Be Filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2.1-13)

Introduction

Here is a pie chart with three equal segments. The Bible reveals God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, meaning each person of the Godhead is equal in glory, power, divinity and majesty.

In other words, Father, Son and Holy Spirit have the same amount of “Godness.” There’s no hierarchy. There’s no pecking order.

You might know that in your mind, even though you’ll never understand it, because that’s what people told you.

But when you close your eyes and think of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, how do you feel? Who do you relate to most? Is it the Father? Who is prominent? Is it Jesus? Who is in focus and who is in the background? My guess is that for many of us, the pie chart looks like this. 

We know what a father is, and either we have had personal experience of a good one or we long for a father we never had. The Gospels tell us what Jesus is like and we can even picture him because there are so many paintings of him.

But the Holy Spirit is more elusive. The Holy Spirit for many Christians is just a blurred question mark. I listened to a talk on the Holy Spirit recently by a curate in a large, well-known, Bible-based church and all the way through he referred to the Holy Spirit as “it” as if the Holy Spirit was a thing, like the Force from Star Wars.

In the Bible, the Holy Spirit is always “him,” not “it.” He lives, he speaks, he searches, he guides. You can hear from him, you can lie to him, you can grieve him, you can know him.

I have here a chocolate bar: It’s a raisin and biscuit Yorkie. Other brands are available. How many of you have ever tasted one of these? Has anyone never tasted one before?

OK, there’s a list of ingredients. Pretty well entirely sugar as it happens, but other things too. You could know that list off by heart.

You could know where it’s made, about its nutritional information, you could know about the advert that was produced to make you think you need it, you could have an opinion about the design of the wrapper, you could be an expert on its price in every UK shop.

But you will never know what it’s like until you’ve tasted it…

But then, maybe this bar is not all it seems. What if it’s fake and is actually made of plastic? Or it could be a trick bar from a joke shop made of powerful laxatives. Or what if it’s a faulty bar from a recalled batch? Or it might be the real thing…

Are you prepared to take a chance? Do you trust me…? The Bible says in Psalm 34.8, “Taste and see that the Lord is good…”

The Holy Spirit

I just want to say that straightaway because people look at Acts 2 and think it’s all a bit weird.

Understandably. 120 people in one place. Without warning, the sound of a howling wind, fire from heaven, an outbreak of foreign languages, and a gathered crowd of confused people.

And, as ever when anything supernatural happens, someone writing the whole thing off with a rational explanation. “This isn’t a miracle! These people have been on the bottle.”  

But drunk people slur their words and don’t make any sense. They weren’t drunk at all. They were speaking fluently with no mistakes.

But whenever people see or sense the supernatural, some get perplexed and then recoil in fear…

It is pretty weird though. What would people think if 120 simple folk from up north with flat caps and whippets, like extras from a Hovis advert, all started speaking perfectly fluent Greek, Italian, Cantonese, Arabic, Serbo-Croat, Outer-Mongolian, Swahili and Russian in a public place?   

Galileans were country cousins from up north remember. These particular ones were farmers and fishermen and labourers. They had a distinctive accent like Liverpudlians and Geordies do. And here they were in the heart of the capital talking foreign with perfect pronunciation and clear articulation.

I was once told about a woman from a small, traditional parish in the home counties of England. A new vicar had come with radical ideas and was rather too enthusiastic for comfort. “Oh vicar” she said, “I hope nothing supernatural is going to happen in this church.”

Which, when you remember that our faith is founded on the resurrection of a dead man who walked on lakes and turned water into wine is a pretty dumb thing to say really!

Are you OK with God doing something supernatural? I hope you are.

Pentecost Power

Although this was sudden and dramatic, God had prepared them for it. There was plenty of fair warning.

Thousands of years earlier, Moses in Numbers 11 looked forward to a day when all the Lord's people would be prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit on everyone, not just a chosen few.

The prophet Joel said hundreds of years later that God would one day pour out his Spirit on all people. Sons and daughters would prophesy. Old and young alike would dream and see visions.

John the Baptist, preparing the way, said that he baptized in water but one much greater was just around the corner – who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.

Then Jesus himself said to the disciples to wait and then they would be clothed from on high.

All the way through the Bible up to Pentecost, it’s like the countdown to rocket launch. 10, 9, 8…

The Saturn V rocket is the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful rocket ever designed. Five massive engines burn 500,000 gallons of fuel in just 168 seconds, producing 7.5 million pounds of thrust, to propel 31,000 tons of hardware and fuel into the stratosphere, reaching a speed of over 6,000 mph. And that’s just stage 1. Six more engines fire after that to accelerate the craft enough to power a payload to the moon and back.

At take-off, the ground literally shakes two miles away. That’s power. And at Pentecost God started an unstoppable mission movement. Missile and Missionary are the same word in Latin.

On the Day of Pentecost there were many Jews in Jerusalem for the festival. As is the case today, there were more Jews living outside the Holy Land than inside – and the places listed in v9-11 are as far apart as southern and Eastern Europe, North Africa and right across the Middle East as far as Iran.

If a house is on fire, literally on fire, people come and look. Crowds gather round. People want to know what’s happening.

If a church is on fire, figuratively on fire, people come. Where God is at work, people want to know more and the church grows.

There was no manufactured atmosphere, no whipped-up emotion, no laser lightshow or dry ice machine. It was first thing on the first day of the working week, in the cold light of day. It was the equivalent of 9am on a Monday morning.

There are two words in Hebrew meaning “breath.” The first (neshamah) is the calm, gentle breathing when you’re at rest.

The other (ruach) is blowing and puffing until you’re red in the face. It also means wind, like a blustery day on Roseberry Topping where your face gets sandblasted off the front of your head.

Well, it’s that second word that is used to describe the coming of the Holy Spirit. And that’s what they ruach experienced.

In 1955, Billy Graham was invited to preach in Glasgow. “They said, go to Scotland because it’s the most sinful place in Britain.” They told him that the Scots were a wild and fearsome people. They would give him a tough time. His ministry would unravel before this hardened people.  

And it is said that Billy started to worry and become anxious. He lost his nerve a bit. On the train to Glasgow all his team fell to their knees in prayer and asked God to go before them. As they lifted up their voices to God, the carriage was suddenly filled with a rushing wind.

For six weeks, six nights a week, in rain, snow, and sleet (and occasional fine weather) Kelvin Hall Glasgow was packed out with hundreds in the streets outside, listening to loudspeakers.

Billy Graham preached with anointing every night and he said this: “When I gave the Invitation at the end of the sermon… not a soul moved... I bowed my head in prayer, and moments later, when I looked up, people were streaming down the aisles, some with tears in their eyes.”

Thousands upon thousands came forward to ask Christ to be their Saviour and Lord.

Here’s one typical testimony: "I was just 29… I was wondering what I was doing there and felt unsure about the experience. As soon as Billy called people forward, something made me stand up. I was pushed up off the chair by the Holy Spirit.”

Ruach, the powerful, holy breath of God…

In 1996, we went with our then church to a convention near Macon in south west France. Before the opening meeting, on the first morning, as people were arriving and the band were tuning up, our son Nathan, then about 8 years old, spontaneously laid hands on a little girl a couple of years younger than him, and she instantly fell to the floor under the power of God and stayed there for over an hour.

I know her parents’ well, and I know that she had experienced a personal trauma when she was about 2 or 3 years old. I was sure God was doing a profound healing work in her. We took it in turns to babysit all the kids during the evening meetings and I asked this little girl if she remembered when Nathan prayed for her a few days earlier and she did. I asked her what it was like. She said “it was wonderful. I was in the arms of Jesus.”

Ruach, the powerful breath of God...

You know when it’s blowing a gale outside? You see wheelie bins transported from one side of the street to the other without touching the ground. Wind can be overwhelming, and irresistible. It’s an all-consuming, overpowering, unstoppable force.

On the Day of Pentecost they spoke with new tongues. This is when you are given words to speak in languages, which you have not learned and do not understand.

Jackie Pullinger works amongst drug addicts, gangsters and prostitutes in Hong Kong. After a difficult and fruitless start to her work there, she said this, “I prayed 15 minutes a day in the language of the Spirit and felt nothing as I asked the Spirit to help me pray for those he wanted to reach.

After about six weeks of this, I began to lead people to Jesus without trying.  Gangsters fell on their knees, sobbing in the streets.  Women were healed.  Heroin addicts were miraculously set free. Scores were converted. We opened several homes to house heroin addicts and all were delivered from drugs, painlessly because of the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Nicky Gumbel talks about an occasion when a woman called Penny prayed for somebody called Anna on an Alpha weekend. What Anna needed to know more than anything else at that time was that God really loved her.

Penny ran out of words in English and started praying quietly in tongues. Anna looked up and started laughing. She said, “You’ve just spoken to me in Russian.”  Penny said, “Well, I don’t speak any Russian”. 

But Anna was fluent and loved the language. So Penny asked, “What have I been saying?” Anna said, “Well you’ve been saying, “my dear child, my dear child…” 

Ruach, the powerful breath of God...

Ending

This is what happens when the Spirit comes. May he visit his church afresh in this and every generation.

As I end, further on in Acts 2, Peter gets up and speaks, appealing to the gathered crowd, and quoting from the prophet Joel. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” he says.

It’s a promise that still stands and listen - it’s for you.

If you’ve never done it before, call out to the Lord today. It’s never too late and there’s no time like the present. Tell him you want your life to turn around. Tell him you want to experience the power of his forgiveness, the fullness of his joy and a release from spiritual darkness into glorious new life.

Taste and see that the Lord is good.

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 20 May 2018

The River of God (Ezekiel 47.1-12)

Introduction

Back in 1997, when Kathie was pregnant with Ben, we went on a mountain bike ride while on holiday in the south of France. We started off whizzing downhill at great speed from a town in the hills called Lodeve. I guess we must have travelled about 10-15 miles and it was a baking hot summer’s day.

It may have been a bank holiday weekend. In any case, no shops were open and we badly miscalculated the amount of water we needed to take with us. We soon became quite dehydrated. Kathie felt really ill.

So we decided that I should do the manly thing and cycle back alone, all the way up the hill to the holiday home, get the car, and drive back to pick her up while she rested in the shade. Riding back, I honestly thought at one point I was going to die. 

When I finally got back, I realised Kathie had the keys to the house. Our three children were out with the friends we were holidaying with. So I lifted a wheelie bin onto the car roof and climbed over a high wall into the property. 

Just behind that wall there was a big drop into a swimming pool and I just flopped into it, completely exhausted. That chlorinated pool water, probably peed in by all three kids all week, tasted like the elixir of paradise! I’ll never forget it. 

And when I read Ezekiel 47 about the river of life, I remember what acute, life-threatening thirst feels like. I’ll come back to that a bit later.

Ezekiel and the River of God

This is the third of three talks between Easter and Pentecost on the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel, as you may know if you have been here the last couple of weeks, was a young priest who had been forcibly removed from his home in Jerusalem and had to live as an exile in Babylon, hundreds of miles to the east.

And while he’s there, with no way home, just doing the best he can, God gives him a series of amazing visions, of which this is the last. 

He is shown a river dribbling gently out of the newly built temple in Jerusalem, and he notices that it’s getting deeper and deeper, even though it has no tributaries running into it to swell the flow.

It is just one source, from the presence of God himself, and down the hill it runs from a dribble, to a trickle, to a creek, to a brook, to a stream, to a river, to a torrent through the Arabah desert until it tips like a mighty cataract into the Dead Sea.

What is this? Is it a prophecy about an actual river? Some people think it is and that it will start to flow when the Lord returns. Zechariah 14 says that when the Messiah comes to the Mount of Olives, two great rivers will gush out from Zion; one westwards towards the Mediterranean and the other, like this one, eastwards down to the Dead Sea. Well, maybe…

But the early church fathers saw this river in more symbolic terms as a vision of the increase and outpouring of the Holy Spirit. I think they got it right.

All the way through Scripture, and not just when the Lord comes back, there is a running river, a place of refreshment and revival and life.

Right back where it all starts in Genesis 2, there are streams that irrigate paradise. In the very last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22, the river is still flowing, clear as crystal, watering the tree of life with fruit all year round and leaves that make the sick well again. It’s about heavenly provision and supernatural healing.

And all the way through God’s word, this river runs. Psalms 36 and 46 speak of drinking from God’s river of delights, a source whose streams make glad the city of God. It’s about happiness and pleasure.

Zechariah 13 and 14 speak of a fountain of pure, living water that washes away people’s dirtiness and shame. It’s about purity and cleansing.

Isaiah 43 speaks of God doing a new thing; streams springing up in the wasteland and a watered wilderness. It’s about change.

Joel 3 also speaks of a source flowing out of the Lord’s house and water the valley of acacias. What a gorgeous picture of lush abundance and life!

For Ezekiel, looking at all this, it was a vision of the future, of what God wanted for his humiliated people. Ezekiel 47 is, in fact, one of the defining passages of the Old Testament in looking forward to what will happen when Jesus comes. It’s about increase and growth – the waters run ever deeper, ever faster, ever louder. 

And when Jesus does arrive, he speaks in John 4 about life-giving water that you put to your dried, cracked lips and you never thirst again. Then three chapters later he calls out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink, and rivers of living water will flow from within them.”

What is this river if not the very presence of God and the soul-refreshing, life-giving, spiritually reviving outpouring of his mercy and grace? There’s nothing else like it. It’s the place to be. 

When I was a boy, my dad used to read me The Wind in the Willows. Have any of you read that book? 

There’s a scene near the beginning where Mole meets Rat, who’s actually a water vole, but never mind...

 “So-this-is-a-river?” says Mole.

"The River," corrects Rat.

"And you really live by the river? What a jolly life!" says Mole.

"By it and with it and on it and in it," says Rat. "It's brother and sister to me, and aunts, and company, and food and drink, and (naturally) washing. It's my world, and I don't want any other. What it hasn't got is not worth having, and what it doesn't know is not worth knowing.”

If you’re wondering what it’s like to swim in the river of God’s presence and pleasure and blessing, well, I agree with Rat, what it hasn't got is not worth having, and what it doesn't know is not worth knowing.

Thirsty World

We should remind ourselves often how desperately thirsty our world is. The whole earth is longing for this river. Our society is spiritually dried out, it craves and yearns for this water of life. 

Kilroy J. Oldster is an American Trial Attorney. He’s seen a lot of crime in his career. He’s seen some dark stuff. He wrote a book called Dead Toad Scrolls in which he says, “Every road leads to sorrow. All aspects that make life beautiful – friendship, love, art, and truth – will end... we came from nothingness and will return to the great void that birthed us.”

The human heart is parched. It’s like an arid desert, panting, thirsting, gasping for life-giving water.

Bertrand Russell was a leading and vocal atheist in the mid-20th Century. He wrote an essay called Why I Am Not a Christian. 

But when his daughter wrote a biography of her father she said 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.”

Pascal said there’s a God shaped-hole in every human heart. We have this instinctive longing for the watered garden of Eden. We look over our four score years and ten and say, “Is that it? Is this all there is? It’s not enough. There must be more. Where can I drink?”

Every 12 years about 120 million pilgrims head off for the Kumbh Mela in India. Something inside them knows there’s a river of life somewhere. And they head for a literal river, the Ganges.

They know they are spiritually unclean and tainted. They know they need salvation and cleansing. Their hearts tell them that every day. They walk for days to congregate in a great mass of humanity dipping themselves in this squalid, brown, bacterially infected, mosquito ridden water, hoping somehow to wash their sins away.

Upstream there are toilet drains that empty into the Ganges, but such is the desperation of some pilgrims, that they drink the waters hoping they’re sacred, looking for purity and forgiveness.

The whole world is a scorched spiritual wilderness. 

And the devil loves the desert. The first time he appears in the Gospels is in the desert. He gravitates to dry and barren wastelands, Death Valley, where nothing lives and nothing grows.

Getting into the River of Life

If you’ve ever been a victim of flooding you know how devastating it is. The nearest I’ve got to it is a thoroughly miserable week’s camping in torrential rain where my leaking tent proved to be completely useless, the groundsheet got left at home, and my bedding ended up like a waterlogged sponge. That was 1996. I vowed never to camp again and I have kept my word.

A few weeks ago, the grandchildren were staying and – you know when you’ve got a two-year-old in the house and it goes very quiet? Well, I was working in my office when suddenly I heard Kathie yell from the kitchen “Oh no!” 

One of our two-year olds had decided it would be a great idea to turn the kitchen tap on and leave it running. By the time Kathie got there, it was like a scene from Paddington Bear. Water was running down the front of the kitchen cabinets and starting to spread all over the floor.

In Ezekiel 47, God leaves the taps on in the temple and causes a flood that gets deeper and deeper. But instead of causing damage and devastation, it’s a life-giving source that flows out from the presence of God, to irrigate desert places of dryness and lifelessness. 

People’s lives produce rotten fruit, leaves that curl up brown and dry. But where the river flows, fruit trees spring up on the riverbanks. The fruit never fails. The leaves on the trees never wither. Salt water becomes fresh. Even the Dead Sea comes to life and begins to teem with fish. 

And notice that Ezekiel doesn’t just watch. He is not a casual observer; he is invited into this flowing stream.

The invitation is to step into the river of life, and ever deeper into the experience of God’s presence.

Ezekiel is very specific about the aspect of the temple and the direction of the flowing water.

He says the temple faced east. That’s where he was, in Babylon. Due east. The east was always for God’s people the direction of danger, of hostility, of foreigners, of enemies, of those estranged from God. But the water runs out towards the east.

You don’t have to go up the hill to find it; the river comes down the hill to you. Grace flows out to lonely, dry, desert places, to the Arabah.

But notice also, that it flows out east from the temple on the south side, which is the side where all the pilgrims went out. In other words, this stream of life-giving water is following the people of God as they leave worship.

So it’s an invitation to journey deeper and deeper in our experience of God, having encountered him and feasted on his presence in worship.

And here’s the invitation:

First of all, you’re ankle deep. Just dipping your toe in. This is maybe like when you first become aware of God and the life of faith. It’s unlike anything you’ve known before. Perhaps you venture to splash about a bit as the experience is so new and exhilarating. But some people never go further than this. All their life is spent in the spiritual shallows where it’s perfectly safe.

But the invitation is to journey further, to go knee deep. Wading knee deep is a bit harder than when the water is up to your ankles. 

The knees naturally remind us of prayer. Whenever we go further in prayer we go further into God.

Thy Kingdom Come, this season of prayer we are in now between Ascension and Pentecost, is challenging us to pray for people to come to faith in Jesus Christ. Thousands are uniting together to ask God for an outpouring of the Spirit. I hope you will wade deeper into the river of God in these days.

But the invitation is to go yet deeper– up to the waist. In waist-deep water your feet are still on the ground but you can’t run anymore. You are more affected by the current of the river. You have less control of where and how fast you go.

In Ephesians 6, it says to fit around your waist the belt of truth, so you might see water up to the waist as maybe a reminder of your need to go deeper in your engagement with God’s word. 

Finally, the waters are too deep for your toes to touch the riverbed. You’re at the mercy of the current and you have to swim. Ezekiel says it flows out to the Arabah (which in Hebrew literally means “desolate and dry area”). It pours into the Dead Sea, a great depression at the lowest point on the earth’s surface.  

The Dead Sea is ten times saltier than the ocean. Nothing lives in its toxic brine. 

But that’s where the river goes; towards desert places. The river of God brings complete transformation. Nothing stays the same when God is at work. Marshes and deserts break out into blossom. 

Violent career criminals go straight and become responsible fathers. Miserable people cheer up and become filled with joy. Lonely people find a family. Sick people get well. Dead churches come alive. Tight old misers become joyful and generous givers. Self-centred people start to look to other people’s needs.

This is what happens when the people of God leave the place of worship, full of the Holy Spirit; they become conduits of blessing and healing all the way to the great depression of spiritual death and decay.

Are you going to step forward into deeper waters today? For some, that’ll be from dry ground to ankle deep. For others it will mean from the ankles to the knees. For still others the year ahead is about going from knee-deep to waist-deep. And for some, it’s time to launch off in total surrender, to wherever God leads, to the exhilaration of being out of your depth.

Some of you have swam in deep waters before but you’re back on dry ground now. Don’t waste your life just looking at it from the banks. God is calling some of you this morning to step back into the current and let God be God.

Let’s stand to pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 13 May 2018

All Authority (Matthew 28.16-20)

Introduction

Small children, usually when they are about 4 or 5 years old, go through a phase when they continually ask the question “why?” We know deep down it’s necessary - how else are they going to learn if they never ask questions? And we have to admit that were probably no different when we were young.

But if you’ve been a parent of a child this age, you’ll know very well how wearisome it can be.

Children are naturally curious and eager to learn. But there are times when the question “why?” has nothing to do with inquisitiveness and everything to do with defiance.

Share your toys please, Anna. Why? 

You’ll have no ice cream until you eat your peas, Nathan. Why?

You draw on paper, not on the walls, Joseph. Why?

It’s time for bed now, Benjamin. Why?

And - we’ve all said it - sometimes the only answer we have the energy to give is “because I say so” or “just because.”

It’s fifty years ago this month that students in Paris began a protest demonstration that brought the French economy to a standstill and, at times, turned really ugly.

Such was the explosive and anarchic nature of this uprising that the French government temporarily ceased to function. President de Gaulle, fearing civil war or another all-out revolution, actually fled the country at one point.

Just as a young child’s petulance defies a parent’s authority, the riots of May 1968 targeted all authority, all power, and all institutions; the government, the military, the police, the education system, the church, the family, the media – everything.

And though it was mostly confined to France, the spirit of mai soixante-huit has permeated the entire western world, including here.

Who gave you the right? What makes you so special? Why should I do this or that just because you say so? These attitudes have become embedded in our society.

Consider attitudes towards the royal family, towards elected office.

Consider the disrespect footballers and tennis stars have for match officials. 

Consider the physical attacks on firefighters and first responders. 

Consider the fragmentation of marriage and family life.

So it’s with fear and trepidation I, as a member of the clergy, still seen by some as part of the establishment, address you tonight on this subject of authority. In fact, “all authority in heaven and on earth.”

Jesus’ Authority

It’s a phrase, as we’ve just heard, that Jesus used in Matthew 28, just before his ascension. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” he said.

Throughout his ministry on earth he was questioned and challenged on his authority by the religious elite. “By what authority are you doing these things?” they sniffed.

Everything he did was challenged and contested. 

“Who said you can heal on the sabbath? It’s not allowed.” 

“Why does this fellow forgive sins? Only God can do that.”

Who does this upstart think he is? Isn’t this just the carpenter’s son?

It was non-stop. When he produced a miraculous catch they probably moaned all day about him fishing without a licence.

So much for the religious leaders. But for the ordinary people, it was totally different. Have you noticed?

In Mark 1.22 and 27 it says people were amazed by Jesus’ teaching because it had authority unlike the teachers of the law. His message was powerful. It was striking. It was thrilling. People marveled.

Even the Roman centurion saw Jesus’ authority. He said to Jesus, “This is my line of work. I say ‘jump’ and my men all say ‘how high?’ I get how authority works. You’ve got it in spades. You just need to say a word and – that’ll be enough, it’ll be done - my servant will be healed.”

The American theologian Bernard Ramm summed up Jesus’ words saying that they “are read more, quoted more, loved more, believed more, and translated more because they are the greatest words ever spoken … Their greatness lies in …dealing clearly, definitively and authoritatively with the greatest problems that throb in the human breast. No other man’s words have the appeal of Jesus’ words because no other man can answer those fundamental human questions as Jesus answered them.”

In other words, what Jesus said was not theoretical, propositional or merely academic. When he spoke, he turned heads. He opened his mouth and people hung on every word. It was electric. It was revolutionary because he addressed felt needs like no one else did but also because what he said was backed up by works of power.

There’s a little story about a vicar shaking hands with his congregation on the way out of church: Someone says, “Thank you for that sermon vicar; I’ve never understood that subject and I still don’t understand it – but now I don’t understand it on a much higher level!”

We can smile at a funny story but there’s enough truth in it to bite.

About six months ago, a man I know who is training for ordained ministry posted the following words on his Facebook page. I’m going to read it slowly…

“Just had a lecture on missiology which included a very broad and incisive view of church and mission... The orientation themes were placed in a new context. We looked at… a view of critical correlation and the questions we need to bring to Scripture and the view we have of the world. Then we spent time with a social cognitive discourse analysis on the wonder of the hybrid person. We even looked at epigenetics and how the church can suppress who we truly are, yet in embracing our DNA, we can be freed to bring that part of our humanity to the light.”

I mean - what? Who understood any of that? Can anyone help me here? This makes me so angry! Why are we training people to empty our churches?

There is zero authority and zero amazement, in stuff like that; it’s just pretentious, pompous garbage. People listen to hot air like that and just yawn.

That’s not authority at all. It’s spiritual impotence, ineptness and irrelevance.

Jesus’ Authority and Ours

When I talk about authority, what I mean is this: there’s a church in Halifax that started six years ago primarily for homeless, marginalised, recovering addicts, ex-offenders and street kids.

I was chatting to one of the leaders of that church last month and she told me about a service a few years ago, when a Wiccan High Priestess visited. While standing at the back during the singing of Amazing Grace, she encountered the living God, and couldn’t physically move while waves of love and grace washed over her. She quickly renounced her life as a High Priestess and surrendered her life to Jesus. She’s now a key staff member there.

Another day during sung worship, phones were ringing, a group started chatting and it looked like a fight was about to break out. Prompted by the Holy Spirit, they stopped everything mid-song and explained that they needed to pray against a spirit of distraction.

Once that happened, a powerful time of worship followed. The Holy Spirit came in power. At the end of the service, they discovered a visitor had given his life to Jesus and another man was healed of lung cancer which was later verified by doctors. 

That’s authority! That’s unmistakably the mark of Jesus. This is what he does. This is what he is like.

He preached the gospel, healed the sick, cast out demons and raised the dead.

Then, the Gospels tell us, he sent out the 12 and said, “Now you do it, go on! You preach the gospel, heal the sick, cast out demons, and raise the dead - do it in my authority, in my name - off you go.” And they came back and said, “This is amazing. It actually works with us as well.”

Of course it works. Because it flows from Jesus’ authority. So then he sent out the 72 and said, “Now it’s your turn; preach the gospel, heal the sick, cast out demons, and raise the dead - do it in my authority - off you go.” They came back and said, “This is brilliant. It works with us as well.”

And this is exactly what it means when Jesus tells us to pray, “Your kingdom come.” It means the awesome power of heaven brought into the everyday ups and downs of life so that lives are touched, communities are healed, and nations are transformed.

Jesus said “As the Father sent me, so I send you.”

You and I have been given authority in prayer to make a difference. Prayer is the difference between the best we can do and the best God can do. “Anything you ask, in my name,” says Jesus, “will be given to you so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”

That’s what this ten days of prayer “Thy kingdom come” is about; that people far away from God will be brought near.

Ending

So on this Ascension Day, let me end with some words from the Apostle Paul in our second reading that can encourage us as we pray with the authority of Christ that his kingdom will come and what he wants will be done here on earth as is the case all the time in heaven.

Ephesians 2.6-7 says this: “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that… he might show the incomparable riches of his grace…”

Sermon preached at Saint Mary's Long Newton, Ascension Thursday, 10 May 2018

Bearing Fruit and Growing (Colossians 1.1-13)

Introduction

We give thanks to God for his blessing on this church which has endured for many years. Our prayer is that it may continue, and indeed accelerate, as we journey together into the future he has for us.

Whenever a friend of mine visits another church, I always ask, “How did you find it?” And what I mean by that question is not “what was the building like?”, or “what do they wear?”, or “how many people were present?”, or “which songs did they sing?” or “did you find out about their finances?” 

What I’m interested in is what I call the “spiritual temperature” of church. In other words, did the people seem to be on fire for God or apathetic? Did you find them outward-looking and welcoming or a bit cliquey? Was the Bible teaching sound and life-giving or dull and lacking conviction? Was their worship vibrant and energising or lethargic and tiresome? Was the atmosphere there full of faith and the Holy Spirit or a bit worldly and dreary? 

Our reading today, from Colossians 1, is all about those kinds of issues. It’s about the personality of the church in Colossae and the impact it was having beyond its four walls. 

Colossae, like Stockton on Tees, was a meeting place of many different worldviews and beliefs. There was a great plurality of different ideas that were all tolerated as long as they didn’t result in civil disorder. Our secular society works in much the same way today. You can believe what you want as long as it doesn’t offend or limit the rights of someone else.

Hearing About What God Is Doing

And for the church in that town, the Apostle Paul’s prayer was surely what he would pray for the church in this one; (v10) that we would live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way.

As far as we know, Paul never visited Colossae. The nearest he got to it was when he started a church in Ephesus, about 100 miles away, but he knew about it because one of his converts in Ephesus, called Epaphras, later took the gospel to his home town of Colossae. He took the essential DNA of the church in Ephesus and put it somewhere else. Hold on to that thought, I’m going to come back to it. 

But notice this; Paul never went anywhere near this church and yet he can say in v4, “We have heard of your faith... and your love.” 

In fact, three times in this short passage Paul says; “We’ve heard all about you.” So it was a church with influence. There is something about the work of God there that became news. It was heard about and talked about hundreds of miles away. What was it about that little church that caused ripples throughout the wider region? 

Growth and Fruitfulness

In v6 you get the answer; “The gospel is bearing fruit and growing… among you.” 

Paul repeats that in v10. He prays, “that you may please the Lord in every way, bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God.”

One of the unmissable hallmarks of an individual or a church where God is at work is that there is growth and fruitfulness. God wants you and me to be growing and bearing fruit in such a way that people get to hear about it. 

Let me ask you bluntly and directly; do you think you are growing? Is your faith deepening? Is your heart for God getting bigger? Do you have a healthy appetite for God’s presence? Are you forgiving as the Lord forgave you? Are you further on in God than you were this time last year? Are you asking God for more faith, deeper joy, greater love, and increased generosity...?

Growth and fruitfulness are unmistakable evidence of spiritual health. Spiritual stagnation and unproductiveness are signs that something is wrong and needs sorting out.

So what’s the secret of spiritual growth and fruitfulness? Well, the Bible says here that before you can ever make an impression on your community, the gospel has to make its mark on you.

Here’s how it all works in a nutshell; first, God does a work in your heart and you change – and you then enrich the life of your local church making it stronger and more healthy - and only then, when the whole church is alive and vibrant, is there an impact on the wider community. But it starts with each individual growing and bearing fruit.

If you look closer at verses 6 to 9 you can see that they reveal a sequence. 

In v6 it says “you heard the word of the gospel.” In other words, somebody articulated the good news about Jesus and your ears tuned in. It appealed to you enough to listen up and take an interest. That’s vital.

But hearing the gospel is not enough. I mean, I have heard about pulsars, quasars, phantom energy, black holes and dark matter. I have heard that they exist out in space and are fundamental to the structure of the universe. But that doesn’t mean I understand what they are. 

But a bit further in v6 it says about the gospel, “You truly understood it.” That is to say the message of the gospel rang true and made sense to you. Your eyes were opened to the truth about the gravity of sin and the sweetness of salvation and you said, “Ah yes, I see that now.” 

But understanding the gospel is not sufficient either. I understand how planes fly; it’s basic aerodynamics; thrust must be greater than drag, and lift must be greater than weight. I can understand that perfectly well, but I have never learned to actually fly a plane. 

So in v7 Paul goes beyond just hearing and understanding. He says, “You learned it.” He’s talking about life-related biblical training so that theory becomes personal experience.

That’s where these believers were. They had first heard, then understood, and finally really learned or grasped the gospel of God’s grace. 

Where do you think you are on that scale? The truth about you and God’s plan for your life – are you at stage 1 (have you just heard it?) Or do you think you have progressed to stage 2 yet (do you really understand it?) Or have you made it to stage 3 now (have you properly learned and grasped it so it is an integral part of who you are?) 

This is so important. It’s why we work really hard on biblical preaching and encourage everyone to be in a Life Group. Our aim is that everyone here has heard, understood and learned the gospel so we are all growing and bearing fruit.

There are four different ways in which I see us growing and bearing fruit, and I want to end by saying a few words on each.

1) REACh

We have made a start in growing the building here. We are very blessed to have the facility we have, and I thank God for the vision of generations before me. But the truth is that parts of our building fit what God was calling the church to be in the 1950’s and 60’s. This is 2018. And we should not ask those who will come after us to fit in with what God was doing decades ago.

If we do not change, we will find ourselves perfectly equipped for a world that no longer exists. So we have to find a way of honouring the heritage of the past, without ever being controlled by it. 

Jesus said that new wine needs new wineskins. He didn’t advise us, he commanded us in the great commission, to make disciples and preach the gospel to all creation, not become curators of a religious museum. So REACh will continue and we will not rest until we’ve finished the job.

2) Discipleship for Everyone

But even with the best church building on earth, if we are not all growing in our discipleship, we are failing as a church. Discipleship means a lifelong programme of learning to live more like Jesus did. It's our job to train people to be more like Jesus in his character, to think more like Jesus in his priorities and to minister more like Jesus in his anointed power. 

From June onwards, we are going to be intentionally focusing on this. Because we know that there is a great temptation to sit comfortably, get some popcorn and just enjoy the show. That is not the church Jesus is building.

Jesus modelled to all his followers how to preach good news to the poor, how to heal the sick, how to drive out demons and how to feed the 5,000. Then he said, “Right, now it’s your turn. You do it. And when you’ve done that, tell someone else how to do it.” That is what we’re about.

3) Equipping Leaders

Because the 10.30am congregation has grown in size over the last few years, All Saints’ has increased in complexity. There are more people to get to know, to keep up with, to look after, and to involve.

Logistically, it takes longer to administer Communion and serve coffee; queues are longer meaning servers get home later... The parking challenge, already tricky two years ago, is now even more so. On so many levels, we simply cannot operate like we did before.

This means we have involve more people in decision making, train more people and give them responsibility. For example, because the pastoral caseload has grown so much, Peter is now co-leading the pastoral team with Karen and he is training to take funerals too, releasing me for other things.

The leadership of Connect is now shared between 6 different people. We have identified new Life Group leaders. I have invited new faces into the service leading and preaching teams. We aim to double the size of the prayer ministry team.

4) Planting Out

Finally, I mentioned Epaphras earlier, the man who first took the gospel from Ephesus to Colossae and established a new church there. This is the way the early church grew. Churches sent out leaders with teams who began to grow and bear fruit where they went.

All Saints’ has gospel-shaped DNA which multiplies wherever it goes. When the Alan and Nicky went to Central Stockton with a few others ten years ago, a church facing closure came alive.

When Sylvia went out five years ago there were virtually no children or young people and only very formal services where she went. Now there is lots of youthfulness and a growing congregation.

When Stuart and Nichola went to Sunderland two years ago, they had a congregation of 6; 4 of whom were them. Now they’re getting over 60, people are coming to faith, and God is growing his church on that tough estate.

What we have here, what God has so graciously done among us, is too precious to keep to ourselves. And whenever we give it away, God pours even more back in. Jesus said, “Give, and it will be given to you – with an added bonus and a blessing.”

When Paul comes as curate here in July, his focus will be to gather a team of hopefully about 30 people to go with him and his family from here and do the same again about three years from now. The church he will go on to is not viable in its present form and is facing closure. But we believe God has a new day for that community.

I want to ask you to pray, perhaps especially if you live nearer to there than here, and ask God if he might perhaps be calling you to join that new plant team. It won’t be to keep doing with more people what has led to decline there for decades. It will be new wine in a new wineskin. People are going to meet Jesus, come to faith, be filled with the Holy Spirit, be added to the church and it will grow and bear fruit.

Ending

I think we are entering one of the most exciting chapters in All Saints’ life. The best is yet to come! It is an honour to be called by God to lead this church and serve you all.

Let’s stand to pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 22 April 2018

Go Into All the World (Mark 16.9-20)

Introduction

You cannot help but notice that we make a much bigger deal of Christmas than we do of Easter.

In general culture, Christmas basically starts as soon as Halloween is over, at the start of November. Ugly jumpers and plastic Santas start to appear everywhere like a terrifying scene from a Zombie film. There’s Christmas adverts, Christmas cards, Christmas parties, Christmas bonuses, Christmas shopping, Christmas cake, Christmas crackers Christmas pudding … And of course, there’s the inexplicable annual fuss over who’s going to be Christmas Number One. Does anyone actually care about that? It all builds up to December 25th.

As for Easter, well, no one even knows what month it’s going to be in let alone the exact date. And apart from Easter eggs appearing on Boxing Day, and an Easter bunny vaguely turning up in March, the general sense of anticipation for Easter in our society is frankly underwhelming.

And it’s the same in church. Attendance at Christmas vastly exceeds attendance at Easter. And yet, Easter is infinitely more important than Christmas. I mean, while the Apostle Paul never once even mentioned Jesus’ birth at Bethlehem, he said the cross and resurrection were matters of first importance.

If the first Easter actually happened like the New Testament says it did, it has prominence and precedence and pre-eminence at the very top of the short list of life’s absolutely essential things.

If it didn’t happen like the New Testament says it did, then the Bible is fake news, church is a waste of time, Christians are deluded, everyone you love who has died you will never see again and I’m no better than a snake oil salesman for what I’m saying today. But if it happened…

Simon Gathercole, Cambridge University’s leading expert on the historical evidence for Jesus wrote in The Guardian last year, that the “abundant historical references leave us with little reasonable doubt that Jesus lived and died. The more interesting question… is whether Jesus died and lived.”

The Empty Tomb

As we saw last week, one Sunday morning, as far as we can work out the dates, we’re not 100% sure, but it was very possibly 5 April 33AD, three women peer into a tomb just outside Jerusalem’s city walls. They expect to see human remains, hard and cold and possibly starting to smell unpleasant.

And what do they see? Nothing. Nothing but a discarded, bloodstained burial shroud left behind and a stranger telling them what is blindingly obvious; “Jesus is not here. That’s where he was, right there, but that was then and this is now.”

Sometime very shortly before they arrive, the most momentous chapter in world history is being written. The Bible, in Ephesians 1, describes the magnitude of that event by saying “God placed all things under Christ’s feet.”

Think about those feet for a moment.

·         those feet that first took proud little steps in his dad’s carpenter’s workshop

·         that went all over the dirty roads of an occupied land

·         that stepped towards untouchables when everyone else walked away

·         that walked on water in the middle of the night

·         that were washed by the tears and dried by the hair of a grateful and forgiven woman

·         that gave way under the weight of the cross on the way to death

·         that curled up in agony as they were smashed against the coarse wood of his cross by a nail the size of this one

·         that hung limp and lifeless as Jesus was lifted down dead from the cross

·         that turned stone cold in the cool of the tomb…

But as the sun rises on that first Easter Day, all of a sudden Jesus’ ankles begin to tingle, and his toes begin to wiggle, and his feet begin to move, and his legs begin to stretch - and he kicks off his burial shroud and walks towards the one-and-a-half ton door of the tomb which cannot stay in place as out from the grave he strides, victorious over death forever!

The First Witnesses

As I said last week, the earliest manuscripts we have of Mark’s Gospel, end abruptly, and in mid-sentence. Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony and Hergé’s Tintin and Alph-Art are works that were never completed. We know why. Schubert and Hergé both died.

But no one knows why Mark’s Gospel lacks the ending it obviously builds up to. It’s like an Agatha Christie whodunnit that finishes with Poirot getting everyone together and saying that the murderer is in the room, but never getting revealing who it is.

So a few decades later, when the other three Gospels had been written, someone else, not Mark, decided to tidy up the ending a bit and that’s why v9-20 in our Bibles are written in italics. Scholars universally agree. Verses 9-20 were added later by someone else.

But everything in this postscript is found in the other three Gospels or in Acts except one little detail, and I take this to be the Word of God and authoritative for us.

So let’s look at it now (page 967). It says in v9 that Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene. The other three gospels all agree.

It tells us here that Jesus had delivered her of seven demons. To have one is a right pain in the neck – she had seven of them. Just think of the oppression, the burden, the constant grinding down, the heaviness, the darkness, the torment she lived with…

An ancient tradition says Mary Magdalene had been a prostitute. We don’t know - and we don’t need to know what the demons were or how she got them.

All we need to know is that when she met Jesus, at his word of his command, they had to go and her living hell was over.

No wonder she loved him! No wonder she stayed to the very end at the foot of the cross and no wonder she was first to arrive at the tomb. This was perhaps the first man she ever met to treat her with courtesy and respect as a woman and not as a commodity.

As Matthew’s Gospel also testifies, she bursts in to the house where the men are “mourning and weeping”.

So the women are up, running around, organising the whole shebang, sorting the funeral out, getting stuff done, while the men are all sitting around at home, feeling sorry for themselves and whining like puppies in a pet shop.

Not one of them has the wit to say, “Hey guys, do you remember when Jesus said he would go up to Jerusalem, be rejected, be crucified, would die, get buried and after three days rise again… well, you know he said it not once, not twice but three times… well, you know he actually did go to Jerusalem, get rejected, and crucified, died, and is now buried… well, do you think the last bit might happen as well?” They’re too busy sniffling and whimpering to even think of it.

In fact, even when Mary Magdalene tells them in v11 that he 1) is alive and 2) that she has actually seen him, they do not believe it.

Verse 12. Later that day, as Luke’s Gospel also says, two of them go for a walk to Emmaus, meet Jesus, return and tell the others. They still don’t believe it. They simply dismiss it as rubbish.

Verse 14. As John’s Gospel also says, Jesus meets with all the eleven this time. Jesus has to say, “Stop doubting, and believe.” And finally, reluctantly, uneasily and hesitantly they come to see and believe that Jesus is alive.

But as v15 and 20 say, when it all sinks in they start spreading the message over the whole then-known world. They do it during a reign of terror organised against them. They don’t fear death. They are just fine with being eaten by lions and wrapped in pitch and set aflame for torches in Nero’s garden. Because they know Jesus is alive. Death is no longer fearful or final for them.

Charles Colson was known as President Nixon's "hatchet man” and he was one of seven men jailed for his part in the Watergate scandal. Whilst doing time in the federal Maxwell Prison in Alabama, he became a Christian.

And reflecting on his experience he once said this: “I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Everyone was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world-and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks. You're telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely not!”

In v16 Jesus says, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”

John’s Gospel says the same thing in chapter 3. “Whoever believes in [Jesus] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”

The gospel speaks in plain language. No one can say that God has not made himself clear enough. No one can say, “Oh, why doesn’t the Bible say anything about believing? No one said anything about having to believe anything. I thought God just wanted me to be a nice person.”

Believe it or not, this point needs to be made as much in church as out of it. There are people up and down this land, faithfully attending church services week in, week out, all entirely in vain because they have never been converted.

I actually heard about someone the other week who is training as a lay assistant to conduct Christian funerals, who doesn’t really believe in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

That’s like someone who hates kids applying to become a teacher. Or someone who thinks what people really need is prolonged pain training as a nurse.

The Australian Professor Gerald O’ Collins says: “In a profound sense, Christianity without the resurrection is not simply Christianity without its final chapter. It is not Christianity at all.”

He’s right. If we don’t believe that Jesus died and rose again we are not Christians; we are still condemned by our sins, estranged from God and lost for all eternity.

Signs and Wonders

But wherever the good news about the risen Christ goes, there will be signs and wonders to authenticate it. Verses 17-18 summarise the entire Book of Acts, which is a documentary of the early church.

You can read in Acts about deliverance from demon possession, laying hands on the sick for healing and people speaking in tongues they haven’t learned, it’s all there. But it’s not only in the Bible. If Jesus is really alive today, he heals the sick today.

Jean Smith from Cwmbran in Wales was in her mid-sixties. She had been blind for sixteen years. She had a white stick and a guide dog. An infection had eaten away at the retinas and mirrors behind her eyes – they could not be replaced. She was in constant pain.

Jean went on a local Alpha course. On the day away, focusing on the Holy Spirit, she felt the pain leave her, though she was still totally unsighted. She went to church the following Sunday to thank God that all the pain had gone. She was anointed with oil and prayed for in Jesus’ name. And as she wiped the oil off her forehead, she noticed, to her astonishment, that she could see the communion table. God had miraculously repaired her retinas.

She had not seen her husband for sixteen years. She was shocked at how white his beard was! She had never seen her daughter-in-law before. Her six  year-old grandson used to guide her around the puddles to avoid her getting her feet wet.

He said to her, ‘Who done that Gran?’ She said, ‘Jesus made me better.’ ‘I hope you said thank you, Gran’ he said. ‘I will never stop saying thank you,’ she answered.

Ajay Gohill was brought up as a Hindu and worked for the family business in a newsagent in North London. At the age of twenty-one he contracted erythrodermic psoriasis, a chronic skin condition. His weight dropped from 11.5 stone to 7.5 stone. The disease was all over his body from head to toe. He lost all his friends. His wife and son abandoned him. He wanted to die.

But as he lay dying in hospital he cried out to God. He looked in his locker and found a Gideons Bible there. He opened it at Psalm 38.

My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly.

I am bowed down and brought very low; all day long I go about mourning.

My back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body.

I am feeble and utterly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart…

Lord, do not forsake me; do not be far from me, my God.

Come quickly to help me, my Lord and my Saviour.

Every verse of that Psalm seemed to be about him. He asked God to heal him and fell into a deep sleep. The next morning, he woke up, totally healed. His skin was new like a baby’s and his life was turned around. He was reunited with his son. When interviewed in a church service he said, ‘Every day I live for Jesus.’

I found a picture on social media last week of our good friend Mike Taylor from Tees Valley Youth for Christ with a 13-foot python. It reminded me of v18. I don’t think we’ll introduce snake-handling services at All Saints’ any time soon, though if you want to arrange one when I’m on holiday I have no objection… But in Acts 28, Paul was bitten by one but was unharmed.

The one thing you can’t find in either the Gospels or Acts is any witness to drinking deadly poison and surviving. Well, let’s give that a go eh?  Opens can of Red Bull and drinks… If I’m still breathing by the end of this talk, I think that might count...

Seriously though, the early church historian Eusebius wrote about Barsabas, the apostle who replaced Judas Iscariot, “drinking lethal draughts and surviving” but that’s an ancient tradition, not in the Bible, and in any case I wouldn’t try it at home.

Ending

I’d better draw to a close. And as I do, I leave you with this thought.

In every major city on this earth you will find shrines to holy men and women, famous celebrities, great heroes and outstanding leaders. Sometimes at a tomb, other times at the place where a fatal accident took place. You’ll often find memorials there with flowers, handwritten cards and candles.

It was customary for Jews in Jesus’ day to dedicate a shrine venerating the last resting place of a prophet or holy man. But nothing like this was ever done at Jesus’ tomb. No one really went there. No one gathered around the site to light candles or write prayers or shed a few tears.

I visited the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem when I was 20 years old.

As you can probably see from the picture, it’s a beautiful and quiet little space with a simple, empty 1^st Century tomb hewn into the rock. I asked one of the guides there if this is where he thought Jesus’ body had been laid, and he said, “Honestly, I really don’t know. It could be. If it’s not this one, then it would be one quite like it.”

The bottom line is this: no one knows where Jesus’ body was put. Because no one ever went there! Why would they? What would be the point? It doesn’t matter! Who cares? There’s nothing there! Jesus is alive!

That is the news the first Christians spread everywhere, turning the world upside down. And that, my friends, is the exact same message we have for our generation which is just as needy as theirs was.

Nine months ago, we began this series in Mark with the very first verse which says, “The beginning of the good news about Jesus the messiah.” The beginning of the good news is that Jesus is alive. And so can you be.

Let’s stand to pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 8 April 2018