Salvation Today (Luke 19.1-10)

Introduction

There’s a story about a fitness club that was offering a £1,000 prize to anyone who could show that they were stronger than the manager. Here’s how it worked. The boss was a great hulk of a man and he would squeeze an orange until all the juice ran into a glass, and then hand the orange to a challenger. Anyone who could squeeze out even one more drop of juice would win the money.

Many people tried; weightlifters, hod carriers, firefighters, front-row rugby players, vicars, professional wrestlers, and all failed to produce a single extra drop.

But one day this scrawny, weak-looking man signs up for the contest. A crowd assembles and the puny challenger steps up to the stage. After the laughter dies down, the owner grabs his orange and starts squeezing. When he’s done, he hands this bone-dry pulverised ex-orange to the skinny challenger.

But the crowd’s laughter turns to gasps as the man clenches his bony fist around the orange and six drops fall into the glass. The crowd goes wild, and the boss coughs up the prize money. He asks the little guy “What do you for a living - lumberjack, builder, or what?” The guy just smiles and says, “Actually, I work for the Inland Revenue.”

Background

Like the character in Luke’s gospel today… It’s one of the best-loved stories in the Bible; for years, children have sung songs in assemblies and Sunday school about it. “Zacchaeus was a wee little man and a wee little man was he…”

He lived in a place called Jericho, one of the oldest settlements in the world. It is called the city of palms because it’s built around a spring of water. It’s a garden city, surrounded by desert. It was also on a key trading route called the King’s Highway that connected Syria, Israel and Egypt - and because of its lushness and its location it was, and still is today, a prosperous place.

Being a strategically located oasis city, Jericho was also a major customs and excise post. You had to pay duty on anything you transported through that place. And because of that, it was an absolute gold mine for the tax man. It was, in fact, the tax capital of Israel in Jesus’ day.

At that time of course the Romans were in charge – almost everywhere. Their Empire stretched north/south from Hadrian’s Wall to the Sahara Desert, and west/east from Portugal to the Caspian Sea. And it is well-known that they imposed a heavy tax burden on all populations under their control.

Nobody likes paying tax. Not just Coffee Shops, and Internet multinationals. You don’t want to pay more than you have to - and neither do I. But the Jews at this time hated paying it even more because these taxes propped up an immoral and arrogant government with pagan gods. It led to frequent uprisings and revolts.

This is why tax collectors were the most unpopular people in the country. They did Rome’s dirty work and were considered traitors. Everyone thought they were scum; fat cats ripping off their own people.

But no one is beyond the reach of God’s love and grace. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you’ve done, or where you’ve been. Jesus came to show that with God there is always a way back.

Zacchaeus - Before

What about Zacchaeus; what do we know about this particular tax collector? Well, he wasn’t just on the staff – v2 says he was a chief tax collector. Top dog. He gave orders to all the collecting agents in town and took a commission from them. He was in charge of one of the three largest tax offices in the country, and may well have had the best job of them all. 

Not surprisingly, he had become wealthy. He was top of the tax collection food chain. And like all tax inspectors at that time, he was lining his own pockets before he sent the required taxes off to Rome.

He was also a man with a curious mind. He had heard about Jesus because he was talk of the town all over Israel. Everywhere Jesus went there was a big crowd.

Which is when Zacchaeus saw he had a little problem. Danny DeVito claims he is 5’ tall. In fact, he is 4’10”. That was the trouble. He couldn’t see over the crowd, and they wouldn’t let him push to the front, so he climbed a sycamore fig tree which you’ll know if you’ve ever seen one, has low branches and is quite easy to climb.

Why did Zacchaeus want to see Jesus? I think there are three reasons.

Firstly - the obvious. Why do people go to a firework display? Jesus was a sensation. He was box office. The end of the previous chapter tells us how Jesus had just healed a blind man on his way into Jericho. Zacchaeus would have heard the commotion outside so he left his desk to see what was going on.

Secondly - I’m guessing here, but I think his distant memory of a godly mother and father prompted him to find out more. You see, the name Zacchaeus means “good, pure, righteous, upstanding.” I imagine two parents who loved God and named their boy after their hopes and dreams for him, before he became greedy and rich.

(Alexander, by the way, means “defender of men.” I’m sure you want him to have the courage to stand up for what’s right, to have great strength of character. Or maybe you just like the name…)

But I think that Zacchaeus’ parents planted a desire in his life to be good, to be honest, and he lost his way, but when the chance came along to make amends he took it.

Some of you have children who have wandered away from the path you intended for them to take. It’s painful. Where did it all go wrong? Why? After all you did for them? But keep praying for them, keep loving them. It’s never wasted. Your spiritual care is never forgotten.

I think Zacchaeus longed to get back to what his godly mum and dad had always dreamed for him, and that’s why he was determined to get to Jesus. He was ambitious.

You don’t get to be head honcho of the biggest tax office in the land by lacking ambition. When he made up his mind to do get to Jesus, he did it. Listen, anyone who is determined to find God will find him.

There are a hundred things that can get in the way; work, family, leisure, the golf club, even church can get in the way. For Zacchaeus, nothing got in the way. He had to see Jesus for himself. He had to push through whatever it took.

The third reason he was so eager to see Jesus, is this. As we see later in the story, everybody hated him. He was a capitalist, a crook, a collaborator and a cad.

He had fleeced the entire population of Jericho to line his pockets and live in a flashy mansion. He had no friends. But none of his life of luxury made him happy. He was empty inside.

150 years ago, the writer John Ruskin said, “Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.”

More recently comedian Russell Brand said this: “Drugs and alcohol are not my problem. Reality is my problem. Drugs and alcohol are my solution to fill up a hole inside of me.”

Zacchaeus knew about this – and some of you know about it too. Zacchaeus had a gaping void in his soul. He was miserable. All his chasing after the next luxury – at the time it looked so attractive, it seemed so compelling. But his relentless pursuit of money was his ruin. He looked around his flashy villa with its luxury furnishings and it seemed like dust. It left him with a sense of gnawing emptiness. And then Jesus walks into town.

There are six things that happen next that shock the crowd: Jesus noticed Zacchaeus in a leafy tree, Jesus actually spoke to him, Jesus knew him - by name, Jesus called him, Jesus accepted him just as he was and Jesus even befriended him.

Jesus still notices, speaks to, knows by name, calls, accepts and befriends anyone who seeks him.

Zacchaeus – After

“Come down now Zacchaeus” says Jesus. It’s been said that he was converted before his feet hit the ground. He hurried down and welcomed Jesus gladly. Jesus is still looking for people who will welcome him gladly into their lives.

Zacchaeus knew that now was the time and he seized the day. I love his eagerness. And I love it that he’s all or nothing.

Many people want a bit of meditation, a bit of reiki, a little statue of Buddha in the garden, some purple crystals and maybe the Lord’s Prayer as the cherry on top. It won’t do. It is Jesus or nothing; it’s all of Jesus or nothing. That’s what Zacchaeus understood. He couldn’t hang on to his old life and he didn’t want to. It had to go.

Look at the immediate difference between before meeting Jesus and after. Instead of hostility there is hospitality. Instead of grabbing there is giving. It’s instant transformation. It’s not “I will give”, it’s “I give” – Zacchaeus is already writing the cheques and doling out the moneybags.

I was queuing up at a supermarket checkout once. My trolley was brimming over with stuff. As usual, my queue - though visibly the shortest - proved to be the slowest. As I was waiting, the checkout assistant came over and stuck a magnetic sign over my checkout. The sign said ‘10 Items maximum’. She looked at me and said “after you it’s limited items only.” But then, other people came along with three yoghurts in the basket and joined my queue. They started to mutter their disgust to each other about my trolley and how I was out of order. I felt so guilty – but that’s false guilt.

But there’s also such a thing as real guilt, and I feel that also from time to time as well. Jesus came to deal with all our guilt. This is the amazing news: God loves you. You are loved. It’s the most important thing to take away from this morning: you are loved. God loves you.

And he came in the person of his Son, Jesus, to die on a cross for you and for me. And he took all of our guilt, all of our bad stuff, in your place, in my place, in order that we should be free to enjoy life to the full.

This is the most stunning, wonderful news. And to me when I first discovered it as a nerdy, self-conscious, anxious seventeen year old with zits and a brace on my teeth, it was totally life-changing.

Today

Three times in Luke’s gospel the word “today” is found. The first you hear at Christmas – “Today a saviour has been born to you; Christ the Lord” say the angels.

The second you hear at Easter – “Today you will be with me in paradise” says Jesus to the dying thief.

And the third is right here. “Today salvation has come to this house… for the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.”

Are you lost? Do what Zacchaeus did. Come to Christ today! Why put it off?

Ending

Let me draw to a close. When the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1912, the ship’s owners, the White Star Line, placed two noticeboards outside its offices in Liverpool. They were marked “Known to be saved” and “Known to be lost.” As each passenger’s fate was confirmed, their name was added to one or other of the boards. The same is true eternally for a world drowning in guilt: either your name is in God’s Book of Life (known to be saved) or it is not.

If this day, God forbid, were to be your last, would you be known to be saved or known to be lost?

I watched a video this summer on an online news site about a petty criminal called Arthur Booth in a Miami court for burglary. And the Judge Mindy Glazer says to him, “One question for you, sir. Did you go to Nautilus for Middle School?” And he looks at her and recognises her and just loses it right there. He breaks down and starts sobbing, saying over and over again, “oh my goodness!” 

She says, with a smile, “I always wondered what happened to you. And looking around she says, “This was the nicest kid, the best kid, in middle school. I used to play football with him. And look what’s happened to him.” Then she shuffles her papers, looks right at him and says, “I hope you’re able to change your ways. Good luck, you’re free to go. Live a better life.”

That’s what Jesus does every day. This is a little booklet called Why Jesus? There are copies in the foyer and on the information stand. Please do take one. It’s free. And there’s a prayer in the back, which you can pray and through which you too can encounter Jesus - today.

Let’s pray…


Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 16 October 2016

Leadership in the Church (1 Timothy 3.1-13)

Well now, in a week that has seen appalling lewdness in the private conversations of a candidate for the US presidency, and our main parliamentary opposition party is largely declining to serve under its leader and two British members of the European parliament reportedly had a scuffle that put one of them in hospital, the theme for today’s talk is leadership.

The New Testament has little to say about the qualities necessary for political leadership. But it does say much about the qualities required for leadership in the church. And the letters to Timothy and Titus is where we find a lot of what it says.

A vicar was leaving his parish and he was saying farewell to his congregation at the church doors for the last time. He shook the hand of an elderly lady called Mavis as she walked out. She said, "Your successor won't be as good as you." This was, he thought, the first encouraging word he’d had in all his ten years in the parish.

But it was a nice thing to say, and he was very flattered. But vicars have to be modest and self-effacing don’t they? They can’t let praise go to their heads. So he said, "Oh, nonsense Mavis!” "No, really", she said, "Your successor definitely won't be as good as you. I've had five different ministers since I’ve been here, and each new one has been much worse than the last."

We’re looking at Paul’s first letter to Timothy again this morning and we’re particularly interested today in what it has to say about leadership.

Listening to some of my clergy colleagues I sometimes get the impression that the secret of leadership is to keep the four guys who hate you away from the five who are still undecided.

Trip Lee once said “You cannot follow Jesus and be liked by everybody at the same time.” Which is true, but giving gratuitous offence just because you’re the vicar doesn’t always help either!

In the letters to Timothy and Titus, Paul uses four different words to describe church leaders in the earliest churches. The words in Greek are -

Apostolos, episkopos, presbuteros and diakonos.

The apostoloi were church-founding pioneers, who never stayed in one place all that long. Their job was to get a church started, appoint leaders, then move off and start another one somewhere else. They always worked in apostolic teams and in our Bibles they are called apostles.

The episkopoi were spiritual supervisors of a local congregation and are always referred to in the plural because they too always worked in leadership teams. In our Bibles they are called overseers.

The presbuteroi were also spiritual leaders of one congregation and, once again, they only worked in leadership teams. In our Bibles they are called elders. It doesn’t mean they had to be old and decrepit; it means they had experience and were mature in outlook.

In point of fact, episkopos and presbuteros were one and the same thing; the two words describe the same people; episkopos describes what they do (they provide oversight) and presbuteros describes what they’re like (they are mature Christians of good character).

Finally, diakonoi were also recognised leaders who excelled in practical tasks. They too were always local church based and, yet again, always worked in teams. In our Bibles diakonos is translated deacon.

These terms (apostle, overseer, elder and deacon) all sound rather official but, in fact, these words were not theological-sounding titles. They were every day, non-technical terms, which simply meant envoy, supervisor or foreman, mature person and helper or support.

Greek	NIV Bible Translation	Basic Meaning
apostolos	apostle	envoy
episkopos presbuteros	overseer elder	supervisor/foreman mature
diakonos	deacon	support worker

There are two important things to say about all these words.

Firstly, all New Testament ministry, without exception, was team-based. There is not the faintest hint anywhere in the New Testament of one-man or one-woman ministry. Jesus sent his disciples out in twos. Paul was always with Timothy, or Silas, or Barnabas; never alone. Every church had several leaders. Healthy church leadership means teams.

One thing that should be said to every newly ordained minister as soon as the Bishop’s hands have left his or her head is this: “God has already appointed his Messiah, and it’s not you.”

In fact, I am so against this one-person-doing-it-all model that I decided to write a poem against it. 

 

Mary had a little lamb, 'twas given her to keep,

It got ordained a parish priest, then died for lack of sleep.

The sermons that it preached each week were a total waste of bleating

And Mary's lamb spent endless hours attending every meeting.

It preached and sang and cooked and typed and cleaned and served the Lord

Not seeing there were other lambs available and bored.

So when your vicar’s burning out and splitting at the seams

Show him the New Testament, how they always worked in teams.

Not exactly Tennyson, but it made me feel much better...

The second important thing to say about these words is that there is no hint whatsoever that New Testament church leaders were ever called, or considered to be, priests. In fact, the Apostle Peter made it crystal clear that all Christians, not just the leaders, are equally part of a new, royal priesthood.

The word episkopos evolved into our English word bishop, and presbuteros morphed into our English word priest, that’s why we still use that word.

But I am not a priest in the sense of an intermediary standing between God and the people. I have been ordained a priest in the sense of "elder;" an experienced, mature leader. Speaking amongst friends, if I'm totally honest, I think it's a confusing and misleading business and, if I had my way, we would ditch the word "priest" for all ordained ministers today. I never use the word. And while I'm at it, I also think we should scrap calling bishops "My Lord." There is only one Lord - and his name is Jesus.

What is clear is that God calls leaders to serve in his church and they are each given authority to provide direction and organisation.

The emphasis in the New Testament is on church leaders, not controlling the church, but releasing it, so that everyone can excel in using the gifts they have been given by God.

To finish my poem on a happy note:

Mary had a little lamb, who trained the local church

So all the lambs could use their gifts, not one was in the lurch

Everything grew wonderfully, the flock was doing fine

And Mary's lamb lived to the ripe old age of ninety-nine.

As you must have noticed in the reading, 1 Timothy 3 sets out some qualifying criteria for church leadership. There is no mention whatsoever of natural talents. (You might be thinking, “Well, that explains a lot!”) There is nothing here about academic qualifications either. All the qualities listed here are about good character. That’s what God is looking for.

In v1 it says it is good to have an ambition for church leadership. It is a noble task. It is an excellent thing. It certainly is. Two years ago, The Office for National Statistics compared hundreds of different careers and occupations. Vicar came out as the number one occupation for job satisfaction, the most enjoyable and rewarding occupation of all. Incidentally, pub landlord was rock bottom at 274th out of 274. 

In v2-7, the personal qualities include integrity, moderation, insight, an open home to people with needs, and the ability to teach. Negatively, it says that a leader in church should avoid four “a”s. They should not be alcoholic, aggressive, argumentative or avaricious.

That’s personal qualities. There are domestic qualities too: leaders in church should, if married, have a married life that is in line with God’s pattern, be respected outside church, be seen to be able to manage the more limited sphere of the family first, and not be recent convert – lest they let it go to their heads and become proud.

Those are the kinds of qualities you should expect to see in bishops and clergy.

In v8-13 it talks of deacons, or servant helpers in church. Again, it is all about character. They should be serious (that doesn’t mean lacking a sense of humour, it means not flippant). They should be sober, satisfied with their lot, discreet (not gossips), stable, trustworthy and have a sound grasp of Christian teaching.

That’s an impressive list. But it’s not an impossible standard. It may be demanding, and it should be, but it is not unattainable. You don’t have to be the Archangel Gabriel to qualify.

Let me end by talking about the ancient Romans and a tradition they had because it illustrates very well the serious responsibility and the humble servanthood that I think characterise Christian leadership.

Whenever one of their engineers constructed an arch, as the capstone was hoisted into place, the engineer assumed responsibility for his work in the most profound way possible: he stood underneath.

May the Lord bless his church with leaders who build carefully, do a proper job, take responsibility for their work and give Christ the glory.

Let's pray...


Sermon preached at Saint Mary's Long Newton, 9 October 2016

Faith: Sure of What We Hope For (Hebrews 11.1-7)

Introduction

There was a very cautious man who never travelled fast.

He wouldn’t risk a step of faith; it was safety first and last.

And when, one day, he passed away, his insurance was denied,

For since he’d never really lived, they claimed he’d never died.

I don’t know who wrote that poem, it’s anonymous, but it’s perfect for opening this series on faith. We’re going to be going through Hebrews 11, on and off, until the end of November.

Why a series on faith? We’ve all got faith, haven’t we? We hear every day about faith but it’s not the faith God is looking for. There’s talk of faith communities, faith schools, interfaith initiatives, faith-based charities and all the rest of it, but that’s just a new way of saying “religion.”

Someone said to me this week, “The answer to the question ‘do all religions lead to God?’ is no. Not because some do and some don’t, but because no religion leads to God.”

When we talk about “faith” over these next couple of months, we’re not talking about belonging to a religion. We’re talking about daily trust in Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life.

People say, “I haven’t got much faith; it’s all very vague for me.” But faith is not clarity, it’s not sight, it’s not knowledge. Faith doesn’t know the future, but it knows the one who does.

Hebrews 11 is all about faith. The word appears 27 times in this one chapter and you find the words “by faith” 22 times. Hebrews 11 is a guide on the sort of thing living by faith involves.

If I had to sum up Hebrews 11 in a few lines, I’d say it’s all about people in the Old Testament; seventeen are named personally, who were given the land of Canaan but were never content with it. They were yearning for a better country. They were hoping for something more. They were looking ahead into the future to something - or someone - who would fulfil all their spiritual longings, and when Jesus came, he was it. None of them lived to see him, but they never gave up looking until the day they died.

We too, as Christians, are people who long for more. Many Christians say that they don’t quite feel at home on this earth. We don’t totally belong. We’re misfits. People think we’re a bit weird. They’re probably right!

I have a brother called Richard and a sister called Fran, neither of whom are Christians. I feel like a spare part whenever I’m with them. They don’t understand me and I never feel at home in their company. In many ways, I feel a closer family tie to you and all Christians worldwide. You’re my family, and this is home.

I’ve got a United Kingdom passport. So this is where I’m from, and there are things I like about my country, but I don’t feel I completely belong here. My patriotism feels stronger for God’s kingdom than for the United Kingdom. Hebrews 13.14 says, “We do not have [on earth] an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.”

So it’s as if I’m just passing through here. I’m like a traveller with no fixed abode. Is it just me? Do you ever feel like that? Well, faith gives us rights of citizenship of a heavenly country.

Definition

Hebrews 11 starts (v1) with a definition of faith. “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”

You might be saying to yourself “I’m never sure or certain about anything. I’m riddled with doubts.” Do you ever say that?

Martin Ayers wrote a really good book on dealing with doubt called Keep the Faith. And in this book, he asks you to imagine that you’re on jury service for an important trial.

“You arrive on the first day and you sit there with other members of the public. You see all the same things and hear all the same evidence. Speeches are made, witnesses are called, exhibits are passed around, and right from the start, you think it’s fairly clear. The defendant is guilty.

Each day of the trial leaves you more and more convinced. The evidence is overwhelming – stacked against him. By the time you listen to the closing arguments, you think it’s a dead certainty. And then comes decision time. You and your eleven fellow jurors gather in the jury room. As you sit down, people are already saying what you expected them to say. “Well, it’s fairly straightforward isn’t it?” “No question in my mind.”

But then a shocking truth begins to dawn on you. Everybody else is convinced the other way. Every one of them thinks he didn’t do it... You pluck up the courage to say what you think and mention that you think he’s guilty, and the others gaze at you with astonishment. A few of them appear angry – they’re aghast at the way they think you’ve misread the facts.”

That’s a bit like how it feels to be a Christian in the modern world. Everyone else seems to think you’ve lost the plot. Such is the overwhelming tide of opinion against Christian truth, the environment we live in can feel daunting. No wonder we wobble!

But faith is being sure of what we hope for. The word ‘hope’ in English is a tentative, abstract kind of word. Is it going to be sunny tomorrow? I hope so. In England, that means, “who knows?” Basically, “I hope” is indistinguishable from “I wish.”

But the New Testament (in Hebrews 6) describes hope, not as a lottery ticket, but as an anchor. Anchors are never made of porcelain or papier maché; they’re usually cast iron; they’re weighty, they’re solid, they’re built to endure. They’ve got to be up to the job of securing a 400,000 ton fully-loaded super tanker from being dragged off its mooring by powerful tides and currents.

If someone asks you, “Are you going to heaven?” how would you reply? Some people say, “I hope so, fingers crossed, touch wood, if I’m lucky, we don’t know, do we?” Ask a ship’s crew if they think their vessel is going to stay where it is after they winch down a 30 ton solid steel anchor and sink it into the sea bed!

Faith is being sure of our anchors. It’s not optimism, or positive thinking. It’s not about being sure of ourselves, it’s being certain of what we don’t see; it’s about trusting in God.

Faith is not, “I’ll wait and see how things turn out before I decide whether I believe or not.” Faith is “I’m going to believe now, I’m going to give my life to this, even though I can’t see absolutely every consequence.”

Faith in Creation

Verse 3: “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”

Where did everything come from? What’s it for? How did it get here? The answer is we don’t know; we weren’t there. Even John/Bill wasn’t there. Creation has never been replicated so we can’t analyse a repeat occurrence of it. These are facts beyond our ability to know for sure, so we have to take someone else’s word for it.

Imagine someone suddenly threw a ball into this space from the narthex behind you and ran off before you noticed it. With science you could calculate the distance the ball travelled and its rate of deceleration before it stopped. You could gauge the height it bounced, you could weigh it and measure it, and you could determine what it was made of. But you couldn’t tell who threw it.

This is what scientists have worked out about our origins:

About 13.75 billion years ago, in a spontaneous explosion called the Big Bang, everything came into being from nothing. Nine billion years later, the Earth formed when masses of very hot matter got pulled together by gravity to form a sphere.

It cooled down over time and now happens to be the optimal size for a life-sustaining planet. The earth’s mass has enough gravitational pull to support an atmosphere, but if it were much bigger its gravitational force would press mountain ranges down submerging the entire landmass under water. Our planet spins at just the right speed, is just the right distance from the sun, and has just the right mix of gases in the upper and lower atmospheres to allow flora and fauna to co-exist, and has a powerful enough magnetic field to deflect harmful solar wind.

Over a vast period of time, and by the most unlikely chain of lucky breaks, the heap of diverse elements, scattered chaotically over the world’s surface when it formed, somehow got it together. It just so happened that there was an ideal environment at the right temperature and the right atmospheric pressure for all this to give birth to something.

By a series of extremely complex chemical reactions, primitive cells eventually formed, each one made up of a million, million atoms, all in just the right arrangement. Amino acids and enzymes just happened to develop together at the same time and in the same place. Not only did these cells form, they also began to successfully reproduce themselves.

Even this ultra-primitive life had long and highly complex genetic information. Francis Crick, who co-discovered DNA, said, “The origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.”

That’s what science knows about the origins of the earth. It’s brilliant. It’s ingenious. But it can’t tell you what or who brought it all about.

It’s by faith, not by sight, we understand that something was made out of nothing, “that the universe was formed at God’s command.” It’s by faith that we understand that God had only to speak for energy and matter and time to come into existence.

When I used to do homework with my children, they would sometimes struggle over something. As long as it wasn’t long division, which I still can’t do, I tried to explain as best I could, but I could sometimes tell that I wasn’t helping much. So I would try to explain again in a slightly different way and then, suddenly, there’d be a lightbulb moment and they’d understand what I meant.

That’s what it’s like with creation. You understand with your mind as the Holy Spirit gives you understanding. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

With the illumination of the Holy Spirit, it is no big deal believing that God created everything out of nothing. Once you know God, it doesn’t really surprise you at all. “Creator God of earth and sea and sky, our awesome God.” He is grand scale, almighty, omnipotent, all-powerful, and pre-eminently supreme. It’s what you’d expect of him.

I think all the science points compellingly to a creator. The more I read science, the more it strengthens my faith.

Justin Brierley, writing in Premier Christianity magazine in April wrote this about the science of our origins: (You have to concentrate a bit to get what he’s saying).

“Some 30 or so fundamental numbers, such as the force of gravity, the rate of the expansion of the universe and the ratio of electrons to protons in the universe, are so exquisitely balanced that the tiniest fluctuation from their actual value would mean that a life-permitting universe could not exist.

The odds of the finely tuned universe we live in coming about by chance are so unlikely that it’s difficult to conceive of the astronomically large numbers involved.

US Physicist Hugh Ross gives a helpful analogy for visualising the ratio of electrons to protons as sensitive to the degree of one part in 10³⁷. ‘Cover the entire North American continent in dimes all the way up to the moon, a height of about 239,000 miles. Next, pile dimes all the way up to the moon on a billion other continents… Paint one dime red and mix it in the billions of piles of dimes. Blindfold a friend and ask him to pick out one dime. The odds that he will pick the red dime are one in 10³⁷.’

These then are the odds of the correct ratio of electrons to protons arising by chance. [And without the ratio being exactly so, life cannot exist.] When you combine all the other (even more improbable) odds of the [30 or so] other fundamental forces together, it becomes difficult to believe that our life-permitting universe is a product of chance.”

I love this stuff! And we need to understand that faith doesn’t contradict reason. Reason can coexist with faith but you cannot argue someone by brilliant logic into the kingdom of God. You can help them overcome some intellectual obstacles, but you can’t make someone believe by force of argument.

Faith in God at Work

Verse 2 says that the ancients were commended for their faith and then there’s a whole list of people, most of whom were very fallible, and had major crises of faith. The whole Bible is like this. God has chosen to reveal truth mostly in narrative, in real situations, through people’s triumphs and failures - not in philosophical platitudes.

I have about two dozen biographies of great men and women of faith at home; books about Smith Wigglesworth, John Wesley, Thomas Cranmer, and William Tyndale.

I’ve got books by, or about, more recent giants of faith like Rachel Scott and Cassie Bernall (who were shot dead in the Columbine High School massacre after refusing to deny Christ), and Brother Andrew, Bilquis Sheikh (a Muslim woman of noble birth who met Jesus in dreams) and Jackie Pullinger. These too were, or are, ordinary people but their lives inspire me to live with greater faith. I’d commend reading a good Christian biography to encourage your faith.

Faith is as old as humanity. There was faith in the first family. If Adam was the first to lose his faith, his son Abel (v4) was the first to find it. Abel lived by faith because he had a right attitude towards God, unlike his brother Cain. Is your attitude right towards God today? Are you open to him working in your life?

Enoch lived by faith (v5). He didn’t just live for God. He walked with God. There was intimacy, friendship. Step by step, every day, Enoch knew experienced God beside him. Would you describe yourself as a friend of God? Do you need to grow closer to him?

Then it says (v6) “without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

Noah lived by faith (v6). He built a ship in dry desert miles from the sea and where it never rained. But he believed that when God said, it would happen. Half-hearted Christians never live by faith. They structure their lives so that they never have to.

Jesus said that what happened in Noah’s day is going to happen again. When he returns, he said “people will be busy going about their lives, mostly ignoring God.” Jesus is coming again to judge the living and the dead. Do you believe him?

Ending

I’d better end. Maybe I should close with an encouragement.

Jesus’ 12 disciples exasperated him practically daily. They walked around with Jesus for three years, watched him feed the 5,000, saw him walk on water, heal the sick, turn water into wine, restore sight to the blind, cleanse lepers, calm a storm, get paraplegics back on their feet, raise the dead and do the same things themselves, even then they ran away at his arrest, denied him at his trial and refused to believe when he rose from the dead. No wonder Jesus often castigated them for their lack of faith. They were champions of doubt and unbelief.

But he never gave up on them. You haven’t seen half of what they saw. And he won’t give up on you either.

So without faith, it is impossible to please God. But acts of stepping out in faith do please him. He loves it. Whenever Jesus did see faith, he commended it and power was released. “Woman, you have great faith” he said to the Caananite woman, and signs and wonders followed.

Faith is what sets us apart from the rest of the world. What, specifically, are you doing in your life that requires you to take a step of faith?

Let’s go for it – and ask God to release his power as we step out.

Let’s stand to pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 2 October 2016