Introduction
Three weeks ago, Amy began this spring
sermon series, with a talk on telling others about Jesus as an act of vision.
Sharing our faith is something we as a church aspire to and plan strategically
for.
Then,
a week later, Paul got outdoors and reminded us that sharing our faith is an
act of proclamation. We have something to confidently but humbly commend to
others.
Last
week, Kevin said that sharing faith is an act of power. The Holy Spirit inside
us gives our simple, faltering words a supernatural edge. Remember that.
Next
week, and in a fortnight, we’ll think about sharing our faith as an act of hope
and of witness.
All
five aspects of faith sharing I’ve just mentioned focus on the impression our
testimony makes on others outside the church.
You’re
a Christian because someone told you about Jesus. That’s why there’s a church
today. There will not be one tomorrow if we all keep our faith private.
Our
faith is not something we have the luxury of keeping to ourselves. The Lord has
not given us a box to tick in which we can opt out of publicly affirming our
allegiance to Christ if we don’t quite fancy it.
Encouragement
But this talk today, just one out of a
series of six, is about the effect sharing our faith has on those inside the
church. You see, when we listen to what God has done, or is doing, in each
other’s lives it stirs us, it lifts us, doesn’t it? Sharing faith is also an
act of encouragement.
You
like it when someone encourages you. I know you do. Everyone does. We all crave
and need encouragement. God has designed us so that we thrive on it. Spiritual
encouragement causes us to flourish and grow in our relationship with God.
Let’s
constantly talk amongst ourselves about what God is doing; let’s not focus our
conversations on what God is not doing.
When
you’re encouraged you feel like you can walk through walls. When you’re
discouraged you feel like you’d struggle to make your way out of a wet paper
bag.
Psalm
78 in the Bible, talks about amazing miracles God did in the past. He divided
the Red Sea, he led his people through, he guided them with a cloud by day and
fire by night, he split rocks to give them water to drink. Such faith-building,
life-enriching stories.
But
then the Psalm says this: “The men of Ephraim, though armed with bows, turned
back on the day of battle; [because] they forgot what God had done, the wonders
he had shown them.”
So
Israel is going to war, armed to the teeth it says against an attacking enemy –
but they become fainthearted and say, “We don’t fancy our chances.” Why?
Because they had stopped encouraging each other about how God’s awesome power
had broken into their lives before.
Well,
this morning, I’m going to try and open up a short passage from the letter to
the Hebrews and I’m going to pepper what I say with testimony from my own life
and from elsewhere. My prayer is, that by the end of my talk, you will be
encouraged and truly motivated to tell God stories in turn.
Cleansed
and Allowed In
Let’s
dive straight in to Hebrews 10.19-22.
Therefore,
brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by
the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain,
that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let
us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith
brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and
having our bodies washed with pure water.
In
Old Testament times, nobody could get near God. The full manifestation of his
glorious presence was locked away behind an inner, inner chamber in the temple;
the holy of holies. In front of it, hung this thick, tall curtain, which
screened off God’s presence from any chance of human contact.
The
message was clear. You can’t come in. Nor can I. Nobody can. One small
exception. Just one man, from one tribe, once a year, on one specified day, for
one reason alone, could approach. It was as if to reinforce the sense that God
was so near and yet so far.
But when Jesus’ body was torn to shreds
on the cross that curtain, which shut off access from God’s presence, was also
ripped in two. God himself tore it. So now, because of Jesus, you can go right
in to the most holy place and talk to your Father who loves you.
It says, “our hearts are sprinkled”;
that’s theological language but it simply means this: as nails drove into his
hands and feet on the cross, Jesus’ spattered blood, removed all the grimy
darkness in here and it wipes away every moral stain.
And now, heaven’s door is open. Before,
people approached God only tentatively and with fear – and after a lot of
thorough ritual washing. But now we can draw near to him confidently and with
joy because Jesus has cleaned us up on the inside. God actually invites you
into his overwhelmingly holy and awe-inspiring presence. And there’s no need
for any sense of dread or panic.
Imagine you’re in London. You want to
see the sights, but you don’t know the place so you ask someone the way to
Buckingham Palace. They say, “I’ll take you there if you like, I’m going that
way and it’s not far.” So off you go.
Minutes
later, you arrive. There it is at the end of The Mall.
Your
guide can take you as far as the railings, but they need another level of
authority entirely to get you through the gates, let alone across the
courtyard, let alone in through the door, let alone up the stairs, along the
corridor and Slide 8 - heaven forbid - into the presence of Her Majesty in
person.
Hebrews
is saying here that, likewise, any old priest could take you to the outer gate
of God’s presence. But only Jesus can take you all the way into it.
Stories
Fire Our Faith
That’s the gospel. It’s the power of
God for salvation of all who believe it.
A
few months ago, I got an email from Simon Guillebaud’s GLO ministry in Burundi.
It was packed with amazing testimonies – I was so encouraged reading it. Here
are a few extracts:
Libere,
who had never seen a healing miracle, found himself witnessing to a woman who
had been paralyzed for three years. He sensed the Lord telling him: “Miracles
accompany the preaching of the Word.” So he responded in faith, and commanded
the lady to stand up. She stood up immediately and started dancing with joy!
Libere said: “Now I believe that God can work with whoever believes regardless
of age or denomination. I will spend the rest of my life proclaiming the love
of God.”
Bururi
province is a resistant area. But one of our teams met a family there whose
7-year-old girl was blind, crippled, and her tongue hung limply outside her
mouth, so she was unable to speak. They washed her and prayed for her,
whereupon she immediately got her sight back, began speaking, and was able to
walk. The whole village ran to see this. Her family and 25 others in the
village gave their lives to Christ.
Our
team found a vagrant madman under a tree. He couldn’t speak at all. They prayed
for him and he was healed, in his right mind, and able to speak. When his
family heard he was no longer mad or running naked in the streets, they made a
fire to burn all the objects of witchcraft they’d used to try to set him free,
at which point they gave their lives to Christ as well.
It’s
like reading the Gospels and Acts isn’t it? This is our God. This is what he
does. Isn’t that encouraging? It blessed me to read that.
Hebrews
10 goes on to urge us to keep meeting up and think about how we can inspire one
another.
Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we
profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur
one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as
some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as
you see the Day approaching.
That expression “the hope we profess”
is about our personal testimony, our story, the reasons we have for being
optimistic about the future; God is good and God is faithful.
When it says, “spur one another on” it
literally means to badger, to pester, to be a bit of a nag. The Bible says you
can be provocative towards your fellow Christians if the end result is that
they feel fired up to follow Jesus with a bit more passion. Has your
get-up-and-go got up and left?
Just
last week, I a 13 year-old lad, a friend of one of our young people, gave his
life to Christ. My heart leapt when I heard that. I remembered the elation, the
joy, the feeling brand new of when I first became a Christian.
A
day earlier, I was looking at Facebook and I saw a comment on my page from an
French-Italian we knew in Paris called Elisa. She wrote, “Thank you to the man
God used in 2006 to bring me to know Him!”
Two
surprises; 1) I didn’t know she spoke English and 2) I didn’t know that God
used me to lead her to Christ. It lifted me. Who can say how many people out
there belong to Jesus today because of something they saw in you or something
you said and you didn’t even know?
Hebrews was written at the time of the
Emperor Nero, and that’s key because Nero clamped down hard on Christianity,
making it illegal. But he tolerated Judaism, so many Hebrew Christians were
fleeing to the safety of the synagogue. But they only accepted you back there
if you publicly renounced Christ.
When
it says, “some have given up meeting together”; it wasn’t because they were on
the golf course or having visitors for the weekend, it was because they feared
for their security and were turning their backs on Jesus for a quiet life.
I
hope this lockdown is increasing your yearning for worshipping together in one
place. We can’t meet together now in these exceptional times. But when we can
meet again, I hope we will savour it and cherish it and not take it for
granted. Don’t neglect meeting on Sunday. It’s primarily to focus on the Lord
as one but also, it says here, it’s about encouraging one another.
To
neglect Christian meetings when they are available is to deny your soul the
oxygen of encouragement and support from brothers and sisters who love you. We
may face trials, even persecution as these Hebrews did, but that is all the
more reason to gather together if we can.
The
world has enough discouragers, naysayers, cynics, doom-mongers, critics and
pessimists. We are about encouraging one another. Say a word of thanks, show
your appreciation, talk about something God has done - it can keep brothers and
sisters heads above water.
Ending
As I draw to a close, I want to share
something with you, I listened to a Premier Profile podcast this week which was
a conversation with Ken Fish; a man who trained with John Wimber, an evangelist
with remarkable healing ministry. I commend it to you. Do check it out and
listen to it if you get time.
It
was one of the most edifying things I have ever heard; one or two stories stood
out; but I’m just going to pick one - this is Ken Fish (slightly edited for
brevity):
“I
remember one time, when we were meeting in the gymnasium at Canyon High School
in Anaheim Hills, California. One night, we were all gathered and the place was
pretty-well filled, maybe 3 or 4,000 people there.
I
was with a bunch of friends; I was in my early 20s. And there was a woman
sitting close by me and everybody knew who this woman was because she was one
of the most beautiful women in the church (she was married).
But
what was interesting was I knew her story; she was afraid of getting married,
because she always assumed no one would want to marry her because she was born
without ovaries.
I
remember that night distinctly, because John said, “Now, the Spirit of God is
here and he’s about to move in great power.” And all of a sudden, I looked over
at Nancy (that was her name) and she broke out into a sweat. Her clothes were
soaked all the way through and she began to vibrate intensely.
Several
of us laid our hands on her (her husband was standing there) and the power of
God came and this incredible wave of energy came over her body.
At
the end of that prayer time, she said, “I feel fatter inside” and of course she
went to the doctor and got some confirmation and she had had ovaries created in
her body that didn’t exist [before].
Now,
that’s a miracle, that’s a full-on miracle, and she went on and had four
children and they’ve gone on and had children of their own.”
End
of quote. I’ve seen God heal on occasion; nothing like that, but backs,
shoulders, migraines, tinnitus, partial deafness, and infertility (though as
far as I know, the ovaries were already present) …
I’ve
told you before about the most extraordinary miracle I’ve personally witnessed;
a cockney named Arthur from North London, bent over with chronic spondylosis,
only able to walk slowly and painfully.
A
day after being prayed for in the name of Jesus I visited him and, with a glint
in his eye, he said, “Watch this John.” And he ran up and down the stairs like
an excited child. I said, “What’s happened to you?” “Jesus ‘as ‘ealed me, ain’t
‘e? Praise ver Lord.”
I
can see it in my mind and I can remember the wonder, the fear of the Lord that
came over me. It nourishes my faith every time I think of it.
Every
person who has a story of amazing signs and wonders might have five - even ten
- stories of heartbreak when God says no. If we’re going to go after the things
of the Spirit, we're going to witness incredible victories and bewildering,
heart-breaking defeats.
But
I want to encourage you to keep praying, keep persevering, keep believing, and
do not settle for less. Let’s do that and may All Saints’ forever be a place
where one generation tells of the marvellous works of the Lord to another to
everyone’s great encouragement.
Let’s
pray…
Sermon preached via video link at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 17 May 2020
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