Anger, Sexual Immorality and Low Self Esteem are three of the most stubborn sins known to mankind. We know we should eliminate them from our lives, but the question is: HOW?

Well, welcome to this third week in this series called “Eliminating Stubborn Sin – Once and For All”. Over the last few weeks on the programme we have seen that God truly does want us to overcome stubborn sin in our lives – that God gives us the power to deal with every sin and whatever temptation comes our way. He gives us the way out – a way of dealing with it. Actually there are very few things that God says “Don’t do!” and the only things to which He says “Don’t do!” are the things, if we are honest with ourselves, the things that are going to hurt us.

And today we are going to look at anger, sexual immorality and low self esteem because they are way out there. But when it comes to dealing with these stubborn sins, the issue is not so much that we should get rid of them – we kind of know that – the question is how?

So let’s kick off today with anger because anger is actually a big issue in this world today – it seems we’re all so busy doing all the things we have to do – racing around, taking the kids to school, getting off to work and at work these days the pressure is really on. Make more, achieve more, deliver more – it used to be in the ‘good old days’ the pace was much slower.

You had to wait for the mail to arrive and when you sent a letter out, it took a couple of days to get it all correct through the typing pool. But these days, even when people are on holidays with their families, they’re answering emails on their mobile phones.

We’re so connected, so in demand, so busy – it’s almost like we’re like battery hens – the slightest thing makes us snap. Some people have more of a problem with anger than others. The more achievement oriented and outcome focused a personality we have, the more we are going to be prone to anger.

And that was my ‘biggie’ when I became a Christian – anger. Nothing was ever good enough or fast enough for me and as I look at that, the whole "anger" thing was based on a self-centeredness and a sense of self importance. The world was there to serve ME and to fit in with MY plans and if you didn’t play the game by MY rules and deliver what I wanted – well, watch out!

It’s a way of living and thinking and behaving that robs us of relationships and tenderness and joy. It’s actually awful! But how can we change that? Well, here’s how! Psalm 145, verse 8, says this:

The Lord is gracious and merciful and show to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

What that’s saying is that God’s grace and His mercy and His steadfast love make Him slow to get angry. God does get angry sometimes and that’s a fearsome thing but not at the drop of a hat. He doesn’t have a temper that’s on a hair trigger. Why? “Because He’s abounding in steadfast love.”

In other words, He’s more focused on loving us for who we are than what we do or don’t do. Imagine if this awesome and mighty God became angry with you and I every time we didn’t fit in with His plans – we wouldn’t last very long, would we?

For me, learning to break the pattern of angry behaviour began with loving the people I was dealing with; valuing them for who they were; understanding their hurts and their inadequacies. The things that had happened to them in their lives that made them behave the way they did. And the more I did that, the less angry I started to feel. In fact, what I began to do was prepare myself for people.

As I said, I am one of these outcome focused people who moves quickly, sets goals, achieves them. And it’s easy when you’re like that just to roll over the top of people. And then ... then I have to work with someone who just wants to have fun! You know the sort of people? They just want to enjoy the moment and I just want to get things done. But without them to help me enjoy the moment, well, I’d miss out.

So I started to prepare myself – "I have to work with him today! Right! Okay! I understand him. He’s not going to be like me today and that’s okay", almost forgiving them, if you like, before they walked into the room. It took me a while to figure it out but that’s what God is like. That’s what that verse from that Psalm is all about. Psalm 145, verse 8:

The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

And actually that "slow to anger" thing has a lot to be said for it. Here are a couple of verses from Proverbs that really helped me. Proverbs chapter 12, verse 16:

Fools show their anger at once but the prudent ignore an insult.

In other words, the moment that someone says something that triggers anger in me, well, I’ve learned to let it pass me by, more often than not, these days. No, I don’t have to win every time anymore. I don’t have to have the last say; I don’t have to be right all the time. “Only fools show their anger at once, the prudent ignore an insult.” And this verse – Proverbs chapter 15, verse 1:

A soft answer turns away wrath but a harsh word stirs up anger.

This was like being a shock absorber. When someone does something to stir up anger and dissent, how wonderful it is to respond with gentleness and wisdom, calming the situation instead of throwing fuel on the fire with a harsh word. Ignore the insult and respond with a gentle, soft answer.

Can I tell you, once I decided to start loving the people around me, these two things took a bit of practice but after a while they became a habit, because they’re a much, much better way of living? These days I have much more peace in my heart; much more joy in my life. Instead of always having MY day ruined by other people’s failure to fit in with my plans, I’ve discovered the joy of fitting in with their plans sometimes too.

And the biggest thing ... the biggest thing with letting the anger go is that it set me free to enjoy the beauty and the creativity and the incredible specialness of each person I come in contact with. It’s like a whole new world has opened up.

Do I still get angry sometimes? Course I do, so do you! It’s what I do with that anger when it happens that makes all the difference. This anger thing was a stubborn sin in my life. It was one that looked like it would never go away but when I took those few simple Scriptures we just talked about and started applying them to my life, God did the rest. He set me free from a sin that would have ruined the rest of my life.

Next we are going to look at another one of those stubborn sins – sexual immorality.

Earlier we looked at overcoming anger and right now we are going to move on to sexual immorality because it’s one of the most stubborn sins of all. It seems these days that it doesn’t matter how hard we try, sexuality is constantly thrust before our eyes and under our noses. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have a very simple view about sex. God invented it: it’s good, it’s great.

But the role of our sexuality - apart from the obvious thing of keeping the human race going by bringing babies into the world – is to bring a husband and a wife into a level of intimacy so wonderful that there aren’t enough words to describe how good that is. But because sex sells, it’s used in the media to such an extent, you can’t walk down the street without the image of a scantily clad woman advertising some product on a billboard shoved in your face.

Now, God’s Word is pretty clear on sex and here it is in a nut shell. Human sexuality is a part of His design for humanity and as such, physical intimacy is a beautiful gift from Him but the only proper expression of that gift is exclusively between one man and one woman who have been joined together as husband and wife in the life-long bond of marriage. And people who continue in sexual immorality outside that – whatever form that takes – will NOT inherit the Kingdom of God. They are not my ideas. That is clearly, clearly what God says through what I believe to be His Word – the Bible.

Now, I think that one of the biggest issues today is pornography. So many men are caught up in sexual immorality – they’re married, they want to be faithful to their wives but with the internet being available 24/7, the temptation is simply too great. And so they are caught up in the cycle of addiction and shame that spirals ever downward.

It actually robs them of the intimacy that God had planned for them. It substitutes a poor impostor for the real thing. And because they are carrying the burden of hidden shame around in their hearts, it robs them of the power that God has for their lives – the power to make a difference for God in this world. That’s why this particular stubborn sin is so insidious.

Here are some sobering statistics: over 50% of all men are addicted to pornography; over 82% percent of males between fifteen and twenty-eight have intentionally or deliberately sought out pornography in the last three months. A man whose campaign to help men addicted to pornography, Pastor Steve Davies, puts it this way – he says: “We’re at war and pornography is Satan’s number one weapon against men to destroy their walk with Christ.”

So how do we overcome this most stubborn of sins? If you are a man addicted to this cycle of pornography, how can you overcome it? If you are a woman who’s living through the pain of her husband’s addiction to pornography, how can you be part of overcoming it? They’re tough issues and perhaps the odd person is squirming right now and maybe you’re tempted to turn the radio off but God’s Word speaks into every situation ... every situation and this sin is no different.

For the man who is caught up in this most stubborn of sins, the first thing he needs to know and understand is this: that Jesus came to set you free from every sin ... every sin, and this sin is no different. Colossians chapter 1, verses 13 to 14, says this:

He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

So, anyone who has put their faith in Jesus has been rescued from the power of darkness and transferred into the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. And this Scripture too – Romans chapter 6, verse 14:

For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under the law but under grace.

So, here’s the very first thing – this man caught up in pornography is entitled to believe that something has happened – sin no longer has dominion over him and whilst it might take a little while to overcome this addiction, the power of sin is broken because God applied His grace to you in that situation. This has already been dealt with on the cross of Christ; once and for all, the power of sin has been broken.

So instead of approaching this addiction with faith in failure, you can approach it knowing that the deal is already done. Success is guaranteed and every time the devil whispers doubt into your heart, you can stand on God’s Word.

The second thing is getting really practical about what you look at and where your mind wanders. Proverbs chapter 5 is a powerful part of God’s Word for anyone caught in the cycle of pornography. In particular, verse 8 says this about seduction:

Keep you way far from her and do not go near the door of her house.

It’s so easy in a world saturated with sexuality, to let one image; one unintended and unfortunate encounter, act as a trigger for this addiction. Keep away; in other words, don’t put yourself in places where you are going to be trapped and when the temptation does come your way, "don’t go near to the door of her house".

In other words, guard your eyes, guard your mind, guard your heart – stay away and don’t go there. Any man knows that there is a line he can step over, allowing his mind to wander into places where it should never go. And that wandering ultimately conceives sin.

Thirdly, you men who are married flee ... flee into the arms of your wife. She is the real thing; she is God’s perfect provision for you. And as I said earlier on the programme, God’s plan for exclusive intimacy between one man and one woman who are yoked together for life, through thick and thin, is so utterly wonderful. It can never be replaced by this impostor called pornography.

This may surprise you – if you have never read it before, but the Bible – First Corinthians chapter 7, verses 1 to 5 - tells husbands and wives to be intimate with one another. Go on, read it for yourself – it’s all there – it's God’s plan.

Finally, you men who are addicted to pornography, let me say this – and this is going to be perhaps the hardest thing of all – you need to be accountable; to your wife if you are married and to other men. It’s time for us to go beyond the shame and look for solutions. God’s plan is to set men free from this addiction. It is the most stubborn of sins because it’s hidden. Bring it out into the open and as much pain as it may cause in a marriage, that’s the place where healing can begin.

And if you are a wife, hurt you may be by this infidelity and adultery – because that’s what it is - here’s my counsel to you: forgive your husband and be part of the solution. Love him, hold him, and the Lord your God will use you as His instrument to heal this man whom He has entrusted to you. Love does hurt sometimes and this is one of those times, but the prize ... the prize is worth it, isn’t it?

Now, finally on the programme today we will look at low self esteem. Low self esteem is a rampant disease in our society, particularly let me say, amongst women. And while the Bible has lots to say about pride, it appears to be almost silent on this thing that nowadays we refer to as ‘low self esteem’. So what it is? Well, put simply, it’s an unhelpfully low sense of self worth. "Aw, I’m no good, I can’t do anything, I’m useless, I’m stupid, I’m worthless ... " all those statements are thoughts that constantly ... constantly plague people with low self esteem.

And the impact of them is that the people who suffer from this unhelpfully low sense of self worth, struggle to have any meaningful relationships. They don’t have any joy; they don’t have any peace in their lives; they are touchy; their feelings are easily hurt – and it’s like a prison, this low self esteem thing - for many it seems like a life-long sentence.

Now, we would all agree that anyone who suffers from low self esteem is missing out on a full and healthy life. They are in a sense, missing the point of life, at least the point that God meant for them, which is a full and abundant and rich life. And if that’s the case, then there is only one name for low self esteem: it’s "sin".

Now I don’t mean to make things worse but "sin" as it is defined in the New Testament, literally means, "to miss the mark", or as we might say today, "to miss the whole point of life", and wandering around with this incredibly low sense of self worth, misses the whole point, doesn’t it?

We all know people with low self esteem – we know how debilitating it is – we can see how it robs them of rich and meaningful relationships. But how many of us would have thought of it as "sin"? Well, let’s call it for what it is and there’s a good reason for that, because whilst "sin" is all too common, it is not normal. Jesus came to set us free from sin and its effects. Not just that we might have forgiveness for sins past but that we would be free from them today and for all eternity.

The problem with people who have low self esteem is that they don’t, for one minute, imagine that their lives could be any different. They don’t for a single minute believe that Jesus came to set them free from the pain and the anguish of their low self esteem. But what if ... what if He came to do exactly that? Would you want to be part of it? Maybe that’s for you; maybe that’s for someone who’s close to you, well, I come to you today with some good news. It’s great news! Jesus came to set us free from sin; every sin, including this sin – stubborn though it may be; persistent though it may be.

As much as someone who suffers from low self esteem imagines they will never be free of it, Jesus came to set them free!! Here’s how I know: without a shadow of a doubt, this is true. At the beginning of His public ministry, Jesus stood up in the synagogue to tell people about Himself and He chose to quote from the Old Testament prophet, Isaiah, using chapter 61. Let me read to you the opening few verses of Isaiah 61:

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn; to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.

Tell me ... tell me that those who are suffering from this debilitating sin of low self esteem, tell me they are not included in that – gladness instead of mourning, God’s favour, comfort for all who mourn, binding up the broken hearted, liberty for the captives, release for the prisoners. The key ... the key to being free from low self esteem is simply to know this: that you and I, we are fearfully and wonderfully made – Psalm 139, verse 14 – handcrafted by God in His own image.

See, most of us have spent so long, so very long staring at our reflections in this distorted mirror of the world that we’ve developed a distorted image of ourselves. We look at people who are more successful, more beautiful, more intelligent, more anything else you would care to name, more than us. We watch the ads on TV full of beautiful people, telling us we could be like them and no wonder people have low self esteem!

But what if we are indeed fearfully and wonderfully handcrafted by God Himself, made in His image? What if when He looks at us His great and mighty heart aches for us? And here’s a question ... this is THE question: what are we going to believe, the world’s distortion or God’s truth? Well, what are you going to believe? The problem is that someone with low self esteem may well be able to get a glimpse of that but the feelings of complete inadequacy crash over them day by day by day, minute by minute, swamping any budding confidence that they might have developed in God’s truth.

That’s why, if you are someone who is struggling with low self esteem; if this is a stubborn sin that you just can’t overcome in your life, I want to give you something today that I believe ... in fact, that I KNOW God will use it to heal you from the sin and its devastating effects. It’s a short, simple passage of Scripture that even I can memorise. Here it is: Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10:

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, to do good works that God prepared beforehand for us to do.

If you’re someone who’s struggled all your life with low self esteem, I believe God is going to use His Word to help you overcome it, once and for all because every time your distorted image is reflected back at you, through the lives and the deceptions of this world, you can take this Scripture; this verse – say it to yourself, choose to believe God over the world - every time your feelings are hurt, every time you feel that gut wrenching pain of rejection and fear and anguish, take this verse, listen to God and believe Him instead of the world.

Listen to God, memorise this Scripture! It’s something you can do in just about ten minutes or so – own it, let God’s Word do its work in you and I know that you will be set free from stubborn sin ... this stubborn sin of low self esteem. I know that anyone caught up in low self esteem believes that it’s a life sentence – my friend, it is not! Jesus came, He died for you, He rose again for you. Our value is in what God says and not in what the world says.

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, to do the good works that God prepared beforehand for us to do.

My friend, that is the truth!!

Most of us have heard sermon after sermon, message after message telling us that we shouldn’t sin. That instead we should repent and live a godly, holy life. That’s great – but the real question is HOW?

I was never much of an accountant but I do remember learning about double-entry book keeping systems. They were really important back in manual accounting systems because they provided a double check to make sure that the accounts balanced.

Basically, here’s how it worked. Every financial transaction in the accounts had two entries – hence the name double entry. A credit entry and a debit entry. And the whole point of that was the double entry provided a double check.

And it’s not just in accounting that you find this approach. You find it in physics too. Newton’s third law says that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In other words – whenever a body exerts a force on a second body, that second body exerts an equal and opposite force on the first body. Maybe that’s something we should have learned at school.

And it’s not just in accounting and physics that we see this two sided approach to life, we also find it in the spiritual dimension. Absolutely we do. Every spiritual transaction has two sides to it. Every spiritual action in one direction creates an equal and opposite action in the other direction.

So what’s the point? Well in this double-sided mystery lies our rubber-hits-the-road solution to overcoming stubborn sin – which is the thing that we’re talking about in this series, “Eliminating Stubborn Sin Once and For All”. And it’s a powerful solution indeed.

Last week on the program we saw that each one of us finds ourselves with at least one stubborn sin in life that we can’t seem to overcome. Now it’s different for each one of us – anger, temper, sexuality, greed, self esteem, pride … the list goes on. And somehow that one particular sine comes back again and again to defeat us.

But whilst sin is all too common, it’s not normal – and God’s intention is to set us free from that sin. Not only His intention – it’s His plan, it’s His will and it’s something that He has the power, the divine power to do. Last week on the program we looked at this particular passage, 2 Corinthians 10:4-5:

For the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.

Every proud obstacle in our hearts that sets itself up against the knowledge of God – and that’s what the strongholds are that the Apostle Paul’s talking about here – can be destroyed by the weapons of warfare which are not human, they’re divine. God’s divine power.

And it’s a power that God delights in exerting right in the moment our of our weakness – so that it’s His power and not our strength that overcomes sin. Here’s Paul again. We looked at this last week too, 2 Corinthians 12:7-9:

To keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

Don’t you just love this. Instead of just taking the messenger of Satan that was tormenting Paul away – God instead gives Paul the opportunity to discover God’s perfect power – the power of Jesus Himself – in His own experience in overcoming Satan.

But it’s one thing to know that whilst we all have a stubborn sin and even though it’s God’s plan to wield His divine power to overcome that sin in our lives – well, all that’s one thing. But what you and I really need to know, beyond that wonderful liberating truth – is how! HOW to lay hold of God’s power and how to overcome the stubborn sin that’s been wracking our bodies for a lifetime.

Well today, right now, I want to take you deep into God’s Word and show you God’s how. Not my how. Not the world’s how. But God’s HOW! Now I’ve heard this Scripture we’re about to go to have a look at quoted often – but only half of it, only one side of the transaction, and not the other side. And a half truth is as good as an untruth because a half truth can easily be made into a lie. It’s something the devil does all the time. The half truth – the part of this Scripture that’s most often quoted – goes like this, James Chapter 4 verse 7:

Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

And so a whole bunch of people set about resisting the devil. Problem is that the old enemy’s been around much longer than you and I have, and he’s seen it all. He’s wily, crafty and deceptive and he’ll go to any length to catch us in his snare. He’ll wait to till the most opportune moment, until we’re tired or weak or distracted or frustrated or all of the above – and then he’ll pounce. 1 Peter Chapter 5:8:

Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.

Lions wait in the long grass until they see a weak animal or a young animal or a slow animal separated from the pack – and then they pounce on their prey. The devil’s the exactly the same.

And what we discover when we set about resisting the devil – is that working hard just doesn’t work. We don’t need human weapons in this spiritual battle, we need weapons full of divine power. And it turns out that the way to access and wield those weapons involves a double-sided transaction.

The half truth from the Scriptures that I gave you before – let me give the whole thing to you now – and you’ll see what I mean. James Chapter 4:7-8

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

Do you see the two sides of the transaction involved in defeating the devil – in overcoming stubborn sin? The first is, submit yourself to God and then resist the devil – two sides – and the result of that is that he will flee from you.

When we submit ourselves to God, we rebel against the devil. When we submit to the devil – we rebel against God. It’s a double sided entry, it’s a double sided transaction. But some people have a foot in both camps – they want to honour God but they want to go with the devil and they’re the ones who are double-minded, the ones who have to cleanse their hands and purify their hearts.

We’re going to look at some intensely practical examples of this after the break – but just for now think back to Adam and Eve in the garden. When they were living that perfect life prior to the fall – they were submitting to God (and getting all the benefits) – but on the other side of the ledger, they were resisting the devil.

The tree in the middle of the garden, the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, it was there all the time, they just didn’t eat of it – and so they lived in the benefit of God’s blessing. BUT – the moment they submitted to the devil – on the other side of the ledger, they were resisting God, they were rebelling against God – in that very first, terrible, double-sided act of rebellion.

Submission to God = rejecting the devil.
Submission to the devil = rejection God.

And in this double-sided transaction lies the practical truth of overcoming stubborn sin. If we try to do it by resisting the devil, as we’ve already seen – that’s a half truth and it doesn’t work. The answer is first to submit to God, to draw near to Him, because in so doing, He will draw near to us. And since He’s the one with the power – He’s the one with the weapons of warfare that have the divine power, the first thing that we need to do, is to submit our selves to Him. Resisting the devil is what flows out of that.

Stubborn sin – that sin that we just can’t shift, sin that keeps on keeping on long after we’d hoped that we would have defeated it – is a fact in many, many people’s lives. And over the last couple of weeks on the program, we’ve seen that not only does God understand that, but He wants to give us His weapons full of His divine power, right in the middle of our weaknesses defeat the sin.

Jesus died and rose again to give us victory, to give us a new life – and so whilst stubborn sin is commonplace, it’s not normal and it’s not what God means for our lives.

In fact, this is something that God takes so seriously – that He sends not only His Son just to die to pay for all our sin on the cross, but to rise again to give us a new life. 2 Corinthians 5:17:

that if anyone believes in this Jesus, then that person is a new creation – old things have passed away and look all things are new.

So, whilst many a Christ-follower is convinced that their particular brand of stubborn sin is just a fact of life, just something that they have to live with for the rest of their lives here on Earth, that’s a luxury that the Gospel of Jesus Christ doesn’t afford us. Jesus came to set us free from every sin. And right now we’re going to continue our look at this practical “how to” – how do we lay hold of God’s divine power to allow ourselves to be set free, by God – of this sin and, and it’s painful consequences.

Now this is something that frankly puzzled me for a long time. First, I thought I had to do it all. And so I fought against the devil and I tried and I tried and I tried to resits him and overcome these temptations … but as strong willed an individual as I am, that just didn’t work. I ended up lying bloodied and beaten and discouraged and dejected and defeated on the battlefield. OK ... OK ... OK that didn’t work. So, what I’ll do is I’ll leave it all up to God. I’ll sit back and let God do it all. But let me tell you – the old “spiritual couch potato” model didn’t work either.

And it wouldn’t amaze me at all to know that you’ve been there too – right? So the question is, how do we make it work? What’s God’s part, what’s our part? Come on – how do we break free from the power of stubborn sin??

Well, before the break we discovered that not only do accountants have double entry book keeping, not only did Isaac Newton discover that in physics and in nature, every action has an equal and opposite reaction – but when it comes to defeating sin, this spiritual transaction too is double-sided. And, it’s in the double-sidedness of the transaction that we discover our role and God’s role. If you were with us before the break you’ll have heard this Scripture, James 4:7-8:

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Do you see its double sidedness? This is really important – that’s why we’re covering this ground again briefly. It’s not just about racing on and resisting the devil – that’s something we can’t win on our own. First, first submit yourselves to God – that’s the God side of the ledger, and then, on the devil’s side – resist him and he will flee.

That’s because when we submit to God, we lay hold of His power, and we have the power to resist the devil – and once he sees that power at work – he’s on his bike and out of there because he and all his demons have to submit to the name that is above all names – the name of Jesus Christ.

Now the danger is that we leave it there and we don’t get down and practical enough to give us something to take away to implement. So I want to go deeper into the “how to” so that each one of us knows how to live out this submission to God AND resist the devil, so that the devil will flee from us. That’s how you overcome stubborn sin.

This first example is one that jumped out at me in a Bible study group. Have a careful listen, it’s the Apostle Paul on death row, writing to his friends in Philippi – telling them how not to worry: now listen and see if you can pick up the double-sidedness of God’s solution to worrying, Philippians chapter 4:6-7:

Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

I remember sitting in this Bible study group and we talked about worry and people hedged around this and they were prepared to move on from it without taking God at His Word.

Worry is a sin – people with their trust in God needn’t worry. Worry falls a long way short of living the life of abundant peace that God purchased for us on that cross. What this passage says is – look, here’s the solution to overcoming this sin of worry. Instead of worrying – instead of spending your time doing that, replace that with praying and giving thanks to God and telling Him your needs.

First submit to God – see that’s what’s going on here. This is God’s way of dealing with the problem, the sin of worry. First submit to Him, do it his way. Pray and give thanks. Let your needs be known to God. If we take the time that we would have spent worrying … and instead we used it to do it God’s way – to pray. The devil loves throwing doubt in our minds. He loves it when we’re discouraged.

How to deal with him?? We submit to God, we do it God’s way – and the promise is that when we do that, “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus”. What’s just happened here?

God’s weapons of divine power have been brought into play – we have a confidence that comes from God, because we did it His way in faith – and so the devil ceases to have any power over us to make us worry. Now, now stand in this newfound power from God … and watch the devil flee.

The secret is in proactively replacing the bad with the Good, proactively stepping into this space and saying – No, no – no, no! This worry is from the devil. My only answer is to submit to God. Now I discover His divine power in my weakness. Now I can resist, now the devil must flee.

Let’s have another quick look at another practical example. It has to do with the things that we say that hurt other people. So many of us have a problem with that don’t we – always grumbling, always pulling other people down. Have a listen again to the double-sided solution, Ephesians chapter 4:29:

Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.

How do I stop this addiction of evil talk coming out of my mouth. Do I just sit there and try to hold my tongue. No! – God’s saying – instead of doing that, proactively replace it with my way – instead of speaking the things that are only going to hurt people, speak only what is useful for building other people up as there is need. Replace the bad with the Good.

Deliberately step out with God and do it God’s way and not our way. So when we feel like cursing people with our words instead we go “No! God’s way is to bless them”. The devil’s got nowhere to go. He’s lost his power. Then, having submitted to God, then we simply stand and resist the devil in the power of God because we’ve done it God’s way.

And let me tell you – they way I’ve learned this is simple. I sat down and thought about my weaknesses. I identified them. And I had more than my fair share. And I looked through the Bible and found a simple verse to tell me - when I’m in a situation where I’m prone to live out this particular stubborn sin – what is it that I CAN DO, to submit to God in my actions and my thoughts and my words, right there and then how can I submit to God.

And so when I found myself in that place, I knew God’s word, I knew how to submit to God. And you know what happened, little by little – God changed me. And the devil, well, he had no choice. He just had to flee. And when you think about it – this isn’t rocket science.

This is something that we can apply to any sin in any situation. It’d be just like God to make it that simple, wouldn’t it? In fact next week on the program, we’re going to look at some more specific details – common stubborn sins that people have in their lives, – to help each one of us stop sin dead in its tracks.

Over the next couple of weeks on the program, we’re going to be looking at some very common stubborn sins that people deal with – anger, sexual immorality, selfishness, low self esteem – and how to overcome each of those.

But as we come towards the end of our time together, I want to share with you perhaps the most important thing that I know about overcoming stubborn sin in my life. In fact – there’s no maybe about it. It is the most important thing that I know. And it’s this – that prayer works. 1 Thessalonians 5:17 says very simply that we should:

Pray without ceasing.

Can I tell you something – that verse has stuck with me over and over and over again as God’s done His work in me to overcome the stubborn sin in my life – and let me tell you, I had more than my fair share – and this is what I’ve found.

When I was in that time of overcoming anger or overcoming selfishness – God dealt with them one at a time in me – I discovered that on those days when I specifically and deliberately prayed about that sin in my life first up in the morning – and got focussed on those handful of scriptures that God gave me – perhaps only a five minute investment each day – but when I made that investment I didn’t sin.

But somehow when I didn’t quite get around to it, didn’t have time, you know what it’s like– those sins just got the better of me – time and time and time again.

And still today, if I don’t spend that time with the Lord each morning in prayer and reading His Word and letting Him have sway in my heart – I tell you - those stubborn sins will find their way back into my life.

To put it very succinctly – PRAYER IS THE ONLY THING THAT WORKS. I can’t make it any simpler than that. And even through the day, when I was in a situation where that sin was prone to come out of me – just a quick prayer under my breath – LORD HELP ME – that’s all It takes.

Pray without ceasing – because prayer works. I’m always taken by the time that the disciples were trying to cast a demon out of a boy while Jesus was up on the mount of the transfiguration – they couldn’t do it. And Jesus came down – cast the demon out no problem and later the disciples went to Him and said, “So Lord, how come you could do it but we couldn’t?” And Jesus said the most surprising thing to them, Mark 9:29:

He replied to them, This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.

Now just stop and think a minute – He’s been up on the mountain, He’s walked down into this farce where there’s a crowd and the disciples are trying to cast out a demon and the demon’s not going and instantly Jesus casts out the demon. Let me ask you – did Jesus have time for prayer and fasting right at that moment? Not at all – He was talking about his normal, every day prayer life, He was talking about the fasting He’d been doing before that.

And when I scratch around looking at the original text of what Jesus said – recorded in Greek not English – the deep sense of what He’s saying here is this – nothing but prayer and fasting has the power to cast out the stubborn demons such as these. – The stubborn demons. The sort that wont go – like our stubborn sins.

The power is in the prayer – Jesus was incredulous when He saw what was going on – He said “How long must I bear with you, you faithless and perverse generation?” Pretty strong language. He was expressing His frustration - why is it that you people still don’t get it?

My friend if you would defeat the stubborn sin in your life – it will only happen by prayer. And the odd bit of fasting isn’t going to hurt either I have to tell you. Pray without ceasing. Pray every day. And little by little that stubborn sin will be gone – so out there in the heat of the battle, with the crowds looking on – that hidden prayer life will bring its rewards.

That hidden prayer life will bear the fruit that others see in your life. That hidden prayer life will bring the power of God to bear in overcoming the most stubborn sin in our lives that we could ever imagine.

Stubborn sin – the sort that just keeps coming back again and again, no matter how hard we try – is a fact of life for so many. And we have a choice – we can just accept it and its devastating consequences, or we can believe God’s Word that where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Today we are kicking off a new series of programmes for the next four weeks. It’s called “Overcoming Stubborn Sin – Once and For All.” And God triggered in my heart, just the other day, when I was sitting talking to a man – but more about him later.

Now let me ask you, have you ever had a pen in your pocket and it’s leaked? More common for men, I guess – we’ll put a pen in our shirt pocket or maybe on the inside pocket of our jacket and then, for one reason or another, the pen leaks and you end up with an ink stain all over your shirt or your jacket.

Now that stain, it’s called a stubborn stain, isn’t it? At least that’s how we refer to it where I come from. And the reason we call it a stubborn stain is that, no matter what you wash it with or scrub it with – it doesn’t matter what you do to it – it just won’t come out.

I remember when that happened to one of my favourite jackets, years ago now. I mean, I really liked this jacket; it was soft and comfortable and it looked great. I spent a fortune at the dry cleaners, but it doesn’t matter what they tried, the stain didn’t come out. And so I simply couldn’t wear it out any more. I mean, it would have looked ridiculous.

But isn’t it funny, these days, when we have a stain like that on our characters, it seems we almost wear it out with pride, or at the very least, we just put up with it. After all, it’s a stubborn stain – nothing we can do about it. And that’s the attitude of that man that I was telling you about at the beginning of the programme.

Here’s the thing: he rang the other day and wanted to catch up for a coffee. I agreed and as we sat down in the cafe, we had a bit of small chit-chat and then the crunch issue – the thing he wanted to talk to me about. Well, it was his sin. It was a sin he’d been struggling with all his life. It turned out that his particular Achilles heel was his temper. A lovely man but he has a hot temper and just flies of the handle at the drop of a hat.

He was sharing with me what had happened just a few days before. A situation where he’d hurt some people that really mattered to him and the more I listened, the more I got this impression that as far as he was concerned, this was something he was stuck with and the best he could do was to manage the symptoms. There wasn’t a single thought in his head of treating the disease.

And the reason this shocked me was this man is a Christian with a powerful heart after God and a commitment to God’s Word. So I listened without saying too much but the more I turned this conversation over and over in my head, the more disturbing it became. It was like he had a stubborn ink stain on his jacket but he was intent on wearing that same jacket out, day after day, with that stain on it. There was no thought of changing the jacket. Do you see the point?

We wouldn’t think of wearing an ink stained jacket out to work and yet we’ll take who we are - with this great big stubborn stain, smack bang in the middle of our character and our personality, so prominent; so obvious that nobody could ever miss it - and wear it out day after day after day, for a whole life time, resigned to what we think is the fact that there’s just nothing we can do about it. Changing the jacket never crosses our mind.

Have a listen to this. In the context of what we have just been talking about – stubborn sin – Galatians chapter 3, verse 27:

“As many of you as were baptised into Christ, have clothed yourselves with Christ.”

And again this: Ephesians chapter 4, verses 22 to 27:
“You were taught to put away your former way of life; your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to clothe yourselves with a new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbours, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.”

Both of these Scriptures from the Word of God are very, very clear. They’re about putting on a new jacket; they’re about clothing ourselves in Christ; clothing ourselves in the new creation that we become when we put our trust and our faith in Him. There’s nothing ... nothing, so far as I can find in God’s Word which says that sin is normal. Sure, it’s common; all too common but normal it ain’t!

Have you put your trust in Jesus Christ? Have you? Then you are a new creation. The old things have passed away and all things ... ALL THINGS are new. That comes from Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17.

We all have one or two stubborn sins in our lives. For some people it's temper and anger, for others it lust, for others it’s always seeking glory and recognition, for others again it's low self esteem or un-forgiveness or gossiping or slander. Other people are addicted to gambling or perhaps it's worshipping other gods. Some people don’t seem to be able to help themselves – some are involved in the occult. My friend, the list goes on and we sometimes behave as if the only person who has this stubborn sin stain on us is us!

Listen to me – it’s everyone! I’ve never met a person who hasn’t had to grapple with at least one stubborn, persistent, ongoing form of sin in their lives. So many men are addicted to pornography, which now with the internet, has over half ... over half of all men addicted to this – something we are going to talk about in the coming weeks – and they live in secret shame, imagining that there’s nothing they can do about it. And over half of all women, in Western society as least, suffer clinically from low self esteem.

And each one of these stubborn sins is the devil’s way of robbing us of life. Sure, so many of them are dressed up to look respectable – so seductive; so normal. Now the person who puts their faith in Jesus, kind of knows they’re not right, but like that man that I was talking about at the beginning of the programme, they’ve kind of resigned themselves into believing that there’s nothing they can do about their particular brand of stubborn sin. Whether it’s a red stain or a blue stain or a black stain, "Well, that’s just my coloured stain and there’s just nothing I can do about it."

Let me give you this very direct and very blunt response to that kind of thinking: rubbish; its absolute rubbish! That’s a deception of the devil and you won’t find it in the Bible. Jesus said, quoting Isaiah chapter 61, verse 1. He said:

“God had sent him to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners.”

Now, there’s no fine print in there that provides you or me with a personal exclusion for our particular colour of stubborn sin. Now, I’m a man who has had more than his share of stubborn sins to work through – anger, temper – all sorts of stuff and because I am one of those strong willed people, those things have had even a stronger hold on me than most.

And here’s what I’ve discovered along the way and I’m still discovering it – Jesus came to set me free from every sin that robs me of life. He came to set you free from every sin that robs you of life – to clothe us in Christ, to make us a new creation that shines His glory and His image into this lost and hurting world. That is the truth!

One of the worst feelings that we can have in life is that sense of being trapped ... trapped in a place, trapped in our circumstances, trapped in our own destructive patterns of behaviour. And try as we might, we just can’t get out. Now, God has a name for those destructive behaviours; a much shorter name – He calls them ‘sin’ and that’s exactly what sin is – behaviour that’s destructive; behaviour that misses the whole point of life.

And it seems to be the case that pretty much each one of us has one particular pattern of destructive behaviour; one sin that seems to be stubborn in our lives. Like a stubborn stain that just won’t wash out – as much as we wish we could get rid of it. We’ve tried and tried and tried and tried over the years – we just can’t. For many people it feels like they’re trapped; like there’s no way out. It’s a pattern of behaviour that we seem to be locked into – repeating over and over and over again.

And so many people have just resigned themselves to the fact that that’s the way it is and that nothing’s ever going to change – they’re trapped; hopelessly trapped in sin and there’s no way out and so they just have to live life with the painful consequences of that sin.

Well, if that kind of resonates a bit with you, I have some good news for you – in fact, it’s some great news. Stubborn sin comes in so many different forms. Have a quick listen to this list written by Paul the Apostle, a couple of thousand years ago. It comes from Galatians chapter 5, verses 19 to 21:

“Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Some people are just naturally prone to being critical or argumentative. Some are locked into patterns of jealousy or sexually immorality. And in this world of ‘anything goes’, where cheating on your wife or your husband has been reduced to a lifestyle choice, it’s easy for us to rationalise our particular form of stubborn sin away, as being just that.

"Well, the world’s moved on, you know – we think differently these days. Sleeping around – hey, what’s wrong with that? Arguing, criticising, pulling other people down, flying off the handle, ranting, raving, getting drunk until all hours – aw, they’re just the way we do things these days."

But no matter how much we rationalise our sin away, if we are going to be brutally honest with ourselves, most of us – with just a few minutes thinking about it – will be able to point to the one sin that seems to recur over and over and over again in our lives. And come on, let’s be honest – there are consequences; serious consequences to our sin.

And those consequences hurt – they hurt us and they hurt other people. And I don’t know, maybe we have tried to break out of that pattern of behaviour from time to time, but it’s so easy to fall back into it again and that’s when we feel trapped. That’s when we feel like there’s no way out ... no escape. And the worse thing is, it feels like, well, like we’re the only ones with this problem.

Well, have a listen to what God has to say. Come on, because, I for one, am prepared to take Him at His Word. Let’s have a listen – it comes from First Corinthians chapter 10, verse 13. It says that:

“No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.”

Now, that’s powerful stuff, so let’s take just a few minutes to unpack this because my hunch is the power here in God’s Word is going to set some people down a path of actually believing that God can make a difference ... that God wants to set them free.

“No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone.” Testing is about a trial and a temptation – it’s testing our fidelity to God. Let’s take a man walking down the street: a young, scantily clad woman comes walking towards him. Now there’s a test of his fidelity to his wife. What’s he going to do with his eyes; what’s he going to do with his imagination?

I heard an interesting statistic from research conducted by an American Jewellers Association on employee theft. Have a listen to this: Ten percent of people will always steal, no matter what. Ten percent will never, ever steal, but eighty percent will steal if given the opportunity and if they think they won’t get caught. So, for eighty percent of us, our honesty and integrity is tested on a daily basis. Testing happens all the time and nothing that you and I are tested with is unique to us – indeed it’s common to everyone.

We all go through this. Sometimes we feel condemned because we think that it’s just us that are being tempted with this or with that. No! Everyone is tempted ... but and here’s the great BUT, “but God is faithful and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength.” I love that – that’s a promise from God.

When we feel trapped and weak and impossibly vulnerable, the promise of God is that He will never allow us to be tempted by our own desires or by the devil or, as is so often the case, by both, to an extent that is one hair’s breadth further than our capacity to withstand or resist the temptation.

So many of us head into temptation just expecting defeat – just planning on failure – so, well, we fail the test; we yield to the temptation. The great news is this: that God is faithful, and He will not let us be tested beyond our strength. Instead, with the testing He will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.

And over the coming weeks on the programme, what we are going to be doing is investigating that way out – a practical; rubber hits the road, expose of how to stop this stubborn sin dead in its tracks, because God’s Word is so incredibly practical. For the man who for years has been caught in a cycle of shame and addiction to pornography; for the woman who for years, has had a miserable life because of her low self esteem; for anyone and everyone who has ever felt trapped and completely powerless in their destructive patterns of behaviour that lash at their soul like a whip that never stops tearing into their flesh.

For you, I have this good news – First Corinthians chapter 10, verse 13:

“No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.”

You’re not alone! You’re not unique and God is faithful. He has already prepared the way out for you; a way out of the shame and the pain of persistent, stubborn sin. And I want you to remember this – these aren’t my words. This is God’s Word and God’s Word is sharper that any two edged sword. God’s Word has the power to change us; a power that we simply can’t begin to understand, until we experience it for ourselves. That’s what we are going to be talking about next.

Have you ever noticed that we can be chugging alone okay, living in victory for a week or two or maybe even a month or two and then all of a sudden – WHAM – that sin comes back and pounds us like a battering ram. It pounds the living daylights out of us. Have you ever wondered why that is? Why these ebbs and flows? Why is it sometimes I can live in victory over this thing and other times, I feel completely and utterly powerless to do anything at all to overcome this destructive behaviour called "sin".

Well, here’s my take on it. Well, actually, no, no, it’s not my take at all, it’s God’s take – it’s God’s truth from God’s Word. We live on a spiritual battlefield and our enemy, the devil, is always prowling around, waiting for a good time to strike. He did that even with Jesus. After Jesus resisted the devil’s temptations when He had been in the wilderness for forty days and forty nights, Luke tells us in chapter 4 of his Gospel, verse 13 that:

“When the devil had finished testing Jesus, he (the devil) departed to wait for a more opportune time.”

So here we have this picture of the devil prowling around looking for someone to devour. He has the element of surprise and that’s why we feel powerless when he strikes. Well, today and over the next few weeks, we are going to take an intensely practical look at how to be ready for him. As I said before, we all have this Achilles heel; a part of our makeup or our personality or who we are, that’s more vulnerable to attack than others.

I was telling you before on the programme about this man whom I met who struggled with his temper and for other people it’s their sexuality and for others again it’s pride or they are addicted to money or recognition – we all have some area in our lives where we are vulnerable. And we all have times when we are more vulnerable than others in our lives.

Now sometimes we have learned to exercise self control over our tempers but then, you know, the pressure is on and we’re tired and the circumstances just seem to conspire to make us snap. So it doesn’t matter what our particular weak point is, there are times when we feel stronger and times when we feel weaker. And there are times when we feel completely tossed around and completely vulnerable, like we have no strength at all to resist the prowling devil who is just sitting back waiting, like a lion in the grass, to pounce and attack while we are feeling weak.

Now, what I’m about to say may sound completely perverse. In fact, if we judge it by the world’s wisdom, actually it is. God’s wisdom often seems perverse by the world’s standards, but have a listen to God’s wisdom about our weakness. It’s written by the Apostle Paul in the New Testament – Second Corinthians chapter 12, verses 7 to 9. Paul says:

... to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

Now, we never discover what the thorn in the flesh was – was it a physical ailment? Was it a particular temptation to which Paul was prone? We’re not told, what we do know is that it was a messenger from Satan to torment him. And God doesn’t take this torment away because, God, it appears, is quite content with Paul’s weakness. He doesn’t actually want Paul to be strong, in and of himself but instead, He wants to give Paul the real thing - God’s perfect power amidst Paul’s weaknesses. And so that completely changes everything for Paul. Instead of being ashamed of his weakness, he boasts all the more gladly of it so that the power of Christ may dwell in him.

And here’s the crunch: anyone who has tried and tried and tried to be strong to overcome stubborn sin and overcome the devil will know that working hard at it doesn’t work, but it’s in our weakness that we have the opportunity to discover the good and perfect awesome power of God to achieve what we can’t; to achieve victory over stubborn sin.

My friend, this is fantastic news – it’s liberating news! The opportunity to give up trying and to tap into the power that works – it’s divine power. Have a listen again to Paul – Second Corinthians chapter 10, verses 4 to 5:

For the weapons of our warfare are not merely human but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.

Paul’s saying that we are living on a battlefield and instead of just using human weapons, we actually have God’s divine power to destroy strongholds; the fortresses. And the strongholds that Paul is specifically talking about here are the thoughts, ideas beliefs, behaviours in people who believe in Jesus. Not something way out there – the strongholds in us that we can’t seem to defeat. God has given us weapons with divine power to overcome our sin.

You know what a stronghold is? It’s something we hang onto so strong that we can’t seem to let go. And if we are holding onto sin that strong we can’t take the hold of the good plans that God has for us. We can’t let go of stubborn sin in our own strength. We can’t break down those strongholds with weapons that are merely human – we need divine power and right here, right in the middle of our weaknesses is where God wants to give us His divine power.

And over the next couple of weeks on the programme we are going to look at just that – how to use that divine power to eliminate stubborn sin, once and for all.

When the storms of life hit, as they do, right, what we do is that instinctively we grab a life vest, we look for a lifeline here on this earth, a worldly solution if you will … instead of turning to the One who can calm the storm. So, you have to ask yourself then, who exactly is the Lord of our lives?

Over these last few weeks we have been looking at what it means to get our feet back on solid ground in life. You know, when we are going through storms we are bobbing around like a tiny little boat floundering on an angry sea and sometimes we don’t know which way to head – which way is up, which way is down. All we want to do is put our feet back on solid ground. And it turns out that you don’t always find that solid ground exactly where you expect to find it.

And we have been exploring this whole idea of getting our feet on solid ground through the story of a humble woman called Hannah who honoured God and turned to Him in the midst of her storm - and at completely the other end of the scale, a priest called Eli and his sons Hophni and Phinehas. They were evil guys and they got their just rewards and the nation of Israel who struggled with their God.

If you’ve got a Bible, grab it and open it up. Over these last three weeks we have been looking at the first seven chapters of the Book of First Samuel. Now First Samuel appears about a third of the way through the Old Testament. We are going to finish off that series today with the crux of what this is all about. We are going to have a look at the decision that ultimately determines whether our feet are on solid ground or not. It’s a decision between the obvious and the not so obvious.

What is it that you and I can decide to do that will absolutely ensure that no matter what comes our way, our feet are on solid ground? Now the pivot of this whole story – the contrast of Hannah on the one hand and Hophni and Phinehas and their dad, Eli, on the other – happens, if you remember the verse – if you have been with us over these last few weeks – in First Samuel chapter 2, verse 30, where God says:

Those who honour Me, I will honour but those who despise Me will be treated with contempt.

We are going to pick up that story today. The priests are dead, they’ve got their just rewards, Hannah’s son – she couldn’t have a son remember, but she now has a son, he is grown up – Samuel is the judge and the prophet and the leader over all Israel. Now that’s a really important concept – they didn’t have a King. All the other nations had a King but Israel did not because Israel’s system of government was a theocracy – that meant that God was their King. And God appointed judges and prophets to declare His Word over the people of Israel.

So He administered justice – this was Samuel – he was a prophet who declared the will of God and God was the King to the people. Now that was unique among the nations and as we saw over the last few weeks, when they honoured God; when they obeyed Him, that nations’ feet were on solid ground.

Now the story takes an interesting twist. We are going to pick it up in chapter 8 of the Book of First Samuel. Here’s how it goes:

When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. The name of his first born son was Joel and the name of his second was Abijah and they were judges in Beer-sheba. Yet his sons didn’t follow in his ways but turned aside after gain – they took bribes and perverted justice.

Then all the elders of Israel came together and they came to Samuel at Ramah and they said to Samuel “You are old and your sons don’t follow in your ways, appoint for us then, a King to govern over us like the other nations.” But this displeased Samuel when they said “Give us a King to govern us.

So Samuel prayed to the Lord and the Lord said to Samuel “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being King over them. Just as they have done to Me from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking Me, serving other gods so also they are doing to you. Now then, listen to their voice – only you shall solemnly warn them and show the ways of the King who shall reign over them.”

So Samuel reported all the words of God to the people who were asking him for a King. He said these will be the ways of the King who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horse men and to run before his chariots and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties and some will plough his ground and reap his harvest and to make his implements of war and to make his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.

He will take the best of your fields and your vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give them to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves and the best of your cattle and donkeys and put them to his work. He will take one tenth of your flocks and you shall be his slaves and in that day you will cry out because of your King whom you have chosen for yourselves but the Lord will not answer you in that day.

But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel. They said “No, we are determined to have a King over us so that we may also be like the other nations and that our King may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”

Isn’t that interesting? All this time you go right back to the slavery, when Israel was in slavery in Egypt and God released them through some major miracles and through the parting of the Red Sea and then into the Promised Land and they captured the Land, battle after battle. All this time it was a simple, simple principle that God honours those who honour Him. And God did and God won the battles for them and God delivered them.

And now they reject their King, their God who is able and willing to bless them and to protect them. Why? Well, actually, first they blame Samuel’s sons and no doubt there is something in that, but actually you find out the reason towards the end of that verse. Look again at the passage we have just read: verses 19 and 20 of chapter 8:

But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel. They said “No, we are determined to have a King over us so that we also may be like other nations and that our King may govern us and go to battle and fight our battles for us.”

They wanted to be like all the other nations. Now, let’s think about that. Israel is unique – God is their King, He promised them the Promised Land, He has the power to make it happen. Whenever they honour Him He does make it happen and yet they want to reject Him – why? So that they can be like all the other nations! Is that stupid or what? None of the other nations have an invincible god as their king so why do they want to be like the other nations? Because in the heat of the battle they want a king they can see – a king of flesh and blood! Their enemies have a king at the head of their army so they want one too and they are prepared to give up the perfect power of the King of Kings for a poor substitute so that they can have a king that they can see!

How often do we do that? How often do we put our faith in things that we can see – in our investment portfolio to provide wealth is fine until the economy goes belly up, in our career, which is fine until our health fails, in other people, which is fine until they desert us or fail us? See when we hit a storm you know what we want to do? We want to reach out and put a life preserver on instead of go to the One who can stop the storm. We want something we can see and touch and feel, instead of putting our faith in the One whom we can’t see.

A favourite Scripture you hear people quote is Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 7 that says “We walk by faith and not by sight” and that’s great until the storm hits, when we will definitely go for something that we can see and touch and feel, ahead of someone we can only see by faith – we’ll pick that anytime. And that’s the point – when we step off solid ground onto a stormy ocean.

Yea, just like Israel, we want to be just like everyone else some days; just normal, everyday people who put our faith in things that we can touch and feel. It is something the Apostle Paul rejected – have a listen – Second Corinthians chapter 5, beginning at verse 1. He says:

We know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, if indeed, when we have taken it off, we will not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden because we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing, is God, who has given us His Spirit as a guarantee so we are always confident, even though we know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith not by sight. Yes, we do have confidence and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

See, here Paul is talking about the struggle between the temporal and the eternal – between what we can see and what we can’t see. And Paul is saying "Look, I have got a body; I’ve got a tent but one day that is going to pass away and my faith isn’t in the "here and now" – my faith is in God – I walk by faith not by sight." It’s about where he puts his confidence.

Now, let me tell you how easy it is to appoint an earthly King, like what Israel was trying to do and to reject the King of Kings – even when we are out and about doing God’s work. This ministry that I am involved in, Christianityworks, it has been going for fifty years out of Australia and yet when I took over four years ago, there were hardly any people supporting the ministry. It had almost no income, it was going broke, there were no programmes going to air. And four years ago – it’s still pretty fresh – I remember the panic attacks over finances – you see the money dwindling away and wondering when we are going to go broke – not if but when.

You see, what I was doing: I wanted a big bank balance – something that would provide security that I could see and I had to turn away from that. I had to put my trust in God alone and these days, sometimes, let me tell you, things are still very, very tight. And whilst I do my part in all of that, as a good steward of the money that supporters entrust to the ministry, over and over and over and over again, let me tell you, as we have done our best just to simply honour God in all that we do here in the ministry of Christianityworks, He has honoured us. It’s as simple as that!

Now, let’s get back to the story and find out where the real problem was here with Israel and the Kingship of God. Well, Israel got its very first King like all the other nations and God, through the prophet Samuel, appointed Saul. Let’s have a look at it in the first couple of verses of chapter 9 of the Book of First Samuel:

There was a man of Benjamin whose name was Kish son Abiel son of Zeror son Becorath son of Aphiah, a Benjaminite, a man of wealth. He had a son whose name was Saul, a handsome young man. There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he – he stood head and shoulders above everyone else.

So the prophet hears from God and God says “Saul is the King. If they want a King they are going to get Saul”. And initially at least, after he is anointed, Saul has success because even though God was rejected by His people in favour of Saul, God is a God of grace and He continued to honour them and bless them even though He warned them of how the King would turn out. We saw that earlier.

See, sometimes when we reject the Kingship of God in our lives and choose something else – career or wealth or whatever it is – initially we have some success but as we will see later, Saul ended up in abject failure. In fact, Saul (if you want to read it in First Samuel chapter 31) committed suicide in the middle of battle.

It’s easy for you and me to say "Well, what’s the problem here? It’s probably not a bad thing that they had a King to lead the nation. What’s the problem? I do have to invest and plan for my retirement, sure, but do we do it under the Kingship of God?" When God is calling us to give a substantial amount of our money to let’s say the poor, do we do that? Or do we sock it away for our retirement? Who or what do we put our trust in, who or what do we submit to?

Listen again to what Samuel said to Israel – First Samuel chapter 10, beginning at verse 17:

Samuel summoned the people to the Lord at Mizpah and he said to them “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “I brought you up out of Egypt – I rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all the kingdoms that were oppressing you. But today, you have rejected your God, the God who saves you from all your calamities and all your distresses and you have said “No! but set a King over us.”

That’s the problem – they rejected their God; they rejected the great Unseen for a King who was far inferior to God but whom they could see. See, despite all that they knew – they knew that God had brought them out of Egypt; they knew that He had rescued them from the Egyptians; they knew that He had rescued them from all their oppressors. God said “I did all that. Couldn’t you see that I was your King? Couldn’t you see that I am worthy of your trust? Couldn’t you see that with Me you have your feet on solid ground? Couldn’t you see that?”

No, they couldn’t see and no, some days we can’t see it either. We are blinded by the dazzle of what this world has to offer. It never ceases to amaze me, you know, in times of economic prosperity, people behave as though there is no tomorrow. They put their faith in the money they are earning, their stock portfolio that is growing and the house that’s mortgaged up to the hilt and the new car and all that stuff. But then, when the economy eventually takes a dive - as mind you, it always does – they cry out and scream at the price of petrol and the high interest rates and the risk of losing their home.

Can I tell you something? You can’t live a life of peace if you are putting your trust in an inferior king. You can’t have security when you put your faith in those things that will fail. You can’t! I can’t! It just doesn’t work.

I want to take us right back now to the beginning of this series – to the first chapter of First Samuel. It’s the story of a simple woman called Hannah - she was one of Elkanah’s two wives. The other wife Peninnah had children, Hannah had none. And if you have ever been in that situation where you can’t have kids or you know someone in that situation, you know how incredibly painful that is and to make it worse the other wife Peninnah, would give Hannah a hard time over this. Pretty tough!

There is a real storm that was going on year after year after year – this pain of being childless. Now Hannah had a lot of choices in that space. She could have been angry, she could have lashed out or she could have withdrawn. Her husband didn’t help her much so what does Hannah do? First Samuel chapter 1, verse 9:

Once they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh, Hannah stood up. Now Eli the priest was sitting on a chair by the doorpost of the Lord’s temple. In the bitterness of her soul, Hannah wept and prayed to the Lord and she made a vow. She said “Lord God Almighty, if You will only look upon Your servant’s misery and remember me and do not forget Your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life and no razor will ever be used on his head.

And as she kept praying to the Lord, Eli the priest, looked at her mouth – Hannah was praying in her heart – her lips were moving but her voice couldn’t be heard. Now, Eli thought she was drunk and said to her “How long will you keep on getting drunk. Get rid of your wine.” She said “Not so, my lord, I’m a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul to the Lord. (Isn’t that beautiful?) Don’t take your servant for a wicked woman. I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief.” And Eli answered “Well, go in peace and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked for.” She said “May your servant find favour in your eyes.” Then she went away and she ate something and her face was no longer downcast.

Now it turns out – see, Hannah was a "nobody", not like the priest – she wasn’t a man in the social structure – she wasn’t a priest, she was a "nobody". She just goes and pours out her heart to God amidst the bitterness of her soul. Turns out God honours those who honour Him, as she does have a son, she calls him Samuel. She gives him back to Eli; she gives him over to God as soon as he is weaned and he comes and serves as a priest in the temple, under Eli, whom she discovers later, is a bad dude.

This priest is supposed to be a go-between between God and His people, yet he and his sons have no respect for God and His people at all, so Samuel is put there by faith by her. Now we have heard the story: Samuel grows up, he becomes a mighty man of God. Do you know why that happened? Because Hannah honoured God! And God says “I will honour those who honour Me but those who despise Me, will be treated with contempt". And that’s what Eli and his sons Hophni and Phinehas found out when they died because they did not honour God.

And then we saw how, because of them, Israel ends up rejecting God. And you know how that ends up? In defeat! Saul ends up committing suicide – you can look at it in chapter 31, the last chapter of the Book of First Samuel. Israel rejected God as its King and God said “Well ok, I am going to warn you – you’re rejecting Me. I am going to give you a King but this is not going to go well for you.” And because they wanted a King that they could see, they rejected God anyway, they chose Saul and it ended up not well for them. The Philistines defeated them, Saul died.

The one who is honoured by God is the one who honoured Him! How did she do that? In her misery and her pain; in the bitterness of her soul – she didn’t act up, she didn’t complain, she didn’t grumble – she put her trust simply in God. She poured her soul out to Him, God honoured her.

Eli didn’t, his sons didn’t! At the end of the day, Saul didn’t, Israel certainly didn’t – the one who did was Hannah and God honoured her because she honoured Him.

I want to lay a challenge before each one of us today through this story. We all go through times, you know, when we would like to have our feet on solid ground and yet we are all over the place and things don’t seem to be working out and everyone is coming up against us. I want to lay a challenge before each one of us today – you and me – we have to choose our King – it’s either God or it is something else we trust in.
You can’t have both – you can’t serve two kings, you can’t serve two masters. It’s either going to be God, the great unseen reality; the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords or its going to be something we see – a life preserver that we can grab onto. Problem is, life preservers might stop us from sinking for a while but they can’t stop the storm. Only God can stop the storm!

There are people listening today and your life seems to be one endless storm. Maybe you are absolutely sick to death of being tossed around by angry waves; maybe you are in that boat today. Well, it is time to put your feet back on solid ground. It is time to say "You know something? I may be a nobody like Hannah, it may be that I am not an Eli, I’m not a Samuel, I’m not a David, I’m not some big person – I’m some little unknown person like Hannah, that may will be the case. And yet in this whole story she is the only one who received God’s blessing because she is the only one who honoured God. She received her son Samuel who had such a mighty influence over the history of her nation."

And Hannah was onto something! Maybe today is time to say "I choose my King". Either we are going to choose God or we are going to reject Him and choose something that we can feel or touch.

I can choose a "Saul" in my life – you can choose a ‘Saul’ in your life and it may give us a sense of security for a little while. You know, when that boat is bobbing round the ocean, you grab for the life preserver – that’s a pretty good thing. Probably a pretty good feeling but the life preserver doesn’t get us out of the storm. It just keeps us floating there for a bit longer.

Only One – the only One – that can get us out of the storm; the only One that can put our feet back on solid ground is our King, God. You want your feet on solid ground?

This whole story that we have been looking at over the last four weeks in the first nine or ten chapters of First Samuel – this story is about the Kingship of God. And the story tells us very clearly – you want to put your feet on solid ground? Go honour God – go choose Him as your King – go submit to Him as your King!

Let me ask you something – which one is going to work, the King of Kings or Saul? Which one is going to put your feet back on solid ground?
Which King will you choose in your life?

It’s so easy to look at God and come to the conclusion, well I want that part of Him – but not that bit. And definitely not that bit. It seems that all too often, we want Him on our terms rather than His. But God just doesn’t work that way.

Have you ever wanted something in life – I mean really, really, really wanted it and then when you finally get it, you just want to give it back? I think we have all experienced that at some point and you know, I think that for some people, it can be the case with God. I know people, lots of people, who hunger to be close to God. I know there are people listening today – maybe you are one of them – and all their lives they have wanted God – whatever that means.

But can I tell you something? Even something really good – I mean really, really good like God, well, it can be a shock to the system and the reason is that we have these idealised, unrealistic notions of what that good thing will be like. Take the young woman who wants more than anything else, to be married and she meets her knight in shining armour, she marries him and a year later she is wondering, "What happened to all my ideas of romance 24/7?"

Today on the programme we are going to take a look at some people who got God and couldn’t wait to give Him back. Now over these last few weeks we have been working our way through the story of Hannah and Eli and his sons in the Book of First Samuel. And the crux of it is that Hannah honours God but Eli and his sons don’t and the turning point of the whole story comes in the verse First Samuel – if you have a Bible, grab it, open it up here in First Samuel chapter 2, verse 30. God says:

I will honour those who honour Me but those who despise Me, will be treated with contempt.

And we have seen how the central reality of that verse has played itself out in the lives of Hannah, who was blessed when she couldn’t have a son and she honoured God and God gave her a son Samuel and the opposite is Eli and his sons Hophni and Phinehas who didn’t honour God and were greatly punished, in fact they lost their lives because of that.

This story plays its self out in the storms of life. I mean Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, they were the priests; they should have been bringing God’s people close to God yet they were living life of Riley, as we saw last week on the programme. And God had them killed. They’re job was to bring people close to God and yet they were not honouring Him. Instead they had led Israel to a place of defeat.

We saw last week in First Samuel chapter 4 where the Philistines attacked, Israel thinks "Oh well, God is always on our side – we will go to battle" and they had a huge defeat – thirty thousand of their soldiers were killed. The Ark of the Covenant, the presence of God itself, was captured by the Philistines.

See the Ark of the Covenant was where God actually sat in the midst of His people. You see that in the journey through the Exodus – forty years in the Tent of the Meeting and later on in the temple. The Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies; it is the very presence of God.

And strangely, you know, when the Philistines are close to capturing the Ark they kind of realise, with a sense of foreboding, what this is about. It says in First Samuel that:

When they learned that the Ark of the Lord had entered the camp of the Israelites, the Philistines were afraid. “A god has come into their camp” they said “we are in trouble. Nothing like that has ever happened before. Woe to us. Who will deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods?”

And so it goes on …

Well, it turns out that they should have followed their instincts. Today we are going to look and see what happens to the Philistines and to the Israelites when the presence of God comes close to them. Let’s have a look at it. If you’ve got a Bible, open it up at First Samuel chapter 5, we are going to begin the story at verse 1.

After the Philistines had captured the Ark of God, they took it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. Then they carried the Ark into Dagon’s temple and set it beside Dagon. When the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, there was Dagon, their god, who had fallen flat on his face on the ground before the Ark of the Lord. They took Dagon and put him back in his place.

The following morning when they rose, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the Ark of the Lord. His head and hands had been broken off and were lying on the threshold – only his body remained. That is why to this very day, neither the priests of Dagon or any of the others who enter Dagon’s temple in Ashdod, step on the threshold.

The Lord’s hand was heavy upon the people of Ashdod and its vicinity. He brought devastation upon them and afflicted them with tumours. When the men of Ashdod saw what was happening they said “The Ark of the God of Israel mustn’t stay here with us because His hand is heavy upon us and upon Dagon our god.” So they called together all the rulers of the Philistines and ask them “What are we going to do with this Ark of the God of Israel?” And they answered “Have the Ark of the God of Israel moved to Gath.”

So they moved the Ark of the God of Israel but after they had moved it, the Lord’s hand was against that city, throwing it into great panic. He afflicted the people of the city, both young and old, with an outbreak of tumours so they sent the Ark of God on to Ekron. As the Ark of God was entering Ekron, the people of Ekron cried out “They have brought that Ark of the God of Israel around to kill us and our people.”

So they called together all the rulers of the Philistines and said “Send that Ark of the God of Israel away. Let it go back to its own place or it will kill us and our people,” for death had filled the city with panic and God’s hand was very heavy upon it. Those who did not die were afflicted with tumours and the outcry of the city went up to heaven.

Do you see? The Philistines looked like they had won and yet they take the presence of God; the Ark of the Covenant, they put it in their temple next to their god and Dagon falls down, face down in front of the God of Israel. And the second time his head and his hands are cut off and then wherever they took the Ark of the Covenant, the impact of God, as a captive in their midst, was devastating – they got tumours, we will see later, there were plagues of mice.

They had captured God – in human terms, they had won but you know what they had forgotten, in fact they had never realised it in the first place? God is not subject to people – God is not someone you can capture and stick in your temple. He is not someone you can tame and subdue. Why are we talking about this stuff today? Because you and I, deep down, we try and tame and subdue God – we try and swing Him around to our way of thinking; to meet our needs. We put Him in the temple of our choice; we put Him in the town and the city of our choice.

You know what happens when we try to do that? We discover exactly what the Philistines discovered – we discover that God is not someone you can push around. "Well, I’ll just take this God and He’ll bless me whenever I want Him to." Ok, we can’t see Him! Our present circumstances perhaps, appear much more powerful than Him but if we want to have our feet on solid ground, amidst the storms of life, (that’s what we have been talking about over these last few weeks) we look at this maelstrom of the storm; the battle between the Philistines and the Israelites – thirty thousand Israelites killed because they didn’t honour their God.

Who appeared to win? Who should have been, according to our simple human expectations, on solid ground? The Philistines – they won the war. They captured Israel’s God but who they captured was the God who created the entire universe – not some idol; not some tin pot little god. They captured God and He wrought destruction upon them because they tried to subdue God.

So much so they couldn’t wait to get rid of Him. Do you get it? When we try to take God by force – force of argument, force of opinion, force of anything – anything that doesn’t recognise Him for who He is – watch out! There are so many people playing "church". There are so many people playing at being Christians; playing at religion, putting God here, putting God there. That’s not what it is about. As Dagon found out, the only way you honour God is when you bow down before Him because of who He is – the sovereign God, above every name and every power and every authority in heaven and earth.

That’s what Hannah discovered; that’s what Eli discovered; that’s what Israel discovered and that’s what the Philistines discovered, the hard way. You can’t have God on your own terms. You can only have Him on His terms.

Well, the Philistines finally came to their senses. They realised they couldn’t have God on their terms. They had a choice – you either accept God on His terms or you get rid of Him. So they decided to send Him back from whence He came. Now, let’s have a look at how they did that.
We are going to pick this up in First Samuel – grab your Bible – First Samuel chapter 6, beginning at verse 1 – it’s a great story.

When the Ark of the Lord had been with the Philistines for seven months, they called for the priests and the diviners and they said “What are we going to do with this Ark of the Lord? Tell us how we should send it back to its place.” They answered “If you return the Ark of the God of Israel, don’t send it away empty, but by all means, send a guilt offering to Him then you will be healed and you will know why His hand has not been lifted from you.”

The Philistines ask “What guilt offering should we send Him?” and they replied “Five gold tumours and five gold rats, according to the number of Philistine rulers because the same plague has struck both you and your rulers. Make models of the tumours and of the rats that are destroying the country and pay honour to Israel’s God. Perhaps He will lift His hand from you and your gods and your land. Why do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and the Pharaoh did when He treated them harshly, didn’t they send the Israelites out so that they could go their way?

Now then, get a new cart ready with two cows that have just calved and have never been yoked. Hitch the cows to the cart but take their calves away and pen them up. Take the Ark of the Lord and put it on the cart and in a chest beside it put the gold objects you are sending back to Him as a guilt offering. Send it on its way but keep watching it. If it goes up to its own territory towards Beth-shemesh then the Lord has brought this great disaster on us. But if it doesn’t then we will know that it was not His hand that struck us but all this happened just by chance.

So they did that – they took two such cows, hitched them to the cart, penned up their calves. They placed the Ark of the Lord on the cart, along with the chest containing the gold rats and the models of the tumours. Then the cows went straight up towards Beth-shemesh, keeping on the road, lowing all the way. They didn’t turn to the right or to the left. The rulers of the Philistines followed them as far as the border of Beth-shemesh

It is fascinating stuff! See, these people didn’t know God – they got their own pagan spiritual leaders to advise them. Now their system of faith was not one God; that’s called mono-theism. No, they believed in many gods; they were poly-theistic. And so they see the God of Israel as just another god on their list who may or may not have power. Now, He clearly does because He has brought all of this destruction on the Philistines.

So they devise a test for this God. They get these two milk cows, with their calves. You see there is no way two cows that have just calved are going to leave their calves and these cows have never been yoked. So only God could cause them to go back to Israel, away from their young and that is exactly what ends up happening. They don’t turn to the right or the left – they are lowing all the way. They don’t want to go but they go and clearly this is an act of God. That’s how the Philistines saw it.

This is a story about so many people in this world who don’t know God. See, they hear about God – it’s amazing, God is still speaking. The number of times that I have had a letter or an email that says "You know something – I just happened to flick on the radio or turn to a channel and your programme was on and God spoke to me and changed my life." I’m going to share one of those at the end of this programme – an amazing story of a rebel fighter in Africa who laid down his arms. See, God is still speaking today, all over the place, and He reaches out to us and He ends up in our midst, one way or another, as He did with the Philistines.

Remember back, how did the presence of God, the Ark of the Covenant, come to be in the midst of the Philistines? The Philistines fought Israel, Israel hadn’t honoured their God – they got defeated by the Philistines big time. Eli the priest and his sons, Hophni and Phinehas were killed in that battle. They expected God to show up like He always did, but He didn’t. And it was a sovereign act of the sovereign God to allow defeat to come upon Israel and to allow His presence, the Ark of the Covenant to be captured by the Philistines. God’s own decision was to be in the midst of the Philistines those seven months.

And they discover that you can’t have Him on your own terms, so they give Him back – they send Him packing. That’s what I did for many, many years of my life. Every now and then I encountered God. And you see I had my own agenda for my life; I had my own plans. God didn’t fit so I would send Him packing. And it seemed like He would like to cause me grief and pain; want me to give up things I didn’t want to give up. And time and time again I’d want to hang onto Him on my terms. Let me tell you something – it never, never, never worked so I sent Him packing.

I rejected Him like the Philistines. I wonder if that has ever happened in your life. Come on, how much do we want God, but on our terms? Well, I believe this about abortion or I believe that about sexuality or I believe this about the different roles of men and women and when I discover what God has to say about those I say to myself "Well, I can’t believe that! No, either I have God on my terms or not at all."

Come on, there is a reason that God went to the trouble of recording this story about the Philistines and the Ark of the Covenant and then preserving it for a few thousand years and then broadcasting it on this radio station today. There is a reason! He is speaking to us through His story today. To all those people who would have God on their own terms, He is saying “No, you can’t have Me on your terms. You can’t capture Me and stick Me in your temple. You can only have Me on My terms.”

And as we are going to see soon, this problem was not reserved for the Philistines – it’s not just for the people who didn’t really know God but it was also for God’s own people – God’s own people who would push Him away.
This series that we are going through is called “On Solid Ground”. We need solid ground beneath our feet and we are going to discover next, exactly how to get it.

As I said earlier, the problem wasn’t just restricted to the Philistines, sending God packing with those cows with the Ark of the Covenant in tow – it was also a problem that happened with the Israelites. Let’s see what happened when the Ark of the Covenant arrives back with Israel - First Samuel chapter 6, beginning at verse 19. The Ark has just wandered down the road with the cows and this is what happened:

God struck down some of the men of Beth-shemesh, putting seventy of them to death because they had looked into the Ark of the Lord. The people mourned because of the heavy blow the Lord had dealt them and the men of Beth-shemesh asked “Who can stand in the presence of the Lord, this holy God? To whom will the Ark go up from here?” Then they sent messengers to the people of Kiriath-jearim, saying “The Philistines have returned the Ark of the Lord, come down and take it up to your place.” So the men of Kiriath-jearim came and took up the Ark of the Lord. They took it to Abinadab’s house on the hill and consecrated Eleazar, the son to guard the Ark of the Lord.

See, God is a sovereign God. We get Him on His terms and not ours. And the Israelites dealt casually with God’s presence when He came back – they looked upon Him. Now God says “You can’t look upon Me and live.” How often do we treat the mighty sovereign casually? You and I – we take on God. Can I tell you who is going to win? Not us!

Israel was God’s people – they should have known better but they didn’t. So what was their reaction? The same as the Philistines – “Who can stand in front of this sovereign God. Where are we going to send Him?” They sent God packing and it’s a pattern repeated over and over and over again. So what is the answer?

What these people needed was some solid ground beneath their feet. What you and I need is some solid ground beneath our feet. Well, that comes next in this story – it’s exactly what happened. First Samuel chapter 7, verse 2:

It was a long time, twenty years in all, that the Ark remained a Kiriath-jearim and all the people of Israel mourned and sought after the Lord and Samuel the prophet, said to the whole house of Israel “If you are returning to the Lord with all your hearts, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths and commit yourselves to the Lord and serve Him alone and He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines. So the Israelites put away their Baals and their Ashtoreths and they served the Lord alone. And then Samuel said “Assemble all Israel at Mizpah and I will intercede with the Lord for you.”

When they had assembled at Mizpah they drew water and poured it out before the Lord. On that day they fasted and they confessed “We have sinned against the Lord.” And Samuel was the leader of Israel at Mizpah. When the Philistines heard that Israel had assembled at Mizpah, the rulers of the Philistines came up to attack them and when the Israelites heard of it they were afraid because of the Philistines. They said to Samuel “Don’t stop crying out to the Lord our God for us, that He may rescue us from the hand of the Philistines.”

So Samuel took a suckling lamb, offering it up as a whole burnt offering to the Lord. He cried out to the Lord on Israel’s behalf and the Lord answered him. Whilst Samuel was still sacrificing the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to engage Israel in battle but that day the Lord thundered with a loud thunder against the Philistines and threw them into such a panic that they were routed before Israel. The men of Israel rushed out of Mizpah and pursued the Philistines, slaughtering them along the way to a point below Beth-car.

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and he named it Ebenezer, saying “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” So the Philistines were subdued and did not invade Israelite territory again. Throughout Samuel’s lifetime, the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines. From the towns of Ekron to Gath – that the Philistines had captured from Israel - they were restored to Israel and Israel delivered the neighbouring territory from the power of the Philistines and there was peace between Israel and the Amorites.

First Samuel chapter 2, verse 30 says this:

I will honour those who honour Me but those who despise Me will be treated with contempt.

See, that’s the place of solid ground – Israel finally got it right here! See, before they had had priests who were sleeping around with prostitutes, priests who were dishonouring God, priests who were plundering the sacrifices of the people to God and God said, “You know something? If your leaders are going to be doing that I am not going to bless you.”

So Israel fights the Philistines and Israel loses. And so the Ark of the Covenant of God goes to the Philistines and there is devastation there because of the presence of God and they send it back to Israel. And there is devastation there because of the presence of God because everyone was trying to have God on their own terms.

Here is the place of solid ground:

If you want to return to the Lord with all your heart, put away all your foreign gods.

And that is God’s Word for you and me today. Put away all your foreign gods – all the other things that you put before God – all the other things that you and I worship – put them away and worship God alone.

Come to God on His terms, not ours, because He is the sovereign God. He is the God of the whole universe. He is the God – not just one other god amongst many – He is THE God; the only God and He calls us to worship Him and Him alone.

So the people did that and right at the moment they did that, the Philistines were going to attack them again, but this time, the moment they began to honour their God – this verse First Samuel chapter 2, verse 30 – came into their experience.

I will honour those who honour Me, but those who despise Me will be treated with contempt.

People – that is the place of solid ground. It is the only place of solid ground. God is a sovereign God. He is not my performing puppy and He is not your performing puppy. He is not there to do tricks on our command.

He is above us and we are His people and God is calling us today to accept Him on His terms as the sovereign God – just the way Samuel told the people. Samuel said to them “You have got to accept God on His terms” – they did and immediately, when a storm arose, God blessed His people. And that blessing went on for many, many years and their feet were on solid ground.

We tend to see the world room where we are. It’s only natural. We want everyone and everything else to fit in with us. But God, well, He doesn’t quite see it that way.

Last week on the programme we spent some time talking about the fact that when the storms of life hit and they inevitably do, what we need is some solid ground beneath our feet. It’s a scary place to be, out on that stormy ocean – we are not made for that. We are made for solid ground.

And we began looking at the story of some people: a woman called Hannah and her son Samuel and some priests – Eli and his sons Hophni and Phinehas. Hannah, now here was a woman who honoured God and He honoured her – the priests, on the other hand, although they should have known better, they didn’t honour God. And as we will see on the programme this week, they reaped their just reward.

And the reason we are looking at this story of these people, is that when we are in the midst of the storm, as we so often are, we lose our bearings. We so often lose sight of those things that really matter and for me, as I have spent time in that story, it has clarified some things for me – it’s brought them into sharp focus and my hunch is that as you and I spend some time together today, well, maybe you will find that too.

So let’s just recap briefly on this story of Hannah. Hannah married a man called Elkanah and he had two wives: Peninnah and Hannah. And Hannah didn’t have children and Peninnah did, so Peninnah would taunt Hannah and there was a lot of pain around that, so Hannah goes to God – she pours out her heart to Him in the temple and she gets God’s peace. It is what always happens when we do that.

Eli, on the other hand, is the priest that is at the temple at the time when Hannah comes to pour her heart out and he mistakes what Hannah is doing – he thinks she is drunk. And the priest Eli and his sons Hophni and Phinehas, they are bad dudes – they are plundering the sacrifices, they are not honouring God and there is a real contrast between these two – between Hannah and her family and Eli and his - this nobody Hannah and this priest Eli.

See that’s what we so often miss in life – God is hidden; He is invisible – we forget about Him – we go on living our lives, wondering why things are going from bad to worse. And in the middle of this story (last week we stumbled across this verse) when God was pronouncing His judgement on Eli and his family – you can read this if you have a Bible, grab it, open it up at First Samuel chapter 2 and verse 30. God said:

Those who honour Me, I will honour but those who despise Me shall be treated with contempt.

And that’s kind of the pivot on which this whole story turns and this week on the programme we are going to look at how things turned out for Hannah and for Eli. There was a sharp contrast to their approach to God and there is a sharp contrast in how things turn out for them.

It tells us a lot about God; it clarifies the confusion in the midst of our storm when we can’t see God, necessarily. When that happens we know how to put our feet on solid ground. Well let’s start today with Hannah – this pain of being childless and the taunts of the other wife. Childless couples the world over, know how painful this is.

So she goes to God – let’s have a look at it again in First Samuel chapter 1, beginning at verse 9 and she pours her heart out.

Once they had finished eating and drinking at Shiloh, Hannah stood up. Now Eli the priest was sitting on a chair by the doorpost of the Lord’s temple. In the bitterness of her soul, Hannah wept much and prayed to the Lord as she made a vow saying “O Lord Almighty, if You will only look upon Your servant’s misery and remember me and not forget Your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life and no razor will ever be used on his head.” Then she went on her way, ate something and her face was no longer downcast.

Let’s take a look to see what happened next. First Samuel chapter 1, verse 19:

Straight after this, early the next morning they rise, they worship before the Lord and then they go back their home in Ramah. Elkanah lay with his wife Hannah and the Lord remembered her so in the course of time Hannah conceived and gave birth to a son. She named his Samuel, saying “Because I asked the Lord for him.”

When the man Elkanah went up with his family to offer the annual sacrifice to the Lord and to fulfil his vow, Hannah didn’t go – she said to her husband “After the boy is weaned I will take him up and present him before the Lord and he will live there always.” “Do what seems best to you,” Elkanah, her husband told her, “Stay here until you have weaned him, only may the Lord make good His Word.”

So the woman stayed at home, nursed her son until she had weaned him. After he was weaned, she took the boy with her, young as he was, along with a three year old bull, an ephah of flour and a skin of wine and brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh. When they had slaughtered the bull, they brought the boy to Eli and she said to him “As surely as you live, my lord, I am the woman who stood here beside you, praying to the Lord. I prayed for this child and the Lord has granted me what I ask of Him so now I give him to the Lord for his whole life – he will be given over to the Lord and she worshipped the Lord there.”

See, Hannah had this terrible pain – she came to God with this impossible prayer – it was a humble and heartfelt prayer and God honours that. See we so underestimate the power of humble prayer; prayer from the heart; prayer that just lays it out before God the way we see it and feel it. God honours that! When He honours her with the impossible, she honours God back and gives her son over to God to serve at the temple for the rest of his life.

Now that’s easy to gloss over that, but can you imagine? I mean, she wanted her son more than anything and now she gives him up to honour God. God honours that – her incredible heart was to honour God, so she does. She honours Him by giving up the one thing that she desired most – her son. And what’s more, she gives over her most precious to be under the wicked Eli and his sons. Now figure that out! It’s not exactly a great strategic choice – this young, impressionable child, but see, God honours those who honour Him. And God honours her and protects young Samuel, and we will see, raises young Samuel up and makes him strong.

See, the more we honour God, the more He honours us. Look at this - First Samuel chapter 3, verse 7:

Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord. The Word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.

And verse 19:

The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up and He let none of His Words fall to the ground and all of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba recognised that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the Lord. The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh and there He revealed Himself to Samuel through His Word. And the word of Samuel came to all of Israel.”

You see, God honoured her in her storm! Young Samuel went on to become the chief priest, the prophet, the judge of all of Israel. Why? Because this nobody; this woman Hannah, honoured her God, so simply by pouring her heart out to Him, by trusting Him.

I want you to notice how insignificant that may have appeared to her at the time. She had this big hairy giant; this huge storm; the pain of being childless, the taunts of Peninnah, it was impossible but for God nothing is impossible. God honours those who honour Him! She honoured God in her naivety – giving young Sam over to Eli. And even there in that impossible situation, God honoured her and He honoured young Sam.

So simple – it’s so powerful.

I guess intuitively, we understand that the things we say and do, the way we think and behave – well, they have consequences. There is a link between cause and effect. We kind of know that but how easy is it to delude ourselves in this area; to make excuse for ourselves? To live out our own selfish desires and pretend that, well, really, that cause and effect stuff applies to other people but not to me!

You know what I am talking about. We deny it, we deny it, we deny it and all along the warning signs grow – the storm clouds start to gather over the horizon. But sometimes it’s not till that first clap of thunder that we take any notice and then, so often, it’s too late. The storm has gathered momentum and all we can do is brace ourselves for when it hits.

We are going to spend some time in that space today with a man called Eli because he was in exactly that situation and he left it too late. Let’s make no mistake, there is a definite link in God’s economy between cause and effect, especially as it turns out, in our relationship with God.
We have been working our way, in this series, through the story of Hannah, this woman who honoured God and Eli, the priest, a man with his sons who did the exact opposite – even though he should have known better.

And right now I want to look at how things turn out for Eli and his sons, Hophni and Phinehas. These were men who were priests – their job was to be shepherding Israel, bringing them close to their God. Instead Hophni and Phinehas were plundering the sacrifices of God’s people, they were sleeping with prostitutes – they were doing anything but honouring God.

Look at how God reacts to that. If you have got a Bible, open it at First Samuel chapter 3, verse 1.

The boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days the Word of the Lord was rare. There were not many visions. One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord. Remember Samuel is Hannah’s son. He was in the temple where the Ark of God was.

Then the Lord called “Samuel” and Samuel answered “Here I am” and he ran in to Eli and said “Here I am, you called me.” But Eli said “I didn’t call you. God back, lie down.” So he went and lay down. Again the Lord called “Samuel” and Samuel go up and went to Eli and said “Here I am, you called me.” “My son,” Eli said, “I didn’t call you, go back, lie down.” Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, the Word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.

The Lord called Samuel a third time and Samuel got up and went to Eli and said “Here I am, you called me.” Then Eli finally realised that the Lord was calling the boy so Eli told Samuel “Go and lie down and if God calls you again, say “Speak Lord for Your servant is listening.” So Samuel went and lay down in his place so the Lord came and stood there, calling as at the other times “Samuel, Samuel”. Then Samuel said “Speak for Your servant is listening.”

And the Lord said to Samuel “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. At that time I will carry out against Eli everything that I spoke against his family from beginning to end, for I told him that I would judge his family forever, because of the sin that he knew about. His sons made themselves contemptible and he failed to restrain them, therefore, I swore to the house of Eli, the guilt of Eli’s house will never be atoned for by sacrifice of offering.”

Samuel lay down until morning and then opened the doors of the house of the Lord. He was afraid to tell Eli of the vision but Eli called him and said “Samuel, my son,” Samuel answered, “Here I am.” ”What was it He said to you?” Eli asked. “Do not hide it from me. May God deal with you, be it ever so severely, if you hide from me anything He told you.” So Samuel told Eli everything, hiding nothing from him. And Eli said, “He is the Lord. Let Him do what is good in His eyes.”

Here’s the paradox – Samuel is this young kid, he didn’t recognise God’s voice and finally Eli did. Yet Samuel is the one that listened to God and Eli didn’t, even though he knew God’s voice. Remember that verse: First Samuel chapter 2, verse 30.

"I honour those who honour Me” says God, “but those who despise Me I will treat with contempt.”

And here it is – it’s happening to Eli. Here is this powerful truth working its way out in Eli’s life.

We can be beetling along in our own selfish ways, ignoring our conscience, treating people with contempt, treating God with contempt, ignoring God but God never stops speaking. And even someone like Samuel can hear Him. If you want to know what He has to say, just listen. He spoke to Eli over and over again but Eli didn’t listen.

He talks to us over and over again. How? Maybe you were just flicking around, channel surfing today and you happened across this programme – kind of by chance or by accident, it seemed – there you go. God is always trying to communicate with us; to reach out to us but eventually, enough is enough. Eventually we kindle His anger – eventually the time comes when we reap what we have sown and that’s exactly what’s happened with Eli, Hophni and Phinehas.

And here it is coming: the first lightening strike of the storm and what God tells Samuel actually goes on to happen. You can read it in chapter 4, verses 12 to 22.

This is a wakeup call! In the storms in life – yea, they happen – and sometimes they are of our own doing, as it was for Eli and his sons. And we keep going and we keep going and we keep going and deluding ourselves, pretending there is no cause and effect, but there is.

Eventually, there is a day of reckoning, here in this life and one day, you and I will stand before God and He will judge us and He will! We may not like the idea, but that doesn’t change anything. Today is a wakeup call. Perhaps we are in one of those stormy times of life and you know, when things are going badly we are tempted all the more to behave badly. This truth rings out – “I will honour those who honour Me but those who despise Me, will be treated with contempt.”

Those are the words of the sovereign God, the King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords who is above all things and there is no solid ground beneath the feet of those who turn their backs on God. None! It might feel like that for a while but it will crumble.

I have said a few times that I am a confirmed landlubber – give me solid ground beneath my feet any day – I love good old terra firma. You know, what we have seen with Eli is Eli heading off in the wrong direction and you and I have done that too. How do we stop doing that? How do we not go in that place? Because it is so easy for us to head off there, go in the wrong direction, like Eli and his sons Hophni and Phinehas and plunder sacrifices and do all the wrong stuff that they did, in our own lives and forget that God honours those who honour Him.

There is an executive summary of what God thinks about Eli, Hophni and Phinehas. It’s in First Samuel chapter 2, verse 17. It says:

The sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the Lord for they treated the offerings of the Lord with contempt.

And remember the central theme – the pivot on which this whole story turns is in First Samuel 2, verse 30. God says:

I will honour those who honour Me and those who despise Me, I will treat with contempt.

Now there is a great part to this story; a great adjunct that goes with this story and it’s about what happens when Israel just takes God for granted. This bad stuff has been happening among the priesthood and Israel ignores it and just expects God to keep on blessing them. Let’s pick it up in First Samuel chapter 4.

See, the Israelites went out to fight the Philistines, the Israelites were camped at Ebenezer, the Philistines at Aphek. The Philistines deployed all their forces to meet Israel and as the battle spread, Israel was defeated by the Philistines who killed about four thousand of their men. When the soldiers returned to camp, the elders of Israel said “Why did the Lord bring defeat on us today before the Philistines? Let’s bring the Ark of the Covenant from Shiloh so that it may go with us and save us from the hand of our enemies.

So the people sent men to Shiloh, they brought back the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord Almighty, who was enthroned between the cherubim and Eli’s two sons Hophni and Phinehas were there with the Ark of the Covenant of God. And when the Ark of the Lord’s covenant came into the camp, all of Israel raised such a great shout that the ground shook. Hearing the uproar, the Philistines ask “What are those Hebrews shouting about?

When they learned that the Ark of the Lord had come into the camp, the Philistines were afraid. “A God has come into their camp” they said “we are in trouble. Nothing like this has ever happen before, woe to us! Who will deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods? They are the gods who struck the Egyptians with all kinds of plagues in the desert. Be strong Philistines, be men or you will be subject to the Hebrews as they have been to you – be men and fight.” So the Philistines fought and the Israelites were defeated and every man fled to his tent. The slaughter was very great. Israel lost thirty thousand foot soldiers, the Ark of the Covenant of God was captured and Eli’s two sons Hophni and Phinehas died.

See, Israel is so used to God being on their side, they just kind of head off, assuming that He was, despite the fact that all this bad stuff was going on. Despite the fact that the two priests Hophni and Phinehas were dishonouring, they were despising God - they were doing what was wrong. They deluded themselves – see, there is a cause and effect. No, no, she’ll be right! God is always on my side, He is a good God, and He blesses me.

See, we take this mighty God, who created the whole universe and expect Him to become our performing poodle – don’t we? He does tricks on our command, He comes along behind us.

Their first defeat, they get defeated and they lose three thousand men – what do they do? They go and send for the Covenant of God – “Let’s bring God to us, let’s make God do what we want Him to do, to protect us against the Philistines.”

But God is not like that! God is an awesome, mighty, powerful and good God and when we start dishonouring Him let’s not expect Him to put our feet on solid ground – let’s not expect Him to keep honouring us. He always loves us – He’ll always forgive us; He’ll always bring us close but on His terms, not ours. We can’t sow dishonour in God’s direction and expect to receive honour from Him in return.

See the humiliation of this story is: they treat God like a performing poodle, by bringing Him to them and in fact the Ark of the Covenant is captured by the Philistines. This was the place of the very presence of God Himself and over the next couple of weeks we will discover that people, when they realised what they actually had, these Philistines, all they wanted to do was to get rid of Him. But that’s for another day.

Today, the simple message of this story is this: we can’t go living out a life of stiff necked rebellion and expect God to toddle along behind us on the leash and bless us on cue. We just can’t! God is a powerful and mighty God.

You know when you put it that way it’s pretty plainly obvious, isn’t it? And to tell you the truth, that’s my agenda today – to make that plainly obvious. It’s blindingly, glimpsingly obvious. Let’s all take a big wakeup call here. When a storm hits, do you want solid ground beneath your feet? Do you want to know that God is with you? Do you want that certain knowledge that: well, He is going to bless you, no matter what this world throws at you?

Gotta tell you – I sure do! And let me get back to the central point; the central theme that the sovereign God wants to get across to us today through His Word. First Samuel chapter 2, verse 30. God says:

I honour those who honour Me but those who despise Me will be treated with contempt.

God is a sovereign God. God is the King of Kings. God is the Lord of Lords. We had better stop treating Him as thought He is not. You just can’t send for God and expect Him to show up when we have been dishonouring Him. Hophni and Phinehas found that out because just as the man of God had prophesied, they were both killed on that same day. And later on in the story we see Eli actually died on that same day as well.

God is slow to anger but God does anger and He can’t bless our rebellion because if He does, we’ll think “Oh great, I can do anything I want and He’ll bless it.” But anything that I want is not the place of intimacy between God and me any more than adultery is the place of intimacy between a man and a wife.

See just to underscore this point, this wasn’t some small defeat by the Philistines, it was the mother of all defeats. How many Israelites were killed? Four thousand and then thirty thousand! That is a lot of people! And the irony of it all is that God’s people did not understand the power of their Almighty God but the Philistines did. When the Philistines heard that God was in the camp they were afraid.

I want to ram this home today – get right in your face with this: if we head off in our own direction, in our strength, in our own selfish ways – on our own without the blessing and covering of the power of God, we are going to come a cropper. We are not going to have any solid ground – if we do that we will reap what we sow and there is no solid ground in that place. None, only trouble!

God honours those who honour Him but those who despise Him will be treated with contempt.

When the storms in life strike, as they inevitably do, it feels as though we’re caught in a small bout out on a stormy ocean. At that point, what we really need is some solid ground beneath our feet. And fortunately, God knows that only too well.

You know you can always tell when we are starting a new series – I am excited. I love to get onto a new series in God’s Word and that’s what we are doing today. We are starting a series called “On Solid Ground” to listen to what God has to say into one of the central dilemmas of our lives and that dilemma is this: dealing with the storms of life.

I remember when I was a young boy – I was about four or five years old. My mother and my sister and I sailed in a ship from Australia to Europe. Now that was a four week sail through the Suez Canal and back again. It’s a long way and I remember, even to this day, there were some huge storms along the way. I remember they had ropes in the corridors on the ship to hang onto.

I have never forgotten those storms and remember, this was a large cruise ship and yet it seemed to get tossed around in those storms. I was sea sick; I was very afraid as a young kid, even though I was on this big cruise liner. I remember going out onto the deck and seeing the huge waves and the winds and the ship was pitching around in this fearsome ocean and for me, there is nothing as frightening as an angry sea and a violent storm – the ground as it were, moving under your feet.

For some people life seems to be a constant storm. The ground under their feet is never solid – there is always some fear and some uncertainty and they can never quite figure out why. What is going on – why is my life always like this? Now many of these people believe in God and yet life seems to be one endless storm. What we really want to have is solid ground under our feet.

When you are in a storm the question is – how? That’s what we are going to be exploring in this series called “On Solid Ground” starting right here and right now. Now if you have a Bible, I’d like you to grab it because we are going to be spending most of our time in the first eight chapters in a Book called First Samuel, in the Old Testament. We are going to discover the truth that we kind of know or we should know and yet it gets lost in the world that we live in.

See this is a ‘me’ centred world where so often we find ourselves going to God asking Him for things for me, for me, for me and little by little, instead of God being God we expect Him to start being like a performing dog – to do tricks on our command. It may seem harsh but you get God the wrong way around and it spells dog.

Am I expecting God to start dancing to my tune or am I dancing to His? It’s a good question. That’s what we are going to be exploring in this story and it begins in the storm. It’s a story about a woman called Hannah and it turns out that she is going through some incredibly tough times in her life but she has the Creator/creature relationship the right was up.

Open you Bible – let’s go to First Samuel – it’s the ninth book of the Old Testament. It’s kind of just over a third; between a third and a half way in. We are going to start at the first verse of the first chapter of First Samuel.

There was a certain man from Ramathaim, a Zuphite from the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Elkanah, son of Jeroham the son of Elihu the son of Tohu the son of Zuph, an Ephraimite. He had two wives; one was called Hannah, the other Peninnah. And Peninnah had children but Hannah had none.

Year after year this man went up from his town to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord Almighty at Shiloh where Hophni and Phinehas the two sons of Eli, were the priests of the Lord. Whenever the day came for Elkanah to sacrifice he would give portions of the meat to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters but to Hannah he gave a double portion because he loved her and the Lord had closed her womb. And because the Lord had closed her womb, her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her.

This went on year after year – whenever Hannah went up to the house of the Lord her rival provoked her until she wept and wouldn’t eat. Elkanah, her husband would say “Hannah why are you weeping? Why don’t you eat? Why are you down hearted? Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons?"

Pretty tough! Anybody who has ever gone childless or had someone in their family who has gone childless will know the incredible pain of a couple who would like to have a child and yet they can’t conceive. Can you imagine this going on year after year after year and in between these annual trips, as well? And of course, there were two wives – now the Bible doesn’t talk about the fact that there were two wives – obviously the author doesn’t feel a need to comment – praise God that has gone away.

But never the less, poor old Hannah had a pretty tough time – a real storm, year after year, the pain of being childless and she had lots of choices in that space. She could have been angry; she could have lashed out; she could have withdrawn. And her husband is pretty useless; typical male – "What’s the matter, why are you crying? You’ve got me!"

So what does Hannah do? Let’s look at First Samuel chapter 1, beginning at verse 9:

Once they had finished eating and drinking at Shiloh, Hannah stood up. Now Eli the priest was sitting on a chair by the door post of the Lord’s temple. In the bitterness of her soul, Hannah wept much and prayed to the Lord and she made a vow saying “O Lord Almighty, if You will only look upon Your servants misery and remember me and don’t forget Your servant but give her a son then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life and no razor will ever be used on his head."

As she kept on praying to the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was praying in her heart and her lips were moving but her voice was not heard. Eli thought she was drunk and said to her “How long will you keep on getting drunk? Get rid of your wine.” “Not so my lord” Hannah replied, “I’m a woman whose deeply troubled. I haven’t been drinking wine or beer. I was pouring out my soul to the Lord. Don’t take your servant for a weak woman – I have been praying here about the great anguish and grief that I have.” And Eli answered “Go in peace. May God of Israel grant you what you have asked Him.” She said, “May your servant find favour in your eyes.” Then she went her way and ate something and her face was no longer downcast.

Turns out she does have a son, calls him Samuel, gives him over to God as soon as he is weaned and he comes and serves as a priest in this temple under Eli, whom we discover later is one bad dude. He is the priest; he is supposed to be the go between, between God and His people and yet he and his sons have no respect for God. We will look at them later and also we will see Samuel’s fate.

At the start of the programme I talked about this "me, me, me" thing – always asking God for stuff; kind of turning things the wrong way round, instead of us being made in God’s image, we try to remake Him in ours. And yet here is this story – this story that begins in a storm – this story that begins with Hannah in a storm and she is asking God for something. Did you notice she doesn’t lash out or whine or complain? She humbles herself before God and asks her sovereign God; pours her heart out to Him.

Eli, this scoundrel, with as much spiritual insight as my pet cat, thinks she is drunk and feeds her with platitudes – "May the Lord give you what you ask for." Yet here is a simple woman at the bottom of the heap, pouring her heart out to her God. And notice what it says after she does that, in verse 18 of chapter 1: “Then she went her way and ate something and her face was no longer downcast.” See Hannah’s feet were on solid ground – even before her prayer is answered – a seemingly impossible prayer.

You know what that tells me? She trusted her God – no matter what His answer would be – she trusted Him; she let it go; she stopped worrying and God answered her prayer. I’m not saying "Let’s all be like Hannah" – we are clearly not, our storms are different to hers but what we discover in this story is that when we put God in His rightful place – God – He honours that.
We are going to have a look at her understanding of her God again next.

What comes next in this story is Hannah’s prayer of thanksgiving. She is in this storm; she asks God for the impossible; she has got the taunts of the other wife and she comes to God in a prayer of humility; pouring out her soul and God answers her with a son and she gives that son back to God for the rest of his life. Now listen to what she prays and how she rejoices.

We are now at chapter 2 of First Samuel, beginning at verse 1:

Then Hannah prayed and said ‘My heart rejoices in the Lord, in the Lord my horn is lifted high, my mouth boasts over my enemies for I delight in Your deliverance. There is no one holy like the Lord. There is no one besides You. There is no rock like our God. Do not keep talking so proudly or let your mouth speak such arrogance for the Lord is a God who knows and by Him deeds are weighed. The bows of warriors are broken but those who stumble are armed with strength.'

And this prayer goes on and on ... read it for yourself in First Samuel chapter 2. And you know what it’s all about? The power and the sovereignty of God! It’s about a Hannah who went to God with this in her heart – God is above all things. Not this attitude of "Let’s reform God in my image. Let’s turn Him into a performing poodle."

You know how I know that? Because when she poured out her heart to God she offered her son back to Him and she honoured that promise when God delivered her son. There is a challenge there for each one of us about how we go to God – how we see Him – as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords or some puppy dog that performs tricks on our command? Come on!

And how can we tell the difference? See, this is a very hard thing to discern sometimes. How can we tell the difference between a right and a wrong attitude towards God? Let’s go back to His Word and we will see what a wrong attitude looks like when we look at the priest Eli and his sons. Join me is First Samuel chapter 2 verse 11. Remember Eli was the priest that was at the temple when Hannah went to pray.

Eli’s sons were wicked men; they had no regard for the Lord. Now it was the practice of the priests with the people, that whenever anyone offered a sacrifice and while the meat was being boiled, the servant of the priest would come with a three pronged fork in his hand, he would plunge it into the pan or the kettle or the cauldron or the pot and the priest would take for himself whatever the fork brought up. This is how they treated all the Israelites who came to Shiloh.

But even before the fat was burned, the servants of the priest would come and say to the man who was sacrificing “Give the priest some meat to roast – he won’t accept boiled meat from you but only raw.” If the man said to him “Let the fat be burned up first and then take whatever you want, the servant would answer “No, hand it over now, if you don’t I’ll take it by force.” So this sin of the young men; the young priests was very great in the Lord’s sight for they were treating the Lord’s offerings with contempt.

You see the way we tell the difference about our heart attitude towards God is through how we behave. Hannah could have complained; Hannah could have fought back; Hannah could have acted up badly; she could have lashed out at her husband; she could have grumbled at the other wife and yet, in her pain, who could have blamed her? She could have shaken her fists at God and instead she went to Him with her mission impossible and poured out her heart to God and trusted Him because He is God and then she had peace. He honoured that!

Here’s an amazing truth – it’s one of those pivotal passages in the Bible that tells us a huge amount about why, when we have a wrong heart toward God, things go badly in our lives. Listen to First Samuel chapter 2, verse 30; this is a verse that’s worth writing down. God says:

For those who honour Me, I will honour. And those who despise Me shall be treated with contempt.

And what we read in the remainder of chapter 2 of First Samuel, starting at verse 27, is that God deals with Eli and his two sons and He sends a prophet to Eli and this is what happens. First Samuel chapter 2, verse 27:

Now, a man of God came to Eli and said to him “This is what the Lord says” “Did I not clearly reveal Myself to your father’s house when they were in Egypt, under Pharaoh? I chose your father out of all the tribes of Israel to be My priest, to go up to My alter to burn My incense, to wear an ephod in My presence. I also gave your father’s house all the offerings made with fire by the Israelites.

"So why do you scorn My sacrifice and offering that I prescribed from My dwelling? Why do you honour your sons more than Me by fattening yourselves on the choice parts of every offering made by My people Israel?” Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel declares “I promised that your house and your father’s house would minister before Me forever,” but now the Lord declares “Far be it from Me; those who honour Me, I will honour but those who despise Me I will disdain.

The time is coming when I will cut short your strength and the strength of your father’s house so that there will not be an old man in your family and you will see distress in the dwelling and good will be done to Israel. In your family line there will never be an old man. Every one of you that I do not cut off from My alter, will be spared only to blind your eyes with tears and grieve you heart and all your descendants will die in the prime of their lives.

And what happens to your sons Hophni and Phinehas will be a sign to you - they will both die on the same day. And I will raise up for Myself a faithful priest who will do according to what is in My heart and in My mind. I will firmly establish his house and he will minister before My anointed one always. Then everyone left in the family line will come and bow down before him for a piece of silver and a crust of bread and plead "Appoint me to some priestly office so I can have food to eat."

The boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days the Word of the Lord was rare – there were not many visions.

There it is – these priests were in a position of power and authority and responsibility and they ... they didn’t honour God, in their words and in their deeds, they rejected Him. And God dealt with them. Hannah on the other hand – well, she was like chalk and cheese compared to Eli, Hophni and Phinehas. Hannah was the lowly of the lowly – these priests were on the top of the social religious register but that made no difference to God. “I will honour those who honour Me and those who despise Me shall be treated with contempt.”

The priests failed! The Word of the Lord was rare – their job was to tell people what the Word of the Lord was and yet, in those days it was rare. You know, if you can’t change the people, sometimes you have to change the people and that’s exactly what God does here. Ultimately, young Samuel becomes the priest and the prophet of Israel – he is the one that grows in favour and we are going to look at his story next week.

Let me ask you something. Who was on solid ground, Hannah who honoured God or the priests Eli, Hophni and Phinehas who pleased themselves? See, it’s so easy to be like Eli, Hophni and Phinehas but it’s hard to be like Hannah. You know why? Because we can’t really see God – not like we can see the physical reality that we are in – not like we can see our circumstances – not like we can see the storm and feel the fear.

All those things seem so much more real than this notion of a God that we can’t see – a God that we have to put our faith in instead of being able to touch and hear physically. And so this present reality takes over and God has to fit into our present reality. Absolutely, it is easy to be like Eli, Hophni and Phinehas! It’s easy to relegate God to one of the things that has to fit into our present daily agenda.

But God is no less real for the fact that we physically can’t see Him. He is no less powerful for the fact that we interact with Him in faith. God is God and solid ground is the place that Hannah knew – she stood before God.

I once heard someone say that peace is trusting in the sovereignty of God. Hannah had that peace. For that very reason – in the eye of her perfect storm, in that place of taunts and disappointments and hurts that she couldn’t even utter when she poured out her heart to God – Hannah discovered God’s peace through a simple, simple act of faith.

So many times over these recent years for me, when the storms have blown in – so many times and you know, in a sense - each time I feel so inadequate to deal with those storms. Isn’t that the point? When we are on that ship in the ocean, doesn’t matter how big the ship is; doesn’t matter how strong we are, we are nothing compared to those storms.

People come against you – circumstances, finances, things that really hurt, things of real fear, horrible things that people do – and we feel so inadequate just going and praying about them, well, "What good is that?" But you know what that prayer of faith is? That prayer of anguish and pouring out our hearts before the Lord, like Hannah did, it’s honouring Him as the sovereign God. It’s saying "God I may be smaller than this storm but this storm is nothing more than a pin prick for You. You are above all things, above all powers, above all dominions and circumstances and storms."

And listen again to God’s Word. First Samuel chapter 2 and verse 30. God says:

I will honour those who honour Me and those who despise Me will be treated with contempt.

Who had solid ground under their feet – Hannah or Eli, Hophni and Phinehas?

Now next week we are going to see how God’s contempt was poured out on Eli, Hophni and Phinehas. Remember that prophesy from the man of God, saying to Eli, “Your two sons Hophni and Phinehas are going to die on the same day as a sign to you that there will never be another old man in your line.” We are going to see that happen next week and we are also going to see how God’s honour was carried forth for Hannah through Samuel her son.

We haven’t talked a whole lot about him today but this Book is named after him – First Samuel. We will see that next week on the programme. God blesses Samuel – God sets him up as the priest and the prophet and the judge over the whole of the nation of Israel. This nobody woman, this Hannah, who couldn’t have a son, honours her God and God takes that and changes the course of history.

God’s blessing to Hannah flowed on, down the generations through her son. The question we need to ask ourselves is this: when I look at my life, when you look at your life, do we look like Hannah or Eli? Because that’s how I figure out whether I’m someone who honours God as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, as the sovereign of all things.

Is this the God I go to, to pour my heart out to? Or do I steal His stuff? Is He the God I rejoice in when He answers me or the God who I try to kind of fit into my schedule when I can be bothered? That God who I manipulate and massage and mould into whatever I want Him to be.

Make no mistake – God takes His honour and His glory very, very seriously. He gives them away to no man and to no woman. And as we will find out in the lives of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, it’s a matter of life and death.

Imagine that you’d watched Jesus die that horrible death on the cross.  And then, on the third day you go to His tomb and discover that it’s empty.  What would you think? How would you react?

Well I’m excited. This is the last week in a four week series that I’ve called "Who is Jesus?" And over these last few weeks we have just been looking at little snapshots of who Jesus is from the different gospels. From Mark and John and Matthew and Luke. And today of course we are going to talk about the empty tomb.

And maybe you have been having a long week end because its Easter but two thousand years ago it wasn’t some long weekend they were celebrating in Jerusalem it was a brutal crucifixion. A burial and then something that nobody would have expected.

Imagine you have a friend or relative that has just died, tragically killed. You have watched them die. You go to the funeral. You’ve seen them buried and you get what you think is closure. Closure is one thing but the mourning process goes on. And then three days later you go down to the grave to leave some flowers, to reflect on the life that was so tragically taken, and the grave’s been dug up. The coffin is up on the ground, the lid’s off and it's empty. What would you feel? What would you do?

A friend of mine was interviewing Barry McGuire for a radio program in New Zealand recently. Now Barry McGuire is a well known rock protest singer from the sixties. And over a period of 10 years or so he lost more than 20 of his closest friends to drug overdoses and sexually transmitted diseases. Now these were TV and movie stars and politicians who committed suicide. They were personalities of such promise and yet they turned out not to be what they promised.

Marilyn Monroe, Michael Hutchins of INXS. These were fallen stars. See people have placed their hope in these stars and then they failed to deliver. And Jesus must have looked the same. He had rock star status the crowds followed Him everywhere. He was very definitely Jesus Christ superstar.

Over the last 3 weeks we have been looking at who this Jesus is. And we have seen how He healed people. And people flocked to Him to see His miracles and to hear His preaching. Jesus had this wisdom that confounded the religious critics. And they tried to trap him and yet He cared for the widows and the prostitutes and He did these amazing miracles healing the lepers, the blind and the lame. He was passionate, He was profound, He had a wisdom about God and yet He was so relevant. He touched people deep inside, and so these huge crowds.

Jesus held out so much promise. I mean, here He was in the first century in Israel. It was an oppressed land, occupied by the Romans. Most of these people were subsistence farmers. They were poor. They needed someone to believe in, someone to hope in and that someone looked like it was Jesus. And yet the events of that first Easter long week end, you know, the Passover festival, the crowds in Jerusalem. And then the unexpected. The lynching the mob baying for Jesus blood. They cried out, “We want Barabas” and “Crucify Jesus”. And this hope, this Jesus who was a miracle worker and such a powerful preacher, the hope turned into to despair.

Jesus was crucified on a cross and he was buried. And he was buried just before the Sabbath. And so on the Sabbath people couldn’t do anything. But on the day after the Sabbath they went down to his grave because he needed to be embalmed they didn’t have any funeral parlors in those days or an undertaker. So this just had to be done. Let’s have a listen to the story. Let’s pick it up. If you have a Bible open it up. In John Chapter 20 beginning at Verse one. John Chapter 20.

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. And she said to them, “They have taken our lord out of the tomb and we don’t know where they have laid him”. Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went towards the tomb. The two were running together. The other disciple out ran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there but he didn’t go in.

Then Simon Peter came following him and went into the tomb. He too saw the linen wrappings just lying there and the cloth that had been on Jesus head not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the disciple who reached the tomb first also went in and he saw and he believed. For as yet they didn’t understand the scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.

The first reaction of Mary was to run back to Peter and the others and say they have taken the body out of the tomb. Then Peter and the other disciple run down there and sure enough the stone’s been rolled away, the linen wrappings are lying there folded neatly. They saw and they believed. You see Jesus had been telling them that He would rise from the dead. Now you read on and they had a mix of pain and fear and tears and hope and confusion but there it was a glimmer of hope that these next few weeks would show something different.

I mean, they had seen Jesus killed and yet they had hope. They had hope before. They hoped in Jesus and it was lost on the cross and now here was this empty tomb. No Jesus. Hope. We can casually brush over this Easter story dozens of times, lots of times during our lives and miss out what was going on in the hearts of His followers. These were people who had lost hope and now they discovered new hope. Many years later the apostle Peter wrote these words.

If you have a bible turn with me to First Peter, Chapter one. He writes this in Chapter one Verse three.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ by his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

See Peter writes looking back on this that through the resurrection of Jesus Christ God has given us a new birth into a new living hope; hope that we can have here and now a hope that is eternal; hope of glory and joy and peace; a hope of an eternal life of no tears and no pain for ever and ever. That hope began on that first Easter morning when the disciples went down to the tomb, and they discovered that it was empty.

I hope that you’re having a great Easter and that you have had a great Easter. But we do we brush the Easter celebration aside so quickly each year. A day or two later we have forgotten all about it. It wasn’t like that on the first Easter, this brutal crucifixion the pain, the mourning, the fear. They had lost someone that promised so much. They had lost hope. And then on the day after the Sabbath when a few of his followers went down to the tomb they discovered that it was empty. He was gone. There was confusion there was hope there was despair there was fear. Maybe? No, surely not. Was there hope? Had He risen? He always said He would. But nah! Couldn’t.

Some found it easier to come to grips with than others. But Mary, Mary Magdalene, was the women who first saw the empty tomb and she couldn’t come to grips with it. She thought some one had taken His body away. And then she talked to the local gardener.

I hope you’ve been with us over these last few weeks as we’ve been looking at who this Jesus actually is. What He said and what He did. And as we've looked at Him in these last couple of weeks as we’ve looked these last couple of weeks, what happened leading up to His crucifixion and now what’s happening after his crucifixion. If you have missed any of the programs you can listen to them again at our web site, www.christianityworks.com

Mary Magdalene was a devoted follower of Jesus. She is the first one down to the empty tomb and her immediate reaction is the one that sticks out. They’ve taken His body. Who’s "they"? The Romans? The religious leaders? Other followers? Don’t know! But it’s not an unreasonable reaction in fact it’s the most plausible reaction. In john chapter 20 beginning now at verse 11 why not join me as we read this.

So Mary stood outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept she knelt to look into the tomb and she saw these two angels sitting there dressed in white one at the head the other at the foot of where Jesus’ body had been laid. And they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping”. (See, there is this supernatural intervention going on) And Mary says, “They took my Master and I don’t know where they have put Him”. After she said this she turned away and she saw Jesus standing there but she didn’t recognise Him.

She was sort of surprised. She wasn’t expecting to see him alive. And Jesus spoke to her and said, “Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?” And she thought He was the gardener and said, “Mister, if you took Him tell me where you have put Him so I can care for Him”. And then Jesus said “Mary”.

Turning to face him she said in Hebrew, “Raboni” meaning ‘Teacher’. Jesus said, “Don’t cling to me for I haven’t ascended to the Father. Go to my brothers and tell them I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God. So Mary Magdalene went telling the news to the disciples, “I’ve seen Him! I’ve seen the Master!” And she told them everything that He said to her.

See, Mary was locked in the reality of her grief. Isn’t that so often the way. We’re locked in the here and now, the physical circumstances, the pain or just the plain old life that we live in, we are locked into our reality. And we brush by Easter and we barely notice that something profound has happened; we barely notice that Jesus has risen from the dead. Mary looked with her own eyes at Jesus and what she saw was the gardener. “Listen Mister”, she said.

I think that is really funny, it always makes me laugh. Can you imagine? The son of God has just risen and Mary looks at Him and thinks He is the gardener. And in the same way we can look at Easter and see chocolate and Easter bunnies and all that stuff. That’s such a tragedy. But then, you see, then He spoke her name. He said, “Mary”. (There is something special about someone who knows our name; someone whom we can trust.) And then she knew it was Him. He was alive! Instantly her grief turned to joy; instantly her hope was restored; instantly she knew she need never have lost hope at all.

See, the disciples, Peter and the others, believed first, and then they went back to their lodgings. But Jesus knew her grief. He lingered there waiting for her. She was the first one to see Him alive and yet she didn’t know it. And then He spoke her name. have you ever brushed past Easter? Have you ever been so locked in the present circumstances of life you can’t take in that Jesus rose again for you? Today, today He is speaking your name; today He’s whispering hope into your heart; today if you’ve lost hope He wants to bring that back to you again. The master’s speaking your name, can you hear him?

Listen deep inside. Listen. Jesus wants to give you a new hope, a new start, a new life. The gardner is one explanation but when we believe, when we truly believe He rose again we know the joy of Jesus who waited there for Mary.

Well, Jesus is risen. Here we are almost at the end of this 4 part series called "Who is Jesus?" We’ve been just asking and exploring this question, exactly who is Jesus? What I thought would be great is to finish up the series by having a look at one of His last promises. For me there’s nothing worse than when someone makes a promise and then they fails to keep it. It’s really lousy. Jesus makes quite a number of promises in his three-and-a-half years of public ministry. But this one, this was a parting promise. He said it was also His Father’s promise, and it was a promise that ended up changing the course of human history. What was it? Did he keep it? What happened?

In human terms promises are wonderful things. You look at the promise of marriage. There are two types of promises or covenants that we can make, or treaties if you like. There are unilateral promises and bilateral promises. A unilateral promise is an unconditional promise: no strings attached. A bilateral promise is a conditional promise: I’ll do this if you do that but if you don’t do that then I will do this.

These are the vows that I shared with my wife Jacqui when we were married have a listen to this.

Jacqui today I take you to be my wife and I set myself apart from the rest of the world for you and you alone. Everything that I am and everything that I have I give to you, in the heights of our joy and in the depths of our sorrow. I promise to be by your side, to hold you, to encourage you, to honour you, to cherish you, and to protect you. This is my solemn promise to you, that I will always seek to love you just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. All of these things are yours until we are parted in death.

Now I just talked a little a bit about a unilateral promise, which is an unconditional promise and a bilateral promise, which is a conditional promise. So, these wedding vows, which one is it, unilateral or bilateral? See we think as wedding vows as being bilateral; two parties make a vow to each other. But actually, whenever you read or hear a wedding vow it is an unconditional promise. There is nothing in the promise that I made to my wife Jacqui or in the promise she made to me which depends on what the other party does. Nothing in what I read you says, “Well, my darling wife, if you love me and you are good to me then I will be faithful to you but if you are not I wont be."

No, that is not what I said. I gave her an unconditional promise of relationship. No matter what you do, this is what I will do for you. Anyone who’s married will know that it is tough some days and those days love is a decision. Marriage is a great promise. Its says, when you fail I wont attack you, I wont reject you, I will stick by you, I’ll hold you, I’ll cherish you, I’ll lift you up. When one of us is down the other one can lift the other up. That’s the beauty of an unconditional promise and in sense it’s kind of the same thing this final promise that Jesus made to his disciples.

If you have got a bible open it up to Acts chapter 1 beginning at verse 3. This is what it says:

After His death He presented Himself alive to them in many different settings over a period of forty days. In face to face meetings He talked to them about things concerning the Kingdom of God. As they met and ate meals together He told them they were on no account to leave Jerusalem but must wait for what the Father promised, the promise you heard from Me. John baptized you with water, you will be baptized in the Holy Spirit and soon. When they were together for the last time they asked, “Master, are you going to restore the kingdom of Israel? Is it time?”

You don’t get to know the time. Timing is the fathers business. What you’ll get is the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you’ll be able to be my witnesses in Jerusalem. all over Judea and Samaria and even to the ends of the earth. These were his last words. As they watched he was taken up and disappeared in a cloud. They stood there staring into the empty sky.

Suddenly two men appeared in white robes. They said, “You Galileans, why are you just standing looking at an empty sky. This very Jesus that was taken up from you into heaven will come as certainly and mysteriously as He left.”

See they didn’t get it. They were still thinking this Messiah was coming to save them from the Romans. “When are you going to restore the Kingdom of Israel?" "Is now the time?" They still didn’t get it after three-and-a-half years with Jesus. Crucified and resurrected they still didn’t get it. But Jesus wasn’t promising them release from the Romans. Jesus was promising them something much better.

What you get is the promise of the Father. You will get the promised Holy Spirit. John baptized you in water but not too long from now I’ll baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

These were his last words.

See, when a husband and wife promises each other something they become one flesh and here Jesus promised an intimacy. He promised the Holy Spirit. He said, "You’ll be baptised; you’ll be dripping; you’ll be drenched; you’ll be dunked." You know when you have a crumpet and you put some butter and honey on it and its soaking in this sweet honey, that is what the word "baptise" means. You’ll be drenched with the Spirit of God. That is the promise of Jesus to each person who puts their faith in Him. Isn’t that an awesome promise!

It’s like the marriage promise. It’s not a conditional promise any more, This is the new covenant, the new promise. This is what Jesus died and rose again to give us and it’s open to every person who believes that Jesus Christ died for them on the cross and that he rose again for them to give them a new and eternal life. This promise is open to each one of us. A promise of a new intimate relationship.

And if you read on in acts Chapter 22 you will read about the day of Pentecost, the day that God indeed poured his Holy Spirit out on every one who believes. That’s exactly what happened. What does that mean? Well for the disciples these bumpkins, these fishermen, these tax collectors, God filled them with the power, the strength and the wisdom and the godliness to go out and kick off this thing called "church", and its still going today two thousand years later. God empowered them amazingly.

Can I tell you, God has filled me with a power and strength and a wisdom and a desire and a passion and a closeness and intimacy with him that makes me want to do what I’m doing now to tell you about Jesus. We need never be alone. Can I ask you, what about you? Have you accepted this Jesus yet? Have you received that promised Holy Spirit yet? This Spirit of the intimacy and the closeness and the presence of God dwelling in you. So this is who Jesus is. This is what He did. He said, “I will come and make my home with you”. He wants to be with us every step of the way.

One of His other promises just before he ascended to heaven was, “I will never leave you or forsake you”. Who is Jesus? Healer, teacher friend. Lord, Saviour, wise, kind, powerful, humble, creator. Everything. He is everything God is. He wants to baptise us with, He wants to drench us with His presence. What a Saviour. What a promise. Jesus.

Let’s face it – we like winners.  We want to hang around successful people.  And yet when Jesus was hanging there on that cross – He looked like anything but a winner. In fact, given all that He’d said and done and promised, frankly, He looked like a dead loss.

Perhaps one of the biggest objections I ever had to Christianity was what I observed to be a kind of a self righteous hypocrisy. On the one had they put some old guy on the news and he’d tell me that this was wrong and that was wrong. And on the other, that same denomination had a club with gambling and poker machines in it not far from where I lived. I mean, come on. Is it any wonder that people weren’t flocking to church on Sundays? Well, that’s how I saw it.

And so for me that equalled Jesus, which equalled God. And frankly, who needs that sort of religion. Pretty impeccable logic really, until, well until you take the time to look at Jesus himself. Tell me, how would he respond to the church with poker machines? Well, actually we know, because in his walk on this earth he had to deal with almost exactly the same thing.

Well, this week we’re heading towards Easter and over these last few weeks we’ve been looking at this series “Who is Jesus”. And today I’d like to particularly look at Jesus in that difficult week leading up to the first Easter, in that difficult week leading up to the cross. And it began with a triumphal entry into Jerusalem. We’re not going to go there and look at that now because we don’t have the time.

It was like a rock star entry where Jesus rode this donkey into Jerusalem, and the church celebrates it now as Palm Sunday. And people were cheering and shouting “Hallelujah” and “The Messiah’s here”. And straight after that, gets into Jerusalem and one of the things, the thing we’ll look at today, is that He goes to the Temple.

And He kind of behaved a little bit on the surface at least, like one of those quixotic rock stars on dope. You know the ones who get on stage and smash their guitars and do all these weird things. Well, what He did was a little bit different to that and the motivation was different, but on the surface it must have looked a little bit strange to the people in that day. He went and cleansed the temple.
See, have a listen. This is how Mark puts it.

Jesus came to Jerusalem and He entered the Temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the Temple. And He overturned the tables of the money changes and the seats of all those who sold doves. And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the Temple. He was teaching and saying, ‘Isn’t it written my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations but you have made it a den of robbers’. And when the chief priests and the scribes heard this they kept looking for a way to kill him for they were afraid of Him because the whole crowd was spellbound by His teaching. And when evening came, Jesus and His disciples went out of the city.

See, the temple was the place where God was. He was in the Holy of Holies in the sanctuary and the Temple was the place where animals were sacrifice. Doves, and sheep and bulls and goats. And what was going on here is that the traders were playing and preying on the people. The great Lamb Scam, as I call it, because people would come to sacrifice to God and they would have to buy sheep and bulls and goats and doves.

So the traders moved into the courts of the Temple and they were selling substandard animals for the sacrifice, because only the best was good enough for God, only the best, only the clean, perfect dove, or lamb or bulls or goats were acceptable for sacrifice. And this practice of selling substandard animals and trading and doing all these things, was worst still sanctioned by the religious establishment. Kind of like a church with poker machines really. It’s religious hypocrisy. And you don’t have to look very far to discover that religious hypocrisy is still alive and well today.

So I’m not mocking all the churches. Absolutely not. You see, people in churches, average, every day people who believe in Jesus do so much good, that out in the world people don’t see, serving the poor, looking after them, loving people that others won’t love and often our society’s missed that. But there is still religious hypocrisy. And there was religious hypocrisy in Jesus day. Elsewhere another account tells us that Jesus actually made a whip and drove people out of the Temple.

See, the Temple is the house of God and you enter the courts and there’s the smell of animals and the noise of money changes and for the convenience for all the pilgrims who came to the Temple they moved the market into the Temple. There was noise and commerce and cattle and exorbitant prices and unfair money changing. And Jesus directly challenged the authority of the chief priests, throwing down the gauntlet. Look at the reaction. The leaders, the religious leaders, were plotting to see how they could kill Jesus. No wonder. He was challenging their hypocritical, cushy, system. They were afraid of Him because the crowds were spellbound by His teaching. He was either a madman or a genius.

People were looking for something, they were looking for someone, they were on a spiritual journey and Jesus comes and He is so real, He is so authentic, He so goes right to the heart of the hypocrisy and distortions of the religious system. He’s the guy that hung around with prostitutes and lepers and tax collectors and healed them and He directly challenged established religion and its hypocrisy.

This is no mamby, pamby saviour. This is not your kind of soft stuffed toy, cuddly Jesus. This is a wild Jesus. He goes, can you imagine, He goes into the Temple, he makes a whip. He drives people out, He turns the tables upside down, He screams at them. You couldn’t put this Jesus in a box, you couldn’t contain Him. This is the only time He does this and it’s important to understand that Jesus had compassion for little people, yet He had this rage for religious hypocrisy, this cold religious establishment.

And the flip side of Him, important to realise, is that Jesus was humble and kind and He changed lives and healed people and He transformed people through His love. But when we look at this ugly end of the scale some people think that must be what religion is like, that’s what Jesus is like, and yet Jesus railed against religious hypocrisy.

You ask who is Jesus? We see Him in this last week before He was crucified standing up against economic and religious systems that suppress people. And maybe that’s all some people saw of Him and ignored the quiet, hidden, not noisy, not public things that Jesus did to touch people and heal them.

Whatever or whoever else Jesus was and is, He’s not a religious hypocrite and He railed against it. He was an advocate of the little people. Little people like you and me, and as you’ll see, that’s what cost Him His life on so called Good Friday.

I have a confession to make. I love food. I just love it. I grew up in a European household and I learnt to cook when I was young and Mum worked in the early evenings teaching piano so I often cooked dinner for the family. I established my credentials, I love food. It’s not very often that I go off my food. It takes a lot for me to turn down a meal. I have to be really sick or I’m really dreading something. I think in my first 48 years of my life I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve gone off my food.

But when you’re feeling deep pain or real fear, well, I know for me, I just can’t look at food let alone host dinner for 12 other people just before I was arrested and crucified. So what was going on at the last supper? We’re looking at the last week of Jesus’ life leading to Easter before he’s crucified.

And this is such an important time, because, you know, when someone’s under pressure, when the chips are down, when people are after someone’s life, that’s when you really discover who they are. And I know we look at Easter as being bunnies and chocolate Easter eggs and all that sort of stuff. That’s nice, but Easter’s not about that. Remember Easter is an assassination; it’s a state-sanctioned execution, when Jesus was tried and falsely convicted. And this was a tough week for Jesus. It was a really tough week.

If you have a Bible, grab it and open it up at Mark Chapter 14, because that’s what we’re going to look at right now. Mark Chapter 14, beginning at verse 12. I just want to take a brief look at this Last Supper, which I guess we’ve seen the painting that’s been painted and we look at it from a distance, but this was the night that Jesus was betrayed. The Last Supper.

On the first day of the unleavened bread, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed, His disciples said to Him, ‘Where do you want us to go and make the preparations to eat the Passover?’ So he sent two of the disciples saying, ‘Go into the city and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you, follow Him and wherever he enters, say to the owner of the house, ‘The teacher asks where is my guess groom and where may I eat the Passover with my disciples?’ He’ll show you a large room upstairs furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there.’ So the Disciples went into the city and found everything just as Jesus had told them and they prepared the Passover meal.

When it was evening He came to the twelve and when they’d just taken their places and were eating, Jesus said to them, ‘You know, truly I tell, one of you will betray me, One who is eating with me.’ They were distressed and began to say to one another, ‘Surely it’s not me.’ And He said to them ‘It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the bowl with me. For the son of man goes as it is written of Him but woe to the one by whom the son of man is to be betrayed. It would have been better for that one not to have been born’.

So here He is at this thing we now call the Last Supper, we see the paintings and churches regularly celebrate Holy Communion. It’s become like a solemn ritual. We have the little pieces of bread and we have the little glass of wine or juice and we all do that. But this wasn’t a ritual, this was the Passover meal. It was a celebration of one of the great miracles did many centuries before to free the Israelites from Egypt. They were to eat roast lamb with rosemary and red wine with unleavened bread, which is a little bit like pita bread.

And this was the week of the assassination plot being well underway. The Chief Priests and the Scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by stealth and to killed Him for they said “Not during the festival or the people might riot”. And the twelve disciples knew this and there was a deep sadness and a fear, like a pall of fear, hanging over the group. And Jesus was just entertaining His guests. He was sitting with them and He knew that He was about to be crucified. He knew He was about to suffer pain and death and yet He sits there and while they’re eating reading from Mark Chapter 14 verse 22:

While they were eating He took a loaf of bread and after blessing it He broke and it and said take this, This is My body. Then He took a cup and after giving thanks He gave it to them and said, ‘This is My blood of the covenant which is poured out for many. Truly I tell you, I will never drink again of the fruit of the vine until the day when I drink new in the kingdom of God. And then we know that Jesus washed their feet. (24 feet – 120 grubby toes. The son of God is about to be crucified, He washes their feet. Even the feet of the one who would betray Him, Judas Iscariot)

And after the meal He took the bread and he broke it and he took the wine and gave it to them. (It wasn’t white, soft, fluffy bread it was unleavened bread, brown and gritty) This is my Body broken for you. This cup represents my blood, take drink of it. This is the basis God’s new promise My blood will be poured out for many.”

All the time Jesus is thinking of his disciples and of you and of me and with humility He washes their feet. He even washes Judas’ feet. Doesn’t accuse him, doesn’t condemn Him doesn’t hate Him, even washes his feet. Isn’t this fabulous? Jesus has His closest friends, the Last Supper, the Last meal he would spend with them, He knows He’s about to die, and yet He takes this ragtag little band of fishermen and tax collectors and ordinary people, people like you and me. What would happen next would turn the world upside down. What happened next opened the door wide to God so that you and I could walk through. But here we see Jesus with His friends inviting them to His table, inviting us to His table to eat lamb and bread and drink red wine to remember what God has done.

Well, so Jesus was arrested and He was crucified, they call it Good Friday. What’s so good about Friday? I guess every Friday’s good, it’s the day before the weekend. But not this particular Friday. It’s the day when the criminal justice system broke down. It’s a day when Justice became a sham. It’s a day when an ugly, angry mob demanded a lynching.

It’s a day when an innocent man was flogged to within an inch of His life. With blood pouring out of His wounds, and the soldiers’ spit running down His face, He dragged a huge cross along the via Delarosa to the hill they called Golgotha. And there they nailed Him to that cross. Over the next few hours, in excruciating pain, He died an agonising death. Good Friday? Not that particular day.

We’ve all experienced, I guess, bureaucratic buck-passing, when we’re handed from one department to the next with no satisfaction. You’d expect more of the criminal justice system. A fair go, a fair hearing, a just outcome. Jesus was betrayed by Judas Iscariot (who goes and hangs himself). He’s handed over to be tried. For what? Now there’s a problem.

You see Jesus got up the noses of the religious leaders because He struck at the truth. He struck at the heart of things and that threatened their corrupt hypocritical system. He claimed to be the Messiah, the king, and I guess the Roman emperor could have been threatened could have seen it as a political threat. Jesus, King of the Jews? Maybe Jesus was going overthrow the Roman Empire. Maybe Israel would succeed. Jesus was this one man who never took up arms. He had twelve disciples, fishermen and tax collectors. As though Jesus could overthrow the Roman Empire.

And so first He was tried by the Chief Priest. “Are you the Messiah?” No answer. So they beat him and mocked Him. And then He went before the Council, the Sanhedrin. “Are you the Messiah?” “Yes.” Again they rejected Him. And then they sent Him to Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor, if you like, who had the power to have Him crucified. And they accused Him. They said He was against the Emperor, He doesn’t pay taxes, He’s the King of the Jews, His going to threaten the Roman Empire. And Pontius Pilate said “No,I don’t think I want to be part of this”. So he sent Jesus off to King Herod.

Herod was half Jewish and an illegitimate king and the people hated him and the religious leaders prosecuted Jesus in front of Herod. And Herod wouldn’t do anything and sent Him back to Pontius Pilate. Can you believe this bureaucratic duck shoving. Here is a system of justice, supposedly, that’s just gone mad. And then finally He comes to Pilate. If you have a Bible, open it up to Mark Chapter 15 beginning at verse 6:

Now at the festival Pilate is to release a prisoner to them, anyone whom they asked for. There was a man called Barrabas who was in the prison with rebels who committed murder during the insurrection. So the crowd came and ask Pilate to do for them according to His custom. Then He answered, ‘Do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews’, for He realized that it was only out of jealousy that the Chief Priest handed Him over. But the Chief Priest stirred up the crowd to have him release Barrabas instead.

Pilate spoke to them again. ‘Then what do you want me to do the man they call the King of the Jews?’ And they shouted ‘Crucify Him’. Pilate asked them, ‘Why? What evil has he done?’ But the shouted all the more loudly, ‘Crucify Him.’ So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barrabas for them, and after flogging Jesus, he handed Him over to be crucified.

And Jesus just stood there. The Son of God who could have stopped this because He had the power just stood there and took it all. Pilate said, “I found no ground for this sentence of death”, and yet this Jesus who just days before had been welcomed into Jerusalem like a superstar, was now to be crucified. You find out a lot about a man when he’s under pressure. He stood there and He took because His job was to take my burdened of guilt and your burden of guilt and to pay the price of death that you and I deserve in God’s eyes on that cross.

What an incredible injustice, and yet Jesus took for us and right when He was crucified and when He died, Mark’s gospel Chapter 15 verse 38 tells us that the curtain at the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the Centurion stood there in front of Jesus and heard his cry and saw how He died. He said:

Surely this man was the son of God.

You see when Jesus died, when He cried out His last breath, the curtain of the Temple, the place where God was, in the Holy of Holies, was torn open to you and me. The door to the throne room of God was flung open. The first time in the history you and have access to God, direct access to God. Not through a priest, not through someone else, but through Jesus Christ. We can walk boldly before the throne of Grace and it’s a door that we can only walk through if we believe in this Jesus who died for us.

Was it a good Friday? Well if you were Jesus it wasn’t. It was a terrible Friday. Jesus the Son of God carried all our sin; Jesus the Son of Man going through the pain and the torture of a crucifixion. Ultimately it was a good Friday, because on that day God opened the door. On that day, from the cross, God cried out a personal invitation to you and me. Jesus cried out from the Cross, “Eloi, Eloi lamasabachthani”, which means “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” For one reason, and one reason alone, did God forsake His Son, so that you and I could have and eternal life; so that you and I could be forgiven. Who is Jesus? Jesus is the Son of God who hung on that cross who suffered and died for you and for me.

So let me ask you, is Jesus still relevant today?  I mean, look it’s all well and good that we’re going to celebrate Easter shortly, but is this Jesus of whom we read in the Bible, capable of making a difference in your life and mine – here and now?  Does He still impact people in this day and age?

As you look back through history there is no larger single group of people who have been more oppressed and appalling treated than that group in our society known as women. They have been treated like chattels and decorations; they have been beaten and raped and killed – all through the physical reality that men are physically stronger than women.

The official statistics say that each year over one million women are trafficked as sex slaves across the international borders – one million. And the reality is that it is much, much higher than that. Add to that the psychological and physical abuse of women in the home, right through to the clear reality that women today are still paid less than men and are clearly under-represented in the ranks of senior management and politicians and professionals. And as much as we might want to deny it, it’s a pretty bleak global picture, if you are a woman.

This is the second programme in a series that I’ve called “Who is Jesus?” Because it’s a great question to ask as we head towards Easter. Last week we looked at just a few of the things that Jesus did and the people that He hung around with because you can tell so much about who someone is by the people he spends his time with.

Today I’d like to look at just a few people whose lives Jesus impacted. This is kind of like flipping through a photo album or a story book of Jesus – just looking at little stories and pictures and vignettes of what Jesus did because I believe that as we see how Jesus treated people and what impact He had on their lives, well, it tells us something about who Jesus is and what He means to us today.

Back in the first century women had almost no rights. They were chattels – they couldn’t own land, they couldn’t inherit things, if you became a widow you were destitute, if you were unattractive you would starve, if you came from a poor family you would end up all alone because they couldn’t afford to pay the dowry for you to marry. It was a tough world, especially for women.

So, how did Jesus treat women? That’s a good question - in a tough patriarchal society that treated them like chattels – how did He treat them? If you have a Bible, I want you to open it at Mark chapter 5 – we are going to begin at verse 21. It is a story of three people – Jairus, the leader of the synagogue, a man, and a woman and we are going to look through her story.

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered. One of the leaders of the synagogue, named Jairus, came and when he saw Jesus, fell at His feet and begged Jesus repeatedly, “My little daughter is at that point of death, come lay Your hands on her so that she might be made well and live.” So Jesus went with him, with a large crowd following Him, they pressed in on Him.

Now there was this one woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured so much under so many physicians, spent all that she had and she was no better - but in fact she grew worse. She had heard about Jesus and she came up behind Him in the crowd and touched His cloak. She thought to herself, “If I can just touch His clothes I’ll be made well.” Immediately her haemorrhage stopped and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.

Immediately aware that power had gone out from Him, Jesus turned around in the crowd and said “Who touched My clothes?” His disciples said to Him, “Go on, the crowd was pressing in on You, how can you say “Who touched My clothes?” He looked all around to see who had done it but the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before Him and told Him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.”

See, this woman was haemorrhaging and the Old Testament Law - you can read it in the Book of Leviticus - said that she was unclean; she was an outcast. She was just unclean and so if she touched anyone they were unclean, which means that they couldn’t go to the temple or the synagogue to worship. And here’s Jesus – Jairus, the leader of the synagogue, comes to Him and says, “My daughter is dying.” The crowds are pressing in.

His disciples know that Jesus has really upset the religious leaders and so they’re thinking, "Great, here’s a chance for Jesus to go and heal the daughter of the leader of the synagogue and get in good with the religious establishment and then all of a sudden this woman comes and touches Him and He stops and pauses and listens to her whole story." How long do you think it would have taken her to tell the whole truth, as it says in the Bible there? A minute, two? I think maybe five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes – this would have taken out of His time. Meantime, Jairus, the leader of the synagogue; this guy whose way up the pecking order – his daughter dies.

Now, figure this out. If you or I had been in this situation, would we have raced off and gone to heal Jairus’s daughter first? Would we actually have stopped for this nobody; this unclean, outcast woman? See you think about it – her bleeding – it didn’t stop. They didn’t have the sanitary arrangements that we have today. This was a deeply shameful thing. They didn’t have hot and cold running water and all that stuff. This is a reality – a gritty life issue.

It’s about social isolation and yet Jesus puts her before the synagogue leader. He puts her before the life of the daughter of the synagogue leader. That touches me so deeply about Jesus. Only when Jesus had responded to this woman’s faith – this nobody – we don’t even find out her name in the Bible; this smelly unclean woman - only when He had responded to her faith and touched her and healed her, did He then turn to Jairus and go and raise the daughter of Jairus from the dead.

See, Jesus has more than enough of Himself to go around. He doesn’t pander to religious hierarchy - He doesn’t pander to the things that you and I think are important. Jesus is about touching little people like you and me when we go to Him in faith. That’s more important to Him than anything else.

Ever been rejected by someone? It hurts, doesn’t it? And the whole thing about rejection is that it hurts because whoever has rejected us was supposed to welcome us – to stick with us. In fact, the closer the person is to us the more, in our minds anyway, they have a duty to stick by us and so the more it hurts when they reject us. It’s a vicious circle.

So if God did send His Son and His name is Jesus; if the whole point was to show us how much God really loves us, well, then Jesus had to experience rejection. He had to travel down that road to be one of us; unless He did the whole thing would have been something of a sham.

I want to share with you a story from my life. I became a Christian about a dozen or so years ago. In my work life I ran a large IT consulting firm and I travelled all round the world speaking at conferences - thousands of people in Asia and Europe and North America. And people would ask me for autographs and there were all the lights and the cameras – you know, I was highly esteemed in the IT industry.

And not long after I was called to use that gift that I then used in pride, in the Lord’s service – here on the radio; the speaking ministry, supported by faith partners – people who believe in what we are doing. And it was startling to me, almost none of the Christians that we knew, supported our ministry. And that hurt – it was a form of rejection; it was a form of disappointment – until I read a passage that told a similar story about Jesus.

If you’ve got a Bible, open it to Mark chapter 6, beginning at verse 1. This is what it says:

Jesus left that place and came to His home town and His disciples followed Him. On the Sabbath, He began to teach in the synagogue and many who heard Him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all of this? What is this wisdom that has been given to Him? What deeds of power have been done by His hands? Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of James and Judas and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us?” And they took offence at Him.

Then Jesus said to them “Prophets are not without honour except in their own home town and among their own kin and in their own house. And He could do no deed of power there except that He laid hands on a few sick people and cured them. And He was amazed at their unbelief.”

See, Jesus has been doing amazing things; He has been healing people. Huge crowds have been flocking to Him to listen to Him preach and to watch Him heal. Jesus had celebrity status – He was a rock star in the first century in Jerusalem. And He comes to His own home town - see, people had been amazed at Him and He comes to His own home town and even they listen to Him and say, "WOW, it’s really, really amazing what He says.”

And yet, even though He’s got a gift for unlocking God’s love and God’s truth and for healing people – familiarity breeds contempt. Isn’t He the son of Mary? Isn’t He the carpenter from Nazareth? We saw Him growing up – we knew His mum; we knew His brothers; we knew His sisters – and they took offence at Jesus.

God sends His Son – God chooses that His Son would be a humble carpenter from Nazareth. Not the son of some high religious official from Jerusalem – He didn’t live in a palace – He didn’t sit on a throne. If He had had all those outward trappings they would have been all over Him. No, God wouldn’t work that way. God sent His Son as a humble carpenter and even though He was clearly anointed by God, even though He healed people, He preached with such power – familiarity breeds contempt. And the people closest to Him rejected Him.

Let’s assume that this story is true, for a minute – I believe it is, with all my heart. What does it tell us about Jesus? Who is He? What’s He like? The first thing it tells me is He chose to be a carpenter at Nazareth. God Almighty chose this for His Son. Let that sink in for a minute for if I had been God I’d have chosen something entirely different – but I’m not! God chose this for His Son.

What’s that saying to us? To me, it’s saying that Jesus wants to walk a mile in my shoes. Jesus wants to say “I know what it’s like to have God’s call on my life and be rejected by the very people who should be supporting me and rejoicing with me. I know how you feel when you are rejected. I understand what’s going on inside you – I feel your pain.” Isn’t that what Jesus is saying through this? Isn’t Jesus saying “This is who I am? I didn’t have to be but it’s who I am – it’s who I chose to be for you.”?

Jesus is real! Jesus is right down here at my level and your level – right where we are, right at the moment. And He chose to be humble and to be rejected and when He was rejected, in a sense, it took away His power in their midst. But it didn’t stop Him. He walked in their midst and He was the Jesus that God always wanted Him to be and I think, that is just awesome.

Well, here we are in the second programme of a series that I’ve called “Who is Jesus?". And I want to take one more look at another picture of Jesus. One of the really popular buzz words that’s doing the rounds in business circles these days is "empowerment". We need to "empower" our employees to make decisions. We need to "empower" our employees to perform and innovate. We need to "empower" our employees to serve our customers.

Now I don’t know about you, but the more they talk about it, well, the less it seems to happen. Smaller companies are gobbled up by bigger ones; there are mergers and acquisitions and listings and big companies have more services and they deal with the complexity by building rigid systems and pushing customer contact into call centres where you talk to someone who not only doesn’t get paid much, but who doesn’t have the authority to make a decision in your favour. And they talk about empowerment!

It’s a pretty familiar story to most of us. As consumers we have more choice and more ways to spend our money than we ever had before and yet, when you deal with these large companies, whether you are buying a bit of furniture or dealing with your bank over the phone, the suppliers squeeze us into their systems. And as employers – the bigger employers – well, you’re just a number most of the time. The supervisor or the boss is just a number and as a result, it’s just not satisfying anymore.

See, you and me, we have all these different skills and creativity and desires that we want to fulfil and we want to innovate to express who we are. One of my sons, who is twenty five or twenty six now, did very well with a large retail chain – he was a manager and had lots of people working for him and he left. Do you want to know why? Because it was a big company and he was just a number and they didn’t care about him.

Ok. Who’s Jesus in all of that? I mean, it’s ok to talk about Jesus back then but is He still relevant today? Does He understand what’s going on? Why don’t you come with me to Mark chapter 6, beginning at verse 6. Let’s have a read.

Jesus went around teaching from village to village. Calling the twelve to Him, He sent them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits. These were His instructions: “Take nothing on the journey except a staff - no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but don’t take an extra tunic. Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave as a testimony against them. Well, they went out and preached that people should repent. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.”

See, what Jesus gave to these twelve disciples, sending them out two by two, was a tough gig. The Jews believed in the law of the Old Testament and Jesus was sending them out with a new message – a message of grace. And He didn’t give them a set of rules and procedures. He just said, "Look, head out two by two. Don’t take any props. Don’t take things that you can use in your own strength – don’t take money and food and stuff. Go out there and trust Me and if they don’t welcome you, move on."

Jesus actually empowered them. See, Jesus sent them out into almost impossible circumstances, with a really tough message. “Repent – turn away from your sins – turn back to God.” And He gave them authority so that demons fled and the sick were healed and the people received the Word of God.

God sent His Son Jesus to this earth and Jesus takes these uneducated fishermen and tax collectors and sinners whom He calls His disciples; the Apostles and He sends them out. You know, that’s what the word "Apostle" literally means. The Greek word "apostolos" means "one who is sent out".

And He didn’t weigh them down with a rule book. He didn’t weigh them down with a set of tight procedures. He inspired them. See, He said, “Go and tell those people what you have heard from Me. Go and do to those people – heal them and cast out the demons, make the lame to walk and the blind to see – because you have a relationship with Me.”

It was the ‘top down hierarchy model, it was a "bottom up" empowerment model. He didn’t tell them what they couldn’t do; He told them what they could do. “Use who you are and your gifts and abilities and My power,” and they went out and preached that they should repent and they drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and they healed them.

Jesus didn’t tell them “It’s too hard.” He just told them to go and do it and they did it. They got a taste of what His empowerment model was all about. I don’t know, sometimes I think we treat religion like a straight jacket. Sometimes I think we think we have to have all these rules and certain procedures and ways of doing it. Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s wonderful that people go and study at Bible Colleges - I have and it was really important for me to do that. But I know people who kind of sit in the pews of churches and they think "Well, you know, I’m not an expert. I haven’t been to Bible College – God couldn’t possibly use me,” and yet their church is crying out for their gift.

You know the most common people who think that and sit in the pews and think that they don’t have a role are the people who are pastorally gifted; the people who are just gifted to pull along side and be friends and encourage people and hang in there with people. Those people who have that pastoral gifting, so often, don’t see themselves fitting into the structures and the procedures and the hierarchy of their church.

But Jesus ... Jesus calls His disciples; His followers; His … you and me, ordinary people, just to go out. We don’t have to have all the tools and all the money and all the ability. So often, we get called by Jesus to get out there and to do something by Him, we don’t have the money; we don’t have the full picture of how it is going to pan out. We don’t know – He just say, "Go out there and trust Me and use the gifts that I have given you and use the power that I have given you and tell people what you have heard from Me."

Jesus is a wonderful leader. Jesus is someone who doesn’t tell us we can’t do it – He calls us out there in the most outrageous way, to go and do it. I have to tell you, when Jesus called me to do what I am doing right now, it was scary and I didn’t know how it was going to grow. I just knew He had put something in my heart and I just gave Him all my gifts and abilities – I made some mistakes. And we just got out there and started doing it. And today several million people are listening to this very programme around the world.

I can’t do that! You can’t do that! Only Jesus can do that. And whatever the gift is that He has given you that’s the gift that He wants you to use, here and now. If you are a Jesus follower, don’t be one of disempowered people who sits at home or at work or in the pews of your church and thinks, "I can’t do anything."

Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village and called His twelve disciples and He sent them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits. Don’t take money or a bag or a spare tunic or anything else. Just go and do it. And it happened – they drove out many demons and they healed the sick.

Who’s Jesus? Jesus is this outrageous subversive who believes in you and me – who knows what He has wired into our D & A. He just calls us quietly to step out in faith, believing in Him.

Tell me this doesn’t ring your bell. And go on; tell me that deep down inside that you don’t want to know this Jesus.

I just so encourage you, get to know Him more and more. Know this Jesus who just wants to empower you to get out there and serve Him for His glory.