Doubt, it will be our portion as long as we are alive. On account of the fallen nature that still remains within us we are professional doubters who default to doubt at the best and worst of times. We doubt because of satan, we doubt because of sin, we doubt because of ignorance, we doubt because we don’t like the truth, we doubt when we are in pain as a knee jerk reaction against God. The strongest and the weakest Christians have struggled with doubt. Elijah doubted God after the victory over the prophets of Baal; David doubted God fleeing from Saul to the Philistines; Abraham doubted God’s protection and so lied about Sarah being his wife; Adam and Eve doubted God’s goodness in the commands He gave, and on and on we could go. Saints in both the OT and the NT have had wobblies in their faith. John the Baptist was no exception to the rule. John is in prison and has heard the reports about Christ. But he is not sure, he thought he was but not anymore, this section explores John’s doubt as he sends some of his disciples to enquire whether Jesus is the long expected Saviour promised in the OT. This section comes to us in a chapter that has been looking at who Jesus is through the eyes of the believing Centurion; as the Lord of life who raised the widow’s son, and 7:16 shows the Jews drawing some conclusions about who Jesus is that are off the mark. This section will help us see how Jesus sees Himself, how John sees Jesus, how Jesus sees John and how we are to view John, Jesus and ourselves. This is a section where a lot of things get clarified. Jesus gets asked the question,...

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Have you ever heard of the irresistible force paradox? Have you heard the phrase ‘the unstoppable force meets the immovable object?’ Maybe you have heard it in the context of sport where two powerful rugby teams are going to compete. Technically it is an impossibility for an unstoppable force to move an unmovable object, or vice versa because then the object would by definition no longer be immovable, or the force unstoppable. Nevertheless, ‘the unstoppable force meets the immovable object’ is a way in which several commentators have described the next section we are looking at. In this section the Lord of life meets the enemy, death. Death is the universal reality we must all submit to, it is the one foe none of us can conquer, as far we are concerned it is the immovable object. In desperation some have turned to cryonics for the hope of a resurrection by advanced science in the future. Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Arizona is a non-profit organisation that will freeze your head for $80 000, or your whole body for $200 000. You can become a ‘cryonaut’ with the promise of the possibility of science being able to revive you. But it is Christ and not science which is the unstoppable force of life, He is the God-man, He is the Messiah with the Spirit without measure. In this section we will see Christ come into our pain and sorrow filled situation with His compassion and power and give us a taste of the Kingdom where death will be no more. We will look at this section under two headings: Christ’s compassion, and then His power.

There is a lot of confusion around the idea of faith today. In our post-religious age faith is now a form of ungrounded optimism towards the future, a keep-your-chin-up sort of attitude that helps motivate you. Some see it as a self-development tool in a materialistic age. Since we have impoverished ourselves in an age of consumerism we need to have some spirituality, and any sort will do. Biblical faith is something different, Biblical faith is informed by the Bible, and it has an exclusive object—Christ. In the Scriptures we come across those who have no faith, those who have weak faith and those with great faith. Hebrews 11 gives us a great list of those who lived by faith. The portion that we are looking at today, Luke 7:1-10 is all about someone who had great faith. Luke deliberately puts on display the faith of the Centurion in a chapter where John the Baptist is showing uncertainty, v18-35. This is one of two places where Jesus is said to marvel at people’s response to Him v9. He marvelled at the Centurion’s faith, the other place is where He marvels at Jewish unbelief in Mark 6:6. Even though Christ does an amazing miracle, He heals the Centurion’s servant without sight of him or touching him, the mechanism of the healing is not explored or even recorded, the last two verses show no detail of how it was done; rather our focus is drawn by Luke to this man and His faith in Jesus. The Centurion’s faith is indeed great and a good study for us who are often weak in faith. Before we get stuck in let me ask you, does it matter if you have a weak faith? It matters to God, in Matt. 6:18-20 Jesus rebukes those who...

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As my introduction to this sermon let me give a quote about conclusions to sermons: ‘The last sixty seconds are typically the most dynamic moments in excellent sermons. With these final words, a preacher marshals the thought and emotion of the entire message into an exhortation that makes all that has preceded clear and compelling. A conclusion is a sermon’s destination. Ending contents are alive—packed with tension, drama, energy, and emotion. This never means bombast and does not necessitate grandiloquence, since deep and powerful thought are often expressed in quiet, sincere terms. Masterful conclusions sometimes thunder, and other times they crackle with an electricity barely audible to the ears, but the best endings always register in the heart.’1 The conclusion to a sermon is the most likely part of the sermon to be remembered so a skilled preacher will work hard to ensure that the sermon ends in such a way to carry the message to such a climax that the listener goes away moved to do what they have now learnt they ought to do. Jesus was the greatest teacher who ever lived and His sermon conclusions have all the ingredients that make for a good conclusion. We have come to the end of the Sermon on the Plain and all that Jesus has been saying in criticism of the false religion of His day comes to a challenging conclusion. We have entered the parabolic part of the sermon where Jesus uses parables to drive His points home, the picture of the blind guides, the log in the eye, and now we continue in v43-49 looking at two more pictures, the tree and its fruit, and the house and its foundation. Jesus moves through the pictures of being an eye inspector, to a fruit inspector, to a building inspector...

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The eleventh commandment is ‘Thou shalt not judge!’ At least in our modern pluralistic context where all religion is now equally irrelevant this is deemed to be a cardinal rule. At times it seems as if the only thing people know about Jesus teaching is that He taught that we should not judge. It is to this section that we turn now in the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6:37-42. Key to understanding this section is the context. Jesus has divided the people of Israel into two groups, the godly and the ungodly, but here is how the first century context differs with our own. In the first century everyone was religious. The poor, hungry, weeping and persecuted prayed, worshipped, attended synagogue and the temple but so did the rich, happy, sated and loved. In the first century the comparison was not between the religious and the non-religious but rather two different types of religion. Christ was deeply critical of the prevailing form of Judaism in the first century as it had lost its moorings and was no longer recognisable as the worship of the OT. Sure it had all the external forms, and in many ways it was more zealous in the externals than former generations, but it was no longer a way of serving God that flowed from grace but rather a form of religion natural to the sinful self. We can glean several characteristics of this religion that provokes the curse of God from Jesus criticisms. Matt. 23:3 they preach but do not practice; v4 says they laid heavy legal burdens on God’s people; v5 talks about their exhibitionism; v6 talks about their social climbing. Jesus describes how they invent ways of lying and breaking oaths, how they are scrupulous with minor matters but neglect love...

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One of the reasons why Christ has turned the world upside down is because of His teaching on love. Not only does Jesus teach a pure version of the OT teaching on love, to love God and our neighbour; not only is His teaching on the golden rule supreme and positive compared to all the other versions of it floating around in philosophy and religion; He introduced radical models of love, namely loving each other as He has loved us, and the command to love our enemies. In our portion of scripture today in Luke 6:27-36 Jesus outlines His love ethic for the disciples, a teaching that will be practised and repeated throughout the rest of the NT. He has overturned the prevalent teaching on the type of person who is blessed by God and now He has a new teaching on love that goes beyond anything that the world has seen. In particular we want to examine how Jesus outlines His teaching on love as a response to the persecution mentioned in the sermon so far. Jesus has split the world up into two groups, the victim and villain, the one who loves God and the one who loves the world, those whom the world hates and so provoke persecution and those whom the world loves and are the persecutors. Jesus is now going to outline how we are to respond to those who persecute us. We will divide out section into 4 parts, firstly we will look at some of the love commands in v27-28; then we will look at some illustrations of love in action in v29-30; and then we want to see how Jesus expands the definition of love in v31-36 beyond what the ordinary and acceptable definitions of love would approve.

Never before has public opinion counted for so much. Living in an age of twenty four hour news, in a culture where public shaming, on line trolling, managing and marketing an online persona; Christ, Christianity and Christians are in the spotlight like never before. Public opinion is not limited to your family, your school, your town, or even your country, it is universal, it is a new power group able to exert pressure, it is often polarised and tribal, and you don’t have to go far on the internet to find how Christ, Christianity and Christians are caricatured, demonised, marginalised and trivialised. This new world of constant scrutiny is just another manifestation of the ancient battleground between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. We are presently looking at Jesus teaching on blessing as we look at the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6:17-26. We have looked at the poor and rich, the hungry and full, and the weeping and laughing. Now we look at those on opposite sides of the publicity war, the hated and the heralded. Luke 6:22-23, 26 reads, 22 ‘“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! 23 Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.’ 26 ‘Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.’ We have been talking about the right and wrong ways to read these descriptions. We have noted that Jesus is dividing all of humanity up into two groups. The various positive and negative characteristics are descriptive...

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Can you remember a time, when you didn’t associate the word Jesus or Jesus Christ with a cross? Even before you understood the gospel, you probably knew that Jesus had something to do with a cross. We live in a society that has been built on the Christian worldview, and the largest, professed anyway, religion in New Zealand is some form of Christianity. There are crosses in some schools, on war memorials, on emblems and coat of arms. Perhaps you may have seen an image of a Jesus crucified upon it on a church window or on a necklace around someones neck. Although may not be the case for many young people in our rapidly secularising age, I could probably confident say that most people listening to this probably connect the person of Jesus Christ with a cross. Now this is not the case with the 12 disciples. A couple of weeks ago, Pastor Nick introduced us to all of the disciples, and we are much more knowledgeable for it. But when the 12 disciples first began to minister with him, they saw him do wonders and miracles, healing the sick, raise the dead, and even control nature itself. And from the beginning, they certainly didn’t associate  Jesus with a cross. It was probably the furthest thing from their mind. No, they were probably thinking of a crown, not a cross.

In the Sermon on the Plain Jesus divides the world into two different types of people, they serve two different Gods, bear two different types of fruit, and have two different types of eternal destinies. The beatitudes and the woes lists for us the characteristics of these two groups, those who love God are those who are poor, hungry, weeping and hated; but those who love the world are those who are rich, full, laughing and loved. Jesus is using paradox and loaded images to convey important spiritual truths. Jesus employs some typical biblical caricatures to distinguish these groups, the poor, hungry, weeping and hated are the typical picture of the persecuted and rejected believer. The rich, full, laughing and loved is the typical privileged oppressor who is against God’s people. Jesus is using a victim and villain contrast. But these are not watertight categories, as we have said before there will have been those who were physically rich but they were poor in spirit. Likewise there may be people who are physically poor who think themselves spiritually rich and who don’t need God. Jesus is generalising on the basis of well-known caricatures. Now we must be careful with these categories. It is easy for us to rip them out of the text and make them serve our own purposes. Many have done this today coming up with a little man theology that makes out as if God is always on the side of the underdog. So when you have a scenario of people on the government benefit complaining about the ungenerous government, we can make out as if God is always on the side of the person we insert into the poor position no matter the justice or details of the situation. We must allow the text to provide...

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Jesus was the greatest teacher who has ever lived, He would have spoken the truth perfectly with no error. Would He have had the greatest gifts in preaching? All we can know is that He would have been perfectly fitted to preach outdoors to very large groups. Jesus taught authoritatively on God as our Father, on Himself as divine and the Spirit as personal. He taught on angels, and demons, heaven and hell. He taught on the historicity of creation and the inerrancy of the Scriptures. He taught about the purpose of His coming to earth to save sinners and prophesied His own death and resurrection. He came with a message about the Kingdom of God being present because He the King was among them. And he taught on the nature of true religion and exposed the false religion of His day. The sermon we are beginning to examine is one instance of Jesus teaching about the Kingdom and true religion. This is the second recorded sermon by Luke, the first was when He announced His mission in the synagogue Luke 4:18; it is similar to the Sermon on the Mount but it is probably similar content preached at a different time. Jesus like many preachers in history would have had a few set sermons up His sleeve and this material could be reworked depending on who the audience was. He did not preach from notes but extemporarily. Jesus has just appointed the 12 apostles and has come down from the mountain to a level place v17. Some think that this is a plateau upon the same mountain making this the same sermon as sermon on the mount, but this is not necessary. We see that at this early point of His ministry there were many who were coming to...

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