The importance of God’s word - 3rd Sunday in September

The importance of God’s word - 3rd Sunday in September

Jesus prays in this morning’s gospel reading from John chapter 17 that as Christians we may all be one so that the world may believe in him.

In other words, he prays that we may be united, as a united Church is a great witness to a world that is full of division and conflict.

Part of this unity comes from having the same spirit - the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of Truth living in us. And when the Holy Spirit comes to live in us - he then leads and guides us into the truth.

And then hopefully, as Christians, although we may have differences of opinion over some minor areas of doctrine – we should be united in our belief in the core truths of Christianity as outlined in the Creed for instance.

But how do we know what to believe and how do we know what is true and what isn’t?

Well the answer is that we find the truth in God’s word - the bible. As Jesus says in verse 17 - ‘Father Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.’

God’s word is the truth. It tells us all we need to know about God and about life and death and eternity – and it is utterly reliable – because as Paul says in our other reading from 2 Timothy –  it is inspired by God.

The bible was written down by human beings but they were under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit as they wrote it – and as such the bible is exactly as God wants it to be.

One of my university lecturers told me that truth was relative – but he was wrong.

Truth is absolute. God either exists and he created the world – or he doesn’t exist and the world somehow came out of nothing by chance.

And Jesus was either God made flesh or he was a fraud and a liar.

As CS Lewis said; A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You must make your choice.

In the old days builders used to use a plumb line to check if walls they’d built were straight. If the wall lined up with the plumb line they knew it was straight. If it didn’t, it meant the wall was crooked.

Like-wise if we’re not sure if something is true or not we can line it up with the what the bible teaches – and this will tell us. If something doesn’t line up with what the bible teaches then we know it is untrue.

For instance, before I became a Christian I used to believe in reincarnation. But the bible doesn’t mention re-incarnation, and we are told in Hebrews chapter 9, that each person is destined to die once and then face judgement – so now I don’t believe in reincarnation – because it doesn’t line up with what the bible teaches.

The bible isn’t just another book. It is God’s written and living word to us. So, we should approach it with reverence and awe – because we are reading the words of our creator.

And we should approach it with humility. It is not for us to sit in judgement on God’s word and dismiss bits we don’t like or don’t agree with.

We become Christians as we submit our lives to Christ and the only way we can grow as Christians is if we then submit our minds to God’s word and allow it to teach, rebuke, correct and train us as Paul puts it.

The bible of course is split into the Old and New Testaments. And the word Testament means a will? Hence we speak of someone’s last will and testament. Well, when Jesus died on the cross for us he left us an inheritance in the pages of the bible.

As God’s children we are heirs to this inheritance and spiritual riches are waiting for us to appropriate within its pages.

Many of these spiritual riches concern our new identity as a children of God.

Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans that we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. We will be transformed as people as we take on board who we are in Christ and as we start to realise how much God loves us.

As we read and take in what God says about us and what Jesus’ death has secured for us and made us, it should transform the way we see ourselves, and it should motivate us to want to share God’s love with those around us.

You see as Christians we have a completely new identity in Christ Jesus.

As Paul says in his letter to the Romans – ‘if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come.’

We used to be cut off from God and unforgiven but that person is now dead and we have been re-born as completely new people in God’s eyes.

The new person is a child of God. He or she has been adopted into God’s family. He or she has crossed over from death to life and from darkness to light. He or she has been set free from condemnation and judgement.

This new person has the Holy Spirit living in them. As Christians therefore, we carry God’s presence around in us wherever we go. The new person has been forgiven and redeemed. The new person is bound for heaven.

None of this was true of the old person we used to be.

As we start to see ourselves as God sees us, and as we start to understand the amazing implications of the cross in our lives, it should motivate us to love God and to want to share what we have found with others.

And the bible equips us to serve God. We find for instance that God has given us authority over evil spirits. Jesus says in Luke chapter 10; “I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.”

As we submit ourselves to God’s authority, so we are delegated by God to use that authority to rebuke the devil – and see him depart not just from our own lives but the lives of others.

The bible is also the main way by which God speaks to us – sometimes to rebuke or correct us – but mostly to encourage and guide us.

Sometimes we may be reading a bible passage and some of the words will really make an impression on us or speak to our situation – and we know in our spirits that God is talking to us.

For instance several years ago, I had a lump under my right arm removed. After God’s intervention – it was benign – but this event rattled me and I became worried about my health.

A few months after my operation – after I got home from Church one Sunday I felt that God wanted me to read psalm 42 – so I did.

And God spoke to me and encouraged me through the words of this Psalm. He told me that he would protect me and preserve my life – that he wouldn’t abandon me to the power of my enemies, and that when I was sick he would restore me to health.

God also gives us revelation as we read the bible. What do I mean by this? Simply that God reveals things to us that we didn’t know or understand before.

When I was in my teens I went up into the French Alps with my family and I saw this beautiful mountain lake with absolutely crystal-clear water.

And as I looked into the water closely I could see things hidden under the surface. And the bible is a bit like this lake.

As we look into it and study it and think about it – sometimes we’ll see something new that we hadn’t noticed or understood before and it will become clear to us.

I remember for instance reading John chapter 6 verse 21 which comes immediately after Jesus has been walking on the water. This verse simply says; “Then they were willing to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading.”

I’d read this several times before and thought nothing much of it– but as I read it this time, I suddenly knew for sure in my spirit that this was a miracle and that the boat with Jesus and the disciples in had instantly reached the shore where they were heading.

And of course, we read of the same thing happening with the apostle Philip in Acts chapter 8 where we are told; “the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more ... But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.”

So, I know now for sure that God can miraculously transport people from one place to another if he so wishes.

The bible also tells us what is coming in the future. There is a lot of future prophecy particularly in the books of Daniel and Revelation but also scattered throughout the Old and New Testaments.

For instance, in Matthew chapter 24 and 25 Jesus teaches about the end times and his second coming. And in his letters to the Thessalonians, Paul also tells us about not just Jesus coming to collect the Church – but also the coming of the Antichrist – the lawless one – who Jesus will destroy with the breath of his mouth when he comes again.

And just as we see Old Testament prophecies fulfilled precisely and exactly by Jesus – so we can be sure that future prophecy too is utterly reliable – because it has been revealed to the bible’s writers by God – and God already sees and knows the future.

So, to tie up what I want to say this morning – the bible is absolutely fundamental and critical for our lives as Christians. We become Christians as we receive the Holy Spirit but then we grow and discover our identity as Christians – only as we read the bible.

God can speak to us through the bible in many ways – to encourage us and to reassure us and give us promises about things that concern us.

He can reveal spiritual truths and insights to us. He has revealed the future and everything we need to know about life and death. And he can as Paul says use the bible to teach us, rebuke us, correct us and train us for service.

Ultimately whether we choose to read the bible or not is up to us – but just as it’s a very good idea when we buy a washing machine or a car to read the instruction manual and follow the maker’s instructions – so it’s a very good idea to read our own maker’s instruction manual.

If you’re new to the bible perhaps start by reading the gospels. Alternately there are numerous daily bible reading plans and booklets available and Nicky Gumbel has produced a bible reading app for reading through the bible in one year.

In the name of the living God. Amen.

What on Earth am I here for?

                         

I wonder how often you pause to ask yourself, ’What on earth am I here for?’   I don’t mean - though some of you may well sometimes ask yourselves! – ‘what on earth am I doing here in church this Sunday by Sunday?’ I mean, rather, ‘Is there something I’m missing about the meaning and purpose of life itself?’

Sometimes it takes a sudden shock, or a disconcerting fact, or a challenge to our firmly held ideas about life that hits us and forces us to think about this. Too often of course people shy away from such deep questions because, well, they are simply too busy, too absorbed in the whatever it is they are doing – from making a home to making money: sometimes they shy away from such questions because they are just too scared of what the answers might reveal.

But if you do find yourself caught in one of those sudden, critical moments of wondering what on earth is the meaning and purpose of life (I learnt on my pilgrimage a couple of years ago that the Germans have a special word for it.    I can’t remember what it was but I do remember that it was very, very long and began with ‘Selbst’, which is German for ‘self’) where do you turn to to get your answers? Do you rush to the bookshelf or, these days, to Wikipedia, to consult one of the thousands of self-help books such as Schultz on self-awareness, or Lieberman on the self-conscious or Hinderberg on self- esteem, or perhaps to Carlsberg for those parts the other books can’t reach? Or do you go to your bible, to Jesus, to Paul, to John, and to James to discover the real meaning and purpose of and for your life? Because if you do you will find that they do not start with ‘Selbst’ (self); they start with God, the God who created the world and you and me in his image to inhabit it and to care for it; and has already revealed – He did not leave us to speculate – his answers to why we are here and for what purpose – or purposes.

One of the reasons why we have such trouble in discovering our true meaning and purpose for this life is that we start in the wrong place: we start with self-centered questions such as ’What do I want to be? ‘What should I do with my life? What are my goals, my ambitions, my dreams for my future? But focussing on ourselves will never reveal our life’s meaning and purpose. Indeed the main reason why people find it so hard, so challenging, to make any progress in discovering God’s answers is because their thinking is too deeply ingrained with such self- centred questions. Whereas God has actually revealed – if we are prepared to listen to what He has said – His FIVE purposes for our lives which, when taken together, give the real meaning to life and to our lives.

These five purposes are what we are going to be considering over the next few weeks and they start not with us but with God.

God’s very motive for creating us was His love. His love is admittedly difficult to fathom; but it is fundamentally reliable and He proved it supremely by choosing, in one of His forms of being God, to come to us in the person of Jesus. (verse 13 of our Gospel reading) He even gave us the free will to choose either to accept Him or to reject Him (verse 19) because that is the only way that love can work. It’s very messy, I know; but apparently He thought it better to make us in His image and give us free will rather than to create robots or puppets on His strings. And He did so because (verse 16) He wants us to enjoy eternity with Him.

The trouble is that because our minds are so turned in upon ourselves, they need to be (verse 2 of our Epistle to the Romans) ‘transformed’ and actively and willingly ‘renewed’. But how hard it is for God to reach us often because our minds are (verse 2 again) ‘conformed to the pattern of this world’. It is when we come to realise that we were created as a special object of God’s love, that He made us so that He could love us, that we have the fundamental truth on which to build our lives.

One of the many things that first convinced me of the truth of Christianity, of God’s revelation of Himself in the person of Jesus, and the utter integrity of Jesus and the Apostles – fallible human beings though the latter certainly were! – was that they were not themselves trying to profit from their message but, quite the opposite, were even prepared to lose their lives in order that you and I might find the true meaning and purpose of why we are here and for what purpose.

Now you might not find this alone sufficiently convincing proof; but for anyone with any philosophical curiosity or moral conscience it surely ought to prompt them to examine why they were prepared to do so and what their message was. And when we do examine this we discover some very clear and defined yet at the same time tremendously liberating and fulfilling answers that are not just for Christians but for everyone on this earth. Of course, many people will say that they have already discovered meaning and purpose in their families, their careers, their goals, their ambitions, their dreams. But can any of these things really answer the question before us, the question with the uncomfortable habit of nagging, and so often at the most inconvenient of times, especially, for example, when life is all about to end either for ourselves or for those we love? Is what you believe about what happens next based on a sure hope – or, if you are honest, purely on wishful-thinking or, like the atheist philosophers…’Sorry, folks but that’s it’?

Just before we meet the FIVE purposes God has revealed for our lives, those very purposes that give our lives His meaning rather than any we can make up for ourselves, as the likes of Richard Dawkins argues, or, like Sartre, Camus and others, the cold, hopeless assertion that there is no meaning to life, we perhaps need to think about what drives peoples’ lives, because everyone’s life is driven by something.

Some people are driven by guilt, some by fear, some by the need for approval, some by resentment and anger, some by materialism; the list goes on and all of them without exception are ultimately either destructive of themselves or of their relationships or of other people. They all at heart have a preoccupation with the self. It is from these deceptive but innately destructive motivations that God in the person of Jesus came to save us and offer us His loving and gracious purposes to liberate and fulfil us and give meaning to our lives.

Yes, we are products of our pasts but we do not have to be prisoners of it; yes, we can be fired by resentment and anger but we can be healed by Him; yes, we can feel guilty but we can be forgiven by Him; yes, we can allow our personal value to be determined by our personal valuables, or we can find our true value in Him; yes, we can be driven by many deceptive yet destructive things or we can find our meaning and purpose in Him. ‘Come unto me all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest: take my ‘yoke’ upon you and you shall find rest for your souls.’ Yes, we can live life as if it is the be all and end all, or we can realise that God invites us to share eternity with Him.

When a person fully comprehends that there is more to life than just the here and now, and realises that this life is just preparation for eternity, things change so much for the better and that person can begin to live differently. It changes everything: our view of ourselves, of others, of our jobs, of our ambitions; it changes our values, our priorities, how we spend our time, our money, everything.

Does it mean I have to give up my career, my goals, my dreams, my ambitions? No, not necessarily so at all. But instead of wanting to be, say, a doctor, an accountant, a teacher, a cook, a mother, it puts in our hearts the desire to be a Christian doctor, a Christian accountant, a Christian teacher, a Christian cook, a Christian mother. Why? Because, again to quote Paul (verse 2), we will be able to ‘test and approve what God’s will is – His good, pleasing, and perfect will’; there will come with this discovery not only a revelation but a motivation to reinterpret for the best how we can live out our lives; not only for our own sakes but for the sake of others and to the praise and glory of the one whom we know to be not just ‘God’ but our Heavenly Father who loves us immeasurably more than we can either conceive of or imagine.

Over the next few weeks (on and off!) we are going to be considering God’s  perfect, perfectly loving, purposes for us. And this is what we shall discover:

That we were:

1.    Planned for God’s Pleasure, that is, a relationship with Him.

2.    Formed for God’s Family, that is, His Church.

3.    Created to become like Christ

4.    Shaped for serving God

5.    Made for a Mission, that is, sharing the truth and good news about Him.

For those of you who are baptised, these talks will help you to remember and apply the promises that were made on your behalf at your baptism. For those of you who have been confirmed, these talks will challenge to reconsider and assess your calling to turn to Christ, follow Him, and to do so unashamedly.

For those of you have been neither baptised nor confirmed I hope that these talks might shed light on the questions you have and help you to perceive what God has revealed about the meaning and purpose of life and of your life.

We have as usual provided some study questions on today’s readings so that you can give this profound, challenging, but very exciting issue some more thought and prayer during this week.

I decided to have an extra reading from the Psalms this week because it reminds us that it all starts not with ourselves but with Him. And it is as we begin to worship in spirit and in truth as Jesus commanded, that what God  reveals to us through His word will begin to make more and more sense.

Psalm 145: 1 - 8                      Romans 12: 1 – 5:                     John 3: 11 - 21

Luke 10 25 to 37

Luke 10 25 to 37

Today’s gospel reading is the Parable of the Good Samaritan which most of us know very well. This morning I’d like to pick out some things that struck me about this story and then see how we can seek to apply it to our lives.

So firstly, we are introduced to this lawyer who isn’t a lawyer as we’d understand today – but a Teacher of the Jewish Law. He was an expert in Old Testament Law and he wants to know what he must do to inherit eternal life.

In other words, he wants to know what he must do to be saved – to be put right with God.

And it’s interesting that he uses the word inherit here - because of course no one works to inherit things.

Inheritance comes through being a member of the family.

And thus it is with the Christian faith. We inherit eternal life by repenting and then believing in the Lord Jesus Christ - and becoming God’s child, a member of his family; not by striving to do good works or to impress God.

So, in a sense this expert in the law is already slightly off track with his question. A bit like the rich young man in Matthew’s gospel – who says ‘what good deed must I do to get eternal life’ - he wants to be given something he can do to earn his right standing with God.

He hasn’t understood that people are put right with God through their faith in him. As Paul points out in his letter to the Romans; ‘Abraham believed God and it was credited it to him as righteousness.’

God regarded Abraham as righteous simply because he had a living faith in him.

Jesus then asks this lawyer for his opinion on what the Jewish Law has to say in answer to his question and he gives the correct answer.

And his answer is the summary of the Law that we use in our services as an introduction to our time of confession.

'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.'

But of course, the reason we use this is - because as we say most Sundays - we each know that we haven’t been able to keep these commandments.

No one apart from Jesus - however holy or good they are - has ever loved God with all their heart and mind and soul or loved their neighbour as themselves.

To be justified by the Old Testament Law required a person to be perfect – to follow the Law perfectly without any deviation - and of course none of us is perfect.

So, as Paul points out in his letter to the Romans; “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.”

The Law helps us to recognise that we fall short of God’s commands.

And this is why we can never be justified or put right with God by striving to love him or to be good or to impress him – because however good we are we will still always fall short.

No, we are put right with God by grace through faith.

And the great thing about God’s grace is that when we put our faith in Jesus – God credits righteousness to us – just as he did to Abraham.

He no longer sees us in the light of our sin and failure – but rather he sees us in the light of the perfect life that Jesus lead.

Martin Luther described this as a “A wonderful exchange - whereby our sins are no longer ours but Christ’s; and the righteousness of Christ - not Christ’s but ours. He has emptied Himself of His righteousness that He might clothe us with it, and fill us with it.”

And our response to this should then be to do our best to love God wholeheartedly and to love our neighbour as ourselves - but not to earn God’s approval – but rather because we already have it and we are thankful for it.

Perhaps the lawyer recognises that he is unable to love God and his neighbour as the law commands – and he doesn’t want to lose face – so he seeks to justify himself by asking a further question – so “who is my neighbour?”

And then Jesus tells this famous story about the Good Samaritan.

The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a very dangerous road known as the ‘blood road’ or ‘the way of blood.’ It was steep and treacherous with lots of places for robbers to hide and attack unsuspecting victims.

And the man in the story falls victim to these robbers. And then we get these 3 passers-by – a Priest, a Levite and finally a Samaritan.

And as he so often does, Jesus turns his listeners perceptions on their head.

The Priest and the Levite would have been regarded by his listeners as extremely worthy and holy people – first in the queue for heaven. They were the religious professionals – the ones who organised and officiated at temple worship.

Whereas Samaritans were despised and hated by the Jews – and regarded as heathens.

The Jewish Law taught that whoever touched the body of a dead person would be unclean for seven days, so it may be that the Priest and the Levite – fearing that the man might be dead - didn’t want to risk getting their hands dirty.

Of course, had they bothered to check, they’d have found that this man wasn’t dead.

But whatever their reason – although they may have been concerned about following the letter of the law – they completely missed the spirit of the law.

Again, Jesus is highlighting that God isn’t pleased by outward religion – an appearance of being religious.

God looks at people’s hearts. And this Samaritan has a good heart.

He is moved with pity when he sees this poor man, lying beaten and robbed by the side of the road and his compassion leads him to act.

He isn’t concerned about the man’s colour or creed or social class. He recognises that this man is his neighbour and is in need of his help.

We can be religious and go to church and seem very upright and holy – like the priest and the Levite – but if our hearts remain untouched by God – our religion is nothing but an outward show.

True religion as James says in his letter involves looking after orphans and widows in their distress and keeping oneself from being polluted by the world.

It involves action, actively seeking to make the lives of those around us better.

When I was reflecting on this I realised that the Samaritan in this story pleases God because he does exactly as God would want him to do.

He treats this man as God would have treated him.

You see God loves all people. He cares deeply for every person he has created.

And because he wants the best for all people, he cares when people are suffering and in need.

And this includes people we see today lying on the streets or sitting huddled in doorways. They may be drunks or drug addicts – but God still cares for them – and looks at them with love in his heart.

And of course, as Christians we are Gods hands and arms and voices in the world. He longs to reach out and work through us.

So, when we recognise that anyone can be our neighbour – and we try and show them God’s love – especially those who are struggling with life - he is pleased, because we are expressing to them what is in his heart.

The Good Samaritan by his actions demonstrates God’s heart to this man. And ideally – if we profess to be Christians - this is what God wants us to do in our daily lives.

This isn’t easy – I certainly don’t find it easy - and we won’t always get it right. And realistically we can’t help every person we see on the street.

Jesus didn’t heal every leper or blind person he came across.

But what we can do is seek to be led by God’s spirit to show something of his love to those people who come across our paths that he wants us to help.

We do need to try and be discerning because as I’ve found not everyone in apparent need is genuine or honest.

And loving our neighbour isn’t just about helping strangers or doing charity work.

Its doing small every day things for those we live and work with that help to make their lives better and brighter.

Offering to help people with tasks, giving people lifts, offering to pay for things, offering to baby sit, helping people to move house, carrying shopping bags, volunteering to work in the creche.

Small day to day actions that make other people’s lives that little bit easier and show them something of God’s love.

It’s important to try and share the gospel with people but they will be much more open to what we say if it is backed up by what we do.

The other thing that strikes me about the help that the Samaritan gives this man is that it is very practical help. He doesn’t kneel down by the man and pray a long prayer for God to help him and pat him on the head and walk off.

He rolls up his sleeves cleans his wounds, and finds him accommodation and food. And then he picks up the bill for it.

It costs him time and money. He interrupts his own journey and makes this man’s needs his priority.

When I first got this passage to preach on – I thought oh goodness what more can I possibly say because everyone knows it so well – but studying it has challenged me.

I realised that I need to try and open my eyes much more to the needs of people around me.

Of course, to love our neighbour we need God’s help. We need the help of the Holy Spirit. We need to ask God to fill us with love, and to open our eyes to recognise the people he has brought across our path – that he wants us to help.

And to help us demonstrate something of God’s heart to them – so that they can see something of God’s love in us – and be drawn to him through us.

Let’s close with a short time of prayer and reflection where we can each think about how we can better love our neighbour as ourselves.

Let’s pray. Lord Jesus you told this story to show who our neighbour is – and what practical love in action looks like. Be with us now in this time of quiet as we each reflect on how we can go and do likewise.