Seven Churches: 5, Sardis (Revelation 3:1-6)

Revelation 3:1-6

I’m sure you have noticed that whenever a major organisation is in the news because of a scandal, one of the first things they often want to do is protect their image. They call in public relations consultants who specialise in so-called ‘reputation management.’ The public image must be protected at all costs.

I think it was to the credit of McDonald’s UK boss on Thursday that when the BBC reported nothing had changed there since they had exposed a culture of sexual abuse and harassment of young workers, he didn’t pretend that everything was actually fine. He spoke instead of his determination to make the company a better and safer place to work. Of course, only time will show whether there is substance to what he says.

And with that in mind, let’s take a trip to this week’s church in Revelation, the church at Sardis. This time, Jesus is so troubled by them that his rebuke comes before his praise – the opposite way around from usual.

So the first thing we will consider is Jesus’ rebuke of Sardis.

I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.  (Verse 1b)

‘You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.’ If ever a church was trying to maintain a good public image while everything was in truth rotting, it was Sardis.

But to help hear just how forceful Jesus’ words are here, it’s useful to know something about the history of the town itself. Listen to what Dr Ian Paul says about them:

Sardis lost out to Smyrna in competing to host an imperial temple, because of emphasizing its past splendour rather than the present reality. And though the capturing of the acropolis became a byword for an impossible task, it was in fact taken by force – not once, but twice! When Cyrus attacked the city in the sixth century, his forces noticed the use of a trapdoor under the unguarded walls, and while the occupants slept he entered to open the city gates. Three hundred years later, the Seleucid king Antiochus III the Great besieged the city, and apparently took it after reading of Cyrus’ victory. The inhabitants were once again asleep instead of on guard.[1]

The church at Sardis was just like the city itself. In having a reputation of being alive when they were dead they too were trading on past glories. They might not lose an imperial temple but rather a community that was the temple of the Holy Spirit, worshipping the One True God. They too were asleep and needed to wake up if they were not to suffer invasion from their spiritual enemy.

How easy it is for a church to trade on its past reputation, or to live in the past when the present doesn’t seem so appetising. I tell the story of a vociferous elderly lady in one past church who repeatedly reminded everyone of the time when the church had a hundred children in the Sunday School. It didn’t do much for the morale of those who were trying to lead the children they did have at the time, and nor did it help in finding out what God wanted to do there and then in that part of the church family’s life. The only way to do that involved sidelining and ignoring the nostalgia, and then praying, ‘Lord, this is the honest situation. Things are not good. What do you want to do here with children and young people?’

There are many churches which would like us to believe the hype that they are alive when in fact they are dead. They may be trading on past glories. They may be deluding themselves that because the people who worship there at present are happy, it must be a good place. They may not want to ask why some people have left. Show me a church that doesn’t say it’s a friendly church. But then ask people if they have ever encountered an unfriendly church. Many dying congregations expend a lot of time and energy on deluding themselves. They need to hear the rebuke of Jesus to Sardis for themselves.

And they need to hear what Jesus says they should do instead.  

2 Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God. 3 Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.

Get back to basics, says Jesus. What brought you to a living faith in the first place? Was it not repentance for your sins and trusting in the mercy and grace of God rather than your own good deeds? Why is it that we confess our sins in every Sunday service? Is it not because we always need to be in that habit of getting back to basics? None of us is beyond the need to confess our sins.

When I was in my church youth group, our favourite preacher in the circuit was an elderly Welsh Local Preacher. I worked out once that he had been born two years before the Welsh Revival at the beginning of the last century. He would have been a toddler during that revival, and he preached like he was still in the middle of the revival.

One Sunday he challenged us from the pulpit with these words: “Have you been converted? Because I’ve been converted many times.” And I think what he meant was that he regularly had to come back to Christ in repentance and be made new again.

If we spend our time telling the old stories, we should be thankful to God for what he did then. But if we live in the past without walking with Jesus today, it counts for nothing. We are asleep in the light and it won’t be us who closes the church, it will be Jesus.

The second of our two things to consider is Jesus’ praise of Sardis.

4 Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. 5 The one who is victorious will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out the name of that person from the book of life, but will acknowledge that name before my Father and his angels.

What is this about? Let’s hear from Ian Paul again:

It is striking that the contrast here is not between the (spiritually) dying and the living, but between the dying and the unpolluted; spiritual life involves purity of living, symbolized by the unsoiled garments. From Genesis onwards, walk[ing] with God signifies approval, friendship and obedience (Gen 5:22); the purity of the garments now is in anticipation of the life of the age to come (6:11, 7:9, 13). Although the high priests in the Old Testament wear linen, white is predominantly the colour of pagan worship, signifying purity, holiness and honour in Greek and Roman culture. Participation in the life of God and Jesus includes sharing in their qualities; just as God and the lamb are lauded as being worthy (4:11; 5:9), so those who remain faithful are the ones who have ‘lived a life worthy of [their] calling’ (Eph 4:1).[2]

So here is our number one priority in the church: to be people who walk with Jesus, who reject the pollution of the world for the purity of his ways. This is what pleases him. This is the true sign of life in the church.

Having a lively programme of events and meetings is not our priority: walking with Jesus is. Having high-quality music from a choir or a band is not our priority: walking with Jesus is. Being the hip and fashionable place to go where there are lots of young people is not our priority: walking with Jesus is. Being an institution that is a respected pillar of the local society is not our priority: walking with Jesus is.

If other blessings come, that’s great, but they are not what we seek. Our priority is walking with Jesus.

And the thing is, we already know what to do about this and we’ve heard it over and over for years. We know from the Gospels how Jesus wants us to live our lives. We also know he has given us the Holy Spirit so that we can put these things into practice. Let’s not deflect from this by saying, “But how do we do it?” because Jesus has already given us his instructions and given us the tools for the job.

I read a column on the Internet by an American New Testament scholar called Scot McKnight. Every Friday he hands over his column to a recently retired minister, a Baptist pastor by the name of Mike Glenn. This week, he was writing about the ways in which preachers look for sermon illustrations and how long it takes us. But he ended his column this way:

Since my retirement, I’ve had a little more time to think. As you would imagine, I’ve come up with a lot of theories with what’s wrong with the world. Here’s one of my theories. The world needs some good sermon illustrations. That is, we need more people whose lives prove the reality of the Risen Christ. Before people look at Jesus, they look at His followers. Do His followers show any difference in their lives? Do they show evidence of having been with Jesus? If the world sees something interesting, then they might want to learn more about Jesus. If they don’t find anything in the lives of His disciples, the world will conclude there’s nothing to Jesus either. 

As I have often said, the world isn’t mad at the church because we’re different. They’re mad at us because we aren’t different enough. 

Maybe the world needs a few more sermons. Maybe. What we really need, however, are more good sermon illustrations. People whose lives tell the gospel in unforgettable ways. People who love their neighbors. People who forgive after being horribly wronged. People who can live in hope when the world is filled with despair. Whenever we hear stories like these, they stick with us. We can’t forget them.

The world is always looking for a good story. We just can’t find enough of them. Maybe if we made it easier to find a few good stories – a few good sermon illustrations – the world would find it easier to find Jesus. 

Do you see now how important it is that we all walk with Jesus. We shall fail. I do. We shall need to return to confession every week and be converted many times.

But there is nothing more vital in our lives and the life of the church. It comes above everything else we do.

So let’s make it our priority.

[1] Ian Paul, Revelation (TNTC). p99.

[2] Op. cit., p102.

0

Seven Churches: 4, Thyatira (Revelation 2:18-29)

Revelation 2:18-29

Let me ask you a question or three: is tolerance a good thing? And if you say yes, why is it good? And what are the extents and limits of tolerance?

It’s a live question in our society today. As many thinkers have pointed out, there are vastly different views in our culture about what it means to be human. But proponents of some views shout down those who hold other convictions.

So, for example, some people essentially believe that we are just minds trapped in physical bodies. (This is called ‘transhumanism.’) Others say that our biological sex is decisive for understanding who we are. But others say we should listen to Nature at large, or to our own intuitions and desires, or we just make our own choices to construct reality as we see fit.

Hence, you get the situation where even a lesbian professor at Sussex University, Kathleen Stock, was driven out of her post because she believed that biological sex was primary, but militant transgender activists wouldn’t tolerate an opinion that disagreed with theirs.

In other parts of public life in the UK, the majority opinion has a low tolerance for immigration, refugees, and asylum seekers. Our Prime Minister wants to ‘stop the boats’ and our Home Secretary wants to send people to Rwanda – despite both of them coming from immigrant families themselves.[1]

Tolerance, it seems, is rarely the two-way exchange it claims to be. It often ends up as a one-way street.

As we’ll see in a few minutes, tolerance of the wrong kind is a big issue at Thyatira.

But first, let’s look at what Jesus commends at Thyatira. Because there’s actually some pretty good stuff going on in the church there.

19 I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first.

If that were the sum total of a church’s profile that I saw when I was looking for a move of appointment, I would probably think yes, I’d love to be the minister of that church! And if you had moved to a new town and came across a church that could be described like that, perhaps you too would think that this was the kind of church where you would like to belong.

I mean, what’s not to like? This is not just a Sunday religious club. They are serious about their faith and putting it into practice. And I could connect a lot of Thyatira’s qualities to Midhurst. ‘Deeds … love … faith … service … perseverance … doing more’ – yes, I can think even after only two months with you of ways in which this church exemplifies these qualities.

I think of the way some members are getting involved in the Midhurst Community Forum, in order to make a difference for good in this town, and the possibility of an official partnership between the church and the forum.

I think of the way you showed care and concern for Debbie and me when you learned that we had had a difficult move here.

I think of how I learned at the Pastoral Committee of the quiet dedication of our Pastoral Visitors, who get on without fuss in regularly staying in touch with the people on their lists.

I think of the way Jeanette took the trouble to contact me specifically to tell mw how much she had loved being your minister. If you ever formed a church fan club, I think Jeanette might stand for election as the President!

In fact, risky as this may be to put on record after only such a short time with you, I want you to know how much Debbie and I look forward to driving over here to see you.

So yes, I know the age profile of the congregation has skewed older. I know the numbers are not what they used to be. But while we may need to draw some lessons from that, don’t let it hide the fact that a lot of good, commendable Christian things are going on here.

And provided we don’t overload the same few individuals, a good challenge for us would be to consider how, like Thyatira, we could be ‘doing more’ of the ‘deeds, love, faith, service, and perseverance.’ What are the opportunities for us to do that?

Let’s not forget that the kind of church which receives praise from Jesus is one in which the prevailing attitude is, ‘What can we give?’ rather than “What do I get out of this for myself?”

Then secondly, let’s look at what Jesus criticises at Thyatira. Here’s where the question of tolerance in a bad way will come in. What we have is cultural compromise by some Christians that is tolerated by the church.

You might say this is a variation on a theme from the previous church, Pergamum. In that city, there was cultural compromise in that some members, like in Thyatira, were eating food sacrificed to idols and committing sexual immorality (verses 15, 20). The difference at Thyatira is that the church was actively tolerating it (verse 20).

Why am I describing these sins of eating food sacrificed to idols and committing sexual immorality as cultural compromise? Thyatira had a number of professional guilds for the different trades and occupations that were followed there, and these guilds were the basis for social recognition and progress. It was particularly known for coppersmiths (which may explain why Jesus introduces himself as having ‘feet like burnished bronze’, verse 18). Each of the guilds had a patron god. At social events held by the guilds there would be a meal, and beforehand the food to be served would have been dedicated to that god. Post-meal entertainment was usually provided by prostitutes.[2] 

So if a Christian tradesman went to his guild meeting and wanted to get on in the society, he probably associated with the false god by accepting the food, and then broke Christian sexual standards with a prostitute.

You might think that the church would condemn such behaviour, but evidently not. If we think that the church in the early centuries was just filled with zealous, passionate Christians who were willing to give up everything for Christ, we are mistaken. There was cultural compromise going on regularly, as one new book amply illustrates.

This, then, is the wrong kind of toleration. It’s good and fine to tolerate people who are different from us and show them kindness and love, but what was going on here was a toleration of outright sin.

Do we do that? Sometimes we do. It may be that a church member has committed an egregious sin, but pressure is placed on the minister not to engage in our disciplinary procedures, because the friendship of church members with this person over-rides the concern for the holiness of the church.

I know that all too well from when I began ministry as a probationer thirty-one years ago and had to deal with a long and painful child protection situation, when Safeguarding had not fully come in. Some church members cared more that I was raising queries against members of the church family than they did that I spent eighteen months living under threats of violence from them.

Or another common example is this. A church is so concerned to make ends meet that it will allow regular bookings from organisations whose practices are in conflict with Christian belief. For me, it’s a really delicate issue when a church is approached by a yoga teacher. For yoga is originally not just a set of exercises but an act of Hindu devotion, and therefore not to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. If the meditation aspect is left out and all that is being taught is an exercise regime, I am less worried, but I find too many churches will brush this all under the carpet (or should that be the yoga mat?) because when push comes to shove, balancing the books matters more than costly devotion to Christ.

Could it be that today, as in the days of Thyatira, that Jesus is also calling some churches to repent? Could it be also that he has given some churches time to change their ways and they have refused, leaving Jesus himself to cause their decline and death?

The Anglican New Testament scholar Steve Walton warns that

Compromise is not about choosing to worship other gods instead of Jesus; it’s trying to include other gods along with our worship of Jesus.[3]

What are the stages of compromise? Walton says we go through four stages[4]: attraction to the other ‘god’, rationalisation that it’s OK to do so, indulgence in practices contrary to Christ, and finally a re-definition of our faith. If we recognise that process going on in our personal lives or our church, we need to turn back to Christ.

In conclusion, what does Jesus ask of his church? In Thyatira’s case, he says,

hold on to what you have until I come (verse 25)

and

do[es] my will to the end (verse 26).

In other words, keep on with all the good things the church is known for, and weed out the cultural compromise.

Let us not judge our success in the faith on whether we are a big and growing congregation or not. Instead, let us judge it in the way Jesus does: are we doing things that bring joy to his heart, and are we faithfully keeping ourselves away from the idols of our day with a single heart for Christ alone?

[1] I am indebted to Steve Walton for this approach to introducing the passage.

[2] Again, I’m following Steve Walton here. See his slides.

[3] Walton, slides, slide 11.

[4] Walton, slides 12-15.

0

No Video This Week

There is no teaching video from me this week: today is my Sunday off for the quarter.

I’ll be back next week when we look at the fourth of the seven churches in Revelation, Thyatira, where we consider the thorny question of tolerance.

0

Seven Churches 3: Pergamum (Revelation 2:12-17)

Revelation 2:12-17

You may have spotted that I’m one of those ministers who only wears a clerical collar for formal occasions or when it’s absolutely necessary, such as when I visit someone who doesn’t know me and I need to be identified as a minister.

One of my Anglican friends noted this attitude of mine and said to me, “Dave, you’re not so much low church, you’re more like subterranean!”

Others, more particularly older and more traditional church members, have questioned me on this and claimed that the dog collar is like some magical Open Sesame that gains ministers entry into places others can’t go. The usual claim is that it allows us to get into hospital wards outside visiting hours.

I have to disappoint these people and tell them that I have no more right to go into a hospital ward out of hours than anybody else, unless I’m a member of the hospital chaplaincy team. And then what would gain me access is not the dog collar but a hospital lanyard.

If I’m feeling particularly mischievous in the conversation, what I then retort is that since Methodist doctrine says that ministers hold no priesthood that is different from the priesthood all believers have, then maybe all Christians should wear the collar!

Why am I telling you this? Because what Jesus writes to the church at Pergamum is all about being identifiably Christian. If we ask what Jesus praises them for, it’s being identifiably Christian. If we ask where he calls them out, it’s for when they hide their Christian identity.

Firstly, then, let’s listen to the praise Jesus heaps on the church at Pergamum:

13 I know where you live – where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me, not even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city – where Satan lives.

They wore their Christian uniform, so to speak, and were clearly identifiable as followers of Jesus. They knew it would put them in the firing line in a place ‘where Satan has his throne’. Whatever that phrase means precisely, we can be sure that Pergamum was a tough place to identify as a Christian, because hostility, opposition, and even violence would come their way. Yet they still did it. And it even cost one church member his life.

This wasn’t unusual at the time Revelation was written. We are fairly sure it was written around the time that Domitian was the Roman Emperor (that’s AD 81-96, fact fans). A cruel and ruthless ruler, he only tolerated religions other than the Roman emperor cult if they could be assimilated into that Roman culture. If they stood out, it seems persecution was the consequence.

Indeed, the Book of Revelation is not so much cryptic prophecies of future end-time events as a document to give hope to persecuted Christians. Throughout the centuries and around the world, the persecuted church has taken great comfort from it.

Today, we hear inspiring and shocking stories from around the world about what it means for many Christians to ‘wear their uniform’, to be publicly identifiable as disciples of Jesus.

Here’s one I found through an email from Christian Solidarity Worldwide:

[In August], hundreds of people stormed a Christian colony in Jaranwala city near Faisalabad in Pakistan. Up to 25 churches and chapels and hundreds of homes were ransacked and set on fire.

Why? Two local Christian residents, Rocky Masih and Raja Masih, had been accused of blasphemy. Mobs, stirred up by reports that the men had desecrated religious scriptures, attacked the colony, demanding to execute the two men themselves.

Rocky and Raja were subsequently arrested and charged with insulting Islam and defiling the name of the Prophet Mohammed. Other Christians in the area have fled in fear of their lives.

This is what happens in many places around the world when you publicly identify as a Christian. Lies, false charges, violence, and the risk of death.

But what does that all mean for us, in a country where it is much safer to be a Christian, even if it is less well received than it once was?

I think there are a couple of applications.

One is that we need to take seriously what happens to other members of the Christian family around the world. We need to use our freedoms to support them and campaign for them. I strongly recommend that we look into the work of organisations like Christian Solidarity Worldwide, whom I just quoted,  or Open Doors, who do similar work. Who else is going to speak up for suffering Christians if not the rest of the church? These organisations can provide us with material for prayer, for lobbying Parliament, and so on.

The other application I would draw is this. If our situation is easier, then why do we allow relatively trivial opposition to close our mouths from speaking up for Christ? I know we want to avoid the stereotype of Christians being judgmental, but the mockery or opposition we would face is nothing in comparison to what our sisters and brothers in Pakistan, Nigeria, India, Iran,  North Korea, China, and so many other countries face.

Surely we could find a bit more courage to nail our colours to the mast?

Secondly, why does Jesus call the church at Pergamum to repent?

You may know one of my favourite sermon stories. It concerns a question set in a training examination for police recruits:

‘You are on the beat and you see two dogs fighting. The dogs knock a baby out of its pram, causing a car to swerve off the road, smashing into a grocer’s shop. A pedestrian is severely injured, but during the confusion a woman’s bag is snatched, a crowd of onlookers chase after the thief and, in the huge build-up of traffic, the ambulance is blocked from the victim of the crash.

‘State, in order of priority, your course of action.’

One recruit wrote, ‘Take off uniform and mingle with crowd.’[1]

I think that’s rather like the issue Jesus had with Pergamum:

14 Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: there are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate food sacrificed to idols and committed sexual immorality. 15 Likewise, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. 16 Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

Effectively, the Christians at Pergamum had taken off their uniform and mingled with the crowd. How? Note the reference to eating food sacrificed to idols and committing sexual immorality. It sounds very much like some of them were joining in with the practices of the local pagan religious cult.

The management guru Peter Drucker once famously said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” and this rather sounds like the local culture had eaten the Christians for breakfast. After all, surely it doesn’t harm to mingle with the local crowd if the alternative is sticking out like a sore thumb as a Christian and getting in trouble as a result?

But the problem here is that in letting themselves be absorbed by the surrounding culture they ended up imbibing a lifestyle that denied the Gospel. So no wonder Jesus calls them to repentance.

Could it be that we face the same challenge? Sadly, there is plenty of evidence of both individual Christians and the church corporately taking off uniform and mingling with today’s crowd. We do it when we baptise the world’s ethics and try to convince ourselves they are consistent with the Gospel.

We take off our uniform when we succumb to the politics of ‘might is right.’

We mingle with the crowd when we adopt a celebrity cult in the church, just as the world does.

We do it when we worship the god of individual choice, or the idol of consumerism. And you don’t even have to buy anything to worship consumerism: you can just treat church as a consumer choice, that exists solely to meet your needs and tastes.

Yes, we are every bit in as much danger as the Pergamum church of letting the culture eat us up and losing our Christian distinctiveness.

And when we do this, we are saying we are ashamed of the Gospel, and of he One who went to the Cross for us. That’s serious.

We might do well to reflect on whether there are any ways in which we have bent the shape of our faith to fit what’s popular in our society, rather than calling our society to change shape in conformity to Christ.

Each one of us needs to examine ourselves from time to time to consider whether we have compromised our faith to fit the wider culture.

In conclusion, we have a choice and each choice will lead to a different response from Jesus.

If we choose to take off our uniform and mingle with the crowd, rendering ourselves indistinguishable from the wider world, then Jesus has a solemn response. He says,

16 Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

In other words, he will speak against us. Is that what he has done when scandals have been exposed in the church that is exposed in the world?

But there is good news from Jesus if we take the more difficult route of staying in our distinctive Christian uniform in the world:

17 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.

The ‘hidden manna’ surely means he will sustain us in difficult, wilderness times in our lives. The ‘white stone’ is what a not guilty verdict was returned on in the local courts and indicates Christ’s acceptance of us. The secret name likely signifies his intimate knowledge and love for us.[2] These are ways in which Jesus strengthens us when times are tough.

So there we have it. We are faced with a tough choice, whether to identify publicly as Christians at a potential cost or to go underground and be indistinct from the rest of the world.

But the easy road is confronted by the opposition of Jesus, and the tough road takes us into the blessing of Jesus.

Which will we choose?

[1] Adapted from Murray Watts, Bats In The Belfry, p137 #232.

[2] See Ian Paul, Revelation (Tyndale New Testament Commentary), p90.

0

Seven Churches 2: Smyrna (Revelation 2:8-11)

Revelation 2:8-11

I was on sabbatical earlier this year, and when people asked what I was going to do with my time, some were surprised by one of the things I had chosen.

I had decided to revisit one of my favourite places, the Lee Abbey community in north Devon, to take a course on ‘Dealing with disappointment.’

“Why would you want to do that?” people asked me. “Don’t you want to do something more uplifting on a sabbatical?”

So I explained that I was coming to the end of thirteen years in a circuit appointment where not all my dreams had been fulfilled. I was in the latter stages of my ministry generally and as I look back I don’t see all the hopes I had for my calling at the outset fulfilled, either. I needed to process these things healthily.

Moreover, I said, disappointment is a regular pastoral theme when people talk with me. So few are living Plan A for their lives. More often it’s Plan B, Plan C, or Plan D. It’s important to have a grip of this theme.

Which brings us to that early church at Smyrna. Already facing afflictions, poverty, and slander (verse 9), Jesus tells them that suffering, imprisonment, persecution, and even death are just around the corner (verse 10). It’s not exactly the good life. So much for the old lie that said, ‘When I became a Christian, all my problems disappeared.’

Yet in these four short verses Jesus gives them a way to understand what they are going through that will fortify them for the difficult times and give them hope for the long term.

But what has all this got to do with us? We know about our Christian brothers and sisters in other parts of the world who suffer greatly for their faith. We often give thanks in our prayers that we have the freedom to worship.

I would not agree with those who say that Christians are now persecuted in this country, but I would say that it is becoming more difficult and there is increasing hostility in the public square to us. We should be prepared for days when Christianity will be costly even here.

And even if that doesn’t come our way, we shall all for sure face disappointments and injustices in life, so it’s best we prepare for facing them with faith rather than an attitude that expects everything to go right.

There are two things in what Jesus says to the church at Smyrna that help us. They are encapsulated in the way Jesus introduces himself, and they are implicit in his pastoral words to them.

How does he introduce himself?

These are the words of him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again. (Verse 8b)

Death and resurrection are the two themes that help us. How so?

Firstly, let’s consider death – and specifically here, I mean the death of Christ. He is the First and the Last, the agent of creation and also the One who will reign for ever and ever. And yet he died.

Whenever Christians think about injustice and suffering, the best place to start is at the Cross. Our faith is centred on the Cross. And what is the Cross if not the most unjust act in history? The eternal sinless Son of God is stitched up by both Jew and Gentile and condemned to an agonising death.

We might say that the death of Jesus was an unique event in history, and in the sense that if made possible the reconciliation of the world to God, that is true. But we might still draw a couple of lessons for ourselves.

One is that in a battle soldiers put themselves in harm’s way in order to conquer the enemy. That is what Jesus did with sin and the power of evil. We may not suffer for the sins of the world, but we do find ourselves in a spiritual battle. It is therefore not surprising if the enemy seeks to inflict damage and pain on us. It is the risk we take as soldiers of Christ.

Another is that our calling as disciples is to be imitators of Christ. I know we do that very imperfectly – well, I do, for sure – but it does mean that we are liable to be treated in a similar way to the way the world treated Jesus. Remember that he said,

If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. (John 15:18)

So while we are not to go out and look for suffering, nor are we meant to be stupidly provocative (as I fear some Christians are), we should not be surprised when we are treated badly. In a time when more and more groups are trying to exclude Christians from the public square because they say we are hateful and dangerous, it’s par for the course. No wonder Jesus tells the Christians at Smyrna to expect suffering.

The trouble is, we have been led to think differently by living in a country where for many centuries Christianity was a major player in shaping the culture, where it has even been in partnership with the State – so-called Christendom.

But throughout history and throughout the world, this is not normal. It is more common to be reviled for following Jesus than praised. Remember: our faith is centred on the Cross.

Secondly, let’s consider resurrection – and again, we starting with the Resurrection of Jesus.

Not only does Jesus remind the church at Smyrna that he died, he also reminds them that he ‘came to life again.’

Now you might say that the Resurrection is an unique event in history, too. You would be right at present, but by the end of history as we know it you will be wrong. Jesus promises here,

The one who is victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death. (Verse 11b)

We look forward to the resurrection of the dead. The Resurrection of Christ is the first-fruits of the harvest of resurrection to come. If we follow Christ, then ‘The second death’, that is, eternal judgment, is nothing to fear, for by the grace of God we are put right with him by faith and he remembers our sins no more.

And we do see some mini-resurrections in this life. We see answers to prayer. Injustices are put right. People are healed. Those in need are provided for. Folk who have fallen out are reconciled. Wrongdoers make restitution to those they harmed. Forgiveness is given and received.

When we pray about a situation that is wrong, we do not always know whether our prayers are going to be answered in the affirmative in this life. But that should not stop us praying. If we don’t pray, then very little will happen. If we do pray, though, then there is more of a chance of seeing some divine resurrection.

So let us continue to pray and act for the sick, the bereaved, the suffering, and those facing injustice. We never know what God might do.

To speak personally, I can only think of two times when I can say for certain that God answered my prayer for someone to be healed. However, that neither stops nor discourages me from continuing to pray for the sick. Who knows when number three will come along?

Or maybe you are upset that certain close friends and relatives have never committed their lives to Christ. If so, then I remind you about D L Moody, the famous evangelist, who prayed daily for a hundred of his friends to come to know Christ. Amazingly, by the time of his death, ninety-six of them had done so.

But what about the other four? They were converted at Moody’s funeral.

Conclusion

How do we hold all this together? We do so in a framework that Christian thinkers call ‘The now and the not yet of God’s kingdom.’ Since the coming of Jesus, we are living in two overlapping eras. The first is the era of sin, and thus we continue to see injustice and suffering. This is our first category of death.

The second is the era of the kingdom of God, which Jesus inaugurated when he came. Thus we also continue to see people and things being made new in response to prayer. This is our second category of resurrection.

We haven’t simply passed from the era of death to the era of resurrection. The two are co-existing, overlapping until Christ appears again to judge the living and the dead. Thus we must expect that sometimes we shall face suffering, and on other times we shall experience restoration, and we won’t always know in advance which will be our lot.

But whichever happens, God is still in charge of our lives. Jesus is reigning at the Father’s right hand, even though not everybody acknowledges his rule.

Here is a story I like to tell that I think illustrates what I am trying to say. Some decades ago, there was a massacre of British Christian missionaries in a far-off land, although some survived the attack.

A memorial service was held back in the UK. At it, the preacher said, “I believe that all of the missionaries were delivered by God. Those who survived were delivered from suffering, and those who were murdered were delivered through suffering.”

For we worship

him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again.

0

Seven Churches 1: Ephesus (Revelation 2:1-7)

Revelation 2:1-7

There’s probably someone in your life whose opinion of you is important to you. This is somebody whom you long to please. It may be a spouse, a parent, a boss, or some other significant figure in your life. I tell a story in my book about how I longed for my parents to be pleased with my school reports, and how I misunderstood their unconditional acceptance of me.

For Christians, and for churches, the One whose opinion of us we cherish is Jesus. And when we come to the so-called ‘Letters to the seven churches’ in Revelation, we get to hear what Jesus thinks of the churches to whom Revelation is addressed.

They are not really seven letters. The whole of Revelation is an elaborate letter, and these are seven royal pronouncements about the churches.

But we are going to look at these seven royal pronouncements about the churches in the coming weeks. We are going to see what Jesus thought of those churches and use that as a way of considering what he might think of us.

The pronouncements are very similar in their style. They start by describing Jesus, using some of the material about him in Revelation chapter 1. They end with a call to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches, and a blessing for the obedient. In between, we usually find both praise and criticism (although sometimes it’s only one and not the other).

If we’re going to concentrate on what Jesus thinks of each church, most of these sermons will focus in on the praise and the criticism. And that’s largely what we’ll do today with the congregation at Ephesus.

Firstly, what’s good about the congregation at Ephesus?

Jesus lists seven good things about them, which for simplicity I’m going to summarise as three: hard work, right living, and right belief.

Hard work can be seen in the way Jesus says,

2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. …

3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.

Hard-working people who keep going in the face of difficulty and even opposition are often the backbones of many churches. We know those people who will always take on something that needs doing, however busy they already are. Many of our churches stand or fall on the old maxim, ‘If you want a job done, ask a busy person.’ It’s been said that many churches are like a football match: twenty-two thousand people in the crowd desperately in need of exercise watching twenty-two people on the pitch desperately in need of a rest. What we do without our ‘twenty-two people desperately in need of a rest’? Churches would close without them.

And we know people who keep on loyally serving the church, even when other people are making snide remarks about them.

Right living appears when Jesus says,

I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people (verse 2b) …

6 But you have this in your favour: you hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

Some churches are very lax in what they accept in terms of the lifestyle of their members. They won’t hear anything against their friends. Woe betide someone who comes in – be they a minister or another church member – and says that something is wrong: then look to see how the church reacts.

It happened to a friend of mine who began as a probationer minister at the same time as me. He discovered two Boys’ Brigade leaders conducting a sexually immoral relationship and when he said he wouldn’t sign the form to re-appoint them, a group of church members threatened to march on the manse and smash the windows in.

But at least the congregation at Ephesus knew how to oppose evil. Good for them.

Right belief features at the end of verse 2:

you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. (verse 2c)

It’s utterly important to follow right belief. Christianity is a religion based on truth. We need to know the truth about God. It’s simply no good just to say, “I like to believe in God this way,” if ‘this way’ is unrelated to what we learn about God in Holy Scripture. We cannot follow our fancies and what pleases us.

That’s why it dismayed me when I once heard a committed member of a congregation say, “I like having all the different preachers each week, so that I can hear all different opinions about God.” Friends, the job of the preacher is to preach biblical truth. Any deviation from that is unacceptable. It leads us astray spiritually.

So when the congregation at Ephesus opposes these false apostles who have ridden into town with their unique teaching, I say good for them. They are doing something vital. I wish it happened more in Methodist churches. We set our standards too low at times.

There is plenty of reason, then, to commend the church at Ephesus. Indeed, they are doing things that we could do more of. Hard work, even in the face of opposition; a commitment to right living; a desire to stay faithful to the truth of the Gospel. How I would love to see more of these things in our churches today, rather than places where ten per cent of the members do ninety per cent of the work, and where anything goes morally or doctrinally.

But did you also get a sense of a harshness of tone when you heard about what was good at Ephesus? That’s where we come to the second thing we need to look at: what’s bad about the congregation at Ephesus?

That can be summed up in verses 4 and 5:

4 Yet I hold this against you: you have forsaken the love you had at first. 5 Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.

‘You have forsaken the love you had at first.’ Other translations say, ‘You have lost your first love.’

Jesus doesn’t say what love they have forsaken. Is it love for God or love for neighbour? Well, since Jesus holds loving God and loving our neighbour together as the two greatest commandments, it’s probably both. If we truly love God, we also love our neighbour.

If the Ephesians have lost love of God and of neighbour, then no wonder all their good qualities still sounded rather harsh. Loving God and loving our neighbour, all in response to God’s love for us in Christ, is the foundation of Christian living. The Ephesians have got rid of the foundations and although they don’t realise it, their Christian faith is collapsing.

It is out of love for God that we work hard for the church. It is out of love for our neighbour that we long for right living. It is out of love for God that we want to believe the right things about him (and worship him appropriately as a result).

But sometimes we get so caught up in the busyness of working hard for the church, of defending holy living, and advocating the truth about God, that we forget to nurture the relationship of love. We forget our first love. When we see Christianity as all about being busy and forget that it is a relationship of love, we begin to chip away at the foundations of our faith, and we risk it collapsing one day.

It is urgent for every Christian to nourish a relationship of love with our God, and let the ways in which he is calling us to love our neighbours flow out of that. We cannot just come to church on Sunday and let that be the sum total of our engagement with God. Would a marriage survive if a couple only ever spoke to each other once a week? Why then do we think we can do that with our faith in God?

I decided when I came here that the regular pattern of prayer and Bible reading I had been following each day for many years had become rather stale. I have started combing around for other ways of maintaining my devotional life. But if I end up with nothing then my spiritual life will wither away. I need to give attention to this. So, I believe, does every Christian.

Jesus talks about removing the lampstand if we let go of our first love. According to Revelation chapter 1, the lampstand represents the church. What he is saying is that the church dies when we don’t prioritise our first love of loving God and loving our neighbour.

I believe that the Holy Spirit is warning many churches and Christians today that we get so obsessed with the mechanics of church life that we forget the very source of life, our relationship of love with God in Christ that then inspires us to love our neighbours.

And therefore when we do neglect our first love, the church dies. We ponder why traditional churches are declining and closing in our society, and while a fair amount of that is due to us living in a society that has rejected the Christian faith and embraced beliefs and lifestyles that are hostile to Christianity, it is also true that some of the decline is down to us. We have forsaken our first love.

So you will find that I regularly emphasise the need to read our Bibles prayerfully every day to grow our relationship with Christ. It is not an optional extra for keen Christians: it is essential for every Christian.

If you want to know more, then I can soon talk with you about different ways of reading and experiencing the Bible prayerfully. It may involve Bible reading notes, it may involve using some ancient practices of the church to meditate on Scripture. But whatever it is, let’s do it.

If we want to

eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God (verse 7)

that is, participate in God’s new creation, then we need to make developing our relationship with our God our first priority. If we are serious about building our faith and building for the kingdom of God, this is where we start.

0

Harvest: May The Peoples Praise You (Psalm 67)

Psalm 67

One thing it’s not worth asking me when you arrive at church on a Sunday is, “Did you hear the morning service on Radio 4?” because I never listen to it.

But I do love the story of the harvest festival they broadcast many years ago, where the presenter rather unfortunately explained, “During the next hymn the children are going to bring up their gifts.”

I wouldn’t have liked to have cleared up that mess!

Actually, let me amend my words. Anyone can have a ‘harvest festival’, but Christians can have a ‘harvest thanksgiving.’ The world around us can celebrate harvest by having a festival, but as Christians we have Someone to thank for the harvest.

So I rather like referring to ‘harvest thanksgiving’ rather than ‘harvest festival.’ Although I don’t always remember.

Psalm 67 is full of thanksgiving. The people are exhorted to praise, gladness, and joy in response to God’s blessing in so many ways.

I see three areas in this Psalm for praise and thanksgiving, and all are relevant to a Christian celebration of harvest.

Firstly, thanksgiving for the harvest of salvation:

1 May God be gracious to us and bless us
    and make his face shine on us—
2 so that your ways may be known on earth,
    your salvation among all nations.

So often in the New Testament, and especially in the parables of Jesus, harvest is used as a metaphor for God taking the initiative to offer his grace and love to the human race. If you recall a few of the parables, you will recognise the agricultural context of them. Seeds, plants growing, gathering in the crops, the harvest itself. And so on. Jesus took images from the harvest to talk about what the Psalmist here calls God’s ways and his salvation.

Sometimes we only celebrate the physical, material harvest (which is a good thing in itself) but Jesus and the Psalmist would have us also give thanks for lives made new by the grace of God and people learning to walk in his ways.

I rarely hear this in Methodism. Have we forgotten this? Or is it that in aging and declining churches we have experienced the joy of people finding new life in Christ and following him so rarely that we have forgotten how to do this?

Perhaps we look on with envy at some of the numerically big and growing churches when God would have us celebrate and give thanks for what he is doing there.

But when the occasions come along in our orbit, let us not forget to give thanks for God’s life-giving and renewing work.

In my last circuit, one of the churches used to host an Iranian church on a Sunday afternoon. Sadly, it folded when the pastor retired and they couldn’t find a successor. The members dispersed to other Iranian congregations and around the UK.

One Sunday morning, a familiar face from that congregation turned up at the usual morning service, and had a friend with him, whom he introduced to us afterwards. He and the friend had been flat-sharing, but now a refugee agency had transferred him to our area, where he was living in a flat above a pizza takeaway.

This man knew very little English, but he came every week and also joined in some midweek activities. He had had to flee from Iran as a political asylum seeker, having opposed the government. He had to leave his wife and young son back there. He didn’t know when escaping that his wife was pregnant with their second son.

We supported his application for asylum and one day he asked to be baptised. I met him, along with a church member who had learned the Farsi language of Iran. We asked him why he was seeking baptism. He explained that he was so bowled over by Jesus, by his incomparable teaching such as the Sermon on the Mount, and by the way he treated women, which was so different from what he saw in Islam.

Oh, and one other thing. That second child whom he had only ever seen on Skype on his mobile phone had gone down with a mystery illness that the doctors couldn’t cure. He had asked us to pray for his little boy one Sunday after worship. Unbeknown to us, the boy had been completely healed after those prayers and before there was any further intervention from the doctors.

Jesus wasn’t a theory to our friend anymore. He was real, and he wanted to follow him. I baptised him on Easter Day.

When things like this happen, we give thanks for the harvest of salvation. May God trust us with may more.

Secondly, thanksgiving for the harvest of justice:

3 May the peoples praise you, God;
    may all the peoples praise you.
4 May the nations be glad and sing for joy,
    for you rule the peoples with equity
    and guide the nations of the earth.
5 May the peoples praise you, God;
    may all the peoples praise you.

Maybe this is more familiar to us at harvest. We know that millions of people in our world do not have what they need due to injustices, and so we campaign for justice. It’s clear from this psalm that God loves justice. He rules the people with equity and guides the nations of the earth.

This is why organisations like the Trussell Trust food banks do not only bring short-term relief to people in crisis, they also campaign for government policies that will help the poorest in our society.

This is why All We Can describes itself as both a relief and a development movement. They promote self-help for people in poverty, including conquering illiteracy. They support another project that campaigns for human rights in rural areas, where people have been left in poverty thanks to the work of major mining companies.

Or take an organisation that is dear to my heart, Tear Fund. Yes, they partner with local churches and organisations to bring relief to people who suffer when there are major disasters, like floods and earthquakes, but they do so much more. They are campaigning hard for the development of an international treaty on plastic pollution. Why? To quote one short paragraph from their website:

We’re facing mountains of plastic pollution. 2 billion people have no safe way to dispose of rubbish, and it’s people in poverty who are suffering the worst impacts of this rubbish problem. They are forced to live and work among piles of waste, which is making them sick, releasing toxic fumes, flooding communities and causing up to a million deaths each year.

When our God promises to rule with equity and guide the nations of the earth, and when we know he is doing that as part of his plan to make all things new, then it is a Christian responsibility for us not only to relieve poverty but to campaign against the causes.

And when we see some victories, let us again give thanks.

Thirdly and finally, thanksgiving for the harvest of the fields:

6 The land yields its harvest;
    God, our God, blesses us.
7 May God bless us still,
    so that all the ends of the earth will fear him.

And now the most familiar of all harvest themes, the one we think about when we sing the hymns, even if more people live in an urban setting these days and are more detached from the means by which food is produced. We raise the song of harvest home, we plough the fields and scatter, or imagine ourselves doing so. We decorate our churches with food and grain.

It’s a good thing to give thanks for God’s material provision for us. It reminds us that Christianity is not just concerned with the soul and the spiritual. Ours is a faith in a Creator God. Ours is a faith in a God who raised his Son bodily from death. He cares about his creation and wants to restore it from its brokenness. So the next time someone tells you that Christians shouldn’t poke their noses into material and political things, tell them they have no right to celebrate harvest festival.

Harvest celebrates the God who in his fatherly goodness takes care of his children and is outraged when some humans deny that provision to others. He is the God who does not want us to need to worry about having the basic essentials of life, who has entrusted the human race with the stewardship of this planet, and when it is mismanaged, he calls on us to change our ways.

Food banks aren’t the only way we show this. The local parish church where we lived in the last circuit ran a ‘community fridge’, which took donations of food the supermarkets weren’t going to be able to sell because it was soon to go out of date. Anyone, regardless of their economic status, could come and help themselves, so that the food could be used for what it was made for, rather than wasted. Which is an interesting thought in this county, where there appears to be no specific provision for food recycling.

One of my churches took food from the local Tesco Express that they couldn’t sell and repurposed it at coffee mornings, including leaving some out free of charge on a table for anyone in need. Several widows on limited incomes attended those coffee mornings and benefited.

In a wasteful world, these are reasons for gratitude towards our loving heavenly Father.

Conclusion

So the harvest is wide and broad, encompassing salvation, justice and material provision. Therefore our thanksgiving and our consequent actions shall surely also be wide in their scope.

No wonder Saint Ambrose said,

“No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.”

Maybe it’s the poet and parson George Herbert who summed up our harvest response:

“Thou hast given me so much … Give me one thing more, a grateful heart.”

0

New Beginnings 4: You Have Not Been This Way Before (Joshua 3:1-17)

Joshua 3:1-17

The late American church leader John Wimber used to say that Christians are like people who go down to the quayside, expecting to board a ship that will take them on a luxury cruise, only to find when they get there that their ship is gunmetal grey in colour. It’s a battleship.

He used to recall how, when he first found faith from a background as a rock musician (he was the keyboard player for the Righteous Brothers), he would go to church and hear all the Bible readings about Jesus and the apostles performing great miracles of healing. And he would say to the other church members, “Great! When do we do this?”

To which they would reply, “Oh no, we just talk about it.”

At some point for Christians, the rubber has to hit the road. We’re good at talking, planning, and preparing. But actually ‘doing the stuff’? Hmm, that’s a bit radical.

What I’ve said so far in my three previous sermons about New Beginnings was potentially challenging, but it could just be treated as preparation. Israel still had to take that final step of entering the Promised Land. We have to take that final step from theory to practice.

So yes – we must not live in the past but look to what God wants to do today. Yes – we must live by faith in what God says he wants to do, and not be constrained by fears based on our human limitations. And yes – we need courage and obedience to the Scriptures, all nourished by the promise of God’s presence.

We have to do something new. ‘You have never been this way before,’ say the Israelite officers to the people (verse 4). But that’s no excuse for staying put. This goes way beyond just singing an unfamiliar hymn! It means getting out of our comfortable space in church fellowship and taking God’s redeeming love in Christ into the world in both our deeds and our words.

Here are four things that Joshua 3 teaches us we need in order to live out our calling in the world.

Firstly, follow God’s lead.

“When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the Levitical priests carrying it, you are to move out from your positions and follow it. 4 Then you will know which way to go, since you have never been this way before. But keep a distance of about two thousand cubits between you and the ark; do not go near it.”

The ark of the covenant is the portable presence of God with Israel, especially in the centuries before the Temple is built at Jerusalem. For the ark to go ahead of Israel is to signify that God goes ahead of them. Their calling is to follow God’s lead. God will lead them forward into the land.

The Christian call is also to follow God’s lead. He leads and directs the mission to which he calls us. We don’t invent things and just do what we fancy. We seek God’s lead and we respond.

That is built right into all Christian theology in one way or another. In the Methodist tradition, we talk of God’s ‘prevenient grace’, which means that God acts graciously before we ever do anything.

There are some similarities in the way Christians widely talk about mission today. We say that Christian mission is the mission of God, not our mission. We are called to find out what God is doing, and join in.

But how do we do that? Well, there is no getting around the need to practise what Wesley called ‘The means of grace’ and which modern Christians ecumenically call ‘The spiritual disciplines.’ It means actively seeking to be in tune with God. That requires a serious commitment to prayer and to meditating on Scripture. It’s no good thinking that we can just tick those off as done on Sunday mornings in the service, these need to be daily personal habits.

There are many ways to practise these disciplines, and we shall vary according to our personalities and gifts how we do them. I don’t have time to list different options now, but speak with me if you want some ideas.

What is certain is that the church sinks without them.

Secondly, imitate God’s character.

5 Joshua told the people, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you.”

To consecrate oneself is to dedicate oneself to God’s service. It is to be set aside for holy work. It is not just for the priests (or modern-day ministers, for that matter!) but for all of God’s people.

God’s mission is not something that merely requires a certain amount of religious competence. It needs character, too: God’s character. God’s mission is to make all things new, and that includes our character. If we are to be in harmony with God’s purposes, we need to grow in his likeness and utterly dedicated to his cause.

If you want an engineer or a plumber, character may not matter, only their competence. But not with the mission of God. It requires a people who are growing in Christlikeness.

So we are called to consecrate ourselves before God does amazing things among us.

Joshua does not tell us here how the people did this, but we may have a clue from a similar event. When they had arrived at Mount Sinai after leaving Egypt, Israel had been called to be consecrated at the foot of the mountain while Moses climbed up to meet with God. How did they do it then? By various forms of fasting. Not simply fasting from food, but married couples also abstained from marital relations.

Fasting takes various forms. We can fast from food, from marital relations, from TV, from gadgets, and so on. In each case we are giving up something good for a season to concentrate on something far better and much more important. That’s why when we fast we also pray.

And as we show God just how serious we are about his will by abstaining from something good in order to find extra time for prayer, so he will respond to a commitment like that by forming us more like his Son through the gift of the Holy Spirit in us.

It is no good being recklessly unholy when God turns up in power to do amazing things. If we are, either his power will burn us or in his mercy he will not act powerfully at all.

But if we long for God to act in power, we need to consecrate ourselves.

Thirdly, grow in faith.

8 Tell the priests who carry the ark of the covenant: ‘When you reach the edge of the Jordan’s waters, go and stand in the river.’”

Have you noticed the similarities and differences in this passage with the account of Israel crossing the Red Sea out of Egypt into the wilderness? Here at the end of their wilderness wanderings, they are again faced by a mass of water, and the waters divide.

Only this time, Joshua’s command differs from that of Moses. At the Red Sea in Exodus 14, Moses told the frightened people that all they needed to do was stand still and they would see the deliverance of their God. But here, the command is not to stand still at the water’s edge.

On this occasion, however, they don’t get to wait on dry land. Or at least, the priests are going to need some towels afterwards, because they have to go and stand in the river before God divides the water this time. They were called to do something more by faith before God enacted his promise.

Faith, like love, is something that needs to grow. If I still loved Debbie the same amount today as I did on our wedding day, our marriage would be long over. If I still had the same faith that I had on the day I was confirmed and received into Methodist membership at the age of sixteen then my faith would have collapsed years ago. It is for good reason that God calls us to grow in faith.

In my first circuit as a minister, I got involved in some youth ministry that worked across most of the churches in the town. We began by holding Sunday night youth services, but they became a bit cheesy, and in order to challenge ourselves in a more difficult situation, we then hired a vacant shop in the town. We couldn’t use as much gear, and so we did what we called ‘Worship Unplugged.’ If any of you remember the MTV Unplugged shows from the 1990s, you’ll have an idea of what we did.

But we had too many numbers to cram into the shop, and so we moved to the church hall at the URC. Again, that was fine for a time, until the numbers made that venue too uncomfortable. There was only one venue in the town that would hold us, but it required a step of faith. It was the local nightclub.

One of our team, a Christian businessman, approached the nightclub owner, and he said he was willing to take our booking for one Sunday night a month. He would provide bar staff who would only sell non-alcoholic drinks on those occasions.

There was just one thing: the fee he wanted went beyond our existing budget.

This was the time which we identified as our ‘put your feet in the water’ moment. God wanted us to go further than we had before. We agreed to the terms for the nightclub without having the money.

But when we did, another Christian businessman in the town stepped forward and underwrote the project.

If you want to go forward in faith (and why wouldn’t you?), then is it time for you to get your feet wet, metaphorically speaking?

Fourthly and finally, remember God’s deeds.

12 Now then, choose twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one from each tribe. 

What’s that about, then? The twelve men get mentioned but then Joshua goes back to talking about the priests.

We find the answer in chapter 4, which we didn’t read. These men take stones from the river and create a memorial to the miracle God does here.

Why? This is no monument or museum. This is no living in the past. This is about learning from the past. It is easy to forget what God has done. In later Old Testament times, tragically the prophets record that Israel had forgotten her God. Not that she forgot God existed, but she forgot what God had done for her. And when she did, she went off the rails spiritually.

We need to do something similar, because it stirs our faith to believe again in a God who does mighty things. The supreme memorial for Christians is of course Holy Communion, when we remember what God did for us in Christ at the Cross.

But we need to create smaller memorials too, by recording things God has done individually for each of us. Here’s how I have found that to be important.

Like many ministers, I have on more than one occasion become discouraged and considered resigning. If that shocks you, then you would be even more shocked to know the substantial percentage of ministers who have felt like that.

But when I have been down in the depths, on some occasions Debbie has said to me, how can you consider such a course of action when you look back at all the ways in which God guided you into this calling? My metaphorical memorial stones brought me back – even if reluctantly at times!

What are your memorial stones? If you don’t have a heap of them, then perhaps now is the time to start collecting them.

Because it’s time to set out on that new beginning to which God has called us, following his lead, living in his ways, stretching our faith, and being sustained by remembering his mighty deeds.

0

New Beginnings 3: Occupy The Land (Joshua 1:1-9)

Joshua 1:1-9

Moses my servant is dead. (Verse 2a)

It’s not quite what we experience in Methodism when one minister leaves and a new one arrives. Or, as is the case here, one minister in the circuit changes responsibilities and a new one arrives. But it is that time when we break with the past and set out on a new adventure. 

Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the River Jordan into the land I am about to give to them – to the Israelites. (Verse 2b)

I know our call is not literally to occupy geographical land, as was Israel’s. Nor is it military conquest. For Christians, crossing the Jordan and occupying the land is metaphorical. It is about breaking out of our holy huddles and bringing the Good News of God’s victory in Jesus Christ into the world. 

But even so, there are some parallels between the commands God gives Joshua and what he requires of us as we begin moving forward. These are commitments we can renew at our Covenant Service. Here are three. 

Firstly, be strong and courageous.

6 Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.

7 ‘Be strong and very courageous.

I think Joshua gets the memo! Be strong and courageous; be strong and very courageous. 

There is no doubt that we need strength and courage to announce the Good News of God’s victory in Jesus Christ to the world. We know that we risk being mocked, ignored, or maybe at best patronised. We know that we live in a society that understands life in a very different way from the historic Gospel. On occasions, the difference can be so much that we are assumed to be a threat to the well-being of our society, and we are treated as enemies. The number of people with a residual sympathy for Christianity is declining fast.

When our world is like that, it’s little wonder that we can feel nervous about speaking up for Christ. No wonder we get worried. Unlike Israel, we do not face military enemies who can take our lives, but we do face people who may be cruel with words and other actions. 

We too need to hear the injunction to be strong and courageous. We need strength that will overcome our paralysing fears so that we act in word and deed for the Gospel. 

We need strength and courage to overcome the excuses we make for keeping silent about Jesus. I’ve heard some Christians engage in worthy social action programmes but keep quiet about their faith, while claiming that their social action was their evangelism. No, it wasn’t. It was a demonstration of the Gospel, but the Good News still needs to be proclaimed and explained. That requires our words. 

We don’t all need to be confident evangelists with slick presentations, we just need to be people who are willing to speak of what Jesus has done for us and what he means to us. We are witnesses: we speak of what we have seen and heard. 

Neither do we all need to be people with clever answers to the questions and objections people raise against our faith. We can say with all honesty, I don’t know an answer to what you are saying, but I will come back to you. In the meantime, we can bring their questions to the Christian community for reflection, and where people who are more specialised in their knowledge can offer some thoughts. We can and should do our own thinking, too – O for more Christians to do serious reading about their faith in between Sundays. 

At heart, we simply need to be people who will speak of the difference Jesus has made in our lives. A friend of mine is an Anglican priest, and he is serving in parishes in the Church in Wales. Every week, he puts a video on Facebook of an ordinary church member speaking about the difference Jesus has made them. 

Can we do that? If Jesus went to the Cross for us, surely we can do that? The Cross gives us the strength and courage we need. 

Secondly, be scriptural.

Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. 8 Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.

Joshua doesn’t have the whole Bible at hand – obviously! He just has the Law that God has given Moses. But he is to follow the revelation he has been given. 

We, on the other hand, do have the entire Bible. It is the collection of books which the Church recognised had the particular signs of the Holy Spirit’s work as the apostles, prophets, and others recorded in their own styles what God had revealed to them. 

And in handling the Bible, we hold no ordinary book, or library of books. We hold a collection that in classical Christian terms is sufficient rule for our faith and practice. Its origins with the Spirit’s guidance of divinely commissioned messengers makes it the written Word of God. Its job is to point us to the living Word of God, Jesus himself. 

As Christians, we therefore have no liberty to depart from and contradict the teaching of Holy Scripture in all that it affirms about our faith and practice. We cannot soften our message when the world doesn’t like it. We cannot adapt our meaning to make it more congenial, for if we do so we are more concerned to please people than please God. And in any case, if we think that making ourselves more like the world will bring more people into the church, we are seriously deluded. If they don’t have to change, there is no need for them to join us! 

In my ministry among you, it will be my task to expound the teaching of the Bible as our primary guidance in their faith. I know there are difficult parts. Some are difficult, because we don’t understand them. Other passages are difficult, because we do understand them and don’t like them. But I will grapple with the difficulties and seek to provide a lead through such exposition. 

And I therefore call every Christian to a regular and sustained encounter with the Bible, so that we may engage seriously with the written Word and let it reveal to us the will of the living Word, Jesus himself. 

Can we renew that commitment at this our Covenant Service?

Thirdly and finally, the promise of God’s presence.

9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.’

There it is a third time: ‘Be strong and courageous.’ Only this time it isn’t simply a command. It’s accompanied by a promise. In the Lord’s desire for us not to lapse into fear or discouragement, he makes Joshua and his people a promise: ‘the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.’

There is something similar here to the promise of Jesus to be with us always, even to the end of the age in Matthew 28. In both cases, the promise of the divine presence with his people is given in a specific context. And that context is of God’s people being sent out into the world as witnesses to him. Israel and her army will witness to the presence of God as they occupy a land where tribes who practise detestable things such as child sacrifice are. Christians will go into the world with the Good News of God’s victory over death and sin in Jesus Christ. 

It’s not just a general promise for God to be with his people. It’s a promise that God will be with his people at the very time they may need strength and courage. 

It is as if God said, I didn’t make up all this going into places where people will be hostile just for a bit of fun as I watch you suffer. Oh no. I will be with you. 

Christians may not have the sort of visible signs of God’s presence that Israel had in the wilderness, such as the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. In any case, that didn’t always stop Israel from disobeying. 

But the sign of God’s presence with us is the gift of the Holy Spirit. The work of the Spirit is to bear witness to Jesus, and he will do that in many ways in our lives. He will help us see Jesus in our everyday. He will fill us with the peace of Christ, and not only individually, the peace of Christ will dwell in our midst. The Spirit will be there to help us speak when we are opposed. He will be our Advocate when we are under accusation. 

We may be a long time past Pentecost in the church calendar, but this is as good an occasion as any in the Christian Year to cry, ‘Come, Holy Spirit. Come with the presence of God. Come to make us strong and courageous as we witness to Jesus. Come and enliven the Scriptures as we read them so that we may know the will of God.’

Yes indeed: come, Holy Spirit.

0

New Beginnings 2: Moving On (Deuteronomy 1:1-46)

Deuteronomy 1:1-46

“Are we nearly there yet?”

I’m sure you recognise that as the frustrated cry of a young child on a car journey. I’m pretty certain those words came out of my mouth when I was small.

A frustrated child would have been driven mad by the antics of ancient Israel:

2 (It takes eleven days to go from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea by the Mount Seir road.)

3 In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses proclaimed to the Israelites all that the Lord had commanded him concerning them.

Forty years to travel a distance that should have taken them eleven days. And now Moses preaches this recent history back to the Israelites by recognising this trait in them: 

6 The Lord our God said to us at Horeb, ‘You have stayed long enough at this mountain. 7 Break camp and advance …

God is calling them into a new future, a future of blessing, in the Promised Land. But they are resistant.

And that makes this a good passage to look at in the second of my sermons on New Beginnings at the start of my ministry here. Last week, I talked about how we must leave the past behind, learning from it yes, but living there no, and seek the new thing God wants to do in our day and age. (You can watch the video or read the blog). This week, I want to talk about moving on, and the spiritual qualities we need.

Here are four important things we need to practise.

Firstly, every member ministry.

In verses 9 to 18 we read of how Moses was overloaded and how he shared the leadership and pastoral care of the people. He knew the whole enterprise would grind to a halt unless he stopped everything funnelling through him. 

I once heard about a vicar who would go to the bottom of his garden every morning at 10:30 to watch the Inter-City express train whizz past. Someone asked him why he did so.

He replied, “I want to see the only thing in this parish that moves without me pushing it.”

I think Moses felt like that, and so he drew on the gifts and talents of others. He wasn’t worried about keeping all the glory for himself. 

At Monday’s welcome service I said how such occasions made me uncomfortable. The very fact that ministers get public welcome services but others don’t tends to raise people’s expectations of people like me. 

But, I said, we are not your saviours, because the job of Saviour of the world is not vacant. It was taken long ago by Jesus. Ministers come alongside to help lead the work of the kingdom, we don’t come to save your church. 

So – I won’t be the first preacher to say this to you, but it bears regular repeating – have you considered what your talents and spiritual gifts are? And have you offered them in the service of God’s kingdom? We are all what the Bible calls ‘vessels of honour’ who have the privilege of serving Christ in response to his great salvation. 

How does that work out for you?

Secondly, obedience.

After the spies come back with some beautiful fruit from the Promised Land and their message that ‘It is a good land that the Lord our God is giving us’ (verse 25), how does Israel respond? Moses says,

26 But you were unwilling to go up; you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God.

Let us not think that once we have received salvation we can behave as we like. Obedience is not what earns us the love of God, but it is the way we show our gratitude for the salvation we have received. It’s no accident that Israel receives the Ten Commandments after being set free from Egypt, and not before. 

And there’s a very specific command here that Israel disobeys: to take the presence of God into the world where he is not yet known, and where people at the time worshipped other gods, false gods. Oh no, they said, we’ll stay among ourselves here where we’re comfortable. 

And God gets mad. 

I was once asked to conduct the funeral of an elderly church member, and so I arranged a meeting with her family to discuss the service and talk about her life. When her grown-up children, who were no longer churchgoers, were telling me about her, they said one very striking thing.

They told me that the old lady’s whole life had been based on the church and its activities, even her social life.

I think they were trying to impress me, but inside my heart sank. Just as Israel had a command from God to get into the Promised Land, so we have a command from Jesus to get into the whole world with his redeeming love. 

It’s so easy just to have a nice quiet life with our Christian friends, but all of us are called to show and tell the Gospel in our words and deeds. There are people around us who need some demonstration of God’s love, and we are the people to do it. 

I was so sad when I heard one of the lecturers where I trained for the ministry say, “I don’t have any non-Christian friends.” What a tragedy for the Gospel that was. 

There are many ways we could explore this question of obedience, but let’s just concentrate on this for now: how are our lives shining with the Gospel in the world?

Thirdly, gratitude.

It’s more than disobedience to take the presence of God into the world, says Moses. He goes on to say, 

27 You grumbled in your tents and said, ‘The Lord hates us; so he brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us.

Grumbling, rather than gratitude, characterises Israel here. 

Please don’t misunderstand me. There are times to complain. We should not always let lazy or malicious people mistreat us or others. There are issues of justice to take into account.

But there is a grumbling negativity that pervades some Christians and some churches. Nothing is ever good enough for some people. 

In one church I had people refuse to take on a role with teenagers. Two of those I approached declined, giving the same reason. 

“I’m not taking that on just to be ripped to shreds at Church Council by [Name].”

And when we did get someone else to do the job, guess what happened to them?

When we consider all that God has done for us in Jesus Christ from creation to redemption to the gift of the Spirit and the promise of a New Creation, surely our default attitude in the community of faith needs to be one of gratitude. It will show in our worship. It will come through in our relationships and our sense of community. It will be a shining witness to the world. 

When I was a child, I recall my maternal grandmother, who lived with us, singing the old chorus ‘Count your blessings’ around the house. The thought of counting our blessings and being surprised how much the Lord has done is a good principle. Put into practice, it changes the atmosphere in a place. It brings a kingdom atmosphere, I might say. 

In saying all this I don’t want to minimise the hardships and struggles that some of you are doubtless facing. But I do want to say that the sort of church which can survive and thrive in the future is a grateful one. There is more than enough of the grumbling spirit in the world. Let’s live – as one Christian leader once put it – ‘in the opposite spirit.’

Fourthly and finally, faith.

Here is the last issue that Moses and God have with Israel:

28 Where can we go? Our brothers have made our hearts melt in fear. They say, “The people are stronger and taller than we are; the cities are large, with walls up to the sky. We even saw the Anakites there.”’

29 Then I said to you, ‘Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. 30 The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, 31 and in the wilderness. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.’

32 In spite of this, you did not trust in the Lord your God, 33 who went ahead of you on your journey, in fire by night and in a cloud by day, to search out places for you to camp and to show you the way you should go.

Fear replaces faith. Israel sees the task ahead purely in terms of what they can or cannot do on their own. They do not see that when God commands something that seems to be humanly impossible, that same God will provide the means to achieve what he has commanded. Israel does not trust its God. Paralysing fear takes over.

This is certainly something we see in churches, and it inhibits their mission. It may even be the beginning of the death of those churches. 

Perhaps you have come across churches where they have been offered a great refurbishment and rebuilding project that will reinvigorate their premises for mission. Their existing building is getting old and expensive to run. Although a lively and loving community worships there, the local community looks at the building and thinks it’s closed. What do they do?

They can choose between fear and faith. Fear says, ‘We can’t do this. It’s too much money and too much work for the people we have.’ Faith says, ‘What is God saying to us here? If he is calling us to do this, then we will.’

Fear says we can’t. Faith says God can – provided it’s what he has said. 

Hudson Taylor, the famous nineteenth century missionary to China, once said this:

God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supply.

Conclusion

Perhaps, like Israel at the beginning of Deuteronomy, we are on the verge of something new. Will we embrace these qualities and go forward with God?

  • Every member ministry, where all our gifts contribute
  • Obedience, to take the love of God into the world
  • Gratitude for all God has done for us in Christ
  • Faith, to run with whatever God calls us to do, even if it stretches us.
2

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑