Bear With and Forgive One Another (Colossians 3.12-14)

Introduction

Kathie and I celebrated our wedding anniversary on Friday. 27 years. Sometimes people ask what the secret of a long marriage is. My answer is this; we go out to a restaurant twice a week and arrange a little candlelit dinner, with soft music, and a slow walk home. She goes on Tuesdays and I go on Fridays! No seriously, here’s to you darling; no matter how old you are, you don’t look it.

Marriages require a great deal of maintenance don’t they? No marriage just turns out well on its own. It takes effort to make the relationship work because however in love a bride and groom are on their wedding day they’re entering into a coalition of two sinners, and sin always spoils everything. Your garden needs trimming and weeding otherwise it becomes a jungle. In the same way, married couples need to constantly affirm one another, listen to one another, be patient with one another and forgive one another or the marriage will soon become life-sapping. The thing is what is true for gardens and marriages is also true for churches.

Ask most people in the UK what they think of church and you will hear words like “boring,” “hypocritical,” “irrelevant” and “judgmental.” But God’s great vision for his Church is of an alternative society, a new community, an inspirational fellowship of people quite unlike anything else you can find on earth.

Have you ever asked yourself why Jesus spent three years with a motley collection of lame ducks and losers? He did it to build them into a united band of brothers capable of taking on the might of the Roman Empire and winning. It has been calculated that 44% of the letters of the New Testament are specifically about how we should get along with one another. If anyone thinks it is inconsequential that so much of the New Testament is about relationships they’re wrong. One of the key measures of our effectiveness as a church is how we get on with each other.

The theologian Andrew Kirk puts it this way: “What the New Testament means by the Church is not an institution which owns property, performs rites and organises meetings, or even one that plans strategies to evangelise unreached people. Rather, [the church] is a group of ordinary people who, because they are experiencing the immense grace of a compassionate God, are learning how to overcome hostility between people, forgive and trust one another, share what they have and encourage one another in wholesome and joyous relationships.”

That is right. There are, in fact, 54 ‘one anothers’ in the New Testament, and each one is a command, not an option on a menu. Love one another, bear one another’s burdens, pray for one another, wash one another’s feet and agree with one another encourage one another, teach and admonish one another, be devoted to one another, greet one another with a holy kiss… But today, we’re going to consider what it means to bear with one another and forgive one another, both of which are found in Colossians 3.

Putting On Christ

Read Colossians 3 carefully is all about you - not as you see yourself but as God sees you. It gives you God’s perspective - and therefore the correct view - of the way things really are with us. Our understanding of spiritual reality is like looking through an opaque window; it’s always distorted by sin. From the moment we are born every one of us naturally sees ourselves as the centre of the universe. Everything revolves around me; what I want, what I like, what I need. So we need to be educated by the Word of God and learn to place Christ at the centre of all that is.

According to Colossians 3, as God sees you, once you’re a Christian, the personality you were born with (with you at the centre of everything), as far as God is concerned - it’s all dead and buried. It’s finished. All the wrongs you have done and every wrong done to you… the funeral is over. And it says that God has made you a new personality, a new self with a new heart. Every believer in Christ is a new creation, born again. “You died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (v3). “You have been raised with Christ” (v1). That is your status in God’s eyes if you are a Christian this morning.

It means this; putting it crudely, because you and I have been given royal status by God it is expected of us now to show a bit of class. So in v7 it says, “you used to walk in these [sinful] ways, in the life you once lived, but now you must rid yourselves of all [that]. We saw this week that, just because someone has connections with the royal family, it doesn’t mean they automatically live accordingly. It’s one thing to be given the status, it’s quite another to adopt the lifestyle.

The way the Bible puts it in v9-10 is this; it’s just like God gives you an entirely new wardrobe. You open the door and all the garments in there are classy, brand new, well designed, made from the best materials and perfectly fitting. Becoming a Christian was like taking off your old dirty, stained, ill-fitting, badly designed, nylon rags with holes in the arms and knees and being dressed in the very finest clothes you have ever worn. “You have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self.”

The thing is about clothes though is that you have to put them on every morning! Every day, you get up, get washed, open the wardrobe and you put on each garment, one at a time, until you’re fully dressed and ready to go out.

So that’s where we pick up the train of thought in our reading; v12.

“Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”

This is the kind of heart and attitude God wants you and me to choose and display – consciously choosing these virtues as if we were putting them on when we get dressed in the morning.

Of course, the royal robes God invites us to put on are not made of natural material. They are woven from spiritual fibres. Try as you might in your own power to always be compassionate, kind, humble, gentle and patient, they don’t come naturally. You need to let God grow them in you.

For instance, compassion. The old human nature with me in the centre says things like, “She deserved that, I don’t feel sorry for her at all.” But the new nature with God at the centre says, “She must feel terrible. But for the grace of God that’s where I’d be. I’ll give her a call and see how she is.”

Kindness; the old human nature with me in the centre says, “I’ll do my fair share but no more.” But the new nature with God at the centre says, “I’ll cheerfully go the extra mile here and that will be an offering of praise to God.”

Patience; the old human nature with me in the centre meets inconvenience and says, “I’m important, I deserve better than this!” But the new nature with God at the centre smiles and says, “the Lord is slow to anger and abounding in love. How can I reflect his heart in this situation?”

Forbearance

So v13: “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”

What does it mean to bear with someone? It’s a bit of a strange expression. When you phone someone up and they ask you to hold the line, sometimes they say, “Just bear with me a minute…” It sort of means, “I want you to just wait and not get annoyed.” I looked up the original verb in my Greek Interlinear and traced all the other times it is used in the New Testament.

It turns up in Mathew 17.17 when the disciples failed to drive out an evil spirit and Jesus says, “You unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?” So we might say “put up with others in the church even when they are slow to learn, annoying and a bit useless.”

The word appears again in Acts 18.14 where it is translated “to listen to someone.” You know when you’re in a conversation and you are so focused on putting across a point of view that you don’t really hear what the other one’s saying because you’re preparing to say your bit? Well, I think it’s saying here that “bearing with one another” means really listening to what others are saying even if our first thought is that they’re going to talk rubbish.

It appears again in 1 Corinthians 4.12 when Paul talks about his response to constant hassle. “When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it.” So we might say “endure others in church even when you are shabbily treated and gossiped about by them.”

So put up with one another’s irritations, listen to one another’s words and endure one another’s failings for the sake of Christ. Bear with one another.

Forgiveness

Verse 13 continues, “forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

If you have a grievance it means you have a legitimate reason to feel offended. For example, if someone promises to help you clean up the garage, but instead they fall asleep watching football on the sofa, you have grounds to feel aggrieved. If someone promises to meet you at a certain time, and they forget and leave you standing out in the rain, you have a valid grievance. I bet everyone in this place today could come up with a list of legitimate reasons why we have been upset with certain people. In fact, here’s a list I’ve been keeping since I arrived here nearly two years ago… (produce long roll of paper). And I’m sure people could produce a roll of paper twice as long for the things I’ve aggrieved them over in half the time.

The Bible doesn’t say “don’t have grievances.” It assumes that you will. It says, when you do have grievances, don’t run away, sort it out.

You may not have realised this, but there are in the New Testament several different words translated “forgive.” The one here in Colossians 3.13 means to freely or graciously give something away. The idea is of someone treating someone else better than they really deserve. Imagine someone says something untrue and quite hurtful about you, or someone badly lets you down. And they realise it and say “sorry.”

What about your pound of flesh? Natural justice suggests that you have the right to demand something from them in compensation for the distress they caused you. But this word “forgive” means not only do you refuse to insist on reparation, but instead you freely and graciously return good for bad. That is the meaning of this word. “Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” When the Lord forgives, he doesn’t just make a bad situation neutral, he goes one step further and makes a neutral situation beautiful.

There’s a story about a man who drank a bit too much at a party and embarrassed his wife. The next morning he felt really bad and asked her to forgive him. She said she would, but day after day she kept bringing it up. So one day in discouragement he said to her, “I thought you said you forgave me.” She said, I did. He said, “Yes, but I was hoping you’d going to forgive and forget.” She said, “I have, I just don’t want you to forget that I have forgiven and forgotten!”

Ah, ah! No cheating… When you forgive, let it go. “Yes, but I keep thinking about it, it won’t go away.” Well, every time the thought comes back to mind, rebuke it and send it back to the cross, the place where God completely forgives and permanently forgets in Christ.

Ending

And finally, verse 14: “And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” After you have dressed yourself with compassion and kindness and humility and gentleness and forbearance and forgiveness – after you have put all these other things on, then, over all these virtues cover yourself with love.

What kind of “love” are we talking about here? When people think of “love,” they usually think of two-way love. In other words – you love me, and I’ll love you too. I love you because there are certain things that attract me to you. And you love me because there are certain things that you like about me. But when the Bible says, “Over all these virtues put on love,” it’s talking about one-way love. In other words, you love me, even if I don’t love you back. You love me, even though there is nothing particularly loveable about me. It’s the kind of love that God has for the world. Even though you didn’t ask for it, Jesus loves you and died for your sins on the cross.

That’s the kind of love that God is saying he wants us to have here – a one-way kind of love. Love the unlovable. Love even though no one says thank you. Love even though no one appreciates what you do. Even though there are a million reasons to not love someone, love them anyway. “And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”


Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 30th May 2010

Chasing the Wind (Ecclesiastes 2-3)

So, here you are, on the brink of independence. This service marks, not just the end of the school year, but the end of school full stop. Soon it’ll all be over and most of you will be waiting on the A-level results that will decide where you’ll be living in October. Where do you think you will be this time next year? Durham? Exeter? Oxford? Manchester? Basildon..?

It wasn’t all that long ago that you first walked into this school as children. Now you’re about to leave it as adults, legally able to drive, marry, vote, drink alcohol and gamble online.

As the Apostle Paul in our first reading reflected on his passage from infancy to adulthood he said, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” And he went on to talk about hope. It’s not greater than love, he says, what is? But it is up there in his all-time top three of virtues. Faith, hope and love, and the greatest is love.

What about hope, then? Hope is defined in the dictionary as “expectation and desire for something to happen.”

As I awaited my A-level results it was more a case of desire than expectation - hoping against hope; clinging to the mere possibility that I might attain the grades I had scarcely worked for. Some hope… But I’m sure you have greater cause for optimism than I had.

At the time in my life when I was sweating on my A-level grades, I was looking forward to something better. Even two years before then - I always seemed to be dreaming of utopia which was just over the next horizon. So when I was 16, I said “When I have a few exam certificates to my name, life will be great,” and then I passed my GCSEs, doing inexplicably well, went on to VI form - and for a couple of months it felt great to be free.

But as soon as term started in September, I found myself thinking “I wonder if there is more to life than this? I hope so.”

And then I thought “Maybe when I’ve got a girlfriend, things will finally start to get interesting.” And somehow or other, I don’t know how I did it, but I somehow managed to get a girlfriend and it was amazing… for about three weeks! But then my sweetheart and I had a big argument about nothing and, (I still maintain I was right by the way) but before I knew it, I discovered I had been unceremoniously ditched. “I wonder if there is more to life than this? I hope so.”

So then I thought, “Well, when I get a job, I’ll earn some serious money and I’ll be able to buy more and do more.” And I got a job offer. Oh, the elation when I opened the letter! “Dear Mr. Lambert, we are delighted to inform you…” So I started work and for a short while it was fantastic. The adrenalin, the challenge, the pay slip at the end of the month… But then the novelty of that wore off too. “I wonder if there is more to life than this? I hope so.”

I’ve found that many people spend the best part of their lives dreaming about the next house, the next promotion, the next relationship, the next holiday. But when they get there, they find it doesn’t really satisfy them in the way they hoped it might.

King Solomon was such a man. He lived about 1000 BC which was Israel’s golden age. And he was in charge of it all. Its economic wealth, its cultural influence and its military strength were at their zenith during his reign. Israel’s borders have never in history been so extensive either before or since. This is the narrator of our first reading and he tells there of the many things he did in his quest for greatness.

Like many of you here, I suspect, with the best years of your lives ahead of you, he was ambitious. He wanted to be significant and leave his mark on the world. His engineering feats were legendary; grand building projects, fortress cities, landscaped parks and gardens, impressive roads and canals...

People worked for him in their thousands. He was one of the most powerful people on earth. Royalty from all over the then known world travelled to Jerusalem to admire the splendour and finery of his palace and kingdom. He amassed unparalleled wealth and lived the luxurious life of a superstar – including the charm. As far as we can make out, there were about 1000 women in his life. Everyone wanted to be Solomon and everybody envied what he had.

He planted vineyards and produced the finest wines. He held banquets serving the world’s most luxurious and sumptuous food imaginable with top celebrity guest lists. Anyone who was anyone had to be seen at Solomon’s dinner parties.

He took to writing; he was a gifted poet, a prolific song writer, a brilliant philosopher, and he also delved into science and academic investigation.

In fact, he says “I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me… Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.”

Like when you try and hold water in your hands, as hard as you try, it leaks out and it’s gone. “I wonder if there is more to life than this? I hope so.”

He came to a depressing conclusion; that study, wealth, fame, greatness and unlimited pleasure just don’t satisfy the soul. They can’t because there is a God-shaped gap in every human heart that gives us a yearning, a restlessness, for the eternal. Like a square peg in a round hole, nothing else fits.

Even learning and wisdom... Near the end of his life Solomon wrote these weary words; “Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.” Even Solomon sat A-levels it seems…

He also wrote this in the same chapter;

“Life, lovely while it lasts, is soon over. Life as we know it, precious and beautiful, ends… Remember your Creator while you're still young, before the years take their toll and your strength wanes, before your vision dims and the world blurs and the winter years keep you close to the fire.”

You have worked hard during your time at Yarm School. Well done. (All right, perhaps some of you haven’t worked that hard – some of you are probably a bit like me in that way)!

You have so many options and possibilities before you. I wish you well. (Not least because when you get to the height of your earning powers, you’ll be paying my state pension)!

I hope that, collectively, you’ll achieve more than Solomon, that distinguished overachiever.

But most of all, I hope that, unlike Solomon, you’ll remember your Creator while you’re still young, so you’ll not end up concluding, as he did at the end of his career, that it was all so pointless, nothing more than chasing the wind.


Sermon preached at the Yarm School leavers’ service, Yarm Methodist Church, 20th May 2010

Hope to the Helpless (Luke 7.11-17)

Among the more difficult things I get to do as a minister is taking funerals from time to time. For obvious reasons, funerals are not occasions that anyone really looks forward to attending. Once in a while, you get a funeral that is quite depressing. Usually they’re very moving and, especially when the deceased was young, some can be absolutely heart-rending. Funerals for children or young people are often like this. There is no greater pain to observe than that of a mother burying her child. The part of her that she has just lost will always be missing. No consolation is adequate. No affliction in human experience compares with this one.

So you can picture the ghostly, grief-stricken face of the widow of Nain in Luke chapter 7 as it describes two groups of people converging at the town gate. The first crowd is the funeral cortege making its way out of the town to the cemetery. The second crowd is a large gathering of interested followers surrounding Jesus who just happens to be passing that way.

What’s going through this woman’s mind? She’s at that stage in the grieving process where everything is numb. Nothing has really sunk in yet. She still can’t believe what has happened to her. She was acquainted with sorrow. She had already lost her husband, she was a widow. Now her only son has died too and with his death the family line has ended.

We can’t always appreciate how serious her situation had become. With this death, this woman had just lost her last source of income. In a land and culture with no social security she was now facing destitution. Her son was her one and only pension plan – and the basic income that she would need in her retirement and old age was now gone forever.

In a few hours, the crowd of mourners would give her a hug, say ‘goodbye’ and then all go home. Once the last one left the funeral she’d be penniless and alone.

We know her son was grown up (it says he was a man) so we can surmise that she would have been in her forties - and in her society, at that age, her prospects for remarriage were practically zero. The bottom line was this; unless someone from her wider family took pity on her, she was facing a bleak future - probably begging bread. She would be easy prey for crooks and racketeers.

But her funeral procession meets Jesus and his followers on the way to the grave and immediately everyone knows that something is not quite right. Normally, Jesus and his entourage would just stand respectfully to one side as the funeral party passed by – or perhaps they’d join the back of the crowd out of sympathy. To interrupt a funeral procession was completely taboo. It was one of the most serious transgressions you could think of in 1st Century Jewish culture.

To touch the funeral bier, the cart on which the body lay, meant that, according to the Law, Jesus would be ritually unclean for the rest of the day. To touch the body he would be ritually unclean for a week. Jesus didn’t seem to mind that much. He never let ceremonial religion get in the way of healing someone’s broken heart.

The funeral party would have been led by the widow (the next of kin always used to go out in front); so she’s the one Jesus would have met first. When the Lord saw her, it says, “his heart went out to her” and he said, “Don’t cry.”

Why did he say “don’t cry”? Was he a bit embarrassed by a show of emotions? Was he saying to her “Come on now, chin up, stiff upper lip and all that”? Never.

He didn’t want to see her suffer any more. He wanted to do something about her pain. He wanted to bring hope out of her tragedy. And so he did.

He turns to the dead young man. A body ready for burial would usually be anointed in fine spices to cover the smell of decay, dressed in strips of linen, and a shroud would be covering the face. “Young man, I say to you, get up!” The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.

And it seems to me that this is what God wants his Church to be like. That’s certainly what Lions Raw is about. I thank God for men like Jon Burns to whom God has entrusted a vision of Christians bringing blessing and renewal to some of the poorest communities in South Africa with the good news about Jesus.

• Hearts going out in kindness and compassion to the loveless and abandoned
• Drying the tears of street children who have lost their parents to HIV
• Saying to people who are down in the dust, “Young man, I say to you, get up!”
• And helping them to their feet again
• Showing the world what “Good news for the poor” looks like

Every time you watch the Three Lions on TV this summer, pray for the ministry of Lions Raw and cry out to God for the kingdom of heaven to come in power in the townships.

Pray for Matthew, Stephen and Michael who’ll be part of that 120 person army.

Matthew Trotter, Stephen and Michael Farish; why don’t you come out to the front and tell us more..?

• Why did you want to get involved in Lions Raw?
• What are your hopes and fears about the trip?
• When are you flying out to Durban?
• What exactly will your role be when you get there?
• Is there anything you still need to get sorted before you go?
• How can we pray for you while you’re out there?

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 16th May 2010

Wash One Another's Feet (John 13.3-17)

Introduction

I guess I must have been about 13 and I was late for P.E. I arrived in the sports building and hurriedly changed into my vest and shorts before walking barefoot into the gymnasium where all my classmates were standing in line. I crept in and excused myself for being late. My P.E. teacher called me out to stand in front of the others and directed everyone’s attention to my feet.

I looked down and, to my horror, they were as grimy as I can ever remember them. It looked like they hadn’t been near a bathroom in months. I don’t know why; perhaps my shoes had holes in – or perhaps I really hadn’t washed for weeks – but my feet were inexplicably and exceptionally grubby. “Lambert! Your feet are absolutely filthy! When was the last time you washed! You come here into my nice clean gym and cause a health hazard with those feet, what have you got to say for yourself?” I can’t remember what I said, but I felt deeply embarrassed as the whole class erupted with laughter, pointing at me and making faces at the lamentable state of my feet.

You know what? Let them laugh. The Lord Jesus is not only my magnificent Saviour, my unparalleled master, my righteous redeemer, and my supreme king - who justifies me, who saves me, who delivers me and who crowns me with honour – he is the God who washes my feet.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons this passage of Scripture has always touched me. Why did Jesus do it? What did he mean when he said “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me?” What’s that about? And what did he mean when he said, “You also should wash one another’s feet”?

The Upper Room That Night

Let’s go back and explore. It was the night Jesus was betrayed and arrested. There was tension in the Jerusalem air. He was in a first floor room for the Passover, which he was about to celebrate with the twelve. Everything was on the table. Everything was ready. They were all reclining around the table, rather than sitting upright. Each was lying on a thin mat and leaning on their left elbow, eating with their right. Their heads would be resting against the chest of the person to their left, their feet pointing away from the table rather than tucked under it.

In our culture people wash hands before coming to table. In Bible times people washed feet before eating. It was really necessary because everyone walked around in open toed sandals through dusty, insanitary streets. (Even in 1980 when I was in Jerusalem, my guide told me, “Mind where you’re treading because it could be anything - and probably is.” In Bible times, there were many more animals roaming around and sanitation was much more primitive. Everyone’s feet got dirty and would smell at the table.

That’s why washing feet before eating was indispensible! But unsurprisingly, nobody wanted to do it. It became the most demeaning of tasks. If there wasn’t anybody available to wash your feet, you did your own. In that very hierarchical society it just wasn’t the done thing even to wash the feet of an equal. Nobody would even think of washing the feet of somebody below them in the pecking order.

In Luke’s gospel it says that a dispute arose at the table as to which of the 12 was the greatest among them. They were jockeying for position. Who’s the most important? Who’s highest up the pecking order? Who’s top dog?

This is how it worked; the second lowest servant had the demeaning task of unfastening people’s sandals but only the absolute lowest of household servants had the indignity and humiliation of actually washing the feet afterwards. John the Baptist looked at Jesus and said, “I am not worthy of untying his sandals” but Jesus didn’t think washing feet was beneath him.

It’s difficult to think of an equivalent thing for our day and age; imagine being invited out to dinner at someone’s house and just before you sit down to eat your host gives you a toilet brush and bottle of Harpic and tells you to clean the toilets because they haven’t been done for weeks. You’d be embarrassed and taken aback wouldn’t you? You just wouldn’t ever expect anyone to ask such a thing.

But shortly before the meal was served, to everyone’s amazement, Jesus abruptly pushed himself up from his mat, left the table, took off his outer cloak, thus adopting the simple clothing of a slave, tied a towel around his waist, filled a bowl and began to wash his disciples’ feet. This is what Philippians 2 means when it says, “He made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant… humbling himself.”

One by one… he carefully took each sandal off, took each dusty, sweaty, malodorous foot, lifted it in the water bowl, splashed water over the ankles, rubbed off the ground-in dirt, paying particular attention to between the toes, until each was clean again, then he dried the feet with his towel. What was the expression on their faces as he did it? By the time he finished his towel will have been stained brown with dirt, dust and muck.

There are two things going on here. Let’s look at v6. Jesus washes these men’s feet one by one – apparently to stunned silence. When he gets to Simon Peter, Peter can’t quiet any longer. “Whoa! Wait a minute, Lord; you’re not going to wash my feet are you?”

Jesus answers, “You don’t understand now what this is about, but it will be clear enough to you later.” With respect, that’s a hung parliament of an answer. Peter wants a straight “yes” or “no.” Or to be perfectly honest, he really wants Jesus to suddenly coil back and say, “Oh, Peter, you’re right! What was I thinking! Of course this is improper. I am your superior, you are my subordinate. Oh dear, I got that wrong didn’t I? Let’s see if we can find a complete nobody from somewhere who will take care of the foot washing!” But Jesus doesn’t say that. He just looks at him.

So Peter persists, Maybe if I just say it strongly enough, Jesus will see I’m offended and back down. “You’re not going to wash my feet - ever!”

Jesus doesn’t blink. “Peter, if I don’t wash you, you have no part with me.” Unless you humble yourself and let me do this, you can’t be part of what I’m doing.

Let Jesus Cleanse You

We have to allow Jesus to wash us. Jesus is not commenting here on Peter’s personal hygiene. Jesus is saying here that there is a symbolic, spiritual significance to this washing of feet which Peter would not fully understand until he received the Holy Spirit. It is, in fact, a symbol of Jesus’ imminent death on the cross.

Jesus could have suggested that everybody wash their own feet. “Come on guys, you’ve got to take responsibility for your foul-smelling feet, I’m trying to eat here” But he didn’t. Jesus washed did them all. And in doing that, he literally took their dirt and transferred it from them onto himself. Just as, on the cross, God made Christ, who had no sin, to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. As he suffered and died Jesus took on himself the full blame and the whole punishment for all our moral filth – everything, once for all.

This is what Jesus means in v8. It doesn’t mean: “Peter, I’ll be frank with you. The smell of your feet is so horrible that I don’t think I’m ready to look at my starter until you’ve had a wash.” It means: “Peter, unless you are ready to let me wash away the stain of sin in your life, I am wasting my time with you.”

And so it is for each of us here this morning. I am dirty before God because of my sins, and there is nothing I can do to clean myself up. You are in the same boat as I am.

In Philippians 3, the Apostle Paul listed his best achievements and his most immaculate religious correctness - and then said this: “The very credentials people wave around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash - along with everything else I used to take credit for. All the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant.”

Isaiah 64.6 says that all our righteous acts are like filthy rags. That’s the good things we do. Oh, the ego, the pride, the vanity they lead to.

Your dilemma, and mine, is that we need much more than a quick spiritual wipe down to bring us up to scratch. Oh yes! We are objectively guilty before a God who is so morally pure and gloriously holy that we could never hope to earn his acceptance on the merit of our tainted goodness. Just don’t even ask. But the amazing truth is that God’s love is so high, low, deep and wide that he has decisively cleansed us from every sin; past, present and future by washing us clean, washing away the otherwise indelible stain of sin forever. That’s what the cross is all about.

Are you allowing Jesus to come near, to wash your feet? Are you submitting to his leadership, seeking his forgiveness for sin? Are you letting Christ effect that ongoing cleansing you need in order to stay in a life-giving relationship with him?

Some people needlessly forfeit intimacy with God because they won’t let Christ wash their feet in this way. “No Lord, you will never wash my feet!” The point of resistance may be failure to submit to his moral leadership; “Jesus, I am not willing to accept your decision as final my relationships, choices and values.” Or it may be a refusal to admit that there is a need for cleansing; “Lord, I’m all right really as I am. I’m comfortable with dirty feet. I don’t want need you to do anything.” Or there may be a lack trust his power to cleanse. “Lord, how can I be sure that you will want to cleanse someone as bad as me?”

This is one of the basics of what it means to be a Christian. It’s so simple. But it cuts right across the grain of ego and self-sufficiency. That’s it’s one of the keys of spiritual growth and blessing; because God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Learn the secret of daily letting Jesus bathe and cleanse you from sin.

Peter caught on pretty quickly. “Master!” said Peter. “Not only my feet, then. Wash my hands! Wash my head!”

Notice that Jesus did not say, “Since I washed your feet, you should wash mine.” This is one of the world’s ideas about love - “I scratch your back, now you scratch mine.” But Jesus’ security and self-esteem was always rooted, not in getting appreciation and gratitude from men, but in his Father’s unconditional love and approval for him.

But that’s not all. Jesus didn’t stop there. He finished off, washed them all, including Judas, and put his outer garment back on. Everyone’s eyes followed him back to his place at the table. I bet you could hear a pin drop.

Wash One Anothers’ Feet

What was he going to say now? Could he possibly come out with something more outrageous? Let’s pick it up again at v12.

“Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me Teacher and Lord, and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”

Could he possibly come out with something more disagreeable, more unpalatable, more outrageous than washing their feet? Oh, yes. He says here that it isn’t enough that God incarnate gets manure under his fingernails just before sitting down to dinner – he expects them to do the same!

“You also should wash one another’s feet.” I’ve been to Foot Washing Services before, usually organised for Maundy Thursday. And what happens is this; someone in senior leadership, a bishop for example, takes a basin and towel and symbolically washes the feet of the laity – only to go back and be waited on by his staff in his episcopal palace or castle. Some people find that sort of thing moving and uplifting. Whatever… I don’t think this kind of ceremonial show is what Jesus meant here when he said “You also should wash one another’s feet.” For a start, everyone who has their feet washed in a service like that would be mortified if their feet turned the water brown so they tend to make sure they’re spotless beforehand. Look, Jesus washed his disciples’ feet because they were dirty. They smelt. It was not a sacramental ritual – it was a functional chore.

When Jesus said, “wash one another’s feet” he was building on his commands to “love one another as I have loved you” and “live in peace with another.” He was saying to his disciples – and by extension to everyone who claims to belong to him – you must embrace a lifestyle of serving love toward others. Someone said, “Humility is not thinking less of ourselves but thinking of ourselves less.”

You know, in the hours before Jesus died the Bible tells us that there were two bowls of water. One was used by Jesus for washing other’ feet. Can you think of what the other one was? The other was used by Pontius Pilate to wash his hands of Jesus. There are only two bowls; if we do not embrace a life of lowly service we choose to wash our hands of Jesus and his message. The one and only alternative to serving others is indifference to Jesus.

When a brother or sister in Christ exasperates or angers you, creating an awkwardness or a distance between you, the easiest option is simply to wash your hands of them – just avoid them. We can even justify it. We say, “I don’t want to get hurt again, so it’s best we just stay away from each other.” Listen, Jesus washed the feet of a man who would, that night, hand him over to an assassin. Jesus washed the feet of a man who would, that night, deny ever knowing him. But I’ve seen people leave churches and go somewhere else instead of facing up to issues like this. Washing someone’s feet means swallowing pride and making a move and saying “I have not understood something,” or “I’m sorry, will you forgive me?”

In 1908 the Salvation Army held a conference. The founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth, was old by then and was unable to attend due to ill health. So he sent a telegram. The message contained just with one word. Does anyone know what it said? “Others.” The Salvos at that time were in danger of becoming inward looking. “You also should wash one another’s feet” said Jesus. But if he was sending a telegram and only had one word, I reckon it might be the one William Booth used. The Salvation Army have gone all round the world with their blood and fire. Their movement is a byword for Christian love and service to the poor and needy. Even the bitterest opponents of the gospel admit that the world is a better place for these Christians - who wash the dirtiest feet of tramps and prisoners and prostitutes and drug dealers.

Finally let’s look at v17. “Now that you know these things,” says Jesus, “you will be blessed if you… do them.” Don’t be distracted by that word “blessed.” It can sound a bit churchy and religious but it just means “happy” or “satisfied” or “contented.” Jesus says here that foot washing is the pathway to true happiness.

Don’t believe the world when it says that you’ll find fulfilment when other people run around you and give you what you want when you want it. That’s a lie. Jesus says you can only be truly happy when you have learned to wash the feet of others the way he, on the cross, has washed you clean from sin. That’s the truth.


Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 9th May 2010

Change the World: Heal the Sick (Luke 6.1-12)

Introduction

When we were living in France, I used to lead a home group in the east of Paris at the home of a couple who were quite young in the faith. They hadn’t been Christians very long. They hadn’t grown up with any exposure to Christianity and had so much to unlearn and so much to learn. So for several years a group of about 10 of us used to meet weekly at their place to read the Bible and talk together about what we were reading.

Between 1993 and 1995 their son Quentin had many health problems. He seemed to be in a permanent sickly state; flu, high temperatures, gastroenteritis, infections, earaches; nothing life threatening but it was unrelenting. He had to be hospitalised several times in that period because medicine just didn’t seem to change anything. One night his mother Eloïse, completely at the end of her rope, asked the group to pray for her son’s healing. No doubt about it, he was ill way beyond what was normal for a child of his age. So, that night, as soon as he was settled and sleeping in his cot, our little group crowded into his room and started to pray over him. From that day on, Quentin enjoyed normal health.

At the time I had faith that the little boy could be healed but I did have a few doubts, I’ll be honest. What if our prayers make no discernable difference? What if the boy actually gets worse? There was one person in our group who was particularly sceptical. “Why can’t we just come here to study the Word of God together?” he said. For most it was more fear than doubt. They said that they believed God could heal, but were afraid he wouldn’t. But we did pray, the child’s nonstop sequence of ailments stopped - and I believe God did that.

Now, I share that little story with you not because it was particularly remarkable – I have seen God do much greater things in answer to prayer for healing – but because that was the day I discovered that healing was essential to the mission of the church. Essential. Not peripheral, not incidental, not secondary, not trivial – but absolutely vital and central.

Since the day I was converted at the age of 17, I have believed that God can and does heal today. The more I read the Bible the more convinced I am that this ministry should be a significant feature on the public face of the Church; that all Christians, as a matter of course, should know how to pray for the sick in the power of the Spirit, expecting that God will raise them up.

That does not mean, incidentally, that we should snub the National Health Service and medical science in general. In fact, our reading tonight, describing the instant healing of a man with a crippled hand, was written up by Luke who was a medical doctor. But the Church is designed by God to be a centre of healing for the world. It’s in our DNA.

I have detected a shift recently in the Church’s approach to healing. All my life so far I’ve been used to thinking about healing services in church, prayer ministry at the communion rail, mention of people needing of healing during the intercessions, leaflets like this with lists of names for prayer… but in the last few years God has raised up people who have put the healing ministry back where Jesus exercised it; in the market place, in the public squares and street corners.

Healing on the Sabbath

Let’s take a closer look at the reading in Luke’s gospel. It’s a tale of two Sabbaths. In v1-5 Jesus and his men are walking through a field of wheat and, being a bit hungry, they rub off the chaff from some stalks of wheat and eat the cereal grains. When grain in a wheat field begins to harden, you might never have realised this but it is really good to eat raw. You pluck the heads off the corn, and then rub it in your hand and eat what’s left.

For us it looks a bit dishonest going into someone’s field and eating his produce without asking. But in Bible times it was allowed. It must have been quite common because there is a specific Bible verse that says it’s OK; Deuteronomy 23.25 says, “If you enter your neighbour's field of grain, you may pick kernels with your hands, but you must not put a sickle to his standing grain.” In other words, take what you need for your lunch but don’t take advantage by cutting a whole load down to take away.

Anyway, that’s what the disciples do; they take just enough for themselves. The Pharisees get to hear about it and don’t like it because it’s a day for religious observance and they have repressive ideas about what the Sabbath day is for.

It is significant that the attitude of the Pharisees is recorded here because that judgemental, look-down-your-nose mindset is still commonplace today. Religious people love to pick holes and criticise. “Why are they doing this? This is against the rules. You can’t do that here. Don’t touch, don’t taste.” And Jesus says to them, “Oh Please. Go away and read your Bibles.” (I’m paraphrasing slightly here).

And then Jesus says this; “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” He is saying “I’m in charge of what happens and what doesn’t happen on Saturdays - not you.” His supremacy is over rest and recreation, his authority is over eating and drinking, his power is over life and death, his sovereignty is over health and sickness.

But it’s interesting that Jesus says, “Haven’t you ever read the Scriptures?” Because when you look in the Bible about what God says on the subject of healing you discover that as far back as Exodus 15 he says “I will not bring upon you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians for I am the Lord who heals you. Yahweh Raphé. And the Old Testament’s witness to the healing power of God is loud and clear.

When you get to the New Testament you find that one quarter of the gospels focuses on healing. A quarter! Unless God intended the healing ministry to be central to the mission of the church you’d call that a waste – or maybe just careless. And, of course, once Jesus was ascended, healing and deliverance noticeably accompanied the preaching of the Gospel as the Church expanded – authenticating the message as true.

So in v6 we find Jesus on another Saturday in the meeting place teaching. There’s a man there whose right hand is withered or crippled. The word “withered” is the same word that was used about a plant that has shrivelled up because it was never watered, or about dead wood that had become soft and weak and crumbly. It probably means some kind of muscular atrophy. People must have noticed him; you know what it’s like when someone with a very conspicuous physical deformation walks into a room; people want to stare but deliberately look the other way or pretend they haven’t noticed. It’s what I call the elephant-man in the room.

The Pharisees are only interested in religious games and power play here. Arms folded, eyes narrowed they’re thinking, “Who cares about whether this man can ever work again? Who cares about his health and wellbeing? Who cares about bringing hope to his heart and dignity to his family? Let’s see if we can spot a procedural breach of canon law here! Let’s see if we can pick Jesus up on a technicality!”

Verse 8 says, “Jesus knew what they were thinking.” Everyone can feel waves of hate and loathing and contempt from these men. Jesus asks the man to stand in front of everyone. The man gets up and walks to the front. If you don’t like confrontation you’re already feeling sick. You can hear a pin drop. People are craning their necks to look over the people seated in front of them to make sure they don’t miss anything. Will he or won’t he? Will Jesus dare to provoke the powers that be? Will he defy their organised religion?

“Let me ask you a question,” he says in v9. “What kind of action suits the Sabbath best? Doing good or doing evil? Helping people or leaving them helpless?” And he looks around slowly, looking everyone in the eye, finishing with the man in front of him. No reply. “Stretch out your hand.”

People are thinking, “Oh no! This is going to be embarrassing! Poor man! Everyone’s going to stare at that ugly, weird, freak-show, shrivelled hand.” So the man slowly lifts his arm and, as it appears before everyone, fully extended, it is already completely new and healed.

Sola; why don’t you come up and share what God has recently done in your life… (testimony followed)

Matthew 4.23 says, “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.” There are four strands to Jesus’ ministry as defined by that verse.

First, he went throughout Galilee. So he was mobile; he went from place to place and was not confined to one location. Second, he taught in their synagogues. That means he opened the Bible and explained to churchgoing types what it means. Third, he preached the good news of the kingdom. That is to say his message was enjoyable to hear, people would warm to it because it was good news – hookers, harlots, thieves, taxmen, drug dealers, crooks and rogue traders could get cleaned up and become new people because God loves them. Fourth, he healed every disease and sickness among the people. Notice that detail. It wasn’t just in the synagogue but it was among the people, it was on the streets as well.

Now. Of those four emphases what score (out of 10) would you give the Church in this country for its attempt to be faithful to Jesus’ ministry?

• Go from place to place
• Faithfully teach the Bible
• Give some good news to desperate people
• Heal in the power of the Spirit on the streets

Praise God for what he did in Sola’s life – that is an encouragement. But God does not want us to stop there. Jesus healed on the streets, the apostles healed on the streets in his name and all through church history men and women have healed in the public arena in the name of Jesus.

Irenaeus, who was Bishop of Lyons in the 2nd Century, said this; “Some do certainly and truly drive out evil spirits, so that those who have thus been cleansed frequently both believe [in Christ], and join themselves to the Church. Others have foreknowledge of things to come; they see visions, and utter prophetic expressions. Others still, heal the sick by laying their hands upon them, and they are made whole. Yea, moreover, as I have said, the dead even have been raised up, and remained among us for many years.”

You can read similar testimonies in the following centuries from Justin Martyr, Theophilus of Antioch, Tertullian, Origen, Augustine and many others. But nothing compares with the explosion of signs and wonders that has accompanied the preaching of the gospel in the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements of the 20th and 21st Centuries.

You have been born at a time in human history where the power of the Holy Spirit has been poured out in unprecedented intensity and magnitude.

Change the World

Over the next few weeks we’re going to look at a passage of Scripture and consider the ways in which God is challenging us to change the world. Each week we’ll look at ways in which that is starting to happen in our community and beyond; we’ll gather testimonies from Stockton Town Pastors, A Way Out, Sowing Seeds, Lion’s Raw and, tonight, Healing on the Streets.

The Church that will change the world will be a Church that is very at ease with the healing ministry. Not the Church of the Pharisees that squabbles and fusses over the finer points of ecclesiological trivia.

The Pharisees didn’t see hungry people who needed food. They didn’t see a man with a crippled hand. In each case, they saw a problem that would inconvenience their church routine and having church just the way they liked it.

With Jesus hungry mouths get fed and broken lives get healed.

I’m going to interview Judith in a minute because she has been very involved in Healing on the Streets since it began in Stockton about a year ago. I want you to be encouraged because God has started to make waves. But I also want you to be stirred and motivated in faith so you can see that, under God, you can surf those waves too.

In the times I have got along there I have noted three things.

1. People really stop in the middle of Stockton High Street and ask for prayer
2. God really does heal
3. The team is mostly comprised of people over forty years-old. I want to commend them for their faith and boldness. They fear nothing and no one. Like Moses, these people are legends. But I do ask myself, “Lord, where is the Joshua generation?”

So I want to challenge everyone here, however old you are. Is God calling you to join in with what he is doing in Healing on the Streets? Is there something else more important he is calling you to do between 11:00am and 1:00pm on Saturdays?

Ending

I was sitting down at my desk early this morning typing up a few notes for this talk and I was struggling for a compelling illustration to end. And I looked up for inspiration and I saw a couple of blackbirds busily gathering bits of long grass for a nest they were building – in the eaves of Witham House, just across the road from me, and which is halfway through demolition. By this time next week it will be gone, and the nest with it.

Those birds, at one level, are doing a perfectly valid thing. Indeed it would be remiss of them not to build a nest in spring; that’s what birds do. That’s not the point. The point is that they are wasting their time. Don’t waste your life! God is doing a new thing. Do you perceive it? I think that’s a word for a few people here.

Judith… (testimony followed)


Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 11th April 2010

The Day That Changed History (Acts 10.34-43 and Luke 24.1-12)

Introduction

A Bishop with a badly defective memory was having a garden party one day with all his clergy. “My dear fellow,” he said to one vicar, “how lovely to see you here today; and how is your dear wife?” The vicar was a bit surprised by this question. “She’s dead, Bishop. Don’t you remember, you wrote me a very helpful letter at the time?” “I am so sorry,” said the Bishop, “Do please forgive me.” And then he moved on. Later that afternoon, the Bishop came across the same clergyman. “Hello there,” he said. “So good to have you with us; and how is your dear wife?” “Still dead, Bishop, still dead!”

Of course, when we die it’s overwhelmingly likely that we stay that way for the foreseeable future! That’s not a particularly cheerful start to a sermon is it? So let’s spend a moment thinking about some entertaining headstones.

Here’s the epitaph for Ezekiel Aikle in East Dalhouse Cemetery in Nova Scotia: “Here lies Ezekiel Aikle. Age 102. Only the good die young.”

Emily White was an inexperienced driver from Berkshire. Her headstone reads: “Here lies the body of Emily White. She signalled left, and then turned right.”

Jonathan Blake, buried in Uniontown, Pennsylvania is a variation on the same theme. “Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake - stepped on the gas instead of the brake.”

Sir John Strange was a barrister and his body lies in a chapel in London. “Here lies an honest lawyer. And that is Strange.”

John Dryden commissioned the following epitaph for his wife in 1700. “Here lies my wife: here let her lie! Now she’s at rest, and so am I.”

Or what about this one? “Here lies an atheist six feet below - all dressed up and no place to go.”

What would you put on Jesus’ grave do you think?

“Can’t keep a good man down”? “Here today, gone tomorrow”? Or maybe just “Tomb for sale. As new, one careful owner”?

Announcing the Resurrection

I said just now that, when we die, we usually get to stay that way for some time. And that is why what the apostle Peter says in our first reading today is so unusual. It’s about what happens if you don’t stay that way longer than a few days.

To give you the context; Peter (an Orthodox Jew) is invited to the house of a man named Cornelius (who is a gentile from Rome). This is, in itself something of a marvel. In fact, it took 5 miracles to set the meeting up (a heavenly vision, an angelic visitation, a trance, the audible voice of God and an impossible coincidence) but we’ve no time to go into that now.

When Peter gets to Cornelius’ house he basically says five things.

a) It doesn’t matter where you come from or who you are; God loves you and wants to touch your life (v34-35).

b) I have seen personally how good Jesus really is; saying wonderful truths, healing the sick, driving out evil spirits and doing good (v36-39).

c) Tragically, he was put to death as a common criminal (v39b).

d) But he rose from the dead and there were many witnesses of that event (v40). In fact, piecing together all the different appearances in the Bible we know that Jesus was seen after his death and burial, alive-and-well, by over 500 people. That is a substantial number of eye witnesses.

e) Those who have experienced seeing him alive have a responsibility to tell others in turn (v41-43).

We’re going to concentrate just on the end part of this speech today. Starting at v40 where Peter says, “God raised [Jesus] from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen.” Peter is breaking news. I saw it. It really happened. I’m not making this up.

I want to share with you three simple reasons why I think it is.

1) Peter’s Change of Direction

Firstly, consider this. Peter was a fisherman who had a small business on the Sea of Galilee. He lived in a village on the northern shore of that lake called Capernaum and, as far as we can tell, he never left the area. He had no need to. There was no other fishing zone for miles and there was a large population around the Sea of Galilee that support a thriving market for his fish. Furthermore, he was a settled married man and his extended family was in that area too – so everything points to a pretty settled lifestyle. But in our reading today we find Peter in Caesarea (that’s miles away on the Mediterranean coast). Elsewhere in the Acts of the Apostles we find him in Jerusalem, in Antioch and eventually he travelled to Rome - 1,500 miles away.

Why would a settled, comfortable, small-time merchant in a provincial backwater end up travelling to the ends of the then known world? His life completely switched course. How do you account for that? The resurrection of Jesus changed the direction of his life.

2) Peter’s Unimpressed Initial Response

Secondly, think about our Gospel reading. How would you describe Peter’s behaviour there? I think it is remarkable how unimpressed he was by the fact that Jesus’ tomb was empty.

The women went first, they didn’t understand what had happened, so they went back and told the men.

Verse 11 says, “But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.”

Typical men; they didn’t take the women seriously. They probably shook their heads patronisingly and thought, “Typical women, I bet they went to the wrong graveyard and met some weirdo who said to them “Hey listen, get me a beer.” And they probably misheard it as, “He is risen; he is not here.” So they went hysterical and ran back here spouting their nonsense.

So Peter rolls his eyes and goes off to see for himself - I think it’s so he can come back later and condescendingly tell the ladies where they went wrong.

Verse 12; “Peter got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.”

There he is, scratching his head and frowning as he looks around. “I could swear that’s where the body was laid on Friday. Hang about, maybe it was in the next row of tombs? No, no, it was definitely here. Why is stone rolled away then? Maybe the cemetery staff have put the body somewhere else… But why would the burial shroud still be in the tomb then?”

Back to my question; how would you describe Peter’s behaviour there? Frankly, I think he was underwhelmed.

Actually, how many of us are underwhelmed? It’s possible to come to church on Easter day, say “hi” to the people we know, sit through the service, sing the songs, then return to our homes unmoved and unchanged. Could it be that some of us don’t really get it either?

It seems that Peter just didn’t compute that Jesus might no longer be dead. To be honest, if the Gospel said, “Peter ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and instantly believed, telling everyone that Jesus was raised from the dead” it would look a bit fishy wouldn’t it? It would just be a bit too easy. They say that if you want something to be true enough you can delude yourself that it is. But Peter didn’t get it at all until he actually met Jesus alive a day later.

No one expected it at all or understood it at first. The whole narrative rings true.

3) Witnesses

Thirdly, I want to go back to the Acts reading again. Verse 41 says; “Jesus was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen - by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

Twice in this speech by Peter he uses the word “witnesses” and twice he uses the word “testify…” which is what Spencer and Joseph have been doing already this morning. They are witnesses who testify to the power of the resurrection that still changes lives in the real world today. Their lives have been touched by grace – and it has left an impression.

Did you know that every touch, every movement you make leaves some kind of identifying mark? Fingerprinting is well known, but forensic investigators can also trace foot­ (or shoe) prints on carpets, tool marks and tyre imprints. They can be incredibly accurate. Even clean, dry­ shoes can be detected because they create electrostatic charges from which you can build up a visual image. Wire cutters, screwdrivers and crowbars that are used to force entry all leave microscopic marks that investigators can trace and identify. Tyre marks work the same way. Forensic teams can identify the brand of tyre, wear and tear on the tread and even alignment problems just by studying tyre tracks. In forensic science there is a rule that, simply stated, says, “Every touch leaves an impression.”

When a life is touched by the risen Christ, it always leaves its mark.

I met a man called Dennis Balcombe the other week. He is a church leader in Hong Kong and he often travels into mainland China to visit outlawed churches where there is a spiritual revival unprecedented in human history. Christians now number around 100 million in China - and they are more numerous than members of the Communist Party. Now, this man Dennis Balcombe had heard rumours of great signs and wonders accompanying the preaching of the Gospel there including resurrections from the dead, so he was eager to make enquiries about it. “Is what I have heard really happening?” he asked. Everyone said, “Yes, it’s true” and one man came forward saying, “I was one of those who was raised.” Others present confirmed his testimony saying they were mourners at his funeral when it happened. He had been certified dead the previous day. Many were converted... Every touch of grace leaves an impression.

That man will die again one day. Those who are miraculously healed will grow old and will one day die. But Jesus was raised and lives for evermore - saving the desperate, transforming lives, healing the sick and mending broken hearts.

That’s why the first Easter Sunday is the day that changed human history. It’s changed Joseph’s and Spencer’s human destiny. It’s changing families, communities, cities and nations. Jesus is alive!

Ending

Let me end with a story I heard recently about a Muslim man who became a Christian and some of his friends asked him why.

He answered: “Well, it is like this: suppose you are going down a road and suddenly the road forks in two directions. You don’t know which way to go. If you meet two men at the fork – one dead and one alive – which one would you ask to show you the way?”


Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 4th April 2010

After He Has Suffered (Isaiah 53.10-12)

One hot day 1947, a young Bedouin shepherd boy was throwing stones into the caves on the shores of the Dead Sea when he heard a very startling noise. Instead of the usual thud and echo of his stone striking a rock, this time it sounded like he had smashed a vase or something. He ran away as fast as he could and hid behind a rock thinking he was going to get into trouble for breaking someone’s china. But no one came out of the cave. He waited a bit longer – nothing moved. So he slowly approached the cave and went in. In the cave he saw dozens of clay jars holding nine hundred very ancient parchments; the Dead Sea scrolls. It was one of the most significant discoveries of antiquity of all time.

2700 years before that Isaiah wrote down some words about a mysterious servant figure. He wrote in graphic detail about his appalling suffering and traumatic death. It is an almost photographic record of Jesus’ passion and crucifixion, 750 years before it happened.

The description of suffering and death that is born on behalf of others, of burial and of resurrection is so thorough that some people have said it must have been fabricated by deceitful Christians after the crucifixion and made to look like it was written before. And, that’s what it looks like, after all the whole passage is written in the past tense.

But the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls has settled the matter. They discovered, a complete copy of Isaiah (including chapter 53) dating back to several hundred years before Jesus was even born.

‘My servant’, says God in 52.13, ‘will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted’. How is this going to happen? Some sort of coronation ceremony perhaps? A great splash of pomp? No. God says that he would be raised up only after he had suffered.

Just picking through the verses we have been looking at over the last few weeks, you can see twelve indisputable things about this suffering servant, all of which were perfectly fulfilled by Jesus’ death and resurrection.

1) In v3, it describes a man who will be turned upon and rejected.

He was despised and rejected by others,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

2) Verse 8 says his trial will be a miscarriage of justice.

By oppression and judgment he was taken away.

It will be a joke trial because he will be innocent in word and deed as v9 makes clear.

He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.

3) 52.14 indicates that the gruesomeness of his beatings will be so savage that people won’t recognise him anymore.

His appearance was so disfigured 
beyond that of any human being 
and his form marred beyond human likeness.

4) Verse 5 predicts that his death will result not from poisoning or hanging or from drowning or burning or suffocation - but from wounds pierced in his flesh.

He was pierced…

5) He will not try and argue his way out of it and he, who died at the same time that Passover lambs were being offered in the temple, will himself be like an uncomplaining lamb going to slaughter. You can read that in v7.

He did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

6) Nobody will complain or come to his aid – he will be deserted and denied.

We considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. (v4)

Who of his generation protested? (v8)

7) Yet v12 says that he will pray for his executioners while he is dying.

He made intercession for the transgressors.

8) Then no less than ten times between v4 and v12, it says that in dying, he will somehow take the blame for all our sickness, sadness and sinfulness upon himself. For example

Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering… (v4)


He was crushed for our iniquities… (v5)

The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (v6)

9) He really will die. He will breathe his last and his body will become a lifeless corpse. Verse 8.

For he was cut off from the land of the living.

10) Not only that, he will die among thieves and he will then be buried in the tomb of a wealthy man. Verse 9.

He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death

11) All this will be no accident, says v10, but fully in God’s plan.

Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer.

12) After suffering, death and burial, he will live again and be exalted as v10-11 make clear.

Though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days…


After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied…
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great…

What an amazing vision.

So Jesus suffered terribly, died, was buried and was raised to life. The Scriptures had said it would happen but who could have guessed that it would describe the life of a carpenter’s son turned preacher 750 years after the prophecy was written?

Crucially, it says that he bore, in his body, your sin and your sickness – and mine. He took the blame on himself. The wages of sin is death – his death, not mine. He paid my penalty. When Isaiah wrote all this down he cannot have had any idea what he was writing about, nor would any of his contemporaries.

“What’s that about Isaiah? Someone gets stabbed because of our sins?” “I don’t know, I just heard it from God and had to write it down.”

Now, with hindsight, you can see that Isaiah was painting the finest word portrait of Jesus that has ever been painted. It’s perfect. All the shades and tones are in the right place.

It describes a man who was led to a courtyard where they pressed a crown of Judean thorns (as hard as barbed wire) onto his head. He was molested and pushed around by a battalion of men, who called him names, thumped him, spat in his face and pulled out his beard in lumps. Then, he was ordered to carry the crossbeam of his cross until he couldn't lift it any further. At the crucifixion site, he was stripped a second time, stretched out on his cross and 12 inch nails were driven into his forearms. His knees were twisted round and another long nail was driven between his tibia and Achilles tendon. Then they lifted high his cross with ropes and let it drop into a hole.

Hanging there, sunburnt, thirsty, exposed, stared at, laughed at; he was left for six hours in indescribable suffering as his life ebbed away.

Still feeling the stinging sores from his beating, getting weaker as his blood pumped out of his gaping wounds, facing the pain of having been deserted by his friends, rejected by the world. It was an emotional anguish; stripped and left to die slowly in front of his mother. It was a spiritual anguish; severed from the affection of his Father, as he carried the full weight of the guilt of our sin.

For as he hung there, he took the blame and suffered the terrible retribution for every unjust hanging, every ugly riot, every spiteful attack, all the mean things you and I ever said and did, all the shameful things, the darkest evil, he bore the weight of wars and massacres, he plumbed the horrors of Auschwitz and Rwanda and Srebrenica. He felt the lonely pain of every raped girl, every shunned parent, every abandoned spouse, every bullied child, the full range of human selfishness, pain and hatred and guilt and fallenness and he took it all upon himself.

No one took his life from him. He laid it down. Such is his love for you, for you, for you.

I’m going to pass round a replica crown of thorns and some household nails. The Judean thorns that made his crown are much harder and the spikes are much longer. The roman nails that fixed him to the cross were longer and thicker. Hold them in your hands and pass them around - and thank him that he took this for you.

And then watch some images of his passion and praise him that he did this for you. Amen.

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 21st March 2010

Spiritual Fitness: Joy (Philippians 4.1-13)

Introduction

Getting into good spiritual shape is quite a demanding. We’ve already talked about prayer, fasting and tithing. And we’re going to look at sacrifice next week. That’s a tough programme. Makes an army assault course look like a walk in the park! Praying, fasting, giving and living sacrificially are things that people do. They are faith exercises, if you like. They are actions that people take. They’re to do with behaviour. But today’s theme (joy) is different isn’t it? I may feel joyful – or I perhaps I may not – but in any case not many would say that joy is something you do. The Oxford English Dictionary defines joy as “A feeling of great pleasure and happiness.” So either I experience pleasurable emotions or I do not. Either I happen to feel full of joy or I just don’t. But I can’t force myself to overflow with heavenly happiness; that would be completely artificial and contrived wouldn’t it?

Nehemiah 8.10 says that the joy of the Lord is our strength. And that joy does not depend on how the weather looks, or what’s on the lunch menu or the ups and downs of life. My joy is in the Lord.

What I mean to say is this: joy is a choice. It’s a life preference. That’s why God says in Psalm 37.4 “Delight yourself in the Lord.” It’s not a suggestion. It’s not advice. It’s an order to be glad in him that God gives to the whole of creation. “Delight yourself in the Lord.”

How can you choose to be joyful without being false? I want you to imagine that you are a small child, just 6 weeks old. You fall ill and your sight weakens. The doctors treating you make terrible elementary mistakes and their lack of care and attention actually make the situation worse. Their making a pig’s ear of some fairly routine treatment, results in you losing your sight irreversibly. This is what happened to a young American girl called Fanny Crosby. She began to understand that other children could see and people broke the news to her that, as she grew up, she would never see the colours of creation or the beauty of the natural world. But she decided to keep a treasure of contentment in her heart. When she was 8 years old she wrote these lines:

Oh what a happy soul I am, although I cannot see;
I am resolved that in this world contented I will be.
How many blessings I enjoy, that other people don't;
To weep and sigh because I'm blind, I cannot, and I won't.

She died in 1915 having written over 8,000 hymns of praise and worship many of which are still sung today. She never allowed herself to grow bitter or resentful. She said one day, “In heaven, where I shall be healed, oh what joy, the first face I shall see will be my Saviour’s.” You see, for the world joy comes and goes with the ups and downs of life. But for anyone who is in Christ joy is something you do - joy is a choice.

This is the theme of our first reading from Philippians. Several times in this short letter Paul erupts with joy as he says, for example, “In all my prayers for all of you I always pray with joy... Because of this I rejoice… Yes, and I will continue to rejoice… I will continue for your progress and joy in the faith… You are my joy and my crown… I rejoice greatly in the Lord…”

No one reading that would be surprised if they were told that the man who wrote these words did so having just won the lottery, reclining by an empty pool, in a luxury hotel, with a glass of champagne, dictating them to a gorgeous secretary.

But no. Having been arrested for a crime he never committed, he finds himself far from home, attached by a chain to a duty officer, remanded in custody, locked up behind bars and awaiting a court hearing.

He says this; “Even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you.” In other words, even though I’m banged up here inside in a total miscarriage of justice – oh my, I am just overflowing with joy and this happiness, this contentment, is in God. Joy is a choice.

Why is it that we have to fight for joy? Why do we find that sometimes our soul is downcast and heavy? It’s because the Christian life is a fight. There are pressures all around that sap dry our joy in Christ - I call them joy smashers - and there are 6 examples of them in this passage of Scripture, Philippians 4.

1) Drifting from God (v1)

Here’s the first; drifting away from God. Look at v1. “Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends!”

A few years ago I read a book about the behaviour of a pride of lions. They are ruthlessly efficient hunting machines. Lionesses (because not surprisingly it’s the females who do all the work while the males lie around doing nothing!) they spend hours on end patiently tracking a herd of antelopes or wildebeest in the hope of singling out a young one, a sick one or a distracted one that gets separated from the others.

The Bible picks this up and tells us that the enemy of our souls, Satan, operates in exactly the same way. 1 Peter 5.8: “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”

Now, if you’re young in faith, or if you’re faith is weakened because you have neglected to feed and nourish yourself on the spiritual food that is the word of God, or if you have allowed yourself to become isolated from fellowship and biblical teaching, it won’t take long before Satan has you in his sights. He hates you, he wants to drain your joy in the Lord and destroy you. It says he’s prowling around looking for someone to devour.

Why does drifting away from God lead to less joy? Because fullness of joy is found - where? In the presence of the Lord. Psalm 16.11 says, “You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” So the more time you spend resting and renewing in the presence of God, before him in the intimacy of heartfelt praise – the more your joy will renew its strength. That’s a spiritual law. Drawing close to God in worship is part of our essential survival kit as disciples of Christ.

2) Resentment (v2-3)

Second joy smasher: resentment. Verse 2: “I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord…” Here are two women in the church at Philippi who, by all appearances, have crossed each other off their Christmas card lists. I wonder what they were upset about? What might have been the nature of their little dispute? Was it the colour of the flowers or the choice of worship songs or something more substantial? Nobody knows, it doesn’t say. But let me ask you this; do you honestly think these two women were in top form, smiling broadly and generally full of joy all the time that their conflict was simmering away unresolved? Of course not. I picture these two with their arms folded defensively, frowning unhappily and touchy about the smallest thing. Tensions and misunderstandings between brothers and sisters are such a drain on joy.

If it so happens today that you have an unresolved conflict with someone I bet my last penny that you aren’t dancing with abandoned delight before the Lord in your heart this morning. I’ve learned this lesson over the years; when God says “Delight yourself in the Lord” we sometimes need to sort out a soured relationship before we can do that with all our heart.

3) Anxieties (v4-7)

On to joy smasher number 3. The worries, anxieties, troubles and concerns of life that fatigue us.

Some of us might be wrestling at this very minute with fears about debt or family worries, or nagging thoughts about health… there could be any number of anxieties in our fellowship this morning connected with work or with matters of the heart… or whatever. Read v4-7 with me.

“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything…” And then God says how he wants us to live with apprehension: “In every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Here is a simple three-point strategy for battling anxiety. Firstly, expose your needs - Paul says, “present your requests” - to God. That sounds like this: “Lord, I’m fearful about my children’s future, I’m apprehensive about my appointment with the doctor and I am just dreading when the heating bill comes.” You just pour it all out before God item by item.

Secondly, prayer and petition. Sometimes people say that prayer shouldn’t just be a list but if you’ve got a long list of worries, what better thing can you do than list it all before God? And it says in v6 “petitions.” What is a petition if it isn’t a long list of names and addresses? So in prayer and petition you say, “Lord, please increase my faith, will you break through and change these particular situations, by your power and grace may difficulties become opportunities; Father please glorify Jesus in my life.”

Thirdly, don’t forget to say thank you. Verse 6 mentions “thanksgiving” because it’s important. “Thank you Lord because I know you are faithful, you won’t let me down, I can trust you to deliver and thank you in advance for the blessing of answered prayer.”

4) Unwholesome Thinking (v8)

The fourth joy smasher is kind of implicit in what Paul writes here; it’s unwholesome or negative thinking. Verse 8 says, “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things.”

Just think about what the opposite of that verse would sound like. “Whatever is false, whatever is gross, whatever is just wrong, whatever is dirty, whatever is ugly, whatever is despicable - if anything is dire or misguided - spend your day thinking about that.”

That will sap your joy big time. Such unwholesome thoughts stain the mind, that’s obvious, but if they aren’t dealt with it gets worse; they pollute and infect the heart.

And I want to say that it’s not exposure to violent or obscene images or nurturing hatred and revenge that this verse has in mind. You can see easily how those things would poison the soul. But I think it’s much more subtle. It’s things like jealousy and comparisons; “She looks like a car crash in that dress.” “How come that loser has a bigger house than me?”

Unwholesome thinking takes away our joy in the Lord. And that’s why God wants to renew our minds.

5) Abstract Religion

Joy smasher number 5: this may surprise some but abstract religion that is just cerebral and academic turns the soul miserable. Look at v9 with me. “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me - put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”

Question: how can I ensure that the God who gives peace will be with me? The answer, according to v9 is: By putting my faith into practice. Loving people, reaching out to the lonely, supporting the people no one else notices, welcoming strangers, opening my home, visiting the sick, forgiving people who have hurt me…

There is a version of the Christian life that is purely intellectual and dry. I don’t mean to say that we should hold theology or Bible study in contempt, on the contrary. No, I am talking about unattractive, dreary and boring churchliness that bears no resemblance to anything Jesus ever said or did, and is completely absent from the Gospels except in the sanctimonious snootiness of the Pharisees. God save us from it! Oh God, give my generation a chance to see a church that talks like Jesus and loves like Jesus!

6) Worldliness (v11-13)

Finally, we arrive at joy smasher number 6 and it’s worldliness. If you really want to look miserable it’s simple; just cling for dear life to everything you own. It’s lethal for your joy in the Lord.

I used to have a grumpy neighbour when I was growing up who would go absolutely mad if any of his kids touched his gleaming car in the driveway. They almost needed his permission to breathe within 20 yards of it! He was the most cheerless man I have ever met.

What does Paul say in v11-13? Why is this man so elated? How is it that he can be jumping for joy as he rots away in jail, accused of a crime for which he is completely blameless? What does he say?

“I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”

I am not sure if I will ever get to having the attitude that John Wesley had about material things. There’s a story about Wesley’s house catching on fire and burning down. So someone went up to tell him about it and Wesley responded by shrugging his shoulders and saying, “God’s house burned down… one less thing to worry about.”

How many millionaires do you know or see on TV who never seem to be worried about anything? I can’t think of many… One of the secrets of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want, is to delight in the Lord.

Ending

Hebrews 1.9 says about Jesus, “God has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.” Jesus was anointed with joy. He was heavy armed against all the joy smashers that we have listed this morning. Because he never drifted from his heavenly Father. Because he was never resentful or bitter. Because he was never racked by anxieties and worries. Because he never got into cycles of unwholesome thinking. Because his spirituality was always practical and down to earth, never sterile or sanctimonious. And because he was never attached to any of material thing.

That is how to live in the joy of the Lord – which is our strength and our song.

So let’s pray...

Preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 14th March 2010

Spiritual Fitness: Generosity (Malachi 3.6-12 and Matthew 23.23-24)

Introduction

Spiritual fitness chapter 3; generosity. I’m going to talk about money this morning – aren’t you glad you came? Well, let me start by saying two positive things.

1) Money isn't everything, but at least it keeps you in touch with your children when they leave home. 2) If you think nobody cares you are alive, just miss a couple monthly payments – and you’ll soon find they do!

Sometimes people complain that the church is always banging on about money. “Christians should stick to preaching the gospel” they say. And who can argue with that? Of course we should prioritize proclaiming the good news about Jesus. The only thing is it costs money to do that and, as most of us know, it doesn’t grow on trees. Incidentally, how ironic is it that those people I know who think that money does grow on trees are the ones who have a hard time getting out of the woods?

But anyway, Christians are followers of Jesus - and Jesus had more to say about money than almost any other subject. In all his many references to money, 9 were to do with resourcing ministry, 15 were illustrations of a spiritual principle and 35 were direct challenges to discipleship.

In other words, when Jesus confronted someone about how serious they really were about following him he usually did so by bringing up the subject of money. You’ll be familiar with some of these.

“Go and sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and you shall have wealth in heaven; and come, follow me.”

Or this one: “No one can serve two masters; either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” (By the way, that’s why Billy Graham once said, “A cheque book is a theological document; it will tell you who and what you worship.”)

And another challenge from Jesus: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle that for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Different Ways to Give

I can guess what some of you are probably thinking. Today’s theme is generosity and generosity is not just about money. And of course that is correct. In the dictionary, “Generosity” is defined as “readiness or liberality in giving and freedom from meanness or smallness of mind or character.”

So I can be generous in many different ways.

I can be generous with my thoughts. If someone passes a bit of gossip on to you about Auntie Mabel, you will be generous in thought if you choose to believe the best about her instead of fearing the worst. Has anyone let you down lately or disappointed you? You will be generous in thought if you let it drop instead of harbouring a grudge. Abraham Lincoln was good at this. He once said, “I destroy my enemies by making them my friends.”

I can be generous with my words. Every time you encourage someone (when you say to them “that was really good, you have really blessed me today”) or every time you thank them (“I just want to say thank you for what you do or for what you said”) or every time you pray for them you are being generous with your words.

I can be generous with my time. Possibly the biggest challenge we face as a church, with many who lead busy professional lives, is being generous with our time.

I think it was Stephen Cherry, who heads up training in the diocese, who once talked about an experiment someone did during a training day on the Good Samaritan. When it came to about midday the students were sent out in two separate groups in two different directions for lunch and both groups were told to come back at 1:30pm. Now, for each group there was a staged “accident” with fake blood in which an actor pretended to faint and hit their head. The first “accident” happened in front of the first group shortly after they broke for lunch. And, of course, everyone gathered round to see what was wrong, speak to the young man who had fallen and call for help. The other “accident” for the second group was staged 5 minutes before they were due back. And no one stopped - not primarily because they were hard hearted or uncaring - but because they didn’t want to be late; they didn’t have time.

I suspect that being generous with our time is the biggest challenge we face. A tithe of my waking hours; that is to say 10% of the all the time available to me when I am not asleep, works out at 11 hours a week. I suppose that most of us would find it more challenging to give 10% of our time than 10% of our income.

So I want to stress that staying spiritually fit by practicing generosity is not just about writing a cheque every month. In fact just writing a cheque every month might actually be the problem.

That is what Jesus was saying in Matthew 23.23. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, such hypocrites! You give one tenth of your spices - mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law - justice, mercy and faithfulness.” In other words, you have been generous with your money but you have been mean with your thoughts, your words and your time.

There is no doubt about this; these religious leaders were scrupulously open-handed with their money. They made painstakingly sure that they gave away one tenth of all their earnings. They would have been absolutely mortified by the very idea of giving any less (even down to 10% of their herb garden – you can just picture them with a ruler and scissors on the parsley bush).

But the gospels tell us that they made a parade of their generosity. They announced with trumpets the act of putting their envelope in the offering so as to be noticed by others. Jesus says, “when you give… do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”

I have a friend in Canada who said once that that’s his church treasurer’s favourite Scripture. He says it’s the fastest Bible verse in the West. Your left hand does not know what your right hand is doing. So the right hand puts a whole wad of bank notes into the offering before the left hand has a chance to say, “Oh no, not that much!” I’d just like to make it clear that I don’t think that that interpretation is the right one!

Tithing

Where did the Pharisees get the 10% figure from? They got it from the Law of Moses which mentions it a lot. Leviticus 27, for example, says: “A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord: it is holy to the Lord” (Leviticus 27.30). Deuteronomy 14 explains that the tithe existed for three reasons; firstly to acknowledge the abundance of God’s provision; secondly, to give an income to the Levites in the temple who had no other way of earning a living; and thirdly, to assist the poor who had fallen on hard times.

And Pharisees also knew about our first reading from the Prophecy of Malachi which says, “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.” Malachi was written about 450 years before Christ, a time when God’s people were rebuilding Jerusalem which had been in ruins for decades. By the time Malachi prophesied there was a city wall with its gates crucial for security; there were new houses and there was a completed temple. The nation was back on its feet again after years of exile in Babylon.

But there was a problem; low rainfall and failing harvests – not just once but two years running, then three, then four... The crop yield was becoming predictably disappointing. Cattle and sheep were becoming thinner and thinner. Why? Why were things not going right?

It was all due to spiritual neglect. Here’s a principle that runs right through the Bible; when God’s people honour him and put him first in all things, he restores, he provides and he blesses at all times. And the reverse is true. When God is silent, when his presence disappears from worship and when he withholds his blessing it is because God’s people have put themselves first and honoured themselves above him.

In Malachi’s day, across the land, worship had become tired and stale. The people were half-hearted and the priests, with no real vision, were just going through the motions. God’s people were drifting into relationships with godless spouses from pagan nations. Men were being unfaithful to their wives. Marriages were falling apart. The most vulnerable people (widows, orphans, immigrants and the poor) were being overlooked and forgotten. The nation was in a sorry state because it was becoming disconnected from God and failed harvests were a direct consequence.

Notice in Malachi 3 that the people are completely unaware that there is any kind of problem.

Verse 7; “Return to me” says God.

So they look at themselves, shrug their shoulders and say, “Return? What do you mean ‘return’? How? It’s news to us that we have actually gone anywhere.”

Verse 8: “You are robbing me.” Says God.

So they look at the dry fields and empty barns and say, “Robbing? Wh…? How does that work that we are stealing from you?

Verse 9: “In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse - your whole nation - because you are robbing me.”

And what single solution does God prescribe to lift the curse on the nation? It comes in v10. “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.”

Don’t you feel a bit sorry for these people? At first sight, it looks as if God is being a bit harsh on them. If yours is an agricultural economy and your harvests fail disastrously year after year, your country falls into recession and your reserves dwindle to perilously low levels. I guess the people of Malachi’s day were saying, “Now let’s be sensible, watch the pennies and cut back on non essentials.”

If that were all, then yes, someone might well say that God is being a bit severe. But God promises big things here to those who faithfully give back to him their first fruits, not their last fruits. 1 Corinthians 16.2 in the New Testament says the same thing: “On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income...” Not “See what’s left for the Lord after you’ve covered all your outgoings.”

God likes to turn upside down our accepted wisdom about generosity. Many people tend to think that everything we have is ours and we can decide how much of our stuff we give away – if anything. But the Bible teaches that, if Jesus is Lord, everything we have is his. And under Christ as we give without counting, the more he seems to bless without counting.

So God speaks about opening up the floodgates of the sky and tipping down rain on the land to bring about a harvest so abundant that the people wouldn’t have anywhere to put all the grain. This is the promise of God for a generous people.

But I want to say also that there is no compulsion from God over this. The New Testament angle on this is, “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” (2 Corinthians 9.7) Under Christ you are free to tithe. The difference is that under Moses you were not free not to tithe.

Does it work? I resolved a long time ago never to preach on something that wasn’t a reality in my own life. In my years as a Christian, there have been times when I have tithed, times when I have given less and times when I have given more. The only time our bank account has ever been overdrawn is during the time when we gave less. The rest of the time God has blessed us abundantly; we have never lacked for anything we needed and our four children are walking with God. Blessings all mine and ten thousand beside.

How does this work? I don’t know. But it does. As the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken Colonel Sanders once said, “There's no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery.” So let me quote from three wealthy businessmen each of which were multi-millionaires and each of which had a gift of generosity and who gave away most of what they accumulated before they died.

Sir John Templeton, the stock investor and chairman of the Templeton Fund: “I have observed 100,000 families over my years of investment counselling. I always saw greater prosperity and happiness among those families who tithed than among those who didn’t.”

John D. Rockefeller, the oil tycoon: “I never would have been able to tithe the first million dollars I ever made if I had not tithed my first salary, which was $1.50 per week.”

Robert Gilmore Letourneau, the engineer and inventor: “I shovel money out, and God shovels it back ... but God has a bigger shovel!”

Test Me

And then God says something truly shocking in v10. “Test me…” Time and time again God says in the Bible, “Don’t test me.” But here God makes an exception. Why here? Because putting God to the test in the area of our money stretches and exercises our faith. Putting him to the test in any other way is saying, in effect, that God has to justify himself to us while we sit around with our arms folded.

Do you want to do an experiment to see if God can be trusted or not? Here it is. Step out in faith. Give him back the first tenth. See if he disappoints you in return.

For any of you who have never done this, let’s be honest - it’s quite daunting. What if it doesn’t work for me? What if this is just for the Old Covenant and now we are free from the Law? Is this irresponsible given my situation? What if God is calling me to give only in other ways? I have asked the same questions.

So our treasurer John Belmont would like to help us put God to the test. Here’s the deal. He will arrange, for anyone who wants to, a three month tithing trial. You tithe and pray during that time that God will bless you in your life and provide for all your needs financially. If, at the end of that time you can conclude that he has blessed you and provided for you (and I think he will) then you’ll have grown in faith and released resources for the kingdom.

And if for any reason you feel he has not blessed you and allowed you to get into trouble financially then John will refund you. There’ll be no questions asked, no judging, no pressure, no assumption of failure, no guilt… you’ll get your money back and that will be the end of it. His details are on the notice sheet.

“Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the Lord Almighty. “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the Lord Almighty.


Preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 7th March 2010