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.

The post The God of Second Chances – Jonah 3 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Morning folks, good to be here with you this morning. We are continuing in a series that we started last week in the Old Testament part of the Bible, the book of Jonah. If you want to read our passage with me, you’ll find that on page 928 of these Red Pew Bibles, so just help yourself to one of those and look up page 928.

And we’re going to read just from the end of chapter 1, and we’re going to read the whole of chapter 2. For those who weren’t here last week, who missed the opening chapter, we’re looking at the story of this Old Testament prophet Jonah. And in chapter 1 last week, we saw how God had called on Jonah to go to Nineveh, a great but notorious city in his day. But rather than obeying that call, we saw that Jonah decided to hot-foot it as far as he could in the opposite direction.

He got on a ship, sailed to the other end of the Mediterranean Sea. But as he was trying to do that, God sent a storm which threatened to sink the ship. And realising that the storm was because of him, because of his disobedience, Jonah persuaded the sailors to throw him overboard, at which point the storm subsided and Jonah disappeared beneath the waves.

So, let’s read from chapter 1, verse 17. Now, the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. From inside the fish, Jonah prayed to the Lord his God.

(1:47 – 8:03)

He said, in my distress, I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From the deep in the realm of the dead, I called for help, and you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the current swirled about me.

All your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, I have been banished from your sight, yet I will look again towards your holy temple. The engulfing waters threatened me.

The deep surrounded me. Seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains, I sank down.

The earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, Lord, my God, brought my life up from the pit. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.

Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. But with shouts of grateful praise, I will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed, I will make good.

I will say, salvation comes from the Lord. And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.” This is the Word of God. Well, we come to what I think is fair to say the best known part of Jonah, but also the most bizarre.

It’s the bit, I guess, that causes many people just to write off Jonah as a kind of fairy story. I’m the only Christian in my family, and I guess that many of my family would just think this is where Christians really have just gone to la-la land if they believe this kind of stuff. I mean, what could be more preposterous than a man being swallowed by a whale or a great fish and then surviving three days only to be coughed up on a beach somewhere still in one piece? So, let us deal with the issue of the great fish there in chapter 1 verse 17.

It is a very eye-catching, a very outlandish event, that as Jonah sank into the sea, a giant fish swallowed him whole and entombed him for three days. Some people have tried to find some precedence for this. There’s an incident which is often quoted, 1891 off the Falkland Islands, where a man apparently was cut out of a whale’s stomach.

Unfortunately, such stories are often very contested, aren’t always very verifiable. Others give a lot of time to calculating how big a big fish’s mouth would need to be, the temperature inside a whale’s body, the oxygen and acid levels, et cetera, et cetera. Well, it all leads me at least to one conclusion, that such an event to have been true must have been a miracle.

That shouldn’t surprise us. The Bible is full of otherwise impossible events which were made possible because of divine intervention. Of course, if your presupposition in life is that miracles can’t happen, that only things that conform to the regular pattern of natural events are possible, then you’re going to dismiss Jonah and this story.

But you also dismiss the parting of the Red Sea, three men surviving in a red-hot furnace, an axe head floating in water, or the possibility of a virgin birth. After all, Jonah and this great fish are far from being the most outlandish event in our Bibles. I remember listening to an interview a while ago with the comedian Frank Skinner, who has an interesting story of faith himself.

And in it, Frank Skinner noted his amusement when people say to him, I believe in God, I think God probably exists, but I can’t believe all that miraculous stuff in the Bible. That is that they’re apparently okay with the idea of a presumably all-powerful, all-present God, the source potentially of the whole universe of our very existence, but yet they can’t believe that such a God could turn water into wine. And so, yes, let me say this morning, right at the start, as with Jesus walking in water, feeding 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish, I believe that Jonah was literally swallowed by a great fish and survived for three days and three nights, but equally, I believe it was a miracle.

And in that sense, we don’t have to try and over-explain it. So I think one of the big problems we often have as 21st century Westerners, when we read this story, the big problem we have is, let me say, Pinocchio, if you know the film. We can’t get by, can we, that Walt Disney image of Pinocchio sitting in the whale’s stomach in a hollow chamber with a little wooden table and a candle.

And of course, if we imagine the story in those terms, we’re going to assume it’s some kind of fairy story rather than the horrific experience that it must have been. I mean, the experience of drowning is bad enough. At Pollock Shaw’s Baths down the road, now demolished in 1979, I nearly drowned.

I came very close, I think, to losing my life. And that was a horrific experience. But then, on top of that, to be entombed in the dark, suffocating gut of an animal, well, that’s just nightmarish.

But actually, as much as this big fish fascinates us, the book itself is quite minimalist about it. It’s just the basic facts. Jonah is swallowed.

(8:03 – 10:35)

He prays, and is then spat out. Why? Because the fish isn’t the point of this story. In one sense, it’s just a vehicle that God is using to move Jonah on.

Rather, the Bible’s bigger interest is on how this event is going to affect Jonah’s heart. What will Jonah do at this point as the bottom literally falls out of his life? When every other possible self-help option has been taken away from him, he does the only thing you can do in that situation. He cries out to God.

You see, in times of crises, when all of life’s support are starting to fall away, it might be that God is simply trying to get your attention. He’s calling out to us. He’s reminding us of the truth that we so easily forget when things are going well, that nothing outside of him can ultimately last, ultimately save us.

That at the end of the game, it’s you and God, and nothing else is going to count. Perhaps to emphasise that point, you notice in his prayer as we read it, that Jonah speaks out against those, verse 8, who cling to worthless idols, and says that in doing so, they turn away from God’s love for them. Last week, we noted that idols, of course, in the Bible aren’t just little pagan statues, but biblically, idols can take many forms.

An idol is anything that becomes a surrogate for God in your life, anything that we look to to be and to provide what only God can be and ultimately provide for us. Here’s a little thought exercise for you. Think of this table, these bullet points on the screen, they’ll come up in a second, illustrations of what we would want as Christians, God to be in our lives, if God is the centre of our lives, that God gives purpose, meaning, and fulfilment to my life, that God governs the way I act.

(10:37 – 10:49)

God is a focal point around which my life revolves. God is often in my thoughts, and I get excited about God. Thinking about God comforts me when I feel down.

(10:50 – 11:32)

I read about God, I love to talk about God, I desire more of God. That’s what we’d want God to be, the position to have in our lives, that He ought to have as our Creator and sustainer. But supposing we score out God there, and we insert something else in those spaces on the next slide.

Academic success gives purpose, meaning, and fulfilment to my life. Popularity governs the way I act. My partner is a focal point around which my life revolves.

(11:33 – 12:20)

Money is often in my thoughts, and I get excited about money. Thinking about my career comforts me when I feel down, or whatever else it might be. You see how all those things can become functional gods in our life, can take the place of God? That’s biblical idolatry.

And Jonah was perhaps starting to realise, it was starting to dawn on him that maybe he had some idols of his own. His prayer in the darkness being a first admission of that. For Jonah, maybe his idol was his pedigree Jewish identity, that he was better than all those pagans out there.

(12:21 – 13:21)

Maybe it was being a prophet, the special status that gave him. Maybe it was popularity that he was affirmed in what he had been doing in Israel. But of course, in the depths, none of that can help him now.

All those things are irrelevant, gone. You see, it’s a basic truth in life, that the only unshakeable security that you and I can ever have is God. Anything other than God, no matter how great and how good, and all those things are legitimate in the right way, anything other than God can never be enough.

If your security and your comfort in life is in your bank account, it can disappear. Financial crash, a scam, folly. If it’s in your looks or your fitness, they’re going to wither away.

(13:22 – 13:42)

If it’s in your family or a romantic partner, then circumstances can snatch them from you. Anything other than God is just not big enough, because death will ultimately take them all. And Jonah is taking a crash course on learning that lesson.

(13:44 – 17:10)

So, let’s look at his prayer a little bit more closely. In the short time we have, you’ll see it’s kind of written out like a psalm, if you’re familiar with the book of Psalms and the Bible. No doubt, it’s a kind of later summary of many of the things that Jonah prayed for during that ordeal.

But it gives us a pretty vivid description of his peril. He is a man descending to the depths, helpless and trapped, verse 5 and 6. The engulfing waters threatened me, the deeps surrounded me, seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down, the earth beneath barred me in forever.

He is buffeted and overwhelmed by the sea, verse 3. You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the current swirled about me. Some people think perhaps this is primarily Jonah’s prayer while nearly drowning. So, actually in one sense, the fish itself was the answer to that prayer.

So, as Jonah flounders in the sea, God provides the fish to come as a rescue. And that kind of fits, I suppose, a bit with the description of his distress. This is a description that feels a bit more like being in the sea than in a fish.

But that can only be one part of the story, because we’ll see at the end, Jonah’s full deliverance doesn’t come until the fish vomits him up. But let’s note just one or two features of the prayer, and that is that Jonah pushes towards God despite feeling abandoned. You see, Jonah isn’t in this situation because of bad luck.

This isn’t just an unfortunate turn of events. Rather, Jonah is very aware that this is God’s doing. You notice the language there in verse 3, you hurled me.

These are your waves and breakers. Yes, Jonah had been disobedient, but the outcome was determined by God. Now, of course, not every disobedient person ends up being thrown off a ship.

But Jonah is acknowledging that God is ultimately sovereign over his life. We saw that last week. God is never not 100 percent in control.

And that recognition is a good place to start when we come before God in prayer, to recognise and for us all to recognise this morning that we are where we are, whatever your situation is, because God has determined it. You might be in a worse place than you feel you deserve to be in this morning. You might be in a better one, but God has put you there.

If your life is good, bad, average, going well, tanking, God has determined it. And that might feel a bit unsettling. I mean, why would God put me in this difficult situation? But actually, let me suggest it’s our best comfort, because if God put me here, that He’s not just a bystander.

He’s not just one of the crowd hoping that things might work out okay for me. But this is a situation that is firmly under His control. If He caused it, He can change it.

(17:12 – 18:23)

And also, if He put me there, because God is good and kind, then there must be some good that He wants to bring out from this situation. You see, God is never callous. He’s never uncaring.

He’s never reckless. The God of the Bible never drops the ball. So, wherever we are, we must be there because God has a good purpose in it.

When the Bible famously says, all things work together for the good of those who love Him, the word all in that sentence means all. All things, the good, the bad, the ugly, every situation. And we need to hold on to that in times of trouble, don’t we? To cry out to God, God, wherever I am now, whatever I’m facing, I need to trust you and to remember that God is always, always working in our lives as He was in Jonah for good and for blessing, however counterintuitive that might feel at times.

(18:24 – 18:48)

So, whatever the situation, the best thing that we can do is to keep pushing towards God, which is mercifully what Jonah does. Verse 4, I feel I’ve been banished, but I’ll look towards your holy temple. Verse 7, when my life was ebbing away, it was you I remembered.

(18:50 – 19:35)

But in the darkness, perhaps the biggest breakthrough of all for Jonah is that he grasps grace. You see, Jonah’s time in the fish isn’t going to be the end of the story for Jonah, we’ve still got two chapters to go, but it is a very significant breakthrough point because it lays the foundation that God is going to bring him back to later on in the story, the foundation of grace, the truth about God’s grace. Because we’re going to continue to unpack this, but it seems very clear by now that Jonah has something of an issue with what we would call today self-righteousness.

(19:36 – 20:25)

He looks down on the wicked Ninevites, that’s why he doesn’t want to go there. He’s appalled at the thought that God might have mercy upon those terrible pagan people. Whereas he, as presumably a clean-living, orthodox Jewish prophet, well, God ought to be favourable to me.

It’s the thinking of someone who thinks that God owes them something. Deep down, even if we never admit it, the belief that I should be a little bit more deserving of God’s favour than all those terrible other people out there. Of course, I’m not perfect, Lord, but I’m not one of those terrible Ninevites.

(20:26 – 21:07)

I give my tithes, I regularly attend the temple, I read the Torah and all the rest. So, fair’s fair God, I’m making the effort, you owe me something in return, surely, surely that’s the deal. And in doing so, Jonah, along with everybody who has that mindset, forfeits God’s grace.

They lose the unconditional security of God’s love. They become tit-for-tat believers. I keep God happy, He’ll keep me happy, which, of course, is a recipe for insecurity and despair.

(21:09 – 21:35)

Because we’ll never be quite sure that we’ve done enough. And when we mess up, as we will, we’ll have no peace. It’s only when we grasp grace, verse 9, that salvation is of the Lord, that is, it is His unconditional gift that we can be released from that yo-yo of guilt, anxiety, and spiritual exhaustion.

(21:36 – 22:26)

Only when we accept that salvation comes from the Lord, that God is the one who accepts us fully and unwaveringly, not on the basis of our efforts or our self-generated righteousness, but because, as we’ll see, because of Jesus Christ, Jesus on the cross being treated as we deserve to be so that we can be treated as He deserved to be, only then, only when we grasp that grace, that gift, that provision of God, will we find the peace and security that our souls yearn for. And Jonah is starting, it seems, to get it, at least to get the principle. It’s going to need a lot more working out in his life as it does for all of us.

(22:27 – 24:32)

Salvation comes from the Lord, not my efforts, not my church or Jewish pedigree, not my Christian CV, not my charity giving, not my nice guyness, but God’s undeserved gift. And in that moment, verse 10, he is released to go out and serve the Lord with joy and thankfulness. We will never serve God with joy if we don’t grasp grace.

But before we leave chapter 2 and Jonah’s time in the belly of this great fish, we cannot go to Jesus, both because Jesus is the key to that salvation and that grace, but also because this incident takes us straight to Jesus, if we know our Bibles, because it was Jonah and the fish that Jesus Himself pointed to when speaking of Himself. Matthew 12, verses 38 to 41, the words are on the screen. And some of the Pharisees, the religious leaders of Jesus’ day and the teachers of the law said to Him, teacher we want to see a sign from you.

Jesus answered, a wicked and adulterous generation asked for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgement with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah.

And now something greater than Jonah is here. Context is Jesus being asked for a sign. Jesus, prove yourself.

(24:35 – 24:53)

Jesus, of course, had performed many miracles by this time, but yet another is demanded of Him. And Jesus sees this as a rather shallow, thrill-seeking request. He’s not going to allow His ministry to be turned into a kind of performance act for people.

(24:54 – 25:13)

So He tells the Pharisees, the religious leaders, those who are looking for a sign, if they want a sign, look to the sign of the prophet Jonah. Now, of course, Jonah and Jesus are very, very different in lots of ways. Not least, one was hard-hearted and disobedient.

(25:14 – 25:26)

The other was loving and self-giving. Jonah was buried metaphorically, if you like, because of his disobedience. Jesus is going to be buried because of His obedience.

(25:28 – 27:34)

Crucially, though, Jesus compares Jonah’s three days and three nights in the fish to His own entombment, His own burial. Just as Jonah came back from a virtual grave, so Jesus would come back from a literal grave. Now, we don’t know what part Jonah’s resurrection in that kind of sense played in his ministry, if any.

It’s not mentioned when we get to Nineveh that Jonah mentions it. He might have done, he might not have done. But whether he mentioned it or not, the result was that the hard, violent pagans of Nineveh responded positively to his message and repented on hearing, perhaps, the worst ever prophet, Jonah.

In contrast, religious Israel, with all its knowledge of the law and the temple, heard the greatest of all the prophets, the prophet Jesus Christ, and they rejected and crucified him. No wonder Jesus says the Ninevites would rise up and condemn that generation at the final judgement. But here’s the point for us as we close this morning.

We’re not relying on a terrible prophet who may or may not tell us about a miraculous episode in his life. We stand on this side of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, an event witnessed and recorded by a host of witnesses, detailed in the Bible, the event that however hard people try, there just simply isn’t a more plausible explanation to the empty tomb, to the transformation of Jesus’ followers and their lives, and to the explosive spread of Christianity. You see, if you want a sign, if you want authentication about Christianity, about the claims of Jesus Christ, there is nothing bigger than the resurrection.

(27:36 – 28:12)

Because, of course, the resurrection is the supreme validation of all that Jesus claimed to be and taught. Humans in his day might have rejected his claims and crucified him, but three days later the supreme judge of the universe struck down that verdict and raised him from the dead. It’s why the apostle Paul later on will write to the Roman church and the Corinthian church and is prepared to hang Christianity lock, stock, and barrel on one thing.

(28:14 – 28:39)

The resurrection, if that hook doesn’t hold it, then nothing else matters. We can go home. It’s why the late Tim Keller wrote in his book, The Reason for God This, he said, Sometimes people approach me and say, I really struggle with this aspect of Christian teaching.

(28:40 – 29:35)

I like this part of Christian belief, but I don’t think I can accept that part. I usually respond, if Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all he said. If he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? Where do we go this morning? If God has pricked your conscience or your curiosity, we’d love to talk to you more about these things.

We’re hoping to run a course after Easter, 321 course, where people with curious minds, with questions about Christianity can get together at a convenient time and ask their questions and think through the implications of this. Talk about the resurrection, talk about Jonah, talk about whatever you want to talk about, but explore more Christianity. That’s the way forward.

(29:36 – 30:22)

Listening to an interview with Elizabeth Oldfield, fascinating broadcaster and journalist and author, and she has an interesting story of having been involved in church and Christianity, becoming a very staunch atheist and now coming back to faith as a Christian. Familiar story and increasingly familiar story in these days. And she talked about if you want to explore Christianity, if you want to really understand it, if you’re one of the people who thinks Jonah and the whale, that’s la la land, what are these Christians going on about? Or you’ve got struggles about the miraculous, or you wonder if God even exists and how can all these things be true? She said you need to use the right mode of attention.

(30:23 – 30:46)

What she meant by that was you have to look at it through the lens that God has given us. It’s rather like somebody saying, talking to you about bacteria, and you’re saying, I don’t believe in bacteria because I can’t see it. I can’t see it.

I don’t know what it is. Doesn’t make any sense to me. And you say, but you need to look at it through a microscope.

(30:46 – 31:10)

You’re not going to see it by having your arms folded and sitting over there. You have to come and look through it through this lens. And how do we look at Christianity? How are we going to explore whether these things might be true or not? Let me suggest you need to start reading the Bible, looking at it for yourself, open your heart and pray and ask, come to church.

(31:11 – 31:24)

And through those modes of attention, like Elizabeth Oldfield, you might start to suddenly realise there’s a reality there. There’s a truth there. There’s a substance there, which you’re never going to see and understand standing over there.

(31:25 – 31:45)

So, let me invite you warmly to come to 321 course, to come back to Greenview, to talk to somebody here. There’s nothing more important, nothing more significant, nothing greater for us to wrestle with than the claims of Jesus Christ. Let’s pray.

(31:53 – 32:39)

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We thank you for that greatest of all signs, that declaration from heaven that Jesus was the Son of God, that he was the one who alone can open the door of heaven to our souls and bring us into a right relationship with you to free us from striving and self-righteousness, from the yo-yo of spiritual exhaustion, from idols that are worthless and turn us away from your love, that in him and in him alone we can come to the true and living God and know you as our Father, be at peace with you and live in grace. Father, thank you for your words.

(32:40 – 32:43)

Bless it to our hearts, we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The post Back from the Dead – Jonah 2 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Thank you, David. It’s a great hymn to sing that, isn’t it, at the start of this service and any service. Sets us in the right frame, doesn’t it? We live every moment coram Deo.

It’s maybe not a phrase you’ve heard before, I only heard it a few years ago myself, but it means we live life before God, under His authority, and for His glory. So all of life’s habits matter, even the ordinary everyday ones. We might not think that all habits shape our sanctification, becoming more like Jesus, but in reality everything is spiritual.

Every action is done in God’s world, and we are accountable to Him, even in habits, as we’ve been saying over the weeks, like driving or eating. For Paul writes, whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Some mistakenly see a spiritual-secular divide, believing that only spiritual things matter to God, while ordinary secular or material things do not.

But God cares about all of our life. He made us embodied souls. We live in a material and spiritual world.

We often reduce the spiritual part of our life to a small slice of life. You can see there a little graphic there. I did some calculations on Excel.

That’s the workings there you see in front of you. If we reduce spiritual life to things like Bible reading, praying, church worship, ministry, evangelism, maybe coming along to church, as we say, maybe two Sundays, maybe involvement in some sort of ministry week by week, that’s about 5% of our week. Meanwhile, the other 95% is spent on ordinary activities – work, school, chores, entertainment, exercise, shopping, cooking, eating, sleeping.

We can wrongly assume this ordinary stuff matters less in God’s kingdom because it doesn’t really feel spiritual. So work, like raising our children or being a teacher or an IT programmer or caring for loved ones, may feel good and meaningful, yet we sense somehow it’s less spiritual. When we think this way, we risk neglecting our habits in everyday life and assume they are less significant.

But all of life is lived before God, and every habit matters. In Hebrew, there’s no word for spiritual because in their worldview, all of life is spiritual. When Paul uses the term in the New Testament, it literally means animated by the Spirit of God.

(3:12 – 4:49)

It’s the Greek word pneuma. It refers to this idea of driving, empowering the presence of God in our lives, enabling us to do the good works that we are created for, including the ordinary habits of ordinary day life. And as believers, we want to do these good works that we are created to do, but often we fail for many reasons.

Sinful hearts, weak bodies, personal histories, the environment that we operate in, the actions of others all play their role. Sometimes we make excuses or we sabotage ourselves. We believe lies in ourselves said to us.

Yet we’re to keep learning, keep growing, and maturing by God’s grace from start to finish. And God gives us habit as part of this gracious provision for every part of life to bring wise, flourishing order out of the chaos of our lives, to please Him, to love others, and ultimately bless ourselves. And we want to wisely invest our energies in what matters most.

The diagram shows what I understand to be the biblical priorities. It is God first, then personal, then family, work, and social. There are various ways to group these up.

I think this is a good way to do it. God’s wisdom teaches that by loving Him first and others second, we’re blessed. This contrasts with the world’s view, doesn’t it? A sort of self-first mindset.

(4:49 – 5:00)

But I want us to be clear when I talk about personal. Prioritising personal doesn’t mean loving self. It’s not what I mean by that word.

(5:02 – 6:42)

It means we are responsible and we are accountable. Secular books on habit often focus on self-improvement, you know, the better you. While not inherently wrong, the Bible calls us to love God and put others’ interests before our own and to do nothing from selfish ambition.

So we cultivate good, wise personal habits, and we remove the selfish, the sinful, the unhelpful, harmful ones because they affect our ability to love God and love others. Personal habits aren’t just for us. When we develop good, helpful habits, we function better and we bless others.

And if we neglect them, then that negatively impacts us and every area of our life and others too that we are relating with. Of course, we’re called to cultivate the fruit of the Spirit and lead ourselves well. And we are to do that primarily before we think about leading others.

Hence, personal comes after spiritual. But let’s understand these things a bit more. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 10 gives us the biblical principle that we are accountable personally.

It is about relating to yourself. David mentioned that in his prayer. Thank you, David.

It’s how we relate to ourselves. It includes our hearts, of course. We’ve been thinking about that since the beginning.

(6:43 – 7:42)

So our minds are in view, how you understand your identity, who you are, what you are about actually matters. We might say of someone, she has confidence in her abilities or he has really low expectations of himself. You get what I mean? What you believe about yourself and respond to those thoughts about yourself actually matters.

But what you believe about God says about you also matters, as well as what you think other people think and believe about you too. When we think about hearts, it must also include what we personally want. And the opposite of that is what we don’t want, what we fear, and what we personally make decisions about, the choices we make, all complex, all working together, thinking, desiring, choices.

(7:43 – 8:49)

But God made us to live in a personal body and personal habits are to do with practical, ordinary things like eating and sleeping and living within our means and the use of our time and so on. These habits have significant effect on our personal life and they affect the lives of others around us in our family, in our workplace, in our churches, in our neighbourhoods. So we are personally responsible.

Personal responsibilities are the things that God has called us to do that we cannot give to someone else. My words, my behaviours, my actions, my efforts, my mistakes, my ideas, my consequences, these are all my responsibility. As I live out my role, and there are multiple, I’m a parent, I’m a brother, I’m a husband, I’m a child, I’m a neighbour, I’m a brother and sister in the Lord, I’m a child of God.

(8:50 – 9:43)

Same for you. God’s Word directs us in these roles, so 2 Timothy 3 reminds us all Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the servant of God, which is you and me, may be thoroughly equipped for every good work, which is in and outside of this building. We are to avoid the danger of not fulfilling our responsibilities.

You know, we recognise lots of reasons to perhaps delay actions, to put off, to avoid. We maybe fear certain things, we think perhaps we lack skills, or we simply decide that others will pick up our responsibilities. And of course, the other danger is that we assume too much responsibility, where we try to do what others are responsible for, or what God can only do.

(9:46 – 10:58)

We also acknowledge our personal limitations. We have limitations. Some of us might not realise what they are.

Some of us are all too aware. But we can be tempted to be like God, the fourth member of the Trinity, where we try to be everywhere and do everything and know everything. But we’re to honestly assess our personal limitations before God and with the help of others.

I think the help of others will come quicker than you realise. And we’re to grow in because we can deceive ourselves. There’s also the danger of allowing others to think that we can be everywhere, that we can know everything, and that we can sort everything for them.

For whatever reason, we can allow other people to perhaps persuade us or tempt us that we’re needed to be whatever it is for them. Yet maybe they too are to learn their limits. So we’re slower perhaps to just jump in and be the rescuer, to be the Saviour.

(11:00 – 13:02)

Maybe they too need to realise that only God can be with them anywhere and everywhere. And they too need to learn to believe that God will make things beautiful in His time, and that ultimately God knows all things, and they too are to entrust themselves and their situations to Him. Of course, Scripture calls us to come alongside each other.

We are to help, to care, to love, and these choices require growing in wisdom. So we ask how much time, how much energy and resources should we give before it becomes too much? Well, that varies by person and by season of life, stage of life. Self-care does mean that we ensure we sleep right, we eat right, we exercise, we set boundaries to protect, and we allow time for rest.

But we must be aware of a worldview which says, let’s focus on me time and treat ourselves because we deserve it. Paul tells the Romans to be living sacrifices, but they’re not to be dead ones. We have to give of ourselves in sustainable ways.

We respond to God’s mercy in Christ, but we’re not to love others manipulatively to get something back from them in return. Rather, the biblical concept is stewardship. A steward manages the valuable resources of another, resources they don’t own on behalf of the true owner.

1 Peter 4 speaks of this, says, each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. This too requires wisdom. We must use our God-given time, money, skills, energy, but at the same time, we’re to preserve them too.

(13:03 – 14:27)

So, we hold them with open hands before God, and we ask God, how do we use each one well and wisely? And there are no simple rules with these things. It’s not you just need to rest first, then give, and it’s not sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice. Some things are black and white to be sure, but many things are grey.

Some of us just want clarity, and they want to know the rules, what to do, what not to do. And some of us like it black and white because, well, that makes things easier. But the grey of wisdom is hard work.

Some things God means for us to wrestle with and struggle with our tendencies, our weaknesses, and strengths before Him and with the help of others so we mature and grow in wisdom. But let’s break this down a bit further, shall we, with just some examples. By their very nature, these are highly personal.

I’m mindful too that there are things here relating to our bodies that we don’t have responsibility and accountability for. Our bodies are complex, and we battle disease and weaknesses of all sorts. Our brains can be wired differently for all sorts of reasons, and we suffer in different ways within our bodies.

(14:27 – 16:07)

So we speak about these things, or as we speak about these things, I want you to put your focus on what you are responsible for and you are accountable for. Remembering that personal performance or efficiency or training our bodies and so on is not the main thing. There are good in these things, but we cultivate personal habits from hearts that seek to honour God and love others, which in turn blesses us.

And we remember that we live by grace and in God’s strength. And we remember too that there are things that are for us that are good or not, or helpful or not, and they are not necessarily practises to be imposed on someone else. I said a lot about that in our foundation talks.

You can go back and think about that if you want to pick up on that. So how do you bring this into your life and situation? Well, let’s think about it in four ways. Firstly, as you can see on the screen, there are sinful habits and unhelpful habits.

Sinful habits are some things you do regularly, frequently, and is clearly disobedience before God. Paul writes to the Ephesians and Colossian church and puts it in language of putting off sinful thoughts and actions. These things can affect you personally, and they can be harmful to others.

Unhelpful habits, potentially unwise, not the best, not necessarily sinful. They are not enabling your flourishing. They are unhelpful for others.

(16:07 – 16:51)

It could be things like poor time management and its impact on you and others’ lives. And then we have sanctifying and helpful habits. Sanctifying habits are those that are encouraged in Scriptures in ways to glorify God and love others.

They are the put-on actions that Paul writes of and elsewhere in Scripture. So if a sinful habit is to get rid of speaking lies, a sanctifying habit is to replace that with the truth and edifying words. And alongside this comes helpful habits, those not mentioned explicitly in Scripture, but are good and wise ways of living that help us and others flourish.

(16:52 – 18:52)

So if someone messages you to invite you to something, you cultivate the habit of answering them in a timely way and not ignoring them and waiting for the better offer, as opposed to the unhelpful habit, which you forget or you ignore because you’re waiting for something else instead. It’s happened to me a lot, that kind of example. Personal habits to do with our bodies.

Let’s think about these things. Thought of three things here. Sleep.

Sleep is a habit tied to our bodies. It’s a good, good gift from God, knowing we need it for restoring energy and vitality. And from childhood, you know, our parents help us to instil this kind of habit, don’t they? We form sleep habits from childhood, learning when it’s too late and we need to get to bed and we understand our body needs overtime, don’t we? And you likely use an alarm or wake up naturally because that’s a habit you’ve developed over time.

And as we consider our technology era, well, with the various screens beckoning us into the final hours of our day, it takes serious discipline to develop good sleeping habits. At bedtime, we can practise things like entrusting ourselves to God, who never sleeps. And instead of fretting about the day ahead and tomorrow or the week ahead, we can write things down for that next day and commit them to him as we put our head on our pillow.

And I know sleep can be elusive for some, especially as we age. I fall asleep quite quickly, but I often, for various physical reasons, struggle to get, I wake up and then struggle to get back to sleep again. I sometimes listen to things and they can be helpful or not, something I’m still learning.

(18:54 – 19:30)

And it’s recognising that many of our life issues and the impact on others could be could be eased by this fundamental habit of getting the sleep that we need. The Bible, too, speaks a lot about food. We are to eat bread with joy and drink wine with a merry heart, says Ecclesiastes.

Yet God’s kingdom is not about eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Spirit, says Paul to the Roman church. So, how we eat and drink actually matters. Food is not everything on one hand, but enjoying it rightly with gratitude glorifies God.

(19:31 – 19:58)

We also eat and drink in ways that care for ourselves and love others. So, we look to avoid unhelpful habits that can lead to sinful ones, like gluttony, which harms our health and our abilities, and then the impact on everyone else. And we put alongside that exercise, because exercise, too, matters, because it helps our bodies be fit for God’s purposes.

(19:59 – 20:53)

Sure, Scripture says physical exercise is of some value, and it’s not above godliness, but it enables us to serve well. So, we aim to avoid self-induced weaknesses or immobility, which affects us and others. And of course, as I say these things, I’m mindful that we’re all on a spectrum with regards to our own health in our bodies, and there are things that come at us that good exercise or nutrition has no impact on.

And there comes a time of life, too, when being dependent on others is part of God’s good design and wisdom for us and others’ good. Yet we consider before God, and we focus on where we do have personal responsibility and accountability. Let’s think about personal habits to engage with our world.

(20:54 – 23:07)

Some things I’ve thought about here. What about time management? Personal habits like time management? Scripture says, again, many things about time. There’s the famous verses in Ecclesiastes on time, but also Scripture says we should number our days rightly and make the best use of time, because the days are evil.

James reminds us that we’re not to presume on the time we have, as we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. So, personal habits of time management and organising our days and being aware of time’s influence help us grow in wisdom and love before God and others. So, we must make wise choices with competing demands.

Saying yes to one thing means saying no to another, because we’re limited and we can’t be everywhere and do everything. And maybe it’s about making space for things that need to take a higher priority. So, we consider these things before God as part of pouring out our heart to God.

It includes our thinking, our desires, but also the choices that are in hand. And we seek His help and wisdom, resting in His patience, His care, and His goodness. And again, we’re mindful that what is right for me is not necessarily right for another, whilst also recognising that the importance of disciplines and habits that develop our relationship with God surely are first and foremost.

I’m mindful here of the rise and understanding of various difficulties that people can have with these things, like managing their time, managing their lives, organising themselves, or simply needing to complete certain tasks before starting new ones. Maybe even getting out the door is a challenge for some. I get that.

I hear that. We are within limits, yet we can still be mindful of engagement, our engagement with time and its impact on self and others. And we remember that our ability to organise ourselves and our time does not define our value or position before our God.

(23:09 – 26:42)

Last week, we talked about giving in a world constantly pushing us to consume more and more, and generous giving to God’s kingdom is part of that battle and part of the antidote, if you like. Good financial habits, therefore, are part of our personal disciplines, and it includes living within our means, spending wisely, saving regularly for unexpected needs, and investing for the long term. These are good, wise things to do.

And so that requires a plan, but it also includes consistent habits to stick to it. For financial, wise financial habits will bless you and those you are responsible and accountable for, and poor ones do not. Whether we earn 15K or 150K, without good financial habits, we risk wasting it all.

Rather, we’re mindful we are responsible and accountable for looking after ourselves and those we’re responsible for, including giving, along with our church family, to God and his kingdom. But it’s also about cultivating good habits of rest and recreation, unwinding after work or when the kids finally get to bed, at times after perhaps a long stretch of work that’s been demanding, or you’ve been going through a particular season of difficulty and suffering, extra rest and recreation may be needed. So you think about that and you work that out.

Working too much, though, can cause us problems and cause harm for others. We need rest and relaxation, yet before God we ought to consider how much time we give to rest and relaxation versus spiritual disciplines, personal, family, and social lives. So it’s wise to regularly assess and to check in with others around about us, our priorities of personal rest and relaxation, considering how they affect us and those around about us.

Check in whether we are limiting what we can do that is good and helpful to others in other areas of life, because there’s only so much time in our weeks. Let me try and make some connections with this story. A man struggling with crippling anxiety at work.

He lacked a spiritual habit of bringing his stresses, his attitudes and relationships with his colleagues and his boss to God. He was a spiritual man. He was a member of his church, regularly went, but he didn’t talk to God about these things.

Encouraged to include these things in his confessions and prayers, he began to pray more specifically, sharing his struggles, attitudes, desires, and fears, and asking for wisdom, strength, and love for others. Soon he realised he needed to align his habits with loving others more practically. This meant for him showing up at work prepared, so he started to make some gradual changes to his routines.

He cut out late night TV, and along with that, the unhealthy snacks. That improved his sleep and his nutrition. He was starting to wake up more refreshed.

(26:43 – 28:14)

He was ready to meet God in his Word and pray in the morning. The extra time he had in the morning, he began taking his son to school, easing his wife’s load and strengthening the connection with his son, which in turn helped ease his concerns about their relationship. Other areas improved too.

He made time for a proper breakfast and a healthier packed lunch, which saved him money but also curbed some of the snack cravings during the day. Arriving at work, he was more energised, and he realised he was better able to serve his colleagues and love his customers better. He was able to handle the pressures and the all-of-a-sudden demands and disappointments more effectively.

And though anxious thoughts would still come, often out of the blue, he increasingly was turning to the Lord, speaking to Him, pouring out his heart, finding peace, giving thanks, learning to be content. I’m aware we can wrestle with these things and feel the weight of our lack and the accusations from within and without. So we need to personally remember certain things that help us.

Tonight soon will help us very visibly. But let me say these things. There are God-given standards, true standards.

(28:16 – 28:26)

The problem is not the standard itself, but how we handle perhaps guilt and shame when we fail. We’re to go to Him. We’re to speak with Him.

(28:27 – 29:01)

Then there are self-imposed or culturally-imposed standards, and here the problem is both the standard and how we respond to falling short. And we can feel good when we meet certain standards and should rejoice on such days, but when we fail, whether our own standards or those we place on others, whether we’re tempted to punish ourselves with self-pity and despair, it’s a disaster. I can’t believe I blew it.

Or we blame others. You’re the problem. It’s not fair.

(29:02 – 29:34)

We need to remember that it’s okay with the bronze medal in things like friendships and parenting and work and ministry, that it’s enough to finish the race by trusting Jesus, relying on His strength and His Spirit, that another day is coming. There is no atonement for failing human standards. God has made us righteous by forgiving our sins, not by meeting self-imposed ideals.

(29:36 – 30:11)

So, when we fail, we seek God’s forgiveness and embrace grace, knowing we are accepted, there is no more condemnation, that our standing is in Christ, whose perfect sacrifice fulfilled all the requirements. And we remember our position in Christ is not based on our performance but His, and we leave the business of being perfect to Him. God knows we love Him imperfectly, and we let that weight roll off at the foot of the cross.

(30:12 – 31:41)

And we remember that we are united to Christ, filled with the Spirit, we’re the children of God. We belong, and we’re in relationship with Him. So, we focus on living in a faithful, joyful dependence.

Let me pray. Father, You are good, a good, good God, gracious in all Your ways, kind, compassionate, slow to anger. And in Your Son, You have brought us to You, to a place where we belong, accepted, cleansed, forgiven, under no more condemnation.

Yet You call us to live in ways that please You, to walk worthy of the Lord Jesus, and it’s hard work, and it requires self-control and discipline. It requires us assessing and looking and taking time and making effort, all these things. So, Lord, give us the grace we need.

Help us to endure, help us to love You and love others well, and to increase in wisdom as You are, as You give it to us, moment by moment and every day. And we pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The post Personal Disciplines appeared first on Greenview Church.

Well, good morning, good to be here. As Andy said, we’re starting a series on Jonah, which will be over the next four Sundays, including today. And we’re going to be looking at this fascinating, intriguing, and brilliantly written short story with some non-CGI special effects thrown in.

(0:21 – 0:39)

It’s a book, if you know it, that contains some eyebrow-raising moments with some really penetrating and challenging insights. And it’s all written in a very crisp, non-waffly, and gripping style. This isn’t Dickens, it’s going to get straight to the point.

(0:40 – 1:39)

So it’s not surprising that, despite the fact it’s only got four chapters, Jonah is one of the best-known books in the Old Testament, one of the best-known of the Old Testament prophets, and perhaps one of the few that even non-Christians might have heard of. So over the next four Sundays, we’re going to deal with some of the more sensational aspects of the book of Jonah, but primarily, Jonah is a case study in God’s work in one man’s life, the kind of work that God needs to do in all of us, maybe the very work that he wants to do in you, as you hear the story of Jonah this morning and over the coming weeks. The work to move us out of our blind spots, away from our prejudices and fears, to grasping and living out afresh the freegate grace and goodness of God.

(1:41 – 2:22)

In that sense, others have noted that Jonah is a kind of Old Testament version of the parable of the prodigal son, an Old Testament version in which Jonah, in one sense, plays both the younger and the older brother. In chapters one and two, we’re going to see that he’s the reckless, runaway younger brother, and in chapters three and four, we’re going to see that he’s the cold, graceless, judgemental older brother, both of whom, of course, in their own ways, needed a fresh understanding of God’s heart. So let’s get started, let’s read chapter one together.

(2:23 – 2:43)

If you’ve got a Church pew Bible there, it’s on page 928, 928, Jonah chapter one. And if you don’t have a red pew Bible, just use the index, that’s what it’s there for. Jonah chapter one, verse one.

(2:45 – 3:00)

The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai. Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because its wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish.

(3:00 – 3:20)

He went down to Joppa where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord. Then the Lord sent a great wind in the sea and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up.

(3:21 – 3:34)

All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own God. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck where he laid down and fell into a deep sleep.

(3:35 – 3:54)

The captain went to him and said, how can you sleep? Get up and call on your God. Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish. Then the sailors said to each other, come, let us cast lots to find out who’s responsible for this calamity.

(3:55 – 4:19)

They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. So they asked him, tell us who’s responsible for making all this trouble for us. What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you? He answered, I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.

(4:20 – 4:42)

This terrified them and they asked, what have you done? They knew he was running away from the Lord because he’d already told them so. The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, what should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us? Pick me up and throw me into the sea, he replied, and it will become calm.

(4:43 – 5:03)

I know that this is my fault that this great storm has come upon you. Instead, the men did their best to row back to the land, but they could not for the sea grew even wilder than before. Then they cried out to the Lord, please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life.

(5:03 – 5:16)

Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man. For you, Lord, have done as you pleased. Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard and the raging sea grew calm.

(5:18 – 5:39)

At this, the men greatly feared the Lord and they offered sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him. May God bless the reading of his holy and inspired words. Well, who is Jonah? Well, the answer is we don’t know very much about his background.

(5:40 – 6:10)

The only real trace that we have is that he is referenced and name checked back in the book of 2 Kings chapter 14. This will be on the screen for you there. He, Jeroboam, the king at the time, was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah, son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hefer.

(6:11 – 6:32)

And that reference of Jonah preaching during the reign of Jeroboam II, I guess tells us two things. Firstly, Jonah is not a fictional character. Jeroboam, the book of 2 Kings, is a factual record of Israel and Judah’s history.

(6:33 – 6:57)

And secondly, it means that we can locate Jonah as living about 750 years before the time of Christ, which was for Israel, that northern kingdom, a relative time of peace. But it was a brief peace. It was a interlude between various conflicts and tussles that the nation was experiencing with surrounding powers.

(6:57 – 7:21)

And one of those nations, one of those surrounding powers that was in time to prove most calamitous for Israel was the kingdom, the empire of Assyria in the north. 30 years after Jonah, Assyria would overrun Israel and wipe it off the map. But that was still in the future at the time of Jonah.

(7:21 – 7:37)

But nevertheless, Assyria, whose capital was Nineveh, was nonetheless a very dangerous and menacing place. Indeed, it was so dangerous and so menacing that it had become a standout concern for God himself. We see that in verse two.

(7:37 – 8:02)

Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because its wickedness has come up before me. You see, in Jonah’s day, Nineveh wasn’t just a bad, godless city like every other bad, godless city in a fallen world. This was a city that it had seemed that seemed had dialled its wickedness up to 10.

(8:02 – 8:45)

Even by the standards of a godless world, Nineveh stood out in its corruption and violence, perhaps in the same way that Sodom and Gomorrah had done in Abraham’s day, or in the same way that certain individuals in the New Testament are described as kind of sinners and that they were scandalous even by anybody’s standards. And Nahum, a later prophet, which is all about Nineveh’s sin, Nineveh is described as a city of blood, never without victims, a place of prostitution and witchcraft. So it’s clear that even in the ancient world, Nineveh was an unusually violent and dark place.

(8:45 – 9:08)

And so you might think as we start the book of Jonah, as we read about him in chapter one, that Jonah’s reluctance to go to Nineveh was probably because of fear. After all, talk about being sent into the lion’s den. Maybe being asked to go into ISIS-controlled territory or to a drug-ridden gangland.

(9:09 – 9:41)

But we’re going to see later that the big twist in Jonah, the big shock in the story, is that the reason that Jonah doesn’t want to go to Nineveh is not because of Nineveh’s wickedness, but because of God’s love. It’s fascinating. So Jonah decides that rather than go anywhere near Nineveh, he’s going to get away as far from it as is humanly possible, verse three.

(9:41 – 10:14)

And he goes down to the port city of Joppa and he books his ticket to Tarshis, which is probably in Spain, which would be about as far as you could get in the ancient world, the other end of the Mediterranean. Because of course, if you say no to God, if you push God away, then he’s probably just going to give up and forget about you, right? It’s crazy, isn’t it? I mean, Jonah is a prophet. He knows his theology, we’ll see that later in verse nine.

(10:14 – 10:53)

Does he really think that he can outrun God? Does he really think that his will can cancel out God’s? And yet, of course, the reality is that people do that all the time. But if God is the ultimate reality, if God is the source and sustainer of everything, including your life and mine, then it’s simply not possible as it were to get away from him. In verse three, the verse literally says that Jonah ran away from the face of the Lord.

(10:54 – 11:05)

Because of course, Jonah knew that you can’t run away from the God of heaven and earth spatially. You can’t hide from him physically in that sense. God is everywhere.

(11:06 – 11:28)

As the psalmist put it in Psalm 139, and as Jonah is going to literally experience later on, where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. You can’t hide from God any more than you can hide from yourself.

(11:31 – 11:45)

But you can run from his face. You can spend your whole life as it were trying to avoid eye contact with God. With the God who made you.

(11:46 – 12:24)

To the God who’s always in the room. Why do we find that eye contact so uncomfortable? Why are we so afraid to look at God’s face? Maybe guilt and shame. Something quite intense, quite personal, quite revealing about looking into somebody’s eyes, isn’t there? The sense of, as we look at God, what does he see in us? Well, we know what he sees in us.

(12:26 – 12:39)

What we truly are. Maybe it’s pride that his gaze is going to expose our need. Our pretence, our weaknesses, he sees right through us.

(12:41 – 13:00)

Maybe it’s fear that his will is going to conflict with ours. And so we look down, we look the other way, we run from the face of the Lord. Like Adam and Eve, hiding in the bushes, hoping that God is just gonna pass them by.

(13:03 – 13:15)

And it’s such folly and it’s such tragedy for at least two reasons. One is, of course, we can’t run forever. One day we will be brought face to face with God.

(13:16 – 13:31)

One day we will stand before him. One day, as the Bible says elsewhere, every eye will see him. But secondly, because the face of God has a face.

(13:33 – 13:54)

The face of Jesus. The face whose eyes men and women did literally actually look into. The divine eyes that we read, that when he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.

(13:55 – 14:14)

The divine eyes that looked on a young, mixed up man, full of hopes, full of questions, and Jesus looked at him and loved him. His gaze is intense. Revelation 1, eyes of blazing fire.

(14:15 – 14:27)

But it is a gaze of love. Stop running. Tragically for Jonah, though, he’s gonna go his own way for now.

(14:28 – 14:47)

And he’s about to find out that running from God is always the start of a downhill journey. Again, we don’t get it in our pew Bibles, the translation that we have, but the language in Jonah chapter one is very much focused in those early verses on the sense of going down. Literally, he went down to Joppa.

(14:48 – 14:53)

He went down into the ship. He goes down below deck. He’ll go down into the sea.

(14:53 – 15:16)

Finally, chapter two, he’ll go down to the very gates of death. And but for God’s grace, that’s where our running will ultimately take us. But one of the big themes in Jonah is that God’s mercy, thankfully, is bigger than Jonah’s stubbornness.

(15:16 – 15:36)

And God is actually gonna use the very mess that Jonah creates in his life to call Jonah to his senses. One of the big themes that we’ll see in Jonah is God’s sovereignty. That is that God is never not fully 100% in control of everything that is going on all the time.

(15:40 – 15:52)

And so even as Jonah is sailing off into the sunset, the storm engulfs the ship. Verse four. Jonah might be sleeping in the galley, but God is banging on the door.

(15:55 – 16:02)

And pandemonium is broken out. The sailors are terrified. They’re throwing stuff overboard as this storm engulfs the ship.

(16:04 – 16:28)

Now, the Bible’s very clear that there’s no kind of automatic clunky link between sin and suffering in the world and in our lives. So when things start falling apart in your life, it’s not just some automatic sign that God must be unhappy with you. For example, few people were as godly as the Old Testament character Job.

(16:29 – 16:43)

And yet, few people knew as much calamity in their life as he did. Jesus was perfectly sinless, and yet he was the man of sorrows. Life in a fallen world involves lots of trials and disruption and difficulty.

(16:43 – 16:59)

Things don’t always work out. You can do everything right, and there can be an X factor that means you wonder what happened. Why didn’t it work? Nevertheless, God is a loving father.

(17:00 – 17:19)

And that love does sometimes involve disciplining his children. Like any loving parent, there is sometimes occasions when God needs to administer some tough medicine. God might speak to us and correct us through difficulties in our lives.

(17:21 – 18:13)

He might be trying to keep us from greater sins, trying to bring us to our senses. So if storms come, if things start to fall apart, if you’re feeling a bit like that this morning, without being superstitious about it, maybe just ask God if you’re not already aware, is there an issue in my life that needs to be addressed? Is there a sin that I’m not dealing with? Is there something that I’m running from that I need to face? In Jonah, the sailors, like many non-Christian people or people of other religions in times of crisis, they start praying. We read that, don’t we? But their gods.

(18:14 – 18:27)

Their idols are no use here. And we’ll think more about this next week. But of course, idols in our society are often not in the form of little statues or pagan gods.

(18:28 – 18:49)

But an idol can be anything that we trust in rather than God for those ultimate things in life, career, money, or health. In times of crisis, those are so often the things that people turn to to save them. But there’s no help in them because the one who is over them all is toppling them all.

(18:51 – 19:17)

God has a habit of toppling our idols. And if only in this moment of crisis where these poor sailors facing this calamity, there was someone who could point them to the true God, the creator of heaven and earth, somebody who could intercede for them. But of course, that one person is asleep.

(19:21 – 20:08)

I guess there’s just a little lesson here, a prayer for me, certainly, as we push through Jonah, to look at Jonah asleep in the bottom of that ship and to say, Lord, in those times of crisis, when problems and difficulties rise up in people’s lives, whether it’s a health issue or a job thing or a relational problem, save me from being asleep at the wheel. Unprepared, fearful, being too busy, too lazy, too unconnected, Lord, help me to be awake for the sake of others. But in God’s mercy, and no credit to Jonah, Jonah’s not gonna get much credit in this book, he does get a chance to speak.

(20:09 – 20:31)

And the sailors cast their lots, suspecting that the storm is a sign of divine judgement on one of them, and Jonah gets the short straw. There’s no escape, is there? No escape. But actually, that’s a wonderful sign of God’s kindness, both for Jonah, but also for the sailors.

(20:32 – 20:56)

And the sailors lose no time, verse eight, in interrogating Jonah. And on the spot, of course, how often this happens, Jonah becomes terribly orthodox regarding his faith, doesn’t he, there? In verse nine, I’m a Hebrew, I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. I’m one of God’s chosen people.

(20:57 – 21:17)

My God’s not any old God, he’s the true God, he’s the creator, don’t you know? It’s all good stuff, isn’t it? Textbook stuff. Ask me any question. Dinosaurs in the ark, where did Cain get his wife? Who wrote the letter to the Hebrews? Got all the answers, I don’t, but maybe Jonah thought he would have had.

(21:19 – 21:34)

Except, of course, that his life is shouting out the very opposite. I’m running away from this amazing God. I’m living in denial of the God that I profess to believe in.

(21:35 – 21:46)

Such a shame when that happens, isn’t it? Such a tragedy. The drunk Christian at a party. The Christian spouting abuse online.

(21:48 – 21:59)

Selfish Christian. Christian that mistreats their spouse. It’s why the New Testament is constantly appealing to us to live godly lives.

(22:01 – 22:27)

Not just for our sake, but also for the sake of others. Peter writes, dear friends, I urge you as foreigners and exiles to abstain from sinful desires which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

(22:29 – 22:58)

Because our lives are always, always more than just about us. And yet, there are so many steps of grace, so many sins and failings, and yet, we’ll see them constantly being encountered or coming up against God’s grace. One of the great biblical truths about God is that he can use even our sin and our folly for good.

(23:01 – 23:22)

Out of the mess of our bad decisions and disobedience, God can actually bring blessing. Now, that’s not a get out for sinning. But it does mean that even in our worst moments, even when we’ve blown it, even when we have crashed the car, hope is not lost.

(23:26 – 23:47)

We will see this remarkable sovereignty of God throughout this book. We’ll see how God uses the failings of this car crash profit to bring blessings to the sailors, to Nineveh, and ultimately to himself. And just know the amazing multi-layered sovereignty of God.

(23:48 – 24:05)

God can use Jonah’s disobedience to reach these spiritually lost sailors while also working in Jonah’s life while also preparing him to take his message to Nineveh. God is that big. He can hold all those things together.

(24:05 – 24:20)

He can do all those things at once. Think of the pandemics five years since COVID. Something that had global effects has transformed societies and politics in so many different ways.

(24:21 – 24:36)

But through that very same thing, God has refined churches and reordered ministries. And at the same time, he has used it to challenge individual Christians and altered their plans. He can do everything from top to bottom.

(24:39 – 25:01)

So even in this moment of ghastly failure for Jonah, God turns it for good. Jonah offers to sacrifice himself, verse 12, for these pagan sailors. It’s the first indication that God’s tough medicine is starting to have its effects on Jonah.

(25:04 – 25:23)

Remember, Jonah was running away from a city of pagans precisely, plot spoiler, because he didn’t like the idea that they might get saved. Indeed, Jonah’s a bit like a kind of anti-Good Samaritan. The title of our sermon this morning is the Bad Samaritan.

(25:24 – 25:46)

You know, whereas the Good Samaritan put himself at risk to help a foreigner, Jonah puts others at risk to avoid helping foreigners. And in future weeks, we’ll look at the theme of prejudice in Jonah’s life. Because the irony is, of course, that the pagans in Jonah often put Jonah to shame.

(25:48 – 26:01)

We see that in the sailors’ concern for Jonah. They don’t want to throw him overboard, verse 13. In fact, they manfully try to recover the situation and save Jonah through their own efforts, rowing furiously.

(26:02 – 26:28)

It’s an example of common grace. People around us, non-Christians showing kindness, putting themselves in danger for others, even at times showing more concern for others than we have done. A world in which even pagans can teach us, be examples to us, and bless us.

(26:30 – 26:47)

A world in which we can still see the image of God even in the most broken people, and we’ll see that again. But in all their efforts to save themselves, the storm just gets worse. Their efforts are futile.

(26:48 – 27:35)

And there’s only one option left, and that is to sacrifice Jonah. As we come to the end of chapter one, there are a number of ways in which we’ll see over the coming weeks that Jonah leads and points us to Jesus, but here at the end of chapter one, I think, is just a little vivid illustration of the gospel in miniature. This is a picture of people who are facing death, people who are under the hand of God’s judgement in that storm, and people who, despite their most desperate efforts, can’t change the situation, and who realise that their only hope is going to be the sacrifice of one man, an innocent man.

(27:36 – 28:03)

Verse 14, and it’s only as Jonah goes beneath the waves that the storm subsides, and they are safe. They threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. Imagine someone who loved you so much who would be prepared to do that for you.

(28:06 – 28:47)

And of course, you don’t have to imagine it, because that person is Jesus Christ, going to the cross to face the judgement that otherwise would have fallen on us, the one truly innocent man, God’s own son. You see, the end of chapter one is both a picture of our reality, but also of our hope. People disobedient, ignorant of God, clinging on to our idols, trying to save ourselves with our moralism, our activism, our religious performance, and they’re all howling into the wind.

(28:49 – 30:14)

People furiously rowing against the wind, and they’re going nowhere, facing the judgement of the God of heaven and earth for all the ways that we’ve resisted him, disregarded him, not giving him the place and thanks that he is worthy of. And there’s only one thing that will save us, a substitute, someone who will take the storm of judgement in our place, someone who is prepared to exchange their innocent life for ours. So as we finish chapter one this morning, if Jonah has pricked our consciences, because we’ve been running away from the face of the Lord in our hearts, or perhaps we’ve been challenged about our hypocrisies and our failures, the times we’ve let others down, we’ve not been the people God has called us to be, the answer is not to leave here thinking, I just need to row a little bit harder, but to look at Christ, to look into the face of God, to trust his sacrifice, to rest in the peace from the storm that he has secured upon the cross, and then like the sailors, to worship.

(30:15 – 30:40)

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your words. We thank you that these ancient pages are ever living and fresh and relevant and new to us, that you speak into our hearts from these ancient pages, and Father, we thank you for your work in the life of Jonah.

(30:41 – 31:17)

Father, and we ask as we leave this place that we might have heard your voice, that we might not turn our faces from you, but look into that face of love, and to know that in Christ there is one who loved us, even to the cross, and that in him we can start that journey of transformation that Jonah was about to discover. So, Father, thank you for your word to us. Apply it to our hearts, and work out your good and pleasing purposes in our lives for your glory.

(31:18 – 31:18)

Amen.

The post The Bad Samaritan – Jonah 1 appeared first on Greenview Church.