Grace for the Worst (2 Chronicles 33.1-20)

Introduction

There’s a nice little story about an Archbishop who was visiting one of his vicars in his home and before the Archbishop arrived the vicar though he’d give his little girl some guidance on how to address their guest. “Now don’t forget,” he said. “before you say anything else to him, say “Your Grace.” So as soon as the Archbishop walked into the room, she said, “For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful.”

We use the word grace to describe the movement of a dancer, we choose it as a girl’s name, it comes up in many expressions; grace and favour homes are properties that the Queen offers rent-free. We talk of falling from grace, saving grace, putting on airs and graces, and when we hear of someone who has messed up their life we say “there but for the grace of God go I…”

I wonder what the word “grace” means to you when you close your eyes and think about it? What does it say to you? What kind of thoughts – or feelings – come into your heart when you hear this word, “grace”?

Grace is a word you virtually never hear in any other religion. Hindus don’t use it. Sikhs don’t use it. Muslims don’t either and neither do Buddhists or anyone else. Even Jews rarely speak of the grace of God. But our Christian hymn books, our worship albums and New Testaments are replete with this word – it is essentially Christian.

I quoted the Manhattan-based church leader Tim Keller the other week and I’m going to do so again; this is something else he said recently and it fits the theme of our Bible reading today. He said, “The more you see your own flaws and sins, the more precious, electrifying, and amazing God’s grace appears to you.”

Do you feel God’s grace as something precious, electrifying, and amazing?

Do you think the person sitting next to you this morning would like you more or like you less if they knew everything about you? I don’t think you’d like me any better if you knew all that God knows about me. But have you ever stopped to think that God knows every thought you think, every word you say, and every action you take, past present and future, and it doesn’t diminish one bit the love he has for you.

Grace means that God doesn’t love us because we’re good. It means he loves us because he is good.

So how bad do you think you have to be in order to lose hope of a future with God? I sometimes hear it said that some people are beyond the pale. Something will come up in the news that seems to reach a new low and people say, “That’s it, that’s gone too far.” The Moors murderers. The Jamie Bulger case. The kidnapping, forced conversion and marriage of those schoolgirls in Nigeria. ISIS. How disgustingly awful is it possible to be and yet still be able to get right with God?

Manasseh – the Worst King of Judah

Meet King Manasseh of Judah, who our first reading was about. Some kings in the Bible are very well known – many people outside the Church have heard of David and Solomon for example.

Then there are some quite good ones who stand out and therefore might register in the memory of your average churchgoer; kings like Hezekiah and Josiah.

Then there are kings that virtually no one has heard of or knows anything about – usually bad ones who reign only a short time like Pekahiah and Shallum. How much can anyone tell me about those two?

Manasseh is probably not one of the best known kings in the Bible though I suspect some of you will know a bit about him. Of the 42 kings and 1 queen of Israel and Judah listed in the Old Testament, Manasseh has the distinction of holding two records among them. Firstly, and this is an accolade he now shares with Queen Elizabeth II for our country, he reigned the longest of all (occupying the throne for 55 years).

Secondly, a distinction he possibly shares with King John for our country, he was the worst of the lot.

Manasseh was, of all the kings of Judah, the most wretched. This is what the 2 Kings 21 and 2 Chronicles 33 say about him:

·         It says he was involved with astrology and spiritist mediums in defiance of God’s commands.

·         It says he placed phallic symbols of the fertility god Baal and a statue of the sex goddess Asherah right in the middle of God’s Temple.

·         It says he was involved with devil worship, sacrificing his own children in the fire in a satanic ritual.

·         It says, besides his own sinful heart, he led his people astray into practices of evil.

·         It says he was an indiscriminate murderer. A despot. He drenched Jerusalem with innocent blood.

Manasseh’s reign was a calculated attempt to replace the God of Israel with a cult of sex and violence. It says “The Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention.”

The books of Isaiah and Zephaniah tell us more about that. The prophet Isaiah lived during Manasseh’s reign and he spoke out about what was going on but Manasseh had him silenced, banning him from speaking in public. Time and again, Isaiah warned him “What you’re doing are the very things the Canaanites did before us and that is why God removed them from this land.” But Manasseh just blanked him and carried on and, in fact, he ramped it up even more just to provoke him.

In the end, when Manasseh couldn’t stand the sound of Isaiah any more, he hollowed out a tree trunk, had Isaiah bound and placed him inside it, then gave the order to have it sawn in two.

The verdict: it says Manasseh exceeded the evil of the original Canaanites. That is staggering. God had expelled the Canaanites to make room for his holy people and now, thanks to Manasseh, they were actually worse than the society they had replaced.

He was a thoroughly violent and truly horrible man.

What was it about Manasseh that made him such a bad king, the worst of all? What went wrong? Was it maybe his environment and his upbringing? Can we blame his parents or his education? Did someone corrupt him?

We sometimes try and account for someone’s terrible crimes by pointing out that they were led astray and were themselves abused. Let’s look at that…

His father was King Hezekiah, who the Bible says was one of the very best kings of all. So he can’t blame his dad. His mother was called Hephzibah and Jewish history records that she was none other than the daughter of the prophet Isaiah. So with one of the greatest kings for a father and one of the greatest prophets for a maternal grandfather he could hardly say his family had driven him to it.

He had it all; he had a good gene pool, a nice upbringing, he would have been trained in godliness from birth, he had money, the position, lineage... he was born for greatness. No one can say there were mitigating circumstances and that it wasn’t his fault. It was.

On 29 July 1949 the Stanford Daily News in Palo Alto California carried a report with a photo of a 55 year-old local man called Jack Wurm who was walking along a beach in nearby San Francisco when he came across a sealed bottle with a piece of paper in it.

He opened the bottle and read the note, and discovered that it was the last will and testament of Daisy Singer Alexander, heiress to the Singer sewing machine fortune. The note read as follows: "To avoid confusion, I leave my entire estate to the person who finds this bottle and to my lawyer, Barry Cohen, to share and share alike."

There are two things to say about this: 1) Why anyone would leave half their estate to their lawyer is anyone’s guess but there you are. 2) Why anyone would leave the other half to some random stranger is also a bit weird and sure enough Jack Wurm thought it was probably a hoax. In fact it took the courts until after Barry Cohen and Jack Wurm’s death to finally decide on its authenticity. Had it been judged authentic in their lifetime it would have been worth to each of them over $6 million in cash and $80,000 annual income from Singer shares.

And yet that wouldn’t even begin to compare with the spiritual inheritance Manasseh had from his family and line! And he turned his back on the whole lot. It’s like finding that bottle, realising it’s a valid will and testament and then burning it in a bonfire before showing anyone.

So Manasseh couldn’t blame his environment or his upbringing. None of us can. We are all, as Simon Ponsonby has said, “sindividuals.”

But the Lord loves the least, and the last, and the lost. Rabbi Aaron the Great used to say, “I wish I could love the greatest saint like the Lord loves the greatest sinner.”

And God does love the greatest sinner. You cannot go too low, you cannot stray too far, you cannot be too lost for the reach of God’s grace to be insufficient.

The big question to ask is not can God save someone else, but, can God save me? What about you today? Do you ever feel as if you have done some terrible act that God will not forgive? Do you feel sometimes like you do not deserve the mercy of God? Whatever you’ve done, however recent or long ago, however culpable you were, let me assure you that God has the means and the motivation to deal with it and put it behind you.

That’s what happened to Manasseh as we’ll see in a minute.

Transforming Grace

This year at New Wine, one of the speakers talked about a church weekend he was invited to lead somewhere up north. And he said he noticed a woman, possibly in her fifties, seated near the front just radiating the joy of the Lord. He was struck by her. Her face had the look of someone loved and at peace. She was so free in worship. She had this kind of aura of spiritual well-being. She stood out from the crowd.

So after a few days he asked her if she would tell him a bit about her story. “Well,” she said, “for many years I was weighed down by guilt and remorse for something I did.” She didn’t say what it was she’d done and he didn’t ask her either. “For several decades, I carried around this burden, this weight of disgrace and shame,” she said.

It turns out she wasn’t remotely religious, she had no church background at all, and had never read the Bible… she had no vocabulary to articulate what she felt spiritually.

Her husband was a lapsed Catholic and he told her that, from what he could remember, what she had done was a mortal sin, so it couldn’t be forgiven, that God was ticked off with her and that she was going to hell. Thanks for that, mate. Why don’t you rub some lemon juice into my paper cut while you’re at it.

It turns out she used to sometimes go into empty churches and chapels and just cry about the heaviness that weighed her down. But all she heard was the echo of silence. She had no peace and no rest; her conscience condemned her. She became depressed about it and even contemplated suicide.

Then one day, driving the car to the supermarket she just yelled out, “God, if you’re there, you’ve got to help me.” And straight away, in her mind she saw letters and numbers – Romans 3.23. That meant nothing to her at all.

She went and did her shopping, got back into the car and there again, in her mind’s eye she saw written down Romans 3.23 and she said to herself “I wonder if that’s in the Bible?” When she got home she looked it up and found it was from the Bible and this is what she read: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” She thought, “That’s me! Yes, I have sinned terribly, I’ve made some awful mistakes, I’ve messed up my life, I’ve fallen short of the standard, that’s it!” And then she read on, “and all are justified freely by his grace through … Jesus.”

And there and then her life was unmade and remade in an instant. It was as if in court she had stood in the dock and with a lump in her throat, heard the guilty verdict, knew it was absolutely correct, only to then hear the Judge say, “You’re free to go. All the charges have been dropped. Your record has been wiped clean. The case is closed. Someone has already paid in full your debt to society.”

This is grace. This is what God is like.

And this is what Manasseh, the worst of the worst, discovered. Verses 11-12 describe how he was humbled by a neighbouring superpower. And now that he was in trouble, he sank to his knees in prayer asking for help. He admitted his wickedness and asked for mercy from the God whose name he had dragged through the mud.

After all he had done, why should God forgive him? Why would anyone? But as he wept over his past and prayed, God was moved, God’s heart was touched; he saw he was sincere and truly sorry - and he wiped his record clean and brought him back home.

This is what the gospel is all about. It’s good news. This is what Jesus came to demonstrate for us. Some people say “Oh, I could never be a good Christian.” Listen, Christianity is not about being nice. It's about being new.

“If anyone is in Christ,” the Bible says, “there is a new creation: the old has gone, the new is here!”

Some of you may have seen the video interview on YouTube with a rock singer from the band Flyleaf called Lacy Sturm. She talks about her tormented years. She says “I couldn’t get away from my own depression.” She tried a lot of religions and philosophies. She said “There were all these great ideas but I never found any tangible healing.” She said “I remember thinking I am tired of the pain in my heart. I am tired of going to bed and feeling this burden. Who am I? Why am I alive?”

Bertrand Russell, the famous atheist, once admitted, “The centre of me is always and eternally a terrible pain—a curious wild pain—a searching for something beyond what the world contains.”

He wrote an essay called Why I Am Not a Christian. But tellingly, when his daughter wrote a biography of her father she wrote this:

“Somewhere in the back of my father’s mind and at the bottom of his heart, in the depths of his soul, there was an empty space that had once been filled by God and he never found anything else to put in it.”

That’s what Lacy Sturm felt; the nagging, gnawing emptiness of life without God. The futility of existence.

One day Lacy woke up and decided that she was going to commit suicide. She saw no other alternatives and resolved to end her life at the end of that day. Well, that evening, by the grace of God, her grandmother whom she lived with, said, “You are coming to church with me now.” Lacy said, “I didn’t want to go to church, I hated it, I never went – but look, I’m going to commit suicide later, it can’t get worse, so I might as well go to church.”

So she went. She said, “I hated it - especially the preacher.” [I just thought I’d include that bit in case any of you can relate to it].

Anyway, the preacher, as he was speaking had a word from the Lord and so he said, “There’s someone here with a suicidal spirit.” That got her attention. But she couldn’t stand what he was saying, so she got up and went to walk out. As she got to the back of the church a man with a white goatee beard came over to her and said, “I think the Lord wants me to say something to you.”

She thought, here we go again. Then he said this; “He wants you to know that even if you’ve never known your earthly father, [which she hadn’t] he knows your pain and will be a better father to you than any man could have been. He knows your pain. He knows what’s in your heart. He’s seen you cry yourself to sleep. He wants to come and deal with it. He is called The Comforter.”

She says, “It was as if the God of the universe showed up right in front of me. I realised that God is holy and good. And that I am not. And that he loves me and he knows I am tired of the way I have been living and that he wants to make me new - if I would let him and I said YES! I want that please. And I woke up the next day with such peace and such joy.”

Ending

That’s the grace of God. The grace to forgive. That’s why it is precious, electrifying, and amazing.

I feel that there are some here want to meet Christ today – maybe for the first time. Or it may be that you’ve stepped back and wandered off a bit and today is a day to recommit yourself. I want to lead you in a prayer so let’s pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 1st November 2015

Grace for Little Ones (Mark 10.13-16)

Introduction

Children come out with amazing things sometimes. One of the things we never did, but wish we had done, is to write down in a notebook all the funny things our children said when they were small. There were so many cute words and expressions they invented! Some of them we do remember though and they’ve become part of our family vocabulary.

Someone asked a class of seven year-olds recently to write prayers and here are some examples that I thought were quite good:

Dear God, thank you for the baby brother but what I asked for is a puppy.

Dear God, I always look both ways before I cross the road. So you don’t have to worry about me.

Dear God, did you mean for giraffes to look like that, or was it an accident?

Dear God, I read the Bible. What does “begat” mean? No one will tell me.

Let Them Come to Me

In Mark chapter 10, there’s the account of Jesus meeting some children. In those days and in that culture, children counted for very little. They were not valued at all. Until they had their Bar Mizvah at the age of about 12 they were to be seen and not heard. They were irrelevant.

In the literature of that time what you find is that that people didn’t take children seriously. They were written off as silly, easily-led, unstable, naive and immature.

Children were not important in that society. No self-respecting rabbi would waste his time with them. They had much more important matters to attend to.

But such was Jesus’ exceptional charisma and magnetic personality, people brought their children to him so he would at least bless them before sending them away. This is the one who healed the sick, who cast out darkness and shadows from tormented souls, who lifted the mood of the oppressed, who gave hope to the crushed. Everyone wanted a bit of him. Everyone wanted to be near him and just see him or be around his captivating presence.

So it says “people were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them but the disciples rebuked them.”

These guys are like bouncers on the door. “Get these kids away from here. Can’t you see the Master is busy? What do you think this is, Santa’s Grotto? Go on, off with you, Jesus has got important matters to attend to.” That’s basically what they were saying.

Have you ever noticed that Jesus always seemed to be getting panned for spending time with the wrong people?

“Why do you eat with tax collectors and sinners?” they asked. “Why is he letting that loose woman anywhere near him? If he was really a prophet he wouldn’t let her touch him” they said.

Some people, including his own disciples, thought he should be spending associating more with the rich, with celebrities, with the great and the good – not the riffraff and certainly not with the hyperactive regulars from the local kindergarten.

But the Bible says that when Jesus saw that they were shooing the kids away, “he was indignant.” It means, literally, that he was moved with irritation. It annoyed him. It ticked him off. It exasperated him. It wound him up to the point of snapping.

When he saw what was going on he said, “No! They’re staying. Let these little children come here to me. Don’t you dare prevent them.”

Jesus is once again smashing the conventions of his day to pieces. He’s saying to his minders here, “You’ve got it all wrong. You think that Christianity is only for sophisticated grown-ups. What do you think you’re doing, sending the kids away? Let them in. Bring them here. I want to see them and I want them to see me because the kingdom of heaven belongs to people like this.”

Here’s the point: “You are trying to tell me that children can’t grasp anything spiritual until they become like us adults. That’s completely the wrong way round! It’s the exact opposite. We adults will never grasp anything spiritual until we become like children.”

Our ideas are wrong headed. We imagine that we’ve got to be all sophisticated. We think if it’s really simple and straightforward it can’t be right. Jesus doesn’t agree with that at all. Jesus gets annoyed by holy hot air. It might sound impressive and clever but it’s pious claptrap and he hates it.

No wonder the religious elite couldn’t stand him. And no wonder the Bible says that ordinary people heard him gladly and that he was a friend to people with messed up lives. Children loved him.

What was it about little ones that Jesus said was so important to imitate? Was he saying we should be innocent like them? Was he talking about their simple trust? Was it that they don’t complicate things?

I don’t think he meant that they were innocent. We have four children and, from a fairly young age, they knew how be unkind and disobedient when the mood took them.

Whenever something got broken in my house when I was young, my dad would ask my brother and me, “Now who did this?” And we used to say in exact unison “he did it!”

When my brother was about one and I was three, I once decided, in the middle of the night to try something out. I crept into the kitchen, filled a jug with water, went back into the bedroom and tipped the lot all over him as he slept. I have no idea why I did that. I can only say that it seemed a good idea at the time.

Anyway, he shrieked and pulled himself up on the bars of his cot, blinking water out of his little brown eyes. Then I heard my mum and dad’s footsteps so I hid under the cot. They came in to the bedroom, saw the jug, noticed my feet sticking out from under the cot and pulled me out. “What is all this about?” they said. I looked at my brother. And I looked at them. And all I could think of saying was “he wet himself.”

I could talk about the time I tipped a pack of sugar out of the window, the time I brought a dead mouse in after my mum warned me not to, put a drawing pin on my sister’s chair… children aren’t as innocent as all that!

So what did Jesus mean when he said “the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these”? I think there are three things that you will find in every child. And without these three things you can’t get into the kingdom of God.

1. An Open Mind

Firstly, every child has an open mind. Children are ready to believe you and trust you. They have big imaginations. I used to think my dad knew everything because he said he did. If he had told me he could fly I would have just agreed with him. Children have open minds, and although they do accept things that are not true, they’re ready to receive things that are true. That’s why they have amazing faith.

One of our most treasured memories is when our daughter Anna was about 3 years old. She was buckled up in the back of our old Citroen 2CV one damp, misty morning. I tried several times to start the car, but to no avail. I suppose I must have tried for about 10 minutes but, though the engine turned, it wouldn’t fire. I got out and looked under the bonnet – but there was nothing obvious.

I tried again, failed again, and sighed, feeling helpless. Then, from the back seat, a little voice squeaked “Come on Jesus, start the car!”

I felt sad that Anna’s simple faith would be shattered by our useless, unreliable old banger stubbornly refusing to start yet again. But resigned to the inevitable disappointment, I put the key back in the ignition. I turned the key. It started perfectly.

As we get older, we close our minds, we shut off our imagination, we argue and say, “I can’t believe that.” But children’s minds are open to believe.

Now, I have a bar of chocolate here. And it’s free to anyone who comes up here and asks me for it...

2. An Open Hand

Secondly, every child has an open hand. I mean by that that they are ready to ask and willing to receive. The Bible says, “You do not have because you do not… ask.” Jesus said “God gives good gifts to those who ask.” If I want to receive anything from God, I have to take it, open handed like a child. There is no other way.

I find that the older we more reluctant we become to hold out our hand and ask for more or accept a free gift. We feel awkward, we want to give something back for it. Even if it’s just a Christmas card. “Oh no. They’ve sent me a card and I didn’t send them one.” Children don’t think that way.

As adults, we become more and more proud. We even refuse assistance when we know we need it. We sniff at the idea of someone helping us. “Oh, I’ll be all right!”

No child I know will ever say, “Thanks for the offer but I won’t take those sweets, I don’t need your charity.” But adults do! Children are willing to take what you offer them and that is a must in the kingdom of heaven.

3. An Open Heart

And thirdly, every child has an open heart. If you love children, they will love you in return.

When you show love to an adult, you sometimes get the response “So what’s the agenda? What’s he after? What’s the catch?” The experience of life changes us and as we get older, the heart closes up. We get used to people letting us down so we learn to stop trusting them. We become cynical and wonder if people are trying to use us. Children don’t think that way. They have open hearts.

Here’s a true story - a man was flying from Atlanta to Dallas and it just so happened that in the seat next to him was a little girl with Down’s Syndrome. After a while she turned to him and said “Do you smoke?”

He was a little uncomfortable, but he told her that he didn't.

She said, “Good, because smoking will make you die.” She nudged him, pointed to the guy across the aisle and said, “Ask him if he smokes.” And so, good-naturedly, he did, and the man said that he didn't smoke either.

Then she said, “Mister, do you love Jesus?” He smiled and said, “Well, yes, I do.” The little girl smiled and said, “Good, everyone should love Jesus.”

Then she nudged him once again and said, “Ask him if he loves Jesus. Ask him!”

He thought “Oh no,” but he swallowed hard and turned to the guy again and said, “Now she wants to know if you love Jesus.”

His expression became serious. He said, “You know, in all honesty, I can't say that I do. I've wanted to be a person of faith all my life, but I haven't ever taken that step. And now I've come to a time in my life when I know I should.”

And so Milton Cunningham, who was a preacher on his way to Dallas, led that businessman to faith in Christ on that airplane all thanks to one little girl’s open heart and readiness to ask that simple question “Do you love Jesus?”

Ending

As I end, I want to make it possible for anyone here who wants to open their mind, their hand and their heart to God – to do so. Remember Jesus said, “Anyone who will not receive the kingdom of heaven like a child will never enter it.”

Please don't feel under any pressure to do anything you don’t feel ready for. But there may be somebody here who says “Well, I want to go ahead right now.”

I’m going to finish with a simple prayer. It’s a prayer saying sorry to God for the past, turning away from everything that’s wrong, thanking Jesus for dying on the cross, and asking him to come and fill you with his presence.

Heavenly Father, I am sorry for the things that I have done wrong in my like (maybe there’s something in particular that your conscience brings to mind). I now turn from everything I know is wrong. Thank you that you died on the cross for me so that I can be forgiven and start all over again. Thank you for the gift of your Spirit. I now receive that gift like a child. Please come into my life to be with me forever. Thank You. Amen. 

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 18th October 2015

Thanks to David Pawson for the three headings

Grace Changes Everything (Genesis 37.17b-28, 50.15-21 and Mark 11.22-26)

We are starting a nine-week sermon series today on God’s amazing grace.

Grace is the overarching, grand narrative of the Bible. Grace makes the foulest clean. Grace is amazing. Grace is a rags to riches story; from the filthy rags of our sin to the riches of being adopted as a child of God. Grace is getting the best prize when you were the one who least deserved it.

In the 19th Century, nobody went anywhere near the poor and wretched and exploited in the rat-infested alleys of London. All the churches were rich. You had to be respectable and well-dressed to walk into one.

But outside, little children died hungry, women wept as their men went in and out of prison for trifling offences, people got smashed on cheap gin to deaden the pain of existence, the streets were full of poor lost girls to be preyed upon.

So God, in grace, raised up William Booth and the Salvation Army. He said, “Where there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I'll fight to the very end.” Tens of thousands came to Christ and were delivered from addictions and filthy lifestyles. That’s grace.

There’s a Christian drug rehabilitation mission near Madrid called Betel. It has given birth to a church of several hundred young men and their families and friends. They are a church full of former drug addicts, dealers, prostitutes, and even murderers. But through Betel, they met Jesus Christ, found forgiveness of sin, freedom from addiction, a family to belong to and a future to live for.

When they worship, they shout loudly and dance passionately. A man called Raul was one of the first to be delivered from heroin addiction. He became a pastor there. Someone asked him once why people celebrate in worship so enthusiastically there; he just said “We dance because we cannot fly.” That’s grace!

The Manhattan-based church leader and author Tim Keller once gave the perfect one-sentence definition of the Gospel: He said, “We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared to believe, and at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.” That’s the gospel – it’s the gospel of grace.

I wanted to use that quote because it gives you both sides of the gospel coin. If I give you a £1 coin and on one side it has the Queen’s head but on the other side it is blank it is not legal tender. The coin needs to be minted on both sides for it to have value.

It’s the same with the gospel – the gospel is bad news before it’s good news. If our gospel is just “Christ died for us” we have only preached half of it. The full gospel is this: “While we were still sinners Christ died for us.”

It’s precisely when we were alienated from God, entrenched in our own rebellion against his ways, spiritually empty, disinterested and apathetic about anything to do with God, eternally lost, up the creek without a paddle that Jesus loved us and died in our place.

If our message is just “you are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than you ever dared hope” we have only told people a half truth.

Diamonds sparkle finest when they’re set against a black, velvet background. You see the full majesty of the stars only when you are away from light pollution in town – you have to go to the country where it’s pitch black to really see them.

The glory and the majesty and the sheer exquisiteness of grace is only really fully visible when we realise how spiritually bankrupt, how deeply lost, we are without Jesus.

In the film Trains, Planes and Automobiles Steve Martin and John Candy play a couple of guys trying by any means possible to get home in time for Thanksgiving. In one scene, one of them accidentally sets a car on fire with a cigarette while he’s driving along the freeway. The car becomes a smoking ruin, but miraculously it’s still able to cough its way forward. Anyway, the highway patrol pulls them over, and a cop leans over this smouldering wreck and says, “Do you feel this vehicle is safe for highway travel?” And the driver says “Yes sir, I do. It’s not pretty, but it’ll get you to where you want to go.”

It’s a funny and off the wall scene but that is how many people feel about their limited religious achievements or moral successes – yeah, it’s not perfect but hopefully it’s just about good enough. God says, “Do you think that’ll get you to heaven?” People say, “Yes, I really do.”

We delude ourselves about our own moral goodness. “We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared to believe, and at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”

The thing is, the Bible is full of characters who were deeply sinful or flawed in themselves before God got hold of them. 

You may have heard this before but Methuselah was ancient, Noah got drunk, Sara was impatient, Jacob was a con man, Moses had a bad stammer, Miriam was a gossip, Gideon was insecure, David had an affair, Elijah was depressive, Jonah ran away from God, Peter denied Jesus, Martha was a worrier, Thomas was a doubter, Mary Magdalene had three demons, Nathaniel was a cynic, Zaccheus was short, Paul was a murderer, Timothy was sickly and Lazarus was dead.... these are the heroes of the Bible.

Because grace changes everything.

But the character I want to speak about this morning is not one who was obviously flawed or in any way disabled. On the contrary; the Bible presents Joseph as a man of great integrity and extraordinary ability. The thing about Joseph is it’s hard to think of anyone (apart from Jesus) who was so good, so upright, so virtuous, so talented – and yet so mistreated.

The story of Joseph is found in Genesis 37-50. It’s one of the Bible’s great stories. It’s enthralling. It’s heart-breaking. It’s moving. It’s nail-biting. Read it when you get home.

But for now, let me try and give you a brief outline, condensing 14 chapters of scripture into about 4 minutes.

Joseph is the 11th of 12 brothers. He is a bit precocious and has a remarkable gift for interpreting dreams. As a result of being his dad’s favourite, he attracts the jealousy of his brothers, who decide one day to sell him as a slave to a passing caravan of travellers. They fake his death and tell his father he was killed by wild beasts.

Meanwhile, he is taken down to Egypt and sold in the slave market to a high-up official called Potiphar who soon sees how exceptionally gifted and reliable he is and puts him in charge of his entire estate. One day, Potiphar’s wife tries to seduce him but Joseph refuses to sleep with her and, humiliated by this rejection, she frames him for attempted rape.

So Joseph gets set down for something he didn’t do. But such is the favour of God on his life that the Prison Manager ends up trusting Joseph with running the entire prison.

While in prison, Pharaoh’s cupbearer and chief baker, both locked up for some misdemeanour, each have a dream. Joseph interprets them both and asks the cupbearer to remember him to Pharaoh. He says “I’ve done nothing wrong to be in here, please help me when you get out” - but the cupbearer forgets about him as soon as he’s free.

Years go by. Then one day, Pharaoh has a puzzling dream. No one knows what it means but the cupbearer says “I know a Hebrew in prison who can interpret it for you.” They send for Joseph, clean him up and present him to Pharaoh. Joseph tells Pharaoh what the dream means. There will be seven years of bumper harvests followed by seven years of drought.

He advises Pharaoh to store up grain ahead of the famine. Pharaoh is so impressed that he promotes Joseph, on the spot, to be his right-hand man and run the country for him. So Joseph oversees the construction of vast grain silos and arranges for the harvests to be stored there before the years of famine come.

When they do come, all the neighbouring countries, including Israel, come to Egypt to buy grain to avoid starvation. One day, Joseph sees his brothers queuing up to get supplies for their families. Joseph is dressed as a high Egyptian official and speaks the local language so they have no idea who he is. Finally, after a bit of intrigue, he cannot hold it in any longer and takes them into a side room and says to them in their own language, “I am Joseph!”

They are terrified; this is their brother they beat up and sold into slavery, now the second-most powerful man in the world. But Joseph bursts into tears and embraces them all. So their families come down to Egypt to live like royalty and the story ends in chapter 50 with Joseph saying “Don’t be afraid. You intended to harm me…, but God intended it for good.”

Grace changes everything.

It changes everything for people who are badly treated. Joseph was:

·         hated by his jealous brothers

·         rejected by his unscrupulous captors

·         falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife

·         wrongly imprisoned by his indignant master

·         and he was forgotten and left to rot by the ungrateful cupbearer

That’s a pretty bad run of luck isn’t it? Thirteen years elapsed between his brothers selling him into slavery and his elevation by Pharaoh. Thirteen years of constant mistreatment, rough justice, abuse and exploitation. And he did nothing to deserve any of it. How would you feel if all that happened to you?

But grace changes everything. I read about a church the other week where instead of a creed they recite a kind of statement of faith claiming amongst other things “cheques in the post.” Listen, when Jesus died without a shirt on his back, his body broken and spattered in blood, he was not doing it to make us wealthy. He died to make us holy and fit for heaven. God didn’t show grace to us in Christ to make us super-healthy or mega-rich. He died to save us from sin, and spiritual death, and a lost eternity in hell.

As an aside, I want you to notice something very important here; Joseph’s attitude during the years of loss, during the years of personal misery, the years that seemed utterly wasted and futile… his attitude in this season of misfortune will actually shape his anointing in the season of blessing to come.

In years of pastoral ministry I have met many people who had difficult experiences in life but who allowed those experiences to frame their personality afterwards. Sometimes people just can’t move on. Sometimes they don’t seem to want to. Whatever it was that happened to them came to define them. They keep coming back to it and they talk about how so and so did such and such to them.

Joseph in Genesis never does. He talks about his innocence, and the injustice, and he feels the pain of it - but he never speaks ill of his wicked brothers who sold him, or the heartless traders who trafficked him, or Potiphar’s evil wife who framed him.

Joseph makes the decision to not be a victim. He decides that he’s going to let it go. He chooses to not bear a grudge.

Think about this for a minute. The Prison Governor gets fired if a prisoner dies unlawfully on his watch. If a prisoner escapes on his watch it’s over for him. And yet he hands over the running of the entire jail to this nobody, this Hebrew slave. He gives Joseph the keys. He puts him in charge of the whole operation. He doesn’t feel he needs to check what Joseph is doing.

Either this man is a complete lunatic or he has seen that Joseph has got something that is absolutely outstanding in character and ability – and it’s the latter. What he sees in Joseph is the anointing of God that is on those who have learned to forgive from the heart. He sees the presence of God in him. He sees an innocent man who says, “Even in this prison, I’m going to give my absolute best and not become embittered.”

In our Gospel reading (Mark 11.22-25) Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, “Go, throw yourself into the sea,” and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” But he doesn’t end it there. Look what he says next about that prayer of faith. “And” he says, “when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”

Jesus makes it clear that authority and anointing and favour in prayer flow only from a heart that holds nothing against anyone.

How can I get to that place of being able to let it go? There is a grace to forgive. The Lord has the power to heal and he imparts the grace to forgive.

Grace changes everything. It enables us to see that even in times of hardship and mistreatment, when evil seems to be on top, God’s purposes are higher still.

The end of the story of Joseph says this: “His brothers came and threw themselves down before him. ‘We are your slaves,’ they said. But Joseph said to them, ‘Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God?  You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish … the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.’ And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.”

God, in his greatness and foreknowledge and sovereignty is able to weave those dark threads into the great tapestry of his glory. He takes the flats and minors and off notes and blends them with other notes into the magnificent song of his greatness. Grace changes everything.

Let me finish by sharing a modern day story of this grace. Some of you might have seen this on the BBC news website earlier this year. It was a news feature called “My 25 Years as a Prostitute.”

It was an article about Brenda Myers-Powell who was just a child when she became a prostitute in the early 1970s.

She grew up in Chicago. Her 16 year-old mother died when Brenda was six months old. Her grandmother, who drank heavily, took care of her. She would bring drinking partners home from the bar and after she got intoxicated and passed out these men would do unspeakable things to Brenda as a little girl. It started when she was just four or five years old and it became a regular occurrence.

“These were not relationships,” she said, “no-one's bringing me any flowers here, trust me on that - they're using my body like a toilet.” By the time she was 14, she'd had two baby girls.

Over 25 years, she was manipulated, raped, locked in a closet, trafficked, shot 5 times, stabbed 13 times, but couldn't go to the police because if she did she wouldn't be taken seriously.

When she was nearly 40 years old, a customer threw her out of his car. Her dress got caught in the door and she was dragged six blocks along the ground, tearing the skin off her face and the side of her body.

She went to hospital and they immediately took her to the emergency room. A police officer looked her over and said: "Oh I know her. She's just a hooker. She probably beat some guy and took his money and got what she deserved."

They pushed her out into the waiting room as if she was worth nothing. And it was at that moment, while she was waiting for the next shift to start and for someone to attend to her injuries, that she looked up and said to God, "These people don't care about me. Could you please help me?"

And this is her testimony: “God worked real fast. A doctor came and took care of me and she asked me to go and see social services in the hospital. They admitted me to a place called Genesis House. It was a safe house, [run by the Catholic Church]. They told me to take my time and stay as long as I needed - and I stayed almost two years. My face healed, my soul healed.”

She started to do some volunteering with sex workers and helped a university researcher with her fieldwork. She told the girls, "That's who I was, that's where I was. This is who I am now. You can change too, you can heal too." So far, 13 girls are now in University or have got full scholarships. At 11, 12, 13 years old, they were totally damaged. And now they're reaching for the stars.

After three years, she met an man who wooed her and loved her and married her. She says, “He didn't judge me for any of the things that had happened before we met. When he looked at me he didn't even see those things - he says all he saw was a girl with a pretty smile that he wanted to be a part of his life. We celebrated 10 years of marriage last year.”

Three years ago, she became the first woman in the state of Illinois to have her convictions for prostitution wiped from her record.

Her two daughters, who were raised by her aunt, grew up to be, in her words, “awesome young ladies.” One is a doctor and one works in criminal justice.

“So” she says, “I am here to tell you - there is life after so much damage, there is life after so much trauma. There is life after people have told you that you are nothing, that you are worthless and that you will never amount to anything. There is life - and I'm not just talking about a little bit of life. There is a lot of life.”

Grace changes everything.

Let’s stand to pray…

Sermon preached at All saints' Preston on Tees, 4th October 2015

A is for Alpha

Writing this piece one week before the Alpha Course starts at All Saints’ I am beginning to get excited about it.

In my last church, one of my roles was to run Alpha courses in both English and French. I never kept a record of how many courses I led but thinking about it now it must have been about twenty. I love Alpha and have so many great memories of people gradually or suddenly coming to faith in Jesus Christ or encountering the presence and power of the Holy Spirit on the away day.

In case you’ve been on a desert island over the last 25 years and don’t know, Alpha is a ten week series of interactive sessions - with food - covering the essential elements of Christianity. It was originally designed to help young Christians integrate as church members but it soon also grew exponentially as a faith discovery course for people with no faith at all. Furthermore, some Christians who had been church members for years found their faith rejuvenated by completing the course.

According to Alpha’s website it is estimated that the course is running in 169 countries and 112 languages, with over 27 million people having completed the course since it first started. Courses are run in churches of every major Christian denomination, in people’s homes, workplaces, bars, coffee shops, prisons, universities and schools.

I’ve seen many beautiful things happen at Alpha courses over the years. I wish I’d kept a diary of them. But I have seen the most sceptical people imaginable bow the knee to Jesus. I have seen people turn up off the streets feeling strangely compelled to come in not knowing what Alpha was and then getting converted. I have seen people come to faith after the course because they failed to find the warmth of friendship they had enjoyed at Alpha anywhere else. I have seen a breaking marriage repaired and restored. I have seen not one but two women who had been told they would never conceive become pregnant at the first attempt after the Holy Spirit day. Both gave birth to baby boys the following summer. I have seen a man receive, and subsequently regularly use, a remarkable healing gift of the Spirit. I have witnessed a request for prayer at Alpha for a man who had been told he had advanced liver cancer and a few months to live and who was still alive seven years later, the last time I asked about him.

Of course, it isn’t Alpha that does this. Let’s be clear; it’s Jesus. He is the one who is good news to the poor, binds up the broken-hearted, proclaims freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. The Alpha Course, however anointed it may be, is just an instrument God is using in our day; he can put it down and use something else in a different way as and when he pleases. So we need to be clear that we are disciples of Jesus, and don’t become ‘Alphaholics’.

But please pray with me that our course at All Saints’ from 1 October to 10 December will be effective in helping people meet with Jesus and grow in faith. Pray for the catering team, the leaders and helpers, the speakers and above all the guests. May there be many changed lives through wonderful encounters with the living God this autumn.

Time To Go Deeper (Luke 5.1-11)

Introduction

If you are a guest, or here for the first time today, I want to extend a special welcome to you. It is great to have you at All Saints’ today and I hope you feel at home.

Is there anyone here who likes fishing? I’ve never been particularly good at fishing. In fact, I’ve never been any good at fishing. At all...

When I was about 8, I used to go down to a pond with a little net on a bamboo pole, a jam jar and a few friends. We used to try and catch sticklebacks. They aren’t particularly clever fish that are especially hard to catch. I used to spend hours and hours trying to catch just one of them. But the only thing I ever came home with was gnat bites all over my arms and legs.

Well, maybe I just needed someone to train me and teach me to do it. Maybe then I would have been OK at catching fish.

But no. When I was a teenager, my mate Peter Bradford thought he would introduce me to rod fishing on holiday in Cornwall. I thought “this is my big chance. I will catch whoppers. My photo will be in the papers with a record-breaking haddock in my arms.” Peter Bradford had experience. He had expertise. He knew what he was doing. He took me down to a pier. He opened up a box of slimy ragworms wriggling around and he invited me to skewer one alive on a hook… I took one look at this box of overgrown maggots and said “Why don’t you do that bit while I pour the tea and open the sandwiches?” So that’s what happened. We cast our rods out into the teaming waters with high expectation. But needless to say we sat on the pier the whole rainy evening, got soaking wet and caught nothing.

Yes, I am rubbish at fishing. My angling abilities are absent. My piscatorial proficiencies are pants. If you ever need to get a fish out of the sea, don’t bother with me; I am not your man.

I say this because amongst his twelve followers Jesus chose four fishermen; their names were Andrew, James, John and Simon Peter. And all the evidence from the Gospels suggests that they were just as useless with a net as I am. As I have told you before, on other occasions, not once in the whole Bible do you ever hear of these four guys catching even one fish without Jesus having to do a miracle. If you can show me in the Bible where they caught as much as one sprat without Jesus doing something special - I’ll eat my Bible. And if you can show me anywhere in the Bible where they caught two I’ll eat yours as well.

In the story we had acted out just now, the miraculous catch of fish, can you imagine how elated Simon Peter, James and John must have felt that morning? They’d never seen anything like this! They’d never before had to call in reinforcements to gather in a catch because it was so heavy. They probably didn’t even know anybody who ever had. They probably didn’t even know anybody who knew anybody else who had. But here, the nets were tearing. The boat was sinking; it was so full of fish.

This is a story that tells us a lot about what Jesus is like. For example, Jesus is really good at fishing. Jesus is a lot of fun to be around.

But what I mean when I say that the story that tells us a lot about what Jesus is like is that it shows that he sees the huge potential in people. It shows that he accepts people just as they are. And it shows that he invites people into new adventures.

Jesus sees the potential in people

Let’s take those one by one. Firstly, Jesus sees the potential in people.

The story says, in v4, Jesus asked his soon-to-be followers to put out into deep water and let down the nets to catch some fish. That seems a straightforward enough request doesn’t it? How hard is it to say “OK then”, and put the nets down? But what was their first response to his request? 

How do they reply? “Look!” they say, (v5) “We’ve been fishing all night! We have worked hard,” he says. “And the bottom line is that we’ve caught … nothing!” I can relate to that. That’s exactly what I would have said. And, given their pathetic track record, it’s is not surprising that that’s what they said is it?

But what they’re kind of saying is this: “Just who do you think you are coming down here and telling us how to catch fish? This is our job. We’re the experts! (ahem) We were the ones who’ve been slogging it out all night at sea, while landlubbers like you were fast asleep in bed! We know what we’re doing. What makes you think that we should take a lesson from you about fishing?”

These four guys are hardly contenders for the Compliant Disciple of the Year award. They aren’t the most promising candidates to be included in the Messiah’s trusted inner circle. But that is who they become because Jesus sees what these guys could be like. He sees what no one else can see; their potential for greatness.

By nature, these guys are sceptical, doubtful, and honestly not that interested. But something in Simon Peter manages to rise above his initial response and he turns round and says to Jesus, “All right, fine! – Look, because you say so, I’ll do it.”

That’s the potential Jesus sees. Jesus sees someone who isn’t content to stay in the shallows and play safe. Jesus sees someone who doesn’t just fold his arms and say “Yeah, right.” Simon Peter takes the risk. He puts his oar in the water moves out to where it gets deeper. He gives it a try. He says “What have I got to lose?” And when he does, everything changes. If he stayed in the shallows, he’d have never known if miracles can happen. A sensational thing happens but it never would have if Simon Peter had not had the courage to have a go.

Jesus accepts you just as you are

Secondly, the story shows that Jesus accepts you just as you are. When Simon Peter looks down and starts to realise just how full the nets are, he says in v8 an unusual thing to Jesus.

He doesn’t say “Wow, how did you know there were going to be so many fish in that particular bit of the lake?” He doesn’t say “Why don’t you come and be a partner in my business, we could make some money.” He doesn’t say “Come here”, he says, “Go away.” “Go away from me, because I am a sinful man.” He was right about that. That’s what he was. I don’t mean he was worse than everyone else. People don’t use the word “sinful” very much in today’s English except maybe to talk about pink champagne and chocolate cake. It simply means anything I do that comes between me and God.

I’m sinful because I do things and say things that come between me and God. Sometimes I don’t mean to, but I do. That’s called sins of commission. But there are also sins of omission; things I should do - and don’t. I sin every day of every week. We all do.

Some people think of the whole concept of sin is repressive. “We don’t need all these guilt trips” they say. But that’s a bit like saying “I could drive a whole lot faster if I didn’t have these annoying things in my car called brakes.”

That’s why we need a solution for the problem of sin.

And the funny thing is this: when Simon Peter says “Go away from me, I am a sinful man” Jesus didn’t go away. He said “Come with me.” Jesus accepted him just as he is.

It’s too early for Daniel to be aware of any of this. He’s much too young to understand about sin now. But when he gets a little older, and more aware of spiritual things, he will have to make a spiritual decision for himself – just like we all do as adults. Because, as I never tire of saying, baptism doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to the butchers makes you a lamb chop. Daniel will one day become aware of sin in his life. When he does, will he talk with Jesus about it like Simon Peter did?

Your job as parents and godparents is to do all you can to help Daniel understand these spiritual truths. Pray for him, love him, tell him about Jesus, and keep bringing him along to church as you already are doing. And tell him that Jesus accepts him and loves him just as he is.

You may find that Alpha will help you think through some of the questions that will arise. Like “When the hamster died, did it go to heaven?” And “Why should I forgive and not hate that boy who isn’t nice to me?”

Alpha is a really good, user-friendly introductory course. Why don’t you sign up? If you think after week 1 that it’s not for you, you don’t have to come again and no one will phone you up and pester you. Is it time for you to go deeper?

Jesus invites you into new adventures

The third and final discovery here is that Jesus invites you into new adventures.

There’s nothing wrong with catching fish. I can’t speak from experience, but I would imagine it’s a lot of fun actually. But consider what Jesus says here in v10.

“Simon Peter. James. John. So far, you have spent all your lives as career fishermen. But what I’m inviting you to do - starting today - is this: Instead of investing your precious time and energy in catching six-inch tiddlers, come with me and we’ll go after the six-footers! I’m asking you to follow me, and you’ll see what real living is all about!”

Big fish versus small fry. What do you want to spend your life doing?

In 2010, the BBC made a programme called “Big Silence.” It was a fly-on-the-wall documentary following a group of people had no real belief or interest in God as they spent two weeks in silence in a Christian monastery, with occasional short times of reflection with a monk.

At first, most of the volunteers seemed to be indifferent, bored, even seeing the church as a laughing stock. But after a few days, as they got off the rat race and slowed down from the mad rush of their daily routine and began to think about their own lives, they became aware of an internal mess, of a spiritual emptiness, of a desire for spiritual reality, to know God. Two of the group had profound experiences of Jesus and actually converted to Christianity.

One of these, a hard-driven businessman, said he intended to change his business practices, spend more time with his family and explore further his new discovery of the realness of God. Like James, John and Simon Peter in our story who, it says in v11, pulled up their boats on the shore, left everything and followed Jesus.

That’s what I mean by swapping small tiddlers for big fish.

Thomas Merton once said, “Many people seem to spend their whole life climbing the ladder of success only to find, when they get to the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.”

I’m not saying anyone today should give up their jobs and go into a monastery. But what if, your whole life, the ladder you’ve been climbing is propped up against the wrong wall? What if there’s more? What if actually there is a spiritual side to life that is real?

That’s something Alpha is very good for helping you think through as well.

But I don’t want to point to Alpha so much as point to Jesus. He only had to say “Follow me” and at once fishermen dropped their nets and tax collectors deserted their booths.

Jesus wrote no books, commanded no army, ruled no nation, left no monument, owned nothing, lived rough, died young and was given a hurried, unceremonious burial in someone else’s tomb.

But he is by far the most quoted, most followed, most influential person who has ever lived. And he still heals, delivers and changes lives today by the thousand.

Ending

Is Daniel going to invest his one and only life in pursuing small fry, or will he land the biggest prize of them all? We hope and pray he’ll see the big picture.

What we know is that Jesus sees amazing potential in him, he accepts and loves him just as he is, and he calls him today to follow him into a big adventure. Your promises today say, “We will help him say yes to that call.” Let’s all help him say “yes” as he grows up and begins to understand these things for himself.

In the gospels, Jesus is recorded to have asked 157 different questions.

His question to you and me today is simply “What about you? Are you going to put out into deep water?”

The obvious thing to say is “That’s not rational. It’s not logical. Don’t be daft.”

“Are you going to put out into deep water?”

“But I know there are no fish out there, I’ve looked all night, there’s not one.”

“Are you going to put out into deep water?”

“But I’m going to look a right idiot if I row out there and catch nothing again.”

“Put out into deep water, and let down the nets and let’s see what happens.”

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 20th September 2015