It’s a phrase that’s often used on the back of major events. It’s a short two-word phrase, never forget, never forget. It’s been used in the context of the Holocaust, of 9-11, of many world conflicts.

(0:24 – 2:48)

We should never forget these monumental events, and we forget them to our peril. But as the Apostle Peter continues his second letter, he makes an appeal to the Christian, and he says, never forget. But what is it that the Christian is never to forget? Well, let’s turn together and discover that in 2 Peter 1. 2 Peter 1, and we’re going to read from verses 12 to 21.

Let’s hear God’s word. Peter writes, So I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have. I think it is right to refresh your memory as long as I live in the tent of this body, because I know that I will soon put it aside as our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me.

And I will make every effort to see that after my departure you will always be able to remember these things. For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. He received honour and glory from God the Father when the voice came to Him from the majestic glory, saying, This is my Son, whom I love.

With Him I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with Him on the sacred mountain. We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your heart.

(2:49 – 3:16)

Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. This is God’s Word.

(3:20 – 3:47)

We need to be reminded of the certainty of what we believe. That’s the message of this text. Let me say it again.

It’s very simple. We, the Christian church, need to be reminded not only of what we believe, but of the certainty of what we believe. That’s our message this evening.

(3:47 – 4:12)

Let me break it down into two segments tonight. So first, we need to be reminded. We need to be reminded, verses 12 to 15.

Peter, as he moves into this next section, seems obsessed with reminders. He seems obsessed with reminding us of something. Look at verse 12.

(4:12 – 4:47)

He says, I will always remind you. And again in verse 13, I think it is right to refresh your memory. And then a third time in verse 15, he says, I will make every effort.

Remember last week, we should make every effort in godliness. Peter is making every effort that after his departure, you will remember these things. Peter seems heaven-bent on reminding his readers of something.

(4:48 – 5:48)

But what is it? What is it that we are to never forget? Well, at first glance, and if you only read this text, it might seem a little bit vague. Look at verse 12 and verse 15. Peter says he’s reminding them of these things.

But what are these things? Well, these are the things that we find in the context. So, we need to look back to verses 3 to 11, where we discover what these things are. And there we see that Peter has just been speaking about the gospel and the godly life that the gospel produces.

If you were here last week, this was the sermon last week. The Christian has been called to an eternal kingdom and to live a godly life in the meantime. That was last week’s message.

(5:49 – 9:35)

The gospel, which includes the message that Christ is returning in glory, leads to godliness. This is beautiful stuff. It’s basic stuff.

And now Peter says, we must, three times he says, we must, we must, we must remember it. We must remember the heart of the gospel and the call to live a godly life. And notice now two sub points of this.

We need to remember this even though we know it. Even though we know it. Isn’t verse 12 a surprising verse? Peter says, so I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have.

Peter says, you know this stuff, but I’m still going to remind you of it. Now, that is not the way that we usually operate, is it? Suppose you decided to call me this evening at 5 p.m. and I pick up the phone and I think, this must be something important, an hour before the service, and you said, Colin, I just want to remind you and let you know that the service tonight is at 6 p.m. It’s at 6 o’clock this Sunday evening. Now, I would be very polite, because I try to be polite, and I would thank you for the call, but when you hung up the phone, I would wonder why you called.

There isn’t that much value in you reminding me of that fact, because we don’t remind people of things that we know they know. They know something. There’s not a need to remind them.

Or at least, it’s got to be a situation where we think they might forget what they know, and then we might remind them. But if they know it, why remind them? And yet Peter says, when it comes to the gospel, the same rule doesn’t apply. Knowing that his readers are established in the gospel, he nonetheless reminds them of the gospel.

This is the core calling of any teacher of the Bible. Whether you teach from here, whether you teach young people, children, your own kids, your grandkids, whoever it is you’re teaching, your primary job is to remind people of what they know. Now, this does not mean that there is nothing more to learn from the Bible, and that’s why I’ve carefully worded that when I said, your primary job, your primary job is to teach people what they know.

Because, of course, as we teach the whole counsel of God, there will always be things that we don’t know. There will always be new things, bits that we fill in of the puzzle that we haven’t seen. But the core calling of a regular teacher of Scripture at any level is not to teach people what they don’t know, but to remind them of what they do know.

Teaching is a reminding ministry. And the logic of why that’s the case is kind of obvious when you think about it. When a person sadly abandons the Christian faith, when people in contemporary language deconstruct their beliefs in Jesus, how does that happen? Why does that happen? The stories are many and varied, of course, but they all have this in common.

(9:36 – 11:17)

The person, for some reason or other, has stopped believing in the basics. Right? Isn’t that true? Either they’ve concluded that some basic aspect of the gospel is no longer true, or they are rejecting the lifestyle implications of the gospel to turn from sin and pursue a godly life. People don’t leave the faith because of some issue on the periphery.

They leave because they’ve abandoned the core. So, what should the Bible teacher focus on? They should focus on the core. They should commit themselves to a reminding ministry, as Peter is doing here as he writes his final letter.

I mean, he could have written his final letter and said, I’ve got a whole bunch of new stuff to tell you, but instead he says, I’m going to remind you of all the stuff I’ve told you across the years. What is the cash-out value of this? Do not think that when you read your Bible in the morning, or when you sit in a Bible study, or when you sit through a sermon, do not think that the measure of it going well is always learning something new. That’s the cash-out value.

You will often see fresh things in the Bible, because the Bible is extraordinary. So, you’re going to see fresh things there very often. But if you don’t see anything new, maybe God is reminding you of what you mustn’t forget.

(11:18 – 12:59)

And you can thank him that he’s reminding you of the gospel you mustn’t abandon. Now, this is really important, and it is important, therefore, that we also pass this gospel on down the generations. This leads us to our second sub-point here.

We need to remember, especially as apostles depart. See, the urgency of this reminder is tied in with Peter’s departure. In verse 13, Peter speaks about living in the temporary tent of the body.

A tent’s a temporary dwelling. It’s not like a house. It’s permanent.

And then in verse 14, he adds that his life on earth is drawing to a close, as Jesus has made it clear to Peter. Now, it’s not clear whether this making it clear refers to John chapter 21. Remember where Jesus told Peter that he would one day die a difficult death? Maybe that’s what he’s referring to here.

Or whether perhaps this was a more recent revelation. Maybe Jesus had very recently said to Peter, Peter, the time is now. Get ready to die.

Either way, Peter does not have long in this world. And as a departing apostle of Christ, he feels the urgency to remind not just the next generation, but every generation of the core of the Christian faith. That’s why he wrote 2 Peter.

(13:01 – 14:33)

And that’s why, as tradition indicates, Peter provided the source material for the gospel of Mark, because he was keen as an apostle to leave a firm foundation for the church throughout the ages. I mean, something I’m very grateful for is that Peter was made aware of this. You know, that Peter was made aware that his life was coming to an end, because what that meant was we have 2 Peter.

What that meant was he made sure the gospel of Mark got written. It’s interesting as you read 2 Peter and later what’s going on with the new pope and all of that. With all respect, we do not need any pope to tell us something that Peter reminded us of and laid the foundation to in his writing, right? Peter knew he was going to die, and he laid down for us all that we needed to hear for life and godliness.

And in doing so, Peter left an example for older generations of Christians. Now, I realise that none of us here are apostles, but surely in a kind of secondary application, there’s an example here from Peter. Peter, not only is he an apostle passing on the gospel, but he’s also an older man passing on the gospel, and he’s passing on the baton to the next generation.

(14:35 – 15:44)

And I don’t know at what age that starts to happen, so you might need to figure that out for yourself. But if you’re moving into that stage of life, don’t miss your window. Don’t miss your opening, because there’s a limited opening where you have the ear and the opportunity to invest in your grandchildren and in children and in young people, and many of you do.

Many of you do in the ministries of this church. Don’t miss the window. Well, all of that is tied into point number one, so we need to be reminded.

Then secondly, let’s move on, of the certainty of what we believe, the certainty of what we believe. Now, some of you will be aware that there’s a new church plant that’s being launched in the East End of Glasgow. It’s a plant out of St. Silas Church, and they put up this fantastic launch video on social media where the different members of the new church were telling the community who they were and how much Jesus loves the East End of Glasgow even more than the people of the East End of Glasgow do, and it was a great and warm video.

(15:45 – 18:09)

But I couldn’t help peeking at the comments, right, just to see. There’s lots of Christians in there going, brilliant, we’re praying for you, but there was also quite a number of locals, and not all of them were happy. One person wrote, “Another cult — fft!”

Another person said, “No thanks, I believe in truth, not fairy tales”. Now, what you’ve got to realise is, that’s not just something from 2025 on the East End of Glasgow. The same thing was being said in the first century in Peter’s day.

We’ll find this when we come to chapter three, people scoffing at the whole idea that this crucified man was one day coming back in glory. This is why Peter, in 16 to 21, these verses, is defending the certainty. He’s defending the certainty of what we believe.

He’s not just stating what we believe, but he’s saying, here’s why it’s certain, why you can keep believing in it. And so what is the evidence that Peter lays down for what he and the church believes? Why can we be confident in the gospel? Well, Peter gives us two reasons. Number one, what the eyewitnesses saw and heard.

What the eyewitnesses saw and heard. Look at verse 16. Peter says, for we, and I think the we there is Peter and the other apostles, we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus in power.

And by the way, the coming of the Lord Jesus in power was his first coming, as we’ll see in a moment, not just his second coming. He did come in power, but we were eyewitnesses to his majesty. Peter’s point is that his gospel doesn’t come from the land of fairy tales.

It comes from the realm of history, not fantasy. And how do we know that? Peter and these others were eyewitnesses of Jesus’ divine majesty. They didn’t just hear about it secondhand.

They didn’t just read it in a book. They were there. They actually saw it.

(18:12 – 20:21)

Now, we were in America recently, and we had this lovely dinner with this older couple and found out they were from Texas. And then specifically, we learned that this old lady was from Dallas. And so, we got talking about Dallas and what goes on in Dallas.

But the only thing I could think of was that JFK was shot in Dallas. So, we started talking about that. And she said, oh yeah, she said, yeah, she said, my aunt was there when JFK was shot.

And we said, really? She was there? Yeah, where was she? Oh yeah, she was working in the book depository. She was in the book depository where, you know, the guy shot the shot. Oh, she said, yeah, she said, my aunt actually, she was the first person to speak to Harvey Oswald when he came down the stairs.

And then she told us that her aunt had actually featured as a character in the Kevin Costner JFK film. Like she’s, well, not actually in the film, but her character’s in the film talking to, right? It was amazing. She was interviewed by the FBI for all of her eyewitness testimony.

And you sort of forget this stuff when it comes to all sorts of things. But there actually were people who were eyewitnesses of the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus. There were.

And Peter was one of them. And he saw remarkable things. But here’s the really interesting thing.

Why is it that of all the things that Peter witnessed in the entire life of Jesus, why is it that the one thing he focusses in on is verses 17 and 18, the event of the transfiguration? I’ll leave that question hanging. We’re going to unravel that in just a moment. Why did that stick in his mind? This event in Jesus’ life went on a mountain.

Peter, James, and John got a glimpse of divine glory. I mean, think about this. Like for most of Jesus’ life, he looked like just an ordinary man.

(20:23 – 20:47)

His glory was seen in his miracles, in the authority of his words, but not in his appearance. And yet on one particular occasion, the veil was pulled back, and these men got a glimpse of the divine glory of Christ. The almighty power of Jesus’ majesty was momentarily glimpsed.

(20:48 – 21:25)

And not only did they see something, but they also heard something. Notice that Peter emphasises what they heard as well. He says there, he talks about the voice coming from the majestic glory.

And we ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven. So this is important. They didn’t just see something and then interpret it themselves and work out what it meant, but the voice helped them interpret what it meant.

And this is what the voice said. This is my son whom I love. With him, I am well-pleased.

(21:27 – 22:46)

Now, these words are an echo of two scriptures, Psalm 2 and Isaiah 42. And they’re being kind of combined here in what the father says. What are these verses about that the father was echoing? They’re verses about how God has appointed his son as the king of the entire world, Psalm 2. The father installing his son as king over the whole earth.

And then in Isaiah 42, the son whom I love and with him I’m well-pleased, well, that language is about the son being the servant king. The king who triumphs and ascends to glory through his suffering and service. Here’s the point of this.

The point of all this is that Peter and the other eyewitnesses got an early preview of Jesus’ glory. They got, if you like, a preview of the second coming. It’s kind of like, you know, like a trailer to a blockbuster film where you get a kind of early glimpse of what’s to come.

(22:46 – 23:15)

That’s what they got. That’s why he mentions the transfiguration, because it was the one time in Jesus’ life when they got the preview of the divine majesty of Jesus that all will see when Jesus returns in the second coming, when he reigns as king over all the earth. That’s why there’s this emphasis on the eyewitnesses and the transfiguration in particular.

(23:17 – 24:41)

Now, people may reject this eyewitness testimony, but they have to reckon with it. And that’s always something I would say to a sceptical non-Christian, you know, especially the person who says that the Bible, you know, Christianity has got as much credibility as believing in pixies at the bottom of the garden or something like that, you know. This is what puts it into a different category though.

All of these many eyewitnesses and the seeming credibility of what they saw. People have to reckon with the fact that the apostle Peter, even just take him alone, was willing to die as a martyr to be, tradition says, crucified upside down for this belief because of what he said he saw and what he said he heard. People may reject it, but you can’t easily dismiss it.

It provides strong credibility to the claims of the Christian faith, but it’s not the only evidence we have. Peter finishes with a second line of evidence, and that is the prophecies of scripture, the prophecies that are reliable in what they affirm. Look at verse 19.

(24:42 – 26:53)

We also have, so there’s something in addition to the eyewitness testimony, we also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable. I take it here that the prophetic message is not just limited to what we would traditionally call the prophets or the prophetic books because from a certain standpoint, all of the Old Testament is the prophetic message. Every part of Scripture from Genesis to Malachi is pointing forward to the coming of the Christ, pointing to His first coming, but also to His second coming, to His suffering, yes, but also to His final glory and His final judgement.

And Peter says that this prophetic message is completely reliable. And I take it that Peter, when he says this, he knows that in the minds of his readers, they already believe that the Old Testament has proved itself. In fact, one commentator I read said that for the Jew, there was nothing more certain than the promises of the Old Testament, nothing more certain because time after time, they had seen earlier prophecies being fulfilled and how much more for the Christian community, for those who believe in Jesus, who had seen many hundreds of prophecies fulfilled in the life, the death, the resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus.

The reliability of the Bible by this point in history has a 10 out of 10 maximum score. And so the idea is if the eyewitness testimony isn’t enough, then at least trust the Scriptures in this promise of a final and glorious day. See, Christians like Peter were not coming up with a newfangled idea when they said there was a great day of final reckoning.

(26:54 – 27:05)

No, Peter says this is the sure word of prophecy. And notice also what he says, he says, it’s like a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Look at verse 19.

(27:06 – 29:51)

These prophecies are like a light shining in a dark place. Imagine losing all power, all lights in your house tonight, all power in your neighbourhood, total darkness. Now, if you possess a torch, if you possess a torch, that torch would be your light, your one source of light in the darkness till the morning dawn.

And Peter says that’s what the Bible is. That’s what the Bible is. The Bible, God’s Word, is our light in this darkness of the dark age until the dawn of the risen sun.

Although there’s a curious expression at the end of verse 19, isn’t there? Until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Now, the first bits there are straightforward. The day dawning is the day of the Lord, the final day of reckoning that we see prophesied in the Old Testament.

The morning star, well, that was the promise of the appearing of the Messiah, the morning star, the glorious Messiah who would rise. But then this more curious expression, the morning star will arise in our hearts. What does that mean? Peter is not saying that Jesus won’t return visibly.

I mean, wait till we get to chapter 3. He really believes in a visible, physical return. This is not saying there’s not an objective return, but it is saying there’s a subjective impact. I think what he’s saying is when the morning star rises, when the Messiah appears on the horizon of history, all darkness will be dispelled from our hearts forever.

This godliness that we are making every effort to attain earlier in chapter 1 will become a full reality when the morning star rises. It’s not just that he’s going to arise and appear, but in a sense, he’s going to arise in our hearts and he’s going to dispel all the final darkness and bring about absolute purity in our lives. And the point is that we can be certain of this, certain because of the eyewitnesses who didn’t make up what they saw and heard, and certain because of the Scriptures which were also not invented in men’s minds.

(29:52 – 30:41)

Verse 20 and 21 underline this. The likes of Moses, David, and Isaiah didn’t go to a creative writing class and then decide to write the books of the Bible. They didn’t sit themselves down and think, I wonder what God is like, and then just sort of free roam for 66 chapters worth of the scroll of Isaiah.

No, the origin of Scripture was not in the will of man, but in the will of God. For sure, they wrote down the words, their personalities were involved, and even the language style reflected their own personality. But in a mysterious way, that is a profound paradox.

(30:41 – 31:10)

As they wrote, God spoke. Verse 21 puts it like this, they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. That same phrase is used in the book of Acts of a ship’s sails being carried along by the wind, so that the Holy Spirit gave impulse to everything that they wrote.

(31:12 – 33:54)

Well, what is the upshot of this? How does this land in your life and mine? Well, it lands in the department of what we believe, doesn’t it? Our faith is constantly under attack and in danger of crumbling. Comes from different angles, doesn’t it? There’s the attack on our faith from a sceptical world, the comment under the Facebook post. But there’s also the doubting insinuations of the enemy.

He’s always chipping away at any perceived weakness that we can see in the Christian faith. And sometimes we don’t need the world and we don’t even need the devil. Actually, our flesh, our weak flesh is sufficient to cause at times moments of doubt.

And we wonder to ourselves, can I really be so certain? Can I continue to be so certain in the things that I’ve believed for so long? I’m quite a big fan of a guy called Tim Keller. I know some of you like reading some of his stuff. And I recently read a biography of Tim Keller’s life.

And there was a few surprises in it. There’s this guy who knew the gospel back to front, who taught it and defended it and was engaging in apologetics for his whole ministry with sceptical non-Christians. Like you would think there’s someone that really is absolutely certain in their faith.

But he tells the story that when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and I think lockdown hit around the same time. So he had a lot of time on his hands. He was at home.

And he said that he sat down and he re-read a book that he had read, I think decades before. It was about an 800 plus page defence of the historical resurrection of Jesus. It was the book by N.T. Wright.

And he said, I read through that book from cover to cover. He said, it wasn’t that my faith was falling apart, but I just wanted to double check if it was true. And it was true.

And it’s all in here, folks. It’s all in here. The prophecy of the Old Testament and the apostolic testimony of the New.

(33:56 – 34:18)

And Old Tim puts it like this. How firm a foundation, you saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in his excellent word. What more can he say than to you he has said, you who unto Jesus for refuge have fled.

(34:18 – 34:31)

Let’s pray. Father, thank you for such a firm and reliable foundation. Thank you that you don’t need to say any more than you’ve said to convince us.

(34:32 – 34:43)

But help us to rely on what you’ve said. Help us as we come to the table to once again see that this is true. And we pray this in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

The post Never Forget – 2 Peter 1v12-21 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Bible reading this morning is John chapter 6, verses 1 to 15, and it’s on page 1069 of the Red Bibles. Some time after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee, that is the Sea of Tiberias, and a great crowd of people followed him, because they saw the signs he had performed by healing those who were ill. Then Jesus went up a mountainside and sat down with his disciples.

The Jewish Passover festival was near. When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming towards him, he said to Philip, where shall we buy bread for these people to eat? He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do. Philip answered him, it would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite.

Another of his disciples, Andrew Simon, Peter’s brother, spoke up. Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many? Jesus said, make the people sit down. There was plenty of grass in that place, and they sat down about five thousand men were there.

Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish. When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, gather the pieces that are left over, let nothing be wasted.

So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten. After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, surely this is the prophet who is to come into the world. Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.

Have you ever had the experience of being well out of your depth, of being over your head and out of solutions? It may have been a family emergency, a work catastrophe, a health scare, or some other kind of crisis, and you’ve experienced that sinking realisation that all of your abilities and all of your resources were not nearly enough. Well, if you’ve had that experience, and I expect many of us will have had that experience, you will know the feelings that come with it, that feeling of the overwhelming, that feeling that is really quite humbling as you realise you just don’t have the ability to sort this. And yet it is a feeling that by the grace of God can turn out in the end to be sanctifying.

(3:25 – 3:52)

You see, while none of us would ever choose to put ourselves in those positions, God frequently puts us in that position. Indeed, it is in our inadequacy that God always works most powerfully. And that’s exactly what we see in John chapter 6, verses 1 to 15.

(3:53 – 7:16)

As we have the passage before us, we’re going to see that this is more than an amazing miracle. It is an expose of human insufficiency. It’s about our inadequacy, Christ’s sufficiency, and the danger of us misusing His sufficiency for our own agenda.

Let’s unpack these three themes as we go back through the story. So, first of all, total inadequacy. Total inadequacy.

The feeding of the 5,000 is a miracle that begins with our total inadequacy. Now, this miracle, need I say, is both well-known and not very well understood. It’s very well-known.

Maybe you’ve heard about it in Sunday school or maybe in high school. It’s very well-known, and yet it’s often not well-understood. It’s either just presented as a fun and amazing miracle or as a rather elaborate hoax.

This is the only miracle that is recorded in all of the four gospels, which means it must be extra significant and unusually important. John recounts this miracle by, first of all, setting out the scene. He outlines the circumstances in which it happened.

The place was beside the Sea of Galilee, verse 1. Jesus and His disciples had crossed over the lake by boat from the west side of the lake to the east side, and they had then clambered up a mountain and ascended an area that today is known as the Golan Heights. So, the place is Galilee, and in particular, it is a mountain where Jesus is going with the 12, presumably for some kind of retreat, some kind of respite. But John not only records the place, he also makes a point of sharing the time when the miracle occurred.

Quite strikingly, he says in verse 4 that the Jewish festival of Passover was near. Now, in this gospel, John mentions the Passover on three separate occasions. This is why, incidentally, many people think that Jesus had a three-year, at least a three-year public ministry, because there are three Passovers recorded in John.

For two of the three Passovers, Jesus travelled down south to the capital, Jerusalem. But it seems that for the second one, the middle one, the John 6 one, Jesus stayed up north in Galilee. And crucially, John wants to connect in our minds the feeding of the 5,000 with the Passover.

(7:17 – 8:01)

Well, think about why that is, why John wants to make a connection between the feeding of the 5,000 and the Passover as we go through chapter 6. We’re going to see lots of links between the two. So, the scene is set, and the action now unfolds. A large crowd, verse 5, suddenly appears, and they swarm their way towards Jesus and his disciples.

Now, notice verse 3. They are not coming to hear Jesus’ teaching. They are not coming because they want to be true followers of his Word. They’re simply coming to enjoy the thrill of seeing Jesus’ miracles.

(8:03 – 11:08)

And yet Jesus, nonetheless, cares for them. And he says to Philip, 1 of the 12, where shall we buy bread for these people to eat? Now, I do like the little details in the Bible, and verse 5 is one of the little details. Why did Jesus ask Philip in particular about where to buy bread? Well, because Philip came from that side, the east side of the lake.

We see this somewhere else in the Gospels that Philip hailed from the village of Bethsaida, not so far away. Philip was a local. And so, Jesus asked him, Philip, where is the nearest Bethsaida Extra? Where is… Is there a Costco near the Golan Heights that you know of? To which Philip replies, you cannot be serious.

Forget about the shops, forget about the local provider. Let’s talk, verse 7, about the money. It would take more than half a year’s wages to give each one of these people a single bite.

In fact, they wouldn’t even each get a single bite, because as verse 10 reports, there were 5,000 men there. Including women and children, this could have been as many as double that number. And so, I don’t know about you, I sympathise with Philip.

I mean, have you ever had visitors drop in at your house unexpectedly, and you don’t have anything in the fridge or anything in the cupboard? You sympathise with Philip. I mean, what usually happens? The husband or someone else is quietly sent out quickly to nip down to Sainsbury’s to buy the emergency rations. Now, it’s okay when it’s just a few people, but what if it was 10,000 people? Honey, could you pop down to Sainsbury’s and make sure you come back with enough? You would think that was ludicrous.

You would think they’d lost their mind. You’d be saying along with Philip, even if they have enough stuff in the shop, we don’t have enough in the bank account. And yet, if we said that, I mean, if we said that in the presence of anyone else, it would be sensible.

But if we said that in the presence of Jesus, we would fail the test along with Philip. For you’ll notice it is a test. Verse 6, Jesus asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.

(11:09 – 11:48)

Wait a minute, back up a minute. Jesus was always going to do a miracle. He was never going to send Philip to the shops.

It was a ruse. He asked him in order to test him, to test what Philip’s response would be, to test how sizable Philip’s faith was. He asked Philip the question to see if Philip will focus on the size of the inadequacy or on the presence of the abundant supplier.

(11:50 – 12:08)

Fellow Christian, just by the by, it just struck me as I read this that Jesus will at times test us too. He will test us too. Jesus loves us, but he will test us.

(12:09 – 13:57)

And he loves us enough to test us. He knows that if we lived an untested life, we would never grow in life or in faith. Well, Philip doesn’t pass the test.

He gets caught up in the scale of the problem and in the size of his own inadequacy, and he never goes beyond that. But if Philip fails the test, then maybe Andrew will do a bit better. Cue Andrew to swoop in and give it a better go, hopefully.

But you’ll notice that Andrew’s solution is not a whole lot better. Andrew’s response is to check around the crowd to see if he can muster up enough food for 5,000 people. But all he is able to find is a little boy with a packed lunch, a little boy whose mum had the wherewithal to send him to the lake with some lunch on his person.

Now, I don’t know what the other 5,000 people were doing, but at least one of the mums was sensible. But it really is a little lunch. Five barley loaves and two fish.

Barley loaves were the food of the poor, the food of the poor. And it’s emphasised here that they were small rolls and small fish. This is not five big tiger bread loaves.

It’s not two colossal world record-breaking fish. It’s five little loaves for 5,000 men. I mean, that’s one roll for every 1,000 guys.

(13:59 – 15:39)

How far is it going to go with so many people? I mean, Andrew’s asking the right question, isn’t he? Verse 9. He doesn’t know how this could ever be possible. And so, Andrew ends up in the same place as Philip really, heading the buffers of inadequacy, feeling that sinking feeling of his total inability. And this is often where Jesus wants us to be, friends.

He lovingly pops our illusion that we were ever self-sufficient, that we could ever meet the vast needs, not only of our lives, but of a desperate world. Do you feel your sense of inadequacy in your life and in your ministry as a Christian? Then that’s good. Because it’s only when you see your total inadequacy that you can begin to then pivot to Jesus’ abundant sufficiency.

That’s the second thing, abundant sufficiency. Now, as we come to Christ’s abundant sufficiency, there’s a little nuance here that’s just wonderful. Notice something wonderful, that even though what the boy brings is completely insufficient, even though Andrew’s attempt to muster up some food looks futile in the face of the challenge, Jesus uses these little efforts as part of His miracle.

(15:41 – 16:19)

He uses the little rolls and the couple of fish, even though in themselves they are completely inadequate, even as He uses our meagre service as disciples, even as He uses our limited gifts. And that is wonderful. When you see the size of the need and when you look at what you’ve got in your little lunchbox, it’s amazing that God could ever use it, isn’t it? It is amazing.

(16:21 – 17:05)

I mean, I feel that every Sunday morning. I get up and I think, oh, it’s a Sunday. I can’t even remember what the sermon is.

I open the file, have a wee read through. I think, is this it? I hope this is the wrong file. I hope there’s another sermon that I prepared because this one ain’t that good.

This one ain’t that good. It’s a little lunchbox. You think, is this it? Is this what’s going to raise the spiritually dead? Is this what’s going to sustain the life of the saints? It doesn’t look very much.

It isn’t very much. And that’s all we’ve ever got. That’s our best efforts at Christian parenting.

(17:07 – 18:13)

That’s the best of the gifts we have when used in the service of the Lord. In themselves, there are five little loaves and two little fish, but Jesus uses them as part of his miracle. Jesus, verse 10, includes his disciples in the miraculous work.

He gets them to organise the crowd and to sit them down. And then he takes the loaves and gives thanks, as any of us might normally say grace, but there’s nothing ordinary about what happens next as the bread somehow keeps on breaking and the fish somehow keeps on coming. Now, it is clearly a remarkable miracle.

And yet the focus of the text is not so much on the miracle and on how the miracle happened and on trying to defend the miracle, none of that. The focus in the text is really on the result of the miracle. It’s on the abundance of the result.

(18:13 – 18:40)

Look at verse 12, when they all had enough to eat. When everyone was filled to bursting, Jesus said to his disciples, gather the pieces that are left over. And so they go around and again, they’re part of the miracle somehow, and they gather the pieces up and they discover that there were 12 full baskets of leftover pieces.

(18:42 – 19:39)

Now, let’s think about this 12 baskets of leftover pieces. It is possible, and I would say it is highly likely, that there is a symbolism and a significance in the number 12. This is where our Passover connection starts to come into play for the first time, because 12 is a number associated with the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 tribes who were brought out of Egypt.

Now, there could have been 11 baskets full of leftovers, and there could have been 13. Was it by accident that it was 12? No, it was in God’s providence that there were 12. I think God wanted to convey a beautiful symbolism that Jesus is completely sufficient for the spiritual needs of all Israel.

(19:41 – 20:05)

He has an abundance in 12 portions. You know, going back to chapter 1, he came to his own, Israel, but his own did not receive him. Well, if they didn’t receive him, it wasn’t because he was insufficient.

It wasn’t because he didn’t have enough to meet their needs. It was because they didn’t ask and they didn’t want him. I suspect that symbolism is at play here.

(20:06 – 20:25)

But also, we shouldn’t miss also the simple fact that there was, putting the symbolism to the side, there was just a lot of leftovers. Jesus doesn’t barely provide. He’s the man who more than provides.

(20:26 – 22:47)

He has an abundant supply of life-giving bread. So, what does that mean to us? What’s the significance of that in 21st century Scotland? Is Jesus’ abundant sufficiency a guarantee that I will be abundantly supplied with wealth and resources? I’m kind of hoping that’s the interpretation, but I’m not sure it is. But I’m pretty sure it’s not, that that isn’t what this miracle guarantees me.

I mean, that’s how a prosperity preacher would preach this, wouldn’t they? But it can’t be right. I mean, just for starters, what Jesus abundantly provides here, after all, as vast as it is, is no more than a lunch. He wasn’t providing a mansion.

He was providing a lunchtime meal. And on top of that, to focus on the physical needs is to miss the point of the miracle. This becomes clear later in the chapter when we learn that the miracle points to Jesus’ spiritual provision.

Jesus is the bread of life. There’s a greater bread that can offer life to the spiritually hungry. And the point of the miracle is that there is nothing lacking in Jesus’ spiritual provision.

When it comes to the life and forgiveness and hope Jesus offers, there is no limit to His provision, and there is no need to cap the offer of His provision. You know how it is with some offers. You know, there’s some offers where it’s like the first 100 people get the free gift or whatever it is.

And if you’re 101, sorry, you don’t get it. It’s a provision, but it’s limited. It has a cap on it.

It runs out. But the gospel isn’t like that. With the gospel, there’s such an abundance of leftovers that it’s not only for the Jewish people, but it’s also for the whole world who can be spiritually fed from Jesus’ hand.

(22:48 – 23:32)

And that means I never need to hesitate in witnessing for Jesus. I never need to wonder as a witness for Christ whether I should tell this person of His love, just in case he’s run out of provision today. His mercy is more than enough.

His abundance is all sufficient. That’s very attractive, isn’t it? And yet, its very attractiveness is also, because of our selfish and greedy hearts, in some ways, a danger. And that brings us to our third and final theme.

(23:33 – 23:48)

After total inadequacy and abundant sufficiency, there’s a kind of sting in the tail in this text. The third thing is what I’m going to call selfish ideology. Selfish ideology.

(23:49 – 24:14)

See, this crowd understands that Jesus has some kind of status, that Jesus has some kind of power. They see the sign that Jesus performs, and they say to each other, verse 14, surely this is the prophet who is to come into the world. They’re referring to the prophet that Moses promised in Deuteronomy.

(24:15 – 24:45)

Moses himself was a great prophet. But toward the end of his life, Moses promised that another prophet like him would one day come and would be the great Word of God to God’s people. And the crowd identified Jesus as that prophet.

You’re thinking, good, they’re right. They’re getting on the right track. But just when you think they’re going in the right direction, they suddenly take a very wrong turn.

(24:47 – 26:12)

Rather than coming to Jesus and saying, well, you are the great Word of God, so we’re going to now sit down here, and we’re going to listen to you and hear what your agenda is, instead of that, they have their own agenda for the prophet. And we find out what that is in verse 15. Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

Jesus sneaks away. Why? Because he knows that their agenda is to forcibly make him the king. Now, again, this is where the context of Passover is so important, because the Passover was the festival when the Jews remembered their liberation from Egypt, their oppressor.

And therefore, Passover was a time of great nationalism. It was kind of like the 4th of July in America or the 12th of July in Northern Ireland. It was a time when patriotism reached fever pitch, a time where the Jews were most likely to rise up together against their Roman overlords who were governing the country.

(26:13 – 26:32)

This was a time when a group of 5,000 men could very easily become a 5,000-man militia. And yet, look at the irony here. They intended to make him king by force.

(26:35 – 27:18)

A king by definition is someone who should be calling the shots, don’t you think? Yet the crowd want to force Jesus to be the king in the mould they want. They want a military king. They want a political king.

And they want to set the agenda for this king. But observe that Jesus will not be manipulated to be the kind of king we decide him to be. He will not let us use his power for the pursuit of our own personal ideologies.

(27:20 – 27:44)

We are inadequate. Jesus is sufficient. But he will not let us use his sufficiency to fulfil our personal agendas.

And this is a very good thing. It doesn’t seem like it immediately, but it’s a great thing. First of all, because my agenda is often the wrong agenda.

(27:46 – 28:33)

And secondly, because even when my agenda is the right one, I often do it in the wrong way or at the wrong time. What they needed at that moment was not a political king, but a servant king. What they needed wasn’t one who would slay their political oppressors, but one who would slay their spiritual oppressors.

What they needed was not one to lead a rebellion, but one who would die for our rebellion. That’s what they needed. And that’s why Jesus withdrew to take a different path, to take a path to the cross.

(28:37 – 29:37)

Now, the way of the cross will always be a different path to politics. It will always be a different path to the world of man and the world of politics. Now, we know, of course, that human government has a huge importance, a great influence.

It’s instituted by God, in fact. And there’s a reason that we pray for government. There’s a reason we seek to engage with it, as we’ve been doing in recent weeks.

But we must always bear in mind that the kingdom of this world will always have a different agenda to the kingdom of Christ. And not only is the agenda different, but the manner of reaching it is different. One chooses the way of power and manipulation, while the other chooses the way of the cross, the way of service, the way of sacrifice.

(29:39 – 30:09)

Now, admittedly, the church and what you might call Christendom down the centuries has not always remembered that reality. But the way of the cross is not the way of the sword. It is through the foolishness of the preaching of the crucified Christ that the world is being changed through the church.

(30:11 – 30:47)

So, what are the implications? Where does that leave us as we close? As we round off this miracle with people misusing or trying to misuse the sufficiency of Jesus for their personal gain, what is the application for us? Well, it’s pretty simple. Embrace Jesus’ sufficiency, but do not use him as a divine version of a home delivery service. Now, at home, in our house, we are signed up to Amazon Prime.

(30:48 – 31:58)

And I have a very functional relationship and a very demanding relationship with my Amazon Prime. Whenever I want something, and it must be said it’s less often than the other people in my family, but whenever I want something, with a few touches of a finger, I order the thing. And in a day or two, it comes, because I’m the one in control.

I’m the one who makes and gives the orders. And then I forget about my Amazon Prime. It lives in the background of my life until I have another thing that I need to demand of it.

Jesus should never be treated in that sort of way. But he is often treated in that sort of way, ignored for most of life, and then called on, as it were, to be a need-meeting system. But Jesus will not be that.

(31:59 – 33:10)

He is King, but not a King that we can force or manipulate. The dynamic is more that we respond to his Word than that he responds to ours. Now, he does, of course, he hears us in prayer, but the basic dynamic of the relationship is that we respond to his Word.

It’s not that he responds to our agenda. If you are not following Christ, let me be honest with you, here’s the dynamic if you come to follow Christ. It’s in the expression, you follow Christ, Christ doesn’t follow you.

Right? And it’s a better thing, because Jesus has better ideas about what you really need in life, and he has a better plan for what your life can do and what your life can achieve than you have. And he knows what you need. He knows that you need much more than the stuff you’re aiming for, the physical bread.

He knows that you need the eternal bread. You need more than the liberation from political oppression. You need the liberation from sin and the judgement you deserve.

(33:10 – 36:02)

And follower of Jesus, I wonder if we will keep on learning this lesson. Are we trying to get Jesus to fulfil our agendas, or are we asking him to help us fulfil his? Do you see the difference between those two things? What is Jesus’ agenda? It is the same as it always was. It is to feed the souls of a spiritually hungry world.

Are you going to try and sidetrack Jesus from that? Are you going to try and get him to do your stuff and help you build your kingdom in this world? Or are you going to say, your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven? And yes, give me today my daily bread. Give me the stuff I need because you know I need stuff. You know my family needs stuff.

But give me what is enough and then let me focus on your kingdom coming on earth, even through an inadequate person like me. And then Jesus will say to us, perhaps, well, what have you got that I could use in my mission? And we’ll say, I’ve only managed to muster up five little loaves and two little fish in this little box. And Jesus will say, is that it? He’ll say, in fact, is that the resources of the whole of the church put together in that little box? And I’ll have to say, that’s it.

And Jesus will say, give it here because in my hands, this is enough. Let’s pray. Father, as we sit under your searching word this morning, we confess that our confidence isn’t always in Jesus.

So often we’re focused on our inadequacy and not in his abundant sufficiency. So often we have our agenda and we don’t even realise it, but we use Jesus for our own ends. Forgive us, we pray.

(36:03 – 36:19)

Help us instead to get on board with what he has decided to do so that a starving world might be fed on the bread of heaven, both now and forevermore. Amen.

The post The man who more than provides – John 6v1–15 appeared first on Greenview Church.

We’re starting a new series in the letter of 2 Peter, a somewhat neglected and often underappreciated short letter near the back of your Bible. One commentator I read, sort of summed up the mood of this, when he said that in comparison to 1 Peter, 2 Peter is the ugly stepchild, the ugly stepchild. So if you think of 1 Peter, it’s viewed as beautiful and beloved, but 2 Peter seems less attractive and is sent to the basement with a sort of bucket and a mop.

(0:45 – 2:05)

We may appreciate some of the verses in 2 Peter. We may enjoy some of the purple passages of 2 Peter, but on the whole, we often struggle to see the beauty of all of this letter, and particularly of chapter 2 when we come to it, a very tricky and it seems quite a difficult section. But insofar as that’s the case, insofar as we think of 2 Peter as the ugly stepchild of the New Testament, it is a real shame.

It’s a real shame. Because this letter was written by none less than the Apostle Peter, an eyewitness of Jesus’ majesty, and one of the key leaders of the early Christian movement. More than that, as verse 14 of chapter 1 indicates, this is Peter’s last letter.

It’s his final word to the church. His body, notice he says there, his body will soon be put off as the Lord Jesus has made clear to him. Peter then is most likely writing from Rome, not long before his martyrdom in approximately 67 AD.

(2:07 – 3:34)

Just imagine, friends, having the final words of the Apostle Peter to the worldwide church. Imagine having Peter’s last pleas to the church, his last reminders before he leaves the earth for the last time. Well, we have that in the letter of 2 Peter.

We’re going to kick off our studies here in chapter 1, and as Nigel has read, we’re going to look at verse 1 down to verse 11. I recall as a young Christian often hearing older Christians speaking of God’s call on their life. Most of these people who spoke about this were either missionaries or they were quote-unquote full-time Christian workers.

And how had they become that? Well, they explained that they had received God’s call on their life. They had been called into ministry. And I remember as a young believer thinking several things about this.

Number one, it sounds cool to be called. Sounds cool to be called. Number two, I wonder if I’ll ever be called.

(3:36 – 4:37)

And number three, if I ever do get the call, will I then have made it as a Christian? Because that sort of logic seemed, at least to me, to flow from the very language and the very distinction. If there are called Christians on the one hand and uncalled Christians on the other, are there not two levels of Christians, an elite category and an everyday category? Well, as we begin 2 Peter, this soon-to-die apostle wants to make clear that when it comes to Christian living, there are no levels and there are no tiers. There’s not a premium tier to living the Christian life as opposed to the bog-standard level of the everyday believer.

(4:39 – 6:52)

The church is not like your Spotify or your gym membership or your coffee shop where they have a premium tier of membership with premium privileges. No, Peter is abundantly clear that we live the Christian life on the same level ground. And the way that Peter does this is by using the very language that we sometimes use to differentiate between Christians, one from the other.

He levels the ground by using the language of call. So, if you look at verse 10 of chapter 1, you’ll see one of two important references to this. Speaking in verse 10 to brothers and sisters, so the whole church, he says, make every effort to confirm your calling and election.

And in the context of the next verse, verse 11, we see that that calling is a calling into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. In other words, this call in verse 10 is a call to final salvation. It’s a calling to heaven, if you like.

It’s a calling to this amazing future reality. And Peter says that we all share in this calling. And indeed, we’ll come on to this later, we all should confirm our reservation for this welcome.

But even more than that, Peter also says that we should live in light of that future call now. So, if you take a look back to verse 3, you’ll see that Peter uses our calling word a second time. He says that Christ called us, that’s every believer, by His own glory and goodness.

(6:53 – 8:54)

And why’s He called us? By His divine glory and His attractive goodness. He’s called us, look at the start of verse 3, you’ll see why, for a godly life. So, putting those two things together, verse 3 and verse 10, Peter is saying this, we’re all called to an eternal kingdom and to a godly life now while we wait for it.

I’ll say that again because it’s important. We’re all called to an eternal kingdom and to a godly life now while we wait for it. That is the calling we all share.

We don’t need to wonder about it. We don’t need to try and figure it out. We don’t need to pray and seek God’s will to discern it.

We don’t need to be a pastor or a preacher or a missionary to have it. There is a single call on all believers to be saved for an eternal kingdom and to live a sanctified life while we wait for it. Now, in these verses, Peter, I think then, does really two things.

He encourages us to pursue this calling, and he also exhorts us. So, there’s very much sort of two tones coming through here. Particularly in verses 1 to 4, it’s a very encouraging, nurturing tone as he shows us the resources of the Christian life, and then in 5 to 11, it’s much more of an exhortation.

It’s more of a challenge to use those resources. So, let’s begin with verses 1 to 4. Verses 1 to 4, let me suggest, explain the resources we have to fulfil our call. The resources we have to fulfil our call.

(8:56 – 10:08)

Back when I was at primary school, I recall going on a trip to an outdoor centre. I think it was up in Arrochar, and one of the activities that they made us do was abseiling. Now, I have a little bit of a fear of heights, and so I wasn’t really looking forward to this experience, but when I got to the top of what seemed a very high cliff to me, it was very encouraging to see that they had some robust-looking equipment.

There were harnesses and all sorts of other very robust-looking hooks and clips and various things that they were going to give me to help me do the abseil. Now, just imagine that you got to the top of that cliff, and you discovered that there was one flimsy rope, one flimsy rope that you would hang onto on the way down. Or even worse, suppose you came to the top of the cliff, and you discovered that they had no rope at all, zero equipment to help you abseil down the perilous cliff.

(10:11 – 11:41)

Christian, the godly life may seem challenging at times, but Peter wants to show you how well resourced you are to do it. But before Peter even gets to these resources, he wants to remind us of even the privilege we have to possess these resources. Again, just going back to my analogy, you know, I didn’t realise it at the time, but there were children in other schools who never had the privilege of doing a week-long trip like we did and doing all the fantastic things that we did.

It was a privilege to even be in that position. And Peter says that we are in a privileged position to receive God’s resources. And he speaks about this in verses 1 and 2. He talks in verse 2 of the faith we have received, a faith that is received because of righteousness, grace, and peace.

The righteousness is Christ’s righteousness. It’s the righteousness that isn’t ours by nature, but the righteousness which becomes ours through grace. And what is that grace of God? Well, it is His undeserved favour.

(11:42 – 12:52)

Not just God showing favour to us, which He does, but showing His undeserved favour to those who don’t deserve it, to those who are sinners. And that grace is then accompanied by the peace of God, which is living in the blessing of God and living as the friend of God. That’s peace.

And none of this is our own doing. In fact, we see in verse 2 that Peter, strikingly, even describes faith, the faith that we have. He describes it as something we have, notice, received.

Every Christian is a little bit like a winger in rugby. Now, I don’t know much about rugby, but the winger, as far as I understand it, is fundamentally a receiver in the team. He or she, you know, they hug the touchline, they just stand there and they wait, and they wait for everyone else to pass the ball, and they’re always the receiver.

(12:53 – 13:10)

If we were an American audience, it would be an easier illustration. I could talk about the receiver in the American football team who gets paid millions of dollars to do one thing, receive the ball, catch the ball. Every Christian is fundamentally a receiver.

(13:12 – 15:30)

We receive righteousness, we receive grace, we receive peace, and we even receive faith itself. And notice a little detail here. This is wonderful, the way that Peter words this.

He talks about the faith we have received, which is as precious as ours. Now, who is the ours there? I take it that the ours there is a reference to Peter. He’s just called himself a servant and apostle.

So, I take it that the ours there is speaking of Peter’s faith as an apostle and the faith of his fellow apostles, those who have preached the gospel and birthed the church. And Peter is saying here that there is no premium faith of the apostles. They don’t have a faith above anyone else in the church.

There’s not a bog-standard faith for every Christian and a premium faith for the apostle Peter of this world. If you have received faith, your faith is as precious and valuable as the apostle Peter’s and the apostle Paul’s. That kind of puts into perspective some of the stuff that we’re watching and hearing over the last few weeks regarding the passing of the Pope.

You would think from some of the discourse around that, that if you are either the Pope who died or the next Pope who’s going to be chosen, you would think that the Pope is someone on another level of spirituality. When they appoint him, he’s going to be even above the cardinals. But ironically, the original Peter doesn’t agree.

He says that we share an equal faith with him. And this faith that we share with the apostles becomes ours through the knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord. It’s not a faith that we receive by merit or church appointment.

(15:31 – 17:04)

It’s a faith we receive simply through knowing God and the Lord Jesus, an experience that’s open to every one of us, knowing God, knowing Christ. So in verses 1 and 2, Peter reminds us of how we even got into the privileged position where we can receive the resources. But in verses 3 and 4, he then lists the resources.

And he says that to live the godly life, there are three Ps at your fingertips, three Ps at the Christian’s fingertips. Number one, we have power. Power.

The believer has not just any power, but divine power. This is the power that created the universe. It’s the power that sustains every star and every human heartbeat.

It’s the power that raised Jesus from the dead. It’s the power that will one day, as we’ll see in chapter 3, cleanse the earth of unrighteousness and renew the heavens and the earth. It’s this colossal power.

It’s not battery power, it’s not nuclear power, and it certainly is not willpower. No such power would be enough to live the Christian life. We have divine power.

(17:06 – 17:30)

This is regardless of whether we feel it to be so, and it is regardless of whether we utilise it or not. We may not always avail ourselves of this power, but it is always available to us. It’s a little bit like a house when they hook it up to the mains electricity.

(17:31 – 17:48)

You know, when they’re building houses, there’s a stage where they do whatever they do, and then they flick the switch, and the mains electricity is live. Now, from that moment on, power is available. Now, you might live in the house and choose to never use the electricity.

(17:48 – 21:30)

You may not turn on a single light, or the kettle, or plug in the lawnmower. You may not avail yourself of the power available, but you cannot say the power is unavailable. His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life.

But as well as that, and this is, I think, very important, we also have the resource of promises. Peter continues in verse 4, through these, that’s Jesus’ goodness and majesty, He has given us His very great and precious promises. And this begins to direct us to what will be a major theme in 2 Peter, and that is the theme of the future.

That is the theme of the second coming. Promises are always something about the future. A promise is always related to something that will happen.

And Peter wants to orientate his readers towards the future. We’ll see this again in chapter 1, verse 11, at the end of the passage where he speaks of a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom. And as we go through the letter, we’re going to see at least 10 explicit references to the second coming of Christ.

We’re going to find in chapter 2 and in chapter 3 that there were false teachers on the scene at the time who were denying the doctrine of the return of Christ. And Peter is digging in his heels already, right here in the opening paragraph. He’s saying, you cannot live the Christian life without the fuel of the future, without the fuel of future promises.

It is God’s promises that motivate the Christian to live a godly life. That’s why I’ve titled this series, borrowing from a little study by Jonathan Gibson on 2 Peter, I’ve titled it, Living with the End in Mind. Living with the End in Mind, because we have to have the end in mind and then live now in light of that belief.

That’s what 2 Peter is about. So, we have the resource of power, we have the resource of promises, and thirdly, we have the resource of participation. If you look at verse 4, through these, that’s through the promises, you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

Now, it was pretty deep waters this morning, wasn’t it? In a few places with divine nature and all of that stuff, and here we are again in something that’s a little trickier. What does Peter mean when he says that we, as believers, we participate in the divine nature? Well, he cannot be saying that we actually become God in nature. Peter is too much of a good Jew and a solid Christian to be saying that believers will become divine in their nature and essence.

(21:31 – 22:50)

What he is saying, I think, is something quite similar to what Paul would describe as union with Christ. Paul says that through faith, a believer has a spiritual union with Christ. If you like, a participation in the divine that begins to change us and make us more Christ-like and God-like.

Not God, but God-like. If I could use an inadequate illustration, all these illustrations are inadequate, but when a husband and wife enter a marriage union, you can sometimes tell that they’re married. Now, when this ever happens to us, like if we walk out a door and I realise we’re wearing the same colours on the top and the bottom, I’m like, one of us is going to go and change, because I don’t want to become like this.

But you can see with some couples, can’t you, that as they spend time together and have a connection together, they’re shaped by one another. They speak the same, they kind of look the same, they seem to have the same interests and so on. You can just tell they have a close relationship.

(22:52 – 24:24)

And in a more profound way, but much more as a one-way street, when we enter a spiritual union with Christ, when we participate in the divine nature, the qualities and excellences of Christ begin to rub off on us. And so, when you think about it, the resources we have for the Christian life are massive. Yes, it’s scarier than abseiling down a cliff to live as a Christian, but our resources are as big as God Himself.

We have the power of God, we have the promises of God, and we even have a spiritual participation in God which guarantees that we will become like Him, guarantees it. And yet what we see in the rest of the passage is that knowing we have the resources should move us to action. We actually need to do the abseil.

And that brings us to our second section, second point. The responsibility we have to fulfil our calling. The responsibility we have to fulfil our calling, verses 5 to 8. Now, very important, look at how verse 5 begins, “For this very reason”.

(24:26 – 27:48)

Do not start reading this passage at verse 5. You must begin with verses 1 to 4. You can’t start at verse 5. Verse 5, make every effort. Yes, but for the reason of verses 1 to 4, because verses 1 to 4 is already true, because grace is true and righteousness is yours and peace is yours and faith is yours, because the power, the promises, and the participation are yours by grace, for this reason make every effort. Effort in the vocabulary of evangelicals is often a dirty word.

It’s often viewed with suspicion and hesitation. But Peter in the context of the grace and gifts of verses 1 to 4 has no qualms about calling us to make every effort to live a Christian life in light of grace. The original word that lies behind the phrase make every effort here means to spare no expense.

It was a word used at the time of lavish banquets. You might think of even a wedding today where the parents go all out, no expense spared. Peter says when it comes to the Christian life, do not be half-hearted, go all out, spare no expense, leave no money in the bank, spend it all.

But in what areas should we be spending ourselves in making the effort? Well, Peter very helpfully lists out for us nine areas or nine qualities that are key elements of the Christian life. Now, I take it that this is not an exhaustive list. There are other things that Peter could have said.

These are probably very core and essential things, but there are other things. And I also take it that this is not, by and large, a progressive list or a consequential list. Now, some people do see a particular order in this list, but it seems to me that except for the first and the last qualities, which we’ll come back to in a moment, Peter is simply listing some essential qualities of the Christian life.

You don’t start with number one, and when you’ve nailed one, you think, all right, okay, I’ll maybe try number two for the next five years. It’s not like that. And in actual fact, if you were to read on into chapter two, and if you were to look at the negative character qualities of the false teachers, which we will do in a future week, I think you will see that these qualities that Peter is describing is the opposite of their behaviour and their character.

These are the opposite to the way the false teachers were behaving. So Peter very specifically is emphasising these things. What is driving Peter is that Christians should not copy the ungodly life of those who deny the key doctrines of the faith.

(27:50 – 29:04)

Unlike those people, these Christians were to exercise faith, which we’ve already seen, it’s a fundamental attribute of the Christian life. The Christian is marked by faith, not by unbelief. But that starting point needs to be added to.

And Peter now adds a list of additional qualities that we need to pursue. He talks about goodness, which is the idea of moral excellence. Knowledge.

Knowledge is deepening our experiential knowledge of Jesus Christ. Self-control. Self-control is the ability to restrain our sinful impulses, or indeed any impulse, even if it’s a good impulse.

It’s the ability to control ourselves. Perseverance is the ability to keep on going through hardship and trial. Godliness is living in the fear of God at all times in life, not just here on a Sunday in church.

(29:06 – 29:58)

Mutual affection is the brotherly and sisterly love that Christians show to one another. And then at the end of the list, and I do think the position of this is significant, Peter ends on the attribute of love. The Christian life begins with faith, but it is crowned by love.

As Paul would tell us, without love all the other qualities that we have are meaningless if we do not have this. It’s quite a challenging list. But as I reflected on it this week, I thought, well, actually, it’s a helpful list.

I would rather know what it is I’m meant to be aiming at when God says, I want you to live a godly life. Here it is. Here’s some of the key qualities that we could start with and we could work on.

(30:00 – 33:18)

And so we should be asking ourselves questions like these. Am I growing in my faith? Am I increasing in my moral goodness and excellence? Is my knowledge of Christ growing deeper day by day and year by year? Is my self-control improving? Am I more self-controlled today? I mean, don’t judge this in days and minutes, but is my self-control more mature now than it was 10 years ago? That’s a good question to ask. Is my perseverance growing stronger? Am I growing in my daily awareness of the fear of the Lord? Is my affection and love for other Christians steadily increasing and becoming gradually more selfless and sacrificial? Notice that Peter makes two assumptions here.

Assumption number one is that you already do all these things if you’re a Christian. Every Christian possesses these qualities, he says. That’s assumption one.

And assumption two, we should be increasing in these qualities. We possess them and we’re called to increase in them. In light of God’s abundant resources, making every effort.

Now, you might say, well, I’m not growing in these things. Could it be, could it be that the reason we’re not growing in some of these areas is that we are not making every effort, giving everything? Ask yourself this, what in life do you give everything to? Because none of us give everything to everything, do we? Some things we give 50% to 75%. There’s things you can get away with not putting your 100% into.

What do you give everything to? Some people give everything to their career, give everything to earning money, everything to their hobby. Some people give 50% at work, but they give everything to their hobby, everything to their wife, everything to their kids. Nothing wrong with giving everything to these things.

But do we give the same everything to living a godly life? And if not, why not? Here’s why not, here’s the reason why not. As I was looking at this passage, I realised the reason why not. Well, there’s two reasons, we’ve seen one of them.

Number one, sometimes I just don’t realise that I have the resources to live this life. Because I think we do sometimes think we’re just incapable of living this life and we give up. That’s why we need verses 1 to 4. But I think the other reason is, even when you know you’ve got the resources, the other reason is that we just don’t see the importance of godly living.

(33:20 – 34:34)

All these other things in life seem very important, but if we’re honest, the godly life doesn’t seem that important. And I think Peter understands that. I think that’s why Peter, after he lays this out, he gives us even more motivation.

And he gives us three motivations as we finish to exert ourselves in this way. I’m going to put these in the form of three questions and I’m going to be fairly brief on each of them. So number one, would you like to be productive? Would you like to be productive? So all of us are aware there’s a massive productivity industry with books and blogs and videos telling us how we can live productive lives.

And the reason that kind of thing is so popular is because deep within each of us there is a God-given desire to be productive as human beings. The reason it doesn’t feel good to be unproductive is that you were made by a productive God to be productive. It’s one of the things we were made for.

(34:35 – 36:14)

And Peter says that if you possess these qualities of verses five to eight in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive. Peter says you will never live a productive and effective life unless you are growing in Christ-likeness. Isn’t that interesting? So maybe from an earthly perspective, people might not consider you to be productive.

Maybe at certain people’s funerals, there are folks saying they were incredibly productive in what they did. But from the perspective of heaven, you do not live a productive or effective life unless you’re like Jesus. There is no productivity, there is no effective life that pleases God except the life of godliness and love outlined in verses five to eight.

So if you truly want to feel productive and know that you’re being effective in the way you live, if you want to reach the end of your life even as a Christian and realise that you’ve actually achieved something eternal and worthwhile, then make every effort to live this kind of life. And don’t just keep pursuing all the other stuff that’s never going to be eternally productive. And notice that the alternative to that is living a life that is short-sighted and blind and forgetful.

(36:15 – 36:28)

Perhaps short-sighted and blind there is short-sighted and blind in the sense that we don’t see the future. We don’t see the return of Christ. We’re short-sighted.

(36:30 – 44:17)

We’re not living in light of the second coming. And we’re forgetful, forgetful about the grace and all the blessings that we’ve received. So there’s a choice here.

Do we want to live a productive life or live a life that forgets about the grace we’ve received? Second motivation. Would you like to feel assured? Would you like to feel assured? Peter carries on in verse 10, therefore my brothers and sisters, make every effort, there’s that same phrase again, spare no expense, to confirm your election and calling. In some situations when you’re booking a hotel, you make the booking, but then you have to confirm your reservation.

And it’s a very important thing. If you don’t confirm your reservation, then you rightly should have no confidence that the hotel will keep the room for you. And Peter is saying something like that here.

While we are saved by God’s grace and even by the choice of God, God’s election, nonetheless on a human level, we are to confirm that reservation of the calling we have received. Now, this is not salvation by works. It is rather that we make visible in our lives the work that God is already doing.

And if I could put this in real terms, how would this play out in the average Christian’s life? If you are living a life that has some semblance of love and faith and perseverance and godliness and self-control and mutual love, even if it is not lived perfectly, and none of us live perfectly, nonetheless a life that bears those marks will confirm to you the calling that you have received by God. To put it another way, in the negative, if you claim to be saved by grace, but you see no evidence of faith in your life, if you see zero godliness, but only a zealous pursuit of sin with no effort at all to turn from it, to put it even more bluntly, if you’re committing adultery without any qualms, if you’re lying and cheating your way through life, if you only love yourself and if you hate other people, there is no way in the world that you can have or should have assurance that you’re a Christian. Now, there are other factors at play when it comes to assurance, but this is a factor.

The reality is that how we live our lives either confirms or denies to us that we are God’s children. This is why when we momentarily lapse into sin, we often temporarily lose a sense of our assurance. Of course, it comes back as we repent, but that’s why we lose the sense of it, because we’re not confirming the calling that we have received.

So, if you want to strengthen your sense of assurance, one of the ways you do that is to pursue a godly life. And then thirdly and finally, so would you like to be productive? Would you like to feel assured? And then thirdly, and I finish with this, would you like to be warmly welcomed? Would you like to be warmly welcomed? I’d like you to picture a very grand house, the kind of party that maybe happens in a country estate, the kind of party where people arrive dressed to the nines with food being served on platters, and maybe even a red carpet out front with a violinist, you know, welcoming in the guests. And I want you to imagine all the guests arriving, car after car, and coming in, and they all get a friendly welcome, they all get a drink in their hand, and it’s a rather nice experience to be invited to this party.

Just being there, you know, you’re already a winner. But then a particular car pulls up out the front, and as the person walks in the door, you notice that the host of the party spots them from the top of the grand staircase, and they come down the stairs to meet them, and they come out the front door, and they embrace them. And they not only do that, but they’ve come in with them, and they spend time with them, and they have an extensive conversation with them, because that particular guest is somebody who is particularly appreciated by the host.

Now, I’m not suggesting the new heavens and earth is going to be like a dinner party in a mansion, nor do I know exactly what the welcome will be like in the new heavens and new earth. I don’t know what that’s going to look like. But what I do know is that verse 11 promises not just a welcome, but a rich welcome to all those who have lived a godly life and made every effort to be Christ-like.

To be a good and faithful servant should be an aspiration of every one of us. And to be honest, in the church nowadays, I’m just not sure it is. I’m just not sure it is, and it should be.

This isn’t just a calling for the spiritually elite, and it isn’t just possible for the Apostle Peters and the guys that can do miracles and the missionaries, as thankful as we are for them. It’s a call that we all share, and it’s a life that we can live by God’s power and God’s promises. Let’s pray together.

Father, what an amazing passage and what an amazing call you have put upon each of our lives. We want to feel both the encouragement, that sense of resting in your grace, resting secure in that righteousness that clothes us the righteousness of Christ. And yet at the same time, we want to feel that impulse, that wind at our backs, the wind of the Spirit, which is saying, make every effort, be zealous, be diligent, don’t go cold, be zealously hot in serving me and pursuing me.

Lord, please help us not so much today but tomorrow. And as we go into this week, when these words will have fallen away from our minds, bring them to our remembrance, stir us up, and help us to pursue Christlikeness. And we pray this in his name.

Amen.

The post A calling we all share – 2 Peter 1v1–11 appeared first on Greenview Church.

We’ve got as far as the second half of this chapter, which has been described by various theologians as one of the most complex and densest passages in John’s Gospel. So I’m going to ask right at the beginning that we switch our mobile phones off and make sure that our distractions are kept to a minimum because we’re going to have to concentrate fairly hard this morning as we unpick this incredible passage from Scripture. Scripture.

If you think that being cancelled by a self-righteous minority is something new in the 2020s, you’d be mistaken. Here in John chapter 5, second half, we discover the first steps being taken by the Jewish authorities back in Jesus’ day to cancel him. John tells us in verse 16, you’ll notice right at the beginning of the text that we read this morning, that the Jewish leaders began to persecute Jesus, and two verses later, they’re determined to cancel him permanently.

They tried all the more to kill him. Now that seems quite radical and quite drastic. Why the big change? Jesus has been doing nothing but good.

(1:16 – 8:58)

He’s been performing miracles. He’s been seen as this incredible individual, but they tried all the more to kill him. Why did they want to cancel Jesus? Well, a cultural controversy had been created in verse 9, earlier in the passage that we covered last week, when John tells us that the day on which the man who lifted up his bed and walked away from the pool took place was the Sabbath day, and you couldn’t do any work on the Sabbath day if you were a good Jewish boy or girl.

The Jewish leaders had added some incredible laws to the Sabbath commandment. Let me give you one example. I was doing a bit of reading around this week on this.

Take using vinegar to alleviate toothache. Now, every dental practitioner – and there are a few here this morning – know that that’s a gold standard evidence base right there. Vinegar to alleviate toothache.

But if you took vinegar, if you took vinegar and applied it to your tooth, you were breaking the law because that was work. But if you had vinegar on your food and it happened to touch your tooth as you were eating and alleviate the toothache that way, you weren’t breaking the Sabbath at all. You were just eating your fish supper.

Now, we may mock these crazy rules, but right at the start of our considerations this morning on this passage, we need to hold the mirror up here and be really careful that we ourselves are not simply satisfied by being seen by others to be good people. Outwardly good, keeping all the rules, keeping a set of moral standards rather than people who have a real life heart experience of God deep inside our beings and the desire to know Him and share His love with the lost world. Now, what’s interesting here as we move through quickly is how Jesus begins to defend Himself against His opponents.

The Jewish Sabbath, of course, was based on God resting in the creation story on the seventh day. But obviously rest didn’t mean doing nothing. Otherwise, the universe would implode.

If God didn’t work in upholding the universe and upholding everything by His powerful Word, then the whole thing would collapse. All the ways in which the Jewish law was interpreted, and there were many, many schools of thought, all of those schools agreed that God worked on the Sabbath in that way providentially, that He kept everything going. Everybody agreed on that.

But the controversy was this. Was God breaking the law when He did that? Was He breaking His own law? Or what exemptions did God give Himself from His own law concerning the Sabbath in order to keep the universe going? And the Jewish authorities and the rabbis and the rabbinic schools were divided on all of this. Some thought one thing, some thought another.

But Jesus wades right into this debate using it to claim that He, in healing this man on the Sabbath, has the same exemptions from the law that God Himself has in upholding the universe. Did you notice what He says there? I’m pouring out blessings on the Sabbath. The reason I’m doing that is because my Father is pouring out His blessings on the Sabbath.

Look at verse 17. My Father is working and has been working right up to this day, and so am I. Jesus is claiming He can behave exactly the same way in relation to the Sabbath as God does. And the Jews recognised that by calling God my Father, did you notice verse 17, that little word my is really important, my Father rather than our Father.

Jesus was claiming equality with God, and that for them was absolute anathema and complete blasphemy. Now, this extraordinary claim to be equal with God is a major turning point in John’s gospel. Jesus is claiming to possess God’s very nature in just the same way as human fathers and sons share the same nature.

He’s claiming, if you like, divine DNA. So as we try to answer this great question, is Jesus really equal with God, which is our topic this morning, we find that in this passage Jesus pulls back the curtain to let us see aspects of the Godhead in action that answer this question. And I want you to notice four things that support Jesus’ claim to be equal with God, and yet at the same time, to be subordinate and obedient to the Father.

That’s really important, and we’ll explain why that is really important in a minute. Firstly, let’s look at divine activity. We’ll find that in verse 19.

Jesus says, I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. The Son can do nothing by himself. He can only do what he sees the Father doing.

Now, this is an outrageous and remarkable claim. This is not Jesus saying that he’s trying to imitate what God does in the same way as one of our babies in the church imitates what their fathers do. You know, you see dads doing this stick-your-tongue-out thing.

Now, babies can do that from a really early age. They can see, and they can copy. I did this with my wee grandson when he was only about two months old.

And you can do that, and the baby will copy you. It’s remarkable. They are good at imitating their father.

But that’s not what Jesus is doing here. He’s not just mindlessly copying what he sees the Father does. Jesus is saying, my activities are linked to my divine nature.

I’m not a maverick. I’m not a magician. Everything I do is entirely and perfectly lined up with the Father’s plan, and everything I do is in obedience to the Father’s will.

Jesus is saying it’s impossible for him to do anything other than what the Father is doing. The works of the Father are in perfect harmony with the works of the Son. That’s why right at the beginning of John’s gospel, John the Apostle records this to set the scene, because he knows what else he’s going to say.

(8:59 – 10:28)

In the beginning was the Word. Do you remember that back in John 1? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Without him was not anything made, nothing was made that has been made.

The works of the Father, you see, are perfectly aligned with the works of the Son. Now, even in a world of crazy claims and fake news, can you imagine anyone posting on social media, the only things I do are the things God does? Hashtag God works. I mean, these are staggering claims.

No one has ever made them since. No one ever made them before. And just an aside here, this is important.

Whilst it’s true to say that the works of the Son are in perfect harmony with the works of the Father, that doesn’t mean that there’s no differentiation in the specific things that each of them are responsible for. For example, in the work of redemption and salvation, Jesus is equal with God, but he’s subordinate to the Father. So he’s equal with God in his essence, but he’s subordinate to the Father in his function.

(10:30 – 11:07)

Do you remember Jesus before the cross in the garden of Gethsemane? Do you remember what he says when he’s praying to his Father? Do you remember? These are important words, not my will, but yours be done. The reason that’s important is it’s showing us that although Jesus was divine and had the divine nature and divine essence, as the Son, he was obedient and subservient to the Father’s will. You see, it wasn’t the Father that died on the cross for you.

(11:07 – 11:39)

That was the role of the Son, in obedience to the Father’s will. And these verses about Jesus being equal with the Father don’t mean that when we come to the Lord’s supper later, we should pray, Father, thank you for dying on the cross for me. We sometimes hear that.

We shouldn’t pray that. The Father didn’t die on the cross for you. The Son died on the cross for you.

(11:39 – 11:50)

It was the Lord Jesus who did that. Hebrews tells us he offered himself through the eternal Spirit. So the Holy Spirit was involved as well, but the Spirit didn’t die on the cross for you either.

(11:51 – 13:41)

The Lord Jesus died as the Son, fulfilling the Father’s will. Also, here’s another shocker. The saving work of Jesus wasn’t primarily decided on his love for you or for me.

He does love you, and he does love me, and that’s incredible. But the saving work of Jesus wasn’t determined and decided on his love for you, for us. It was determined by his love for the Father.

Everything he did, he did it because he loved the Father, and he wanted to honour the Father and obey the Father’s will, and it was the Father’s will to crush him and bruise him and wound him for us. And Jesus did that out of love for the Father before he did it out of love for you. And so it’s this divine community or relationship of love between the Father and the Son that Jesus goes on to develop in verse 20.

Look at verse 20. Divine community. The Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.

Now, the tense in verse 20 here is really important. It’s present continuous. That means that the Father had never and will never cease to love the Son.

Jesus acknowledges this in his priestly prayer in John 17, later in the gospel. John records it for us. Jesus prays, You, he’s praying to his Father again, You loved me before the creation of the world.

(13:42 – 14:38)

He says, you loved me before the creation of the world. So there exists a divine community of love between the Father and the Son. And you know, that’s what gives all of our human relationships traction.

That’s why they’re so important. That’s why marriage love is important. That’s why family love is important.

That’s why friendship love is important. Social love is important. These things, all these relational loves all find meaning and purpose.

And they’re so dear and real to us because there is relationship within the Godhead, because the Father loves the Son. That’s what John means later when he says, we love because he first loved us. Our love, our experience of love, however that’s expressed, is a pale shadow of the love that the Father has for the Son.

(14:41 – 15:13)

So when we’re faced with the question, how can I know what God is like? We often say, look at Jesus, because the Father reveals himself in the Son. We often say that, don’t we? If we want to know what God is like, we look at Jesus in the Gospels. We look at Jesus as he’s explained to us theologically in the epistles.

We look at Jesus. But here, and that’s not wrong, we should look at Jesus, by the way. I’m not saying that’s wrong.

(15:13 – 17:23)

Yes, we should look at Jesus when we’re asked that question. But here we’re being told something even more amazing. Here, Jesus is saying the Father isn’t revealing himself in the Son.

He’s saying the Father is revealing himself to the Son. The Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Now, you will never find language anywhere in the Bible that says the Son reveals himself to the Father.

You won’t find that language. Remember, the Son is equal to the Father in his divine essence, yet he always functions in subordination and obedience to his Father. Now, it’s not a subordination of being.

It’s a subordination of function. But because the Father loves the Son, he shows the Son all he does, and then the Son does it. He’s the agent of the Father.

He does the Father’s work. So the Father’s love for the Son shows him all he does, and the Son’s love for the Father works itself out in obedience to the things the Father has shown him. Now, that is so different from how we function, so different from us.

When you have been faced with a difficult circumstance in your life, and you’re peering into that circumstance, and you can’t square it off, you can’t explain it, you can’t understand it, you don’t know what’s going on, we will often deal with those kind of situations by saying, do you know what? God knows. The Lord knows. We’ll leave it with him.

He knows. But notice that’s never the language Jesus uses. Jesus says, everything the Father does as the one who initiates divine activity, he shows me.

(17:24 – 19:45)

And I’m never in any doubt about what the Father’s doing. I never have to say, we’ll just leave that one and stick it to the wall because God knows that. Jesus never said, I can’t see what God’s doing here, or I don’t understand what God’s doing there.

He never has to appeal to that higher power that is God, for he himself is the human expression of that power, and that personality, and that authority. And that authority is demonstrated in two huge areas, John tells us here, that have been delegated by the Father to the Son. Firstly, the authority to give life.

And secondly, the authority to pass judgement. Let’s look at these one by one. Giving life then in verse 21, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it.

And in verse 24, very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life. How do you get spiritual life? What does Jesus say? By believing in me, by hearing the words I speak. Then he adds, oh, and by the way, I’ll also be your judge on the final day on the basis of whether you listen to that word or not.

Well, that kind of raises the bar a bit, doesn’t it? That raises the stakes a bit. That means that listening in on a Sunday morning or online is really important and how we respond to that is really important because how we respond to the word of Jesus will determine what we hear from the lips of Jesus on the final day. Believers in Jesus, he says in verse 24, will have eternal life and will not be condemned.

But those who do not believe in Jesus will not have eternal life and will be condemned. Do you see it? It’s as clear as black and white. Possession of eternal life from Jesus delivers us from eternal judgement passed by Jesus.

(19:49 – 23:25)

But Jesus takes these extraordinary claims to be the giver of life and the judge of all people even further in verses 25 to 27. Look at the text closely, and you’ll see two resurrections are within his power. Firstly, in verse 25, the spiritual resurrection of believers in him in the present day.

So there’s a resurrection going on now at a spiritual level, and it’s under Jesus’ authority. Verse 25, I tell you a time is coming and has now come, present, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. Jesus is saying here that when he comes to speak to us, just as he spoke to the man at the pool in Bethesda in the first half of the chapter, a spiritual resurrection takes place.

Those who hear the voice of Jesus will live. That’s what happens when you become a Christian. If you claim to have become a Christian this morning, if you have become a Christian this morning, in the words of the old hymn, you have heard the voice of Jesus say, come unto me and rest.

And you’ve listened to that voice, you’ve come to Jesus, and you’ve found rest and forgiveness in him. Ah, but Jesus says, there’s an even greater resurrection that’s going to take place on a future day. So there’s a spiritual resurrection in the present, but there’s a greater resurrection in the future.

There it is in verse 28. Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming – hasn’t come yet – a time is coming when all who are in their graves, no exceptions, will hear his voice and come out. Those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned.

Here Jesus is talking about a universal, general resurrection of all humanity that will take place at his return when he will pass judgement on every human being who has ever lived. Now, you may be wondering why Jesus says the eternal destiny of all humanity will be determined by what they have done. What they have done.

But David, isn’t judgement and the outcome of judgement determined by what you believe? Is it not faith that protects you on the final day rather than the works that you’ve done? Is it not faith in Jesus rather than what we do that determines our eternal destiny? Well, yes it is. But this passage shows that the reality of who Jesus is is proved by the things he does. That’s the whole emphasis of the passage.

He lives his life in obedience to the Father’s will. He does what he sees the Father do. These are his works.

(23:27 – 34:44)

They are works of trust and implicit and total faith and dependence on his Father. And in the same way, Jesus is speaking here of the things we do in living our lives in subordination to the Father’s will and under the authority of Jesus himself. And we can’t do that apart from faith in him.

We can’t do that apart from believing in him. We can’t do that apart from having come to him and living our entire lives in dependence upon him, under his authority. That is the work that shows the reality of who we are.

Do you see this? True faith is always shown in works and no one showed that more fully than Jesus. And we are called to do the same through faith in Jesus. So the question for all of us this morning, all of us, no matter how long we’ve been here or coming here or whether this is the first time we’ve been here or the first time we’ve logged online, the question is this, have you actually and in reality heard the voice of Jesus and experienced that voice giving you life? I’m not asking whether you’ve mentally assented to all the truths of Christianity.

I’m not asking whether you believe the Bible is true or you believe God is real or you think coming to church is a good thing. That’s not what I’m asking. Let’s go beyond that.

Have you heard the voice of God that gives life? How would people know? Has your life radically changed? Are you doing the works of Jesus? Are you living under his authority daily? Hearing his voice is eternal life. Ignoring his voice, ignoring his voice is eternal judgement. And Jesus says hearing the voice of God is expressed in us by worshipping the Son.

Do you notice that in verse 23? That all may honour the Son as they honour the Father. You can’t honour God without honouring Jesus. And you can’t honour Jesus without honouring God.

It won’t do to say I’m fine with Jesus as a good man. Jesus, I can line up with a lot of his teaching. Yeah, I can relate to a lot of that.

I think there’s some good moral stuff in there that’s helpful for us. But I don’t really believe he was God in human form. C.S. Lewis, the author of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe says this to such people, and it may be you this morning.

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic at the level of a man who says he’s a poached egg or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice.

Either this man was and is the Son of God or else a madman or something worse. This is what Lewis calls the great trichotomy. Jesus is either a liar, deliberately deceiving people, a lunatic, himself deceived, and with some kind of narcissistic, megalomaniac tendencies, or he is who he claims to be.

That’s the bottom line. You have to choose. You have to line up behind one of those.

And it’s not an academic thing. If Jesus is who he says, then you need to come and bow before him today at his table and worship him as Lord and God. And if you’ve never done that, come down here to the front after this service and pray a prayer that will get you to that place.

Or do it now as you sit listening. No matter how long you’ve been coming here, whether your parents are believers, whether your friends brought you, whoever you are, pray that prayer now. Line up behind Jesus as Lord.

Accept his lordship. He demands your whole life. Could it be that you’re still inwardly running away from the stark truth about Jesus? He demands your whole life because he is God.

Well, you may say, just as the Pharisees said here, you say that. Prove it. After all, talk’s cheap.

And there was lots of fake news back then just as there is now. Well, the thing I love about John’s gospel is that he never shirks away from these awkward moments of challenge and controversy. Jesus knows, and John through his gospel knows, you’ll find the word testimony comes up loads of times in John’s gospel.

Always look out for it when it comes up because there’s a reason for that. Jesus knows, and John through his gospel knows, that according to Deuteronomy 17 and 19 in the Old Testament way back then, any claim to be a true prophet or a true messenger from God needed to be validated by two witnesses. So if you were claiming to be a prophet and then you made a prophecy and it didn’t happen, you were stoned as a false prophet.

That’s what happened. That was quite easy. You make a prophetic judgement or statement, and if it doesn’t happen, you’re dead.

You’re a false prophet. Two witnesses had to attest to the fact that you were a true prophet. Jesus provides at least three, maybe four, but we’ll look at three.

Firstly, the testimony of God’s greatest prophet in verse 32 to 35. There’s another who testifies in my favour, and I know that his testimony about me is true. That’s the possible fourth.

He might be speaking about his father there. We don’t really have time to dig into that verse. There’s a whole series of sermons could be preached on that, but then he says, you have said to John, and you have sent to John, and he has testified to the truth, and he’s speaking there about John the Baptist.

Now, if you go back to chapter 129 to 34, you can read John the Baptist’s testimony about Jesus where he says, here’s a testimony word in John’s gospel, I have seen and I testified. You see, it’s important that John uses the word testify there because he’s going to need testimony later in his gospel. Do you see? I have seen and I testify.

What does he see and testify to? This is God’s chosen one. So there’s the greatest prophet. He’s already been called that earlier in John’s gospel.

The greatest prophet testifying that Jesus is God’s chosen one. There’s the first testimony. Second testimony, verse 36.

I have testimony weightier than that of John. If you thought that was good, I’ve got more. For the works that the Father has given me to finish are the very works that I am doing.

The testimony of God’s works. The things that God does, Jesus does. The miracles or signs that the Father has given Jesus to finish show that he is in the process of completing that proof of his divinity.

That’s why they’re called signs in John’s gospel. They are testimonies to the work of God. And the greatest of these, of course, is the work that we’re going to remember after this sermon.

The work of the cross and the resurrection. The ultimate validation of his words and his actions. And then thirdly, in verse 39 and following through to the end of the passage, the testimony of God’s word itself.

So God’s prophet testifies about Jesus, God’s works that Jesus is doing testify about Jesus and God’s word. In verse 39 and following, testify about Jesus. And what Jesus says about the scriptures is interesting.

Do you notice? Verse 39, you study the scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. You think that in the scriptures you have eternal life. Do we have eternal life in the scriptures? Is life in the scriptures? Is that where we find life? In scripture alone? Just a book, albeit an inspired book.

Think about the Ethiopian on his way back home from Jerusalem, reading the scriptures. And he doesn’t get it. And Philip says, do you understand what you’re reading? And he says, well, I can’t understand unless somebody explains it to me.

And what did Philip do? He explained Jesus from the scriptures. Because life is not found in the scriptures alone. It’s not enough to know the scriptures.

It’s not enough to know the scriptures if you don’t know the one of whom they speak. That’s a big challenge for conservative evangelicals, isn’t it? Who defend the Bible like the Pharisees did with everything they’ve got. There’s a danger we might miss out on Jesus, the one of whom they speak.

(34:46 – 36:14)

These are the very scriptures, says Jesus, that testify about me. The law cannot give life. Can’t do it.

Powerless. And it continues to be a common tragedy that so many are devoutly religious, and it’s possible to be devoutly religious and spend all your life in religious duties, even in evangelical worlds, but still refuse to come to Jesus to have life. So the question this morning, as we boil it all down, is where are you in relation to Jesus? Not in relation to the church, not in relation to the scriptures, not in relation to the Lord’s table or baptism or anything else.

Where are you this morning in relation to Jesus? Is that relationship real? Do you love him? Is your whole life sold out on him? Or have you never got to that point yet? Have you never got? Are you still holding out? So is Jesus really equal with God? This passage replies with a resounding yes, but it also teaches us what true equality with God looked like for Jesus. Paul explains it well in Philippians 2 as we finish. Listen to these words.

(36:14 – 37:26)

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant and being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.

The biggest indictment that Jesus makes to the religious establishment of his day is, you still refuse to come to me to have life. You still refuse to come to me to have life. There was a famous cricketer.

(37:27 – 37:50)

I like cricket. Unusual for a Scot. There was a famous cricketer called C.T. Studd, who became a missionary, and he wrote a great many books and articles.

(37:51 – 38:25)

But one of the most famous things he ever said was this, if Jesus Christ be God, and I hope we’ve shown from Scripture this morning that that is the case, if Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for him. What’s that going to be for you today? Amen.

The post Is Jesus really equal with God? – John 5v16–47 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Well, good evening, everyone, and it’s great to see you here. We’re turning this evening to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, chapter 1, and we’re only going to read the first two verses. And what I wanted to do this evening was remind us, in these days when it’s easy to go soft on the gospel, about the glory of the Christian gospel and why that is so important to us.

(0:30 – 4:53)

So, let’s read just the first two verses of this great letter to the Ephesians, one of the high points of the New Testament. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Now, Ephesians is one of these great New Testament letters written by the apostle Paul during his imprisonment in Rome. It was probably written as we would write a circular email, one of the ones that comes out, the Greenview News, you know, it goes to lots of people at once. And it was probably written as a kind of first century group email to be read by the churches in what is now western Turkey.

One of its most obvious features is the degree to which Paul, the apostle, is gripped by the power of the Christian gospel, what God has done for us in Christ to save us from sin, to rescue us from the power of the evil one, and from his eternal judgement. And so just from the introduction to this letter tonight, I simply want to share with you four observations all related to how in these short verses Paul communicates to us the wonder and glory of the Christian gospel. And the first thing that I want us to notice together is what we might call gospel grammar.

Now, I’m not a student of English, although I do love language, and I’m very aware that I’m treading on sensitive ground here with so many talented people, both degree graduates and others in English and other languages at school, college, or even university. But when we studied languages, we became aware that simply learning a lot of nouns wouldn’t be enough to get a grasp of the language. That’s me in French. So I point a bit of bread, and I go, bah.

But I wouldn’t say I was fluent in French, and I’m not great at French grammar. I want to suggest to you that we don’t get enough to grasp any language until we have an understanding of the grammatical structure of that language, how it holds together. And I want to suggest that Paul knew that is also true of the gospel.

There is, if you like, a grammar to the gospel. And the grammar of the gospel is illustrated perfectly in Ephesians. If you read the letter through in your quiet time tonight or tomorrow morning, it’ll take you 20 minutes if you’re a reasonably fast reader, 25 if you’re not.

So if you’re stuck for where do I go with my quiet time, read Ephesians tomorrow, and you’ll see in chapters 1 to 3, Paul’s emphasis firstly is on all that God has done for us in Christ. That’s the first half of the book. And then from chapters 4 to 6, he tells us what we must do by way of response to all that God has done.

So in the first three chapters, the verbs Paul uses, with one exception, are in the indicative. What do I mean? They describe an action or a state. Paul explains exactly what God has done for us in Christ.

Teaser trailer, verse 3, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. And you’ll notice that kind of language in the rest of chapter 1, most of chapter 2, and almost all of chapter 3. Paul tells us what those spiritual blessings are. He’s saying to us, look what he’s done.

That’s why we sang that hymn this evening. Look what he’s done. What’s he done? What’s he done? What’s he done? And only when he’s done that does he then turn to imperative verbs, verbs that tell us what to do.

(4:54 – 7:05)

It’s only when we understand what God has done that we’ll ever understand what it means to behave properly in response to that. And after he’s done that, he then says, do this. Because of what he’s done, you need to do this.

You need to do that. You need to stop doing this. You need to start doing that.

He’s saying, look, you need to understand the grammar of the gospel. You need to understand the grammar of it all. Your behaviour and your actions aren’t the starting point of the Christian gospel. They’re not what the Christian life begins with.

It all begins with God and what he has done. And this is what differentiates Christianity from everything else in the world. It’s also what differentiates between Christian good works and good works carried out by people who are not Christians.

What we do by way of good works are not driven by a sense of human morality. They are driven by a response to what God has done in the gospel. They are a response of love to all that he has done.

And it’s very possible in our Christian lives to engage with the Bible in our own reading and when we hear it preached in a way that really becomes just a kind of set of how-to’s, a self-improvement programme, if you will. How to do this, how to stop doing that, how to start doing this, how not to do the next thing. But Paul makes sure that the readers of the letter to the Ephesians in that group email don’t make that mistake.

He doesn’t want them to make that mistake. So the structure of the letter, the grammar of the gospel is really, really important. And it’s vital for us to remember that what we do as Christians is always, always based on and always, always in response to what God himself has done.

This is the grammar of the gospel. And we need to get that correct. Second, the second thing that Paul brings before the Ephesians here is gospel geography.

(7:06 – 12:11)

That’s the second gospel focus I want you to see. And that takes us to the text itself that we read together. Paul points out to the Ephesians the geography of the gospel.

What do I mean by this? Well, if your Bible is open, you’ll notice that in verse 1, the members of Ephesus’ evangelical church are described as the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus. Do you notice that? They have two postcodes. Number one, they’re in Ephesus.

Number two, they’re in Christ Jesus. Two concurrent realities, both true at the same time. So if you’re a Christian believer, by the grace of God, having turned to him in repentance and faith, you find yourself tonight in Glasgow, in Greenview, and at the same time, gloriously, in Christ Jesus.

If you were born here in the UK, your passport, whether pink or blue, will say United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. But ultimately, if you’re a believer, you have another passport. It’s a glorious passport.

It’s a passport that heavenly citizens possess because you are now placed in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And it’s vitally important that the Ephesians, and we by extension, understand this. Because the first three chapters, going back to the grammar, lay the theological foundation of the wonder of what it means to be in Christ Jesus.

What does that mean? What does it mean to be a citizen of heaven? And the second three chapters then work out what it means to be those citizens of heaven, living in Ephesus. You see, when these believers in Ephesus gathered together for their home groups in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, much as we do on a weekly basis, they probably didn’t look like very much at all. They were living in a culture that tolerated just about anything other than the claims of Christ and those who upheld those claims.

And friends, the forces of darkness were real in Ephesus. If you’ve ever been there, you’ll know that the reconstructed temple of Diana was regarded as one of the early seven wonders of the world, and the worship of Diana of the Ephesians dominated the place. The occult was rampant in Ephesus, and the kickback from that culture would have been really real for those believers, and it would have been very easy for them to feel overwhelmed, much as it’s easy for us to feel overwhelmed in our culture.

So Paul is reminding them of their gospel geography. Tomorrow morning, you will return to your life in Glasgow, or wherever else you work. But if you belong to Christ, you’re not only in Glasgow.

It’ll be important for you tomorrow to remember that you’re also in Him. That doesn’t mean that you’ve been removed from the heat of the battle. Far from it.

Paul’s going to deal with that at the end of the book. In chapter 6, he’ll tell us about the armour we’re going to need for that battle. So we haven’t been removed from the battle, but we are assured that in Christ, in His death, and in His resurrection, all His enemies, and all our enemies by extension, have been conquered.

Isn’t that glorious? That’s gospel geography. Thirdly, let’s think about gospel identity. That’s the third focus in these verses mentioned by Paul.

As we’ve seen from a human perspective, these Christian believers didn’t look like very much at all. And we can identify with that, as we’ve already seen, can’t we? We’re a diverse group of people. We’re from different backgrounds, different jobs, different homes, different interests.

And that’s actually quite wonderful, because the only thing that really unites us is the gospel. But when you compare this little community here this evening with the size of Greater Glasgow and Clyde out there, it doesn’t really seem to amount to a whole heap of beans, does it? And so it’s very important that Paul reminds these Ephesians not only of the grammar of the gospel, and the geography of the gospel, but also their gospel identity. Back in 1980, an author called Robert Ludlam wrote the first in a trilogy of spy fiction thrillers, introducing the world to a character called Jason Bourne.

In the 2000s, they were turned into movies starring Matt Damon that basically reimagined the spy thriller genre. I preferred the book. But the first of these books and films was called The Bourne Identity.

(12:12 – 13:28)

The series begins with fishermen in the Mediterranean hauling a man out of the sea on the Greek island of Mykonos. But he has amnesia due to some kind of traumatic incident that even he can’t remember at the time. He doesn’t know who he is, why he is where he is, or anything about his former life at all.

And the rest of the series is spent trying to unravel and unpack all of that. And, you know, it strikes me that one of the reasons why we are so often ineffective in our lives as Christians is that we’ve actually developed spiritual amnesia. We’ve forgotten who we are.

We’ve forgotten who we are. Look at what Paul says. He’s writing to the saints who are in Ephesus.

Oh, well, says someone. That immediately rules me out because the saints are clearly a small elite group of people who one day will go marching in. And I’m not one of them.

They’re the ones who’ve been doing a lot of really wonderful things. And as a result, they’ve been given a special title by the church. But according to the New Testament, that’s not what a saint is at all.

(13:29 – 16:26)

According to the New Testament, all Christian believers—young, old, rich, poor, gifted, less gifted, wise, simple—they are all equally saints. So as you look around this little motley crew that’s here tonight—well, you’re looking in this direction, so motley’s the right word. If you’re looking in this direction and you see this little motley crew, you’re looking at a saint by God’s grace.

As you look around you tonight, as you pass the bread from one to another and the cup later, you’re passing it to a saint, someone who is a holy person set apart by God in Christ for his sacred purposes. Now, we need to get a hold of this, because it’s very, very different from how holiness or sainthood is viewed in the religious world today. Those of you who have been in places like India may have come across the holy man.

He’s usually naked or semi-naked, and he’s usually begging for things, and he’s usually very poor. But he’s regarded as a holy man in that culture. And we’ve seen this week, haven’t we, with the passing of the pope, frequently described as his holiness.

Because you see, holiness is frequently related to various external characteristics. This is what a holy man looks like. This is what a holy person does.

He divests himself of this, and he divests himself of the next thing. He gives generously there. He’s kind.

He’s loving. This, that, and the next. But dear friends, this is not how the New Testament describes holy people.

Now, I don’t say this to be disrespectful. But I’m saying it so that we base our understanding of what a holy person looks like on what we find when we open our Bibles and read the text of the New Testament. And holy people in the New Testament are not a super elite.

They’re not the Premier League, and the rest of us are down in the conference. I think it’s fair to say that when we read the New Testament in general, and Ephesians in particular, we discover that a holy person isn’t someone who’s reached a certain level of performance or self-denial or piety. That’s the problem with externalised religion.

People are constantly thinking it’s about me, what I can do, what I do, how well I’m doing it, what other people think about what I’m doing, and how I look, and all the rest. Religion’s always about how well I’m doing out there. Christianity is about the wonder of what Christ has done for me in here.

(16:27 – 17:27)

And he has changed me and made me a saint. Not in Ephesus, but in Glasgow, in Greenview. So a real Christian is always saying, amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

Now, how politically incorrect is that if you set up your Instagram account, at wretch? I wonder how that would look, or hashtag wretch, Wiley, right? That would gain very few followers, I dare say. But Paul says, you are not fantastic, amazing people. You may be fantastically talented in all of the ways that you are, but that’s not what counts with God.

You’re not fantastic, amazing people, but you are saints. You’re holy people because you’re in Christ. I stand in Christ, we sing, with sins forgiven, and Christ in me, the hope of heaven.

(17:27 – 18:58)

That’s your standing as a saint. But not only is their identity that of a saint, they have another gospel identity. Do you notice it there in verse 1 in the second half? The saints in Christ Jesus and the faithful in Christ.

The saints in Ephesus and the faithful in Christ Jesus. Now, if you’ve ever watched the BBC reality show, The Traitors, you’ll know that one of the tribes there are described as the faithful. They have this identity because they’re supposed to be honest and transparent.

They’re not, by contrast to the traitors, trying to kill off their colleagues or pull the wool over other people’s eyes. But look how Paul describes the believers in Ephesus. The saints who are in Ephesus and the faithful in Christ Jesus.

And in chapters 1 to 3, he will go on to describe the work of God that sets them apart as saints. And in chapters 4, 5, and 6, he’ll show them what that faithfulness looks like. And it’s all about the radical difference that being in Christ makes on every aspect of our lives.

You see, it’s not just a lick of paint to spruce us up, nor is it a category in a reality TV show. It’s something completely radical and new. In chapter 2 of Ephesians, Paul describes the faithful in terms of their new life.

(18:59 – 19:44)

In chapter 3, he reminds them that as the faithful, they are part of a new society. In chapter 4, he goes on to describe the new standards that will be worked out as the faithful in that new community to which they’ve been called. The people in Ephesus, remember, were surrounded as we are by all kinds of moral and sexual chaos and confusion.

And Paul says, now, here’s what it’s going to look like for you to be a faithful husband in Ephesus. Here’s what it’s going to look like for you to be a faithful wife in your relationship with your husband. This is what it’s going to look like for you to be a faithful single teenager in Ephesus.

(19:45 – 24:29)

This is what it will be for you to be faithfully holding fast to the truth of God’s sovereignty in a world that’s preoccupied with stars and signs and superstitions and mediums and new age religion of all kinds. And then finally in chapter 6, he lays out the new relationships which God has brought about in the lives of the faithful, harmony within the home and hostility towards the evil one. The whole of the book of Ephesians is Paul calling the faithful in Christ Jesus to a new way of life.

What John Stock calls in his great commentary that’s rarely been bettered, God’s new society. So finally, we come to gospel security. We’ve looked at gospel grammar, gospel geography, gospel identity.

And finally, in this introduction, Paul emphasises gospel security. Do you notice it there in verse 2? Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Here is the security of the gospel.

Friends, you may be here this evening with a broken heart through bereavement, through loss, through sadness, through concern, through anxiety, through fear about the future, whatever that might look like. Can I say to you tonight, this verse, this passage is for you. Here is the security of the gospel.

God grants peace through grace. God grants peace through grace. It’s in our understanding of the amazing grace of God that we can rest content, even when our own hearts condemn us, and which of us don’t have condemning hearts? We marvel that God in his grace could have reached down to us and turned our hearts to him and opened our eyes to his truth and made us his own and placed us in Christ.

Remember, that’s the commonest way that Paul describes Christian believers in the New Testament. Rarely calls them Christians, that was a bit of a slang name. He describes them as saints and he describes them as being in Christ, in Christ.

And if you take those 20 minutes to read through Ephesians later, you’ll find out just how full of grace Ephesians is, particularly in the first three chapters. Grace, that undeserved favour of God, the root from which salvation flows, what we’re going to remember around the table shortly. And as we close this evening, I just want to leave you marvelling at the initiative of God in the gospel and his provision of grace and peace for us.

We’re going to sing as we close in a minute, the song that opens with this line, Loved before the dawn of time. That’s a really, really good hymn. And it’s a good hymn for a lot of reasons, but not least for this reason, because it answers the question, when did God start to love you? When did God start to love you? When did you become an object of God’s love? When you started attending church? When you started showing an interest in spiritual things? When you started reading your Bible? When you decided you were going to try to be that better person? And God says, oh, that’s good effort.

I love you for that. I love you for that. No, he loved you before the dawn of time.

He loved you in Christ before creation. Before he created the universe, he loved you. Now, that’s grace.

You were loved by God before you had had a chance to do anything. Do you see, it’s only that kind of grace that can ever bring the kind of peace that we all long for, the peace that knows we don’t need to try harder to impress God or reach a certain standard before we can kick back and put our feet up and rest. No, we can rest, because if we’re trusting in Jesus Christ, he has done it all, what he’s done.

(24:30 – 27:38)

He has lived that perfect life that we’re going to remember and died that perfect death that we’re going to celebrate. And it’s that grace which grants peace, first with God, because we sense his welcome and his love and his unconditional acceptance, and then with one another. You see, the answer to our broken world is found only in one place.

It’s at the cross of Jesus Christ. He answers the deepest dilemma of our lives right there. That’s why the church is supposed to be a prototype of the finished product.

We know that one day God will finally fix the whole thing. He’s promised to fix it, and he will fix it. But when people come to a local congregation and visit us in our church here, they’re supposed to say, you know, there’s something about those people.

There’s something about them. It’s almost like they’re not from here. It’s like they belong somewhere else.

And they’d be right, wouldn’t they? We’re not from here. We’re not from here. We’re from there.

We are in Christ. He’s raised us into heavenly places. That’s why disunity in a congregation is so abhorrent.

Whatever the reason for it, whether it’s the size of the platform, the kind of bread we use, the colour of the walls, the hymns we sing, whatever, the seating, I don’t know. There’s a million things that cause problems in local churches, aren’t there? But disunity is so abhorrent because it is in our very unity around the gospel that we give a picture to the fragmented, broken world out there that Jesus really is the person he claims to be. And he delivers on his promises.

And so when you read Ephesians for yourself, you’ll see it begins with grace and peace, those two great pillars of the Christian faith. And then if you go to the very last verse of the letter, the last two verses in verse 23 and 24, Paul bookends Ephesians with exactly the same two characteristics, peace to the brothers and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love. Don’t know if you’ve ever noticed that Ephesians is bookended by these two great promises of grace and peace.

So as we close this evening, may each of us know what it means to experience as we come now around the Lord’s table, that peace with God and with each other as we share in communion in the outworking of his grace in all of our lives. May God bless his word. Amen.

The post The Glory of the Gospel – Ephesians 1v1–2 appeared first on Greenview Church.

(0:00 – 1:44)

The reading’s from John 4 verse 43 to John 5 verse 15 and it can be found on page 1067 in your burgundy Bibles. After the two days he left for Galilee. Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honour in his own country.

When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover festival. For they also had been there.

Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official, whose son lay ill at Capernaum. When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.

Unless you people see signs and wonders, Jesus told him, you will never believe. The royal official said, Sir, come down before my child dies. Go, Jesus replied, your son will live.

The man took Jesus at his word and departed. While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. When he enquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, yesterday at one in the afternoon, the fever left him.

Then the father realised that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, your son will live. So he and his whole household believed. This was the second sign Jesus performed after coming from Judea to Galilee.

(1:46 – 4:38)

Sometime later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda, and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie, the blind, the lame, the paralysed.

One who was there had been an invalid for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, do you want to get well? Sir, the invalid replied, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I’m trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.

Then Jesus said to him, get up, pick up your mat and walk. At once the man was cured. He picked up his mat and walked.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath. And so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, it is the Sabbath. The law forbids you to carry your mat.

But he replied, the man who made me well said to me, pick up your mat and walk. So they asked him, who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk? The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there. Later, Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, see, you are well again.

Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you. The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well. This is the word of God.

Thank you very much, Claire. He was one of the leading voices of atheism in 20th century Britain. Bertrand Russell, a sort of Stephen Fry kind of figure, didn’t just doubt the existence of God, but he flat out rejected God.

However, on one occasion, someone put a challenge to him. They said, Mr. Russell, suppose you die and you discover you are wrong. Suppose you come face to face with God after death.

What will you say to God? Without hesitating, Russell replied, not enough evidence, God. Not enough evidence. Now, it was a strong, defiant response, and yet it captures the feeling of many people.

(4:39 – 6:44)

Indeed, some of us listening today might echo Russell’s sentiments. If only God would give me more evidence. If only God would give me more proof.

If only God did something spectacular, then I would believe. The assumption behind these statements, of course, is that currently there isn’t sufficient evidence for us to believe. And yet ironically this morning, we return to the gospel of John, an account of Jesus’ life that is written to give evidence to sceptics.

Listen to John’s words as he gives us the purpose statement of his account of Jesus’ life. This is from the end of the gospel. This is what he says.

These things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and so that by believing you may have life in His name. Notice that John is giving evidence on which you can believe. The Christian faith is not anti-evidence.

The Christian’s faith is built on evidence. In the terms of John, evidence leads to faith, and faith leads to life. That is the story of every single conversion.

In some sort of way, the truth leads to faith, and our faith leads to life. There is evidence to believe in. And yet, and yet, even as I say that, I need to immediately attach a warning to it.

(6:45 – 8:27)

Because what we’re going to see this morning is that sometimes all the evidence in the world isn’t enough for people. Actually, we need something more than one more miracle. And what is that thing that we need? Well, it’s going to become very clear as we look at these two stories this morning.

So if you’ve closed your Bible, open it up again to John 4, end of John 4 and the start of John 5. There are two miracles. I know we’re covering a lot this morning, but I think it’s good to look at these together. And I have two points this morning that correspond to the two miracles.

So here’s the first point. Point one for miracle one, when the Word of God is enough. When the Word of God is enough.

Jesus has recently left a town in Samaria, and He travels north now to Galilee. This is the region where Jesus is from, and it’s the region where Jesus is well known. Indeed, as verse 45 tells us, Jesus by this point is something of a local celebrity.

His recent Jerusalem visit and the dramatic things He did there had earned Jesus popularity among His fellow northerners. Upon His return, His fellow Galileans welcome Him. He’s like a long-lost son come home.

(8:28 – 10:18)

And yet notice verse 44, there’s a little caution dropped in just before the welcome. And we’re reminded that generally speaking, a prophet is not welcome in his hometown. I mean, that’s always been the case if you read the Old Testament.

And so there’s a hint dropped into the mix that while this welcome is warm, it might not last very long. We need to keep reading on in the gospel. Anyway, for now, Jesus is popular.

He’s a person in great demand, and not least, He is in demand for healing, the kind of thing He’s about to be asked to do. An unnamed man appears, a man with a desperate need. We’re not told much about Him, simply that He is a royal official, probably in the court of King Herod.

But notice that His status, His station in life, has not protected Him from the sufferings of life. It never does, of course. His son is ill and dying, and Jesus is His last resort.

When the man heard that Jesus had returned from Galilee, he left Capernaum where his son was dying, and he hurried to Cana where Jesus now was. And so it all hangs in the balance. Will Jesus stay or will He go? Will Jesus help or will He ignore? Interestingly, Jesus does neither of these things.

(10:21 – 12:59)

Instead, He uses the moment to make a point. Now, I wonder if you ever use a moment, you kind of see an opportunity, and you think, this is my chance to make a point that I’ve been meaning to make. Well, Jesus does that.

And on the face of it, what He says seems uncharacteristically cool and maybe even a little harsh, because He launches into a very direct rebuke. It’s directed at the man, because He does say it to the man. But notice that it’s not only directed at the man, because He says, unless you people, the you there is plural, unless all of you people here see signs and wonders, you will never believe.

It’s a rebuke on Jesus’ part, coming out of His knowledge of their hearts. He’s saying they have the sort of hearts that won’t count in His faith unless they see the utterly dramatic. It’s a miracle first, believe next crowd.

Well, the official isn’t put off, and he continues. He asked Jesus, because He’s desperate, for a second time to come down the road to Capernaum. Now, just incidentally, Capernaum was 20 miles away.

And you see here that in this man’s mind, the only way this healing can happen is if Jesus is physically present with His Son. That’s why twice over He says, you need to come, you need to come. You can’t just heal folk from 20 miles away.

I mean, there’s limits to this miracle stuff, even if you do work miracles. Please come, Jesus. Walk with me, come with me, and then you can sort it out.

To which Jesus says, I’ve got a better plan. You go, I’ll stay, and He’ll be healed. He just says, go, and it will.

And the most amazing thing happens. Really, it’s more amazing than the miracle itself. In some ways, the man believes Him.

(13:01 – 14:32)

The man, verse 50, took Jesus at His Word, and he departed. He came for a miracle, but he left with believing in Jesus’ words. But it’s not just any words, of course, it’s Jesus’ words that he’s trusting in.

And so, he travels home. And seemingly, he has an overnight stop because it’s a 20-mile journey. And the next day, he meets his servants on the road who are beaming from ear to ear.

The son who was dying is living. But what the official wants to know is when, what time was he healed? Oh, they say, you can just imagine them kind of checking in with each other. What was it? Was it 12? Was it 2? No, it was 1 o’clock, actually, 1 o’clock, at the very time Jesus had spoken the Word.

No wonder, in verse 53, the man and his whole household believed. I mean, he believed enough to go, but now there’s an even deeper, richer, and more lasting faith. Now, this is a very interesting journey of faith that this man has.

(14:33 – 15:03)

And I want you to notice that it’s not that it didn’t involve a miracle. I mean, if the official had met the servants and they were weeping, not laughing, or even if they had said, your son recovered, but it happened at 9 a.m., long before Jesus said the Word. Had the miracle not happened as exactly and as clearly as it did, this deeper commitment of faith would not have resulted.

(15:05 – 17:51)

It’s back to the point again that God can provide us with much evidence. And God can do whatever God wants, sometimes the dramatic, to nudge people further up the road to the final destination of saving faith. God can do that.

But there is an important point being made in the manner of this miracle, because this man believed in the first place before he saw the miracle. The man believed based on Jesus’ Word alone. And there’s a point being made here, surely, that while we often want more and more evidence, the Word of Jesus alone is sufficient to save and is sufficient for us to believe.

In the end, what brings salvation and wholeness to the sinner is the Word of Jesus. You notice in verse 53, there’s an interesting connection John makes. You might wonder why John mentions the fact that this was the second sign that Jesus performed in Cana.

And that links us back to the sign Jesus did where He turned water into wine in the same town of Cana. But why is John bringing this up? Clearly, he wants us to think of what connections there are between these two miracles. What’s the connection between water being turned into wine and a boy being raised to life? Well, I think the main connection in both cases is that in both cases, it was the Word of Jesus that needed to be trusted.

In the first case, Jesus’ mother tells the servants, do whatever He tells you to do. No matter how ludicrous it might sound to you, I mean, how are you going to get wine out of putting six jars full of water? How is that going to work? Or here, just toddle down the road to your terminally ill son and all will be good. Just trust My Word.

There and here, they had to take Jesus at his Word and trust it. In both cases, we’re seeing that the Word of Jesus is not only powerful, but it is enough. It is enough.

(17:52 – 18:12)

It’s a Word that can turn water into wine. It’s a Word that can raise the dying. We’re going to see later in John, it’s even the Word that raises the dead.

It’s a Word that can save. It’s a Word that can raise. It’s a Word that can bring wholeness to the hell-bound sinner.

(18:13 – 19:51)

The Word of Jesus is sufficient. Yes, God can do dramatic things. They may be part of your faith journey, but this man took Jesus as His Word, and it was enough.

Now, brothers and sisters in the church family, can I say this to you? When you seek to reach people who aren’t Christians, what is your prime strategy? What do you think is the silver bullet? Is it to pray that God will show them some kind of miracle? Or is your silver bullet to get them reading and hearing the words of Jesus? God may do something dramatic. He may nudge your friend, neighbour, child nearer to the point of faith through a miracle. That’s His business, not yours.

Your job is far more simple. Love them, pray for them, and share the words of Jesus with them, because it’s the words of Jesus that will ultimately save them. And if you’re not a believing person, especially if you’re teetering on the brink of faith, why not take a leaf out of the official’s book? He believed before he saw one more miracle.

(19:53 – 20:54)

Ah, you say, but I’m not naive. I just need that extra reassurance. If you think that, if you think that will make the difference, then you need to consider the second miracle and the second point.

Here’s our second point. Here’s the second miracle. When the miracles of God are not enough.

When the miracles of God are not enough. We jump forward in time. We go to a different location.

We’re actually back down in Jerusalem now. It’s a Jewish festival, and Jesus is visiting the great city. And in particular, He visits the pool called Bethesda.

This was a large pool. Interestingly, archaeologists today are excavating what they think is this very pool. You can look it up on YouTube or something.

(20:55 – 21:34)

This is historical stuff we’re looking at. And this particular pool, it was surrounded by five covered columns. And these columns held up the roof and sheltered people from the sun.

Now, who was under the shade? Who was sitting around the pool? Who was lying around the pool? In Jesus’ day, it was unwell people. People who couldn’t see, people who couldn’t walk, and even people who couldn’t move at all. And on this particular day, Jesus walks in, and He approaches one of them.

(21:36 – 23:00)

He speaks to a man who He knows has been unable to walk for 38 years, almost four decades. Now, please notice, and just observe this again, that it was this man’s dreadful condition that was the very reason that he encountered Jesus. It’s the same as in the previous story.

Had that man’s son not been dying, would he have ever come to Jesus at all? Afflictions and sufferings are often for our good. J.C. Ryle puts it like this. He says, affliction is one of God’s medicines.

Health is a great blessing, but sanctified disease is a greater thing. Ryle says, prosperity and worldly comfort are what we all naturally desire, but losses and crosses are far better for us if they lead us to Jesus, end quote. That was certainly true for the man who couldn’t walk for 38 years.

Jesus approaches him. Notice it’s a little bit different. Jesus is the one who takes the initiative this time, comes unbidden.

(23:02 – 24:41)

And again, in what might seem like an insensitive way, He asked the man a question. Look at this question in verse 5 of chapter 5. Do you want to get well? What a thing to ask someone who’s been unable to walk for 38 years. Do you want to get well, pal? Maybe he asked this because after four decades of time, you might have given up hope of getting well, and you may have actually become rather fixed in your life.

I mean, we know the story of the woman who for 12 years was still trying to find a solution. What would you be doing after 38 years? Do you want to get well? But maybe even more than that, and as we’ll go on, I think this is perhaps the right interpretation. Maybe the reason he’s asking this question is what this man really needs is a spiritual wellness and a spiritual healing.

And the question perhaps really is, does he want to get spiritually well? Does he want it? Well, the man insists that he wants to get well. The trouble is he lacks a helper. He sits at this pool in Jerusalem, which the people clearly thought had some kind of healing property, a pool which bubbled up from time to time, and it seemed that healing was available, but he could never get down first because he had no helper.

(24:44 – 26:12)

Maybe Jesus could help him in. Notice here again, like the previous miracle, the assumption is that Jesus is less powerful than he actually is. Jesus will need to come to heal the son.

Here, Jesus will need to lift the man if he’s going to help him. What a shocker it must have been when Jesus said what he did next. He said, get up, pick up your mat, and go home.

And again, it is simply Jesus’ Word. And again, it is the Word that is powerful enough to save and make whole, to immediately heal a man whose limbs have been dysfunctional for almost 40 years. And do not miss either that as in the previous miracle, Jesus calls for a faith that results in action.

In the last story, it was, go, and your son will live. In this story, it’s get up, pick up your mat, and walk. Faith is never something that is intangible or unseen.

(26:13 – 26:27)

Faith cannot be missed because it cannot be hidden. I need to be reminded of this. Almost even more so, I think, the longer I’m a Christian, I need to be reminded of this.

(26:29 – 26:59)

Because in my laziness, and at times in my godlessness, I want to have a faith that does very little. I like the idea of being a man of faith. I like to talk about faith and say, I have faith.

But God says, don’t say it’s faith if you won’t go. Don’t say it’s faith if you won’t get up. Well, I’m just sitting here having faith.

(27:01 – 27:18)

God says, no, that’s not faith. If you won’t get up, if you won’t go, if you won’t serve, if you won’t pray, if you won’t fellowship with the church, or whatever the thing may be, if people can’t see your faith, it’s not faith. It’s not faith.

(27:21 – 27:57)

Maybe I slightly over-preached that. But we do need to hear that, don’t we? Some of us really do need to hear that this morning. The official goes, the guy gets up.

But what is the outcome of this? What is the response to this healing of the lame man? When we compare the outcome to the previous miracle, it’s really disappointing. Because here’s how the story doesn’t end. It doesn’t end by saying, the man went home and he and his household believed.

(27:59 – 28:28)

Doesn’t say that here, doesn’t say that later. The man doesn’t go home. The man is stopped on the way home by some religious people who accuse him of working on the Sabbath because he’s carrying a mat.

Now, what the Jewish law actually said was that you weren’t allowed to work on the Sabbath. You weren’t allowed to do your regular job on the Sabbath. This man had no regular job.

(28:29 – 28:59)

This man was just lifting the mat that he’d been lying on for 38 years because he just received a miracle. But in those days, some of the really scrupulous Jews, they had written out all of their own little rules and regulations above and beyond the Bible. And according to their little rules, this man had broken one of the 38 subcategories of what it really meant to work on the Sabbath, because he was carrying something.

(29:00 – 29:46)

And all these ‘religious’ men, and I put that in quotes, were interested in was finding the culpable individual who had healed the man. Think of how sad and how blind this is. None of them stopped for a moment to think, we need to find this person who did the miracle because they must be amazing.

And maybe they’re the Messiah and the Saviour that we’ve been waiting on. Complete blindness. And the man is blind too.

I love what Jesus does next. Jesus could have just blended into the background and forgotten about this man, because it turns out that the man didn’t even know Jesus’ name. He has no idea who has healed him.

(29:48 – 30:39)

Jesus could have slipped away. But for the sake of the man, He goes, and He later finds the man in the temple. And it is fascinating what Jesus says to him.

Absolutely fascinating. In verse 14, He says, “‘See, you are well.'” In other words, look at what I’ve done for you. “‘I’ve done a great miracle, but now stop sinning, or something worse may happen to you.'” Now, why does He bring in sin at this point? Some people think that this man’s sin was directly related to his illness.

(30:40 – 31:38)

Sometimes in the Bible, sin can be connected with particular sickness. Now, that is not always the case. In fact, we see that later in John 9, that it’s not always the case.

Sometimes people are sick because they’re sick. It seems that it may have been the case here, that there was a connection. But either way, the shock of this relay, the shock of this relay is that this man had been healed, but his heart had not changed.

You see, this is the limitation when it comes to the evidence we demand. Yes, we need evidence. Yes, we’re given evidence.

But we can have all the evidence and still have a sinful, unbelieving heart. We can be like this man, so blessed by Jesus. He might even answer some prayer that we’ve prayed, yet we still don’t even know his name.

(31:39 – 31:46)

And our life is unchanged. And we’re just pursuing a life of sin. We’re pursuing a life without God.

(31:47 – 32:20)

What this man needed was not an outward miracle, but an inward miracle, an inner transformation that would bring about genuine sorrow over sin, a brokenness before God, and a faith in the Lord Jesus. Jesus says, unless you have that transformation, something even worse might happen to you. What? Something worse than being blind, being lame? Is there anything worse than that? Yes, there is.

(32:21 – 32:37)

The final judgement is worse than those things. I think that’s what he’s referring to. And so, there’s a real challenge for us here today, especially if we’re not Christians.

(32:38 – 33:25)

Here’s what you need to stop having if you’re not a person of faith. You need to stop having a conditional faith in God. Here’s what a conditional faith in God is.

It’s, I’ll believe you if. It’s an I’ll believe you if relationship. I’ll believe in you, God, if you cure my cancer.

I’ll believe in you, God, if my children get through their life-important exam. I’ll believe in you, God, if you really do something dramatic, then it will be enough. The Bible is saying it will never be enough if your heart is hard.

(33:26 – 34:00)

Now, don’t misunderstand what I’m saying this morning. The wrong person could take this the wrong way. If you know almost nothing about Christianity, maybe you’re watching this online, you really know very little, and you haven’t read the Gospels, and you haven’t investigated any of the questions you have, issues you have, problems you have maybe with the Christian faith, then you should absolutely search for reasonable and sufficient evidence to believe in Jesus.

(34:01 – 34:14)

You absolutely should do that. And I would encourage you to do that. And in this church, we encourage you to do that.

And we have things that we run. We have courses that puts the evidence of the Gospels before you. Please, please come to us if you’ve never done that.

(34:17 – 36:14)

But this is speaking to those who I would call the 90% people. Who are the 90% people? They are the people who are always like 90% there. They’re almost convinced.

They’re almost all in, but they need the extra 10%. What this is saying is that you don’t need the extra 10%. The gap is not more evidence.

The gap is a gap of trust. You need to trust in the words and behind that in the person of Jesus. Genuine faith says the Word of Jesus alone is enough, and I don’t need the extra 10%.

I can trust Him. Church family, don’t pursue a misguided strategy in evangelism. Even if God shows your friend, your neighbour, your colleague, your family member a miracle, it’s not the silver bullet that will always penetrate the armour.

It’s not. Lots of people that get helped by God, get answers to prayer, that get clean from addiction, all sorts of stuff like that through God’s help. And they’re spiritually nowhere 5, 10, 15 years later.

Once their problem’s cleared up and their life is good, they’ve got no interest in God because they feel they don’t need Him. So give them the words of Jesus and pray for a miracle in their heart so that their soul would live and their life would be made whole once again. Let’s pray.

(36:22 – 37:11)

Our Father, we pray this morning, especially for those who don’t know you. Help them to live in a way which says, Jesus, Your Word is enough. I need nothing else to stand on.

I believe Your promise because it’s Your promise. Father, grant that we would all realise that faith comes by hearing and hearing through the Word of Christ. And help us as Your people at this moment in our lives to stand on every promise of Your Word and to live out the faith that You’ve placed in our hearts.

(37:12 – 37:16)

It’s in Jesus’ name and for His glory we pray. Amen.

The post Will seeing a miracle make you believe? – John 4v43–5v15 appeared first on Greenview Church.

It’s great to see you this morning. You’re very welcome this Easter Sunday morning. And we’re gonna open our Bibles to Psalm 16.

(0:09 – 0:22)

If you don’t have a Bible, there are some Bibles in the seats, at least here in the main hall. And it’s on page 549 of the church Bible. And we’re reading this morning from Psalm 16.

(0:23 – 0:36)

Psalm 16. Let’s hear God’s words together. You’ll see at the opening here, it is a Psalm of David.

(0:37 – 0:50)

And he says this. Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the Lord, you are my Lord.

(0:51 – 1:08)

Apart from you, I have no good thing. I say of the holy people who are in the land, they are the noble ones in whom is all my delight. Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.

(1:08 – 1:23)

I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods or take up their names on my lips. Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup. You make my lot secure.

(1:23 – 1:36)

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Surely I have a delightful inheritance. I will praise the Lord who counsels me.

(1:37 – 1:51)

Even at night, my heart instructs me. I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.

(1:52 – 2:13)

Therefore, my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices. My body will also rest secure because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead. Nor will you let your faithful one see decay.

(2:14 – 2:32)

You have made known to me the path of life. You will fill me with joy in your presence with eternal pleasures at your right hand. This is God’s word.

(2:36 – 3:21)

You may well be wondering on this Easter Sunday morning, why we are turning not to the New Testament, but the Old. Why, in other words, are we not turning? Why are we neglecting, you might say, the well-worn paths of the resurrection accounts in the Gospels or the resurrection themes in the letters? Why not go there? Why go here? I mean, those are wonderful places. They are powerful, life-giving places.

(3:22 – 4:22)

Yet they are not the only places where the resurrection theme appears. Indeed, let me venture to say that from cover to cover in Scripture, that from the front of your Bible to the back, the Bible is a story of resurrection. It tells a tale of life in the beginning, of the death that entered due to sin, but it is then a story of resurrection, of how God in amazing grace stoops to raise the sinner from the hopelessness and paralysis of death, and of how God astonishingly does this through a death, and through a resurrection.

(4:24 – 4:40)

And so the message of the whole Bible is this, that you can be raised because Jesus was raised. All the Bible is about this. It is the mega story of Scripture.

(4:41 – 4:55)

And yet there are particular passages in both Testaments where you simply can’t miss this theme. And Psalm 16 is one of those places. You really can’t miss the resurrection in Psalm 16.

(4:56 – 5:15)

The great thing is you don’t need to be a super sleuth. You don’t need to have an IQ that’s off the charts to detect that Psalm 16 has some sort of link to Jesus’ resurrection. All you need is an open Bible and an open heart.

(5:17 – 5:52)

So let’s have our Bibles open, and let’s pray for that open heart. And let me suggest as we look at Psalm 16, that this Psalm, while written hundreds of years before Christ, offers us a view of Christ. In fact, what this Psalm gives us, let me suggest, is a direct line of sight from the Old Testament to Jesus’ life, to Jesus’ death, and to Jesus’ resurrection.

(5:53 – 6:09)

A direct line of sight from the Old Testament to Jesus’ life, Jesus’ death, and Jesus’ resurrection. And those three words, life, death, and resurrection, are the headlines of my sermon today. Very simple outline.

(6:10 – 6:25)

So let’s begin then with life. Life. While this Psalm says lots about death and resurrection, it actually begins with the life that comes before death.

(6:27 – 6:59)

It tells us something, firstly, of David’s life, and it tells us something, finally, of Jesus’ life. Now, you might say, Colin, how exactly does that work? How can Psalm 16 be both about David and also about Jesus? Well, there’s a longer answer to that, but we don’t have time for it this morning. The short answer is, we know it.

(7:00 – 7:33)

We know that it’s about David and Jesus because the Bible says so. Acts 2, which we’ll look at later on, says that while David wrote this Psalm, it ultimately speaks about Jesus. That doesn’t mean this Psalm has nothing to tell us of David’s experience, but that even more fully and more finally, it tells us of Jesus’ experience.

(7:34 – 7:53)

It is ultimately, it is prophetically about Christ, including the life that Jesus lived. And you’ll notice that that’s where this Psalm starts. It starts in verses one to eight with a life that is lived for the Lord.

(7:55 – 8:07)

Now, maybe you’re here this morning, and perhaps you’re not a person of faith. It’s really wonderful that you’re here. It’s wonderful that you’re exploring, perhaps, faith this morning.

(8:08 – 8:41)

But maybe you’ve wondered, what is a life of faith like? I mean, what would it be like to live as a Christian in this world? What would the life of faith be? Well, David, in his own day, is telling you just that. And in verses one to eight, he tells you lots of different things. He tells you it’s a life of loyalty to God, that it’s a life of love for God’s people.

(8:43 – 8:58)

He says that it’s a life of running from sin, but more than that, a life of being satisfied in God. He says that it’s a life of praise. It’s a life of prayer.

(8:59 – 9:20)

It’s a life of gratitude to God, and a life of listening to God. David says all of these things are part of the life of faith, and yet, let me suggest, none of these things are the main thing he says. The main thing he says.

(9:21 – 9:48)

What he emphasises above everything else is that the believing life is a life of security. David shows us that the believing life is a secure life, and immediately, that should get our attention. For there isn’t a single one of us who doesn’t want to feel secure.

(9:50 – 10:29)

Whatever age we are, whatever temperament we have, whatever we possess or don’t possess, each and every one of us wants to feel safe and be safe in a world that so often is unsafe. And let’s not be kidded here by very well-meaning sociologists who often describe anxiety as if it’s a new thing. You know, those who dub the new generation as, quote, the anxious generation.

(10:30 – 10:58)

Now, there may be some truth in the degree of that, but let’s not miss the fact that every generation has been an anxious generation. Every generation is an anxious generation. Why? Because life in this world has always had its dangers, and the human heart has always had its anxieties.

(10:59 – 11:27)

A psalm from 3,000 years ago tells us as much. The question is not, will we face anxieties, but how will we face them? What does David do? David, in verse one, takes his anxieties to God in prayer. He doesn’t ignore his anxieties as if they’re not there.

(11:27 – 11:51)

He doesn’t address them with his own self-remedies as we often do. David comes with his anxieties to the source of ultimate security. Keep me safe, my God, for in you I take refuge.

(11:52 – 12:07)

And this is not just a prayer. This is the posture of David’s whole life. He seeks his security in God, and he is not disappointed.

(12:09 – 12:27)

Notice that in verse four, that the security he prays for is provided. It is provided by the God who makes his lot secure. In other words, David lives in an experience of divine security.

(12:28 – 13:14)

And why is this so? What guarantees this constant security in David’s life? Well, it’s there in verse eight, isn’t it? When David says, with him, that’s God, at my right hand, I will not be shaken. If we ask David, David, why do you feel secure in life? He would say, it’s the presence of God at my right hand. Now, forgive me for this very earthy illustration, but what came to mind when I read this was verse eight was a brawl in a bar.

(13:14 – 13:26)

A brawl in a bar. You know, the sort of thing you see in films. And often, in a kind of theatrical way, there’s a square off before the fight.

(13:27 – 14:04)

And you might have five guys on one side and one puny guy on the other side. And, you know, the question is this, what would make the difference in that moment? What would make the difference? Well, what would make the difference would be if the guy who is all alone looks to his right and he sees that he is not alone, that he has the biggest of all bruisers at his right hand. That would soon square the whole thing up, wouldn’t it? That soon would give a sense of security.

(14:04 – 14:20)

And this is what David is talking about. He has way more than a big bruiser at his side in life. David has the almighty God of heaven and earth right there at his side.

(14:21 – 14:39)

That’s why he feels secure. And what is true of David, a believer in the Old Testament, is also true of the Christian today. Paul lays it out in Romans eight.

(14:40 – 15:05)

He says there, it’s not that there are no battles and bruises and struggles for the Christian. I mean, David’s life was full of trials, wasn’t it? And when you read Romans eight, you will see too that Romans eight is full of troubles. It’s not the absence of problems that is the key, it’s the presence of the Lord that’s the key.

(15:07 – 16:18)

The Christian can say in the midst of conflict, if God is for me, who can be against me? That is the unshakeable security that every Christian has. But why do they have it? I mean, why would God be so keen to stick by me when I let him down in all sorts of ways, when I’m unfaithful to him? Why would he take me securely through all of the trials and all of the snares of life? Well, only because of the life of another. Only because a greater David could live a life of loyalty, only because he loved, he praised, he prayed, he obeyed, only because Jesus lived the life that deserved to be secure.

(16:20 – 16:46)

And a life which was secure, as you read Jesus’ life all the way up to the moment of suffering, you will find that time and again, the Father preserves Jesus’ life right up until the point when the hour has come. And folks, we need to start with that. You might say, well, I wish you would get on with it.

(16:46 – 17:14)

It’s Easter Sunday, let’s get to the resurrection, or at least let’s get to the death. I mean, that’s at least a step in the right direction, and let’s move this thing along. But let me assure you that without Jesus’ life, without the loyal life that deserved to be secure, you and I can have no eternal security.

(17:17 – 17:58)

One of the newer songs we sing, I think it’s by Townend, puts it like this, it says, he walked my road and he felt my pain, joys and sorrows that I know so well, yet his righteous steps give me hope again, and therefore I can then follow my Emmanuel. I can only walk the life of faith because he walked the life of perfect faith, and because of that, then he goes to the cross to die. And so we do come secondly to the death of Jesus, a little more briefly.

(17:59 – 18:35)

We come, in the words of David now, to the chilling theme of death in verses nine to 11. I was listening just the other day to a podcast, an interview, and the interview was with an expert in longevity. Now, if you don’t know what an expert in longevity is, this is someone who advises people using statistical backing about how you can increase the length of your life, how you can add months or maybe even years to your life.

(18:36 – 19:16)

And this man, to make things understandable to the audience, he said, our life is kind of like a hang glider, he said. It’s like a hang glider. And if you eat the right things and you train the right way in your early years of adulthood, it’s like leaping off a very high mountain on a hang glider, right? And if you’re doing the right stuff, if you’re eating the right stuff, the beauty of that is, he said, you’re jumping off a higher peak, put in the work, and you’ll glide around for quite some time.

(19:18 – 19:41)

And then he said, of course, in the end, all of the hang gliders come down. And you might as well have taken a cold bucket of water and thrown it over the whole interview. It’d been so upbeat about how we’re gonna extend this and extend that.

(19:42 – 20:06)

And then the positive rhetoric was interrupted by the reminder that you and I live in rickety hang gliders that won’t stay up for long. The intrusion of death in verses nine to 11 kind of has that effect. It’s kind of like an interruption in this really confident life of faith passage.

(20:07 – 20:33)

And although David frames death in a positive way, as we’ll see in a minute, I think it’s worth pausing to consider how this interruption played out in the life of Jesus himself. You see, death for Jesus was not just the interruption of his life. It was the interruption of his security.

(20:36 – 21:17)

Because all that stuff we were talking about earlier, the sense of security and closeness and fellowship that was somewhat true of David, but infinitely true of Jesus in his relationship with his Father. As we come to the hour of his suffering and death, all of that security is removed. When Jesus is arrested and tried, mocked and beaten, when he is nailed to the cross under the dark sky of curse, every ounce of the father’s security is withdrawn.

(21:20 – 21:30)

That’s what happened on Good Friday, by the way. It was so much more than a man dying. There’s nothing unusual in that.

(21:31 – 21:50)

It was so much more than a painful death. Many people have died a painful death. What sets Jesus dying apart is that his perfect eternal security was stripped away entirely on the cross.

(21:52 – 22:40)

So that when the Son looked around for help, a help that had always been there, it wasn’t there. He cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And unlike verse seven in our Psalm, when Jesus listened in the night, there was no voice speaking back to him. Jesus, in those moments of suffering, experienced a vulnerability and insecurity that we can never fathom.

(22:42 – 23:11)

And why? What is the reason? The reason is that for us to be secure from a judgement we deserve, Jesus needed to endure a judgement he did not deserve. If we cannot be saved without Jesus’ life, we certainly cannot be saved without his sacrificial death. That’s what the cross is about.

(23:11 – 23:29)

It’s a moment of insecurity to guarantee your eternal security. And yet even that would be all for nothing. The life and the death, if it were not for the glorious resurrection.

(23:30 – 23:54)

And so we come to the third point, the final point, life, death, resurrection. Verses nine to 11 do speak of death, but if you read the verses closely, they are really about resurrection from death. And quite obviously, these verses are not speaking about David’s resurrection.

(23:57 – 24:10)

At this point in the Psalm, these words become entirely about Jesus. Let me show you this. Let’s turn briefly to Acts 2, where this is made very clear.

(24:11 – 24:37)

In Acts chapter two, the apostle Peter is preaching, preaching to a crowd, preaching about Jesus. Interestingly, he’s preaching about Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, exactly what we’re doing this morning. And in verses 25 to 28 of Acts 2, Peter quotes from Psalm 16.

(24:38 – 25:02)

He quotes actually from verses eight to 11, the entire last section of Psalm 16. But you will notice before he gives the quote, how Peter introduces it. Peter says in verse 25, David said this about Him.

(25:04 – 25:37)

David said this about Him. That is about Jesus, the Jesus he’s just been speaking of. In other words, all of this stuff from verses eight to 11 of Psalm 16, the stuff about God at the right hand and the body resting in the grave, the stuff about a body not seeing decay and the joys thereafter, was never about David.

(25:39 – 26:02)

It was always prophetically about Jesus. And just in case we think we’ve got it wrong, Peter doubles down in this in verse 29. Fellow Israelites, he says, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried and his tomb is here to this day.

(26:02 – 26:10)

David’s still dead, Peter says. He’s still in the tomb. These verses could never be about David.

(26:10 – 26:38)

No, David was a prophet. He knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he, Jesus, was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his, Jesus’ body see decay.

(26:40 – 27:03)

God has raised this Jesus to life and we are all witnesses of it. He is saying that David was prophesying and he knew he was prophesying. He was seeing ahead and pointing ahead to a descendant of his who would not stay dead.

(27:05 – 27:39)

And therefore, as we then go back to Psalm 16, and these closing verses, we can see that they give us an insight into the thinking of Jesus himself. We obviously don’t know much about what Jesus was thinking as he hung on the cross, but surely Psalm 16 gives us some kind of insight into what was on his mind when he came to the moment of death. And sometimes we get the wrong idea about this.

(27:40 – 28:01)

A wrong idea about the moment when Jesus came to die. We get the wrong notion that when Jesus died, he died in hopelessness and he died in despondency. But no, Jesus entered death in faith and victory.

(28:03 – 28:35)

As he comes through the suffering, as he comes to the moment of death, he is able to express his unshakeable confidence in the Lord. Now that bearing the curse is over, now that the wrath has been exhausted, Jesus, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me is now replaced with Father into your hands. I commit my spirit.

(28:36 – 28:52)

Jesus doesn’t die in despair. His heart is glad and his tongue rejoices. He breathes his last breath with the confidence that his body will rest secure.

(28:52 – 29:15)

The security that Jesus enjoyed in life, the security interrupted in the hour of suffering will now be renewed as his body lies secure in death. Jesus knows that his body will die, but it won’t rot. That he will be laid in the tomb, but he will not be abandoned in the tomb.

(29:16 – 29:49)

And that he will be so safeguarded that his body will not see decay. The faithfulness of Jesus will guarantee it. I’d never really seen this before, but did you notice that Peter, back in Acts 2, Peter says in that sermon in verse 24, that it was actually impossible for death to keep hold of Jesus’ body.

(29:50 – 30:13)

You know, we modern people with all of our science and secularism, we often think of a resurrection as being impossible. You know what Peter thinks is impossible? What is impossible would be for Jesus not to be resurrected. Why? Because he is far too faithful to be kept in a grave.

(30:14 – 30:22)

He must be preserved. He must be raised. He must rise to the joys of God’s right hand.

(30:24 – 30:48)

When Jesus closes his eyes for the final time on the cross, he is confident of Easter Sunday morning. Just about everyone else was surprised when Jesus rose from the dead, but Jesus wasn’t. He rested his head in death, knowing that the Father would preserve him.

(30:48 – 31:05)

And listen, this is so important, because Jesus died with that confidence. You and I can go to death with that confidence too. What was true for him can now become true for us.

(31:08 – 31:20)

I mean, don’t get me wrong. Like, Christians are as wary of dying as the next person. It’s not like something we’re looking forward to, but Christians do die in a different way.

(31:21 – 31:56)

They face the end with a different kind of confidence and I think, you know, if we are Christians, this is probably something that we sort of take for granted. We assume that, of course, when the time comes, with the help of God’s spirit, we will rest our head on the pillow in some sort of confident faith. We kind of assume that, but we really shouldn’t assume that, because the only reason you can rest your head on the pillow with confident faith is because long before you did it, Jesus did it first.

(31:58 – 32:15)

Because he trailblazed the way through death before you. We, therefore, can live in the total security of what Jesus has done for us. And I’ll tell you this.

(32:17 – 32:44)

Seeking your security in Jesus and in that is so much better than all of the alternatives. I mean, what are the alternatives to this? I mean, this is so much better than seeking security in yourself, which is where a lot of people seek it. I find it very interesting, you know, when people talk about feeling insecure in themselves.

(32:46 – 33:09)

And I understand to some extent what they mean by that. But, you know, I also think at times, even when people talk that way, I often think, well, why would we feel secure in ourselves anyway? We’re not, you know, we’re not impervious divine beings. We don’t have all the answers, do we? We are creatures in a world full of dangers.

(33:10 – 33:18)

We’re hang gliders blowing around in the wind. And you’re gonna look for security in yourself. That’s the answer to everything.

(33:18 – 34:25)

Is that what you’re gonna look in a mind that can fail, in a body that will age and die, in your strategies, in your philosophies, your life hacks? How long will they keep you up? What are you gonna trust? And where are you going to go with your inevitable insecurities? Are you going to come where David came to the wonder of the cross and the hope of the empty tomb and say, I’ll find my security there? I don’t know who came up with it, but I’m gonna nick it. Someone has said that responding to the gospel, this great news, is as simple as ABC, ABC. A is the word admit, admit.

(34:25 – 34:41)

There is something we need to admit to enjoy that salvation security. We need to admit our sin and our brokenness and our need before God. That’s where salvation starts.

(34:41 – 35:01)

Secondly, B, we need to believe. There is something to believe this morning. Believe that Jesus was God in the flesh and that he died to take your place to endure the condemnation for your sin.

(35:01 – 35:10)

He was forsaken so that you can be forgiven. Believe that today. And then C, confess.

(35:12 – 35:31)

Don’t just keep it private to yourself. Don’t live out some kind of hidden faith, but go public with it, because being a Christian is more than a private thing. It is saying, Jesus is the Lord of my life, and I want that to be known, and I’m gonna live my life for him.

(35:34 – 36:08)

And so if you do that this morning, if you do the A and you do the B, then maybe I would encourage you to also do the C and to tell someone that you have indeed begun to trust and follow Jesus. You don’t need to walk out of here this morning as a fundamentally insecure person. You can leave this place with a deep, unshakeable security that because of what Jesus did, nothing in your life can ultimately bring harm to you.

(36:09 – 36:34)

Let’s pray together. Father, we thank you this morning that the Easter story is the bigger story into which our whole life folds. Thank you that our life can be part of something so much bigger.

(36:36 – 36:54)

Our life can be secured by the life of another, that our death can be overcome by the life of another. Thank you that we get raised to life because Jesus was raised to life. My resurrection through His.

(36:55 – 37:12)

Father, grant that new life to all who seek it today so that we may share in the joy of the risen Lord Jesus in your presence. And it’s in his name we pray, amen.

The post Death-proof Security – Psalm 16 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Well, good morning. We are on our final part of Jonah in Jonah chapter 4. So if you’ve got a Bible handy, please turn with me to Jonah chapter 4. You’ll find that in the church Bibles, these red Bibles here on page 929, 929. So let’s hear God’s Word together in Jonah chapter 4. Just to set the context, Jonah, the reluctant prophet who didn’t want to go to Nineveh, was then taken captive by a whale under God’s providence, was spat out, goes back to Nineveh a second time, and witnesses and is part of an amazing revival we thought about last week as that city turned to God seeking His mercy under that warning of judgement that Jonah had brought to them.

(0:59 – 2:14)

So let’s pick up the story in chapter 4. But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? This is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.

Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live. But the Lord replied, Is it right for you to be angry? Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city.

Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort. And Jonah was very happy about the plant. But at dawn the next day, God provided a worm which chewed the plant so that it withered.

(2:15 – 6:09)

When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind and the sun blazed in Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die and said, It would be better for me to die than to live. But God said to Jonah, Is it right for you to be angry about the plant? It is, he said, and I’m so angry I wish I were dead.

But the Lord said, You’ve been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and also many animals.

May God bless to us this reading of his precious and inspired words. Well, the last chapter of Jonah has a real twist in the tail, surprise ending. If Jonah had ended at chapter 3 verse 10, when God saw what they did, the Ninevites, and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened, then it would be a wonderful tale of one man’s redemption.

Jonah, the runaway prophet, is stopped in his tracks by God in the crisis of the storm and the whale. He sees his error and folly. He turns back to God.

He goes back to Nineveh. He sees this amazing, wonderful revival, and at which point he sagely nods his head and walks off into the sunset. What a wonderful, heartwarming book that would have been.

But of course, the Bible is not a collection of pious fables. These aren’t stories that are airbrushed over with some kind of Hollywood gloss. It’s not a fairytale book where every story ends and they lived happily ever after.

Rather, it’s a book whose divine author, God, knows what people are really like. It’s a book whose author has a knowledge of us that goes underneath our words, underneath the appearances, underneath our actions. The author who can read the very contours and motives of the human heart.

David Tripp, an author in a book he wrote called Broken Down House, says this of the Bible, it will be on the screen. He says, the Bible is a book about this world. It is a gritty, honest book.

When we read Scripture, we face the world as it actually is, in big screen, high def detail. God doesn’t pull any punches. He doesn’t paint over any cracks.

He doesn’t flatter or avoid. There is no denial of what is real and true. The sights and sounds of the Bible are familiar.

They are the sights and sounds of the very same broken world you and I wake up to every day. In the case of Jonah, that reality meant highlighting an old truth, the truth that God has more to do in us than through us. In other words, in God’s sight, activity is no substitute for attitude.

So imagine you were reading Jonah for the first time. You didn’t know the story. You had read through chapters 1, 2, and 3. What a shock the beginning of chapter 4 would be.

(6:10 – 10:40)

But to Jonah, this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. Nineveh, has turned from its evil. It sought God’s mercy, and yet Jonah, the prophet of God, who took the message of warning, is indignant about it.

And shock follows shock. Verse 2, this is exactly why I didn’t want to come here. He goes on, this is just what I feared that you, God, would forgive these people.

I knew, verse 3, that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. In fact, verse 3, I wish I had drowned in the sea. It is an astonishing outburst.

It’s a real window into Jonah’s heart and attitude towards Nineveh. And of course, it’s in those kind of moments when all the pent-up emotion and intensity of a situation tumbles out of a person that we often see hidden sides, what’s really going on in the heart. Of course, we like to blame others.

We like to blame our circumstances or the situation that we’re in for our reactions at times, but like to use the old analogy, squeezing a tube of toothpaste, the pressure is only pushing out what’s been on the inside all along. Another writer, Ajith Fernando, writes this in his book, Jesus-Driven Ministry. He says, some seem to be very humble, examples of a servant spirit.

They work hard and follow instructions. They are ever ready to help others, but deep down they are bitter. They may say they do not work for recognition, but they are angry that they have been taken for granted.

We may not see this anger at first, but sometimes it comes out, usually in an outburst that leaves the recipient stunned. So Jonah might have been having a hard day. He might be far from home.

He might have a blinding headache, but whatever the trigger, his deep down loathing of this pagan city and its people is being brought out into the open. He resents the fact that these Ninevites are receiving favour and mercy from God. It just doesn’t seem fair to him.

In fact, it’s what he has secretly feared would happen all along. Maybe that sense of antipathy had been fuelled to some extent by seeing Nineveh firsthand. Maybe as he had walked around that great city, he’d witnessed some of its violence.

He’d seen evidence of its great wickedness that had come up before God in chapter 1. And the thought that God wasn’t going to punish this city and punish these people just seemed to him to be shockingly unjust. In a book, I think I may have mentioned this before, I get a little bit muddled about what illustrations I’ve used in various places. So forgive me if I’ve used this before, but in the book Mission at Nuremberg, it’s the story of Ian Gehrig, an American Lutheran pastor, who in 1945 was sent to Germany to be appointed as chaplain to the 20 most senior Nazis who’d been captured at the end of World War II.

Among that group were names like Goering, Hess, Donitz, Kaltenbrumer, who’d been the head of the concentration camp system, Soukel, head of Reich, slave labour, and others. Men who had organised and participated in the horrors of the Holocaust. Men who were awaiting trial for their crimes at the Nuremberg war trials.

(10:41 – 12:21)

And the book records how humanely those men were held. They were given food and medical care. It records the legal help that was afforded to them and the spiritual care.

A chaplain who had been sent for them, Ian Gehrig, somebody who they could meet with. A small chapel was set up in their prison for services. In contrast, of course, the book also records some of the charges against these men.

The unspeakable sadism, the cruelty experienced by their victims, the Jews and slave labourers and others. Crimes so vast and so malignant that they still make us shudder today. And it seems that in that clean and safe environment, over civilised conversations and through attending simple church services, some of these men came to faith.

They repented. They cast themselves on God’s mercy. Nazis, monsters, now in Heaven, after all they had done. Just through believing.

How can that possibly be fair? And maybe that’s how Jonah felt about Nineveh. Because this is where the book starts to get quite uncomfortable. I suspect that Jonah’s struggle with grace isn’t that far from any of us.

(12:22 – 14:34)

That like Jonah, though we like to talk about grace, salvation is of the Lord. We nonetheless, deep down, feel some people merit it more than others. And some people really don’t merit it at all.

That just as the Ninevites were clearly the bogeymen for Jonah, and as we thought in our studies in John recently, the Samaritans were very much kind of being beyond the pale for the Jews in Jesus’ day, that in our especially polarised world, we might have our own beyond the pale people. For some, the 21st Samaritans are the woke warriors with their flags and their lanyards, their uber-liberal politics and their disregard of boundaries. For others, the 21st century Ninevites are perhaps the right-wing nationalists with their flags and their caps and their crude threats.

Now, of course, I’m stereotyping, but that’s the point. See, Jesus, I don’t think would be despised today for eating with dispossessed and homeless people, precisely because His teaching on these matters has so profoundly shaped our culture and our thinking. But just as He scandalised onlookers by eating with tax-collecting collaborators, just imagine the outcry today at seeing Him going to the homes of neo-Nazis or having dinner with drag queens.

Those people have a line, surely. You see, Jonah and maybe deep down in all of us, we quite like the idea of God’s judgement for them. We love the doctrine of grace for us, but as long as it’s them and us in that order.

(14:37 – 15:11)

You see how in many ways, the doctrine of God’s grace is a much tougher doctrine than God’s judgement. You see, we often want to limit God’s grace, don’t we? His undeserved mercy and forgiveness to certain groups of more acceptable people. Usually, we include ourselves in those groups, but grace deserved is not grace.

(15:13 – 15:39)

And Jonah needed to understand that all forgiveness is utterly undeserved. That’s true for me, it’s true for you, and it’s true for every human being, no matter how marred and broken and mired in sin they might be. And this is where Jonah and, through this book this morning, we need to hear God’s voice.

(15:39 – 17:55)

Verse 4, Jonah, is it right for you to be angry? I mean, think about it, Jonah. You can hardly complain about undeserved mercy. You who wilfully disobeyed me, who were only minutes from death, but who I out of pure grace have rescued, preserved, delivered, and given a second chance to.

I mentioned the commentaries, I think, in chapter 1 that sometimes described Jonah as the kind of elder brother figure, and that analogy with the parable of the prodigal son. Remember the older brother who was resentful at the father’s kindness to the runaway prodigal. But actually, Jonah’s even worse in some ways, because he is the prodigal son who’s now being resentful over kindness being shown to other prodigal sons.

Jonah is a man who has very quickly, it seems, forgotten the reality of grace in his own life. Jonah was doubtless a great ministry worker in Israel, a really committed follower of the Lord. I mean, how could he not be? He was a prophet.

We saw in chapter 1 that he was a man who obviously read his Bible. He knew his theology, his doctrine of God. And I’m sure in Israel, people looked at Jonah and thought, you know, Jonah, he’s a kind of model believer.

He’s a kind of standout Christian. You know, he’s up there with the kind of the A-list followers of the Lord. And perhaps over time in his mind, that had just created very subtly in Jonah a sense of entitlement, rather than a sense of absolute wonder about God’s love and mercy towards him.

Lord, save us from ever thinking we are more deserving of grace. Never to forget these truths from Scripture. They’ll be on the screen.

(17:55 – 18:38)

There is no one righteous, not even one. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. We too were disobedient, deceived, and enslaved.

By grace, you have been saved. As we approach the end of the book, God has another lesson that He wants to unpack for Jonah. Unbelievably, verse 5, Jonah is still hoping that Nineveh is going to get its comeuppance.

(18:39 – 19:33)

And so he goes outside the city to watch, hoping that that judgement will come at the end of 40 days that he had warned the Ninevites about. And he makes himself a shelter, a little place there to spectate. It’s almost kind of comical if it wasn’t so grim.

It’s like those old accounts of public executions where thousands of people would go. It was almost like a day out, and they would have a kind of picnic and make a kind of day of it. Well, here’s Jonah outside of Nineveh, and he builds this little shelter.

And then verse 6, God providentially provides some shade for him. Plant grows up, a little bit of coolness, and we read that Jonah was very pleased about that to get some protection from that fierce Middle Eastern sun. But the next day, God provides a worm.

(19:34 – 23:32)

This is how God is completely in charge. We thought about God’s sovereignty, didn’t we? Everything that is happening here is under the hand and direction of God. And this little worm with a few chomps withers the vine, the plant dies.

And with his shade gone, Jonah is exposed to the sun and the scorching wind, and he’s soon reeling and miserable. And once again, verse 8, he wishes he was dead. Well, God’s lesson is very clear, very simple, but it’s no less convicting, is it? Jonah’s so upset about the loss of a plant, a plant he had no part in creating or providing.

There was no input or effort on his part. And God’s point to Jonah is, Jonah, if the withering of some random plant causes you such distress, how do you think I’m going to feel about the destruction of a whole city full of people and creatures that I made? Do you think I’m going to care less about 120,000 souls than you do about a pot plant? It’s such a convicting, challenging book, isn’t it? The amount of effort and stress I expend over trivial things, and I think of the mission field and how blase and indifferent I so often am in contrast. This is the climax of Jonah.

It’s the big lesson to take away from all the others in the series. It’s so simple and yet so humbling. It’s the truth, it’s reality that God really, really loves people, all people, everywhere.

No one is a statistic to Him. God is grieved and saddened and anguished over the plight of lost men and women, whoever they might be. The heart cry of God expressed by Jesus as He looked at the city of Jerusalem, another great city teeming with people.

Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you. How often I would have longed to gather you, gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. You know, originally I was a little bit anxious or worried that ending on Jonah chapter 4 might be a bit negative, you know, with all the stuff about Jonah’s selfishness.

But the big reveal at the end of chapter 4 is not so much to expose Jonah’s hardness of heart, although obviously it does that, but actually the bigger reveal if we didn’t know it is to reveal the magnitude of God’s compassion, His tenderheartedness to the inhabitants of cities, however wicked or far away they might seem to us. God yearns for those who don’t know about Him, those spiritually ignorant people there in verse 11 who don’t know their right hand from their left and thank God that His heart is that big because we are the Ninevites. We weren’t part of Israel by and large, maybe you were, but most people here weren’t.

(23:33 – 24:19)

We were the pagan Gentiles, those who were afar off, strangers and aliens to the commonwealth of Israel without God and without hope in the world. But as we read recently in John, because God so loved the world and sent His Son, we like the Ninevites, if we heard God’s message, if we were prepared to humble ourselves before it and cast ourselves upon His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ can like them receive mercy and forgiveness and new life. And because God’s rescue is entirely of grace, there is no one who can’t be saved.

(24:23 – 28:01)

And so as we finish Jonah, may that grace, that amazing grace, that challenging, uncomfortable grace, may that so grasp and fill us and humble us that the driving force of our mission, our outreach in Greenview and wherever we go won’t be a kind of Jonah-esque grudging obedience or because of a guilty conscience or because we feel the pressure to look the part, but driven and flow out of the very heart of God Himself, a God who is abounding in compassion and love and grace. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. Let me invite you as we close in prayer, and David then comes to close the service, to look at some of the literature we have.

We’ve got some Easter booklets, tracts at the back in the cafe area. Have a look at them, take them away, ask me for one at the end, come down to the front and pray if God has moved your heart and you want to respond to this amazing offer of grace from God’s words. If you’re watching online and you’re able, next Sunday would be a brilliant opportunity to come along and join us at the Easter service.

Let me warmly invite you to do that. It would be great to see you here. But in all events, let’s pray, let’s give thanks for God’s grace, and if your heart has been touched this morning, do speak to somebody about responding to it in faith and in repentance.

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we want to thank You for grace. We want to thank You that though there are none that do good, and we know deep in our hearts are many sins, our sins of omission, our sins of commission, the things that we ought to have done, the things that we ought not to have done, the many ways that we have failed, that we have not honoured You as we ought, that You have not had that place in our lives, in our hearts, in our world that is rightly Yours.

The many times we have let You down, we have sinned against others, we have been selfish, we have fallen so far short of Your glory, and yet, Father, that door of salvation is open to us this morning because of grace, because of the Lord Jesus Christ, because of the One who on Himself took the sin of the world that those who come to Him might be forgiven and go free. Father, we thank You for Jonah, we thank You for this ancient prophet, we thank You for this book in the Bible that is so relevant and so challenging and so real to us. Father, we pray that its lessons will be absorbed into our hearts and our lives, that they will change us, that they will make us less like Jonah and more like Jesus, the One who came and freely offered Himself in love, the One in whom and through whom we can come and call You Father.

So Father, work in our hearts to strengthen faith and to grant faith, and we ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The post The Unfairness of Grace – Jonah 4 appeared first on Greenview Church.

This is our second last message in the Heart and Habit series. It’s been a series about spiritual disciplines, and you might see the sub-tagline of the series. It’s disciplines for the glory of God and for the love of others.

Now, tonight we focus on our habits of love towards other people, and we’re going to turn to Galatians chapter 6 to direct us as we begin. So, turn with me to Galatians 6 tonight. Just a brief bit of context just before we read.

(0:44 – 2:54)

Paul the apostle is writing to a church he has planted, and he’s warning them in this letter not to abandon the gospel of grace. The gospel of grace is not only Paul’s gospel, it’s God’s gospel, and it’s the true gospel. And Paul says that to seek salvation by works is to abandon the gospel.

But as Paul nears the end of the letter, he wants to clarify something. And what he wants to clarify is that the gospel of grace does not produce a life of bad behaviour. No, the gospel of grace produces a Spirit-led people who do good to all people.

The gospel of grace produces a Spirit-led people who do good to all people. That’s the end of Galatians. So, let’s see something of this in Galatians 6 verses 7 to 10.

Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction. Whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.

Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of God. This is God’s word to us. Now, let me start with five fairly brief initial observations, which are going to give us a basis for this message on the other-centred life.

(2:55 – 4:14)

Very quickly, observation one, believers should habitually do good. Believers should habitually do good. In verse 9 and verse 10, Paul says the Christian should do good, which in the context clearly refers to our doing good to people.

It’s our goodness to people that Paul has in view. And this is to be habitual, continual, and consistent, since Paul says in verse 9 that we shouldn’t grow weary in doing it. Observation number two, believers need encouragement to keep doing what is good.

We need encouragement to keep doing what is good. It’s abundantly clear from how Paul addresses the Galatians that loving others is wearisome and therefore needs to be encouraged. If verse 9 implies anything, it implies that doing good to others can be wearing and wearisome.

(4:15 – 4:55)

Paul understands that keeping doing good to your spouse, that keeping doing good to your work colleagues, that keeping doing good to your children or your parents can be more draining than a marathon. Let’s not be shy in churches that emphasise grace at encouraging one another to not grow weary in well-doing, because that’s what Paul’s doing here. And let us use the motivations of this passage, such as observation three.

(4:57 – 5:43)

Believers who do good will enjoy an eternal reward. Believers who do good will enjoy an eternal reward. Paul says this in verse 9. Look at verse 9. For at the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.

Now, notice that Paul does not say here, at this time we will reap a harvest. He doesn’t say right now, presently, we will reap a harvest. He doesn’t say next week or next month or even next year we will reap a crop.

(5:45 – 5:59)

Paul is making the opposite point. He is saying, you may not see the rewards now, even in this life. You may not see the benefit of your patience.

(6:00 – 7:17)

You may not see the reward of all your kindnesses to your colleagues or your kids. But one day, your heavenly Father who sees all will reward you for every act of kindness that you do. You and I are not saved by a single work, but we will be rewarded for every work that we do.

Philip Rykin helpfully says that rewards for believers are not to make us anxious. The promise of rewards for believers is not to make us anxious. He says it’s there to encourage us to do as much good as we can.

Fourth observation. Believers have a limited time, a limited opportunity to do good. When Paul says in verse 10, therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, he is saying that we each have a limited time to do good to people.

(7:20 – 9:32)

I’m starting to realise more and more that I never know when the last time will be that I speak to this person, that I text this person, that I spend time with this person. I have zero clue whether this will be the last interaction. Will it be a good one or a bad one? Will it be a kind one or a snarky one? Will it be a trivial one or a significant one? We do not have infinite time to do what is good.

And then observation five, as we lay this foundation, fifth thing, believers should do good to everyone. Now, Paul does say that we should especially do good to the family of believers. We thought about that a few weeks ago, that we have a particular responsibility to our church family.

And it may be that Paul is stressing this here because there’s evidence in the letter that the Galatian believers, despite their kind of works righteousness, were actually not loving one another. They actually were proud and they were backbiting within the church. And so Paul’s maybe underlining that, and he’s saying especially show good works to the family of believers.

And yet no one is left out of Paul’s command to do good. All is a pretty comprehensive word, isn’t it? Do good to all, including my natural family. All of them, even the one that I don’t get on with so well, all of them, my church family, my work colleagues, my neighbours, my non-Christian friends, why this even includes my enemies.

(9:33 – 14:58)

There is no person in the sphere of a believer who is not owed the debt of good from that believer. See, the gospel of grace does not produce a life of bad behaviour. It produces Spirit-led people who do good to all people.

What I want to do in the rest of this message is then very practically apply this into three areas of life. So we could go in lots of different directions, but we’re picking three main categories that come under this all-people breadth. So we’re going to first of all think about family life, family habits.

How do we, as part of the all people, how do we habitually do good within our families? And I want to suggest several things with some scriptural basis hopefully. So first of all, as you think about your natural family, the habit of love and respect. The habit of love and respect.

I find it interesting that while the New Testament teaches about the natural family, it nowhere gives us a long list of family rules. There are actually sparse instructions about how parents and children should interact. There’s little in the Bible about date nights or even about how to solve your marital conflicts.

What there is, however, is a stress on habitual attitudes. So for instance, husbands and wives are both commanded to love and respect each other. And even though there is a kind of emphasis that Paul lays upon husbands and wives respectively, that definitely is there, it’s interesting actually that the command, for example, to love, which we often put upon the husband, is also given to the wife in Titus chapter 2. And simultaneously, the husband is actually also instructed to consider and respect his wife in 1 Peter 3. So the love and the respect are to go both ways, even if it looks slightly different.

There’s a lot of things that go into making a marriage work, and there’s a lot of things that can conspire to making it crumble. But one of the most basic reasons why a marriage keeps working is if there is the presence, not the absence, of respect and love. And I don’t just mean that theoretically, but tangibly.

If love and respect are never reflected in the tone of your voice, in your willingness to listen, in your concrete actions, in your readiness to apologise, then you’re not really loving and respecting your spouse. I’m aware that not every one of us here, of course, is married. But let’s think about the area of parent-child dynamics, which is relevant to most of us.

There’s also a love and respect dimension to that relationship. Young children, Ephesians 6, 1, are commanded to obey their parents habitually. This enters a new phase when a child becomes an adult, but there’s still the same dynamic underlying, because Deuteronomy Exodus 20 commands that children should honour their parents.

Parents, in return, are to habitually teach, discipline, and love their children. That also enters a new phase when their children become adults, and yet the underlying dynamic, the habit, continues of love and respect. These are meant to carry on between the parent and the child.

So, how is your family dynamic going in these respects? Let’s move on to another important habit, maybe something that will help us cultivate those attitudes, and that is the habit of Bible sharing, the habit of Bible sharing. Believing families should be families where the Bible is frequently shared. In Deuteronomy 6, 7, God’s people are commanded to pass on the Bible to the next generation.

(14:59 – 17:13)

This is not necessarily about having a family devotion once a day, although I would imagine that would help in achieving this. What it is about is the Bible being part and parcel of your family life. Whatever you are doing, and wherever you are as a family, as Deuteronomy 6 emphasises, it’s even as you walk along the way, it’s even as you go for the Sunday afternoon walk in Pollock Park, that actually there’s to be these opportunities where you’re sharing God’s Word.

It’s as you go through situations as a family and struggles as a family that you’re actually bringing God’s Word into that situation and praying it through. In Ephesians 5, we are told that Christ cleansed the church with His Word, Christ cleansed the church with His gospel, and husbands mirroring Christ have a particular responsibility to keep God’s Word at the forefront in the home. That said, of course, all disciples are called to instruct one another, to encourage one another, which also means if you’re a wife or if you’re a Christian child, you have the opportunity to encourage your family.

I was doing some marriage preparation recently, sharing all my mistakes, and one of the kind of shortcomings I shared was times in my own family life where I’ve failed to do that, failed to be consistent in sharing the Bible. I can remember several patches like this where I was not reading my Bible consistently, and then waking up in the morning to find my wife not on her phone but just quietly reading her Bible. And she didn’t say a thing, but I felt rebuked by that, and I thought, I better do that, at least this morning.

(17:14 – 18:44)

I can recall times when my young children reminded me that we hadn’t done the Bible time today, and if I’m honest, I wasn’t going to be doing it that day. So we all have a role to play in sharing the Bible at home. And by the way, if you are living alone, this still remains true and important for you.

We had the opportunity just the other week there, we were living for one week in the home, Nicky and I, the home of a single Christian woman. And this woman’s house was full of Bibles, it was full of Christian books, and as if that wasn’t enough, almost every wall in her house had Bible verses like everywhere you looked. Now, I’m not saying you should do that, but I kind of came away thinking, this is not a bad idea.

She was making sure that the Bible would be central to her home, and that even if there wasn’t someone there to physically speak it to her, that literally the walls could speak and give her encouragement. But let’s not stop there with merely hearing God’s Word. Let’s then thirdly work it out in the habit of serving as a family, the habit of serving as a family.

(18:46 – 19:59)

As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, Joshua famously said. But how do we serve the Lord? Well, one of the ways we do it is by serving other people. Galatians 5.13 says, serve one another humbly in love.

And I want to just make a pointed application here to doing this within the home, because in my observation, and sadly, painfully at times in my own failures and my own experience, we are often better at serving others outside of the family than we are at serving people within the family. And you know the sort of thing, you know, Christians who would, they would sort of drop everything to run a Christian friend to hospital, but they won’t do the dishes in the sink. You know, they’ll give some great gift to an emergency appeal for some great needs, but they won’t cook the dinner for their brother or their sister.

(19:59 – 20:15)

I’ve just made my own. I’m not concerned about you. Proverbs 31.27 commends a mother who watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.

(20:17 – 20:33)

You know, whenever I read that verse, I think it’s really ironic, because in my experience, it’s the mothers that never eat the bread of idleness. They’re the ones that are always working their socks off at home. It’s really the rest of us that need to be following their example often.

(20:34 – 21:32)

If we think of home, and our homes are a place of rest in many ways, but if we think of it only as a place to veg with our earphones in our ears, then we need to establish a new habit. What does it mean for us to cultivate a habit of serving the family? So, that’s something on our family habits. But let’s then go outside the front door in our second point.

I want to spend just a few minutes talking about work habits together. I want to just turn to a couple of verses in Colossians chapter 3, and we’re going to focus on a few things Paul says here. I’m just going to make two points based on Colossians 3, and the first one, very simply, is the habit of working wholeheartedly.

(21:33 – 21:44)

Listen to these words from Paul. This is verse 23. He says, Whatever you do, but actually he’s talking here in the context of work.

(21:45 – 22:07)

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart. Now, what is really striking about this little section is that Paul is writing this to people, to Christians, who were slaves. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about this.

(22:08 – 26:27)

These people were doing the hardest form of work you can imagine with the least motivation that is possible because they were unpaid. And yet Paul says, nonetheless, it is still the right thing to habitually work hard, to turn up on time, to finish what you start, to do your best work, and to do it with the right attitude. It is always the right thing to do, and it will always be rewarded by the Lord.

And again, interestingly, Paul makes that same point here, that your earthly work, what’s the good of your earthly work? Paul says it will be rewarded by the Lord. So it’s right, the Lord rewards it, and it is a witness to those around you. I was listening to a talk this week, and a guy was talking about a church in England that’s seen some conversions.

And he said, you know, that it’s ultimately under the sovereignty of God, of course, like God’s the one who does the saving. But he said, humanly speaking, in terms of who God has used, he said, it’s a woman in the church. It’s the wife of the pastor who is a local GP.

And in this little town, this local GP lady, she’s well-known, and she’s massively respected. In fact, so respected is she that many of her patients have wanted to come along to see her church. And they’ve come to her church, and they’ve got converted.

It’s a wonderful example, isn’t it? It’s a wonderful example. And here’s the question, does the way you work pull people to Christ or actually push them away? That’s something for us to think about, isn’t it? What might motivate us to up our game at work if we’re struggling with motivation? Let’s go to the second point here, the second habit under this, the habit of working for Christ. Look at what Paul says at the end of verse 23, again of Colossians 3, whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for human masters.

And at the end of verse 24, it is the Lord Christ you are serving. One of the big questions that we need to settle about work is who are we working for? Who are you working for? Paul says it’s not ultimately your earthly boss. It’s the Lord Christ you’re serving.

It’s the authority of the Messiah you’re working under. Even if you, as more and more people are doing, if you, quote, unquote, work for yourself, you’d never truly work for yourself if you’re a Christian. Every Christian in every workplace works for the Lord.

And that habitual mindset creates an inexhaustible source of motivation. Even when your boss is rubbish and your coworkers are a pain, even when the work is frustrating or boring and not going to plan, you are always doing something profound, you are working for Christ. By the way, one of the worst myths in modern Christianity is that it’s only paid people in Christian ministry who are really working for Christ.

(26:27 – 27:21)

That is absolute rubbish. We are all working for Christ. You don’t need to leave your job to start working for Christ.

You’re already working for Him. Whether you’re a pastor or a plumber, whether you’re working for a Christian charity or a secular council, you’re working for Jesus. Understand that and it will temper your ambitions.

Because if you’re working for Christ, then you won’t just be working for a bigger salary. Understand that. And prestige won’t matter so much when you come to work.

Because that’s one of the things we get at work, isn’t it? We get prestige at times. We get honoured. We get the pat on the back.

(27:22 – 30:38)

Well, that will matter way less if what you’re really working for is Christ, who you’re really working for is Christ. And if you’re working for Christ, then when the time comes for you to retire, you will never retire because you never stop working for Christ, do you? Jesus is forever your Lord. He’s forever your boss.

There’s no retirees in the kingdom of God. May this be an encouragement to us as we, it’s maybe the wrong time of year because you’re going to be off for a few days, but maybe even as we come back from holiday, maybe come back with a renewed sense of motivation about our everyday work. So doing good to others in our family lives, doing good in the area of work, and then a final area tonight, we’re going to think about doing good in the area of our social lives, our social habits.

And I’ve got two applications here. We’re going to think one has to do with our neighbours, and the other has to do with our friends. Let’s start with the habit of kindness to our neighbours, our neighbours.

As Galatians 6 says, we are to do good to all. And that’s if Paul’s thinking, well, he’s not thinking of the church here, is he? Because he talks about them later on. So this, I think, is our neighbours.

And of course, it’s not a new idea because in the law of Moses, God spoke about loving the stranger in your midst. He spoke about the neighbours of the Jews, if you like, the non-Jewish people who lived in their communities. And God gave his people a set of instructions that they were to love those neighbours, even the stranger, even those who are unfamiliar.

And in the New Testament, Jesus doubled down on that instruction. Jesus famously defines our neighbour as any human being that we pass on the road of life. Think of the parable of the good Samaritan.

Your neighbour is any human being that you pass on the road of life. Even someone from a different religion or a different cultural background or someone you wouldn’t normally count as someone you are friendly with. Our neighbour is the person we meet at the bus stop.

It’s the person we chat to at the gym. It’s the person we meet on holiday just for a few days. It’s the attendant at the shop that we’re giving the stuff back to or making the complaint to.

And as we heard earlier, it also includes even our terminally ill neighbour. That’s our neighbour too. And yes, of course, it’s also the people who live as our physical neighbours, who we often know better than those other people I’ve just mentioned, those that we know the names of, who we chat to when we’re walking the dog.

(30:39 – 31:05)

What is our responsibility to them? Well, Scripture tells us here, doesn’t it? It is to do good to them, which means to show love and kindness to them in whatever way we can. Doing good might mean helping our neighbours in a moment of emergency. Doing good might mean being proactive with our neighbours in hospitality.

(31:08 – 32:01)

Doing good might simply be the habit of always stopping to chat to your neighbour, even when you don’t think you’ve got 10 minutes to stop. In a wider sense, doing good to your neighbour might mean praying about the assisted suicide bill and contacting your MP about it, because you are concerned to show good to your neighbour. I don’t know how long this miraculous weather is going to last, but it is maybe just a couple of more days.

But it is a reminder to us that we’re entering the time of year when each of us should be on, in a good way, Neighbourhood Watch. Right? Like, I mean, none of your neighbours are like mine. Six months of the year, they’re in hibernation.

(32:02 – 32:52)

And this is the six months of the year where they all appear, and we talk again. And this should be the time when we should be thinking about and praying about what it might look like to do good to our neighbours. They say that everyone needs good neighbours, but even more than that, we need good friends, don’t we? We need good friends.

And that’s the last thing I want to touch on as we think about these social relationships, the habit of loyalty towards friends. Listen to these words from Proverbs 18, verse 24. A man of many companions comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

(32:54 – 33:59)

In other words, there’s a kind of relationship that exists. It’s not just a neighbour, and it’s not a family member. There’s a kind of relationship that exists that’s a kind of sticking to someone in loyalty that sometimes surpasses the efforts of family.

That’s what the Proverbs is saying. You may have a brother, I mean here a natural brother, that shows little concern for you when you’re going through a hard time. Like, you know, they don’t call you up months.

Maybe you’ve lost your job or something, they don’t care. And yet you have a friend who’s texting you every day of the week. I don’t know if this is right, this is slightly my own speculation, but maybe friendship is one of the ways God compensates for times when our families are not doing their jobs, or for the fact that our relatives live far away, or maybe just all of our relatives have died.

(33:59 – 34:23)

What a blessing is the provision of friendship. But it does demand a kind of persistent effort and ongoing loyalty. Proverbs 27.10 says, do not forsake your friend and your father’s friend.

(34:24 – 38:16)

This is why losing a friendship can be so very difficult, because there’s such a sense of mutual trust and loyalty that’s bound up in a friendship. It’s not a marriage, but in some ways, it’s got that kind of covenant loyalty you see in marriage, that stick with you through thick and thin commitment that you don’t see with your neighbours and you don’t have with your work colleagues. That’s what a friendship is.

And that’s why it can be so desperately painful when a friend seems to turn their back on you or stop taking an interest, and they feel the same the other way when you do that. But friendship is also one of God’s very best gifts. However, it demands a persistence, a habit, a loyalty.

I think someone was chatting to someone about this just the other day, and they said, something along the lines of a friendship can end with something as simple as a person just stops texting back, just as little as that. Yeah, they just stopped texting back a couple of times. That’s how easily even a long-term friendship can end.

So let’s be taking initiative in our friendships. Let’s cultivate habits of response and initiative. Let’s not expect friendships to be cultivated when we’re not willing to put that loyalty and effort in place.

Well, let’s draw this to a close. You know, it was interesting as I was thinking about Galatians 6 and doing good, and as you always think when you read these things, you think, well, how does that sort of tie into the gospel? Like, how does that tie into Christ? And I was very struck to notice that in Acts 10, when Peter is recounting the kind of life and ministry of Jesus, he actually uses this very wording where he says, amongst other things, that Jesus of Nazareth went around doing good. Doing good was Jesus’ modus operandi.

His mode of operating was doing good. As Christians, we are saved by that goodness of Christ. It’s by His good works and sacrifice that we’re saved.

But saved by grace and relying on that grace and resourced by that grace, doing good should be our mode of operating too. It’s one aspect of what it actually is to be Christ-like. Jesus died for bad people, but He died to produce a family of good people doing good works.

So let’s live not self-centred lives, but God-centred lives and other-centred lives. Let’s pray. Father God, thank You tonight that we have a Saviour who was good and who did what was good.

We thank You that we’re saved by Your grace, but then empowered to do good. Show us where we need to be more fully obedient to what You’re calling us to be. Grant us the help of Your Spirit, for You have not left us alone.

(38:17 – 38:35)

You have given us everything we need for life and godliness. So we commit our reflections, we commit, Lord, even our lives to You. As we head into this week, whether we’re resting or whether we’re working, help us to do it all to Your glory.

Amen.

The post Family, work & social – the habits of the other-centred life appeared first on Greenview Church.

Morning folks, good to be back with you as we continue on as David said in the book of Jonah. So if you have your Bibles or a red church Bible to hand, one of these, you’ll find that on page of these Bibles on page 929. So we’re going to look at Jonah chapter 3 this morning and we’ll read this whole chapter, just 10 verses Jonah chapter 3. Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.

Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you. Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city.

It took three days to go through it. Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city proclaiming 40 more days and Nineveh will be overthrown. The Ninevites believed God.

A fast was proclaimed and all of them from the greatest to the least put on sackcloth. When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. This is a proclamation he issued in Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles.

Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks taste anything. Do not let them eat or drink, but let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God.

Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish. When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

This is the Word of God. Isn’t the first line of Jonah chapter 3 so encouraging? The Word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time. Our God, the God of the Bible, the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ is a God of second chances.

This is a characteristic we see throughout the Bible, the patient mercy of God. Time and time again, men and women who sin, who fail, who blow it, are given a second chance. It’s not one strike and you’re out, but an invitation to start all over and begin again.

Think of the apostle Peter, someone who spent three years in the physical presence of Jesus, God manifest in the flesh. Somebody who saw firsthand with his own eyes the miracles, the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus walking on water, the dead being raised, who heard the teaching. No one ever spoke the way this man did, and yet despite that in the moment of Jesus’ greatest trial, he abandons Him.

He does so with curses and expletives. This was somebody who had zero excuse for that kind of behaviour. Three days later on the eve of Easter Sunday, coming up soon, he’s going to meet Jesus.

I mean, how would you feel? I mean, you would feel fear the worst, wouldn’t you? I mean, you’ve been a letdown, a disgrace. There’s surely no coming back from that, and yet the greeting he hears, the words that come from Jesus as Peter meets him on that Easter Sunday evening isn’t as we would expect, shame on you, but peace be with you. That is the amazing generosity, patience, and kindness of our God.

It’s a pattern seen throughout the Bible, throughout the Old Testament, God’s mercy to Israel. You read through the Old Testament and year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation, all the slights, all the hard-heartedness, all the sin, all the defiance, all the batting away of God’s words, and yet throughout it all, God can say, will be on the screen, Isaiah 65, all day long, I’ve held out my hands to an obstinate people who walk in ways not good. All day long, right up to the eleventh hour, to the last possible moment, God is holding the door open so that people might return to Him.

(5:40 – 6:19)

And maybe this morning, you’re somebody who needs to be reminded of this truth about God. Maybe you’ve been feeling a bit like Jonah as we’ve gone through this series, who if not publicly in your heart, have been resisting God, running from the face of God as we thought about in chapter 1. Or perhaps like Peter, you’re feeling crushed by a sense of failure. You feel your failure is so great, so persistent, so accumulated, that you must be beyond the point of no return with God.

(6:20 – 6:58)

You’ve prayed so many times for forgiveness that you’re kind of embarrassed to pray again. Well, do you remember when Peter asked Jesus about forgiveness? And he asked him, how often he should forgive someone who sins against him? Matthew chapter 18. Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times? Jesus answered, I tell you, not seven times, but 77 times.

(7:00 – 8:14)

You see, Peter’s view of forgiveness, like I guess many people, was that forgiveness is all very good and fine, and it has its place, but it has to have a limit. Seven times seems more than fair. After that, well, you’re just being unreasonable.

Indeed, that could just be taken advantage of. And so Jesus’ reply must have been quite a shock. No, Peter, it’s not seven times, 77 times.

In other words, there’s no ceiling to forgiveness. And here’s the thing. If that’s the model of forgiveness that Jesus expects you and I to extend to others, then I take it that his own model and practise of forgiveness is not less generous.

Jesus isn’t saying, well, you folks need to forgive each other endlessly, but obviously I’ll have to call time on forgiveness long before that point. And so today, if your heart is so inclined, turn to God. Ask Jesus to forgive you afresh.

(8:15 – 8:43)

Take your sin, your failures, your stubbornness, your love of sinning, and take them to Jesus, because the glory and wonder of the gospel is that even though your sin is inexcusable, it’s not unforgivable. So confess, ask. I know that those hands that were held out to that obstinate people are still held out to you today.

(8:46 – 9:23)

Now, of course, some of us are thinking, and I guess the devil wants us all to think, that’s just too easy. I mean, that’s going to cheapen forgiveness, isn’t it? I mean, what’s the disincentive in that to stop sinning? Free from the law, oh, blessed condition, I can carry on sinning and still have remission. Well, if we’re thinking that, we’ve misunderstood the gospel, haven’t we? Because free grace neither cheapens forgiveness or minimises sin.

(9:25 – 9:57)

Of course, there’s just the danger that because forgiveness is free, we might value it less than we ought to. You know those discussions you have when you’re putting on some kind of ministry event and somebody says, well, you know, we’ve got enough money to cover the cost, so why don’t we make it free? And then somebody else in the meeting says, well, if you make it free, people won’t value it, so we’re better to charge something. Well, that might be good marketing for a men’s breakfast, but it’s not the gospel.

(10:00 – 11:00)

Rather, the amazing gospel truth of grace and freedom offered without cost should make us not less grateful, but all the more overwhelmed, all the more motivated to honour Jesus in every way we can. Because forgiveness isn’t an end in itself, but it’s the doorway back to God. It’s the doorway back to a restored fellowship with the God who made you, with the One who loves you.

And in being reconnected to Him, we can start to become the people we were created to be, people like Jesus Himself. And so, if you think the gospel is just some kind of cheap get-out-of-jail card, you haven’t understood it. You haven’t understood Jesus, and you haven’t understood the point of your life.

(11:02 – 12:51)

But be assured, if you feel your sin, if you feel your sin and you long to be at peace with God, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Well, there’s also a wider ministry application to this new beginning at the start of chapter 3. I guess some people here will know of or maybe even remember Jeffrey Bull. Jeffrey Bull was a missionary who in the late 1940s went out to China, and in 1950 was working in Tibet when the Chinese army invaded.

And Jeffrey was arrested by the Chinese. He was accused of being a spy. He was imprisoned.

He was put in solitary confinement. He was tortured. He was made to go through Marxist re-education until three years later, he was unceremoniously dumped back into the hands of the British in Hong Kong.

And in a subsequent book he wrote on Jonah called The City and the Sign, he wrote this, I too know what it is to have been expelled from the belly of a beast, to stand on a beach, a shadow of the man I once was, and to hear God’s call come a second time. Jeffrey went on to serve in Borneo, around the world. He died in Largs in 1999.

(12:52 – 14:19)

Now none of us here, I guess, have had that kind of experience or are likely to have that kind of experience. But perhaps in, just in a lesser way, you’ve kind of dropped back, dropped out of ministry and active service. Maybe you had a bad experience, you just got jaded, or just life and all its busyness kind of pulled you away.

And maybe you feel the loss of that. Maybe you’re sensing that God hasn’t done with you yet. Maybe this morning God’s Spirit is stirring in you, prompting you to re-engage again with ministry, to go again.

Maybe not to Borneo, but if it’s not too trite, our church cafe needs a leader. There’s a mission field there. There’s Easter work to be done.

But whatever it might be, take heart from verse 3, it’s never too late to get back in the saddle and start afresh. Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Well, we really should talk about Jonah at some point this morning.

(14:22 – 19:04)

His commission, well, it’s just the same as it was in chapter 1 verse 2, go to Nineveh and proclaim the message I give you. And this time Jonah obeys and heads to that great, violent, and notorious city. Just a little technical sidebar here, but the size of the city there in verse 3, it took three days to go through it, literally three days’ journey in breadth.

And obviously if it did literally take three days to walk across, you’d be talking of a city that was 60 miles in diameter, which would be beyond the size of any ancient city. So I think the expression as NIV takes it is really just an expression for it was a big old place. The other alternative, of course, it’s referring to the wider Nineveh region, you can take your pick.

But that aside, what was the message that Jonah was to take to Nineveh? Well, it’s just expressed in eight English words in the NIV. I believe it’s just five in the original Hebrew, so it’s a pretty concise, blunt message. Verse 4, 40 more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.

It’s a message of warning, a message of impending judgement. But crucially, as verse 2 makes it clear, it was God’s message, the message I give you. Now, of course, preaching that kind of message, a message of judgement is rarely going to be a crowd pleaser.

The objections are well rehearsed, feels a bit crass, it’s a bit threatening, it’s a bit negative, bit of a mood killer. So the pressure for preachers is keep it light, keep it upbeat, focus on the positives. And of course, we want to be reminded of the positives.

After all, the ultimate hope offered in the gospel is supremely positive and glorious. But if we want to be biblically balanced, we’re going to have to preach both. Reading in Deuteronomy recently, that bit where Moses takes the twelve tribes, or God tells Moses to take the twelve tribes and to split them into two groups of six, and six of them to go and stand in Mount Gerizim, and six of them to go to stand in Mount Ebal, and the six on Mount Gerizim are to pronounce the blessings of the covenant, and the six on Mount Ebal are to pronounce the curses on disobedience or falling away from the covenant.

And it made me smile at the time because I thought, yeah, you can pretty much still divide the church like that, can’t you? There are those whose focus is always going to be on the blessings of obedience, and there are those whose focus always tends to be on the consequences of disobedience. And temperamentally this morning, you might be more of a Mount Gerizim person, or you might be more of a Mount Ebal person, but we need to hear both because we can’t get away from the fact if we want to take the Bible at all seriously, the gospel contains a huge element of warning because hell is a reality. God is just.

He cannot lie. He will not stand by and leave evil unchecked and unpunished. He cannot just ignore sin because injustice is a sin.

No sin, all sin, our sins included, need to be accounted for. And that, of course, is the problem that the gospel wonderfully and uniquely solves, the great question of how can God forgive sin but also be just? It’s a conundrum that is only answered at the cross because at the cross, as Paul explains in Romans, God was able to be just in punishing sin, but because Jesus stood in the place of sinners and paid that penalty, God can count those who have bound themselves to Christ as free to go. But outside of Christ, people need to know that things aren’t okay.

(19:06 – 19:53)

They need to know that sin is a real problem, and undealt with, it will condemn them. And as tough as it was for Jonah and as uncomfortable as it will often be for us, we don’t do anybody any favours if we gloss over the great problem at the heart of humanity. Indeed, the problem which is the source of every other problem in our world.

This is God’s message. People might not like it, but it’s His message, not ours. And so, Jonah preaches God’s message, and guess what? Something astonishing happens.

(19:54 – 20:39)

Verse 5, the Ninevites believed God. Whoa, hold on, hold on. That doesn’t just happen.

These are hardened, brutal pagans, but yet such is the conviction that Jonah’s message is true, they’re stopped in their tracks. They call a fast, they put on sackcloth, a sign of contrition and mourning, verse 5. Even the king, verse 6, on hearing about the message, gets off his throne and sits in the dust. He orders that everybody prays, verse 8, and they stop their violence in the hope that God might relent from bringing judgement upon them.

(20:45 – 21:07)

Some books in Jonah describe this as the greatest revival in history. Some others have argued about, well, how deep did this conversion really go? Maybe for some, it’s just Nineveh cleaning up its act a little bit. Probably a lot of people just did what the king told them to do.

(21:08 – 21:49)

We don’t read that people converted to Judaism here, although maybe some of them did. But actually, the fact that within Nineveh, perhaps people responded in different ways, some more superficially, perhaps some very deeply, it’s just the parable of the four soils, isn’t it? The reaction you’ll always get to God’s words. Remember at the Franklin Graham event last year, sitting there in the hydro and seeing those hundreds of people that went out at the end to the front when the appeal was made? And no doubt, some of them were caught up in the moment.

(21:50 – 22:30)

Some were just following along, tagging behind their friends. Some were just very confused and didn’t really know what they were doing. But in among them, no doubt, souls about to receive eternal life.

But in all events, this reaction is a remarkable and stunning turn of events. And it should give us confidence and encouragement to share God’s Word ourselves, to remember that God’s Word is powerful. It can cut through in even the most unpromising situations.

(22:32 – 22:56)

People who hear God’s Word simply explained, can and do respond to it positively. And if God’s Word can cut through to the Ninevites, it can cut through in 21st century Britain. Let me encourage you that there are signs that that is increasingly happening.

(22:58 – 23:54)

Let me say that I’m more hopeful and encouraged about what’s going on in churches and the work of the gospel than I think I have been in my lifetime. Certainly post-COVID, I detect a new optimism among the churches that I visit and get feedback from. More and more churches reporting growth.

More and more churches reporting new attenders, conversions, baptisms. Many cases, the numbers are small.

It’s twos, threes, fives, sixes, but replicated across the board. More churches reporting space issues, outgrowing buildings. There are signs of a greater sense of interest and openness towards Christianity than there has been for some time.

(23:55 – 25:35)

The Times in February reported Gen Zs are more religious and more open than their Millennial and Gen X and Baby Boomer predecessors. Churches reporting people just turning up out of the blue, uninvited, no connections. Bible sales in the UK up 87% since 2019.

And the collapse of atheism with its heyday in the noughties, very much a kind of Millennial phenomena, has led to a new openness, a new questioning in places, in the media, among intellectuals, in sports areas. Evangelical Alliance, I believe, are going to produce a report coming out this Easter called The Quiet Revival, because things are happening. Helped, of course, by the huge impact of internationals.

Hundreds of new churches springing up across Scotland. The Redeemed Christian Church of God, very much the Greggs of church planting. Wherever you go, you’ll find one.

The Harper study last year, 41% of people attending broadly evangelical churches in our own city are from ethnic minority backgrounds, having a big impact in established churches. Now, having said all that, we’re still a tiny slice of the population, 2%, 3%. We’ve still got a mountain to climb.

(25:37 – 28:11)

But strangely and wonderfully, I think we’re in a moment where faith doesn’t just feel quite so freaky anymore, as maybe it did 10 or 20 years ago, where if you said you were a Christian or you had faith, you went to church, people would just think, oh, don’t talk about that. That’s weird. The needle is twitching.

But back to Nineveh as we finish. When God’s Word first came to Jonah, he ran away in defiance. But when God’s Word comes to the Ninevites, they get down on their knees.

And their humility is very affecting, isn’t it, there in verse 9? Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from His fierce anger so that we will not perish. It’s an acknowledgement that they can’t presume or expect that God will spare them, but there’s no excuses here. There’s no, well, we’ve not been that bad, or well, what about the Moabites? Rather, they recognise that the only thing that can come between them and the judgement they deserve is God’s compassion.

In fact, some have argued such as this remarkable turnaround that Jonah’s message must have been more than those five blunt Hebrew words, that he must have told them to repent. He must have told them about forgiveness. I think I’m more inclined to go with the people who think he probably just gave the most minimal word that he could.

We’ll see in chapter 4, despite the repentance, Jonah’s still holding out that the judgement will come. He doesn’t feel like someone who’s looking to do Ninevite any favours beyond the bare minimum. So, whereas Jonah grudged God’s compassion, the Ninevites cast themselves upon it.

They could only hope that God was more tenderhearted than his prophet, and they were right to do so. God will judge sin. He must.

We thank him for his justice, but God’s desire is like the Ninevites. We will turn from our evil ways. We will humble ourselves, and we will turn to those held out hands, those hands held out on the cross.

(28:12 – 29:17)

Let me just read some verses from an old Redemption Songs hymn. Depth of mercy, can there be? Mercy still reserved for me. Can my God his wrath forbear? Me the chief of sinners spare.

I have long withstood his grace, long provoked him to his face, would not hearken to his calls, grieved him by a thousand falls. Yet for me the Saviour stands, shows his wounds and spreads his hands. God is love, I know, I feel.

Jesus weeps and loves me still. If I rightly read thy heart, if thou all compassionate art, bow thine ear and mercy bow, pardon and accept me now. And God bless these thoughts from his word.

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