May I say Happy New Year, welcome to church. If this is your first time here at Greenview, or even first time ever going to church, and you’ve decided to give it a try at New Year, well, welcome. And as Colin has said, do say hi to somebody, stay for a cup of coffee later on, make yourself known.

It still happens. I have a very, very dear friend who this time last year had never been in church in their life, and maybe about nine months ago just decided to just try church, as they say in the adverts, and went out and bought a Bible, decided to read it, and last weekend they were baptised, having become a Christian. God still works.

Of course He does. And that’s one of the things we’re going to learn today, as we look at this passage for the New Year, this first Sunday of the New Year. I feel the weight and responsibility on my shoulders as I preach this message.

But let’s have a word of prayer before we look at this. Let’s pray together. Our loving and almighty God, we thank you that here today in 2026 in Glasgow, so far away from this ancient land, so separated by time, that yet your mighty hand is still made known to us.

Through the Lord Jesus and His coming to us, as we’ve remembered in the Christmas season, and His dying on the cross, as we look forward to remembering that in a few months, but day by day and week by week, we remember what He has done for us. We pray that today we might make good of that. Your Holy Spirit might apply the truth to our lives.

We might know your loving care and your power afresh as we enter into this New Year. We pray for help this morning for all of us, especially for me, as we would look at this passage, your word, and read it and apply it to us. These things, Lord God, we pray very humbly and commit ourselves into your hands for blessing.

Amen. Now, it’s usually customary when you’re speaking at a New Year message to make reference to the fact that you know that Christmas has passed when the adverts on TV and Boxing Day start advertising holidays. And my phone went ping with Jet 2 very quickly.

It might even have been on Christmas evening. And you’ll see cruises in the Danube, water skiing with somewhere in the Mediterranean, you know, train journeys across Canada, or even elephant rides in Thailand, all sorts of things will be advertised to you. But there’s one travel that you can’t do or is not advertised to you that we’re going to do a bit of this morning as we start off.

And that type of travel is called time travel. Okay, we’re going to do a bit of time travelling as we start off our service this morning as we look at this passage. And we’re going to stop off as we go back in time, we’re going to stop off in two places.

We’re going to stop off first of all, about 3000 years ago. And then we’re going to head a wee bit further back in time to about 3500, 3700, when these events actually took place. Okay, so if you come with me in your mind’s eye, a little bit of sanctified imagination, I want you to imagine a scene.

I don’t know what your household’s like, maybe the Adams family is a bit like this, where everybody gathers around and tries to decide what they’re going to do for their summer holidays. And you argue about where you’re going to go. But we’re going to visit a house.

And we’re going to call them the Greenberg family, somewhere in a little village in Israel 3000 years ago. And in their little cottage, round about the dinner table, the family are all deciding what they’re going to do for a spring break holiday. Here’s dad, Dan Greenberg and his wife, Sarah, and the kids are there, Ben, Sam and Rachel.

And they’re all deciding what we’re going to do when it comes to our spring break holiday, where are we going to go? And Ben’s first one, he says, Oh, I think what we should do is we should go up to Haifa. We’ll go to Mount Carmel, springtime, it’ll be beautiful as we visit the vineyards, we can smell the new growth coming out the vines, we can even taste some of the vintage wines from the year before, that’d be a great holiday for a spring break. And then Sam speaks next, he says, I think what we should do is we’ll go up to Mount Hermon, we’ll get some late season skiing and it’ll be beautiful, it’ll be fresh just before the snowmelt starts.

What a great way to spend, get some exercise at the end of winter. And then Rachel says, no, no, no, I think what we should do is, and mum will be with me this, we’ll go and we’ll have a beach holiday, we’ll go to Tel Aviv, we’ll go to Joppa, we can top up a tan at the start of the year, we can visit some of the tanneries, Simon and Sons, I hear they’re going to be around for a thousand years. Okay, their handbags are the best.

Okay, we’ll do some shopping in the bazaars and we’ll get a tan on the beach. And then dad says, no, no, no, no, no, no. Right, kids, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but what we’re going to do is it’s time you lot learned a bit of history.

And at the Passover time, we’ll go and celebrate Passover with our auntie Helen down in a town called Gilgal. Down there we can explore the ruins of Jericho, and you can learn a bit about that. And we’ll spend some time with our aunt down in Gilgal, down in the plain, down in the valley, near the Dead Sea.

And then when the boys, when we all have to go up to the Jerusalem for the Feast of Unleavened Bread and present ourselves as God has told us we must do, then the girls can have a spa day at the Dead Sea. And how about that? That’ll be a great holiday. And so that’s what they do.

And so here we are, we’re watching with our mind’s eye, they pack up their packed lunches and, you know, Passover time comes around, Easter hasn’t happened yet, not due for another thousand years. And so they’re having their Passover feast, okay, with their aunt, and the boys all go up to Jerusalem, they come back down, and they decide to spend a day or two before they head back to their wee town, their wee village. And as they’re traipsing around the countryside and the outskirts of Gilgal, all of a sudden, they come to this massive monument.

And they see these 12 huge stones, big stones, all smooth, all set up there outside the town of Gilgal, near the river’s edge. Ben and Sam and Rachel look at each other, and they turn around and say, Dad, what’s this all about? And mum smiles, and then dad explains the story that we have just read today. Those 12 stones stood there, and the kids are like, this is a bit peculiar, bit different from the ruins of Jericho.

What does this mean? And so dad explains to them, well, it’s what God did to bring us into the land, he parted the waters of the Jordan, similar but different to how he brought us as a nation out of Egypt. And so he tells them the story of what took place. And he says that happened that New Year time, the first month, the New Year, the nation was on the east side, the other side of the Jordan, and all of them are waiting to come in, and God performed a miracle.

So now we’re going to get back into our time machine, bit of Doctor Who sounds, we’ll go a bit further back, and now we’re about 3,500, 3,700 years ago. Okay, and we’re now there at the very time when these events took place, that Daddy Dan and Mummy Sarah are explaining to the kids when they’re having their Passover spring break, about what takes place. And here we see nearly the population of Glasgow, pretty much, on the east side of the Jordan River.

And the Jordan River is, as we say in Scotland, it’s in spate, all right, it’s in flood, the flood plain is the river, it’s really rushing. And there’s all the population of Glasgow lined up on one side, okay, and then here’s Joshua, and he’s brought them to the river’s edge. And what I would say to you is that as they are lined up there, at the end of one era and the start of another era, as they face a new year, and they were facing a new year just as we face a new year today, we’re a few days in, that’s why we’re reading Joshua chapter 4, not chapter 1, today’s the 4th of January.

That there they are, all lined up, and there are a few things that must have been through their heads and must have been through their hearts, okay, as would face us today. If this is your first time in church, maybe what I’m going to say next might be applying to you, that’s why we have decided to try church and come along, just as much as it is to the very faithful people. But there are four threats to their psychological safety, as a nation, that speak to us today, as people here in 2026.

Four threats to their psychological safety. Now I’ve used that term because it’s quite a modern term that actually speaks to a lot of us, okay, we talk about psychological safety, but I guess in churchy speak you might say, oh it’s a threat to their faith. Well it is, but if you’re not feeling very psychologically safe, then you tend not to trust things or trust people, so it affects your faith.

So it’s in one sense a modern term that’s similar to, but not the same, as something that’s a threat to their faith. The first threat, when you think about it, is those nearly one million people, certainly several hundred thousand, they’re all lined up on the other side of the river, is that their tried and trusted leadership had gone. You think about what had happened for those people.

For 40 years they had been going through the wilderness, they’d had Aaron and Moses there, and they just seemed to always be there. The Aaron who had performed the atoning sacrifice year after year, as they went through that wilderness journey, Colin’s already referred to the Aaronic beard, okay, there he was, all white, he just always seemed to be there. When he died, he was 123.

Now six months ago, from where they’re lined up there in the riverbank, six months ago, Aaron dies. What’s going to happen to come before God? His son Phineas is taking on the role, but it’s just not quite the same. Aaron was always there, he’d come out of Egypt, he’s the man that went looking for Moses and brought him back to Egypt.

123 he dies, and then barely one month before, as they’re lined up in the riverbanks, Moses dies, and nobody finds his body. 120 years old, fit as a fiddle to the very end. Okay, everybody was impressed, barely anybody could outrun him, he just never seemed to get tired.

Where did he get his energy from? 120. God calls him up Mount Nebo and shows him the land, takes him home. Nobody finds his body.

(11:06 – 12:08)

What is the nation facing? These tried and trusted people of God. And it’s not just the fact that these were the people, these were the link to the past. You notice, we sometimes have that, there are people in the church, or people maybe in your family, there’s a grandparent who you’ve loved, who just knew how to say the right thing to you, to show you affection, or somebody you could go to who had that godly wisdom in the church, and they’re not there anymore.

They’ve died within the past year. Who are we going to speak to to answer that Bible question that you’ve got, or that tricky domestic problem to work through? Who can you go and see, speak that you’ve got confidence they will give you the right advice, or help broker a solution, or speak into your circumstances, or give the right advice? They’re not there, there’s this void that’s there. It’s not just the accomplishments that Moses and Aaron had done, but it was their personal experience, and their wisdom just goes when they’re no longer there.

(12:09 – 12:34)

Maybe you’re sitting here in church, and you’ve been disappointed by a Christian leader, or lack of support from the church, or in the church over the past year. Or as a younger person, you’re a bit fed up hearing about older Christians talking about the good old days, and things that happened. I get that at home all the time, right? The Billy Graham rallies, hundreds go forward, the queue’s six deep, half a mile around the Kelvin Hall.

(12:35 – 15:18)

I hear that nearly every weekend. You hear the same great stories of things that happened in the olden days, but what’s happening these days, it just seems a bit more bleak. For some of us, it’s just when you come to the end of the Christmas season, there’s all this hope and hype, in the run up, and afterwards you’re feeling a bit fat, and maybe drunk a little bit too much over the Christmas season, and you just go, is that it? I thought there was meant to be some sort of great uplifting experience, it just seemed to have gone, and gone very quickly.

The tried and trusted leadership have gone. That was a threat to their psychological safety. As a country, Joshua and Caleb were the oldest two people standing on that riverbank.

Everybody else is 52 years of age or under. A couple of hundred thousand people, no one’s older than 52. There may be some people in this audience round about that age, and I think the psychological threat that we’re talking about here, when this older generation or older people with their godly wisdom goes, there is a threat that it’s difficult to tell other people about that you feel in your heart and in your chest as well.

It’s often an unspoken threat to middle-aged people who are Christians. When an older generation goes, I hope it doesn’t mind me saying this, but I remember having a conversation with David Wiley after his father died a couple of days later, and he said, you know, he says it’s a very sobering thing when your parent goes, he says, because they’ve been the buffer between you and death, and now you’re that for your children. When that buffer goes, all of a sudden you’re meant to be the person that’s got the advice, the leader, you’re meant to be the leadership, you’re middle-aged, and you’ve still got questions to figure out, and there can be that psychological threat to you.

It can shake your faith. The second psychological threat is their understanding and view of painful life experiences with shifting. Now, the first one was a threat to the middle-aged, this is often a threat to young people, I think, and particularly young people from Christian households or religious households.

There was no one left, apart from maybe Joshua and Caleb, probably no one left of those several hundred thousand people standing that bank who had a scar on their body from the lash of Egypt. That generation had died out, who’d had to make bricks, calluses in their hands, the mark of the whip in their body. Joshua and Caleb maybe had it, but all the rest of the people who were standing there, their difficult life experiences just seemed to have come directly from God.

(15:19 – 16:53)

God didn’t seem so caring there. Their parents spoke about the hard taskmaskers, things we had to do. God came and rescued us because he saw our state and our need.

We prayed, we cried out, he came down, he rescued us, he brought plagues to our oppressors. Well, they have gone through an experience where it just seems that everything that goes wrong in this group has come directly from the hand of God. Snakes, serpents, sand pits that swallow up entire families, quail that’s poisonous, kills us.

It just seems that God seems a bit more harsh to that generation, a bit more strict than maybe what the generation before had experienced. Hardships and difficulties seem to be directly from God over the past 40 years. This is often a concern I think sometimes of young people that you’re missing out on some things that friends who are not Christians seem to have a bit more fun.

They seem to be a bit more of a relaxed atmosphere within households that are not religious or not Christian. And it just seems that some of the fun things in life are denied to you. You’ve yet to experience the bitter disappointment of life in the world.

And I get that because I’ve been through a lot of that myself growing up in a Christian family. But as I get older and I meet people who have not come from Christian backgrounds or families, they are so delighted to have become Christians. There is something really liberating and comforting that takes place.

(16:54 – 17:35)

So I don’t want you to think that your situation if you’re a Christian young person in a Christian household is not understood. And if you have concerns and think my parents just don’t get me or I’ve got some worries and concerns about this, it’s not seeming very fair, or I’m not feeling as satisfied as the preachers tell me I should be feeling satisfied, then come and chat. And if not with me or Colin, one of the older women who’s involved in YF, there’s Alison Gilbraith, I’m quite sure I’ll be delighted to chat to you, or other people too.

These are real experiences. I’m not going to deny that for people. The third threat was God’s daily provision was about to stop.

(17:36 – 18:45)

That’s a threat for older people. For 40 years, God had given manna day by day, and now it’s going to stop in a matter of days. Less than one week left before the manna finishes.

No backups. What you’ve gotten used to, and seemed to always be there, as something comforting and provided by God, God has now told you it’s going to go in less than one week. And that can make you feel a little bit threatened when things are going to change in later life.

But it’s not that God’s care changes, it’s just replaced with something different. It will still require some personal commitment. You’re going to experience the new grain in the new world. Okay.

You’re going to drink things, and you’re going to eat things that you had never got access to before. Your palate is going to have to broaden. But what God had given you before is going to change.

He’s no less caring and no less providing, but you have gotten used to the same way of things being provided to you. And it’s going to change. And that can be a threat to the old.

(18:45 – 20:47)

And then the fourth thing that’s a threat to the psychological safety of the people and to us today, as we face a new year, is that battles were promised. Battles were promised. Jericho with its fortifications was right there in front of them, across that river, seemingly impregnable.

It was like something from Lord of the Rings. Okay, there they are lined up, and there’s the glistening waters in front of them. The sun’s behind them, or maybe off to their left.

And across the other side of the plain, there’s this fortress that is the city of Jericho. There’s a risk of failing to appreciate the psychological balance that is in the believer’s favour. And you look at this and you say, this is going to be really difficult to do.

I don’t know what we’re going to do as a church where there’s a particular outreach in an area we’re going to do. There’s some new evangelistic effort or a programme we want to start to encourage people to get involved with, and it can just seem it’s going to be really difficult to do this. Or when you’re speaking to other people and witnessing about your Christian faith.

Battles are promised in the year ahead, and it can get you a little bit nervous about how are we going to do this. But what we forget as Christians is that the psychological balance is so heavily tipped in our favour that we often lose track of that. Let me give you an example.

No matter how timid you may be as a Christian in living a godly life, or how fearful and timid you may be about giving your testimony and telling people about Jesus, and the transformation that can take place with him as your saviour, there are four things that are actually an encouragement to you in your favour. The first is truth is ultimately irrefutable. When I was a kid in high school, I remember having a big, not so much argument, but discussion with the guy who was the atheist in my class about whether God had created us or not.

(20:48 – 21:18)

And his argument was, what about junk DNA, Jonathan? And I said, well, maybe it’s got a purpose. Well, there was laughs of scorn and all the rest of it. Now the same guy is putting in grants to do research on junk DNA because it’s actually active and does stuff.

Okay. My point with that story is that truth is irrefutable. Stick to it in spite of the fact that it looks as if it’s not working in your favour.

Just tell the truth. Tell the truth of the gospel. Truth is ultimately irrefutable.

(21:19 – 22:37)

The second thing is the Holy Spirit is working and active. One of the things I was delighted about over the past year never ceases to amaze me and thrill me is when you have these conversations and you realise that God’s already been at work in people’s lives. You sit next to people on the bus, you have a chat, and wait a minute, I wasn’t expecting this.

I’ll pray for you. Oh, thanks very much. God’s already been at work in people’s lives.

The Holy Spirit is working and active. The third thing, and I thank Rico Tice for reminding me of this, not personally, of course, but years ago, was that when you share your faith with somebody, that person’s conscience is on your side. Did you know that? When you’re sharing your faith with somebody and explaining the gospel about how we need to repent, whether you’re not a Christian or whether you’re a Christian, there are things that we do need to confess and repent from.

Doesn’t matter what age you are, we do. But when you have to encourage people to do that or share your faith, that person’s conscience is working on your behalf. Their conscience is saying the same thing to them.

And God’s Holy Spirit’s already been at work. And then the fourth thing is, your personal experience and testimony, no one can take away. Doesn’t matter how clever the other person’s argument is, they can’t find the right words to say. Okay.

(22:38 – 22:54)

Whatever they say, you can say, I’ve lost that. I couldn’t find the right words to be able to answer all those questions. Doesn’t matter.

Nobody can take away your personal testimony of what God’s done in your life. That’s yours to enjoy. And that in turn also speaks to other people too.

(22:54 – 27:14)

The balance of psychological safety is in the believer’s favour. But if battles were promised, and that’s a threat to everyone’s psychological safety, it’s especially true for mothers. Whenever there’s a threat of war, mothers really fear the worst, rightly so.

And that’s true for spiritual mothers as well. We care very, very deeply for the young in the faith. I think, if I’m being honest, this is anecdotal, that my prayer life for people is particularly intense and quite emotionally weighted when it’s to do with praying for somebody who is on the cusp of becoming a Christian, or a person who has just recently explored the Christian faith for themselves.

And you can see this delicate, lovely, beautiful thing take place, and it’s so precious. And I’m very fervent in my prayers in that situation. Ashamedly, maybe more so than before they were becoming a Christian.

But spiritual mums and dads care really intensely about their children. The Apostle Paul says this in Galatians 4, My little children for whom I labour again in birth. Those pregnancy pains were there till Christ was formed in them.

Galatians 4.19. So when there’s a threat of battles ahead or problems that particularly like new or young Christians or people exploring the faith are exposed to, we’re especially worried for these people in case something upsets their faith. A spanner gets thrown in the works, they get tripped up, they get stumbled, or there’s a problem. Those four problems, and I’ve just selected those four, that the people faced on that side of the Jordan are truths that can affect us as Christians today in the local church, or if you’re just exploring church for the first time this year, particularly as we face a new year.

But if those were four threats to your faith, let me give you three truths that bring comfort and confidence for the year ahead. And in my best Andy Hunter voice I shall say very simply, very simply, God keeps his promises. God does, God keeps his promises.

He’s not restricted by time or by person. As they’re getting ready to cross over, God had already promised to guys called Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, you’re going to get this land, walk up and down everywhere you place the sole of your foot, it’s going to be yours. Is that never going to happen? Nope.

He says, well what’s going to happen is they’re going to go down to Egypt, they’ll be there 400, 450 years, and I’m going to bring them out of a mighty hand, and I’m going to bring them into the land. That’s my promise to you. God keeps his promises.

To the patriarchs, the patriarch is getting a bad name these days, but to the patriarchs of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, God keeps his promises. He keeps his promises for good. In fact, if you really think carefully about this, Joshua is standing on the riverbanks with all those people over there, okay, and he has got under his arm a box.

What’s in the box? Have you ever thought about what’s in the box that Joshua and Caleb are carrying with them? Do you know what’s in there? The bones of Joseph. My youngest brother Philip pointed this out to me one time. It’s the scene when the people were getting redeemed out of Egypt, okay, and there’s, it’s mayhem.

In the middle of the night, people are crying, firstborns slain, terror across that nation, and Moses says to them, ask your neighbours for some jewellery, and so the Jewish women are asking their neighbours, they are plundering, the Bible says, looting Egypt, okay. People say, take, take the jewels, get out of here. My so-and-so has died, okay.

Take it and get out. Take the money and get out. Everybody’s plundering their neighbours, getting jewellery from their neighbours.

What is Moses doing? Moses is off at the cemetery. He’s opening the sarcophagus, the bones of Joseph. We’ve made promises.

(27:14 – 28:59)

We’re going to a promised land. We’re out here and we’re taking the bones of Joseph with us. All that grand burial they had with Pharaoh for being the saviour of the nation? No.

He’s got them all wrapped up, and they’re out, and here’s Joshua and Caleb, and they’re getting ready to cross over, because Joseph said, God has made promises and he is going to do it. That was the faith and the confidence they had, but if it’s a comfort that God keeps his promises, it’s also sobering that he keeps other promises. As I mentioned earlier, everybody in that lineup, apart from Joshua and Caleb, was 52 years old or younger.

He did promise that none, none, none of the rebellious or unfaithful who were not prepared to believe that I can bring you in, none of you, not one, will come into the promised land, except Joshua and Caleb. None of you are coming in because you didn’t trust me that I could bring you in. God’s promises are sobering and serious.

They’re good to us. God says, the Lord Jesus says, I will never leave you, nor forsake you. There’s other promises we have which are amazing.

Hebrews chapter 4, let me read it, verses 8 and 9. For if Joshua had given them rest, then he would not afterwards have spoken of another day. Therefore, there remains therefore a rest for the people of God. All these great things that you and I today get access to as Gentile believers in the Lord Jesus that Joshua’s people didn’t get access to even back then.

(28:59 – 31:12)

There’s a promise, but there are also sobering promises. Do not be deceived. Bad company corrupts good morals.

Or, beware your sins will find you out. Or, for we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ that each one may receive the things done in the body, not our good intentions, but the things done in the body according to what he’s done, whether good or bad. But it is a comfort that God keeps his promises.

The second truth is that his presence makes all the difference in understanding his purposes. I think one of the problems we sometimes face, just like they faced at the time, was the why of the way and the purposes that’s often answered by his presence alone. I’ve often thought that when God first took them out of Egypt, and he sent the spies into the land, and Joshua and Caleb come back, and they’re carrying all those grapes, right? And they say, look at the bounty, it’s ours, let’s take it, okay? And then the other spies say no, and then the people believe the other spies.

They went directly in. But God has brought them this kind of funny long way around to come up, rather than coming up from what you call the Egypt-Gaza approach from the south, and then the people of the land will be fighting a rear guard action against the Israelites as they invade. God takes this funny way around up through what we now call Jordan to come in from the Jordanian side, and takes them up to this river that’s in full flow, and not at the very best, easy to cross, but he takes them there.

It just seems awkward, and why this difficult way? Why this long way around? Because there’s purpose in the way for the nation. God makes himself known in his method and his purposes. He brought them out of Egypt by parting the Red Sea, and he brings them into the land by stopping the flow of the water, essentially by parting the Jordan to bring them in as well.

(31:12 – 31:45)

And I think that one of the things that God does in point in doing this is to show them that there is a sense, there is a sense, and feel free to correct me or challenge me about this later on, that the wilderness was a bit of a parenthesis, as a kind of brackets experience, because God had given the opportunity of going straight into the land. It’s not that they didn’t learn things, there was no other important things from their wilderness time, but God parted the water to bring them out of Egypt, and he parts the water to get them in. The other thing I noticed is there was no sacrifice.

(31:46 – 32:41)

It’s interesting the things that are missing from going across. There was no new sacrifice needed to take place. Of all the sacrifices that they got, there was none to enter the land.

It’s almost as if the intention is for you to come out and straight in. And he does this, and he links them, that’s one of the points of the remembrance stones, to show that just as he had done it then, he parted the water to bring them in. At the risk of over-spiritualising this event, I need to be careful with this.

There is one or two things to think about in what took place. God’s presence goes down alone ahead of the people into the River Jordan, and as the soles of the feet of the priests touch the water, the water dries up. The water doesn’t swallow the priests and the ark, the water retreats from him, or from God’s presence.

(32:42 – 37:23)

The Jordan River is often thought of as being symbolic of separation and death. You only need to listen to a few old Negro spiritual songs. Mahalia Jackson, Get Away Jordan, I’m Going to Cross Over, See My Lord, what a classic. Okay.

Or songs like that. You know, the African American slaves, when they produced these songs, they sang about the slavery of Egypt. They didn’t sing about the Red Sea parting to get out, but they did sing about the crossing of the Jordan over into the promised land.

Because we very often see the Jordan River as being symbolic of death and separation. The symbol of death is dried up and withheld as far upstream as Adam. I don’t think it’s a mistake that that was the town.

The priest’s feet are firmly on dry ground, and all the saved cross over, and the presence didn’t come out until they were all in the promised land. What a picture of the Lord Jesus. Really lovely, isn’t it? But he’s the one who goes down into death.

He’s the one that deals with death as far back as Adam. The problem where, you know, death comes by sin, and it has entered in as far as back as Adam. And all downstream, it all just peters out.

While he’s there, it doesn’t swallow him, but he is there for the salvation of the people, to get them into the promised land. Now again, as I said, I don’t want to over-spiritualise it. There’s other things I think we could probably talk about over coffee.

But at the very least, that’s a lovely picture about what the Lord Jesus has done for us as Christians. In our community group, we were doing some Advent readings and just having a few reflections. And one of the ones that we thought about was the Lord Jesus as our saviour doesn’t just save us out of a bad situation, but a saviour saves all the way home into the promised land.

The Lord Jesus doesn’t rescue you from the penalty of your sin and the judgments or the problems in the world at large which we face, but he gives you this blessing into the promised land too. The third and final thing I’d like to say is, the truth is his power is available and effective and known. One of the points that Joshua makes, the Lord makes as well in this passage, is that from generation to generation, he meets their saving need and everyone’s.

They point out that the stones were set up so that every generation to come can ask the question and be told, not just that the Jordan River dried up that they might come in, but he did it just as he had done it to the Red Sea. For every generation to come, they were to learn that God was faithful in saving people generation by generation up until that point. It wasn’t just a one-shot deal, that it shows you that now, though there may be no Jordan Rivers to cross, that you can trust that he’s got the same power for one generation to bring them out and he’s got the same power to bring the next generation in that takes place.

The stones are set up to remind the young people in Israel that’s the truth. That’s the same thing for us. It speaks to us today.

In fact, one of the wonderful things in this passage is God points out the stones are set up so that all nations might understand and see the mighty hand of God in salvation. Even back then, 3,500 – 700 years before, God was already pointing out that all nations, even Gentile believers in 2026, can have that confidence. The same power is available that parted the Red Sea or dried up the Jordan generation by generation.

As the generations pass, even to now, that same power is still available. And for a purpose, it’s to be seen. His personal work in your life speaks to others that he is powerful.

If you don’t allow God’s power to work in your life, then you are depriving the rest of the world around of seeing what he’s like. The memorial stones reminded him that God’s power is always mighty and consistent in generation to generation, but he doesn’t keep doing the same thing as a proof that he’s powerful. He only does it when it’s actually needed.

(37:24 – 37:43)

The remembrance induced as final thought, reverence and worship from his people, just as all nations were to see and know his power, but to his people, it was to produce awe and reverence. And I think that’s what we’re going to do this morning. I’ll hand back to Colin.

(37:43 – 37:44)

Thank you.

The post Crossing Jordan, a New Year reminder – Joshua 4 appeared first on Greenview Church.

You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those in whom his favour rests. When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has told us about.

(0:25 – 1:43)

So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child. And all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.

But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told. Did any of you watch the FIFA World Cup draw a couple of weeks ago? Even if you don’t follow football, you probably caught wind of it.

One, because Scotland was in it for the first time in 28 years. And two, because in many people’s eyes, it was a rather bizarre spectacle. So if you never saw it before the draw was made, they not only spoke for an hour and a half about the glories of football, but they actually spent most of the time speaking of FIFA’s greater agenda, which apparently isn’t putting on football matches and it isn’t making lots of money.

(1:44 – 4:07)

But no, their greatest agenda is peace in the world. So committed are they to this that they even gave out the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize to a certain individual who they said was an exemplary peacemaker. Well, whatever you made of that, it shows that in 2026, peace is still a popular ideal.

Even if you thought the draw was daft, you probably agree with FIFA that world peace would be a great idea. Whether peace between nations or peace within communities or peace within our personal relationship circles, all sane people at least want peace in this world. And it’s into that longing that the Bible speaks this morning.

To a world dreaming of peace, the angels’ words ring out, glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth, peace to those on whom his favour rests. Words first spoken in the aftermath of the birth of Jesus, the son of God, the king to forever reign. He has just been born in humble surroundings in David’s royal town.

And as this unrecognised king spends his first night on planet earth, we are then whisked away by Luke, the author, to a nearby hillside. In a tale we know so well, shepherds were watching their flocks by night. When an angel of the Lord appeared to them in glory and announced to these trembling men the most fear-calming news imaginable.

Today in the town of David, a saviour has been born. To you, he is the Messiah, the Lord. You should go and have a look for yourselves.

(4:07 – 4:55)

There will be a sign that will mark him out. You will find a baby laid there in cloths in a manger bed. But even as the shepherds try to process this, just before they even have a chance to depart for Bethlehem, they are immediately interrupted in verse 13.

With great suddenness, a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel. An army of angels turns up, but it’s not to declare war, it’s to declare peace. And the song they sang is recorded for us in those beautiful words of verse 14.

(4:55 – 5:32)

As the Bible describes it, it’s a very short song. We do not know whether this is a summary of a longer song. And if it was a one-line chorus, you do wonder a number of things.

Did they sing it one time, or did they repeat it over and over? And you do wonder whether angels are good singers, and what tune they sang it to. And did they sing it as a four-part harmony? At least these are the thoughts that come into my brain. And yet the Bible tells us none of these things.

(5:33 – 6:28)

None of these things seem to be important for us to know, because evidently what is important here is the words and the content of the chorus. Words which were on the one hand, the angels’ authentic praise to God. This is not some kind of staged thing.

But on the other hand, words which presumably were sung in public for the hearing and the blessing of the shepherds. After all, this angel chorus could have been hidden from human sight and could have been kept from human hearing. But God makes the chorus public so that people on earth, the recipients of this great blessing, might better understand the impact of the birth of this child.

(6:30 – 12:37)

And here is the impact, that there is now a marvellous opportunity, an unprecedented opportunity for peace. And I just find this so striking, really, just as I’ve reflected on this text again. You know, the angels had only one line to sum up Christmas.

They only had one line to summarise the difference that Christmas makes. And they chose as their central theme, the theme of peace. The difference that Christmas makes is peace.

But what did they say about it? And what does it mean for us, whether we are people outside of the Christian faith or whether we would consider ourselves to be part of it? Well, in the rest of my time, I want to look at peace from three angles, these kind of overlap together. The first one, though, is maybe slightly off-piste. The first one is this.

First, before we get to peace, first, glory to God. First, glory to God. It’s all too tempting when we read this angel chorus to gravitate to the second line more than the first.

I mean, we quote the first line, we certainly include it on the Christmas cards. It’s a rather nice line. Glory to God in the highest heaven.

We like this, don’t we? And yet the part of the chorus that really sings to us, I think, is the second part of the chorus, peace on earth. That second part seems relevant. That second part sounds world-changing.

That’s the part that FIFA would like to speak about rather than the first part. And yet it is a simple observation, but an important one, that the angels don’t start their chorus with peace. They start their chorus with praise.

They don’t begin with something happening on earth, but with something being offered to heaven. Glory to God in the highest heaven. That is, praise God, worship God.

That’s what it means to give glory to God in the place where God alone dwells, in the highest heaven. I assume here that the angels are using language that the shepherds and we can understand. It’s been said that heaven is a place that isn’t really a place, at least not a place in the physical observable universe.

You cannot get into a spaceship and fly, you know, if you just flew far enough, you might eventually find heaven. No, this is the spiritual realm. This is the domain beyond physical created reality.

It’s the domain of God. And again, using language that makes sense to us, the angels glorify God in the highest heaven, because in the domain where God dwells, He is exalted above all. He’s in the highest place.

He’s on the highest throne. This is what it means to be God. And what gets me here is the great disparity of these two things, such a remarkable gap of difference.

Here the angels are, they’ve descended to this ordinary little hillside with sheep baaing in the background and shepherds cowering in the dirt, and yet their praise is soaring up to the highest point in existence. And this reminds us that Christmas, this story of God coming in human form, it is not just for human good, but it is for God’s glory. And it’s not that God’s praise and our peace are two things that are at odds.

No, as God sends His Prince of Peace to the world, He is rightly offered in return the worship that is due for this great act of grace. And actually, if you go back in the Bible, if you go to any place where God does an amazing and marvellous thing, whether it’s at creation or whether it’s at acts of salvation, there’s always a song that follows it. There’s always a chorus of some kind.

It’s impossible for God to do something of this magnitude and yet not recognise it in the praise that He’s due. And so as God unfolds His ultimate peace plan, as He does His supreme act in all of history of salvation, it is inevitable that the very first thing that happens on earth is a song of praise. And the carols, I mean, it’s not explicit in the passages, but the carols that we sing are surely right to encourage us.

I think the instinct’s right that we should join in with the angel chorus. We should see their song as an invitation for us to sing. This is part of the dynamic.

I mean, we’ve sung it probably hundreds of times, but have you ever noticed that dynamic in Hark! The Herald Angels Sing? There’s a whole verse about joining in with the angels. Joyful, all you nations rise. Join the triumph of the skies.

(12:38 – 16:09)

With the angelic host proclaim, Christ is born in Bethlehem. And as Christmas rushes upon us, this certainly has caused me to pause and ask myself as to whether in my heart I am joining in with the chorus of the angels. And do I have the posture of worship as I consider what Christmas is about? Or am I taken up with lesser things and smaller glories? It would be a sad thing, wouldn’t it, if something that is lovely about this time of year our generosity to other people was somehow contradicted by our stinginess towards God, wouldn’t it? We’re so generous to our families, our friends, even our work colleagues at this time of year, but oh, if that were contradicted by a stinginess in our worship.

And so as we carve the Christmas turkey and spend a little time by ourselves over the holidays, where we really have no excuse to not have the space and the time and the thought to offer our worship, I wonder if we’ll take the opportunity in the quietness of our hearts, in times of prayer, in our words, in our songs, turning on music in the carols and just singing along from our hearts. And if we need a theme to help us do that, then it’s given to us here. Second point is the peace on earth, peace on earth.

Now, I think it is important, particularly when you just have a phrase or a single verse, to remember when we read our Bible that Bible words always have a Bible history. Bible words always have a Bible history. And so as we think back throughout the Bible, as we think of this theme of peace, we realise that the whole of the Old Testament has this theme of peace. And you discover when you do that, you discover when you look at that, that peace is not just the absence of war.

It is a positive concept, not just the absence of a negative concept. Peace in the Bible is the presence of God’s blessing and harmony and joy. It is the world as it should be in relationship with its Creator.

It’s basically Genesis chapters 1 and 2 before all of the mess. That’s peace. And therefore, peace in Scripture is something which always flows out of a harmonious relationship between us and God, the Creator.

If you’re new to the Christian faith, you need to understand this is the basic diagnosis the Bible gives of the human problem. It’s that bit of Genesis 3 when we come to it, isn’t it, that humans chose to rebel against their Maker, and we’ve chosen to turn our back on our Creator. This is the cause of the lack of peace.

(16:10 – 17:10)

This is the reason for alienation, because we think that independence from God and giving glory to ourselves rather than Him is the way to go in life. And this is why in Romans 5 when Paul is summarising the gospel, the good news of the faith, he says, we have been justified through faith, and we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul’s summarising the whole of the problem we faced and the solution.

The whole problem we faced is that we are not at peace with God. We’re not justified before Him, but through Jesus Christ, we have come to a place of righteousness and peace. And the way that the Bible sees it is that this restoration of peace with God becomes then like a spring that flows downstream into our human relationships with other people.

(17:11 – 17:40)

And this is really the point of the promise of Isaiah 9, that great Christmas text, as Isaiah promises that one day a prince of peace will come into the world. It’s to produce this peace with God, this peace then between one another. But you might say, well, we don’t really see this peace as we look around the world.

(17:41 – 19:09)

If Jesus has brought peace, then why don’t we see it? And I think that’s a very legitimate question. I think the answer is that you need to look in the right place. You need to know where to start looking.

And I think the Bible would say that the place to start looking is in the lives of God’s people, the people of faith, those who have already begun to have that personal peace with God, that relationship restored, and therefore that calm assurance that they have in life, even as they go through chaotic circumstances, that it is well with my soul. And so we start by looking there, and then we see hopefully something of that peace in the community of the church. Not perfectly, not even close, but really.

Paul speaks of this in Ephesians 4 verse 3. He speaks of the church maintaining the unity of peace in the bond of the Spirit. What does this look like? It looks like people who would never normally get along in human terms, and yet they get along. We can start to see peace if we look to these places.

(19:11 – 20:21)

And yet it is true, we know it’s true, that the fullness of peace hasn’t come. Peace between God and man, seen visibly. Peace between man and man, perfectly.

Peace between nation and nation, consistently. Peace between humans and the rest of creation. The fullness of peace awaits a future day.

And we pray for, as we did this morning, the cessation of wars. We strive for harmony below, but we know that these conflicts are just a symptom of a deeper problem, and that they will only be finally resolved when the Prince of Peace returns. But the question we need to ask ourselves right now, in light of that big picture, is, do we have peace with God now? Do we know this? Do we have this? Are we at peace with God this morning? There is no more important thing for you to be.

(20:25 – 20:51)

And at what can be sometimes an emotional and, let’s face it, fractious time of year, will we work hard at the downstream element of that? Working out that peace, and it’s hard at times, in our relationships with other people. First, glory to God. Second, peace on earth.

(20:53 – 21:24)

But the third thing is really the context in which this happens. Thirdly, we’re going to think about how peace is resting on the undeserving. Resting on the undeserving.

Look at verse 14 again. And on earth, peace to those on whom his favour rests. What’s clear from the wording here, in the context, is that these are words of grace, mercy, and undeserved favour.

(21:26 – 21:45)

Because there is nothing special about these shepherds. The commentators on Luke go in different directions sometimes on this. Some of them claim that the shepherds were particularly pious people, and that’s why the angels were sent to them, because they were super godly.

(21:45 – 24:17)

Other people, you read them, they go the opposite direction. They say shepherds were particularly rotten people, you know, and you hear all this stuff about God sending the angels to the worst of the worst. But as far as what the text itself says, we’re only told of their profession, and we’re told nothing of their character.

I think it’s better to see this as the shepherds being the everyman and everywoman. The point is not that they are particularly distinctive in their character, but rather they are representative of common humanity who are equally undeserving of God’s favour. The Lord appeared to these common men, and he spoke to them of a peace given to them through a favour that now rests on them.

They haven’t earned this. This is not a lifetime shepherding achievement award, but a very pointed statement that the grace of God rests on people who can’t possibly have any claim on God at all. See, that’s the beauty of grace, but it’s also the battle of grace for many people, because what grace means is that you and I can have no claim on God.

We can have no argument with God to say that I am worthy and deserving of the blessings that you are giving, whether it’s the life you give, or the salvation, or the peace, or the new identity, or the family, all the great blessings of knowing God as His children. There is no claim I can put on God and say, I am worthy of all these things. This made me think of Jesus telling the parable, you might remember, of two men who went up to a temple to pray.

And one of the men was a very religious chap, and when he got there to the church that day, the Bible says he prayed about himself. Now, that’s quite a summary of someone’s prayer life, isn’t it? He prayed about himself. He had no sense of the greatness of God, only a sense of the greatness of himself.

(24:18 – 25:42)

And so he never grasped what that rogue of a man at the back corner of the temple who was cowering and hiding, and he had his face to the floor, and he was beating his chest. He never noticed that man who grasped that the only way he could receive favour was by mercy, not by merit. This is a baffling thing for many.

It’s a trip hazard that stops many people coming to genuine faith. And I wonder if the shepherds that day were listening to this announcement to them, looking over their shoulder and thinking, is this really for us or is it for someone else? Could we really be the people on whom God’s favour rests? Maybe we could be. Maybe God could be that gracious.

Maybe salvation is a gift from God. Maybe the infinitely most important present this Christmas is not one you will buy or receive from another person, but the gracious gift of a Saviour. But notice this is not an automatic thing.

(25:44 – 26:04)

You might think that from the way it’s stated, that this piece then just sort of automatically comes to everyone everywhere in the world. But evidently, that’s not so when you read the rest of Luke. You come to chapter 10 and Jesus sends out his disciples on a little mission trip, and they go into these different villages where obviously they’re going to need somewhere to stay.

(26:05 – 26:29)

And Jesus says, now go to a house and when you enter the house, say to the house, peace be upon you. And Jesus says, if someone is there who promotes peace, your peace will rest on them. And if not, if they kick you out, your peace will return to you.

(26:30 – 29:13)

It’s the very same principle here in Luke 2. These particular shepherds heard the announcement. They showed themselves to be people of peace because they responded in faith and thankfulness, and they hurried their way to Bethlehem. You see, they responded.

That’s the key point. There is a peace that is offered, but it only rests on the believing. If it is rejected, it returns to the sender.

And so again, in this series on Christmas nostalgia, as we think back to maybe what might seem more peaceful times in the past and we long for peace in the world, the greatest question this morning is whether the peace of God is resting on our lives or whether that peace that has been offered has been sent back and returned to sender. Like an unwanted Christmas card or an unwanted gift. Because we’ve said, not here, not now, not me.

But if we have said, yes here, yes now, yes me, then like the shepherds, we become the people of peace who promote peace and proclaim it to those around us. And we seek to live as the people of peace in an expression of that to each other. FIFA, but let’s not just bang on FIFA’s door with this, and all of the greatest leaders in the world do not have the answers to how peace comes in this world.

They don’t have the answers. But the most ordinary person who listens to the chorus of the angels can know the answer and say, glory to God in the highest. Let’s pray.

Father, thank you that we, not by our smarts and merits, we can know today how peace comes to this world. We pray that we would be the people of peace, the people on whom that peace rests by amazing grace. Help us to respond to that.

Help us to rejoice in that. Help us, Lord, to praise you for that. And we ask this in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

The post Longing for Peace – Luke 2V8–20 appeared first on Greenview Church.

This is the last sermon in our series on the Spirit. And if you’ve been at all of these, or most of these, you could give yourself a pat on the back because we’ve travelled a long way and covered a lot of ground in this series. We’ve thought about the person and deity of the Spirit.

(0:22 – 0:43)

We’ve thought about the Spirit in the Old Testament. And we’ve thought about the Spirit in the life of Jesus and in the church and in the life of the Christian. It’s been a short, but a very sweeping series, a kind of overview, really, of what the Bible says on the Spirit.

(0:44 – 0:58)

And this evening, we come to the end. We come to the end of the series, but also the end of the Bible timeline. And so I’d like to read a few verses as we begin.

(0:59 – 1:24)

First of all, from Ephesians chapter one, Ephesians one. And we’re going to read verses 13 and 14 of Ephesians one, page 1173, if you’re using the church Bible. Paul is speaking here to outsiders, non-Jews, people like us.

(1:25 – 2:00)

And he says this in Ephesians one, 13. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit, guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession to the praise of his glory.

(2:02 – 2:39)

And then if you want to flick over to the last book of the Bible, to Revelation, and a couple of verses in Revelation 22, page 1251, Revelation 22, verses 16 and 17, verse 16. I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David and the bright morning star.

(2:40 – 2:52)

The spirit and the bride say, come. And let the one who hears say, come. Let the one who is thirsty come.

(2:53 – 3:09)

And let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life. This is God’s inspired and holy word. It was March, 2020.

(3:10 – 3:20)

We were on the brink of lockdown. And I was attending a concert. It was a Friday night concert with the Christian musician, Andrew Peterson.

(3:21 – 3:30)

The guy who wrote the song, is he worthy, question, answer. Yes, he is. Well, he was playing a final concert.

(3:30 – 3:46)

He was cutting short his tour in the UK because of COVID and trying to hopefully get back in to the US the next day. And if you remember that time, everything was about to shut down. Everything felt incredibly uncertain.

(3:47 – 4:05)

And I’ll never forget something Andrew Peterson said that night. He said, Christians are the people who know that everything will be all right in the end. And he said, that last part is really important.

(4:07 – 4:21)

It may not be all right tomorrow. It may not be all right for the rest of your life. But the Christian hope is that it will be all right in the end.

(4:23 – 4:43)

I guess we easily become familiar with this unique perspective. We easily forget the unique perspective that Christians have of the future. How do people outside the Christian faith view the future? Here’s a few things that came to my mind.

(4:43 – 5:02)

I think first of all, often anxiously. They just worry about the future, worry what’s gonna happen in the world, worry what’s gonna happen in their lives. And so secondly, many of them therefore want to bury their heads in the sand.

(5:03 – 5:14)

Just live for today. They are oblivious about the future. Or thirdly, there are people who are a little more positive than that.

(5:15 – 5:32)

But the positivity is only short-term dreams, dreams that only reach the horizon of this life. And that’s it. Let’s be honest, we as Christians are capable of all of these perspectives.

(5:33 – 5:46)

We sometimes worry, we sometimes bury our heads in the sand, and we sometimes have short-term goals. But we have another perspective. We have an additional perspective.

(5:47 – 6:05)

We have a unique perspective. We look to the future believing it will be all right in the end. And what I want us to see tonight is that this wouldn’t be true without the work of the Holy Spirit.

(6:06 – 6:43)

It will be all right in the end because of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit who lives in us now, who helps us now, will take us from now into a blessed and joyful future. But how does the Spirit do this? What role does the Spirit have in your future and in mine as a believer? Well, let’s consider three ways in which the Spirit shapes our future.

(6:44 – 7:00)

Number one, the Spirit guarantees our future. The Spirit is our future guarantee. That’s what we learn from Ephesians chapter one.

(7:01 – 7:34)

In verses 13 and 14, which we read together, Paul says that the moment someone believes the gospel, they are marked in Christ with the seal of the Holy Spirit. Now, we need to get this illustration and try and understand this image that Paul is using. Back in those days in the Roman world, in the first century, a seal was an identifying mark of ownership.

(7:35 – 8:14)

A seal was a symbol carved into stone or wood or maybe pressed into hot wax. And that seal, that symbol, would tell the people who saw it that this object, this letter, this monument belongs to the person whose seal it is. And so what Paul is saying is this, that when faith starts to dawn in a person’s heart, that person immediately receives the mark of God’s ownership.

(8:15 – 8:40)

They are marked out in the world as God’s possession through the seal of the Holy Spirit. But there’s even more than that because this belonging to God now, Paul says actually has future implications. And this is what Paul then develops.

(8:40 – 8:58)

He kind of goes a step further with the next illustration, that of a deposit. On the face of it, it looks a very different image to that of a seal. But actually a deposit in the Roman world was also linked with ownership, possession.

(8:59 – 9:27)

A deposit was not a casual thing. Don’t think here of maybe when there’s maybe a group of friends and someone buys a few tickets for the rugby and they pay out and they start inviting people, would you like a ticket? And maybe someone says, yeah, I don’t have all the money now, but here’s 20 pounds, I’ll pay you the rest later. And maybe it will be paid later or maybe they’ll pull out.

(9:28 – 9:42)

And maybe if the friend’s very kind, they might even give them the deposit back. This deposit was not that kind of deposit. No, this deposit was, if you like, a legal deposit.

(9:43 – 10:08)

It’s kind of like when I went and bought my car a few months ago and I signed the contract for the car and I signed up to a whole series of payments, but they also said, you need to put down a deposit in order to purchase the car. And so you see in that context, it’s a legal thing. It commits me to future payments and it commits me to future obligations.

(10:09 – 10:23)

And kind of the same way it is now, it was the same then. The moment you put the deposit down, you already owned the item. And so this is the image that Paul is using here.

(10:25 – 10:52)

He is saying, not only are you owned by God now, the seal, but actually God has put a deposit down on you. You are owned by him now, but the deposit of the spirit guarantees something even better down the line. God owns me now, but he has committed himself to future obligations towards me.

(10:54 – 11:33)

And what is it that the deposit guarantees in the future? Well, Paul doesn’t spell it out here in its entirety, but the rest of the New Testament does and it’s glorious. The whole of the new heavens and earth, the whole of the stuff we’re gonna be coming on to in the next couple of points, the resurrection body and so on. And maybe it’s something we realise more at this time of year, maybe when we come to the end of a period of time, the end of a year, and we think back and we think of what’s happened.

(11:34 – 12:16)

And we see just how much change can happen over the course of just a year. People that have departed from us this year, circumstances of health or job or relationships that have changed unexpectedly just this year, the older you get, the more you realise that nothing in this life is guaranteed except the final fulfilment of God’s glorious promises. That’s the one thing and the only thing that is guaranteed .

(12:17 – 12:33)

And it is the Holy Spirit who guarantees it. So what does the Holy Spirit have to do with my future? He guarantees it. He guarantees that it will be all right in the end.

(12:35 – 12:56)

But how will that translate into reality? How will that actually play out in history? Well, that brings us on to our second and our third thing. And the second and third thing are things that the Spirit will do. The seal and the deposit’s true now, but these things are what he’s going to do in the future.

(12:56 – 13:09)

So here’s the second thing. The Spirit will be the reason for our future resurrection. The Spirit will be the reason for our future resurrection.

(13:11 – 13:25)

And the passage we’re looking at here is over in Romans chapter eight. Romans eight. I want to look at a particular, I mean, there’s tonnes of good stuff in this chapter, but I wanna look at a particular verse.

(13:26 – 13:53)

And incidentally, if you’re wanting to follow up and just do more reflection in the Spirit, Romans eight would not be a bad place to go outside of maybe the farewell discourse. It’s one of the, it’s probably the most comprehensive teaching on the Spirit as it covers the past, the present, and the future. But I want to zoom in on verse 11 of Romans eight and just look at one particular point.

(13:53 – 14:33)

Paul says, if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you. This is basically the next step to what we thought about a moment ago. We just thought about the Holy Spirit living in us now, the seal and the deposit, the mark of God’s present ownership.

(14:34 – 15:08)

And Paul now says, because of this, because the Spirit is living in you, you have been marked out for a future resurrection. Now, it’s not exactly the same thing, but this reminded me of, we visited one of these massive war memorial graveyards in France. And if you’ve ever been to these, they’re remarkable places, thousands and thousands of mostly crosses.

(15:09 – 15:47)

Those that come from countries like the UK, but also other symbols reflecting different religions, different belief systems. I understand that many of those people that had the crosses weren’t necessarily Christian believers, but I thought of that kind of image, that sort of idea that it’s as if there’s a mark on a grave of a Christian that says, this person belongs to God. They followed the Jesus of the cross.

(15:48 – 16:03)

They possessed the Holy Spirit. And therefore, on the day of resurrection, it is they who will be raised to eternal life. That’s something of what Paul is saying here.

(16:03 – 16:25)

The Holy Spirit is the mark on the Christian believer. Now, in the way that he describes it here, he pictures the father as being the one who is ultimately raising us from the dead. But of course, all that God does is a Trinitarian act.

(16:26 – 16:38)

We saw that when we thought about creation a few weeks ago. We saw the fathers involved, the sons involved, and the spirit. But the same is also true when it comes to the resurrection in the future.

(16:39 – 16:56)

The father, the son, and the spirit will all be involved. From one point of view, the father will raise us. The same father who raised his son from the dead will be the ultimate cause of resurrection.

(16:57 – 17:16)

And yet the father will do so through the voice of his son. Jesus makes this clear in John 5. Jesus talks about the end of history and people coming out of graves in response to his voice. Listen to this.

(17:17 – 17:54)

The dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. So the father will raise us through the voice of his son and because of the fact that we are marked by his spirit. And I think we can also presume, given that the spirit is the life giver in the whole of the Bible, that the spirit will be involved in the actual empowerment and transformation of our future resurrection.

(17:56 – 18:14)

It’s because the spirit lives in us, and notice this emphasis, that our mortal bodies will be raised. Our mortal bodies will be raised. The same bodies that die will be raised.

(18:15 – 18:44)

The same body will be raised. The Christian hope isn’t that we will float around like a ghost in the new creation, but that our once mortal bodies will rise again imperishable. People today are obsessed with looking young, at slowing down ageing, and in trying to maintain a forever strong body.

(18:45 – 19:12)

But as much as there are good and healthy habits, our hope is not in the preservation of our body. Our hope is not in some humanistic, godlike reversal of inevitable mortality. Like a crazy thing I heard recently of a man who was on a podcast who claimed that he was involved in de-ageing people, de-ageing them.

(19:13 – 19:29)

No. The Christian hope for this mortal body lies in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit who have promised an almighty resurrection. This is the clarity that Christians have.

(19:30 – 19:52)

Not a shadowy hope of some vague afterlife. Not the cold comfort of the humanist trope that we will all carry on in some kind of recycled atomic form. The clear and confident and concrete hope of our faith is a resurrected body.

(19:53 – 20:03)

This is the wonderful hope. This is the hope that sets Christian thinking apart. And without the Holy Spirit, that would not be sure.

(20:04 – 20:22)

So number one, the Spirit guarantees our future. And then number two, the Spirit will bring it about through our future resurrection. But number three, as we take this on right to the end, here’s the third thing the Spirit will do.

(20:22 – 20:46)

The Spirit will maintain our new creation blessings. The Spirit will maintain our new creation blessings. Now, I must admit that when I started to think about this, I wondered if there would be much to say about the future state and the Holy Spirit.

(20:48 – 21:13)

Because in the face of it, you might be tempted to think that the Spirit won’t be doing very much in the new creation. The Spirit seems to be the one who helps us get there rather than being the one who will do much when we’re there. And you could take that, perhaps, if you just skim read the end of the Bible.

(21:13 – 21:31)

That might be your assumption. Because in Revelation chapter 21 and 22, which is the climax of the Bible and the clearest description of the new creation in the Bible, there is a curious fact. Here’s the curious fact.

(21:32 – 21:59)

The Holy Spirit isn’t directly mentioned in the description of the new creation. God the Father is there, God the Son is there, the Lamb. The church is there and the new creation is there, but there is no mention of the Holy Spirit being there, at least not explicitly.

(22:01 – 22:31)

Now, you might say there is a mention of the Holy Spirit in chapter 22 and in verse 17. But let’s have a look at it again. What is actually being said in that verse? It’s the Holy Spirit saying along with the church, the bride in the imagery, it’s the Holy Spirit now crying out with the church on earth now and agreeing with the church, Jesus, come soon.

(22:33 – 22:43)

That’s a now thing, that’s not a new creation thing. The Spirit agrees with our cry. Whenever we are saying, Lord Jesus, please come soon, He’s crying out with us.

(22:45 – 23:10)

But in the vision itself, there isn’t an explicit mention of the Spirit. The Spirit is the one through whom John is seeing the vision of the new heavens and earth, but he’s not in the vision. Now, what are we to make of this? I came across an essay that someone had written on the Holy Spirit in the Bible.

(23:10 – 23:33)

Very good essay, the guy kind of overviewed all the way and he had massive things to say about some sections of the Bible. And it was really striking when I got to the bit on the new creation, he had like, I’m not kidding, a paragraph about this big. And he said, perhaps the Holy Spirit’s main role might be to continue to indwell God’s people.

(23:34 – 23:53)

That was what he said. Is there anything more we can say than that? Let me give you a couple of reflections as we finish that I hope are solid things to say. First of all, the Spirit being more of a background figure in the role of redemption.

(23:54 – 24:16)

The one who helps us see the glory of the Father and the Son. If that is his role in redemption, then it’s hardly surprising that when we read of the new creation, the Spirit, in a sense, will continue to play that background role and he will shine the spotlight on the glory of the Father and in the glory of the Son. He’s been doing that through the whole of history.

(24:16 – 24:43)

Why would he not continue to do that when we come to the end of the Bible? The Spirit loves to put the Father and the Son to the forefront. And so it’s just in keeping with his MO that in this final vision, he’s not prominent, but he is assumed. Then a second reflection comes from the Scottish theologian Sinclair Ferguson.

(24:43 – 25:09)

And if you want to read a bit of a more in-depth book on the Holy Spirit that’s also not super difficult to read, I would recommend Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spirit. Absolutely fantastic book. But Ferguson points out that the Spirit throughout the Bible, we just mentioned this a moment ago, the Spirit is the source of all physical and all spiritual life.

(25:09 – 25:28)

I mean, both of those are seen in both Testaments, but particularly in the Old Testament, the physical life parts emphasised in creation. And in the New Testament, the spiritual life that comes from the Spirit is emphasised. John three, very famously, we are born again by the Holy Spirit.

(25:29 – 25:59)

And so Ferguson says that the idea of the Spirit being the life giver is so well-established in the Bible that it hardly needs to be said at the end. It is implied that the Holy Spirit is sustaining and continuing and maintaining all physical and all spiritual life for the entirety of the new creation. So we don’t need Revelation 21 and 22 to tell us that.

(26:01 – 26:31)

And then thirdly, I came across Kevin DeYoung and he kind of went along the same line, but he just expanded out what Ferguson was saying a little more. Let me just read a quote from the American pastor and writer, Kevin DeYoung, rather than try and put him into my own words. He says, before studying the Heidelberg Catechism, which if you don’t know, that’s a teaching tool for doctrine that they wrote around about the time of the Reformation.

(26:32 – 26:52)

It’s a good way to learn doctrine, the Heidelberg Catechism. Anyway, he says, before he really studied that doctrine, catechism, in depth several years ago, I had not really thought about Jesus’ promise that the Holy Spirit would be with us forever, right? That’s the promise of John 14, 16. He’ll be with us forever.

(26:55 – 27:10)

But the promise is very good news. In heaven, the Spirit will continue to keep us holy. He will continue to teach us more about the inexhaustible riches of Christ.

(27:11 – 27:32)

He will continue to be the personal bond that unites believers in fellowship. And he will continue to minister to us the presence of God the Father and God the Son, who together with the Holy Spirit, our triune God, bless forevermore. Amen.

(27:33 – 28:10)

What he’s saying is that the very promise that the Spirit will be with us forever implies that the functions of the Spirit will continue forever. Just as Jesus will always be our mediator, so the Spirit will always be our counsellor and teacher, the one who sustains our lives and bonds us together as believer and unites us to the Father and the Son. What the Spirit is doing now, he will continue to do forever in the new creation.

(28:12 – 28:31)

Maybe that’s an aspect of the Spirit you hadn’t thought about, a bit like Kevin DeYoung, until he read that catechism. And I guess that’s been part of the point of this series. You might remember back to the very first talk, we used an illustration to try and capture this idea.

(28:31 – 28:48)

And we talked about an unfinished artwork. This is what might have been a masterpiece, but the artist never finished it. And we talked about that, how often when it comes to the Holy Spirit, we see part of the picture.

(28:48 – 29:23)

We’ve got a lot of correct details, but maybe there’s some aspects that we just haven’t seen, gaps in our knowledge in the mural. I hope as we’ve gone through this series, we’ve identified some of those gaps and we’ve expanded our horizon of the great many things that the magnificent Holy Spirit does. And I hope that through that, he will not be the sort of forgotten member of the Trinity, but someone that we know more and therefore honour more in an appropriate way.

(29:24 – 29:47)

And so that as a result, we will more gladly walk in step with the Holy Spirit. Let me pray. Father, thank you so much for sending your Son and for leaving your Spirit till the work on earth is done.

(29:48 – 30:24)

And we thank you too for what we’ve learned tonight, that the one who continues with us till that work is done in mission will also carry on with us into the new creation. We thank you for his amazing work in applying the redemption of your Son, of fulfilling your great plans for this broken and fallen world, of restoring it back into fellowship with you. So help us to not only understand more, but help us to love the Spirit more and to walk in step with him more carefully.

(30:24 – 30:31)

And we want to ask this for the glory of your name and through Jesus Christ, amen.

The post The Spirit and the Future – Ephesians 1v13–14 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Today’s reading is from Luke chapter 1 starting at verse 39. At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leapt in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.

In a loud voice she exclaimed, blessed are you among women and blessed is the child you will bear. But why am I so favoured that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfil his promises to her.

(0:51 – 1:16)

And Mary said, my soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the mighty one has done great things for me, holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation.

(1:17 – 3:16)

He has performed mighty deeds with his arm, he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors. Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months and then returned home. Morning folks, good to be with you this morning.

The Nativity is always a tough act to follow, isn’t it? I feel a bit like, you know, as they say, after the Lord Mayor’s prayed, but we’ll do our best. If you’ve got your Bible there and you had that passage open, then do keep it open. Again, you’ll find that in the Red Church Bibles as we’ll be going back there this morning.

Len Collins said to me that the title for today’s service was Christmas Nostalgia for Happiness. I thought, great, we can just watch a video of Morcombe and Wise. For those of you who weren’t about in the 1970s, that was the kind of feel-good, must-watch programme at Christmas.

I thought that, of course, because my peak Christmases were in the 1970s when I was at primary school and, of course, for most people, Christmas never gets better than when you’re about age eight or thereabouts. So as we grow up, we typically look back, don’t we, to our early Christmases with nostalgia. Nostalgia, as we thought last week, being that kind of mix of warm feelings and pleasant memories, often with a sense of loss because, of course, it was better in the old days.

(3:17 – 5:48)

A yearning for that elusive place when you felt safe and content when you were happy. But, of course, nostalgia is usually pretty selective, isn’t it? And it’s often, if we’re honest, a bit of a fiction. I’ve just finished reading quite a weighty tome about Britain in the 1970s.

And in it, the author Dominic Sandbrook describes a Britain which is very different from my Christmas memories. A Britain that was lurching from crisis to crisis, ridden with massive industrial conflict. The dead were unburied.

Public parks were turned into huge rubbish heaps, bombs going off in English cities. The cabinet meeting in January 1978 to discuss declaring a state of emergency and bringing in the army. And yet the nostalgia persists.

There’s a lot of nostalgia today isn’t there for a Britain that never really existed. But maybe, maybe perhaps that yearning for a happy place is an echo of something deeper, perhaps even something divine. Andy MacDonald was speaking last week and he read a quote from the author C.S. Lewis, the author of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, famously.

I’m not going to read the quote again, but basically C.S. Lewis equated the idea of nostalgia with what we might call a God-given memory. So the sense of longing and loss that we feel is because there is a place that can satisfy those longings. A place where we can be content, we can be secure, we can be at rest.

The place that we were made for, but which has slipped away from us when we became disconnected from the God who made us. The great church scholar from the early centuries of the Christian church, Augustine, put it like this. He said of God, you have made us for yourself, oh Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

(5:48 – 8:05)

And the wonderful news of Christmas, the news that we are celebrating today, and in the week to come, is that there is a way back. That the God that we rejected has made the first and greatest of all moves to bridge that gap, to reconnect you to himself, to the only place that can truly satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart. And if it feels surprising to us that that move, that story started in rural Israel 2,000 years ago, then our passage will give us an explanation about that.

Because God, the God of the Bible, the God and father of the Lord Jesus Christ, is a God who loves to work in the unlikeliest places and in the unlikeliest people. So let’s go to this passage and see if we can pick up the trail that leads us to true happiness. We picked up the reading, Fione read to us, in verse 39 of Luke chapter 1, and we picked up the story just after the angel Gabriel had famously appeared and announced to Mary that she would bear God’s son.

If you’ve got your Bible and you look back in the passage, you’ll see there in verse 31, you will conceive and give birth to a son and you’re to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever and his kingdom will never end.

A pregnancy that was going to be miraculous, a work of the Holy Spirit, no other human would be involved. But in giving her that news, he also notes, Gabriel, that one of Mary’s relatives, possibly a cousin or an aunt, was also expecting another miracle birth. Verse 36, even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age.

(8:06 – 9:58)

This wasn’t going to be a virgin conception in Elizabeth’s case, but a miracle despite her old age. So what would you do if you were Mary? You’ve been given some quite astounding news, but you’ve also been told you’ve got a relative in not a dissimilar situation. Well, you would do exactly what Mary does.

You would hot foot it to that relative and let’s talk about this. Now, Mary’s faith is remarkable in all this. Indeed, her faith stands in great contrast to Zechariah, who was the father of John the Baptist.

You can read about his encounter with an angel at the very start of Luke chapter one. Zechariah, compared to Mary, is very much the senior man. He’s the priest, he’s the pastor, and yet he, when told about Elizabeth’s pregnancy, is very disbelieving and all over the place.

Whereas Mary, this young peasant woman, her faith stands out in real contrast. But nevertheless, she is still a real human being and she was facing some pretty daunting challenges. Not least, of course, the prospect of being an unmarried mother in a first century Jewish culture.

We know from Matthew that her fiancé Joseph’s first reaction to hearing this news was to cancel the wedding. She’s a young female peasant from Nazareth, and as somebody will say later in the Gospels, nothing good ever comes from Nazareth out in the sticks. Socially, religiously, economically, this isn’t great news.

(10:00 – 10:31)

So going to Elizabeth must have been massively reassuring, because the moment Mary enters that house, Elizabeth is in no doubt about God’s favour to Mary. Indeed, the entrance of Mary, and perhaps more significantly, the entrance of Jesus within Mary, is a moment of Holy Spirit activity. We read that in those verses, didn’t we? There in verse 39 to 45.

(10:33 – 11:16)

Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit and her own baby John leaps inside her, verse 41. Did I make the joke? The first Christmas jumper? But notice her greeting, Elizabeth’s greeting that she gives to Mary. Three times in these verses, she uses the word blessed or blessed.

Verse 42, blessed are you among women. Blessed is the child you will bear. Verse 45, blessed is she who has believed.

(11:17 – 11:40)

And that Bible word blessed is a rich word. It contains the idea of divine favour, of being fortunate, and indeed of being happy. You might have seen yesterday that King Charles described the success of his cancer treatment as a blessing, and we’re thankful for that.

(11:41 – 13:23)

But the greatest blessing we can have is to be blessed in relation to God. The deep sense of being secure, of being at peace, of being in the right place spiritually. People often talk, or they post on social media about their happy place, don’t they? It’s usually a seaside town or reading a book beside a log fire.

But the ultimate happy place is to be in the place of God’s blessing, to be in the place of God’s approval, which is exactly what Elizabeth’s greeting confirms to Mary about her situation. Because yes, Mary, there are going to be challenges ahead. This high calling is not going to be plain sailing.

There will be gossip. There will be misunderstandings. There will be some deep sorrow ahead, not least in the road that your child is going to take to the cross.

Remember Simeon’s word to Mary when she took the newborn Jesus to the temple, and that old man Simeon held the baby, gave thanks to God for it, and then he turns to Mary, and a sword will pierce your own soul. But Mary, blessed are you, because you are in the place of God’s favour. And those words, that confirmation, that encouragement opens Mary’s heart.

(13:24 – 15:44)

And whatever fears she might have had are replaced and overtaken with this huge outpouring of praise and joy. It triggers her to magnify the Lord with overflowing happiness. Just as a sidebar, I think this highlights why Christians need other Christians, why church is vital.

Mary had got a word from heaven itself, but she also needed Elizabeth’s encouragement to ground her in the truth of it. C.S. Lewis, I got this from Tim Keller, writes in one of his books called The Four Loves about friendship, and he talks about a group of friends that he was part of, including J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of Lord of the Rings, who C.S. Lewis knew as Ronald. And one of the friends in this group, Charles, died.

And Lewis said that when Charles died, he didn’t just lose Charles, but he also lost the part of Ronald that only Charles was able to bring out. That’s why we need others, because there are things about God and of ourselves that without others there to bring them out and to point us to, we will never see on our own. That’s why for people in Greenview, our community groups are so helpful, because there people will say things and tell me things about God that I would never have thought of.

Faith strengthening, reassuring things that I’d otherwise miss. And in Mary’s response, this song the Magnificat called that, because that’s the first word in the Latin translation to magnify, Mary lays out why her place is the happiest place that anybody could be in. And she’ll do that in two main ways.

(15:45 – 16:29)

She’ll reflect on her own blessings, but most of all, she will reflect on the giver of those blessings, God himself. And that, let me say, is the kind of balance of biblical, of Christian worship. Christian worship doesn’t erase ourselves.

We can rightly talk about our privileges and the good things in our lives, verse 49, the mighty one has done great things for me. But the greater part of our happiness is simply to praise the Lord himself. And that balance, incidentally, is exactly how I think we should approach Mary herself.

(16:30 – 19:42)

Because Mary has historically in the church been the victim of two extremes and how she’s been thought of. On the one hand, the Catholic church, for example, has just made far too much of Mary to the extent that she’s put up as somebody to pray for almost a substitute Jesus, which isn’t the Mary of the Bible. Mary is just as much in need of Jesus as anyone else.

Notice in verse 47, she talks about God, her saviour. She wasn’t sinless. She had no special powers.

But on the other hand, perhaps largely in reflection to that, making too much of Mary, those false ideas, others, perhaps more in our tradition, have tended to ignore her maybe more than we should in the great Bible story. Maybe we’ve been guilty of not giving her the honour that she’s due, the one who would be called blessed in all generations, verse 48. Because of all the godly women that we rightly celebrate, Mary surely stands at the head of them all.

But what is it about God, her saviour, that makes Mary so happy, so blessed? In a nutshell, it’s that God, the God and father of Jesus Christ, verse 52 and 53, lifts up the humble and fills the hungry with good things. You see, in our world, and very much our world, but it’s always been the same really, obsessed with celebrity and money and power and status and self-promotion. God’s blessing, God’s favour, God’s approval is to the lowly.

And that’s not saying that somehow just being poor makes you virtuous. You can be arrogant and poor. Or that being wealthy is some automatic bar to God’s approval.

Many godly rich people have come to faith. As the church historian Andrew Bonar put it, far better to be a rich man seeking God than a poor man seeking riches. But rather, this is fundamentally about a spiritual lowliness.

It’s about our hearts. You see there in verse 51, it talks about scattering those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. How do we see ourselves before God? Do we even think that we need God? Remember a minister years ago talking about conversations he sometimes has with people when he’s talking about Christianity and Jesus and faith.

And sometimes people will say to him, I’m a good person. I’ve lived a good life. I’ve got nothing to be guilty about.

(19:43 – 20:26)

To which he would reply, well you won’t be interested in Jesus then. What do you mean? What do you mean why? Well because Jesus didn’t come for sorted righteous people. He came for the lost.

If you think you can lift yourself up to God, well good luck. But if you know that’s a dead end, then Mary’s song is saying there’s hope for you. If you sense that there’s something missing in your life, if you can admit that you’ve not honoured your maker as you ought, if you’re prepared to humble yourself and admit of all your shortcomings, then Jesus is for you.

(20:28 – 20:48)

That’s why he came into the world. That’s the reason for Christmas as the Apostle Paul will later put it in one of his letters, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And so this morning if you sometimes despair of yourself, you feel a bit useless and a failure.

(20:50 – 22:05)

And you’re not just feeling sorry for yourself, but you’re conscious of the great gulf that exists between you and the glory and goodness of the eternal and perfect God, then praise God. Because you’re in the place, verse 50, where from generation to generation God extends mercy. And that place, the place of mercy and forgiveness and salvation and God’s favour is the ultimate happy place.

Because whatever else happens, God will lift you up and fill you with good things. Don’t be deceived by the power of rulers on their thrones, verse 52, or the rich with their abundance and wealth. For without God it will all be taken away, scattered and empty.

You see, Mary is amazed that God would be mindful of her. A nobody, verse 49. Verse 48, the humble state of your servants.

(22:07 – 22:22)

But that’s what God does. That’s the revelation of the God of the Bible. You see, God’s MO, his modus operandi is always to turn human pride and self-sufficiency on its head.

(22:24 – 23:41)

A peasant girl to bear his son. The creator of the universe lying in a manger. A king who washes the feet of sinners.

Jesus, who being in the very nature of God, humbled himself and became a servant even unto death and death on a cross. But who having humbled himself was exalted to glory and sits today at God’s right hand, the one to whom all power and authority and dominion has been given. And Mary rejoices in such a God and such a saviour.

Because the road to true happiness in this life starts when people are ready to humble themselves. I noted at the start, the book I was reading by Dominic Sandbrook on the 1970s, and this is what partly brought it to mind, that such was the chaotic picture he painted of the time that one of the reviewers on a little bit of blurb on the outside of the book said, it makes you nostalgic for the present. In other words, perhaps we’re actually in the good old days now.

(23:45 – 24:55)

But now, then, Christmas aged eight, none of them are ever going to meet the longing behind that sense of nostalgia. Because the real answer to those longings are not in a time or a place, but in a person. The person who can satisfy our deepest needs, because he can make us right with God.

He can take away that obstacle between ourselves and God, all our shortcomings, all our failure, all our sin, and make us new again to live for the one that we were created for. The person who in every age from Abraham and his descendants forever, verse 55, can bless you. I hope that all of us will have a very happy Christmas.

There’s still a bit to go. Hope it will be full of warm, nostalgic memories in years to come. But even if the turkey burns and the boiler breaks, you can still be happy.

(24:57 – 25:09)

If Jesus is, God, your Saviour, then you can be truly, truly blessed and happy. May God bless these thoughts from his word to us.

The post Longing for Happiness – Luke 1v39–56 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Well, thank you, Nigel, and thank you for that encouraging singing. And can we turn together to 2 Corinthians chapter three, and just turn to a few verses as we begin that capture the essence of our topic tonight, which is the Spirit and the life of a Christian. 2 Corinthians chapter three, and reading verses 16 and 17.

(0:34 – 1:12)

Now, the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces, contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. This is God’s word.

(1:15 – 1:35)

There once was a movie director who wanted to adapt a series of books. There were three books, and he wanted to make three movies. So he went to a film company, he pitched the idea, but they were nervous about committing to three films.

(1:36 – 1:59)

Why not, they suggested, cram all three books into one two-hour film? Well, the director said no. He found another film company, they took on the film, and they agreed to make a trilogy. And because of that, the Lord of the Rings trilogy was made.

(2:01 – 2:29)

Sometimes, the volume of content is so vast, you can’t possibly cram it into a short space of time. That was true of Tolkien’s books, and it’s definitely true of our topic this evening. What the Bible says about the Spirit and the Christian life is so vast and expansive, it would take many sermons and even series to cover it.

(2:30 – 2:53)

Just to give you a bit of a sense of this, a snapshot of this, I want you to have a little look at this slide. Here are some of the things the Spirit does in the life of the Christian. Things he does to initiate your Christian life, and things that he does to continue your Christian life.

(2:54 – 3:25)

His work includes, but this is not exhaustive, conviction of sin, enabling your Jesus as Lord confession, the work of regeneration, making you born again, union with Christ, sealing you as God’s possession, and adopting you into God’s family. And that’s just the beginning. His work of sanctification, intercession, helping you to pray, assuring you, comforting you, gifting you, and empowering you.

(3:26 – 4:04)

And there is no doubt that I haven’t even included some of the things that should be on that list of what the Spirit has done and is doing in your life of faith. Now, I highlight this partly so that I don’t underestimate the work of the Spirit tonight by giving you a snapshot of it, and then you think, ah, that’s all that he’s doing. I want you to leave tonight being so thankful for the many things the Spirit does, and to give the rest of your Christian life to exploring it in all of its detail.

(4:06 – 4:29)

But I also highlight the volume of his work so that you’ll realise the limitations of tonight’s message. What we’re going to simply do is focus in on one aspect of what the Spirit does in your Christian life and mine. But I’ve chosen a very big area, and it’s going to be possibly highlighted in blue on the screen.

(4:29 – 4:50)

It’s the work of sanctification, which, as you might see, I’ve deliberately put kind of in the middle. It’s the only one that’s in the middle there between the initial work and the ongoing, and you’ll find out why that is in just a moment. Sanctification is one of those big Bible words that pops up in Scripture frequently.

(4:50 – 5:11)

And it is good for us to come to grips with it. The English word sanctification comes from a Latin word, which means to make holy. At its most basic level, sanctification is the act of making something that is unholy, holy.

(5:12 – 5:47)

But what does that mean? Can we flesh that out a little bit more? How does the Bible describe and define sanctification? Well, here’s my go at a definition of sanctification. This is what I think reflects the Bible. Sanctification is God’s work through the Holy Spirit of setting us apart for Himself and progressively conforming us into the likeness or the image of His Son.

(5:48 – 5:56)

So it is God’s work. It’s no less God’s work than creation or redemption. It’s God’s work through the Holy Spirit.

(5:57 – 6:14)

And there’s really two distinct aspects of it. Number one, setting us apart for God, setting us apart from the world and apart for God. And then secondly, progressively conforming us into the image of Jesus.

(6:16 – 6:35)

So in this message that we’re going to now proceed through, we’re going to look at those two aspects really. And I’m going to put two headings on it, and I’ll explain these as I go, so don’t worry if you don’t get them first time. We’re going to talk about, number one, positional sanctification.

(6:36 – 6:50)

And then we’re going to talk about progressive sanctification. Positional and then progressive. And in the conclusion, I’m going to cheat a little bit and I’m going to add a third one in, but it’ll be 10 seconds.

(6:50 – 7:13)

So number one, positional sanctification. And this lines up with a bit of the definition which spoke of the Spirit setting us apart for God. Or to put it another way, in a way that theologians have tried to capture this, it’s the Spirit’s work of positional sanctification.

(7:14 – 7:48)

It’s the idea that sanctification is, first of all, a position that you are placed in through the work of the Holy Spirit. So that at least in one sense, sanctification happens the moment you are converted. The instant an individual is united to Christ by faith through the Spirit, they are immediately set apart for God and given a sanctified status.

(7:49 – 8:16)

Now let’s see this for ourselves in the Bible, because maybe you’re thinking that’s not my definition of sanctification, but let’s see it in the Bible. In 1 Corinthians 1, verse two, 1 Corinthians 1, verse two, Paul writes to believers who are sanctified in Christ Jesus. Paul uses the perfect tense.

(8:17 – 8:33)

The perfect tense is where something has already happened in the past, but it has ongoing effects. So for example, I was married in the past and it has ongoing implications for my everyday. I’m a husband every day.

(8:33 – 9:14)

And Paul says that the Corinthian believers have been sanctified in the past and that has ongoing effects in their lives. And that’s an extraordinary thing to say if you know anything about the Corinthian Christians, because you’ll know that some of the ways in which they were living were far from holy living, which must mean that Paul is speaking of a position of sanctification, because this was as yet far from their known practise. And this is not just a slip from Paul.

(9:14 – 9:28)

Paul’s not kind of got his grammar muddled up one time in 1 Corinthians or his tenses. In Acts 20, verse 32, Paul says a similar thing to the Ephesian elders. Acts 20, verse 32.

(9:30 – 9:45)

He speaks of believers who are sanctified. Not those who are being sanctified or who one day will be sanctified. He says it’s already happened.

(9:47 – 10:09)

And I think the explanation of this is then found in the third reference, which is Hebrews chapter 10. In Hebrews 10, verse 10, the author explains how unholy people can possibly be already said to be made holy. Listen to this.

(10:09 – 10:39)

He speaks of those, this is Hebrews 10, 10, who have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. How has the label holy been stuck on the Christian? It is through the sacrifice of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. A sacrifice that is in the past, but which has ongoing effects.

(10:41 – 11:12)

The cross is the means by which the holy status of Jesus immediately upon conversion becomes the holy status of his people. And so the wonderful point is that every Christian, get this, starts their Christian life with the position and status of sanctified. I wish someone had told me that on day one when I was saved.

(11:14 – 11:28)

Let me try and illustrate this. Think of a princess born into a royal family. At the moment the princess is born, she is given a status.

(11:29 – 11:46)

She is a royal princess. That is immediately true, but it’s going to have ongoing effects in her life. And as she grows up in her single digits and then in her teens, sometimes she doesn’t act like a princess.

(11:47 – 12:11)

Sometimes she hates the fact that she’s a princess and sometimes she lives in any way but being a princess. But as she gradually grows and matures and then becomes an adult, she starts to live consistently with being a princess. She starts to do what princesses do and she goes where princesses go, whatever things are that they do and wherever they go.

(12:12 – 12:27)

This is the same thing that happens in the life of a Christian. In our case, we are born again into a holy status. And we don’t always look holy.

(12:28 – 12:39)

We don’t always act holy. But our status sets the trajectory for the rest of our lives. It is what we will become.

(12:42 – 13:17)

And I don’t know about you, but I find that immensely comforting to think that on my very first day as a Christian, my status had already changed from unholy to holy in the sight of God. What a reassurance in those moments, the many moments of messing up as a Christian, that even when I am unholy in practise, this is always still true in terms of my position. I am, you are holy.

(13:19 – 13:55)

And this means that whatever else sanctification is, it isn’t an attempt to gain a status of being holy because we’ve already been given that status by grace through the Spirit and the work of Christ. And by the way, this is the vast difference between the Christian view of works and the view of works in world religions. This is the great difference, isn’t it? Lots of religions teach you to live a holy life.

(13:56 – 14:16)

Many of the same things that the Bible, Christianity would tell you to do. But the difference is in the motivation. For the Christian, it is not to gain the status of being holy in God’s sight because that’s already been granted through the offering of Jesus’ body on the cross.

(14:19 – 14:53)

It is really, really important to get this first point fixed in your mind because if we don’t grasp positional sanctification, the train will immediately derail the moment we start to try and live the next bit. So we’re gonna come secondly to progressive sanctification, progressive sanctification. And most times when we hear the word sanctification, I guess this is the thing that we’re thinking of.

(14:54 – 15:08)

We’re thinking of the actual real life process of becoming more like Jesus. That’s where the progressive words come from. It’s the more and more like Jesus in character.

(15:09 – 15:32)

Not just possessing the status that Jesus possesses, but having the character that Jesus possesses in increasing measure. Now, let me make three observations about progressive sanctification. Number one, it is God’s work and our work.

(15:33 – 15:46)

It is God’s work and our work. I sometimes do this when I’m preparing to preach a sermon. I sometimes ask like folk in the church about some of the application.

(15:46 – 16:17)

And I asked quite a few people this week, what do you think the biggest gap is in the Christian view of sanctification and holiness? And some people said the biggest gap is understanding that this is not self effort. Some Christians seem to think it’s all about what we do and our effort and they lose all sight of the gospel and they lose all sight of grace. That’s what some people said.

(16:18 – 16:40)

Then I spoke to some other people and they said the absolute opposite. They said the biggest gap is Christians thinking that God does everything in sanctification and that therefore we can make zero effort in living as a Christian. Well, let me say thank you for that.

(16:41 – 17:06)

I think that reflects the issue that we’re grappling with here. Because whereas positional sanctification is completely outwith our hands, I mean, what role did you have to play in your own being born again, for example? The actual work of regeneration. Did we give ourselves life? Was that in any way a human work? No, it was entirely a work of God.

(17:08 – 17:36)

And yet when it comes to what we might call progressive sanctification, the on the ground growing into the likeness of Jesus, there is a complex combination of God’s work and your work. And we see this in Philippians 2, verses 12 and 13. Philippians 2, verses 12 and 13.

(17:37 – 18:18)

Paul says, “‘Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, “‘for it is God who works in you to will and to act “‘in order to fulfil his purpose.'” Now, it would be a really interesting, we don’t have time to do this, it’d be an interesting little Bible study just to sit there and try and highlight in red and green which parts of this verse are God’s part and which parts of this verse are our part. It’s actually interwoven all together here. But notice there is an aspect here that is our working.

(18:20 – 18:50)

Paul says to the Philippians, “‘Work out your salvation.'” He speaks of their willing, that’s their decision-making, and their acting, that’s the things they do. So they work, they will, they act, and yet they’re not alone in the willing and the acting. He says that God is working in you to help you to will and to act.

(18:51 – 19:12)

In this aspect of sanctification, it’s not God or me, it’s God and me. Listen to these, I’m going to give you another example from Romans 8, verse 13, same sort of combination. This is Romans 8, verse 13.

(19:12 – 19:39)

Paul says, “‘If you live according to the flesh, you will die, “‘but if by the Spirit you put to death “‘the deeds of the body, you will live.'” So see the combination there. Paul says, live by the Spirit. You’re not doing this alone.

(19:40 – 19:49)

You can’t do it alone. You cannot put sin to death in your daily life alone. Live by the Spirit.

(19:49 – 20:08)

And yet, look what he also says. “‘You put to death the deeds of the body.'” There is a complex combination. The Holy Spirit empowers you not to sin, but you need to choose not to sin.

(20:08 – 20:22)

That’s what he’s saying. That’s the thing about the Christian life, isn’t it? All the good stuff in it, we can say it’s because of God working in us. All of the sin in it, we can say that’s because of our own choices.

(20:24 – 20:41)

And this keeps us from the two dangers that we highlighted moments ago. What were the dangers? Avoiding self-effort as the pattern for the Christian life. We don’t need to do that, because we’re already holy in Christ.

(20:42 – 21:04)

And because we have the Holy Spirit to help us live the Christian life in Christ, in His power. So it’s not self-effort. And yet, on the other hand, we avoid a kind of pious dependence on God that ultimately shirks accountability for our own decisions and our own choices and our own actions.

(21:06 – 21:17)

That excuses us from sanctified sweat. I mean, this sounds like hard work, doesn’t it? Paul speaks about putting sin to death. This is a battle, it’s a fight.

(21:20 – 21:42)

And so it seems to me that what the New Testament describes is dependent activity. Dependent activity in the life of the Christian. Now, I wonder whether some of us fall on each side of that, depending on things like temperament.

(21:44 – 21:55)

Some of us temperamentally are maybe more the kind of lean back, lazier temperament maybe. Just rely on the gospel. If God wants me to be holy, He’ll someday do it.

(21:57 – 22:13)

Or maybe you get up at 7 a.m. and you’ve got your whole plan for how you’re gonna be more like Jesus and you think it’s all on you. Maybe it’s theology. Maybe our theology isn’t quite right and that causes us to fall on one side or the other.

(22:14 – 23:00)

There could be different things at play here. What I wanna ask you tonight is, what side of that equation do you need to pay more attention to? For you, is it resting on the gospel and depending on the Spirit? Is that the thing you need to be doing more of in your Christian life, more dependence? Because you thought the Christian life was just you living it? Like, it’s like, I’m saved through God, but now I’ve go to live the Christian life alone. Is that the issue you have? Or is the issue that you never seem to translate Romans 8, the Spirit-filled life, into actual action, where you put sin to death? So number one, it’s God’s work and ours.

(23:02 – 23:18)

Number two, it’s collective and individual. Collective and individual. I’d like you to turn with me to Ephesians 5. Sorry that we’re jumping around a little bit, but these are just the passages that I think are most helpful to make these points.

(23:18 – 23:35)

Ephesians 5, and this is a chapter, if you read the whole chapter, it’s an entire chapter about the life of the Christian. In verse 15, for example, Paul speaks of living a wise, not foolish life. And so bear that in mind.

(23:35 – 23:57)

That’s the context as we come to verse 18. Part of wise living, Paul says, verse 18, do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit.

(23:58 – 24:22)

Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. I want you to notice something here that is very easy to miss, and I hadn’t spotted it until this week.

(24:24 – 25:11)

And that is that in much of this passage, but in verse 18 particularly, Paul is writing to the church and not just the individual. So in verse 18, this much talked about verse, you hear Christians all the time discussing what does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? We have to realise that when Paul gives this command, be filled with the Spirit, he’s actually saying it in the plural. He’s not saying it to the individual and saying, I need to be personally filled with the Spirit, although of course that’s true, but rather let us as a community be the people who are filled with the Spirit of God.

(25:13 – 25:30)

And this ties in actually with the rest of the letter. In chapter two, verse 22, Paul has been speaking of the church as the temple. The church is the holy temple being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.

(25:30 – 25:48)

That’s chapter two, verse 22. And so here in chapter five, it’s the same temple imagery that Paul’s using. And he’s saying that now you are the temple of God, it makes sense that you should be filled together with the Spirit of God.

(25:50 – 26:09)

And what does that look like in practise? What sort of things would you expect to surround that phrase? Paul says, be filled with the Spirit. What are you expecting to surround that? What would be the manifestations of that? Well, here’s Paul’s list of things. Let me just list some of them.

(26:11 – 26:34)

We wouldn’t see drunkenness. We wouldn’t see a church controlled by alcohol. I think he’s using that incidentally, not only because that is a big issue in itself, any substance that’s controlling us, but he’s making the point that the Christian life is to be lived under a different sort of control and influence.

(26:34 – 26:50)

That is manifest. You can tell when someone is controlled by alcohol, it’s visible. And Paul’s saying the Spirit should be at work in our community in a way that is as visible as a drunk man, except in this case, there’s some wonderful manifestations of it.

(26:50 – 27:03)

And so it’s that, but it’s more than that. Look at verse 19. It’s a worshipful community who is joyful from the heart, who worships God together.

(27:03 – 27:22)

Verse 20, it’s a thankful community, characterised by gratitude. It’s also a community, verse 21, where people submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. In fact, he goes on there to, it spills over from the church into the home, actually.

(27:24 – 27:43)

And I think if you go back, I think you can backfill this as well to earlier in the chapter, because he’s already been describing the Spirit-filled church. Read the earlier part of chapter five. He talks about generosity, self-control, clean talk, relationships based on love, community behaviours.

(27:45 – 28:18)

To put it another way, the evidence of a Spirit-filled life is Spirit-filled relationships and a Spirit-filled community of love. If you walk into a Spirit-filled church, you should be able to see it and even feel it. Not by some miraculous thing that’s happening from the front, but because of the way the community is worshipping God together and the way that they are relating to one another with tangible love.

(28:20 – 28:59)

Now, it is true that in the book of Acts, we also see the church being filled with the Spirit and then being empowered to do great things like evangelism. But it’s interesting that in the letters, that’s not primarily how the filling of the Spirit is described. And it’s so easy to miss this aspect of being filled with the Spirit, which can be seen every Sunday in our church services, in our conversations over coffee, in our community groups, during the week when you visit another believer in church, in the way you speak to them, in the way you speak about them.

(29:00 – 29:55)

Actually, all of that in our daily experience can be the evidence of a Spirit-filled church. Do we need to open our eyes to the broader way that the Bible speaks of a Spirit-filled church? Do we perhaps need to see that pursuing holiness is not an individual sport, it’s a community sport, if I could put it in those terms. One of the things we were chatting about in our community group last Thursday was just this, that I think in churches like ours, in the kind of culture of churches like ours, and this is probably reflecting West of Scotland culture, we put up all sorts of protective little barriers, and we’re fearful of people really getting to know about our weaknesses or our struggles, particularly with our sin.

(29:57 – 30:24)

The problems and circumstances we’re facing we’re more open about, but the struggles we have with sin we don’t wanna talk about. And so we don’t allow for genuine support, the support of fellow sinners who actually, secretly, are struggling with all the same sins that we’re also not willing to be open about. And we miss out on that genuine accountability and that encouragement in becoming more like Jesus together.

(30:25 – 30:44)

If we’re not talking about the battles and the struggles with one another, then we’re just not gonna encourage one another as we should be doing. The New Testament sees sanctification as a community project. So it’s God’s work and ours, it’s corporate and individual.

(30:45 – 31:02)

But thirdly, and finally, it is also beholding Christ. Beholding Christ and increasingly becoming like Him. And we’re finally gonna return to 2 Corinthians 3. Sorry about that.

(31:02 – 31:22)

We’ve been roaming here and there, but we are gonna come back briefly to this at the end. 2 Corinthians 3, verses 17 and 18. And this is probably the finest summary of progressive sanctification in the New Testament.

(31:23 – 31:50)

It just sort of just captures the whole thing in a sense. Paul says, but we all who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. Notice a few things here.

(31:50 – 32:13)

The goal, the goal of the Christian life is to be conformed to the image of Jesus. And Paul says, this is increasingly happening. Notice here, this is why we know there’s another form of sanctification, another shade of it, because he speaks here not of the past tense.

(32:14 – 32:45)

We are being transformed, being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory. In one sense, Paul here is describing conversion onwards, because conversion is where, to use his imagery, the veil is taken away from our eyes. Paul talks about a veil that sort of blinds the unbelieving Jews from seeing who Jesus is.

(32:46 – 33:03)

But Paul says that the Holy Spirit has taken that veil away from our eyes so that we see who Jesus is. That’s conversion, isn’t it? But actually, as we go on in the Christian life, we don’t stop gazing at Jesus. We keep gazing.

(33:04 – 33:41)

We keep gazing at Him in the same way that Moses in Exodus kept gazing at the glory of the Lord in the burning bush. And it was through that continual gazing at the glory of God that led to Moses, you remember, having that face that reflected the glory of God. And using this very same image, Paul says that through continued contemplation of the glory of Jesus, believers are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory.

(33:41 – 34:17)

The way you begin the Christian life is the way you continue the Christian life, with a look to Christ that transforms you from glory into glory. Now, this does not negate any of the stuff we’ve already said, but it is a reminder, and again, this is why we thought about the positional thing first, it is a reminder that the Christian life is never just about looking at a list of commands or just a list of dos and don’ts. That’s where we do go wrong.

(34:19 – 34:44)

We look to the Lord Jesus, the one that we love, and then as we see His glory and as we love Him more, we then long to do the things that He says and asks us to do. We’ve seen that in John, haven’t we? If you love me, you will then obey my commands. And so it is in looking to Christ.

(34:44 – 34:55)

Have you heard the phrase, you probably have heard this, we become what we behold. We become what we behold. Now, just think about this.

(34:56 – 35:28)

That is generally true in all of life, that people become what they behold. If you kind of look at people’s character, even sometimes the way they dress or the way they speak, and then you examine how they spend their time and who they look at and who they listen to and whose videos they watch and whose music they listen to, you see that this is a true principle. What people behold consistently is what they become.

(35:29 – 36:05)

That’s true in all areas of life, but it is true at the deepest level spiritually. It is the people who consistently look to the glory of Christ who become most like Him this side of eternity. Not just people who know lots of Bible verses, or do a whole bunch of religious stuff, but people who are reading their Bible looking for Jesus and the glory of Jesus and savouring that.

(36:05 – 36:24)

Those are the people, always they are the people who develop the most Christ-like fruit in their lives. They are Jesus-y people. And yet notice what Paul says that actually this transformation, and he just drops it in at the end.

(36:24 – 36:32)

You almost miss it. He just drops it in at the end. This comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

(36:35 – 36:48)

The Spirit’s kind of in the background here. So often rightly said that the Spirit’s work is to focus our attention on Jesus, not on Himself. And we see that here, something of it here.

(36:49 – 37:17)

It is from the Spirit that this contemplation continues. And so as you go into work tomorrow, and as you find it hard to remember Christ throughout the day, it is the Holy Spirit that you can be leaning on and you can be asking for the help of in prayer as you go through that busy day. I have a good prayer just to pray tomorrow morning.

(37:17 – 37:41)

Father, help me by your Spirit to not lose sight of Christ as I go through this day and all the things that I’m doing. Or as you’re grabbing your 10 minutes in the lunch break, taking 10 minutes of it just to maybe have a bit of time reading your Bible or reading something devotional, just something that’s gonna focus you on the right thing. That would be a prayer you could pray.

(37:41 – 38:09)

Father, help me by your Spirit to see more of the glory of Jesus in these few minutes in a way that would shape my character and the way that I live. The most important aspect of progressive sanctification is keeping your face directed to Jesus with the help of the Spirit. So positional sanctification, progressive sanctification.

(38:10 – 38:34)

And I simply just want to mention, I don’t want to develop it at all, but just for the sake of completeness, I want to just mention, and I’m going all out in the piece here, perfected sanctification, perfected sanctification. Now, another word for that in the Bible is just glorification, glorification. It’s the same thing.

(38:36 – 39:01)

The time will come when the position we are given at conversion, the character that is progressively revealed in our lives will reach its heightened conclusion. Indeed, it will reach its perfection. We read about this in 1 John 3. Beloved, now we are the children of God.

(39:01 – 39:19)

Now we are the children of God. You see there the status is already given? And it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him. Not just a little bit like Him, but perfectly.

(39:20 – 39:33)

This means exactly like Him. For we shall see Him as He is. You see there? It’s the beholding that transforms us into the likeness.

(39:35 – 39:55)

Our position now, progressively true in our character, will one day be perfectly complete. And as the author of 2 Corinthians just drops in at the end, all of this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. Let’s pray.

(40:03 – 40:28)

Father, fill us with hope tonight. Even as we battle with sin and often struggle to live our lives for you, fill us with hope tonight that our status is already that of holy. Remind us tonight and through this week that we don’t live this life alone.

(40:29 – 40:51)

Help us to walk in step with your Spirit. Fill us as a community and individually with your Spirit so that we might increasingly look like Jesus. And we ask this till the day that we see Him as He is and become perfectly like Him.

(40:52 – 40:55)

And it’s in His name we pray, amen.

The post The Spirit and the Christian life – 2 Corinthians 3v16,17 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Good morning. Our Advent series this year is Christmas Nostalgia. Nostalgia is described as a sentimental or wistful affection for the past.

You know the kind of thing, rose-tinted glasses, visiting the town you were once born in, looking at old photos of your childhood, or of a wedding perhaps. For Scotland fans, after waiting 28 years to make it to the World Cup finals, there’s been a lot of nostalgia kicking about this week. Remember Brazil? 1998 is what the fans have been talking about, and here we go again.

(0:51 – 1:16)

2026, in fact, it’ll be the fifth time in seven World Cups that we’ve played and faced the greatest team in the world. C.S. Lewis, when talking about nostalgia, talks of something in the universe that we now feel cut off from. A desire to be on the inside, but we’re looking from the outside.

(1:17 – 4:50)

The memory of our past, good images of what we really desire, but things that can turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of worshippers. There’s certainly been a few World Cup hearts broken when Scotland were placed in Group C, even before all the nostalgia of 1998 and before. So what do you think of when you think of the nostalgia of Christmas? What memories of Christmas past do you conjure up in your mind? Is it the big family dinner? Getting a Christmas stocking, perhaps? Memories of childhood where everything was done for you, and now as a parent you’re doing everything.

A decent-sized selection box, as with the sugar tax. Chocolates seem to have reduced in size somewhat, or is that just me? Having Schlurr, Viennetta and Ferrero Roche and feeling very fancy. Or the bumper radio times.

However good your Christmas is this year, it probably won’t match up to your rose-tinted memories of Christmas past. When you’ve forgotten about the arguments, the stress, the tears and the tantrums that will often accompany any big family occasion. And with this by way of introduction as much to the next three weeks, as to today, please turn with me in your Bibles to Micah chapter 5, page 933, if you’re using the pew Bibles.

Micah chapter 5 verse 1. Marshal your troops now, city of troops, for a siege is laid against us. They will strike Israel’s ruler on the cheek with a rod. But you, Bethlehem, Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come from me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from old, from ancient times.

Therefore Israel will be abandoned until the time when she who is in labour bears a son and the rest of his brothers return to join the Israelites. He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord, his God. And they will live securely for then his greatness will reach the ends of the earth and he will be our peace.

When the Assyrians invade our land and march through our fortresses, we will raise up against them seven shepherds and even eight commanders who will rule the land of Assyria with the sword, the land of Nimrod with drawn sword. He will deliver us from the Assyrians when they invade our land and march across our borders. Amen.

(4:50 – 6:34)

And this is the word of God. So here we are on the 7th of December, 18 days till Christmas, enjoying our first Advent service. So it’s official.

Trees are popping up everywhere. Our tree has even made it to the box beside me. Black Friday deals are in the past and we can finally say we’re almost at Christmas.

I want to take you on a journey in the next 20 minutes from no hope to hope. From 2,700 years ago to the present day and into your future. Have you made plans for Christmas this year? I want you to pause just for 10 seconds and I want you to think about what you’re going to be doing for Christmas.

Have you got that picture in your mind? Are you visiting family? Do you have family coming to you? Perhaps you’re helping in a homeless shelter. Are you having a curry or are you having full Christmas dinner with all the trimmings? Will there be presents under the tree and excited children or are you past the stage of toys and tantrums and it’ll simply be a glass of wine and a Christmas movie? Whatever your Christmas that you just thought about looks like, I imagine for each of us we are looking forward to Christmas. We’ll spare a thought for people this year who are not looking forward to Christmas.

(6:36 – 10:36)

So our first point, no hope at Christmas. In Scotland, drugs deaths although reduced in 2024 were still by far the worst in any country in Europe. More than three drug deaths every day in Scotland.

With thousands of people addicted to drugs across our country, are they looking forward to Christmas or are they simply craving their next hit? Scotland has the worst life expectancy in Europe. We were once the murder capital of Europe. 22% of the most deprived areas in Scotland can be found on our doorsteps in Glasgow.

Life expectancy is 18 years lower in the parts of the south of Glasgow than it is in other parts of the south of Glasgow and more affluent areas. Over 34,000 households in Scotland are assessed as homeless. More than 10,000 children are spending long periods of their lives stuck in temporary accommodation.

Our suicide rates are increasing year on year with two suicides every day in Scotland. Men three times more likely to commit suicide in those in rural areas and deprived areas more likely than those in urban and affluent areas. And what about the families left dealing with the consequences afterwards facing a Christmas of pain and heartache? The Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland only last week were highlighting that there was a mental health emergency facing Scotland with cases doubling whilst the workforce was being reduced by a quarter.

Young people aged 18 to 34 are far more likely to be pushed into debt at Christmas than any other age group. So it’s not all mistletoe and wine, turkey and trimmings and fun and laughter at Christmas. Now be honest with me, is this what you wanted to hear when you came to church this morning? Andy, we don’t want to hear about hopelessness at any time, especially at Christmas.

I started with this today as I wanted us to realise that for many around us Christmas 2025 will be a very difficult time. A few minutes ago I read from the Old Testament from a prophet called Micah. Now a prophet in the Bible was someone who spoke on behalf of God.

Micah was living in Israel over 2,700 years ago. Life was not great for those living in Israel at that time. In fact, the nation of Israel had already been split into two kingdoms with Israel in the north and Judah in the south.

Let me give you the briefest of potted histories. The whole of Israel were known as God’s people. However, the kingdom of Israel in the north had already fallen to the Assyrians,

and in the south, under the reign of Hezekiah, like other kings before him, the people of Judah had turned from God. They were facing an invasion from the mighty Assyrian army who were coming for the southern kingdom of Judah. They were encamped around Jerusalem, laying siege to the city.

And this is exactly where we find ourselves in Micah chapter 5 verse 1. Marshal your troops now, city of troops, for a siege is laid against us. They will strike Israel’s ruler on the cheek with a rod. So hopefully that verse makes more sense to you now having had a bit of the context.

Micah the prophet of God is saying troops get ready. There is a siege at the door. This is a dire situation for the nation of Israel and the people of Jerusalem.

(10:38 – 11:23)

Micah as a prophet is speaking to the people on a number of different levels as we will see. If we were to read on to verses 10 to 15, we would see because of the way that the people had turned from God, including Hezekiah their king, Micah is predicting judgement, destruction of horses, chariots, cities and strongholds. Micah, as a prophet, was telling the people and the king, you have Assyria laying siege to Jerusalem.

You have disobeyed God. And what happens when you disobey God? Judgement comes. Hold on a minute, Andy.

(11:24 – 15:35)

This is supposed to be Christmas nostalgia, a nice Christmas talk, tinsel and presents, maybe some jokes about the wise men. And so far you’ve given us a dire state of our beloved country of Scotland. And now you’re telling us about the dire state of Israel over 2,700 years ago and how they were facing judgement because they were not obeying God.

Is this not a bit heavy? For a Christmas message? Well, it’s into this bleak landscape that Micah speaks great words of hope, the first Christmas hope. Micah the prophet speaks words of God to people on three different levels. First, he’s speaking to the present situation.

We’ve already seen the call to marshal the troops in verse 1. And in the second half of verse 5 and verse 6, Micah promises that when the Assyrians march through the Israelite fortresses, we will raise against them seven shepherds, even eight commanders who will rule the land of Assyria with the sword. Micah is promising the people who are struggling. He’s promising the people that God can deliver them from the Assyrians.

Verse 6b, he, that is God, will deliver us from the Assyrians when they invade our land and march across our borders. This is not just a call for the troops to get ready, but a heartfelt urging for the people to trust in God. And later after warning them about the judgement that is coming if they do not obey God in verses 10 to 15, Micah urges them to repent.

Chapter 6 verse 8, he has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly with your Lord. I’ll say that again.

What does God require of you today in 2025? To act justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. This is what’s before them, a simple choice, face judgement or seek repentance by asking for forgiveness for the things that you have done wrong. 2,700 years later, this simple message has not changed.

Reject God, disobey His commands, and face judgement, or accept God and His rule over your life, and accept His grace, and His mercy, and forgiveness. This is a simple choice, yet it defines our entire lives and our eternal futures. But there’s more, Micah the prophet speaks into and foretells the future.

So he’s spoken to them about their present condition, and now he foretells the future 700 years before the actual events take place. What am I talking about? Verse 2, but you, Bethlehem, Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from old, from ancient times. Bethlehem, in the district of Ephrathah, within the southern kingdom of Judah, is the predicted place where an amazing thing will one day happen.

Bethlehem is the town of Israel’s thus far greatest king, David. Bethlehem is a small town, small among the clans of Judah. This is God’s pattern.

(15:36 – 16:33)

The weak will humble the strong. The last shall be first. Just look at the life of David.

Was he the oldest or the strongest? No, he was the youngest. Whilst the Israelite army were scared to fight Goliath, David stood up and was counted. Jacob was the younger twin brother, and he was chosen to be first.

Joseph was the second youngest of 12 sons of Jacob, but God had great plans for him. Bethlehem, small among the clans of Judah, God often chooses the weak to humble the strong. So next time you are feeling weak and you can’t possibly speak up for God in your place of work or in your school, just remember how God can use the weak and the small for great things.

(16:34 – 18:07)

Out of Bethlehem will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from old, from ancient times. David might have been the greatest king of Israel, but out of David’s town, in the royal line, a promised Messiah chosen by God will come to be ruler over Israel. This promised Messiah is from old, from ancient times.

Micah is doffing the cap, as you were, to the ancient promise made to Abram in Genesis 12. He’s also doffing the cap to the prophecy about Jesse, David’s father, in Isaiah chapter 11, verse 1. A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse, from his roots a branch will bear fruit. From ancient times, forefathers of Israel who are promised to be made into a great nation and from whom were prophesied, from whom the Messiah would come.

And we can go back even further. As Jesus Christ, the Messiah, was there at the very beginning, the creation of the world. John chapter 1, verse 1, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God.

He was with God in the beginning. Through him, all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made.

(18:08 – 19:47)

The Messiah was from old, from ancient times. Verse 3, therefore, Israel will be abandoned until the time she who is in labour bears a son, and the rest of his brothers will return to join the Israelites. Micah continues speaking into the next 700 years, which we can see from this side of history, just how the Israelites may have felt abandoned.

History and the Bible tell us that the Israelites did cry out to God for help with the Asyrians, and God came to their rescue. We see this in 2 Kings 19, verse 35. That night, the angel of the Lord went out and put to death 185,000 in the Asyrian camp.

What a deliverance! But it wasn’t long before the people of God returned back to their old ways, their old ways of sin, and soon they felt abandoned or left to their own disobedient devices. As a number of years later, the Babylonians invade and carry them off into exile for 70 years, and this starts a period of 586 years where Israel and Judah feel almost completely abandoned, apart from a short period coming out of exile. But the whole time with no king, and it appears that God has properly given up on them.

(19:47 – 20:22)

Not only did Israel and Judah have no king, they did not hear from God, no prophets, nothing for 400 years from the time of Malachi, the last record of God speaking to his people through his prophets. Into this silence in Bethlehem, a mother, as it says in verse 3, goes into labour. Hundreds of years of Israel and Judah’s history laid out like the third trimester of a pregnancy.

(20:23 – 21:44)

It’s amazing that God gets his prophet to announce this some 700 years before it happens, and how God uses Caesar Augustus, the most powerful world leader of the day. It could probably be argued that our most powerful world leader of the day is President Trump, and there he was at the FIFA World Cup doing his thing. But God uses the most powerful world leader of the day.

He uses Caesar’s decree to get Joseph and Mary to travel all the way up to Bethlehem, when Mary is heavily pregnant, as Joseph belonged to the line of David and had to go back to the town of his origin, all in order that when the Messiah was born, he would be born in Bethlehem. So into this 400 years of silence, a baby cries out, a Messiah is born. 700 years later, Matthew quotes Micah, chapter 2, verse 6 of Matthew’s gospel, but you Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.

(21:45 – 23:00)

This shows us a couple of things that the Jewish scholars of the day saw Bethlehem as the promise from Micah, as a messianic promise. And the prophecy was so accurate that King Herod practically used Micah’s prophecy like Google Maps. The promise to the rest of the brothers returning to join the Israelites as a reference to the spiritual brothers of the Messiah, the wider group of disciples following the Messiah.

Jesus inaugurates his kingdom and filled with the Holy Spirit in the upper room in Acts, 120 are sent out to turn our world upside down. The prophecy continues and ramps up even further in verse 4, he will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God, and they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach the ends of the earth. And the beginning of verse 5, and he will be our peace.

(23:02 – 23:59)

Here we see the prophecy about the Messiah in 700 years time, but also how this stretches to a third level. So we’ve seen how Micah speaks to the people in their present situation. We’ve seen how Micah is speaking to the people about what’s going to happen 700 years time.

And he speaks to us now, 2700 years later and into our eternal future. Micah promises that the Messiah will stand. In the Hebrew, that is that he will endure, that he will reign forever.

Is that not encouraging? He will shepherd his flock. What does this remind us of? We’ve been studying John’s gospel. John chapter 10, verse 11 is what you should be shouting out to me.

(24:00 – 24:55)

Jesus said, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. But more than just this, remember that the Messiah is from old, from ancient times.

I read yesterday in Genesis 49, Jacob blessing his sons just before he dies. Jacob says to Joseph, Joseph is a fruitful vine, tying in with our thoughts that we were having in community group this week. And Colin’s sermon from two weeks ago in John 15, a fruitful vine near a spring whose branches climb over the wall. With bitterness,

archers attack him. They shot him with hostility, but his bow remains steady. His arms stayed supple because of the hand of God, the mighty one of Jacob, because of the shepherd, the Messiah, the rock of Israel.

(24:56 – 25:51)

Micah, the prophet, and Moses, the author of Genesis, both pointing forward to the Messiah, the capital S, Shepherd. Jesus, the promised Messiah, will shepherd his flock. Jesus will protect and guide his flock.

Jesus will provide for our every need. So much so that age 33, Jesus, the good shepherd, actually lays down his life for his flock. Jesus died on a cross, and I know I’m jumping to Easter, and it’s not even Christmas yet.

But he dies on a cross to take upon himself our sins, to save us from the death and judgement that we deserve. Jesus will do this in God’s strength. And the verse continues, and they will live securely.

(25:51 – 26:37)

We can be assured of security because of what Jesus achieved on the cross for us, conquering death and Satan. Jesus is able to give those that put their trust and faith in him eternal life and glory. That’s proper security, not just a solid home or a good life insurance, but an eternal promise of a place in heaven.

Just a few weeks ago, John chapter 14, verse 2, in my father’s house are many rooms. I am going there to prepare a place for you. We have the ultimate insurance policy, the ultimate security found in Jesus, the promised Messiah.

(26:38 – 27:31)

For his greatness will reach the ends of the earth. The goodness and knowledge of Jesus, the Messiah, was only just spreading beyond Israel when Jesus was not only crucified, but rose again, back to life, defeating death. From this point forward, the church age, the good news about Jesus spread and spread and spread to the very ends of the earth, which we see in Micah.

This is our present reality being prophesied 2,700 years ago. This is our hope for this Christmas and for our future. And with that, we come to our final point.

(27:31 – 28:26)

Hope for this Christmas and for our future. He will be our peace is how verse 5 starts. Never a truer word of comfort has been uttered.

No one wants to be abused, attacked, or have another country invade us. We all ultimately want peace. Peace is what the Messiah promises.

In a country at war, Jesus still promises peace. And for eternity, Jesus will be our peace. And you know what is truly awesome? David and Micah both believe in the same God that we’ve been thinking about today, a God who keeps his promises, a promise keeper.

(28:28 – 31:10)

If I was to give Andy Hunter £100,000 to invest, I’m not going to do it, Andy, but if I was going to give you £100,000 to invest, I would like to think that you would do some research. You would make sure that you are investing in a company with a proven track record so that you didn’t lose out. Who better to trust now and for your eternal future than God who has delivered on every promise that he’s ever made? Our God has a track record for reliability.

He has delivered on promises made 2,700 years ago, and he will deliver on his future promise to return. This track record gives us such confidence for our future. In the same way that Micah predicted the Messiah’s birth, we can trust the words of Christ himself.

Jesus is the reigning and future King. Do you believe in his death and resurrection? Are you obeying his word? Jesus brings you peace, so take away any worries that you might have and place them on him, and trust in his promise for your future. John 14 verse 3, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me so that you may be where I am.

In the final words of the Bible, God’s written words to us, we have Jesus saying, look, I am coming soon. My reward is with me, and I will give each person according to what they have done. And yes, I am coming soon.

Christ has promised to return, and Christ will return. So what do you do with the ultimate gift this Christmas? Jesus Christ. Will you reject and disobey him and face judgement? Or will you accept Jesus as your Messiah, as your Saviour, the only true hope this Christmas? My prayer is that this Christmas, you will accept this awesome and fully paid for, free gift of eternal life with God.

Amen.

The post Longing for the past and future – Micah 5v1–6 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Well, so far in this series, we’ve talked about the person of the Spirit, and we’ve started to think about the work of the Spirit, first in the life of Jesus, and then in the life of the early church. Very obviously, we’ve started in the New Testament. We started with the Gospels and Acts, rather than with Genesis and Joel.

(0:28 – 1:41)

And while that’s a reasonable approach to take, at some point, we need to step back and consider what comes before, because after all, four-fifths of our Bible is the Old Testament. And so, the question actually arises, what was the Spirit doing before the birth of Christ? To put it in a kind of blunt way, was the Holy Spirit active in the Old Testament? Or was the Holy Spirit working minimally in the Old Testament? Or was the Holy Spirit really doing nothing at all? Was the Spirit just waiting for the day of Pentecost? I was thinking a bit like when you’re sitting in an airport departure lounge, and you’ve really got nothing else to do but wait for the flight to leave. Is that really what the Spirit was doing, just waiting for the day of Pentecost to come? I’m conscious as we begin that this could seem like an academic question to us, because we are a New Testament church.

(1:42 – 2:10)

And so, you might be asking, well, why does it matter what the Spirit was doing in a bygone era? Well, here are a few reasons that I thought of in answer to that question. Number one, if you care about the person of the Spirit, you should care about the history of the Spirit. So, in human terms, if we care about a person, we take the trouble to learn their history.

(2:11 – 4:01)

And it would be strange to say that we honour the Spirit, but we have no interest in his backstory. That was the first thing that occurred to me. The second reason is a bit more practical, and it’s that pondering the Spirit in the Old Testament will actually help us to reflect on the unity and development of the Bible.

So, an important question that every Bible reader asks at some point is, how does the Old Testament and the New Testament fit together? Yes, it’s all one grand story, but are there developments in the way God chooses to operate when I turn the page from the Old Testament to the New? You see what I’m saying? It’s one continuous story, but does everything just work and apply in the same way in the Old Testament as in the New? It’s a difficult and deep question, but thinking about the Spirit’s role in the Old and New Testament might nudge us a little closer to the answer of how these two testaments connect. So, number one, we care about the person of the Spirit. Number two, we want to read our Bibles better.

And number three, which I hope won’t sound too strange or odd, it’s that studying the Spirit in the Old Testament can create a sense of affinity with Old Testament believers but also show us the privilege we have. It’s easy to feel a sense of distance from Old Testament saints. It can seem like they lived in a very different time and in very different circumstances.

(4:03 – 4:27)

And yet something that can close that sense of gap is to realise that Old Testament saints knew something of the Spirit of the Lord. Now, they did not have a clear understanding of the Trinity in the Old Testament. That becomes much clearer when we come into the New Testament.

(4:29 – 5:58)

And yet they weren’t unfamiliar with the idea of God’s Spirit. If you sat in a Bible study with an Old Testament Jew and you mentioned God’s Spirit, they would know what you were talking about. And that helps me to have a closer affinity with Old Testament believers while also feeling the privilege of living in the last days in which the promises of Christ are being fulfilled.

Now, that’s a long introduction, three reasons, but it’s also my attempt to keep you listening for the next 20 minutes. I want you to see that this isn’t academic. And as we turn to the subject, the breadth of it is vast.

There are roughly 100 references to the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. We’re not going to go through every one of them. What we’re going to do is focus on three main things that the Holy Spirit was up to in the Old Testament period.

What was the Spirit doing B.C.? Let me suggest three main things. First of all, He was creating and sustaining. One main thing the Spirit does in the Old Testament is creating life and sustaining life.

(5:59 – 6:33)

We often think of the Holy Spirit in terms of things like salvation, proclamation of the gospel, the formation and empowerment of the church. And of course, these things are all true. But in the first chunk of the Bible, the first thing the Holy Spirit is involved in is creation itself.

Let’s open our Bible to Genesis 1 verse 1 and the second verse as well. Very well-known verses. And we’ll see the Spirit here.

(6:34 – 6:50)

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

(6:51 – 7:59)

This is the first translation of the word Spirit. Some of you will know that comes from a Hebrew word, the Hebrew word ruach, which I always think sounds like it’s a word that’s originated from the highlands rather than Hebrew, ruach. Ruach appears 400 times in the Old Testament, and it can mean different things.

Sometimes, it simply means the spirit or the breath of a human being. So, you have a ruach, a spirit. Other times, we can see in the context, it’s clearly referring to the cosmological phenomenon of breath or wind.

But as I said earlier, on about 100 occasions, the ruach, the spirit, is clearly referring to the Spirit of God. And I think that’s even implied here. I mean, we have the phrase Spirit of God, but notice what the Spirit is doing.

(8:00 – 9:14)

The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Not blowing over the waters, like the wind of nature, but hovering over the waters. It’s a picture of a bird hovering above, poised and ready for action.

The picture is of an intelligent spirit who is ready to swoop into action to create life and order out of the chaos. And so, the capital S Spirit is directly involved in creation. God the Father is creation’s source.

God the Son is creation’s word. And God the Spirit is creation’s operative power, who powerfully brings into being the word of God the Son and the will of the Father. And it’s not only that the Spirit gets things going, but very importantly, the Spirit keeps things going.

(9:15 – 10:02)

Turn with me briefly to Psalm 104. Psalm 104. It’s the kind of psalm, when you read it quickly, you may make the assessment that it’s a psalm about creation.

But I think actually, it’s more a psalm about sustaining life, not just making life. Look at verses 27 to 30. All creatures look to you to give them their food at the proper time.

When you give it to them, they gather it up. When you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. When you hide your face, they are terrified.

(10:04 – 15:14)

When you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. And it goes on. When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.

Do you see there that it’s not just that the Spirit gets things going, but the Spirit keeps things going. That’s Amos is saying, if the Holy Spirit stopped working in the world for a second, there would be no renewal of life and breath and food and water and everything else that makes life what it is. Without the Holy Spirit, the season of winter would never turn over to spring.

Do you see how wrong it would be to say the Holy Spirit wasn’t doing much in the Old Testament? If that was the case, the universe would stop existing. And can you also see, and this is where we start to think about connections, the continuity, but also the kind of elevation. Can you also see that it’s obvious then that the Holy Spirit in the New Testament is going to be the one that gives life, because that’s what he’s always been doing, giving physical life.

And so as we come into the New Testament, he’s the one who gives spiritual life. So that’s the first thing the Spirit is up to in the Old Testament. Let’s move on to a second thing.

The second thing the Spirit’s involved in was empowering and enabling. Now, we should be familiar with the idea that the Spirit empowers and enables his people. The Spirit empowers God’s people for acts of service and acts of witness, and God’s Spirit enables Christians to bear fruit, the fruit of godly character, that would be impossible in their own strength.

This is a fairly 101 idea when we think of Christian living. But actually, in the Old Testament, there was also a certain amount of empowering and enabling believers. And I want you to give you just a smattering of examples of this, and I want you to think about what were the commonalities and the situations in which God’s Spirit enabled people.

Here are some of the people that the Spirit is said to have empowered, and I’m just going to give you the references for you to jot down. In Numbers 11, 70 elders were appointed to assist Moses in the governing of a vast people. There was this position of leadership and wisdom and organisation.

And the Bible says they were given the Spirit of the Lord to help them do that task. In Exodus 31, a man named Bezalel was empowered with the Spirit, along with his fellow craftsmen, to construct the tabernacle, the place of worship. Now, that was actually a very practical skill, of course, but it was a very important building that was being made.

And so God gave the Spirit to enable them to do that practical task Successfully. In Deuteronomy 34, Joshua, the successor of Moses, is filled with the Spirit to lead God’s people into the promised land, with all of the challenges that that was going to bring.

In that context of conflict, the Spirit of God enables them. In Judges 6, Gideon is clothed with the Spirit of the Lord. He’s one of the judges who were leaders in Old Testament times when there weren’t kings.

And he’s clothed, we’re told, with the Spirit of the Lord to lead God’s people against the Midianites. In Judges 13-15, Samson, very famous Old Testament character, is empowered by the Spirit to have supernatural strength to overcome God’s enemies. In 1 Samuel 10 and 11, Saul, the first king of Israel, is given the Spirit to lead God’s people in a way that honours the Lord.

Of course, if you know the story there, he rebels against the Lord, and the Holy Spirit is then taken from Saul, and everything falls apart. But in 1 Samuel 16, David succeeds Saul. And David is really the paradigm for kingship.

(15:14 – 16:50)

He’s the model of it in the Old Testament. And we’re told that he too is filled with the Spirit. And even though he sins against the Lord in a grievous way, we know that his sins are forgiven, and the Holy Spirit is not taken from David.

And so, at least in his lifetime, his whole kingdom doesn’t crumble because of the Spirit of the Lord. And of course, there are many other examples that we could look at in the work of the prophets. In Ezekiel 2, for example, the Spirit strengthens Ezekiel to hear God’s Word and to proclaim God’s Word.

So here are a whole list of people that God in the Old Testament empowers by the Spirit in the Old Covenant era. But what do you notice about them? What’s in common with all of them? Let me suggest three things that all of these people I’ve mentioned have in common. Number one, they are all leaders.

Number two, they are all doing highly important tasks. And number three, the presence of the Holy Spirit is not necessarily permanent. Who are these people? Prominent craftsmen making the tabernacle, the judges who ruled the people, the kings who ruled over the nation, the prophets who alone spoke God’s Word to the nation.

(16:52 – 18:18)

These are not nobodies, but important somebodies playing significant roles in the advancement of God’s kingdom in their time. The legal and spiritual leaders of the people being given God’s Spirit to advance God’s kingdom. But by contrast, under the New Covenant, and as we think about what’s the difference when we get to the New Testament, the promise of Joel as we saw last week is that all of God’s people, all of us, will be given the Spirit of the Lord.

The young as well as the old, the important people and those who may be seen as less important. And it won’t just be for the most significant tasks, like building a temple, or leading a nation, or fighting a foreign oppressor. But because the Holy Spirit lives in us at all times, He is with us to help us even with the so-called ordinary things of life on the Monday to the Sunday.

And there’s also a permanence that comes with the giving of the Spirit in the New Testament. None of us needs to worry like David that the Holy Spirit might be taken from us. Isn’t that wonderful? The Holy Spirit is the permanent possession of every genuine believer.

(18:20 – 19:00)

Are there any other differences between Old Testament saints and New Testament believers? I thought it just would be worth mentioning this, that within discussions about these things among Bible-believing Christians, there’s a bit of debate around whether Old Testament believers were indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Did the Holy Spirit actually come and live within them? Or is that something that only happens in the New Covenant? Did the Spirit empower them but not indwell them? Some people say, yes, the Spirit did both. And other people say, no, the Spirit empowered them but didn’t indwell them until the New Covenant.

(19:03 – 22:17)

My own reading of it is, I do think something very new is happening in the New Covenant. I do personally think that New Testament believers are indwelt in a way that’s not true in the Old Testament. Because in Ezekiel, there is a promise of a new heart, a whole new inner transformation that just wasn’t true for the Old Testament saint in the same way.

But wherever you land in that murky question, the idea of believers being empowered for ministry is not new. And yet as Christians today, we should really see the privilege of living in the time that we do. Well, let’s move on to our third thing before we come to communion.

What was the third thing that the Holy Spirit was doing in this time? Thirdly, the Spirit was prophesying and speaking. The Spirit of God has always been speaking out the Word of God. Another thing that those people we mentioned earlier mostly had in common, not all of them, but most of them, whether it was Moses or David or the prophets, is that many of them were spokesmen for God.

Many of them received the Spirit specifically so that they could speak out God’s Word faithfully, and so that they could write down God’s Word in a faithful way. And we read about this in 2 Peter 1, if you want to turn there just for a moment. It’s just a single verse, but quite an important verse to have as part of your theology as a Christian, in 2 Peter 1, verse 21.

Because it says something about the formation of Scripture, and it says something about the work of the Holy Spirit to guarantee that. And he’s speaking here of Old Testament prophecy, and we’re told that prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God. Now, how did they speak from God? This is the key point.

What enabled them? What guaranteed that they spoke from God? As they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. The prophets like Moses, David, Isaiah, and so on spoke God’s Word because the Spirit gave them the impulse to do so. The Spirit empowered the very process that led them to writing down the Scriptures.

This is a verse in the New Testament that’s telling us that the Old Testament is divinely inspired. And the argument for inspiration is that it wasn’t just a bloke or a guy coming up with his own ideas. The Holy Spirit was orchestrating and directing the entire process.

(22:19 – 23:31)

And so the question then follows, okay, so if the Holy Spirit is speaking in the Old Testament and causing all this stuff to be written down, what is He speaking? What is the message of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament? What’s He saying through the prophets? Well, I guess a whole bunch of things. But I want to just finish on two dimensions, two main things as we think about particularly the prophecies that were spoken. Number one, the Holy Spirit was speaking ahead about Jesus.

He was speaking ahead about Jesus. Think about the prophets. What are the prophets doing? The prophets are called, some people have called them the covenant enforcers.

They basically come along and they say to Israel, listen, here’s God’s law given to Moses. Here’s what God asked you to do, but you’re not doing it. They enforce the law.

They show people that they’re not meeting the standard of the law. But when you read the prophets, what’s the answer to that? I mean, part of it is, of course, repent and change your ways and get back to the law. That’s part of it.

(23:32 – 25:31)

But there’s also a recognition in the prophets that telling the people to pull up their bootstraps isn’t going to do it, isn’t going to achieve it. And so this is the point at which the prophets begin to prophesy the new covenant and a greater fulfilment that’s going to sort out this mess of their hearts. And the answer, of course, is the sending of one who will bring about a revolution of the heart.

The sending of the Son, the sending of the Messiah, the Spirit anointed Messiah, as we thought about just a week or two ago from Isaiah 42, Isaiah 61, and then fulfilled in the baptism of Jesus as the Spirit comes down on Him. As we heard a few weeks ago, that is not just an incidental point in the story. It’s not just a little, you know, an interesting incident.

It’s the fulfilment of all the promises. It’s the moment where Jesus is being identified on earth as the final Saviour King who has finally come to sort out the mess. And that then is the basis on which the same Spirit-filled Messiah will then be able to pour out that same Spirit upon the church and pour out all of His saving benefits upon those who believe.

And so this is the great message at the heart of the prophets. Ultimately, the Spirit is speaking ahead of Jesus. We talk about this, don’t we, the Spirit testifying to Jesus.

But He’s already doing that in the Old Testament. He’s already preaching Christ. But there’s also another aspect to it, isn’t there, as well.

(25:32 – 27:49)

Because not only is the coming of Christ predicted, but also, again, as we saw last week, there’s the promise of the people of Christ, the promise of the church. And so not only is it Jesus Himself who’s spoken of, but this new people, this recreated people with new hearts, with the law of God written on their hearts, with a whole new destiny and a whole new inheritance, not a future of judgement, but a future of glory and a future in the family of God. All of that is promised in the prophecies of the Old Testament.

We don’t have time to go to those various passages, but you can look many of them up yourselves. Well, as we come to the end of this fairly brief study, in one sense, I want us to leave here tonight not only with a clearer view of what the Spirit’s doing in the Old Testament, but maybe also with a firmer view of the value of the Old Testament as a whole. It’s four-fifths of God’s Word, and it’s to be taken as seriously as we take the last fifth of it, and as we consider that whole idea.

Of course, we need to set the Old Testament in its context. We need to wrestle with it in places, but we need to take it just as seriously as we do the New Testament. And so if you are a Christian and you’ve been a Christian for a number of years, but you haven’t really started to get stuck into the Old Testament, then I would strongly encourage you to do so.

Maybe pick a book in the Old Testament. Maybe one of those prophets that particularly point forward to Jesus. Buy an accessible study guide, or have a good study Bible that gives you notes at the bottom that you can look at, and start to enjoy the first volume of what the Holy Spirit said about Jesus.

(27:51 – 28:55)

Do you see just how much the Spirit was up to in the Old Testament? You know, as I studied this, I was actually staggered by the amount that the Spirit does prior to Jesus coming. Creating and sustaining, empowering and enabling, prophesying and speaking. And believe me, there’s a whole bunch of other stuff that I left out tonight, but those are some of the main things.

I hope you sense both the continuity that we have with Old Testament saints, that they actually enjoyed many of the same privileges. Not in quite the same way, but they did enjoy many privileges. Privileges of the Spirit.

But I also hope you sense the real privilege you have of living in this time when the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon His church. We are living in days that our Old Testament brothers and sisters longed to see. Let me just pray for a moment.

(28:59 – 29:42)

Father, lead us now by the Holy Spirit to focus our attention on the One that He proclaimed. We thank you so much for the Spirit-anointed Messiah, the One who fulfils all of these promises. The One who has sent the Spirit upon the church.

The One who has softened our own hearts, opened our eyes, opened our ears, so that we can see and hear and understand the good news about Jesus. May we come to this table with a sense of thankfulness and gratitude. And we ask this in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

The post The Spirit in the Old Testament appeared first on Greenview Church.

If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belong to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.

(0:13 – 1:31)

That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you. A servant is not greater than his master.

If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me.

If I had not come and spoke to them, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my father as well. If I had not done among them the works no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin.

As it is, they have seen, and yet they have hated both me and my father. But this is to fulfil what is written in their law. They hated me without reason.

I’d like to reassure you, if you’re not here that often, that it isn’t every week that we talk about hatred. Our practise is to work through books of the Bible, and so we deal with the next passage, whatever it is, whatever it says. Last week, it was about living a fruitful life.

(1:32 – 1:52)

And this week, what to do when the world hates you. And this is not just hatred in a general sense. I guess we’ve all had experiences of being hated in life, but specifically, what to do when you’re hated as a Christian.

(1:53 – 3:38)

Now, I realise that some of us here may not be in that category of a Christian, but Jesus in John 15 is speaking specifically to his followers, and he tells them what to do when hatred comes to their door. Now, it’s not a case of if hatred comes to their door, but when it comes to their door. And this made me think, I was trying to think of an illustration.

It made me think of one of those big department stores, particularly round about Christmas time, in the likes of Silverburn, whether it’s Marks and Spencer’s, or Next, or H&M. Now, if you work in one of those department stores and are a public-facing member of staff, and I guess particularly if you are the store manager, you will face antagonism from the public. That is just a given.

That just goes with the territory. It may not be every day. It certainly won’t be your whole experience of working there, but you will face hostility if you are the public face of the store.

And Jesus is saying in today’s passage that the same will be true for his followers. His people live in the world as the public face of his kingdom. And therefore, hostility isn’t just possible, it’s inevitable.

(3:39 – 4:20)

It may not happen every day. It certainly won’t be the total experience of being a Christian, but it is part of the package of being a known Christian in the world. And so Jesus is preparing his followers for hatred.

He’s warning them to expect it, and he’s training them in how to handle it. In the same way that in that department store, they might train the staff in how to deal with irate customers. I suppose they must do that, so that they’re setting the expectation and training them in how to respond.

(4:21 – 5:26)

Now, when that training is given, it does not make the experience easy, but it does make it a little less difficult. And Jesus is doing the same thing. He wants the experience of receiving the world’s hatred to be a notch or two less difficult, because we know the things he tells us in this passage, so that we’ll bear it better, and so that we’ll continue to be his witnesses in the world.

So, what is the training Jesus gives? It’s found in John 15. Open your Bible there to the passage. Everything I’m going to say is going to come out of the passage.

And in verses 18 to 25, Jesus gives us this training, and it’s largely about knowing things. This training isn’t full of things to do. It’s full of things to think about.

(5:27 – 6:05)

And this is made explicit in verse 18. If the world hates you, keep in mind, Jesus says. Other translations translate this, know that.

There’s something to keep in mind. There’s something to know and understand that will help you cope with hatred. So, I’m going to suggest that Jesus here gives us four things to understand, not if the world hates us, but when that happens in whatever form.

(6:07 – 7:51)

So, four things to know. Number one, know that Jesus was hated first. Know that Jesus was hated first.

This is how Jesus begins. Verse 18, if the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If this happens, Jesus says, keep in mind.

But it’s clear, although he uses the word if, it’s clear from a few verses later that this will happen. Because look at verse 20. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you.

Well, the world did persecute Jesus. We’ll think about that a little more in a moment. And so, therefore, it follows, the disciples will be persecuted as well.

And when it happens, the thing to keep in the front of your brain is that Jesus suffered first. And I take it, he isn’t just saying that Jesus suffered chronologically first, although that’s true. But that in some way, Jesus is the paradigm of what being hated by the world looks like.

As we read through the gospels and learn about the life of Jesus, we discover that being hated was Jesus’ lived experience. Think about this. Imagine you lived this life.

(7:51 – 8:14)

People attempt to kill you as a baby. As an adult, you preach your first sermon in your hometown, and your hometown tries to kill you. You heal people, and you do lots of good and loving things, and yet people still call you possessed by the devil.

(8:16 – 9:59)

And although you’re popular in a general sense for your miracles, your words are rejected, and your ultimate claims are rejected to be the Son of God. And of course, there is that climactic hatred. When Jesus is arrested and beaten and killed on a cross, Jesus experienced the hatred of the world first.

And I think that means that Jesus sets the pattern of what this looks like, and also that he should become our focus when we experience hostility. When we’re given a hard time for our faith, our first thought needs to be, Jesus encountered this first. Now, quite honestly, in practise, that is not so easy to do.

In those thankfully rare times when I feel I’ve been got at as a Christian, because I’m a Christian, my eyes often have looked in other places and not to Jesus. And maybe that’s been your experience too. Here’s where I tend to look.

I tend to look at the person. I tend to look at what they’re doing to me. I tend to focus on what they’re saying about me, or I focus on my circumstances and the horrible impact of what they’re doing to me.

(10:00 – 10:32)

That’s honestly where I tend to look. And yet, the author of Hebrews says, and we often forget in these beautiful verses that we often quote, that the author was writing in the context of persecution. The author of Hebrews says that we are to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

(10:33 – 11:08)

When the world attacks me for my faith, Jesus wants me to look to him. And what will I see when I look to Jesus? I’ll see that he loved his enemies, that he prayed for his persecutors, and that he even died, according to Romans 5, for those who were his enemies. I’ll see that Jesus persevered because he believed God’s promises of future joy.

(11:10 – 11:38)

And I’ll see that the one that I am suffering for is the one who is running the whole universe, sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. When hostility comes our way, the first thing we need to know is that Jesus was hated first. But here’s a second thing, a second thing that’s important to keep in mind, and I suppose this goes even a level deeper than that.

(11:40 – 12:31)

Know that your connection to Jesus makes hatred inevitable. Know that your connection to Jesus makes hatred inevitable. In our service last week, we spoke about, the whole sermon was about our connection to Jesus, the theme of what we called union with Christ.

You might remember that we defined a Christian, a Christian is someone spiritually connected to Jesus, in a way that brings them eternal life through faith in him. And we thought about lots of positives of that connection. The life that comes to us through union with Jesus, the joy that can be experienced through it, the fruitful and purposeful life that is possible through our connection with Christ.

(12:32 – 13:32)

And all of that is true, but it’s not the whole story. You see, the connection that brings us spiritual life could also bring us physical death. The connection that brings us the love of God’s people, which you might notice in verse 17, is actually the immediate context of this part of the passage.

He’s just talked about the love of the church family, and then he talks about the hatred of the world. The connection that brings us the love of God’s people is the same connection that can bring us the world’s hatred, and it’s all because of our connection to Jesus. I was watching a TV programme the other day, and there was this young woman on it who said that one of her parents was a well-known celebrity.

(13:33 – 14:00)

And because of her connection to that parent, because she had the name, and she was known to belong to them, she said that people treated her in a certain way all of her life, sometimes positively, but oftentimes negatively. And it was nothing to do with her in herself. It was entirely to do with who she was connected to.

(14:01 – 14:20)

And Jesus is making a similar point here. The reason his disciples will be hated is because of their connection to him. Or as he words it in verse 19, it’s because they belong to him, not to the world.

(14:22 – 14:35)

That girl who was related to this celebrity, she belonged to her parents by birth. These disciples weren’t part of Jesus’ original family. They don’t belong to him by birth.

(14:36 – 15:39)

They belong to him by grace. And it’s because they belong to Jesus that they are hated as he was hated. And verse 20 contains a very similar idea, except the image here is that of a master and a servant.

In the ancient world, about a third of the population were slaves. And the etiquette was that masters would be treated better than their servants, because the view was that they were higher on the social ladder. And so Jesus’ point is that if he, the master, has been hated by the world, then his servants won’t be treated any better.

That is never going to happen. If the master is persecuted, then his slaves will be persecuted too. Why? Because they’re connected to him.

(15:41 – 15:58)

Jesus is being so honest about the cost of being connected to him. He’s giving us the true cost. I don’t know if many of you are tempted by the Black Friday deals.

(16:00 – 18:06)

They are rarely as good as they look. If you do a bit of research, and you should, and you track the price over many months, you discover that often the great deal you’re getting on Black Friday is what the price was four months ago. And then they artificially raised it, and then they dropped it to make you think it was an amazing deal.

They hide the true cost of the item. Jesus never does that. Jesus puts the bill on the table, and he says, this will be the cost of being connected to me.

And it turned out to be the cost. As far as we can gather from church history, it appears that 10 of the 11 disciples who Jesus is speaking to here were martyred for their faith. Only one of them died in their own bed.

So this teaching wasn’t theoretical. Jesus isn’t, you know, he’s not over egging the pudding here. He is preparing them for a very hard reality.

And it is a hard reality that continues in some parts of the world even today. If you live in sub-Saharan Africa, or parts of Asia, or parts of the Middle East, becoming a convert to Christ is like signing your own death warrant. And such Christians need to see that their suffering is not pointless.

It is profound. It’s not just that Jesus suffered before them, but actually in a profound way, they suffer with Christ, with him, in their union with him, and because of that union. You know, people who get that have a very different mindset.

(18:08 – 18:28)

I was listening fairly recently to a Christian from a country where quite a lot of people are dying for their faith as Christians. One of these countries in the very top tier of persecution. And this man, this guy is endangered himself when he goes back to his country.

(18:28 – 18:54)

He’s always in danger of becoming a martyr. And the interviewer asked him, what should the church in the West be praying for you? And the man said, if death comes because of my faith, pray that I will not renounce my faith in Jesus. Pray that I will be faithful till the end.

(18:56 – 19:21)

Someone can only pray that if they have a profound understanding of their connection to Jesus Christ. And if they have a bigger picture than the here and the now. But you know, back to our land, where let’s be honest, the cost is not nearly that high.

(19:23 – 19:42)

And yet I think even here, we increasingly do need to have a bigger picture of our connection to Christ, even here. And I’m very aware that in a church like this, we will have a range of experiences of hostility. Some of us might have been very sheltered.

(19:44 – 20:23)

And some of us less so, in terms of suffering for our faith. Let me just add an important qualifier that I must say in this sermon, incidentally. This is about being mistreated because of your faith, and only because of your faith.

Look at verse 21, Jesus said, it’s because of my name. That’s the only reason that this kind of persecution comes. So this is not because I have poor character and people just don’t like me, because I’ve got bad character.

(20:25 – 20:54)

I remember years ago, speaking to a guy. He was going around church telling everybody that he was being persecuted at work for Jesus. And he was being a bold evangelist.

There was lots of maybe good things he was doing. But actually, as he described the manner in which he spoke to people, and the manner in which he did or didn’t do his job, I thought, actually, I think I would persecute him at work too, if I was there. And I’m a Christian as well.

(20:56 – 21:51)

Let’s be sure if hatred comes, it’s only because of our connection to Jesus. But of course, within that, there is a range to this. From the minor end of the register, the subtle dig, the little jab, to the higher end of the register, where maybe someone calls you or considers you to be a bigot for just holding to Christian views that are 2,000 years old and in the Bible.

Or when we’re socially ostracised and distanced, or even cut off from family or relationships because of our faith. Now, thankfully, this does not happen to everyone. There is a wide range of different experiences.

(21:53 – 22:19)

But in the worst scenarios, this can be emotionally devastating for people. Even if it’s a far cry from the physical suffering of our brothers and sisters elsewhere, it is no small matter to be shunned by, for example, your parents, or previously close friends. So in whatever form it takes, Jesus says, look to me.

(22:20 – 23:04)

And whatever it looks like, Jesus says, remember you’re connected to me. And bear in mind that that connection also means blessing as well as suffering. Notice at the end of verse 20, just before we leave this point, Jesus circles back to something positive.

He says, if they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. Of course, not everyone obeyed the teaching of Jesus. He preached and some people rejected, many people rejected him.

But the opposite was also true. I mean, these disciples are the very example of that. They had obeyed Jesus’ command to repent and believe.

(23:05 – 24:33)

And in the same way, these disciples would preach and many would obey their message in repentance and faith. This is basically, this verse is basically what happens in the book of Acts, right? These really ordinary men with no authority in themselves, because they’re connected to Jesus, are listened to and a church is born. So in this darkest section of farewell teaching, Jesus is giving a very balanced picture of union with Christ.

It will bring blessing, but it will also bring suffering. Now thirdly, third thing let’s press on that we need to bear in mind is know that the problem isn’t really with you. Know that the problem isn’t really with you.

It looks like the problem’s with you, but it’s not with you. So look at verse 21, they will treat you in this way because of my name. Jesus says, they’re only treating you badly because of the name you bear.

Their real problem is with me. And actually it’s even deeper than that. This is a bit like, you know, when the archaeologists dig and they find another layer and then they keep going and they find another layer.

(24:34 – 25:35)

Well, this is like that. The top layer is the disciple is hated. You go down a layer, it’s really Jesus they hate.

But if you dig even further down, there’s also someone else they hate. Verse 21, for they do not know the one who sent me. And verse 23, whoever hates me hates the father as well.

And verse 24, they have hated both me and my father. The disciple is hated. Underneath that is hatred of Jesus.

But underneath the hatred of Jesus is the fact that his father who sent him is the one being despised. That is the underlying root problem. On the surface, it looks like Christians being bullied, but the ultimate problem that the persecutor has is with God himself.

(25:38 – 25:56)

And just note this, when we hear this, we might think that this is just speaking of people who kind of obviously reject God. That’s maybe how we hear this in a kind of Western secular culture. We might be thinking of, for instance, people who are atheists and just outright reject God.

(25:56 – 26:42)

It may include them, but actually in the original context, what’s the shocking thing is that most of the early persecutors of Christians were highly religious. They thought they knew God. We’ll see this when Jesus is put to death.

It’s a religious court who condemns him. People who thought they were doing God a favour by killing Jesus. You see, the real test of whether someone knows God or not, hates God or doesn’t, is their attitude towards Jesus, the one the Father has sent into the world.

(26:44 – 27:41)

Do we accept Jesus for who he claimed to be, the Messiah or the Son of God? Or do we say, I’m not so sure? Or I think that’s nonsense. This passage is saying that if we say that latter thing about Jesus, that ultimately, that’s an antipathy towards Jesus. And ultimately, it’s an antipathy towards the Father himself.

At the deepest heart level, we actually oppose the God who made us. And notice this, that this is despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I think verse 22, which looks like a tricky verse, is explained when we think of this as kind of a mountain of evidence that’s being rejected.

(27:42 – 29:09)

Jesus had given this mountain of evidence to the people of his day, which they still rejected. Jesus says, if I hadn’t come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, Jesus isn’t saying that if he never came into the world, these people would be objectively sinless or guiltless.

His point is that he had come, he had spoken God’s words to them. He had shown them the miracles that demonstrate that he was God. And yet these folks still rejected Jesus.

And so they were guilty of the sin of denying a mountain of evidence that pointed to Jesus as Messiah. If anyone had no excuse to reject Jesus, it was them. And the fact they hadn’t accepted Jesus revealed their underlying attitude to him and their underlying attitude to God.

And so speaking from this perspective of the Christian, when people mistreat you for your faith, you need to see that there’s a deeper thing going on in their hearts. There’s a deeper layer to the problem. The problem is not with you.

The problem is with God himself. And you’re just the public face of that. And that’s why you’re on the receiving end of it.

(29:11 – 31:00)

Knowing that can make it just a little easier to bear, I think. So that’s the third thing to understand. Number one, Jesus was hated first.

Number two, your connection to Jesus makes hatred inevitable. Number three, the problem’s not really with you. And number four, God remains in control when you’re hated without reason.

God remains in control when you’re hated for no reason. Now, I’m seeing the God in control bits in the fact that Jesus quotes from a psalm in verse 25. And he says, this psalm is fulfilled.

See that in verse 25? Jesus is probably quoting from Psalm 69 here, which is a psalm of King David. And David speaks in that psalm of being hated for no reason. Now, Jesus, a thousand years later, is quoting the same psalm.

And he says, God’s word is being fulfilled. Or as he puts it, the law is being fulfilled in what is happening to me. In other words, Jesus is saying that David’s actual experience was also prophetic.

It also pointed forward to Jesus, David’s descendant. Yes, this did speak of David, but it ultimately pointed forward in a greater way to how Jesus would be treated, hated without reason. Jesus, the only man who lived with absolute integrity, hated without reason.

(31:02 – 32:24)

If God spares us till after Christmas, we will see in the trial of Jesus that there was no good reason why he was condemned. And yet, that very hatred fulfilled the promise of Scripture. Somehow, that awful and baseless hatred was part of God’s bigger plan to save the world.

Because that hatred led to Jesus going to the cross, where he died as a substitute for people who don’t love God as they should. People who like me. God had a bigger plan.

He was in sovereign control, even over this baseless attack on Jesus. And actually, this is comforting for us, I think, on a secondary level. Because while this was most true of Jesus, it was also true of David.

It was his experience as a believer. And it’s often true of our experience as Jesus’ people. I think one of the hardest parts of that negative experience of being hated at some level for our faith is seeing that there’s no good reason that someone’s treating us that way.

(32:26 – 33:12)

There’s nothing in our behaviour, there’s nothing in what we’re saying or doing that deserves it. Sure, we can see divine reasons and deeper reasons, whether it’s our connection to God or his greater purposes. We can know all of that’s true.

But it’s still really hard at a human level to be hated for no good reason. Maybe you’ve been through stuff like that. Maybe you’re going through stuff like that.

Or maybe you’re the spouse of someone that’s experiencing that. Or the friend of the most gracious Christian, and they’re being treated like rubbish just because of their faith. It’s an absolutely rubbish feeling.

(33:13 – 34:50)

But we need to understand that Jesus knows it too well. He was hated without a cause, and yet he was comforted by the fact that God was still in control. God was even fulfilling his promises in that very hatred.

Now, of course, none of this is a magic pill. Knowing this will not make our experience of hostility easy, but it might make it just a little less difficult. It might just make all the difference to help us keep going as a Christian and to keep afloat in the water.

But as we come to the end, as we focus so much on, I suppose, on the angle of being on the receiving end of being hated for Jesus, I think it would be remiss to finish without asking, but what about from the other side of things? And maybe just finishing with the question, is there then any hope for haters of Jesus? And not just the really blatant examples of haters, but as we’ve been thinking in this passage, actually hatred comes in all sorts of forms. It’s not just somebody that’s obviously hostile. And maybe as we’re sitting here this morning, we’re realising, well, if the category for hatred is someone who doesn’t give their full allegiance to Jesus, then maybe I am in that category.

(34:51 – 35:40)

Well, is there any hope for people in that position? There is a famous example in the life of a man named Saul. Maybe you’ve heard this story, I don’t know. But Saul was living at the time of Jesus.

He was a very religious person. He was a Jewish man. And, Saul didn’t think that Jesus was the Messiah.

He didn’t think that he was the son of God. And because he hated Jesus, he therefore hated the people of Jesus. And Saul goes in this campaign to literally lead the persecution of the Christian church, going from town to town and city to city, arresting people and even supervising their deaths.

(35:42 – 36:50)

And one day Saul, more famously known as Paul, was travelling to a city called Damascus and Jesus appeared to him. And Jesus said to him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It wasn’t really the church that Saul was persecuting. It was ultimately Jesus himself that he had the issue with.

And at that wonderful moment, Saul’s eyes were opened and he saw Jesus for the first time as he really is, as the son of God, as the Lord of glory, and as his personal saviour. The persecutor became a believer and the hater became a lover of Christ. And eventually, it’s a very long story and I will not give you the whole of Paul’s life, but eventually he lays down his life for Jesus.

(36:54 – 37:16)

And so if we’re here this morning and we have the realisation that Saul had, Paul had, that we’ve seen Jesus totally wrong, there is grace available to us today. There can be a Damascus road moment for us today. And that’s how it needs to be for some people.

(37:16 – 37:52)

I mean, for some folk it’s a gradual thing coming to faith, but for some of us, we think of Jesus one way and we need that dramatic moment of revelation to say, “Ah!, this is who Jesus really is”. And what position do we find ourselves this morning? The Bible says, you either belong to Jesus as his friend, or you’re still an enemy of Jesus. The wonderful news of the gospel is that enemies can become friends and haters can become family.

(37:53 – 38:12)

May that be each of our experience as we respond to this message today. Just a moment of quiet. Father, help us to respond to your word to us today.

(38:13 – 38:38)

Help us to see who Jesus really is. Help us to not only trust in him, but then to bear his name, whatever the cost may be. Help us to fix our eyes on Jesus today.

And as we go into another week of living for him, we ask this in his name. Amen.

The post What to do when the world hates you – John 15v18–27 appeared first on Greenview Church.

We’re turning now to our series in the Holy Spirit. We’ve been looking at that over the last few weeks. It’s going to be a bit like a Bible study tonight, because as we do something topical, we’re going to go to different passages.

The verses will be on the screen, but just by way of setting the scene, and it’s always good just to take a bit of God’s word at the beginning of a message like this. Let’s turn to Acts chapter one, and if you do have a Bible, you can read with me in Acts chapter one. I’m just going to read from verses one to eight.

(0:38 – 1:06)

In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of 40 days and spoke about the kingdom of God.

(1:06 – 2:37)

On one occasion while he was eating with them, he gave them this command, do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptised with water, but in a few days you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit. They gathered round him and asked him, Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, it is not for you to know the times or dates the father has set by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes and a cloud hid him from their sight. God bless to us the reading of his inspired words. Well, as we’ve said over the last few Sundays, we’ve been thinking about the person and the work of God, the Holy Spirit.

Colin introduced us to the subject, the divinity and the personal nature of the Holy Spirit. And last week, David showed us how Jesus, the perfect human, was utterly bound into and dependent upon the Holy Spirit. And this week we’re coming to the Holy Spirit’s work in forming and empowering the church.

(2:38 – 3:58)

And by church, because it’s good to get our definitions straight, we mean the family of God, the gathering of those who are trusting Jesus as their Saviour and their Lord, the community of people who are united in Christ, Christians, both in its universal sense of Christians in all times, in all places throughout history, and in its local sense, as Greenview would be one of those expressions. The church which began publicly and formally 10 days after Jesus ascended into heaven, where we’ve just read in Acts chapter 1 on the day of Pentecost, and the particular event, of course, that lifted the curtain on the church age in which we live was the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the lives of those first followers of Jesus. The new age of the Holy Spirit being given, not just to kings and to priests and to prophets, not just on a temporary basis for certain purposes at certain times, but something that would be given to every believer, something that had been promised and foretold in the Old Testament, indeed was going to be the sign of the New Testament.

(3:58 – 7:37)

And when we talk about testament, that’s just another word for covenant, or we might say agreement. In one sense, the New Testament is the new agreement or the new arrangement that was going to come with the coming of Jesus, the time when every one of God’s people would be indwelt by God personally. Jeremiah put it like this.

The verses will be on the screen. Chapter 31, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord.

I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbour or say to one another, know, the Lord, because they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.

Ezekiel describes it like this. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

And I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. And then most famously, Joel, in the second chapter of Joel, which was quoted then in the day of Pentecost itself, the prophet Joel, and repeated by Peter, the apostle, said this. This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel.

In the last days, God says, I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions.

Your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days and they will prophesy. And then later on in that same sermon, Peter says, repent and be baptised, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

This is an amazing step change. Very easy for us as New Testament Christians to take this for granted. This announcement, this reality that fallen humans, with all our sin, with all our uncleanness, and we know our own hearts, we know the thoughts that can pass through our minds, we know our past and our dark secrets, that people like us can now be inhabited by God Himself.

Every Christian, a little temple with God inside. And no exceptions. From the least to the greatest person, humanly speaking, we can all be personally and directly connected to God.

No more of those Old Testament barriers. No more of the big keep out signs in the temple. No having to trek back and forth to priests in order to relate to God properly.

But access to God whoever and wherever I am. Because as Jeremiah put it, they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. And of course, this church age, this giving of the Holy Spirit, only happens after the cross and the resurrection and the ascension, because it’s only possible because of Jesus.

(7:38 – 9:23)

Because He is the one who took away all those barriers. One who took away our sin, who clothes us in perfection, who sits us at God’s own table, restored to your heavenly Father. And Pentecost, the coming of the Spirit that day and upon the lives of every Christian since, is the evidence of that reality.

That Jesus has done that work. That sin has been dealt with. That guilt has been taken away.

That in Jesus we are now new creations. And in pouring out the Holy Spirit on Christians, on those members of the church, I guess there are three wonders that are at work in the lives of Christians. The first wonder, as we’ve said, is that every Christian is directly connected to God and indwelt by God.

Secondly, Christians are unified, because we are held and bound together by the same Holy Spirit. It’s good to remember that, isn’t it? As we look at each other, the same Holy Spirit that is in me, is in you, and is in every other person. We’re not in a competition.

And thirdly, as well as being connected and unified, Christians are empowered. Empowered and enabled to become more like Jesus. Empowered and enabled to be used by God to serve and to evangelise with spiritual effects.

(9:25 – 10:24)

And it’s that last point that we’re going to focus on tonight. The way in which the Holy Spirit empowers Christians to serve and to bless others. I noted this great wonder at Pentecost, and indeed the great miracle and blessing of the church age, is that every person who becomes a Christian becomes a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.

So to be a Christian is by definition to be inhabited by God, the Holy Spirit. Paul couldn’t be clearer. Again, the verse is on the screen.

Romans chapter 8, if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. Good to remember that. Sometimes being at gatherings of Christians or seeing gatherings of Christians where almost the service begins with a summoning of the Holy Spirit.

(10:25 – 13:56)

Come down, Holy Spirit. Come upon us, Holy Spirit. Well, if there’s Christians there, be assured the Holy Spirit is already very truly present.

And so in one sense, we could define the church as the gathering of all those who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, because that’s what it means to be a Christian. Theologians sometimes call this universal outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the democratisation of the Spirit. This is what happens in the New Testament.

No longer are there any hierarchies or special categories of people, but everybody is included. And one of the ways that that would be evidenced according to Joel and according to Peter was that ordinary believers would experience what had previously just been the preserve of a few. So you notice in Acts 2, when we read those verses from Pentecost, that it speaks, and Peter speaks, and Joel prophesies of all types of people, young, old, male, female, servants, having dreams and visions and prophesying.

Now I don’t think that means that Joel or Peter was telling us that every person would have those exact type of experiences, but it’s a picture of the democratisation of the Spirit. Rather like me, I guess. Imagine somebody had left some astronomical sum of money to the members of Greenview, and next month we were due to get our share of this huge inheritance.

And I would be standing here and saying, folks, this time next week, we’re all going to be driving Rolls Royces. I don’t mean literally everybody’s going to go out and buy a Rolls Royce. It’s figurative, isn’t it? We’re all going to have a share in this great wealth.

And by talking about visions and prophecy, Peter and Joel are saying everybody’s going to have a share in this outpouring of the Holy Spirit. So nevertheless, while I don’t think he’s saying we will all see or experience visions or prophecy personally, the Bible nonetheless tells us that every Christian will receive a manifestation of the Spirit in some form. 1 Corinthians chapter 12, again, it will be on the screen.

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone, it is the same God at work.

Now to each one, the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one that is given through the Spirit, a message of wisdom. To another, a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit.

To another, faith by the same Spirit. To another, gifts of healing by that one Spirit. To another, miraculous powers.

To another, prophecy. To another, distinguishing between Spirits. To another, speaking in different kinds of tongues.

And still to another, the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of the one and the same Spirit, and He distributes them to each one just as He determines. To each one, a manifestation or the manifestation of the Spirit is given.

(13:57 – 15:07)

And in the context there, that manifestation is clearly Paul talking about receiving spiritual gifts, Holy Spirit-given gifts. Verse 4, that is abilities given and empowered by the Holy Spirit for the blessing of others. And note, of course, in that passage that whatever those gifts are, there is no one who’s not going to receive something.

Note the language there of everyone and to each one. And the New Testament gives us a number of lists of those type of gifts, those type of manifestations. Again, there’ll be a little table on the screen coming up, just a little summary table of some of the main passages there.

You can see in Romans 12, there’s kind of two lists in 1 Corinthians 12. There’s one at the end of the chapter as well. There’s a list of gifts, offices that have been given in Ephesians chapter 4, and then there’s a little summary which we’ll come back to in 1 Peter chapter 4. So you can see immediately just by looking at that, that there’s quite a variety of things there.

(15:08 – 16:25)

Some of them seem to be skills. Some seem to be particular kind of roles or responsibilities. Some seem to be miraculous powers.

There’s other parts of the New Testament where gifts are almost seen as kind of life situations. For example, in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul talks about celibacy as being a type of gift. And you’ll also see that some of those things seem to be quite ordinary or common, like teaching or hospitality, whereas some of them seem to be quite extraordinary and rare.

Miracles, we might add in speaking in tongues. And that’s something which has caused Christians over the centuries to divide around these gifts. Around the question are all these different types of gifts still in operation? And the two sides have kind of divided around that subject are known as the cessationists and the continuationists.

Cessationists say, no, they’re not all in effect or operational anymore, where continuationists say, yes, they are all operational even up to the present time. The people who say no, the cessationists argue that such gifts are no longer really needed in the church. They were just for the apostolic periods.

(16:25 – 24:41)

They were a bit like kind of booster rockets on a spaceship for liftoff. But now the church is in orbit. They’ve kind of fallen away and it’s able to kind of propel itself without that extra kind of energy.

And they argue that the gifts faded away in the early church. They see perfection, the perfection that will come at the end of chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians, where Paul talks about when the perfect comes, all these gifts will fade away. They see the perfect as being the New Testament, you know, the Bible being completed.

And that’s all we need going forward. That’s the perfect rather than the perfect being, the coming of Jesus himself. Others, on the continuationist side, cards on the table, including myself, don’t find those arguments overly convincing.

They don’t see, however cautious they might be about claiming such gifts or citing examples of them, a really strong biblical case for saying that there is no possibility that these gifts could be in operation today. So take miraculous healing, for example. I think all Christians still believe that God can heal.

We pray for exactly that at most prayer meetings for certain people. And we know of amazing stories of people who have come back from really hopeless looking health situations. But of course, we don’t presume that God will just heal.

Even in the New Testament, those who clearly had a gift of healing, people like Paul and Peter, couldn’t just do it automatically. Paul had bad eyesight. He left trophimus ill in Miletus.

He tells Timothy to take some first century meds for his stomach problem. So could God do a miraculous healing through someone today? Yes, I personally believe so, but I wouldn’t expect that to happen often. There’s also some gifts in those lists that sound quite super spiritual at first glance, but may actually be a bit more commonplace than we sometimes think.

Take the gifts of knowledge or wisdom or revelation. Often those can sound and be presented as quite mystical things, which is not to say that on occasions they wouldn’t involve some remarkable insights. But I wonder often if those are just ways of describing slightly more commonplace and less dramatic experiences.

I had a call with a Christian brother just in the last couple of weeks, and talking various things, and he had come to faith in a very strongly charismatic church, had been in a very strongly charismatic church for about the first 10 years of his Christian life, but now he was in quite a conservative evangelical church. And we were talking a little bit about the strengths and weaknesses of those churches and his experiences, and while he valued greatly a lot of the strengths of conservative evangelical churches, I guess like Greenview, one of the things he said frustrated him a little bit was there was very little openness to sharing what he described as a prophetic word, giving somebody a kind of word from the Lord. And I said to him, I wonder if that’s sometimes just an issue about vocabulary, that in both those types of churches people often have the same kind of experience essentially, but they’ll express it in slightly different ways.

So we would tend to say things like, the Lord has laid this on my heart, maybe I could share this with you, or I was praying about this and I just felt quite strongly maybe this is something to think about, whereas our charismatic brothers and sisters are maybe more likely just to say God spoke to me, or I’ve got a message from the Lord for you and go a bit more route one. The conservative Christian, I guess, has put a bit of a safety valve on what they’re thinking and feeling, a recognition that they might be fallible, or they are fallible, and they could be wrong, that’s good. But equally, maybe we can at times so blunt the axe that the cut through of those things is a bit lost.

We were talking about this at our community group on Thursday night, occasions where you feel prompted to do something, or to help, or to say something, and then you kind of quash it, and it kind of slides away. I’m going over to Belfast tomorrow, and I’m meeting a pastor that I spoke to again fairly recently, and he described an experience quite recently, he’d a church very much like this in many ways, where at the end of the service he felt very strongly he should say, there’s somebody here who needs to speak to me, if that’s you, don’t go without doing that. And he said, but he’s not really given to that kind of thing, and he usually just brushes it off and ends up saying something like, I’m available to chat if anybody wants to speak to me at the end.

But it was quite a strong feeling, so he said this, he said, there’s somebody here who needs to speak to me, don’t go if that’s you. And he walked to the back of the church to the door to shake people’s hands, and a man immediately walked up to him and said, I guess I’m the guy that needs to speak to you. Well, long story short, he led him to the Lord.

But how might the Holy Spirit’s gifts be manifest in Christians perhaps in more ordinary and common ways? We’ve noted those gifts like having a teaching ability, being able to meet a particular practical need, perhaps being the person who does have a bit of insight and wisdom when discussions are taking place, and hospitality and sharing your faith. And of course, one of the questions that comes up with that is, well, aren’t those just natural abilities? I mean, after all, non-Christians can do those kind of things or show those kind of attributes at times. In what way are those type of things, especially spiritual or Holy Spirit-given? Well, I think the first thing to say is, yeah, there is a common grace element in many of the gifts, might even say that in all of the gifts to some extent, in that they originate in simply being people who are made in the image of God.

They are hallmarks of our divine making. But in Christians, that is people who have been reconnected to God and are now indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Those things are remade, can be re-empowered, rededicated, repurposed for spiritual outcomes.

Wayne Grudem, the theologian, puts it like this, and the quote will be on the screen, a spiritual gift is any ability that is empowered by the Holy Spirit and is used in any ministry of the church. He’s going to say this broad definition includes both gifts that are related to natural abilities and gifts that seem to be more miraculous. And I guess the key features that turn ordinary activities into spiritual ones are that they are empowered by the Holy Spirit and they are given for the common good.

As we read in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, they are given in order to build others up. Because remember, even the miraculous gifts can be faked or misused, maybe through even demonic activity. There’s other religions that have a practise of tongue speaking.

So even those things could be deceptive, but where they are empowered by the Spirit and for the common good of Christians, they become spiritual gifts. So teaching is no longer just communicating data, but it is communicating life-changing truths about God. Hospitality isn’t just food or friendliness, but it is putting the arms of God around somebody.

(24:42 – 25:11)

Processing PVG forms, fixing a radiator, no longer just chores, however cheerfully they are done, but they are guarding and caring for precious souls. You see, that’s the difference between the manifestations of the Holy Spirit among us and just doing stuff. And remember, as we look at these gifts, the value of the gift is not in its kind of high status or its wow factor.

(25:12 – 26:45)

In fact, Paul is very clear that some of the gifts that on the face of it look about eye-catching and quite impressive. We could think of something like tongues, for example, very clear that if we’re not careful, those very things can be of quite low value or even occasioned almost no value when it comes to actually building others up. If we had a time, we could start to look at the individual gifts in more detail.

Maybe that’s one for the podcast. But I think it’s not unhelpful just in the short time that we’ve had just to stick with this big point. And indeed, I think it’s Peter who sums up very nicely in chapter four of his letter.

He says, each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so as the one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things, God may be praised through Jesus Christ, to Him be the glory and the power forever and ever.

Amen. See, Peter’s very helpful there. I think he kind of categorises all the gifts probably into the two main categories that are speaking gifts and serving gifts.

(26:46 – 27:18)

But his point is, whatever gift you have, whether it’s the ability to cook a meal, to paint a door, to make a spreadsheet, to prepare a Bible lesson, to organise a kids club, to play an instrument, to grit an icy path, to write a health and safety policy, just the gift of being able to listen. That’s a rare gift, being able to listen to somebody and to pray with them. I mean, that’s worth a hundred hours of tongues if you can do that.

(27:19 – 29:36)

Whatever gift you have, and everybody has at least one, do it for the good and the blessing of others as the Holy Spirit enables you, so that, as he puts it at the end of 1 Peter, so that in all things, God may be praised through Jesus Christ, to Him be the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen. Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We thank you that the risen Jesus, as he ascended into heaven, fulfilled that great promise that he would send another advocate, a comforter, and a counsellor, one who would come upon us, who would indwell us, who would connect us directly into your very presence, to the very throne room of God. That as children of God, we have the Holy Spirit within us, and that we know you, our Father, for ourselves.

And Father, thank you for all the ways in which the Holy Spirit works in us, empowering us and enabling us. Thank you for the manifestations of the Spirit that we experience here in Greenview and in our lives day by day, for the multitude of ways in which those gifts, those acts of service, those words spoken, bless and build up and care for the family of God that are for the common good. So Father, we thank you for this great inheritance and this great gift.

Father, we pray that we will use our gifts in that way to bless each other, to build each other up, to be appraised to your name, that this place might be strengthened and bear witness to Jesus more brightly day by day. Father, thank you for all that you teach us from your words, and we commit it to our hearts now that the Spirit himself will continue to strengthen to lead us for your glory. Amen.

The post The Spirit and the Church – Acts 1v1–8 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Exciting moment in the life of any parent when their children are old enough to leave at home. Now, this is not the debacle of the Home Alone movies, but that time when they can be safely left to fend for themselves. And when that happens, before it happens, something happens that you could call ‘The talk’.

(0:31 – 0:46)

Now, those of you who are parents, or children who are old enough, know what ‘The talk’ is. ‘The talk’ is the set of instructions that you must follow in our absence. Remember to lock the front door.

(0:48 – 1:02)

Remember to turn off the hob. Please don’t fight and kill each other, et cetera, et cetera. Now, what’s interesting is that those children live at home all the time.

(1:03 – 1:16)

But when their parents are absent, it’s a whole new world. It’s a different environment completely. And so reminders and instructions are needed.

(1:17 – 1:49)

And as we return to John’s gospel this morning, I hope you can see a parallel, because we’ve reached a point in the story when Jesus is leaving. Jesus is leaving his disciples, who intriguingly, he actually calls his children in chapter 13. You see, during his earthly ministry, Jesus has acted like a spiritual father to these men.

(1:49 – 2:12)

But now Jesus is leaving for an unknown period of time, and his disciples are disorientated. And so in chapter 14 to 16, Jesus gives his own version of ‘The talk’. It’s full of reminders.

(2:13 – 2:29)

It’s rife with reassurances. And it’s packed full of instructions for what they are to do in his absence. Now, I think chapter 14 really majors on some reassurances.

(2:30 – 2:51)

But now as we come into chapter 15, Jesus really digs into some practical instructions. He gets into the nitty gritty of how these disciples are to live in his absence. And he gives them, essentially, a picture of the Christian life.

(2:51 – 3:24)

He shows them what it looks like, and he tells them how it is possible. So whether you’re a long-term follower of Jesus, or a new disciple, or whether you’re a curious explorer, this will show you the pattern of Christian living, but it will also show you the secret to how the Christian life is possible. The pattern, but also the power, the secret of what makes it possible.

(3:25 – 3:38)

So I’ve got three points this morning, if you’ve got your Bible still open. The first of them is that connection to Jesus is the key. Connection to Jesus is the key.

(3:39 – 4:03)

If you are a visual learner, you will probably like John 15, because while it contains instructions, it begins with, and it’s dominated by, an illustration, a picture for you to look at. It’s a simple illustration, but a really profound one. It’s an illustration of a vine.

(4:04 – 4:29)

A single vine which has branches, and next to the vine is the gardener who cultivates it. But what does the picture mean? And what do these different images represent? Well, Jesus, very helpfully, and I’m thankful for this, explains it to us. So let’s just get a sense of what the picture means.

(4:29 – 5:02)

First of all, Jesus in this picture is the vine. In fact, not only the vine, He is, you’ll notice verse one, the true vine, which I guess implies that somewhere or other, there must be a fake vine, an inauthentic vine if He is the true vine. And sure enough, when we look back into the Old Testament, we don’t have to search very far for this vine.

(5:02 – 5:30)

In the first part of the Bible, God’s chosen people, Israel, are frequently depicted as the vine. Israel were meant to be a fruit-bearing people, a nation who would showcase God’s character to the world, a people who would bear the good fruit of love and obedience to God. That was the idea.

(5:31 – 5:57)

But it was a far cry from the reality. And so in passages like Isaiah two, Isaiah five, rather, and Jeremiah two, you’ll see that Israel is described in those passage as a vine that is corrupt and which bears bad fruits. So all of that’s in the background here.

(5:57 – 6:25)

By wonderful contrast, Jesus arrives in history as God’s true and flourishing vine. As the sinless Son of God, He bears the good fruit of the Spirit. Jesus shows God’s character perfectly to the world, and He glorifies the Father in the world as Israel were meant to do.

(6:27 – 6:43)

And notice that it is the Father who is also involved in this passage. It’s very easy, isn’t it, to see Jesus in this text, but actually the Father is everywhere in this passage. Notice secondly that the Father is the gardener.

(6:44 – 6:58)

Six times in 17 verses, the Father is mentioned. The Father is the gardener, verse one. He is the one who cultivates the fruit on the vine.

(6:59 – 7:24)

When it comes to the Christian life, the Father is overseeing the whole fruit-bearing enterprise. The Father is tending to the branches and cultivating them. And what are these branches? What do the branches in the imagery represent? Well, take a look at verse five.

(7:25 – 7:50)

I am the vine, and Jesus says to His disciples, you are the branches. So Jesus is the life-giving source, but like the branches, His disciples are connected to Him and they receive life from Him. That’s what a Christian is.

(7:51 – 8:19)

A Christian is someone who is connected to Jesus in a life-giving way. Though Jesus is presently in heaven, a Christian is spiritually connected to Jesus by faith and through the Holy Spirit. In Christian doctrine, this is often called the doctrine of our union with Christ.

(8:20 – 9:14)

It’s the idea of our spiritual connection or a union with Jesus through which all the blessings of His person and work flow into my life and become mine. And it’s a great thing to be reminded of if you’re a disciple of Jesus. That even on my worst days, even when my circumstances are dismal and my own performance as a Christian is disappointing, it seems. Regardless of my sense of God’s presence or not, I have a promise of unbroken connection to Jesus, which means I am spiritually alive, eternally secure, and presently equipped.

(9:17 – 9:35)

It’s a connection which if I didn’t have, if you broke the connection, it would be devastating. I would be like the sawn-off branch of a tree that is dead and fruitless. Jesus warns of that possible alternative.

(9:36 – 10:02)

Notice that in verse five, if someone is not connected to Christ, their future is death, destruction, being withered, and burned. Even though this passage has fundamentally a positive picture, it also includes a stark warning. Because if you’re connected to Jesus, it’s eternal life.

(10:02 – 10:22)

But if you’re not connected to Jesus, it’s spiritual death. That’s why being a Christian and being sure you are a Christian is such a big deal. It’s not just a preference or a lifestyle choice.

(10:22 – 10:51)

It’s the difference is, Jesus, between spiritual life and spiritual death. And therefore, the utterly important question is, how does someone hook into Jesus? How do they connect with Christ? And Jesus gives us the answer, doesn’t he? Look at verse three. It might seem like a surprising answer to many of us.

(10:53 – 11:17)

Jesus says, you are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Think of what Jesus doesn’t say here. He doesn’t say, you’re already spiritually clean because you come to church, or because you’re connected to a Christian family, or because you’ve done some religious stuff.

(11:20 – 11:57)

He says, you’re already clean from your mucky, unclean soul because of the words I have spoken to you. It might sound an odd thing to say, but people become Christians by a certain kind of listening. Not by doing, not by hearing and rejecting, but by listening to Jesus’ words about who he is and why he came and saying, yes, that sounds about right to me.

(11:59 – 12:10)

Jesus is the Son of God. And I am in need of God’s cleansing and forgiveness. I believe Jesus died on the cross for my sins.

(12:11 – 12:28)

I believe these things I’m hearing. And the wonderful result of that is that Jesus cleansed me and he connects me to himself. What makes you a Christian is a certain kind of believing listening.

(12:32 – 13:11)

And that begs the question, if you’re sitting in church this morning or you’re watching this online, have you listened? Have you listened in a way that has cleansed you and connected you to Jesus? If you’re in any way unsure about that, but you’re interested in doing that, then speak to someone that you came with today, with a Christian friend or family member, and ask them how you can connect with Jesus through faith. And they’ll try and help you with that. It begins here.

(13:13 – 13:29)

And everything else flows from this and grows from this. And that brings us to our second point today. So the second point is that if we’re connected to the vine, fruit bearing is inevitable.

(13:29 – 13:50)

If we’re connected to the vine, fruit bearing is inevitable. Notice this in verse two, that there isn’t such a thing as a branch connected to Jesus that is fruitless. If there were such a branch, the gardener would cut it off.

(13:51 – 14:13)

In other words, what he’s saying is, there is no Christian disciple who is fruitless. Now, in some, the fruit will be more, and in others, the fruit may be less. But in all, the fruit will be abundant and noticeable.

(14:15 – 14:38)

And whatever the level of fruitfulness, the gardener is invested in seeing the fruit increase. Verse two, see that the branches are pruned by the gardener to make them even more fruitful. God does a sort of Alan Titchmarch, clipping and pruning the vine.

(14:40 – 15:10)

Now that looks and that feels really painful, but it bears more fruit in the long run. We’ll be coming fairly soon to the end of another year. And it’s been my, I would say experience without exception, that the years in my life that have been the most easy, the most pleasant, the most joyful, have also been the years that I’ve grown the least spiritually.

(15:12 – 15:48)

The best years, materially, relationally, and all of that stuff, has always been the worst years of growth spiritually. And the inverse has also been true as well, because it is through God’s painful pruning that we grow in faith and increase in obedience. It’s in those painful times of clipping that our idols are cut off the branch, and we’re left clinging to Christ all the more.

(15:50 – 16:08)

We live in a culture that avoids discomfort as if discomfort is a plague. The moment you feel uncomfortable, you need to get away from whatever that discomfort is. And yet one of the keys to Christian growth is actually discomfort.

(16:10 – 16:31)

This flies completely in the face of that. The worst stuff in your life is often the best stuff in your life for seeing you grow if you respond to it in the right way, which is also key. Now incidentally, there’s a lot of discussion here about what this fruit represents.

(16:32 – 16:59)

And maybe that’s been a mistake not to mention that so far. What is the fruit? What does that stand for? Jesus doesn’t give us a definition of the fruit as he does with the other things. And so people have wondered, is it the fruit of godly Christ-like character? Or others have said in the context of John, I think it’s the fruit of witness and evangelism and disciples seeing people coming to faith.

(17:00 – 17:32)

Well, Jesus says in verse five that the one who remains in him will bear much fruit. And so if it’s much fruit, I take it that we don’t need to narrow it or limit it to one particular area. There will be lots and lots of ways that a disciple will glorify the Father and show themself to be Jesus’ disciple.

(17:34 – 18:04)

And isn’t this massively encouraging? Not only do we have life in the vine, but we have the guarantee of much fruit because of that connection to Jesus. It’s not that there are some Christians over here who are a spiritually elite group who alone bear fruit for Jesus. No, Jesus says even the lowest disciple inevitably bears fruit.

(18:07 – 18:46)

I hear as I chat to fellow Christians, when we talk about how their life of faith is going, I hear all the time believers speaking about how rubbish they are and how garbage they are as a Christian. And I’m sure there’s lots of our lives that is a bit rubbish and garbage and failing as a believer. But what I hear very, very little of is people speaking of the fact that they are connected to Christ and therefore that there is good fruit in their life as well.

(18:47 – 19:03)

We’re so good at seeing the bad fruit. We’re absolutely rubbish at seeing the good fruit. That moment this week, when we did against the odds keep our self-control when we would often lose it.

(19:05 – 19:25)

That grace that we did show someone and it was hard to do it, it was difficult at first, it was a battle, but in the end we were gracious and we forgave them. I wonder if we notice that good fruit as well. It’s really encouraging stuff.

(19:25 – 19:45)

Fruit bearing is inevitable and yet that doesn’t mean we should be complacent because here’s our third and final point this morning. The fruit bearing is inevitable, but it is not automatic. It’s not automatic.

(19:47 – 20:14)

Did you know that it is just over four weeks till Christmas? And when you think about it, there is nothing more inevitable than Christmas. Whether you love it or you loathe it, it doesn’t really matter, it always comes. And yet there is no other periodic event that involves as much input, participation, and preparation as Christmas.

(20:15 – 20:38)

We buy presents, we put up decorations, we invite people over because while the event is inevitable, it is not automatic. And Jesus is clear that in the Christian life it is the same with fruit bearing. It absolutely will happen because you are connected to Christ.

(20:39 – 21:04)

But the speed at which it happens and the smoothness with which it happens depends on our participation. So this passage that is dominated with the picture of the vine and branches also has a number of instructions, things that we are to do to participate in the inevitable growth. So let’s look at these fairly briefly.

(21:04 – 21:19)

In verse four, we are to remain in Jesus. Other translations say abide in Jesus. It’s the idea of staying in the same place.

(21:20 – 21:36)

In this case, it’s remaining in the vine. And of course, that’s where the metaphor breaks down. An ordinary vine has no mind and no thinking and it doesn’t choose to stay connected to the vine, does it? But it’s a metaphor, of course.

(21:36 – 22:01)

Jesus is saying in our case, we have to choose every day to stick with Jesus and remain in Him. And this does not deny the complementary truth at all that God also keeps us connected to Him. But the Bible is also clear that from our side, we must actively stay connected to Jesus.

(22:02 – 22:21)

We are to keep trusting in Him. We are to, author of Hebrews says, fix our eyes on Him, the author at the beginning and the perfecter of our faith. Wherever you are between the beginning and the completion, you’re to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus.

(22:23 – 22:37)

We’re to keep doing this. Notice in the passage, if you count them up, that 10 times Jesus keeps saying, remain, remain, remain, remain, remain. Keep plugged in to Jesus.

(22:39 – 22:53)

Let me say it somewhat provocatively. What you did yesterday as a Christian doesn’t matter today. How faithful you were 10 years ago is irrelevant.

(22:54 – 23:23)

In your life today, in your home today, in your priorities and in your heart today, are you remaining in Jesus? Because it’s inevitable, yet not automatic. And so we need to remain and we also need verse seven to listen as well. Jesus’ word connected us to Him in the first place, but Jesus says, that was yesterday.

(23:24 – 23:46)

This is today. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, the Christian life is the privilege of listening to Jesus day by day. It’s the privilege of letting Jesus be the loudest voice in a world where everyone is talking.

(23:49 – 24:07)

When you open your Bible or study a passage or listen to a sermon, it’s actually a privilege. It’s not a heavy burden. It’s a privilege of listening to the one who is wise and good and who always knows what is best for us.

(24:08 – 24:28)

What a privilege to listen to that voice. It is the disciple who listens to Jesus the most, above their desires, above the voices of other people, that will bear the most fruit. And it’s also those who pray, verse seven.

(24:29 – 24:44)

And verse 16. And again, it’s striking how Jesus describes this, because again, this all seems very mundane to us if we’re Christians, Bible, listening to Jesus and prayer. But look at verse seven.

(24:45 – 24:55)

Prayer is actually the outcome of remaining in Jesus. It’s a privilege you get because you’re connected to Christ. And it’s also the result of having His word in our lives.

(24:55 – 25:12)

We get to speak back to the one who has spoken to us. And because of that, we ask the Father whatever we wish, and it will be done for us. And in verse 17, He says the same kind of extravagant thing.

(25:12 – 25:35)

So that whatever you ask in my name, the Father will give you. Of course, we want to immediately qualify that with the context of God’s word and the Father’s glory. And there’s truth in that, isn’t there? This is not authorising our most selfish requests in life.

(25:35 – 25:48)

It’s not doing that. And yet while the qualifier is true, let’s not dumb down what Jesus is actually saying. He’s talking up the privilege of prayer.

(25:48 – 26:17)

And He’s saying, you have the privilege of making requests to the one who runs the entire universe. I mean, if you had, I saw, did some of you see, I think it was Cristiano Ronaldo, he was meeting with Donald Trump, and there were these very bizarre, they almost looked like AI photos, but I think they were genuine of him in the Oval Office. Now, maybe you think that’s ridiculous, and you wouldn’t meet such a person.

(26:18 – 27:00)

But if you got the opportunity this week to meet the world’s most powerful man, whoever that person is, a person with extraordinary resources to actually change the world and do things, and if, in fact, you knew that you would have at least one request that they would answer and put into operation, would you miss the meeting? Would you turn up? I think you would be there. We often don’t see the privilege that prayer is. We talk about the problems of prayer and wrestling in prayer, and these are realities.

(27:00 – 27:10)

The Bible speaks of these things. These are legitimate things as well. But in talking about the challenges of prayer, let’s never talk prayer down.

(27:13 – 27:28)

Precisely the reason it’s so difficult is because it’s so important and so powerful and such a privilege. Of course the devil doesn’t want us to get to our times of prayer. It’s the most powerful thing that any of us are engaged in every day.

(27:28 – 27:48)

Prayer is the most underused opportunity in the life of every Christian. And so fruit-bearing is inevitable, but it is not automatic. We remain, we listen, we pray, and finally we obey.

(27:51 – 28:09)

And immediately that sounds like a really down note to finish on, except we obey by loving. See that in verse 12. Jesus’ command is to love each other as I have loved you.

(28:11 – 28:30)

Jesus in this passage is linking together the idea of obeying Him and loving Him. Verse 10, if you keep my commands, you will remain in my love. And Jesus has done the same Himself, just as I kept my Father’s commands and remain in His love.

(28:31 – 28:54)

Jesus is speaking of a relationship of love, but also a relationship that involves obedience to demonstrate that love. See, we can’t come to church and say, I really love Jesus. And then go into this week and see some command of Jesus and say, I really don’t like that bit of what you said, Jesus.

(28:56 – 29:22)

I don’t really like your ethical commands. I love you, but I just don’t like what you said over here about moral ethics, or something I would really like to do, or something that is gonna make my life a little more difficult because I believe it. I love you, but, no, if we love Jesus, we will not ignore what He says.

(29:24 – 29:41)

And while I guess that’s applied to lots of commands, it’s especially focused here on love. I guess in one sense, because love is so foundational to everything else. It was the church Father Augustine who said, love God and then do whatever you like.

(29:43 – 30:06)

Now, you can go home and think about that. What does that mean? If you love God, you can then do whatever you like, because that will actually set some guidelines to the way you love and live your life. So this is absolutely foundational, but notice this, that Jesus wants us to express our love for Him by loving each other.

(30:08 – 30:23)

And actually, that’s pretty surprising. He doesn’t say, remain in my love by loving me, although we should love Him. He says, the proof that you’re remaining in my love is that you will love one another.

(30:23 – 30:43)

Well, that’s not the easiest thing, is it? It’d be much easier if He just said, love me, because Jesus is perfectly lovable. Us, not so much, not consistently. But Jesus says, love me by loving each other.

(30:45 – 31:10)

And He knows this is hard, which is why to motivate us to do it, He takes us to the cross. Verse 13, greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Jesus speaks of His dying love that is costly and sacrificial for the disciples, whom He calls His friends.

(31:11 – 31:31)

This was a love that hurt Jesus, but He loved them anyway. Again, we live in a world that’s all about avoiding any kind of cost in our love. Apparently, our love is not meant to cost us anything or hurt us at any point or in any way.

(31:32 – 32:04)

I’m so glad Jesus didn’t take that attitude to us. Jesus laid His life down for us, sacrificially, so that we could be His friends, so that we could be included in His business, and so that we could be included in His confidence. Some of us might struggle to make friends and keep friends, but Jesus says in His amazing grace that we can be His friends.

(32:05 – 32:37)

How amazing is this? All Christians bear fruits because a fruitful Christian life is inevitable, but it’s not automatic. And therefore, it is those who love each other in the most sacrificial ways who bear the most fruit. And notice also that this fruit-bearing of obedient love leads to great joy, something we often don’t connect together, obedience and joy.

(32:37 – 32:51)

Look at verse 11. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. When Jesus asks us to do anything, it is always for our joy.

(32:52 – 33:27)

It’s always to make you happy, maybe not in the short run or immediately, but always in the long run. If we remain and listen and pray and obey, deep joy will be ours, completely flying in the face of the myth about the Christian life, which is that it’s joyless. Jesus says if we’re joyless, we’re not really living a committed Christian life because that joy will come through obedience.

(33:29 – 33:46)

But this life can’t even start unless we are first connected to Jesus. If it is, if we are, then the fruit will come. Let’s pray together.

(33:48 – 34:29)

And let’s take a moment to reflect on what God is saying to us. Do you need to connect with Jesus for the first time? Do you need to see more of the privilege you have to live the Christian life? Do you need to rededicate yourself to remain, to listen, to pray, to obey? Father, in these moments, speak clearly into our hearts. Connect us into the vine.

(34:30 – 34:42)

Fill our lives with fruit. Lord Jesus, only you can fill my deepest longing. Only you can breathe in me new life.

(34:43 – 35:00)

Only you can fill my heart with laughter. Only you can answer my heart’s cry. And so we come to you in faith this morning and it’s in your name we pray, amen.

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