CEBC Leadership Team Update - Nov 09

The Leadership team attended the Global Leadership Summit on 9th and 10th October which was great but on our first day Matthew one of our Deacons played a game of hunt the car key which is not one of his major skills. However after much coaching from his wife, and of course us, he was able to locate the said keys and off we set for Watford.

The two days were excellent and prompted some interesting debate between the leadership team. Much focus was around children and how to do “church” in a global recession with the question should churches to go back to basics. (Isn’t it amazing how God puts you in the right place at the right time for CEBC the last month has been a time of reflection and planning for the future).

Like many churches we have challenges in relation to resources not the least of which is our desire to increase in number especially in relation to attracting young families. We have an excellent Sunday programme for young people as well as other activities in the week. However despite trying and trying and praying and praying we seem to struggle.

We had a Christmas shopping evening this week for Heroes at Home, which was a great success. Like many of you we are planning our Christmas events and look forward to our Nativity which is performed by a group of lower school young people together with the puppets from our middle school club Rock Solid. It’s a really good all age service – if you are around why not come along on Sunday 6 December at 10.30am – you could even join us for Christmas fellowship lunch after the service. It’s a bring and share event - there is always plenty of food for everyone – with absolutely the right balance.
Now we cannot claim that this miracle of planning is anything like the feeding of the five thousand, but none the less we thank God for the fellowship and fun that we have.

One of our members is involved in the Graham Kendrick Concert on 21st December at the Bedford Corn Exchange. Our Street Angels who work with other churches to patrol the streets of Bedford on Saturday nights are amazing – it’s great to see how relationships are building with local night clubs and others.

On this cold damp November day there is a glow on the horizon. Like you brothers and sisters we look forward to celebrating the miracle of Jesus birth we wish you a joyous advent and a really Happy Christmas – ooh what an exciting time!!!!!

CEBC Leadership Team Update - Oct 09

It has been a month since we said farewell to our Minister Richard. We had the opportunity to attend his induction at Upminster on Saturday and whilst wishing him well there was an element of sadness. However we know that God has his purpose for our church and of course Richard.

It’s been quite a hectic time for the leadership and fellowship. The church has been involved in our Village show. We had an Aunt Sally Stall, Bric a Brac and Children’s activity tent. The Christian Motor Cyclists Association also supported us - we are very fortunate in having strong links with them through our Moderator and fellowship. Through the village show we were able to support Christians Against Poverty and the local school. This weekend a group of young people are going to Fort Rockie with our Youth Leaders – not sure who is more excited the young people or the leaders.

We have had a visit from our regional BU Minister who has guided us through the first stages of an interregnum, and whilst this is not something new having had our Minister with us for eight years some of the leadership’s brains needed a little “oiling” (creek)!

The leadership are attending the Global Leadership Summit at the weekend and look forward to some stimulating seminars and challenging dialogue (it would be right to say that the leadership are quite a vocal lot but get on really well together).

We had our harvest last weekend and were proud that a member of our Lower School Stepping Stones team who is seven year’s old played drums with the music group and actually gave a bit of an uplift to Come Ye Thankful People Come. Everyone got stuck into the service with some Duggie Doug songs - all in all it was great – we brought toiletries to support a local charity that house homeless people – the church smelt very fragrant.

So friends what is our challenge for the future – perhaps we need to take a lesson from Paul who stepped out to where the people were – if churches stay in buildings then what hope for the future. May God’s Grace be with you and may His strength uphold you . Amen

A Missionary People

As we come to the end of our series looking at the church under construction it seems right that we remind ourselves of the primary purpose of the church. It was CS Lewis who once said that “the church exists for no other purpose but to draw men to Christ”. Tim Chester wrote: The gospel is good news: a message to proclaim, a truth to be taught, and a story to be told.
This understanding shapes us into a missionary people who follow a missionary God. We are made for a mission as Rick Warren would say.

That our God is a missionary God cannot be ignored. The church was born in mission and grows only through mission. Mission is an expression of God’s own heart for those he misses most, those who are far from him but never out of his reach. It was the Holy Spirit who called for Paul and Barnabas to be set apart for a special missionary task, but it also the Holy Spirit who empowers the church to continue in its mission.

A Missionary People

If we trace the life of the early church we see:

Spirit Inspired Movement

We need boundaries, we need frameworks, but we ought never to forget that we are a movement. Hinted at in the “go” language used by Jesus and expressed as the early church fulfils the words of Acts 1:8

Intentional Engagement

Paul engaged the culture in a dialogue.

Incarnational Influence

A third aspect of the missionary movement is that it is lived out among the people we are trying to reach.

How do we live as a missionary people?

Proximity

First of all we have to be near enough to touch lives and understand them.

Presence

Somehow we have to find ways to be both near the people we are reaching and among the people we are reaching.

Partnership

Partnership with God.

To become fully involved partners with God we need to:

Pray

The three-open prayer: open doors, open my mouth, open hearts

Prepare

Peter writes: Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have

Play your part

Share the story, live the story.

Find out what you do best and do it in a way that makes a difference.

Changing styles

You may have noticed in the last post that I've presented the main bullet points with a brief introduction and conclusion without a lot of text in between. I thought this might be a more helpful way of sharing the outline in order to generate questions and personal exploration.

Previously I've left in much of my notes but of course the notes don't really tell you the whole story of what was said. This way I hope you can focus on the main ideas without the intrusion of my explanations!

This is a rather late change given that I'll be leaving Bedford in September and I'm not preaching in August. That means that next week, assuming I post my outline for the last in this current series, will be last post on this blog.

I'm not sure whether I'll continue to post sermon notes when we move or not, but if I do I'll put a link on this blog to the new one for anyone who might be interested in what I'm doing.

It may also be that someone at Cotton End chooses to take over putting notes and stories (I never really got around to doing the later) about what God is doing in rural Bedfordshire somewhere on the internet. Given that this blog comes under my personal blogger profile, it's likely that it will fall into a deep sleep before quietly shuffling off the radar. Or maybe it will get rebranded and relaucnhed later in the year. Who knows!

A Serving People

Most of us would probably agree that we are called to serve in some way or another. Quite what it means and how we implement a lifestyle of serving, we’re not so sure. But something in us nags away at our selfish tendencies.

Ecclesiastes serves as a reminder about the ultimately unfulfilling nature of a life lived for self. Having tried accumulating great wealth he turned to power. When power and wealth failed to satisfy he tried pleasure, fame and celebrity. But they all left him with that empty feeling that caused him to declare that is was all “like chasing the wind”. Ultimately pointless and totally unfulfilling.

We were not created to chase the wind, pursue pleasure or accumulate wealth. We were created for a purpose, to join God in his great mission to bless the world, to reclaim, redeem and fix this broken world.

Mark 10:32-45

Based upon his own example he calls those who follow him to become like him in serving others rather than promoting self.

Why we don’t serve

#1 We get distracted

#2 We get demotivated

#3 We delegate to others

#4 We’re denied opportunities

Why we do serve

#1 It’s an expression of God’s mission

#2 It’s an expression of true freedom

#3 It’s about following Christ’s example

How we serve

#1 We serve Christ by serving others

#2 We serve wholeheartedly

#3 We serve in accordance with our gifts

Conclusion

Jim Wallis said: Find out what you do best and then do it in a way that makes a difference.

Service serves the purposes of God. It is a missionary endeavour.

If we are to follow Paul’s injunction in Romans 12 to overcome evil with good, then to do will surely involve acts of service.

A Worshipping People

What exactly is worship? What makes becoming a living sacrifice, to quote Paul from Romans 12, an act of reasonable or logical worship?

In truth we might have to concede that the modern-day church has reduced worship to the bit of the service that involves singing. And yet we all probably recognise that worship ought to be much more than that. If we return to Romans 12 for a moment we discover that this reasonable or logical worship is a whole-life response to the mercies of God that we have experienced. Earlier in the letter Paul tells his readers that the natural outcome of the lifestyle choices everyone makes is that they rebel against God and therefore deserve to be judged and sentenced accordingly.

But heaven has a wonderful “however” clause. Rather than judging us as our actions deserve, God offers us the opportunity of forgiveness, the opportunity of a new beginning. Instead of dying because of our sin, we are invited to live because of Christ’s sacrifice. This is mercy. We do not get what we deserve. And because of that Paul says, “Present yourselves as living sacrifices as an act of worship.”

Worship then becomes an ongoing response to God in every circumstance of life.

In the Old Testament worship would be the sign of God’s successful deliverance of the people from slavery in Egypt. As individual characters we meet Jacob who worships God as his final days approach. Job worships God in response to personal disaster. David worships God as he comes to terms with the loss of a son and in celebration of victories.

In the highs and lows of life, worship is always a valid response.

Worship as a whole-life response

Six key elements

Adoration

Andrew Bonar described adoration as “silent wonder”. His point was simply this, that when we truly encounter God at the deepest level we find ourselves lost for words and able only to look at him in silent wonder. Adoration may begin for many as an act of naming God’s great attributes, but it ends up in this place of sheer amazement of who he is and what he has done for us.

Bill Hybels, in his book “Too busy not to pray” describes adoration as entering holy space. In so doing we set the tone for any prayer that follows. Adoration reminds us about God’s identity and inclination. As we adore God, we reinforce our understanding of who he is and what his mission is.

In Acts 4, adoration comes when the community acknowledge the sovereignty of God and his complete awareness of the situation. He is not thrown by anything that has happened.

Confession

Put simply, confession is about naming our faults. Telling God the truth about ourselves. You could be forgiven for thinking in this age of self-promotion that as we confess our faults we would undermine our confidence. Our self-confidence yes, but our confidence in God ought to increase. Confessing our faults is an act of self-exposure that forces us to rely no longer on our own abilities but to trust more fully in God’s great mercy.

John tells us in his first letter that “if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and the cleanse us from all unrigtheousness.” In other words, if we are honest with God about our failures he will be true to his promise and his character and deal with it in mercy and grace.

Intercession

Recent trends in understanding prayer have been in danger of limiting intercessory prayer to those for whom it is considered their gift or their ministry. But intercession is or should be a part of all our lives. Paul tells Timothy about the importance of intercession when he urges that intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone along with prayers and requests. (1Tim.2:1)

When we intercede for someone we pray the prayers they cannot pray or will not pray. We seek God’s mercy on their behalf. Whether it’s international, national or personal, intercession is a vital part of our worship together and individually.

Petition

If we believe that God wants to give, that he’s the kind of Father Jesus describes who does not give snakes and stones when we ask for bread and food, then petition, the process of asking, will be a part of our worship too. Not the kind of asking that wants more stuff for oneself, but the kind of asking that looks to see God honoured and at work in the life settings of oneself and those around you.

If you struggle with how to ask or what to ask for, then simply be honest with God. When I’m not sure I often start my prayer with, “Lord, I’m not sure what to ask for in this situation but here’s what is on my heart. This is my request, if it’s the wrong thing then show me.”

In Acts 4 it’s interesting that the petition made is not for protection but for boldness. To paraphrase Reggie McNeal, they ask God to show up and show off.

Thanksgiving

Paul says in 1Thess.5:18 that we should Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Sometimes we think that feeling grateful is thanksgiving enough. It isn’t. Thanksgiving is an intentional act. We seek out the person to whom we feel grateful and say, “Thank you”. It’s a simple act but an important one. When Jesus healed 10 men of leprosy, a terrible disease that left people living as social outcasts, only one came back and said thank you. All of them were undoubtedly grateful, even profoundly grateful, but only one came back and said thank you. And it moved Jesus.

Thanksgiving is important.

Expectation

The last element is expectation. What are your expectation when you worship? Do you expect God to show up? Do you expect him to answer prayers?

In Acts 4 we see great expectations being expressed in the prayers and worship of the gathered community. The ask and expect God to act, not on their behalf but because that is the kind of God they understand him to be. One who is interested in and involved in the lives of ordinary people who follow him and who do not. Their expectation of God is that out of this situation mission will flow. That’s why they ask for boldness not protection, because they know that there is yet more to be done for the sake of the kingdom of God.

Conclusion

It seems that the more we look at the church under construction the more we see the intimate connection between the life of the church and the mission of God. Whether it’s Pentecost, pastoral care or worship, all of them seem to have a place in the missionary purposes of God.
So let’s commit ourselves to honest, living-sacrifice worship of our God and rejoice at what comes as a result because I believe that God honours this kind of worship in ways we are yet even to imagine.

You know my question, the one about why, when crises come do Christians stop praying and non-Christians start praying? Well perhaps the reason we stop is not a lack of faith or a failure of spirituality but a failure of perspective. Perhaps the reason we stop is because we don’t spend enough time in regular worship that involves adoration and confession, intercession and petition, thanksgiving and expectation.

Acts 17: A Prophetic People

What does it mean to be a prophetic people?

For many people, prophecy is the process by which we discover things we could not ordinarily know, particularly about the future. But is that the sum total of the role of the prophet? In the Old Testament Moses is considered the first of the prophets. He spoke about God’s purpose to raise up a prophet like himself in the future, but the primary role Moses fulfilled was to call the people to wholehearted commitment in keeping the covenant.

If you were to trace out the prophetic patterns of the Old Testament you would come to the simple conclusion that God raised up the prophets to call the people to a life of obedience without compromise. From Moses to Malachi, from Habbakuk to Haggai, from Amos to Zephaniah, they all spoke of the need for 100% commitment to the cause of God.

And if, as we believe it to be true, Jesus is the fulfilment of the words of Moses, then he too follows this same line, calling the people back into a deep and fully devoted life of discipleship within the kingdom and purposes of God.

For the church to be considered a prophetic people therefore it must exhibit such a commitment as we follow the pattern of Jesus himself. There is no room for anything less. As Bill Hybels puts it:

Christ and the cause of Christ is the only thing worthy of our full devotion

.

Paul tells the Ephesians: We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do the works he prepared in advance for us to do.

What will this commitment look like?

Exhibit a growing Christlikeness

Through the process of transformation and sanctification. We are, to use Paul’s language in Romans 8, to be conformed to the likeness of his Son

Alongside obedience without compromise, a prophetic people will also:

Share a common vision that brings clarity about God’s mission and plan.

Be a people committed to engaging with God’s truth through the careful study and application of the Bible

Carry a common burden as together we share God's heart for the lost and missing, for justice and integrity.

The church therefore becomes a prophetic people when it heralds the good news of Jesus Christ, when it challenges the society around it with God’s word and when it reveals the nature and character of God through the lifestyle and testimony of its people.

Acts 17

In Acts 17, as Paul wanders through the ancient city, he expresses the prophetic nature of the church in a number of ways.

#1 Distress over the state of the world

He doesn’t judge the people around him for the worship in which they indulge or the lifestyle choices they make. Rather he’s moved emotionally and spiritually over their lostness.

#2 Engages the culture in meaningful ways

Paul begins with where the people are on their spiritual journeys. In the synagogues, in the market place and at the debating forum. As Paul begins his famous speech at the areopagus, he doesn’t tell the people how wrong they are, he tells them that they are going in the right direction and he’s going to tell them how to get there! He even quotes their own poets to them.

#3 Reveals the truth

He tells them they carry the mark of God as his offspring. And he points out God’s demands for all people: repentance. Ignorance is no longer a defence. God has revealed his truth and we must choose our response to it.

All this he does in this wonderful cultural context whereby he invites his listeners to take the next logical step in their spiritual journey. It's almost as if he is saying, “You've come this far, why wouldn’t you step into God’s full truth?”

This is a far cry from some of the outreach the church has done in it’s history.

Conclusion

God has called us to be a prophetic people. A people transformed by his good news and conformed to his image. A people who will take this good news and declare it in every place possible. In market places, in religious places and even in the highest places.

To be a prophetic people means we will serve him wholeheartedly, declare his message persistently and life a life worthy of all this consistently.

Authentic Church

Last weekend I was at Biggleswade Baptist Church. I shared with them some of what I want to share this morning. This is where I began.

I love the local church. I have a passion to see the local church become the church that Jesus intends to build. I believe that the fundamental shape of that church is missional, that it’s focus is not internal, meeting the needs of the gathered faithful, but external, influencing the world through sharing kingdom life.

I would not argue with those who quote the creed and say that the chief end of man is to worship God, but I would dispute that as a definition of the church. That, it seems to me, is where we have gone wrong. We have turned the missionary movement that we were meant to be into a gathered community of like-minded people who share their sense of collective disappointment that the rest of the world doesn’t realise how wrong it is.

I believe that the church must change.

Defining the task

We have our mission and purpose set out like this:

Our mission is to know God and to make God known

Our purpose is to love people into a deep and growing relationship with God through Jesus Christ

Together these two things help us understand the simple call and purpose of being the church. It is a call to live out our faith in relationship with God and as partners with him in his mission to the world. That mission is redemptive (restoring the broken relationship between humanity and God through the cross of Christ) and it’s active (God came looking, Jesus said, “Go!”) The activity of God in the world was made clear through his covenant with Abraham when he declared that he would bless Abraham in order that Abraham’s descendants would be a blessing to others.

Time and time again this principle of the people of God being a blessing to the world beyond the confines of the people of God is seen in the Old Testament story. Jonah is sent to Nineveh, Daniel serves in Babylon. Fast forward into the New Testament and although the Gospels make it clear that Jesus focussed his ministry on the Jewish people, he consistently blessed those beyond the nation of Israel. The Roman Centurion’s servant, the Syro-Phonecian woman’s daughter, and a Samaritan woman of questionable moral standards.

This is the kind of church I believe Jesus wants to build. A church made up of people who will partner with him on his mission to bless the world and share the message of his redemptive love and sacrifice.

Reshaping the church: Romans 12

In it’s context Romans 12 reflects the call on the church to be a worshipping, prophetic, caring, serving missionary people. All of this is based upon Paul’s earlier arguments that the world is broken and God has broken into this broken world with a plan to redeem it. It’s not a repair plan or a patch plan, it’s a radical reshaping and renewing plan.

 
In chapter 1 we’re told about the gospel, the power of God to save those who believe the core message.

In chapter 3 we are reminded that everyone has fallen short of God’s standard through the selfish rebellion that we call sin.

In chapter 4 Paul points to the example of Abraham whose faith in God was what mattered most. Not his position as the father of the nation of Israel but his attitude of faith that brought about the reward of God’s blessing.

In chapter 5 we’re reminded that God solved our problem while we were unaware of either the problem or the solution. Even as we rebelled against him, he poured out his love for us through his son Jesus Christ.

In chapter 6 we’re reminded that end product of our rebellion is death but the end product of God’s mission is life.

In chapter 7 Paul exposes the state we are in as he describes life caught between two worlds, the world of wanting to do the right thing and he world of doing the wrong thing.

In Chapter 8 he celebrates the release that comes through knowing God as he declares that there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

In chapters 9-11 Paul talks about his passionate concern for Israel and his hope for its future.
And that all brings us to chapter 12 and Paul’s Therefore, brothers and sister I urge you, in view of God’s mercy, to present yourselves as living sacrifices.

In other words, based upon his argument so far, Paul challenges us to become a people who worship God exclusively, serve him unconditionally and partner with him wholeheartedly.

The Acts 2 framework

Acts chapter 2 presents us with a simple pattern for building a church that is totally committed to worshipping and serving God. It is characterised by four things (thanks to Willow Creek!):

Helping people far from God find faith

Growing mature, fully devoted followers of Jesus

Developing a Biblical community

Carrying a servant towel

Conclusion

There is only one question we must ask ourselves:

Are we willing to step up to the challenge of building this kind of church? Of partnering with God as he builds a church that bears his image and follows his pattern?

We will need to ask ourselves more questions as we go along. Questions like:

What kind of followers of Jesus Christ does God want to produce in this church?

What kind of experiences will we need to have in order to become those kinds of followers?

What kind of leaders will we need to help us become those kinds of followers?

A place to start is with an honest assessment of where we are as individual followers of Jesus.
This is not a pass or fail examination. This is an opportunity to look at where we are going and think about what we are going to do in order to get there.

I am the light of the world

We all know the value of light. We have all probably faced a situation where we have thought to ourselves, “If only I had a torch handy.” If you like watching crime dramas, you may well have noticed how popular a torch is for those crime scene investigators. They seem to use them all the time to highlight the area they are focussing upon in their search for clues. Light is very important to us.

The focus for Jesus’ self-declaration, “I am the light of the world’ is a discussion about his personal testimony about himself and the validity of the claims he makes. This all takes place in John 8, and culminates in Jesus saying, “Before Abraham was born, I am”, which so enraged the Jews with whom he was debating that they picked up stones to stone him. We know from elsewhere in the Gospel that the reason they wanted to stone him was because they believed he was guilty of blasphemy because he was claiming to be God (John 10:33).

In the Old Testament David declares, my God turns my darkness into light, and, The Lord is my light and my salvation (Ps. 18:28, 27:1). Most famously perhaps are the words from Ps.119: Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light for my path.

Isaiah too uses the power of the symbol of light when he speaks prophetically about the coming of a new dawn: The people walking in darkness have seen a great light, on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. (9:2). And later when he says: Arise, shine, for you light has come (60:1)

So, light is a powerful symbol of both the presence and the power of God. As John would later write in his first letter: God is light, in him is no darkness at all. (1 Jn.1:5)

Light in John

In John’s gospel, light features 16 times in the first 12 chapters. It is part of John’s opening prologue, it features in the discussion with Nicodemus and is used to describe the ministry of John. It is the self-declaration of Jesus in both chapter 8 and chapter 9 and is used by Jesus himself to talk about his own ministry in chapters 11 and 12.

Incidentally we ought also to remember that Jesus tells his close followers that they too are the light of the world and that Paul would call the Ephesian Christians to live as children of the light (Eph.5:8).

Light reveals God

In his prologue John tells us:

The true light was coming in to the world but would not be recognised. He would give to those who believed in him the right to become children of God. Light and life are linked and the light is more powerful than darkness because the darkness can neither understand nor overcome the light.

This is one of the fundamental things about light. It is light that transforms not darkness. You cannot turn on darkness, you can only turn of light. Darkness is defined by the lack of light not the presence of something more powerful than light. The light that John declared was coming into the world was the life that is expressed in the living Word who is God himself.


Light exposes sin

In his dialogue with Nicodemus, which rather interestingly happens “in darkness” because Nicodemus comes “at night”, Jesus speaks about the power of light to expose. It must have been an interesting discussion as Jesus talked about light and darkness and shadows in the flickering glow of an oil lamp. “Men love darkness,” He said, and the reason they do is because, “their deeds are evil”. The shadows are their natural habitat because the shadows can conceal the true nature of their actions. But light exposes them.

God does not cover up our sin. He exposes it. As Paul puts it: He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness.

Now it has to be said that when you truly think through the implications of that statement, it is far from comfortable. For who really wants their every dark thought and deed exposed to the glaring light of God’s holiness and scrutiny? No wonder we run towards the shadows rather than towards the light. And no wonder it hurts when we come into the light.

But once exposed, it is not God’s intention that we are left to deal with our sin on our own.

Light Liberates

The wonderful thing is that although everything is exposed, nothing is left hidden, the opportunity for freedom also becomes available. Stepping into the light is a choice to live by the truth and not according to a lie. The lie is that we’ll be okay, that somehow God will find a loophole in our favour that will allow us to go on living how we want and at the same time make us acceptable to himself.

Coming into the light is an acknowledgement that we can no longer go on living as if we know best and that our choices have no bearing on our eternal destiny. The light lets us see the real truth that we desperately need God’ forgiveness and grace in order to live in the light. Light sets us free, and when the son sets us free, we are free indeed.

Light offers life

Once we are free, we are free to enjoy a new life. As John would write later:
If we walk in the light, as he is in the light... The blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin.
In his prologue John makes this statement: In him was life and this life was the light of all people.

If you want to know life, then you need to step into the light.

How to walk in the light

I want to offer you two simple guidelines for walking in the light. I’m guessing that we could produce quite a list of things we’d all consider significant, but rather than doing that I want to make it as simple as possible.

Here are my two things. They are taken from Ephesians.

• Walk worthy.
  
• Imitate God.
  

To walk worthy is to ask the simple question: Does this honour God? Whatever decision you’re facing, whatever choices you’re about to make, whatever actions you are taking, ask yourself: Does this honour God?

To be an imitator of God is to ask yourself the other simple question: What would Jesus do?
Wearing a bracelet or necklace or carry a key ring with WWJD doesn’t count if you are not asking the question.

Conclusion

Jesus said: I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness. He called us to put our trust in the light while we have it. If you choose not to believe, not to trust, then you stay in the darkness. If you will trust Jesus Christ, then you step out of darkness into light,and in the light there is life, there is liberty and there is forgiveness.

So choose: Darkness or light. Which will it be for you?

I am the bread of life

We’re beginning a short series of studies on the the so-called “I am “ sayings of Jesus in the gospel of John. There are seven of these sayings, eight if you include the debate Jesus has with the religious leaders in chapter 8 where he declares, “Before Abraham was, I am.”

The significance of “I am”

To you and I, “I am” is a part of our everyday language. I am hungry, I am thirsty, I am tired. Nothing unusual or significant in our use of the phrase. And to be honest there would be nothing unusual about its use in the time of Jesus either except for two things. Firstly you generally didn’t need the personal pronoun “I”. In the languages of the day, the verbs told you who was doing what. You didn’t need to say I or she,or they, the verb carried the person with it.
So you only ever used the pronoun if you wanted to emphasise something. Literally speaking, when Jesus said, “I am the bread of life,” he said “ I, I am the bread of the life.”

The second significant thing about “I am” is that it had strong religious connections for the Jewish people themselves. “I am” was the name by which God introduced himself to Moses, the archetypal prophet leader who spoke to God as one speaks to a friend. No one else matched up to Moses and he was revered amongst the people.

When Jesus used this term about himself the people and the religious leaders knew he was putting himself in place of Moses and even more amazingly he was claiming equality with God.
If it were not true, then it was blasphemy and it outraged the religious leaders of the day.

The story of chapter 6

It’s hard to miss the connection in chapter 6 between the feeding of the five thousand and the conversation about bread, but what has the story of Jesus walking on water got to do with it? Why introduce something so remarkable in the middle of a debate about bread and manna?
The key is Moses as God’s mediator of the old covenant and the status if Jesus as the new Moses, mediator of a new covenant.

For those who know the Biblical story, you will remember that Joshua served as aide to Moses. When he took over the role of leading the people he had to demonstrate that as God was with Moses so he was with Joshua. So, just as Moses had stretched out his staff over the sea and the waters had parted, so too Joshua stands on the bank of the Jordan and God expresses his power through Joshua as the Jordan dries up and the people cross over. Jesus takes authority over water to a new level. Rather than parting it, he walks on its surface. Feeding the five thousand and walking on the water set the scene for the conversation that is to follow.

A new Moses, a new Passover

Moses is mentioned 12 times in John’s gospel. To the Jewish people he was a very important part of their history. He was, as we’ve already mentioned, the key link between God and the people. It was Moses who brought the Ten Commandments, down the mountain, Moses who lead the people out of Egypt and Moses who delivered the design template for the special tent called the Tabernacle.

But John wants us to understand that things are changing because Jesus is here.

In chapter 1 he tells us that the Law came through Moses, rightly so, but now grace and truth have come through Jesus, God’s Son. Moses represents what God did, Jesus represents what God is doing.

The Passover

What did the Passover represent?

#1 Rescue

Israel had been slaves in Egypt and God had rescued them. They had escaped the oppressive regime of Pharaoh, wandered through the wilderness eventually reaching the land God promised them. For Egypt read Rome and the empire. The only difference was that the oppression was happening in their own land. A new Passover would surely bring a new rescue from a new oppressor.

What they didn’t appreciate was that the original exodus, the original escape plan was part of a much bigger picture in the plans of God.

#2 Redemption

The second key aspect of the events marking the first Passover is God’s act of redemption. As the culmination of the demonstration of God’s authority even over the Egyptians, there came the death of the firstborn. The only salvation available was through the blood of the Passover sacrifice, blood that bought back the life of all the firstborn of Israel or any Egyptian who joined them.  This wasn’t about becoming an Jew, it was about trusting God.

A new Passover needed to offer not only escape from oppression but redemption from judgement.

Jesus the new Passover

Enter Jesus. Having fed 5,000 and having walked on water he demonstrates his authority over creation and he opens the door to a new rescue package a new offer of redemption. He reminds the people that it wasn’t Moses that gave them the bread form heaven but it was God who worked through Moses; it was God who gave the manna and it was God who had sent the new bread, the true bread from heaven.

“Give us this bread,” cries the crowd, “I, I am the bread,” declares Jesus. “ I am God’s rescue plan, I am your new redemption.”

Of course the religious people didn’t like what Jesus was saying. They grumble and argue, they even accuse Jesus of suggesting some form of cannibalism. But the point Jesus is making is that to benefit from the Passover you had to take part in the Passover. You couldn’t simply give intellectual assent to it. If the first generation of Israelites who escaped form Egypt had not daubed the door posts with the blood of the sacrificed lamb, if they had not taken part in the meal and eaten its meat, they would not have been rescued, they would not have been redeemed.

The Passover is not effective for those who only argue about its significance or debate the proper application of its elements. It works for those who share in it.

Jesus would make this clear when he shared his final Passover meal with the disciples. “This bread,” he would say, “represents my body”, This wine represents my blood.”

Why do we need a Passover?

You may be wondering what all this has to do with you. Do you feel like you need rescuing? Are you aware of a deeper need for redemption. Whether you feel it or not, the Bible says you most definitely need it. And the good news is that God didn’t wait, doesn’t wait, for you to notice your need, he made provision for you through the death and resurrection of Jesus himself.
We need a Passover because whether we recognise it or not, we need rescuing, we need redeeming. The Bible tells us that we’ve all messed up, we’ve all made mistakes, we’ve all failed God.

Jesus makes an interesting observation about how the people responded to him. He said that they were only really interested in getting enough to eat. They wanted all the benefits of his presence but without all the expectations and demands. They wanted cheap grace. Easy access to God’s provision. They were the kind of people who would praise God went things went well, but if things got hard, well maybe they’d look elsewhere.

But grace is not cheap. It was paid for with the highest price, the death of Jesus himself. The apostle Paul reminds us that we are bought with a price, the precious blood of Jesus himself.
When the crowd asked Jesus what they must do to respond appropriately to the grace of God, he told them they must believe in the one God sent, the bread of life, Jesus himself.

To believe is to share in the new Passover. Just as they had to trust in the redemptive value of the Passover lamb, they now needed to trust in the redemptive value of Jesus, “The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” as John described him.

Conclusion

Jesus makes the same offer to you and I that he made to the crowd that day. You can go on trusting the old way,you can go on trusting yourself, or you can choose to trust God’s new way.
If you choose the latter, then the steps are simple and straightforward.

• Step one, acknowledge that you need rescuing.
  
• Step two accept that only God can rescue you.
  
• Step three, act in accordance with God’s plan. 
  

Easter 2009

We celebrated Easter this morning with an early communion and an All-Age Celebration.

Our all-Age event was a news cast from Rome's premier TV station VVV (Veni, Vidi, Vici) with host Gloria Evermore, roving reporter Max Amillion in Jerusalem, and Fiona Brucia in the studio.

The whole thing went really well. 

Love is not an emotion

We’ve discovered, over the last 10 weeks or so, what love is and what love is not. We’ve found out that love is the best way to live, the highest call upon the church and the ultimate expression of God at work in us and through us. We’ve learnt that love is not the number one gift but that it stands apart from the gifts as the way of life of the true follower of Jesus.

We’ve learnt that love is crucial, generous, has nothing to prove, no hidden agenda at work and no axe to grind. We know that love comes first from God (1 John 4), that Jesus commanded it as the best expression of our discipleship (John 13) and that it is one characteristic of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5). We know too that the greatest expression of love is seen when someone lays down their life for their friends (John 15), and that we have seen and experienced this when Jesus laid down his life for us.

In Romans 13, Paul sums up the importance of love by declaring it to be the fulfilment of the Law. In other words love achieves everything the law set out to achieve. Earlier in the same letter he points out that Jesus is also the end of the law, the culmination of it all. Jesus and love, both expressions of the fulfilment of the law.

Isn’t it interesting that when Jesus either asked or was asked what the greatest commandment was, the answer was all about love. Love the Lord your God.. Love your neighbour.

Love sums up the law. But if the law is now fulfilled by Christ, and in Christ. If it is satisfied through his sacrifice. And if the law no longer rules over us, then what outward sign of our obedience do we have?

 
For the church in Corinth the answer seemed to lie in the secret knowledge we possess or the gifts we exercise. Position and status replace legal observance as the discriminating mark of those who rank higher in the kingdom.

In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul reasserts the primacy of love as the true mark without denying the principles of gifts in their proper place.

Love grows us up!

As Paul draws this passage about love to a close, he uses a series of images and metaphors to reinforce the primacy of love.

Firstly he talks about those things that will come to their natural end. Prophecy will cease, tongues will be stilled and knowledge will pass away. All the things that the Corinthian Christians have made most important will, in the end, disappear. It is of course in this context that Paul introduces the language of imperfection and perfection. A phrase that has caused many questions to be asked. At the heart of Paul’s use of these terms is the idea of incompleteness. We know in part, we prophesy in part. But a day is coming when God will bring all things to completion and on that day we will know fully, see clearly and be fully known. Clearly that day has not yet arrived!

Paul’s second image is about moving from childhood to maturity. Again the picture is of a transition from incomplete to fully formed. His point here is not that spiritual gifts are immature but rather that the Corinthian Christians, with their over-zealous focus on gifts have failed to come to a mature appreciation for and application of the gifts. They have not yet grown up in their understanding. It has produced a playground mentality: “My gift is better than your gift”, a kind of Top Trumps game being played out in the life of the church.

The grown up church certainly needs the gifts, but it also needs to recognise that the gifts are only “partial”. They are not the full story. The gifts operate in the present, love is forever. To rediscover spiritual gifts is to rediscover their true place and value in the life of the church. Not to return to a less mature approach to being the church.

Thirdly he speaks about seeing clearly against seeing unclearly. Again this image reinforces Paul’s point that we are in fact all immature when we put ourselves in the context of eternity. Certainly none of us would put ourselves in the category of “perfect”.

All three images remind us that things change, that we are on a journey. But the one thing that doesn’t change is love. Love outlasts spiritual gifts. Gifts have their place in the life of the church, but they are not the most important thing. I don’t think that Paul is suggesting that a preoccupation with spiritual gifts is a sign of immaturity and that if we are mature Christians we should have left these things behind by now.

In chapter 12 he has clearly made his case for the value of spiritual gifts in the life of the church. The problem in Corinth was that they were speaking, thinking and reasoning as if spiritual gifts, knowledge and wisdom were to be more highly valued than anything else. The consequence of this was that there were divisions among them.

Paul’s point is rather that if you have all the gifts, no matter how great they are, all you have is something that will one day pass away. And when that day comes you will be left incomplete.

Signs of maturity

Love becomes the pre-eminent way to live and the testimony to our spiritual maturity. It is, according to Colossians, the virtue that binds all others together (3:14). But let’s take the image of the child, the immature young of the species so-to-speak, and reflect on maturity for a moment.

Paul says that when we are children we speak, think and reason like children. When we grow up, we put childish ways behind us. This is not about rejecting the learning experiences of childhood but about the process of coming to maturity. How does Christian maturity impact these three areas?

How we talk

James reminds us that the tongue can be difficult to control. It can be like a spark that sets light to a forest. It needs monitoring.

It’s fascinating to watch a child learn to speak. Sounds become words, words build into a vocabulary, sentences begin to emerge. Without being told, they experiment with creating tenses, not that they know that’s what they are doing, but they do it.

We’re wonderfully impressed when they use their first word, say please and thank you for the first time, and maybe, just maybe, rather pleased when they produce their first example of an adverb used in a correctly constructed imperfect tense! Or maybe that’s just me!

As Christians we learn a new language. In our context of 1 Cor.13 we could say we learn a new language of love. And it takes time. But if learnt properly it will affect the way we talk. We will learn to control our speech, to not say that which will hurt and wound, but instead to say that which builds up and encourages. We “speak the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15) and we refuse to allow “unwholesome talk” to be our pattern. (Eph.4:29)

Prov. 16:23 A wise man’s heart guides his mouth, and his lips promote instruction

How we think

In Philippians 4 Paul encourages his readers to think about those things that are noble and pure.

• Finally, dear brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.
  

And in 2Cor. 10:5 he urges us to take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.

How we reason

Perhaps the most preoccupying idea for many children is simply this: Is it fair? Is his piece of cake bigger than my piece of cake? Has she had a longer turn on the swing that I have? Why can’t I have what I want?

As we grow up however, we discover that fairness is not the issue, or at least ought not to be the issue uppermost in our minds. We reason differently. Isaiah Spoke of a generation that would see with perceiving, hear without understanding, and as a result would be hard hearted. That's not a description to which any us aspire!

Conclusion

Perhaps Paul’s challenge to the church in Corinth was to become mature. To get things in their right perspective and to begin to live out the good news more than they preached the good news.

When we come to Christ we begin to think differently, talk differently and reason differently.
All this we do, not in the context of what’s best for me, but in the context of what’s best for everyone.

No posts for a while

Just in case you thought we'd stopped posting outlines....

On Feb. 22nd we had a visiting speaker from Rope (Relief for Oppressed People Everywhere), March 1st was our All-Age Celebration and on The 8th March we had another visiting preacher.

Next week I'm back on the platform, so the outline should appear here.

Love has no axe to grind

If you do a quick search on the internet for revenge you will discover some interesting things. You will of course find a definition for revenge. You might even find a film with revenge in the title. But what you will definitely find are a websites designed to help you exact revenge on those by whom you have been hurt.

Take “The Revenge Lady” for example. Revenge Lady gives advice on using the ancient art of revenge to bring humor and happiness back to your life. There is even a revenge quiz so that you can find out if revenge is right for you! And in case you were thinking it was limited to ladies, there is also revengeguy.com offering to help you get even, pull one over, take revenge against those that have wronged you.

Love has no axe to grind

Anger is the enemy of love.

Man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life God desires Jas.1:20

Jesus said that anger was a serious business. In the Sermon on the Mount he said that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgement just as anyone guilty of murder. Why does Jesus take anger so seriously? What does anger do to us?

It causes us to act unwisely. Proverbs 29 says: A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.

It creates conflict and disagreements. It promotes friction. An angry man stirs up dissension

It generates a need for revenge on those we see as our enemies. But Jesus calls us to bless those who persecute us and pray for our enemies. We are to walk the extra mile, give up our cloak, and turn the other cheek. Revenge has no place in the way of love.

Anger turns us into fools. Eccl. 7:9 Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools.

Managing anger

The simple truth is that we all get angry. Paul doesn’t say that love doesn’t get angry, he says that love is not easily angered. Remember patience? Patience is a long fuse.

Secondly we have, according to Paul in 2 Corinthians (5:18-19), a ministry and message of reconciliation. Reconciliation comes through the cross of Jesus, By his death we are reconciled with God and through his death we can be reconciled to each other. Not only this, but we can take this reconciliation to the world around us by sharing the message of Jesus with our angry, vengeful society.

Thirdly, we live out reconciliation. In the words of Jesus, we forgive those who have sinned against us.

Proverbs 17:9 He who covers over an offence promotes love, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends.

Fourthly we must be ruthless in seeking to remove anger from our lives. In both Colossians and Ephesians Paul tells us simply to rid ourselves of anger.

Love keeps no record of wrongs

Why is it that we find keeping a record of the wrong done to us so much easier than remembering the blessings? I think we keep a record of wrongs in order to protect ourselves. Love is painful. Love is vulnerable and because of this we need some security and that comes through making sure we have reasons to withhold love. That’s a record of wrongs. It’s a list of why we shouldn’t love, why we shouldn’t forgive, why we shouldn’t be reconciled.

The problem with a wrong remembered is that we have to decide what the exchange rate is between a wrong and a right. Is it two to one, three, or more? How many times must the offender ask forgiveness, how many trustworthy things must they do before the debt is paid?
And yet of course we know that if God did this to us, then we could never pay the debt of all our wrongs.

Keeping a record of wrongs destroys friendships, ruins relationships, poisons parenting, undermines marriages, generates bitterness and harbours resentment. And what’s worse is that it can actually make you physically ill.

Take the case of the wife who went to the doctor and discovered that she had an ulcer. He wasn’t sure what the root cause was but suggested that it might be wise to seek the help of a counsellor.

On arrival in the counsellors office she placed on their desk an inch thick dossier of double-sided typed pages. The dossier contained a carefully chronicled list of all the wrongs she felt her husband had committed in their 13 year marriage. All of sudden the root cause of her ulcer became apparent.

You can usually tell when someone is a keeper of records, as one observer once pointed out: in an argument the keeper of records of wrongs usually get historical not hysterical.

Paul’s solution to keeping records is not simply to forget stuff, although choosing to put something away in the past is an important part of the process. In 1Corinthians 13 Paul offers us a positive alternative. We are to love in a way that always protects, always trusts, always hopes and always perseveres.

Love assumes the best about others. If someone inadvertently offends you, you choose to believe the offence was unintentional. If someone seeks to harm you, you "bear all things", forgiving unconditionally. If a positive light can be shed on a difficult encounter, you grasp it. If someone continually provokes you, you "endure all things". You never lose hope in the ones you love. You practice the same unconditional love towards others that Christ gives you.

From Day-by-Day

Love does not delight in evil

Anger and record keeping inevitably lead to the same place. A place where we become proud and self-righteous to the point that we take pleasure in the ill that befalls others. But love does not delight in evil: If love always thinks the best, always seeks to protect, to hope to persevere, then it cannot by its nature rejoice in that which is evil. To delight in evil is to take pleasure in someone else’s misfortune, to draw strength from another’s failure, to feel good when you get even with those who have wronged you.

None of this is consistent with the lifestyle to which we aspire as fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.

And the more you delight in evil the less you will rejoice in truth. The more you take pleasure in the pain of others the less you will be drawn towards grace. You will want it for yourself, but it will always be something that deep-down you believe you deserve. 

You will say to yourself, “I’m not as bad as this person or that person.” A delight in evil leads inevitably to a presumption of forgiveness. “Surely God will forgive me because my sins are nothing compared to the sins of so many others.”

But grace doesn’t work this way. Grace is not about how much you deserve it, it’s all about how much you don’t deserve it.

Perhaps the world experiences grace through the love it experiences through Christians
Philip Yancey, in his book What’s so Amazing about Grace, tells the story about a conversation one of his friend’s overheard on their daily commute. One passenger was reading the book The Road Less Travelled.

“What are you reading?” asked the neighbour.

“A book a friend gave me. She said it changed her life.”

“Oh. What’s it about?”

“I’m not sure. Some sort of guide to life. I haven’t got very far yet.” She began flipping through the book. “Here are the chapter titles: ‘Discipline, Love, grace,…’”

The man stopped her. “What’s grace?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t got to Grace yet.”

Perhaps our friends, neighbours, colleagues simply haven't got to grace yet and we're are the ones who can show them the way. But we can only do that when we stop grinding axes. If you’re not grinding an axe what are you doing?

In the OT the prophets tell the people that a day is coming when weapons of war will be turned in to farming implements. Now I know an axe is not a weapon of war as such, but the image caught my imagination.

If we’re not grinding an axe ready to take revenge, because that’s why we grind our axes, then we’re turning them into things that will nurture rather than destroy. Not only do we not do these things–envy, boast, get angry, delight in evil and record all wrongs no matter how small, but we do the exact opposite. We rejoice in truth, we forgive wrongs done to us, we bring peace. 

In short we live grace.

Love has no hidden agenda

I used to have a calendar with cartoons, one for each day. One of them was a cartoon of a minister sitting on the sofa looking at a large, complicated year planner. His wife (it happens to be a male minister) says to him, “Don’t worry dear, just remember that God loves and everyone else has a plan for your life!” But it’s not only the agendas that other people might have for us that can deflect us. We can have what John Ortberg calls our shadow mission, our hidden agenda.

Paul makes it very clear that to live by the way of love is to dance to a different beat, to walk to a different pattern, to live to a different agenda, It is a way of life that is not meant to moulded and shaped by any other agenda than the agenda of the kingdom of God expressed through the life of the disciples if Jesus. It is a way of life that should reshape and challenge that which the world may see as normal, offering a new normality, a more excellent way.

The way of love subverts the agenda of a selfish, greedy, sometimes irresponsible agenda with an agenda of generosity, contentment and sacrifice. The way of love, according to Paul always trust, always perseveres, always protects.  But to follow this new kingdom agenda will mean that we must reject the alternatives. Something easier said than done.

 
The alternative agendas are subtle. We are so used to living in the world’s normality that we find it hard to recognise the false agendas from the true agenda of Jesus. So we adjust the agenda of the kingdom to fit the agenda of the world around us. For example, Jesus said, “Love your enemies” but we adjust his call in order to meet our need for security.

 

How then do we recognise the false from the true? How do we choose between competing agendas?

Agendas Jesus refused to follow

Political Agendas
Restoring the kingdom
Religious Agendas
The Pharisees and the Sadducees
Spiritual Agendas
The temptations
Self-fulfilment: make bread for yourself
Self-promotion: Worship me and I will give you power
Self-Preservation: Throw yourself down and God will save you.
Social Agendas
Stay with us

Handling Competing Agenda

Prayer
Perception: Discerning what is going on around us, and in us.
Priorities: Seek first the kingdom
Position: Following Jesus not leading

What is my agenda?

Consumer: typified by only worshipping God when things go well, only serving God when the cost is manageable, only following Jesus when it’s not too demanding.

My shadow mission: In public generous, forgiving and loving. In private mean, spiteful and self-centred.

Jesus calls us to an agenda of:

Surrender: “Here I am Lord, send me”
Commitment: "Take my life and let it be..."

Conclusion

Have you checked your agenda recently?

Have you taken a good, long look at your priorities? Are they more about you, your ambitions, your desires, than they are about following Jesus wholeheartedly, seeking his priorities for your life rather than your own.

Perhaps you have never prioritised the kingdom of God in your life. Perhaps the way of love has escaped you because you have never discovered God’s love for you in the first place. Perhaps today you need to step into that love in order that you might begin to live in the way of love.

Jesus calls us to reject any agenda that is not the kingdom agenda, to choose one master to love an to serve.

You alone can make that choice.

Love is patient and kind

Having set out love as the way of life, modelled on the pattern of Jesus and fulfilling the great commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, we now begin to take a closer look at Paul’s great description of the attributes of love. Love is, of course, the expression of the work of the Spirit in us. It’s no surprise therefore that we find parallels elsewhere in the New Testament.  In Galatians 5 we see the fruit of the Spirit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Peter encourages his readers to add to your faith, goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. His reason for this is that if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Put simply: knowing a lot about Jesus is no substitute for knowing him and following him wholeheartedly.

So, if we want to walk in the way of love, to follow the more excellent way Paul talk about, what will that way look like?

Love is patient, love is kind

The first two characteristics Paul tells us about are patience and kindness. All that follows flows from these two attributes.

Patience is about we respond, how we react to people, circumstances, and events around. It is essentially passive. We respond with patience.

Kindness is about we act, it’s our active response to those same things.

It’s hard to imagine being able always to act with kindness if w fail to react with patience. I don’t know about you, but I can’t ever remember being on the receiving end of angry kindness.
Kindness and patience are therefore two key characteristics of a Christlike response to any situation. Paul, in 2 Corinthians goes so far as to say that we prove we are God’s servants when we display patience and kindness among other traits.

Patience

What does Paul mean by patience?

We live in an angry society. Road rage, trolley rage, everything we do seems to have degrees of rage associated with it. But patience isn’t just the simple opposite of anger. Patience is a good translation of the Greek word Paul uses. It means to be long suffering, long-tempered. You might even say that love has a long fuse.

The advantage of a long fuse is that you can put it out before the explosion happens. It’s always useful, for example, that if the bad guys trap you in a mine and intend to blow you up inside it, that they use a nice long fuse so tat you have time to escape the poorly tied ropes, free yourself, and blow out the fuse.

And maybe it’s not just when trapped in an old mine that you need a long, slow fuse.

To be slow to anger is to follow the example of God himself who is regularly described in the Old Testament as slow to anger and abounding in love. Is it possible that if we are to abound in love, to live out Paul’s more excellent way, then the first thing we will need is patience?

Proverbs 15:18: A hot-tempered man stirs up dissension, but a patient man calms a quarrel.

Not only is patience slow to get angry, it is also slow to accuse.

Prov. 19:11 says: A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offence.

Remember how quick Adam was to blame Eve and Eve to blame the serpent? Little patience, quick to accuse and very slow to take responsibility. Slowness demands that we take the time to think and then to think again before we start to throw accusations around the place.

Thirdly, patience is slow to assume.

Have you noticed how worked up we get when we make assumptions? Assumptions lead to conclusions that often wrong and inaccurate. Patience is slow to assume. Do you assume someone doesn’t care because they don’t call? Do you assume no one has noticed because they haven’t commented? Have you assumed someone has understood just because you’ve told them? Assumption are dangerous things, especially when made quickly.

So, patience is slow, but it is also submissive.

Heb.6:15 tells us that Abraham waited patiently and in the end he saw the promise fulfilled. David said: I waited patiently for the Lord, and he answered me. (Psalm 40)

Kindness

Kindness is how we act when we’ve been patient. Kindness never flows from anger. Kindness honours others, it encourages them, it blesses. Proverbs tells us that a kind or gentle word turns away anger, and that it cheers the anxious heart; Kind words are like honey–sweet to the soul and healthy for the body

Kindness as outreach

Kindness provides opportunities to do what Steve Sjogren calls “Low risk, high grace” outreach. As we serve people with kindness we:

• Offer them a glimpse of the kindness of God at work through his people
  
• We break down the stereotype of evangelical Christians as those who simply stand in judgement.
  
• We create opportunities to share our story of how we have experienced the kindness of God through Jesus Christ. 
  
• Allow our hearts to be softened towards those whom Jesus misses most. The lost and missing no longer are objects of God’s anger and judgement but people whom he loves and to whom he wants to show mercy and grace.
  

Kindness becomes our strategy for breaking up the unploughed ground in readiness for the seed of the good news about Jesus to penetrate and take root, eventually producing fruit for the kingdom of God.

Conclusion

These first two attributes of love, patience and kindness, are crucial if we are going to make any headway with what follows. Without patience, love will fail, without patience, love will not persevere. Without kindness, envy can easily take root as we become selfish rather than generous. And so it goes on.

So get to work on your patience, manage your anger, seek God’s help to extend your patience and kindness so that he is honoured and kingdom grows through you.

After all Jesus said that if we bear much fruit then the Father is glorified, and who doesn’t want to glorify the Father?

Love is Crucial

If love is the “Killer App” then it makes sense that it is central, crucial to becoming a whole-hearted follower of Jesus Christ. He loved, and he called those who follow him to love like he did.

The opening verses of chapter 13 have a regular refrain to them that goes like this: If I do not have love, then I do not have anything. I have nothing to offer, nothing to gain, and I am in fact nothing at all. Love makes me who I am in Christ. Tongues, prophecy and miracles count for nothing. Self-sacrifice has no value. Love is the most excellent way.

The clanging cymbal and noisy gong would be familiar aspects of pagan worship rituals. Is Paul saying that without love supernatural gifts are little more use than pagan worship?

But what is love?

There are three Greek words typically translated love. In classical literature, Two are used as synonyms but in the NT they are used to mean two different things. One is used to describe the general love shared by people. Family love, societal love. It’s the word which often provides us with part of a word like anglophile, or hydrophile and Philadelphia (lit. brotherly love). The other word came to be used in the NT to describe God’s love for us and our love for God. It’s used here in 1Cor.13 for the “way of love” of which Paul speaks. If you hear preachers talk about agape love, this is what they are talking about.

The Corinthian question

Perhaps the critical question that was being asked by the Christians in Corinth was the kind of question we still ask today. We might be more subtle about it, but I suspect we still want to know the answer to the same question.

This is the question: What the best indicator of my spirituality?

Perhaps the question is even more subtle: What’s the least I need to do or demonstrate in order to show that I’m sufficiently spiritual to be accepted into heaven?

Now we would never say that out loud, but our human tendency to do the minimum required gives away our deep seated values. When we walk this path we are using Jesus to get to heaven and little else. He is not the way of life, he’s simply providing safe passage. In Corinth this leads them to a wrong emphasis on spiritual gifts as the key to spirituality. Whether it was tongues or prophecy, faith or altruism or even self-sacrifice, what we do for God was the heart of their search not who we are in Christ.

Wrong emphases:

Create selfish behaviour
Mislead us
Make the less important the most important
Rob us of possibilities.

Because we are always measuring ourselves against the wrong criteria we end up in the wrong place with God and with each other. In Corinth, tongues, prophecy, self-sacrifice, even faith had superseded love as the ultimate prize.

Are we in danger of the same thing happening to us? Perhaps not over these issues, but what about other things?

Things like busyness: “I’m so busy doing God’s work, that must make me spiritual”

Zeal: “I’m so committed to making sure we’re always teaching unequivocal truth, that must make me spiritual”.

Evangelism: “I’m always telling people how to get right with God, that must make me spiritual”

Worship: “I know all the words to the songs in the latest Spring Harvest book, that must surely make me spiritual”

The truth is that none of these are the true sign of spirituality. Only love is that sign. That’s why it’s crucial.

The way of love and the grace of God

John Ortberg wrote: Living in grace, remembering grace, keeps love alive.

Grace is key to understanding the way of love because it is by grace that we are saved, by grace that we are made alive and by grace that we are loved. We deserve none of these things. Because of rebellion towards God we do not deserve the live (in the day that you eat of its fruit you shall surely die, Gen. 2, 3). We are under judgement for sin.

Because we’ve rejected God’s way, we do not deserve to be loved let alone rescued.

But we are all three. Loved, saved and alive.

Grace makes no sense to our rule dominated, law driven lives. But to God it makes perfect sense. It was the only way we were going to be set free. And so God did for us what we could not do for ourselves and gives to us what we cannot get for ourselves.

The way of love is the sign of true spirituality because it’s the way of grace and that’s the way of God.

Conclusion

The things the Corinthian church prized as signs of true spirituality were no signs at all. But we are not the Corinthian church. But are we better? What do we prize of a sign of spirituality that is in fact nothing of the sort? Do we prize more highly a spiritual gift or ministry.

What would church look like of we prized most highly the way of love as the sign of true, deep, life-transformed spirituality? What would that church look like?

Love is: "The Killer App"

Tim Sanders, once of Yahoo, wrote a book called "Love is the killer app" His basic point was that looking after No.1 is not the best way to get ahead. The Bible has a lot to say about love. God’s relationship with humanity is predicated upon his love for us. Love, according to the apostle Paul is the only debt that should remain outstanding and the first characteristic of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives (Rom.13 Gal.5).  The writer to the Hebrews (10:24) exhorts us to consider how we can stir one another up to love and good works, and Peter (1:22 & 4:8) twice tells his readers to love one another deeply. Returning to Paul, love surpasses knowledge because knowledge puffs up but love builds up (1Cor.8:1) and is the fulfilment of the law (Rom.13 again). In the end, Paul has one way to describe love:

 And now I will show you the most excellent way

Corinth

Corinth was an important city for both the Greek and Roman Empires. It had a reputation as one of the most culturally diverse cities of its time. It’s location made it important as a trade route, offering an easier land route across Greece rather than the more treacherous sea route around the coast. The Corinthian games were second only to the Olympic Games of Athens.

Cultural and religious diversity produced a society measured by the the philosophy you followed, the teacher with whom you associated yourself or the religion you adopted. The problems and challenges that the church in Corinth faced are a reflection of the issues that probably existed within Corinthian culture.

The Letter

1 Corinthians is essentially a letter to a church made up of people who are struggling to get along and set aside their social/ cultural background. Chapter 13 sets out the value of a single virtue, love. With their Roman and Greek philosophical culture, the corinthians would be well used to this kind of narrative. What would have taken them by surprise is the earthy practical nature of Paul’s argument when compared to the ethereal propositions of philosophical debate and discussion.

Putting Chapter 13 in it’s context

In chapter 12 Paul has made his case for a theological framework for correctly understanding the nature and purpose of a diversity of spiritual gifts. In chapter 14, Paul will taken up this line of discussion again. Chapter 13 is a digression with a purpose. If, as is generally agreed, the Corinthian Christians had become fixated on tongues as the only true sign of spirituality, and ranking themselves according to their gifts, Paul is correcting their misunderstanding by pointing out that all gifts are equal in that they all come from God, given in accordance with his plan and for use in the whole body. No one gift is greater than another, no one person therefore is greater than another. But if the gifts are equal, what is their purpose? Paul’s answer is that they are intended to build up the whole body. If that’s the case, then how do you use them to do that?

Chapters 12 & 14 set out the 'how' for correctly using the gifts. Chapter 13 is Paul’s answer to the question: What’s my motivation? How ever you use the gifts it must be in the context of love, of seeking to build each other up rather than promote oneself. “The more excellent way” is not an alternative to gifts, but the true context for them. Love becomes the proper framework in which to explore, exercise and eagerly desire the gifts of the Spirit. Love defines and directs the Christian life.

1Cor.13 and the NT

Where the Sermon on the Mount is an exposition of the Ten Commandments, the Law from God, 1Cor.13 is “a description of that law fulfilled” 

Just Love p11

RT Kendal Just Love identifies three key attributes of 1Cor.13

• Demonstration of love
  
• Description of love
  
• Direction love gives to life
  

For John Wesley, 1Cor. 13 was about the necessity of love, the nature of love and the duration of love.

What Paul doesn’t offer is a sentimentalised view of love. This isn’t in praise of an unattainable virtue, but a realistic expression of a better way to live. The best way to live.

The best way to live

The Corinthian church had some big questions. Among those questions was the issue of spirituality. What is true spirituality? Is it in hidden in special knowledge, is it rooted in which apostle baptised you? Is it in spiritual gifts or patterns of worship, styles of dress? Does it have any bearing on lifestyle or is this physical life irrelevant?

Love is the way to live, to learn, to lead, to laugh and to let things be.

Have you ever wondered how to describe the fullness of life Jesus promised? It’s the way of love Paul describes.

Corinth was a city dedicated to Venus (Aphrodite), the goddess of love. But Paul’s way of love was very different to the normal expressions of love in this city. Love was not naturally linked to self-denial and self-sacrifice, it was purely physical, a matter of pleasure, of self-fulfilment for many Corinthians.

I suspect that many of the things Paul has to say about love are exact opposites of how life was being done in the city and reflected in the church at Corinth. Think about it for a moment, there were law suits but love, Paul says, keeps no record of wrongs; relationship problems, but love perseveres; issues with pride, but love is not proud, doesn’t envy or boast and isn’t self-seeking.
Paul’s picture must have been quite a challenge.

Love is no optional extra that you add on to faith, doctrine and practice.

What’s the contrast?

What’s the contrast to the way of love? If love is the most excellent way, or the more excellent way, then what are the alternatives?

The selfish way. Me first others second
The self promotional way
The suspicious way
Form, image, reputation before heart
The secret knowledge way
The right doctrine way
The best gift way

The duration of this way

How long does this way of life go on? Put simply, it will go on way past all the alternatives. One day tongues will be irrelevant, prophecy not required, knowledge unnecessary. But love will last forever. Not sentimentally as we’ve already said, but as an eternal context for life lived to the full.

Conclusion

This then is the lifestyle to which we aspire. A lifestyle not determined nor defined by what gifts we have, what connections we have or what things we have learnt. Defined rather by how we have lived towards others. 

Have we loved them as Jesus has loved us?

Covenant 2009

Introduction

In both Old and New Testaments the concept of covenant takes a central role. Through covenant, God established a relationship with his people. Early in their history Baptists sought to express their relationship with God and with each other in terms of a covenanted relationship. They promised to walk together as disciples and to watch over each other in prayer.

As we gather today we will renew our commitment to do the same. A commitment to love God wholeheartedly and to love others as we want to be loved.

• We are called to be a worshipping community, offering all to God in prayer.
  
• We are called to be a missionary community, making known the redeeming love of God.
  
• We are called to be a sacrificial community, generously giving from all that God has given us.
  
• We are called to be an inclusive community, sharing the hospitality of God’s Kingdom with all.
  
• We are called to be a prophetic community, challenging powers that oppress and corrupt
  

As a Gospel people, let us covenant together before God and each other:

The covenant we share

As part of our covenant together we share a common vision to build a great church that honours and glorifies God; built on biblical principles; teaching biblical truth; influencing its community; where personal relationships are deep.

We share a common purpose to love people into a deep and growing relationship with God through Jesus Christ, and we share a common mission to know God and to make God known.
We share a common desire: to share God’s heart for the marginalised and oppressed.

All this is expressed through our life together as we gather for worship, ministry and mission.

We are: A people called and set apart by God, who gather together to worship him, serve each other and reach out to the world. We do not do this alone, but together as the community of faith.

Together we commit ourselves to:

Serve the mission of the church: By inviting others to join the journey of faith; by engaging in evangelism

Safeguard the unity of the church:By loving one another; by refusing to gossip; by engaging with and submitting to the decision-making processes of the church

Support the integrity of the church: By developing a servant heart; by living a life that honours Jesus Christ; by believing the statement of faith

Share the responsibility of the church: By giving regular financial support to the church; by attending regularly; by using my gifts to serve.

We pray our covenant prayer together

Covenant prayer

Heavenly Father,
We come today to covenant with you and with each other:

to watch over each other and to walk together before you in ways known and still to be made known.

We give ourselves again to you and to each other

to be bound together in fellowship, and to work together in the unity of the Spirit for the sake of God’s mission.

In our congregation, in local partnerships, in our association and in the wider Union,

we commit all that we have and are to fulfil God’s purposes of love.

Pour your Spirit upon us. Help us so to walk in your ways that the promises we make this day, and the life that we live together, may become an offering of love, our duty and delight truly glorifying to you – Father Son and Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Wesley’s prayer (adapted and slightly modernised)

I am no longer my own, but yours O God.
Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for you or laid aside for you,
exalted for you or brought low for you.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
you art mine, and I am yours.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.

Christ has many services to be done. Some are easy, others are difficult. Some bring honour, others bring reproach. Some are suitable to our natural inclinations and temporal interests, others are contrary to both... Yet the power to do all these things is given to us in Christ, who strengthens us.