal servants of God. The first one we see is in Genesis, and he was effectively the bouncer at the gates of Eden. Through the Old and New Testaments, the first things angels often need to say to people is “do not be afraid.” Samson's parents wanted to sacrifice to an angel, so powerful and god-like was his appearance. The shepherds in Luke's nativity passage are “filled with fear.”
These things are powerful, and they are terrifyingly real. And they speak with authority, because they carry messages directly from the Lord God Almighty himself. Verse 20 An angel of the LORD appeared to him in a dream, and said, “Joseph, son of David [notice that the angel greets Joseph in exactly the way the genealogy defines him] Joseph, Son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.”

You are to give him the name Jesus. This is massively significant on two counts. The name of this child is more than just a name – it is a signifier of what parents wanted and wished their child could be. You are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. Jesus. The English translation of the Greek Iesous. The Greek is a transliteration of the Hebrew Yeshua. And this means, literally, the Lord saves. You are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. Matthew shows us the value of names as he quotes the Isaiah prophecy that is being fulfilled – Immanuel, which means God with us. It's pretty rare for people these days to call Jesus Immanuel, although quite a few 19th Century writers do – often. Anyone who does Spurgeon's Morning And Evening will be pretty familiar with it. In this case, the truth of the man gives the name – not the other way 'round. God with us.
Verse 22
All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet;
Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
And they shall call his name Immanuel (which means, God with us).

We've got a problem. It's not hard to spot the glaring error in Matthew's logic. The skeptics of the world could (and do) pick a great big hole in this one. And here's one of the places why some people think that the Gospels can't be trusted. This is one of those areas where many smart and well-spoken people will nod mournfully and say that the Bible is inconsistent. The problem's big enough to drive a boat through. Matthew insists on a Virgin Birth. He is insistent –verse 25, he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. Mary is not related to Joseph; if there was a connection, it would have been mentioned in his careful genealogy.

And even granting a Virgin Birth, how can this child claim descent from David and Abraham? Matthew has used those credentials to establish Jesus' temporal authority. That's one great strain in the overture. He uses the Virgin Birth to establish Jesus' heavenly authority – the other great theme. Lord of Heaven and Earth... here's one of the things Matthew wants his readers to understand. But logically, how can he have it both ways? He has to have it both ways, because if you only have one without the other, you've significantly reduced the authority that Matthew is trying to claim for this man Jesus. How on earth can the great strand from Joseph meet with the great strand from Mary if Joseph had no biological part to play?


And at points like this, at points where there are difficulties, at points where belief is hard, we are actively encouraged by the world to put our faith in these things aside. God wouldn't really do that, would he? The Virgin Birth is a legend – a myth. The resurrection isn't really believable... the authors of these books are hardly credible historians, are they? Christianity is an inclusive religion. There must be a misunderstanding when Jesus said that No-one can come to the Father without him. You Christians don't do your religion any favours by reading all of your Bibles... much less believing it...

Which is harder to believe? That Joseph was related to everyone in that genealogy? Or that “before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit”? In an age where more and more theologians and bishops are encouraging Christians to not worry about believing in the hard things, this is a vital question that we MUST be prepared to wrestle with. Because at stake, right now, at the start of Matthew's book – at the start of the New Testament, in fact – is the truth of what Jesus says about himself in this Gospel. The most dangerous myth surrounding the Virgin Birth is that “it doesn't matter.”
Matthew records Jesus saying “Anyone who receives you receives me, and anyone who receives me receives the One who sent me”. Matthew records Jesus saying “All things have been committed to me by my Father, and no-one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him”. And, crucially, when Peter declares to Jesus “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”, Matthew records Jesus saying “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man but by my Father in Heaven”.

What are we to make of these claims that Jesus makes if, as more and more people are content to believe, he was just the son of two normal humans? There are so many of Jesus' sayings and parables that he certainly deserves titles like “a great teacher” and “the most influential philosopher” and “a wise man.” And, to be sure, most people today are more than happy to accord Jesus that honour. But can he still be called a great teacher as he makes these claims of himself? Can a teacher be half-wise and half-delusional? If he is a liar, can we trust any of his wisdom?

But that's not all of it. Jesus isn't the only one claiming this. Matthew makes an outrageously strange claim. Verse 18 – Before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Luke makes a similar claim. There we find an angel telling Mary the same things that were revealed to Joseph in his dream; “He will be great and called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David.” Mary's response was simple - “How can this be since I am a virgin?”

How can this be? Can a Virgin Birth be proven? Can I give you scientific, rock-solid, absolutely irrefutable evidence that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit instead of by normal human agency?

No. In an age of science and reason, where scientists declare that if it can't be proven it cannot be believable, I have to say... no. There is no scientific, rock-solid, absolutely irrefutable evidence that I can provide for you. I can't be Grissom from CSI and say - “Here's the evidence.”

What I can do is point to... this. The Scriptures. And there are one or two things that should be considered here. Even the harshest secular literary scholars agree on one thing. If these writings about Mary and Joseph and Jesus' miraculous birth were an invented myth, devised by the early Church... they shouldn't look like this.

It's not myth. This was written for a Jewish audience, and any hint of a mythological writing-style would render this document as blasphemy – unreadable. The idea that the Holy Spirit would simply make it happen is so unprecedented that if it was a literary invention, there would be far more explanations attached, and a far-larger back-story. The thought that it was a First-Century addition actually creates more problems... why would you add such a strange, outrageous, unproveable, unbelievable teaching...without explaining something about the process?

One of the greatest arguments in favour of the truth of these Gospel accounts is, quite simply, that they are so simple. Matthew and Luke simply state what was.
There certainly were many myths concerning Greek and Roman gods who used all sorts of tricks to sleep with humans – and often in these stories a child happened afterwards, and in these mythological stories, the resultant unwanted child would wreak vengeance upon the father as he grew up. But they were very elaborate tales; they were stylised legends.

There is, in the whole of mythology, nothing like this. A God, through a woman, sending His Son to earth. The Son working in perfect obedience and harmony with the will of the Father. The old 1662 Book of Common Prayer puts it just as simply. Being of one substance with the Father – who, for us men and for our salvation came down from Heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man. There is simply nothing remotely like this anywhere else. Matthew and Luke don't give any stylised details of how this might have happened. It was enough to note that it occurred. The how is utterly irrelevant to them. The why becomes apparent as you read the Gospels – only the Son of God has the authority to forgive sins. Only the Son of God can take every sin and place it upon himself. Only the Son of God can save me.

We are still left with the two great themes. From the line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, King David and Joseph will come the Son of David. From the Holy Spirit and Mary will come the Son of God. The two strands still haven't met. Yet.


I said earlier that Joseph naming the child “Jesus” was massively significant in two ways. Here's the second way. Back to verse 21 – YOU are to give him the name Jesus... If Joseph does this, Joseph will be claiming this baby as his own. A child becomes a man's son not so much because of blood and straight genetics, but from the acknowledgment on the part of the man. Matthew's Jewish audience would understand this more quickly than we do. I may have to explain this further.

My have a name. My father's name is part of that - a big part. He, also, carries a man's name. Now something unusual happened when my dad was a young lad – my grandmother separated from her husband and re-married. Dad was given the option – retain his old surname, or take up the new name. He chose the latter. It's an irrefutable fact that there is not a drop of his new father's blood in my dad's veins. There is absolutely no biological or genetic connection between my grandfather and I.

And yet...

He was always Grandpa to me. And I remain with my name. My wife changed her name nine years and one week ago. And this morning, Bishop Reg Piper held my youngest daughter in his arms and asked me to name this child; I publicly named my little daughter. With my family's name.

There is more to life than genetics. Blood might be thicker than water, but love beats blood any day. I know several people who have been adopted, and I know the people who adopted them, and there is no doubt in my mind that they are family.

Joseph was a merciful, compassionate, righteous man. There was nothing easy in this story for him. I cannot begin to comprehend what he must have thought as he dealt with the news that his wife-to-be was pregnant. To be ordered in a dream to not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife. To accept a child that is not, technically, his. To name this child and claim the child as his own. His world must have turned completely upside down. Joseph is one of the Bible's least-praised heroes. He doesn't swing a sword, he smites no enemies, but he's a giant.

For those with long memories, the genealogy began with Abraham. At nearly a hundred years old and childless, Abraham was promised by Yahweh that he would be the father of nations. And, says the writer of Genesis, Abraham believed the Lord, and God credited it to him as righteousness. Throughout the Psalms we see David desiring, chasing, aiming at righteousness – and mourning when he missed. We see righteousness in Joseph. And because Joseph is a compassionate, merciful, obedient and righteous man, he gave him the name... Jesus.
“To us a child is born. To us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne, and over his Kingdom, establishing it and holding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.”
These were the words of the prophet Isaiah, hundreds of years before. And as these two great strains meet, the son of Joseph, the son of David, the son of Abraham, the son of God... is born.

And Joseph gave him the name... Jesus.

Matthew has closed off the overture. It's time for the first movement. What happens next? You're going to have to wait until next week.

Can we bust all the myths? It'd be good, wouldn't it? I'd love to say we can. But the truth is, there are things in this book that will, from time to time, give us all difficulties. The Bible will throw up all sorts of things that challenge our perception of reality, our perception of God, our ethics, our actions, our morals, our identities, ourselves. And we will come to meet other people who are finding difficult things in here. This is really important to know... there's nothing wrong with that. It is not an easy book. It will, when we dig away, force us to ask all sorts of questions. And that's okay. God has given us questioning, curious, intelligent minds.

Having said that, I urge you to never give up looking for the right answer. Just because we find a few different ideas that don't seem to align, it doesn't necessarily follow that the Bible is inconsistent. It might just be that our vision's faulty. Never give up. Never give up reading the hard bits. And never give up trusting it. The Word of God is something we can trust, even when we don't understand it all. I doubt Abraham understood God's purposes when the Lord promised him that he would be the father of nations. But Abraham believed the words of the Lord, and it was credited it to him as righteousness. Joseph had no rational reason to stay by his betrothed-but-pregnant Mary; but Joseph was a righteous man, heard the words of the Lord that were announced by an angel in his dream...

and... he gave him the name Jesus.

Photograph of Herbert von Karajan from the official 100th birthday site, available at http://www.karajan.org/jart/prj3/karajan/main.jart?rel=en&reserve-mode=active&content-id=1190897372625&foto_kat_id=1192273236199&fotos_id=1190

1Thess 4:13-5:11 - I HOPE...

1 THESSALONIANS 4:13 - 5:11

SERMON - 7:00PM

Let's Pray; Our Gracious Heavenly Father, thank You that You are a God of Your Word, and for giving us Your great Word. Thank You that Your Word is always true, always trustworthy, always the great guide. Help me to speak clearly, to speak Your Word clearly, and for all of us to understand Your good and perfect Word more clearly.
In Jesus' name Amen


Moore College puts on a Mission Week every year, where the College is emptied of both students and staff – and everyone is sent to churches around Australia to help those churches. I was in a group sent to Haberfield, where they had only just re-opened a church that had been boarded-up for a decade. St Oswald's is a turn-of-last-century church – high-roofed, hewn-stone,stained-glassed, with that smell that old churches all used to have. I noticed one of the stained-glass windows; it had some lovely artwork in it, but it also had an inscription carefully cut into it below; “In Memory Of Our Church Warden, Who Fell Asleep...” They did things pretty tough on their poor wardens back then...
Fell asleep. I think it's one of the most beautiful, most expressive ways of describing our passing. If we fall asleep, we have the expectation of waking up to a fresh, new day. Right at its roots, the use of the phrase fall asleep is loaded with hope. It's the active acknowledgement that death is not the end for us.

But it's an expression that also has the capacity to puzzle or confuse, and it didn't sit easily with people at first. If we cast our minds back to Lazarus' death, we can see that the expression puzzled those around Jesus. John chapter 11; “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him up.” His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” So then He told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and for your sakes I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Jesus had to explain the phrase fallen asleep to them.

Paul faced a different misunderstanding as he wrote to the Thessalonian church. They knew that Jesus had power over death, because he had returned from the dead. And they believed that Jesus would return for them. But they thought that 1) He was coming back any hour now, and that 2) he would return before any of the believers had died.
This seems to have led to a couple of problems. Some of them, in the belief that Christ's coming was absolutely imminent, had given up work and all their other earthly responsibilities so that they would be prepared. More seriously, they were becoming distressed that some believers had died before the promised coming of Christ the Messiah. They had two huge questions... What happened to them? Where was Jesus now?

What does happen? Where is Jesus now? It's one of the most natural questions to ask in the middle of tragedy and grief. It's a question we ask ourselves, for reassurance and comfort. It's a question that Paul is happy to answer – and the way Paul answers it is beautiful, full of the truth and grace of God, and full of the comfort that the Spirit brings. And he writes specifically to bring comfort and encouragement. Twice he says to encourage each other with these words. There are other versions of the Bible that translate this phrase as comfort one another with these words; both translations are accurate. The word Paul chooses is one of the most beautiful in the Greek language – parakalew, parakeleo. We still use it to describe the Holy Spirit as a comforter, the Paraclete. Encourage and give comfort to each other with these words. And so we should.

Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who have fallen asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men who have no hope. Paul doesn't say that it's wrong of us to grieve. There is nothing wrong with grief at all. Grieving the loss of loved ones is incredibly painful. In Genesis we learn that a man will leave his mother and father, and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. Anything that parts either union here – between husband and wife, between parents and children – is and always will be incredibly painful. The Lord God, whose own Son was executed by men, knows the pain of loss. To mourn is right and natural. Paul wants to bring comfort, though, and he does. We don't need to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope.

And it's true – our grief as Christians is very different. We know that our loves are not lost forever – though the parting is painful, we will meet together in the love of the Lord. And even in the midst of our great pain, here is great, great comfort. Encouraging comfort – parakalew comfort. We have been given the Great Hope.
Paul goes on to give further encouragement and comfort. He wants his readers to know with absolute certainty and assurance that those who have died will not be forgotten by the Lord, will not be left behind – they are still very much in the Lord's mind. We believe that Jesus died and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him. The way Paul uses this expression fallen asleep in Him is so beautiful – it reminds me of my own kids, totally secure and trusting in Fiona and I enough to put their cheeks on our arms and... fall asleep. According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of our Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep... the dead in Christ shall rise first! Those who have gone before us are not only remembered, they are spoken of as being just as alive as Paul is himself. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever! In the air! Free from the earth, free from the world... truly on the wings of eagles, and with the Lord, uncorrupted and incorruptible forever! Oh, boy. Comfort each other with these words? You bet. Encourage each other with these words? You bet.

For here is our great hope, our beautiful and glorious hope. Here is why our Lord Jesus Christ died – why He was condemned by the leaders of His own people, coldly and brutally executed by foreign soldiers at a foreigner's order. Here is why Jesus came in the body of a man, suffered all of the things that man could suffer... so He could take our place, take our sins, take the justice that should by rights fall on us, take our punishment... so that when the Lord himself comes down from Heaven, those who have died in Christ will - will! rise first, and we who remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Sinless, blameless, with our Lord and each other forever.

Here is our great hope. And it's probably a good point to clarify what we mean by hope. But... but... as I was reading and writing this, I had a sneaking suspicion that somewhere along the line something had happened to hope. I checked quite a few dictionaries over this one, and I was right – something has happened to hope, or at least to what we understand by the word.


The formal definition is straightforward – the old trustworthy Oxford Dictionary defines hope as expectation and desire combined. The almost-as-good Macquarie Dictionary notes that it is expectation of something desired; desire accompanied by expectation. But both dictionaries also noted that these days we don't use that word with rock-solid certainty as much as we used to. Words like probability and more or less confidence appear a little further down as they examine the ways in which we use the word these days. And, sad to day, that's true enough. These days, if we say that we hope for something, there's almost a hidden implication that what we hope for... might not happen. I hope the train comes on time... I hope that the weather will be fine for the wedding... I hope the sermon won't take too long... We have a nagging, nasty sense that what we hope for might not come to pass. And so even in our language now, we as a society slip from a hopeful people to a hopeless people. It tarnishes the way people read the word hope in the Bible.

Thank God that we can understand that we can trust fully and unconditionally. That we can trust Him with our life. That we can hope, knowing with absolute assurance – not more-or-less confidence, but absolute assurance – that this is true. What was that brilliant old hymn? My hope is built on nothing less / than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame / but wholly lean on Jesus' name. On Christ, the solid rock, I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. Our hope is secure. Our hope is assured. Our hope rests in the Word of the Lord, and His Word will never, never fail.
Therefore, encourage each other with these words.


Paul moves on, and it seems as though he's covering familiar ground with the Thessalonians. Now, brothers, about the times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. It's an assumption, but a fairly sensible one, that Paul had taught them about the coming of the Lord, and what Jesus had said concerning His return. He seems to be reinforcing this teaching – that nobody, not even Christ himself knows when God the Father will send him. Matt 24:36 –


Nobody knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in Heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Matthew's record continues in v.42 – But understand this: if the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and not let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him. Paul reinforces Jesus' teaching once again – while people are saying peace and safety, destruction will come on them suddenly.

Paul knows that there's no point in speculating when the Day of the Lord will come. And we know that to be true. Even in our own lifetimes there have been people who have made great noises announcing that they have discovered the date of the Coming of Christ. The year 1000 brought all kinds of speculation. The year 2000 brought all kinds of speculation. There are still those Russians holed up in a cave waiting for a very certain date. And speculation about end-times and tribulation and Daniel / Revelation prophecies have caused no end of anxiety for many, many Christians. But they all fundamentally ignore Paul's very, very important message throughout these times and events – Encourage and comfort each other with these words...parakalew each other. We don't need to scare each other silly, or to have anxiety within ourselves.
I know that some people look at how Paul describes this meeting in the air, where those asleep in Christ rise first, those who remain come after and we meet the Lord and each other in the clouds. And that might be literally how it will happen. I know that some look to the prophecies in Daniel and the Revelation, and they interpret them in various ways, and in what order things will happen, and what signs will occur before... and they might be right, too. I'm not going to go into the whole landscape of end-times, parousia, and rapture – and neither does Paul, because Paul's purpose in discussing death, the dead in Christ and His return is to give comfort, to give assurance, that Christ has the power over death – and that through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. How important are the details and the mechanics of how it will all occur? What does Paul say?
Well, this is where Paul shifts focus. Actually, he really re-focuses attention to what he has been saying to the Thesalonians. He broke the focus to look specifically at their concerns about death, and now he brings it back to living for the Lord.
Verse 5 – You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or the darkness. We are different. We are different. There is no mistaking the differences between night and day. We have everything to live for, every good and perfect thing to look forward to. So we cannot be like others, who are asleep, who do their things in darkness. Paul motivates and encourages the Thessalonians, telling them why they must live godly lives. He doesn't chastise them, he encourages them, so that they will be encouraged. Remember at the start of 1 Thessalonians – Paul told them that the Lord's message rang out throughout the area as they became models of Christian living.
Paul spurs them on and on, urges them on and on. It's what Stu said last week, Paul the Frenchman. He's like a French Tour de France spectator, madly urging on the cyclists, even if they're in the lead. They are different from the rest of men who have no hope.

What a terrible, terrifying expression – the rest of men who have no hope. I talked a few moments ago about the way the word hope is beginning to lose that sense of iron-clad faith. I guess using a phrase like “I hope the train comes on time” demonstrates the point a little bit – there's a lack of certainty there, and (if we're talking about trains, anyway) that lack of certainty is based upon a past disappointment, a past expectation unmet, or a past breaking of faith. But it's worse than that, and the thought of a world without hope surrounds us every day. We can hear it when we talk to so many people. No trust in justice, no belief in lasting love, no surety in marital fidelity... it's like there's the background expectation that anything that hope can be put in will fail. And that's crushingly sad.

There's a British musical group who released an album last year. During the couple of months it took to make the record, a member of the group had a baby. Partly in response to this, they asked people at random what their great hope for their children was. Here's some of their answers...
I Hope... you understand what fear is before you have to feel it.
I hope my neuroses don't rub off on you.
I hope you always have enough to eat.
I hope you're never bullied, and I hope you never bully others.
I hope you find love. I hope rejection doesn't stop you loving.
I hope you don't blame yourself for things that aren't your fault.
I hope you'll visit me when I'm old.

The most heartbreaking thing I found in this song was that the band saw these as being the best things that we can wish for our children. The best hope they would wish for them was that their own ghosts would not follow the next generation. What a terrible thing to be without hope.

How great is our God who, by His grace and the blood of His own Son, has lifted us from this crushing darkness – this night of the soul – and made us sons of the Light. Paul says it loudly and clearly – For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath, but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with Him.

The great theme that resonates through the letter is that Christ will come. The Thessalonians needed the words of Paul to encourage them in their waiting. Paul's encouragement is good for us, too, as we wait for the day of the Lord. But Paul injects something else into this letter, and as we wrap up our look at 1 Thessalonians, I want us all to grasp this firmly. Paul doesn't leave this as a standing instruction book. Paul doesn't want this church to hear his words and merely go-and-do. Twice in our passage here he leaves a living, breathing instrucion. 4 verse 18: Therefore encourage one another with these words. 5 verse 11: Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. It's not just a case of reading Paul's words, or listening to them, or even patiently listening to a sermon on them. Therefore encourage and comfort – parakaleo – each other. Take these great words of comfort, courage and assurance, and use them!

Especially, use them when our families grieve. Especially, use them when our brothers and sisters in Christ grieve. Have it in our minds when we talk to our neighbors who may be men without hope. These great and powerful words that Paul was given by God for the Thessalonians still resonate with the power of the Living God. But most importantly, we all need to re-discover HOPE, we all need to remember that hope placed in the Lord our God, His Spirit the Comforter, and His Son Jesus is secure hope! Trust in His hope -
For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath, but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with Him.
He who has called you is faithful – AND HE WILL DO IT! Amen.

Photo available from Stock.xchng, a site of stock photography (www.sxc.hu) Photographer is EIRincon, photo ID is 717386

2Thess 3:1-5 JESUS IS... LORD?

SERMON
10.8.2008
7:00 service


We have a swear-jar at Moore College… you know, us Bible students are a caring swearing bunch. Not surprising – try learning Greek and you’ll be amazed what you WANT to say… No, the swear jar has been introduced by a lecturer, and a word each week is set up as “The Unspeakable Word”. Say the Unspeakable Word, put 20c in the jar, all funds raised go to Church Mission Society.


This week the word was “Saved”.


Not just saved, but any word using the root word. Salvation, for instance. Just get into your mind the picture of a theological college, with 115 first-years trying desperately looking for ways to NOT say saved, saving, salvation, Saviour... CMS is going to be financially independent by the end of 2009, and a third of all the students sound like they have a terminal stutter.


Still, it’s not as hard as the week before – the week before, the Unspeakable Word was LORD.



Which raises an interesting issue, doesn’t it? How do we use the word Lord? Have we become somehow immune to a word? Who do we think of when we use the Unspeakable Word?


Jewish tradition held – and still holds – that the name of the Lord of Heaven and Earth is itself so pure and holy that merely speaking the name would somehow tarnish it, or defile it. We generally think that this is probably extreme, but it must be said that we’re probably at the other extreme. We might well have forgotten that the God who wanted no statues made of Him also didn’t need to name Himself. Remember Moses? Exodus 3:13 “ ‘When they ask me “what is his name?”, then what should I tell them?’ God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites – I AM has sent me to you’ ” There’s a statement of absolute power.


And yet we are so free and easy with the name of God that it’s now a pretty acceptable part of our language to invoke His name with no thought. I wonder if the blasphemy isn’t in saying “oh, God” but in saying with no thought.



The NT word for Lord is kurios. A slave calls his master kurios. A tradesman calls a nobleman kurios. The kurion, the Lord, was the city ruler, the head of a country, or the Emperor.
For just a moment, I want us to consider how alien Paul’s words would have sounded in Thessalonika – a Greek city with heavy Roman connections and temples to a hundred gods. Listen again to the strangeness… from the Greek transliteration...



1v1 Paul, Silvanus, Timothy – to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father of us and in Lord Jesus Christ. Just God – and calling a Jewish man executed in faraway Judea – Kurios – the Lord.
1.2;Grace and peace to you from God the Father of us, and from Lord Jesus Christ.
2.1With regard to the coming of the Lord of us, Jesus Christ…
2.14;… that you might share in the glory of the Lord of us, Jesus Christ
3.6; In the name of Lord,Jesus Christ, we command you… [and if that doesn’t sound like a commander invoking the authority of the Emperor I donj't know what does].
3.18; The grace of the Lord of us, Jesus Christ. [Again, an Imperial pardon was issued because of the grace of the Lord, the Emperor].
Calling this man Jesus kurios – Lord – is a big, big call.


Keep the strangeness of this in mind as we keep digging through Paul’s prayer request that we read in 2 Thessalonians 3:1-5. And keep in mind that "the Lord" – at least in this passage – should be understood as the Lord Jesus.

Paul has written a follow-up letter to address a couple of problems. In it, he assures them – several times – that they are constantly in Paul’s prayers.
1v3; We ought always to thank God for you, brothers, and rightly so…
1v11; With this in mind we constantly pray for you…
2v13; But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord…
That would be unbelievably encouraging to this young, flourishing church – knowing that the man, who brought them the Good Message of the cross and the rising of Jesus, still kept them in his constant prayer. I know that there are a couple of people who pray for Fiona and the kids and I, and they pray every single day. They are some of the most godly people you could bump into on a very long walk. That’s pretty encouraging, let me tell you. I have no doubt that the Thessalonians would have smiled the widest smile as they read how Paul still held them up to God in prayer.



Now he himself asks for prayer.



James Macbeth said this a long time ago, and it’s an interesting thought – a lot of a person’s heart can be seen in their prayers and what they ask others to pray for. Let’s look at what Paul asks for.
1. Finally, brothers, pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honoured, just as it was with you.
Paul isn’t shy about asking for prayer. But he immediately deflects the focus of the prayer – pray for me that the message [word] may spread. Again, it sounds odd when we give it a little thought. He doesn’t ask for prayer so he can have success in getting the word of the Lord out, although that will be the result if the Lord answers their prayer. But Paul’s doing a little teaching here too, and focusing the Thessalonians’ attention onto who will be answering the prayer. And why.

And why? That the word of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honoured – just as it was in you. Spread rapidly; literally to course like a great river. Honoured; the word Paul uses is a luminous word - doxazetai. Honoured, glorified… but there’s also a sense from the Greek word of glowing fiercely, of shining out in the dark.
And that’s exactly how it had spread in Thessalonika; an unstoppable flood. “The Lord’s message rang out from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia – your faith in God has become known everywhere,” Paul wrote in his first letter. Now Paul wants them to pray that the miracle that occurred in their life – in their city – will never stop happening.

How’s the swear-jar looking? – I’ve said Lord four times (the message / word of the Lord). Whose message or word? God the Father or God the Son?


Verse 2. And pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men, for not everyone has faith.
Following his baptism and first preaching, Paul manages to avoid an assassination plot. He flees to Jerusalem – and then has to run to Tarsus, because of another attempt to kill him. He’s expelled from Pisidian Antioch, escaped a stoning at Iconium, didn’t escape a stoning at Lystra, publicly stripped and flogged before being jailed in Philippi, evacuated by night from Thessalonika, escaped from Berea… Those stoning and flogging episodes, by the way, were very often fatal.
Pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men, for not everyone has faith.


Do you think that Paul should have prayed for this a little earlier? Or maybe prayed a little harder? I’d be surprised if he didn’t pray this every day. Considering that, to the best of our knowledge, he was executed – beheaded, tradition tells us, in Rome – do you think he was delivered from evil and wicked men? Did those people with no faith finally get him? Was this prayer answered or ignored? For that matter, here is the man who spearheaded the first ever persecution, who was complicit in the mob-execution of Stephen. Paul, at one stage, WAS one of the wicked and evil men he asks the church to pray against.


Pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men, for not everyone has faith.

It may help us to see the request more clearly if we look at Paul’s prayer request a little closer. I think that the end phrase is pretty important, and it again shows us the heart of Paul. See, I don’t think that Paul was afraid of faithless men at all.
If I take that phrase and attach it to the first verse – pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honoured, for not everyone has faith – well, that’s a little different. Read the two verses as one request. In other words, pray that the message pours forth, and that nothing hinders people without faith to hear the Good Message of Christ. That makes more sense. And that’s more like the Paul who sang hymns after being flogged.
Deliver us from wicked and evil men, because they delay the progress of the message of Jesus to people who have no faith. Pray that nothing gets in its way.
Paul is on a mission. He wants the Good Message of Christ crucified and risen to be absolutely planted before he leaves the earth. He understands why Jesus rescued him, called him and chose him. Besides which, he’s quite comfortable with the thought of leaving the world behind…
Phil 1:20-24 shows Paul’s thoughts here; … but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labour for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two; to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.
A man thinking that won’t be too worried about the wicked and evil men for himself – but he will be praying that they never get in the way of the Word. Get out of its way – it’s got a world to get to.

The next few verses he spends doing something he spent a lot of time doing in his first letter – encouraging them, building them up spiritually.
Verse 3. The Lord – the Lord Jesus, remember – is faithful, and he will strengthen and protect you from the evil one. It’s a bold, confident statement. There’s no uncertainty, no hesitation – not even an easy “I’ll pray for…” He WILL strengthen and protect you from the evil one. No doubt at all.
Verse 4. We have confidence that you are doing, and continue to do, the things we command. I used to get a little worried when the principal said that. It made me think he had eyes everywhere. And he had the unnerving habit of saying “I have every confidence…” about things that, well, confidence should not be placed in. Paul uses his words far, far more positively than a principal – and it’s good motivation; out-loud confidence in their future protection and obedience.
Verse 5. May the Lord (Jesus) direct your hearts into God’s love, and Christ’s perseverance. Direct… guide – kind of like a rudder guiding and directing a boat into a safe harbour. May Jesus steer your hearts into God’s love, and Jesus’ perseverance. Good encouraging statements, something that Paul spent a lot of time doing throughout 1 Thessalonians.



The phrase “deliver us from wicked and evil men” kept on coming back to me over and over. It’s a haunting phrase, possibly because these days we don’t think about too many people as being wicked or evil. I suspect that one of the attractions of fictional villains is that we just don’t see people in this light anymore. Sometimes the only way we think of them is through movies.
In Schindler’s List, Ralph Fiennes played a real-live wicked and evil man – Amon Goeth, the Nazi commandant of a Polish concentration camp. I haven’t seen it yet, but the reviews for Heath Ledger’s Joker keep on and on saying that his ability to play a psychopathic, evil anarchist – and to play him so darkly and menacingly – is just brilliant. I wonder who it says the most about: a man who can be considered a genius for portraying a wicked and evil man, or a paying public – i.e. me, when we get right down to it – who are really just a little bit fascinated by them…

Deliver us from wicked and evil men. Paul’s teaching would indicate that this is also an excellent thing to pray for ourselves and each other. So… What do we mean when we pray it? I think it’s something that we should give a little thought to.
I suspect that if most of us found ourselves in Paul’s position, we’d consider the circumstances pretty evil – being beaten to within an inch of our life, publicly flogged, people trying to kill us by hurling boulders at us, being hounded out of cities and countries, deported to a city, shipwrecked and eventually executed. It’s a pretty unhealthy CV there.

I suspect that if we found ourselves in the middle of a persecution – our homes torched, being jailed, families threatened, beaten, property confiscated by law, killed for our love of Jesus… we would find ourselves wanting deliverance from evil. I certainly would.

Paul’s thinking is almost completely the reverse, though. Again – to live is Christ, to die is gain.



Declaring the loyalty of our life… will demand our life.



Declaring the loyalty of our life… will demand our life.

When we read Paul’s incredible statement from Philippians, we see a man who understands what it means to call Jesus Kurios – Lord.

We are not of an age that easily recognizes the lordship of others. One of the reasons, I suspect, why democracy works so brilliantly in some countries and is such a disaster in other countries is how people view authority. And it has to be said that democratic countries like the US, Britain – and certainly Australia – generally hold authority in barely-concealed contempt. As a generalization, we see the law as necessary for confining others, but an infringement of our own rights. Most of the time we obey either the law or company policy or school rules because they are convenient for us to live by, but when it’s inconvenient we immediately start resenting that authority. French philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon summed up the logical extension of this: “Whoever puts their hand upon me to govern me, is a usurper, a tyrant and I declare them my enemy.” And that’s a pretty close fit for today.

What are we, with such an appalling attitude toward authority, going to make of a man who desires to be Lord over us? We call Jesus “Lord”. We call God the Father “Lord”. Have we thought about what we’re saying here?
Can we, in a society that intuitively rejects any authority placed over it… can we (not merely passively) describe Jesus as LORD – can we accept the terms of his lordship?

Calling Jesus “Lord” today doesn’t sound as strange as it did when Paul wrote to the Thessalonian church – but that’s only because we’ve made it a cliché and a bumper-sticker.


Because it’s not merely naming him. Matthew 7:21 – “Not everyone who calls me Lord-Lord will enter the Kingdom of Heaven”.
The reality of declaring Jesus’ lordship over our lives is no less shocking and confronting. It means that everything else comes… last.
Listen to what this man Jesus said: Luke 14:26; “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”
Spouses, children, mates, girlfriends, boyfriends, money, music, sex, fashion, literature, movies, shopping, driving… everything about how we live and who we are…
All collected, taken out, and laid at the feet of… our Lord.

Can we do that? Can we really do that? Can we hold those terms of his lordship in a world that makes exactly the same claims over us? At the end of the day, we have to make that choice. Being passive – and not choosing – is itself a choice.

But know this about the one who wants us to call him Lord. He is the best one to have as our ruler and our King and our Lord. Listen to his words, and weigh them against anything else that can claim our life. Jesus says of himself –
· “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me – for I am gentle, and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matt 11:28-30
· “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst” John 6:35
· “God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have life everlasting.” John 3:16

Can you think of a better one to have as your Lord?

Finally, brothers, pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honoured, just as it was with you – And pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men – for not everyone has faith. But the Lord is faithful, and He will strengthen and protect you from the evil one.
We have confidence in the Lord that you are doing – and will continue to do – the things that we command.
May the Lord direct your hearts into God’s love and Christ’s perseverance.

Amen

Artwork: detail taken from Caravaggio, Jesus & Thomas

1Ptr 2:1-3 A MATTER OF TASTE

1 Peter 2:1-3, Psalm 34:8

MEN'S BREAKFAST

5th August, 2008


I’ve had a great breakfast. Tasted great. Thanks to Bob and the boys again!

My little girl Maggie generally has a bit of brekky at about two in the morning.
Maggie’s one, and she still has a few bottles of formula. She knows that the milk isn’t just nice, she knows without thinking that it’s good for her. She knows that it’ll pack her out and make that empty feeling go away. And I can tell you something that Tim Beilharz is going to find out fairly soon, and Phil Glendenning might be learning right now… if you don’t get the milk to her in a reasonable time, she’s going to insist… and they can do that loudly. There’s nothing polite about it – they long for it, and that word – long – has a fair bit of force behind it. Especially at two in the morning.


LIKE NEWBORN BABIES DO, LONG FOR THE SPIRITUAL, THE PURE (lit. the guile-free) MILK, SO THAT BY IT YOU MAY GROW INTO SALVATION – IF [INDEED] YOU HAVE TASTED THAT THE LORD IS GOOD.
Sometimes a verse needs very little explanation – this one has a mental picture that’s so vivid… at least to anyone who’s had to deal with a hungry baby at two in the morning. Peter was telling some of the churches in Asia Minor – call it Turkey and you’ll get a rough idea – how to live. To them it was news; to us, it’s not exactly news, but it’s still pretty challenging stuff. Put away things that we used to feed off. Put away things that the world outside sees as food…
PUT AWAY… ALL MALICE AND ALL GUILE AND HYPOCRICIES AND ENVIES AND ALL SLANDER.
Malice – I was reading a biography of the Whitlam government, and I’ll never forget a description of an old politician by the name of Vince Clair Gair – a good hater. That was an attribute that political parties would encourage and nurture, and I’m pretty sure it’s still something that’s fostered – we just call it a killer attitude.
Guile – the art of using truths to tell a lie, and presenting lies as the truth. An essential in any office if you don’t want to bleed to death.
Hypocricies – Envies – resenting the success of others…
Slander – lit. evil speakings, or as Paul Barnett translates it, “bad-mouthing”.
Food for the world. If you want a guide - not to get ahead in the world, but to merely hold your own – here’s one right there. And here are foods that, when they get into our spiritual life, when they get into our church life, when they get into our family life, will pretty well kill us.

Peter looks at this list of food, and says “scrap it”. Put away – get rid of it. Detox. And instead, look at a newborn baby. . Like newborn babies do, LONG for the spiritual, the pure - literally, the guile-free – milk, so by it you may grow into salvation. There’s a couple of times where milk gets mentioned, usually by Paul, and it tends to mean gentle teaching to people who’ve just come to a knowledge of Christ. Peter wants to give us a different mental picture. Do what babies do, he says. Desire this pure food, this milk. Desire it, want for it badly, loooong for it. In maternity wards, they really encourage breast-feeding, because that’s the best possible food for babies… So that by it you may grow into salvation…

But what do newborn babies really need? They don’t scream for hamburgers or water or coffee… they absolutely need the milk, because the milk gives them everything they need. I wonder why we don’t hunger and ask for our milk too often… I wonder if we’ve forgotten what it tastes like. We live in a world that has a flavour for any possible appetite… but no nutrition. It’s like we’ve forgotten what purity tastes like.

I spent six weeks in the Solomon Islands after I left Year 12. And you know what I missed the most? Mars Bars. Here was a place where an organic shop would be useless – this food was some of the freshest on the planet. And I wanted what? It took me a while to lose my cravings for Mars Bars, though. Until one thunderously hot day fixing roofing, and someone went to get a bucket of rainwater. It was monsoon-time, and the water was as fresh as water gets – straight out of a pollution-free sky. And that water was the best thing I’ve ever, ever tasted. It didn’t just replace lost fluid. It didn’t just quench a hard-earned thirst… it satisfied, and satisfied deeply. It was beautiful. And it tasted… can’t describe that.

Long for this milk – if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. Peter lifts a line out of Psalm 34; taste and see that the Lord is good. It’s an odd phrase; taste and see that the Lord is good We’ve tasted. We’ve seen how good He is. And when we stop eating the world’s junk food, we will long for the spiritual milk – and to get others to drink deeply, too.

I love what Wesley wrote about this verse, and I’ll share it with you in closing;
The milk of the word - That word of God which nourishes the soul as milk does the body, and which is sincere, pure from all guile, so that none are deceived who cleave to it. That you may grow thereby - In faith, love, holiness, unto the full stature of Christ.

Photo of my daughter. Taken by my mum. Great, isn't it?

AFTER THE APOLOGY...

Toward a response to the Commonwealth Government of Australia's Indigenous Peoples.

(Originally written Feb 13, 2008)

The formal text of the Parliamentary Speech can be found at

http://www.pm.gov.au/media/Speech/2008/speech_0073.cfm

Photo from http://www.transit-port.net/Galleries/Australia/images/Parliament%20house.jpg

It was quite an extraordinary sensation. A hundred first-year theological students sat in silence, listening to a small portable radio. We listened intently as the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, tabled the historic motion that both recognised the brutality of, and apologised for, the policies and actions that led to what we now refer to as the Stolen Generations. His speech made no excuses, and it brought up raw and shameful aspects of Australia's past.

Several reactions were evident in the room. There was great relief that this apology had finally been made. There was sadness that such a horrific and heartless policy was still in action so recently (Prime Minister Rudd noted that the forcible separation of children from their mothers was still occuring in the 1970's – pointedly noting that there were some sitting Members of Parliament who had been elected during this period). There was great optimism that this symbolic gesture would become as significant a milestone as the passing of the Referendum recognising Aboriginal people as legal, voting citizens. And there was heartfelt thanks to the Lord that this country's leaders' hearts had been softened enough for this most important statement to be made.

One of the reactions that moved me the most was from an Aboriginal student. As we discussed the meaning and implications of the Apology, he said that it brought to his mind the Old Testament story of Mephibosheth. King David's extraordinary act of mercy restored the honour of the last surviving member of Saul's family; a better Biblical example of the true nature of reconciliation between former enemies would be hard to find.

So far, so good. But tomorrow – and the next day and the next – what should our response be? We truly need to expend thought here. We must, as Christians first, also make our own apologies. And we need to commit ourselves to true repentance within our own hearts.

For the times that we have listened to racist talk (and in many cases watched racist action) and done nothing, we must apologise and seek repentence.

For the times when we have seen, read or heard commentators in the media who have deliberately sought out the worst examples of Aboriginal cruelty, abuse and violence to fellow Aboriginal, explicitly denigrating their ability to be members of “our” community – without holding the rest of Australian society to the same harsh judgement – and we have never sought to give voice to the injustice of this treatment, we must apologise and seek repentence.

For the times when we have ignored, forgotten or turned a blind, apathetic eye to the conditions that past generations and governments have condemned our country's first inhabitants to, we must apologise and seek repentence.

And, in our hearts, we must also recognise that the goal of “reconciliation” is both a poor and inaccurate goal to aim for. The very word “reconciliation” implies a bringing-together of peoples who were once united but then divided. Such a word is appropriate for David and Mephibosheth. It is appropriate for America following the Civil War, or, perhaps in a modern context, for the Sunni and Shi'a communities of Iraq. But from the first arrival of European discoverers until today, we must acknowledge that our two communities have never been close enough to call united – ever.

We must think in terms of uniting, not reuniting. To consider it in other terms will still hide the gulf that has always separated us.

What then? I suspect that our proper response, for the immediate future, is to say no more. And to listen. We must not assume that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities will simply, immediately and unconditionally accept these apologies as they stand at present. For that would be just as arrogant as never apologising in the first place.

We must listen. If there are loud voices from the Aboriginal communities raising the issue of monetary compensation, we must listen. If there are loud voices from our own communities complaining about the issue of compensation, we must insist that they be quiet and listen.

We need to wait, prayerfully and anxiously, for the leaders of the Aboriginal communities to represent their people as they reply. We must not simply make plans to “improve their lot” until we have heard the reply. We must demonstrate that we consider their views not just worthy of listening to but absolutely critical to begin the process of healing.

And then? One thing at a time. There have been moments of national significance in the healing process between black and white. The Referendum. The election of Aboriginal Senators and Members of Parliament in both State and Federal Government. The appointment of Aboriginal judges to the High Court. The recognition of native title. And yet the separation between our two communities is still shamefully apparent. By any measurement – from infant mortality to life expectacny, from rates of diabetes to literacy levels – the division between black and white is an indictment upon our inability to match words with deeds. Faith without works, we recognise, is dead. And there have been, sadly, few enough reasons for the Aboriginal community to place faith in anyone else.

Prime Minister Rudd's address contained an echo of the apostle Paul, when he noted that words without actions are like a clanging gong. We need to amplify the echo from 1 Corinthians 13. Without love, even the best of actions and intentions will come to ends both incomplete and manipulable. For our part, we need to demonstrate that love. Before that, we need to have that love for them. Do we need to remind ourselves about love? That famous passage is read out enough times at weddings, and it may well be that 1 Corinthians 13 is the most appropriate text to meditate upon as we seek union – for our two communities to finally become one flesh...

Jn 3:16 - NICODEMUS & ME

Sermon

4th August, 2008

John 3:1-21
LET’S PRAY…
God our Father, you have given us Your thoughts and Your heart and Your Word in the Bible. We pray that as we explore it today you will open our eyes to the very familiar, that you will help us in the renewing of our minds, that we may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of Yours. Help me to speak clearly, to speak Your Truth clearly, and for us all to understand your good and perfect Word more clearly.

One of my little indulgences is a monthly magazine called “Wheels.” You will, I know, be very surprised that it is all about cars – almost all forms of new cars. From supercars made from unobtainium to cheap and cheerful lunchboxes on wheels, the magazine test-drives everything it can on the Australian market. But there’s one tiny column that appears every month, called “Trainer Wheels.” Famous drivers, designers and bosses of major car companies are asked about their first car – what it was, what they loved about it, and what happened to it.

And there is one common thread here… everyone falls madly in love with their first car. Even if it’s not a good car (and let’s face it, not very many first cars are much good, in the grand scheme of things), they almost universally speak luminously about the joy of their first car. The new freedom it gives them, how it opened up a whole new world for them. They remember that car with great fondness, even when they recall the way that it never started reliably, or very reliably stopped in rain, traffic, hills and for no reason whatsoever.

My first car didn’t last very long – it lasted three weeks before I went through a GIVE WAY sign and nearly straight through another car. Ouch. I suspect Brad Busch can remember that one, too. So my next car was the one that helped me discover the world. It was a Mitsubishi Colt, and it was… terrific! It hated hills, had the weirdest gearbox I’ve ever seen, but it took me places. It took me through the National Park at a speed I shouldn’t advertise, it took me down to my grandmother in Kiama, it took me to Canberra non-stop, and we discovered the magic of the Kings Highway, the road past Jindabyne and so many other great places.

But it also took me to work and back every day, and did the mundane things as well. Shopping. Picking up friends. Just… you know, the usual things. And after a while, it became… an appliance. It was unbelievably reliable and white, so after a while it only got washed when people got dirty leaning on it, and it only got maintained when weird noises happened. Eventually I just sold it, and there was very little sentiment when I did.

What happened there? Had the car deteriorated or let me down? No – it stayed pretty bulletproof right up to the end.

BUT WHAT HAPPENED…?

We can do this with our Bibles.

We can do this with Jesus.

We can, if we are not very careful, lose our great love and passion. We can live with Christianity for so long it’s like skin – but we don’t notice our skin at all unless there’s something wrong with it. Bible verses that rang like sonar in our hearts become… what do they become? We don’t disbelieve them all of a sudden, we don’t forget them… they just become part of the furniture; old, comfy, useful when needed but utterly unseen when we’re not looking at it? First-car syndrome? Is that it? How did that happen?

How did my favourite book become an appliance?

One thing about the Bible, and those phrases in it, is that they never ever lose their point, their effectiveness, their relevance, their wisdom or their God-breathed purpose. It’s the Word of God. But we humans can take the most amazing things and just... normalise them. What’s a novelty or a revelation one week is incorporated into normal life the next.

Sad, in a way.

Sadder when it happens to our Bibles. How many people were persecuted and burned, like Tyndale, for attempting to publish a version that anyone could read? How many people still die in the attempt to take it to all the corners of the map? A couple of months ago Michael Newman told us about people determined to bring the Gospel to North Korea... and they staged their operations out of communist China. China is very hostile to the Word – North Korea is mortally opposed to it. This extraordinary book drives people to do the most extaordinary things... and yet we are entirely capable of reading it all without hearing a thing.

We’re going to look at a verse that is instantly familiar to almost all of us, and we’re going to have a look a guy who knew his Bible inside-out, but still had trouble understanding the importance of what God was saying in the Scriptures that he knew so well.

Here it is. John 3:16. How does it go again?
For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.

It’s a diamond – it captures the Gospel of love and salvation so simply. If you wanted a simple summary of the whole of Jesus' purpose and God's intent, here it is. It sounds like something that would turn up in one of Paul’s letters, or possibly John’s.

But here’s the odd thing; it wasn’t written by someone looking though the life of Christ, needing to distill the essence of the Gospel message's simplicity.

Jesus said it, and he said it right at the beginning of His ministry.

Jesus had an extraordinary conversation with Nicodemus, and we’ve eavesdropped in on that conversation this morning already. I’m not going to dive into the whole conversation. It’s so rich and full of fresh wisdom that we could spend weeks in there. And if I take too long, I’ll be in trouble… babies need feeding, nappies need changing – and that’s just MY kids. But I would really encourage you to go into John Chapter 3 this week and spend more time eavesdropping in on this conversation again.

What I want us to consider for the next few minutes is what Nicodemus heard – and what it must have done to his head.

Before we do that, we probably need to be introduced to Nicodemus. We actually know very little about him – he only turns up in John’s gospel, we only see him very briefly on three occasions, and only hear his voice twice. We know that he was a Pharisee, and a ruler of the Jews… by that we can probably infer that he was a member of what we would term the Supreme Court in Jerusalem – the Sanhedrin.

Now we know about the Pharisees, right? They were the bad guys, weren’t they? My mum and dad spent four years all-up in Singapore, and they wrote in a letter once that going to the movies was quite an experience. The local audience would loudly cheer the hero, and really give the bad guys a big booo! And we get that same quick response when we hear the word “Pharisee” – booo! They’re bad!

It’s not quite that simple, though. Most people in Judea saw them as the good guys. They appeared about 200 years before, and they essentially opposed the corrupting influences of the outside world. Since the return to Judea from exile there were armed invasions in which terrible atrocities had been committed, the Temple had been defiled, and the territory was governed from overseas. But there were more subtle invasions – Greek society itself had arrived in Palestine, and the way people lived was changing dramatically. By the time Jesus began his ministry the language of the street was Greek, business was conducted in Greek fashion, entertainment had a very Greek flavor, and it was getting harder and harder to maintain Jewish customs, Jewish morality and Jewish thought.

The Pharisee’s job was essentially this – to remind God’s people, Israel, how to keep being God’s people. They reminded Jews how to stay Jewish. Much as Jewish people today will remember the Nazi atrocities for hundreds of years, the Jews of Jesus’ day had their own horror that they remembered – the Exile. They believed that they were dragged into exile as punishment for disobedience against the Lord God (and there is much in the Old Testament that confirms that this was the case). And they were determined to never ever place themselves in that position again. From the first reading in Nehemiah 8 (and I’m sorry for all of those names in there – that’s a hard reading) we see the people of Israel, returned from exile, re-opening God’s word, weeping as they understood it again, then being joyful, “because they now understood the words that had been made known to them.”

They were going to obey God, obey his Laws to the letter, and ensure that there was never a chance that they COULD disobey. A couple of hundred years later, the Jewish people were waiting anxiously for the Messiah to bring the Kingdom Of God, and the last thing that they wanted to be was disobedient. And, a couple of hundred years on, the Pharisee’s main task was to make sure that it stayed that way.

The Pharisees were like lawyers. The people made inquiries as to the Law, to everyday activity, to find out whether a particular act would be sinful where the written Law was unclear. And the Pharisee’s job was to advise how God’s law could be interpreted in the context of a modern, rapidly-changing society and culture.

One of the ways that they did this was to thoroughly immerse themselves in the Law; they had read it and found 613 commandments in the Books of the Law - 248 were positive laws (you shall do this) and 365 were negative laws (thou shalt not), Around these laws they made a “hedge” of restrictions – the idea being that if you didn't go over the hedge, you wouldn't be ABLE to break the Law itself.

In theory, it was a great idea – but by the time of Nicodemus, these hedge-laws had in themselves become so restrictive that the real intent of the Law was becoming lost. There were now 39 specified prohibited acts on the Sabbath. Keeping the Law was not just about an individual doing the right things – it was a matter of national security. The idea of being obedient to God as an act of love was disappearing.

And in stepped Jesus.

He had already made a stir for miraculous signs – as well as assaulting the business of the money-changers in the Temple. Nicodemus met Jesus at night. We don’t know why night – whether he was afraid to be seen in alliance with a potential trouble-maker, whether he had been sent by the Supreme Court to quietly see what this man was really about, or simply because night-time was the only opportunity to meet Jesus one-on-one.

Whatever the reason, Nicodemus came to Jesus.

“Rabbi,” he said, “we know you are a teacher that has come from God. For no-one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.” A good way of introducing himself, and he probably waited a similar reply. Jesus doesn’t do this – his reply cuts straight to Nicodemus’ heart. For a man charged with helping Israel prepare for the coming of the Kingdom, Jesus’ opening words must have been shocking.

“No-one can see the Kingdom Of God unless he is born again.” Ouch. I can see Nicodemus in at least mental shock. Born again? What about observance? Obedience? What are you talking about? “How can a man be born again?” he asks. Nicodemus had dedicated his entire life to preparing people for the Kingdom of God, to be told that... maybe he was wrong? “How can a man be born again?”

The commonly-used Greek word for “again” is “Palin.” If I asked you to say something again, I would say “Legete Palin.” This isn’t the word that John records Jesus using. The Greek word used here is “athonen” – which also means “again,” but also carries the sense of “from above.” How can a man be born again – from above?

So Jesus explains something about birth – and while we’re here, we might just have a look at one of our other clichés for a second before we pass along. We all know the expression “Born-Again Christian”. Sometimes it’s a derogatory term, given to us by people who find Christianity a bit weird. Sometimes it’s a term we give ourselves, particularly if we have come to Christ and have had a great change in our lives. But Jesus explains exactly what he meant.

“Flesh gives birth to flesh, but Spirit gives birth to spirit – you should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’”

Do you remember when we were first born? Nicodemus should have remembered it well, and so should we. Right up the front end of the Bible, in Genesis – that book that Richard Dawkins and John Spong and so many others want us to ignore – back in Genesis, we read mankind’s birth notice.

God stooped low, scooped up the rich soil, and made Man. Then He breathed into the clay man’s nostrils, “He breathed the breath of life – and the man became a living being.” The Spirit of God gave birth to the spirit of Man. In either the Greek or Hebrew, the word spirit – p'neuma or ru'ach – has the same sense of dynamic, moving, living energy; breath, wind. “He breathed the breath of life – and the man became a living being.” “You must be born again.” “Spirit gives birth to spirit.” We could spend a long time here – but the nappies are waiting. Let’s move on.

Nicodemus was really under the pump, now; he looked at Jesus and said, “How can this be?” Jesus looked at him. “You are Israel’s teacher, and you do not understand these things?” And Jesus shows Nicodemus His authority to say what He is about to say next; I'd love to linger through here as Jesus throws down credential after credential, but we don't have time today – it is important, though, because what Jesus says next was so profound and so earth-moving that nobody without those credentials could have said this.

“For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

Jesus just changed the orbit of the world.

What did Nicodemus hear? Let's stand by Nicodemus for a moment. Now there are several things that Nicodemus would have been familiar with – for a start, the value of sons. They were, in those times, the future of your family. An eldest son would not only provide for you in your dotage, but they would carry all that you had – and all that you were – into the future. Sons were your life into the future, they were your continued existence. Eldest sons were your treasury, your bank of wealth and knowledge. Only sons were doubly precious... they were irreplaceable; in many ways completely priceless. If an only son died, there would be precious little that would survive past your own life.

Nicodemus would also have a knowledge of sons in the Bible – particularly when sons were given to God. He would recall the story of Abraham taking Isaac up a hill with a knife and a rope. Remember that? He would know about Samuel's mother, Hannah, enduring barrenness for years, praying to the Lord in the bitterness of her soul, having her desperate prayer answered... and finally physically handing the toddler to God; “I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of Him. So now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life he will be given over for the Lord,” said Hannah. The cost of giving God one’s only son is massive. These people loved God so much that they gave their one and only sons… This is something that Nicodemus could understand. And Nicodemus is the first to hear of the price God is prepared to pay for His world, His people. Can you imagine his shock? I think that idea would take some time to chew over.

I’m a father. I love my children, and I would do almost anything to protect them. If someone broke into my house and threatened my family, would I lay down my life for any one of them? I pray that I never have to find out, but I would.

If my youngest daughter, Maggie, develops a terrible condition that requires me to donate a kidney, I’d do it in a flash.

But what if she needs both of my kidneys? What if the cost of sustaining her life was my own possible death? I can’t imagine a more horrible choice – either choice would leave unendurable pain. Her or me.

One step closer...

What if the only possible donor was my little two-year old, Ben? My gorgeous little red-headed smiling tornado… could I make that choice? To save my daughter’s life, could I willingly give away my son?

One step closer...

But… would I be willing to give up one of them for someone who didn’t deserve it? If Osama or Amrozi or Adolf could be saved by a transplant that could only be obtained from my Benny? Would I even allow the thought? There is no way that I could possibly contemplate this.

And here is where we find grace. Another one of those words that we as Christians use over and over till we’ve almost lost touch with the meaning. Grace. Grace is expensive, horribly, horribly expensive. Grace is unutterably painful to God our Father. It is completely unnatural, it is an utter reversal of logic, and it IS the full love of God.

Back to Nicodemus. How is he doing? His shocks aren't over yet. Before his ears have recovered, the second one comes. “Whoever believes in him will... have everlasting life.” Jesus announces that God’s gift is not just for the salvation of the Jewish race alone – the people who knew that God had set them apart – but for everyone. “Whoever” must have been a terrifying word to Nicodemus. He would have spent his adult life protecting his people from the influences of the whoevers. God's Chosen people were set apart from the whoevers

What was Jesus saying? Where could Nicodemus go from here?

We know very little about Nicodemus. John's picture never tells us how Nicodemus reacted to this news. We don't see him as we see the young rich man walking away from Jesus with a sad heart. We don't see him outraged at the outrageous teaching. We don't see him casting everything aside to join His disciples. We only see him twice more. At the tail end of John 7, we see him with the chief priests and the Pharisees. They are all hostile towards Jesus, His message, and the mob that follows Him. Only Nicodemus' voice is raised in concern regarding their summary judgement of Jesus. And our final glimpse is of him accompanying the broken body of Jesus, wrapping the corpse and laying Him in an unused tomb.

There are quite a few similarities between Nicodemus and us. A lot of Nicodemus' thoughts and fears will be very familiar to us. Like him, we are mostly familiar with our Bibles. Like Nicodemus, we live in a world of corrupting influences. Like the Jewish people of his time, we wait anxiously for the Messiah to bring the Kingdom Of God, and the last thing that we want to be is disobedient. Nicodemus considered himself living in the Last Days. So do we. So many of Nicodemus' day-to-day concerns are dilemmas in 21st Century life in Australia – and even in the Shire. How do we remain obedient to God in a world which mocks our Lord, which discourages Christian ethics, which encourages greed and selfishness and immorality? We go to our Lord in prayer, and we look to our Bibles – just as Nicodemus would have done.

How, then, do we react to our Bibles, to these volatile and dangerous ideas that this strange man Jesus brings into the world? We can despise and reject them utterly, which some do. We can take little chunks that we agree with and discard the rest as irrelevant – window-shopping through the Bible for the nice bits without having to scare ourselves with the hard teachings. We can even study it so intently that we know the Bible backwards, understand its historical significance, wrestle with the ancient manuscripts, and study and learn it much like a scientist dissecting a new species of animal... and yet be completely untouched by anything of what we've read. We can look for all the rules, the do-and-do-not lists, assure ourselves that we are living a life in accordance with Scripture – and yet have a heart so cold and an attitude so bitter that nobody around us is even remotely interested in our religion in case they become the same.

We live very much in the world of Nicodemus' heart. So how do we deal with John 3:16? How do we deal with the hard bits? Because there are hard bits there for us to deal with, and we may well struggle with the same thoughts as Nicodemus.

“Whoever”is a big word. Do we really want the “whoevers” to be saved? How do we deal with the horrible and cruel people we regularly see on the news? The fraudsters, murderers, brutal dictators? Do we hear about them on the radio and join in the calls to condemn them? Do we laugh when we hear about the shamelessly stupid exploits of the Britney Spears' and Paris Hiltons of the world? Or do our hearts go out to them in the hope that somehow they, too, will not perish but have everlasting life? Is there anyone here who's prayed for Paris Hilton? I'll confess – I never did until I started writing this.

The “Whoevers” are the bosses that don't care for their employees if it gets in the way of a profit. The “whoevers” are the people behind counters who give us poor, shoddy service. The “whoevers” are the drunks wandering past our windows at three in the morning. Can we accept that God loved these “whoevers” so much that He gave His only Son? Can we accept that and praise God for his strange, unnatural and painful grace? Or do we find ourselves with a heart like the brother of the Prodigal Son, resentful that people who rightly should be condemned are also in the Lord's heart?

Here's the beauty of God's Word. It always challenges us – even the very familiar bits. So how do we stop the familiar bits becoming those cliches, those appliances like our first cars? My nature and my natural instinct is sometimes to hear it or read it, and just nod and go “uh-huh, I know that...” How do I overcome my proud, human nature?

I don’t think I can.

But I think God can.

I think that ONLY God can work against my nature and my natural instincts, and ONLY God can light up my eyeballs when I come across a verse that changes the world. Paul wrote to the Romans and said, “Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” Reading the Bible will often require our minds to be transformed, because it isn't an ordinary book.

We read so much for entertainment these days. Some of us want a good story with racy plots and blood all over the place. Some of us look for exquisite literature of the highest order, and we love to read authors of wit and erudition. Some of us crave inspirational books – books that show us how to live our lives to its fullest potential. And some of us just need a book to read before the light goes out at night. And you will find all of this and more here.

But if that's all we seek, if that's all we think we need, we're going to blind ourselves to so much of what God wants to say to us. Because this is how God has chosen to speak to us. He is a God of words, He is a God of His word, and a God of the Word. “In the beginning,” John tells us, “was the Word; and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In the Greek, the emphasis is even more dramatic; The Word was with God, and God was the Word!

Reg and my father often give me exactly the same advice. “Read your Bible and say your prayers.” Dad still adds “brush your teeth,” which Reg has never seen a need to do yet. But it's our communication with God. Praying without reading the Bible is a one-way monologue. Reading the Bible without praying regularly is pretty much the same.

A German Bible translator called Martin Buber once wrote this about our Bibles; “Read the Bible as if it were something entirely unfamiliar, as though it had not been set before you ready-made. Face the book with a new attitude as something new. Let whatever may happen occur between yourself and it. You do not know which of its sayings and images will overwhelm and mould you.”

Over the last four weeks we've looked at four very familiar verses. Last week James took us through Matthew 11, the yoke being easy. Jai walked us through John 6, food that doesn't perish. James started the series with Matthew 5, “Blessed are the meek.” You know what? It doesn't matter how familiar we are with any of it – this book is so rich that a verse that you've read a thousand times can suddenly throw you a very great surprise.

Read it afresh every time. Take nothing for granted. And we need to let God renew our minds in this. Pray as you read it.

We need to let the Lord renew our minds every time we read...

“In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God... and God was the Word!”

We need to allow God to show us the potency of His Word all over again. For His sake. For our sake. Every day.
Amen.